Ramu Potarazu started Avail Media after leading the $1.2 billion global company Intelsat. What he likes about startup life is the ability to be agile and make things happen.

Rick Geritz, one of Baltimore’s “Top 40 under 40” executives, founded BDMetrics because he had struggled with quantifying the value of trade shows while a senior executive at a large public company

Foster Hinshaw, often referred to as the Father of Data Warehouse Appliances, brings a wealth of creative, technical, and operational expertise in both hardware and software to Dataupia.

Andy Astor, CEO of EnterpriseDB, is an accomplished member of the blogosphere, using his “Open Thoughts” blog as a way to evangelize and discuss his views on Open Source and the role of his company.

Mike Mulcahy, CEO of ExaDigm, joins the company with more than 15 years of executive-level experience in the payment industry.

Alan Grant, CEO of Exchange Solutions, is the originator of the “value exchange” business performance improvement model. Alan first described the opportunity to directly optimize customer-company “exchange economics” in a lead article published in the Harvard Business Review in October of 1995.

Prior to founding Fishbowl, CEO Scott Shaw was co-founder and President of Amy's Ice Creams, Partner & Chief Operating Officer of CAFÉ TU TU TANGO, a Nation's Restaurant News "Hot Concepts" award-winner, and Chief Operating Officer of the Austin Grill, an award-winning seven-unit chain based in Washington, DC.

CEO Michael O’Neil’s interest in GetWellNetwork began when he was a recovering cancer patient.

JumpTap CEO Dan Olschwang left the big company environment of Comverse to take on the challenge of beating big competitors in the emerging market of mobile search and advertising.

KZO Innovations’ CEO Wes Cruver and a friend started their first company in high school, putting kids online. They saw the need for a better video platform and started KZO Innovations.

LeftHand CEO Bill Chambers revolutionized the networked storage by delivering the first SAN over IP.

Nirvanix CEO Patrick Harr coined the edgy phrase “The box is dead” to capture the sea change in storage today epitomized by Nirvanix.

Parature CEO Duke Chung and his co-founder hatched the idea for the company in a Cornell dorm room, based on a vision of a radically simpler way to deliver customer service and support over the Web.

Persystent CEO Joe Loughry has over 30 years of successful hands-on experience in public and privately-held software companies.

RealOps CEO Sean McDermott saw a big opportunity automating the procedures that make big datacenters run.

CEO Mark Logan thinks Rivermine has one of the best ROI stories he’s seen in 20 years’ experience in the enterprise software business.

SafeNet CEO Chris Fedde combines deep technical skills (he holds several patents) with business acumen.

SEPATON CEO Mike Worhach has 30 years of experience in the computer and storage industry.

ServiceBench CEO John Estrada was one of the company’s founders, seeing an opportunity for a software solution to the warranty service business.

CEO Joe Ruef has deep roots in the electronic components business that Verical hopes to revolutionize with its exchange approach to component resale.

CEO Clint Heiden hatched the idea for a next-generation career management site while running his own recruiting firm, the Heiden Group.