Viterbi Startup Garage
Meet the VSG Team
Viterbi Startup Garage Director
David Eastman is an experienced technology investor, executive and advisor, currently serving as chairman of one private company and on the boards of two others; he has also served as an adjunct instructor in national cohorts for the National Science Foundation's i-Corps program to train startup managers. He helped to found MediaShift, Inc. in 2010 and served as its CFO from 2010 to 2013 and its COO from 2010 to 2012, taking the company public during his tenure.
Mr. Eastman served as a General Partner at Park City, Utah based Prospector Equity Capital, L.P. from the fund’s formation in 2002 through its completion in 2013, leading a majority of the fund’s investments and contributing to the fund’s top quartile returns for its vintage year. Most recently, after almost 14 years on the Company’s Board, he served as CFO for portfolio company Ondax, Inc., a Caltech spinoff, working with management to prepare the company for sale and managing the sale process through selection of its investment banking team and closing its merger with one of the world’s largest publicly traded photonics companies in October, 2018.
Mr. Eastman has also served as a Managing Director at Hunter Capital Group, Prospector’s management company, since 1998. Previously, Mr. Eastman focused on private equity investments in Europe, most recently as a partner of Prague-based Tyn Group, where he worked on acquisitions in international franchising and telecommunications following leadership of a USAID investment banking team at the Slovak Ministry of Privatization. Mr. Eastman has also worked as a private equity investor in Asia with Unifund International and as an investment banker with Banque Paribas and Drexel Burnham Lambert in the United States. Mr. Eastman holds a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University and an M.B.A. in Finance from UCLA’s Anderson School.
Facilities Manager
Arcelia Navarro has over a decade of experience in building and developing grassroots programs from the ground up. Throughout her career, she has created and managed program operations both locally and abroad. She is an advocate at heart and is staunchly committed to supporting the needs of those who deserve representation.
Her studies and fascination with human cognitive behavior motivate her efforts in developing programs that highlight individual strengths while addressing weaknesses by way of support strategies. Her ideal work environment is one that embodies all of these aspects in a fun and respectful way, anchored in routine and consistency, preparedness, but above all measurable through data to guarantee fidelity.
As a student at UC Berkeley, she co-founded the Inclusion Initiative DeCal course, connecting differently-abled students with able-bodied students to encourage interdependence whilst addressing stigmas in the community through targeted lectures and lab meetings. In 2016 she joined the Palos Verdes School District to spearhead the BASIS program, and early intervention program addressing inclusion in the classroom.
Traveling overseas to Shanghai, she worked to develop innovative ways to support the local communities by advocating awareness while managing programs for the Essential Learning Group. After giving birth to her daughter, she was appointed SEN Director at SHINE Academy, an offshoot of Olivia’s Place, to build a one of a kind day program supporting both the expat and local communities in Pudong and Puxi. She has presented at East China Normal University on Positive Behavior Support as well as holding workshops on discrete trial teaching in applied behavior analysis at the 2011 SENIA Conference hosted at Concordia Internation School.
Innovator In Residence
Julie Pantiskas is a successful entrepreneurial professional with over 30 years’ experience leading business operations and marketing. In 2017, she joined Salt Creek Capital, a private equity firm, as an Executive Partner, as well as, continued her consulting practice where she has worked with Snoop Dogg and the co-founder of Bitcoin.
Prior to joining Salt Creek Capital, Julie was EVP of Marketing, Training and Project Management for Summit Funding, Inc., a $4 billion mortgage lender. She led a sales and marketing rebranding initiative that resulted in a 24% sales increase. Previously, she held executive leadership roles at the Belkin International, Oberthur Technology, Walt Disney Company, and Deloitte Consulting where she has a proven track record as a “corporate entrepreneur” by driving revenue growth through innovation or streamlining operations. Earlier in her career, Julie was President of her 3rd generation family business, the Nut Tree Restaurant in Northern California where she developed 750,000 square feet of retail space.
Julie earned a B.S, in Agricultural Economics from University of California at Davis. She is very active in the national, state and local community. She is the Board of Directors for two national non-profits: American Women for International Understanding and American Bone Health. Additionally, she is actively involved in Pasadena Angels and the Greater Los Angeles entrepreneurial community.
Innovator In Residence
In 2005, two years before the first iPhone was released, internet fraud was still a theoretical problem and not the headline-grabbing crisis it is today. Darren was one of the 3 founders of TeleSign that had the foresight that online identity would be critical to the success of businesses around the world. With a mission to create a more secure online experience, they designed the system that today we all take for granted - when a website needs to confirm your identity, they simply send a voice call or SMS to your phone with a pin code that you must enter into the website.
Like any other startup, the path at first was difficult. After struggling for years, they had their first breakthrough in 2007 with an online classified site that used TeleSign’s solutions to cut fraud by 97%.
Since that time, TeleSign has grown rapidly to 350 employees around the globe and topped $150 Million in yearly revenue. Counting 21 of the 25 largest internet companies as clients, the company has appeared on several prestigious awards lists such as the Inc. 5000, Deloitte Fast 500, and Forbes Most Promising Companies. In 2017, the company was purchased by BICS, one of the largest telcos in the world, for $300+ million dollars.
Since leaving TeleSign in 2018, Darren has returned to his founder roots to focus on investing and advising early-stage companies.
He has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including Good Morning America, Entrepreneur.com, MSNBC.com, CNN, Esquire Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR.
Darren holds a B.S in Business Administration from USC (cum laude).
Innovator In Residence
Dana Aiken brings more than twenty-five years of expertise developing and leading global operations and sales strategy across high growth startups and mid-sized companies, including IPO and M&A activity. She has held senior positions on executive teams, working with hardware, software and SaaS offerings in security, networking, automated testing, and education industries with companies in various stages of growth. She is known for her expertise implementing scalable Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies and Revenue Operations (RevOps) that result in top line growth while proactively managing expenses.
At the beginning of Dana’s career, she held various sales positions, rising through the ranks to lead GTM teams. Her front-line experience was invaluable as she became Vice President of Sales Operations in 2008 through an acquisition by Blackboard, a $550M educational technology company. In addition to building a team for sales operations and enablement programs, Dana participated in the M&A projects at Blackboard, where the team on-boarded acquired companies for unified sales systems, operations, and processes.
In 2011, Dana transitioned to manufacturing, as VP of Worldwide Sales Operations for Gigamon who provides network traffic visibility. While there, she set up operational teams, business tools, enablement programs and processes including forecasting for demand planning and channel distribution, to scale the company across multiple departments, to meet SOX compliance. This contributed to a successful IPO in 2013.
Most recently, Dana was Vice President and GM of Self Service for Sauce Labs who provides a SaaS test automation platform. She drove strategy with the cross functional “Growth” team to identify hypotheses based on customer voice for test and analysis to result in higher conversions of self-service offerings.
Dana has a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Saint Mary's College, and a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Marketing from California State University, Sacramento.
Innovator In Residence
Entrepreneur, Security Veteran & Investor
As a longtime product leader, Dave has had his hand at a dizzying variety of challenges that range from building an enterprise product from scratch to acquisition (Foundstone) to transforming a consumer product line (Norton). Dave was the driving force that took CrowdStrike’s nascent product line with a handful of small customers and established it as a disruptive force in the industry which has fueled the company’s explosive growth. He was also Chief Product Officer of Tenable where he steered the team through an aggressive growth phase, culminating in a successful initial public offering in the Summer of 2018.
Currently, Dave is CEO of Open Raven, a company founded in the Spring of 2019 focused on disrupting the data security market. Dave also runs the Security Voices podcast alongside B-Sides conference icon Jack Daniel.
Dave is a security industry of 20+ years, starting long before anyone started calling it “cyber”. He began as a consultant for Deloitte & Touche and then Internet Security Systems, conducting security assessments, deploying products and responding to incidents. Dave is a frequent spokesperson, making appearances on NBC, CNN and elsewhere while speaking at industry events such as RSA, Black Hat and most recently B-Sides Las Vegas. He has been a contributing author to a number of information security publications and books, including Crimeware: Understanding New Attacks and Defenses.
Dave is an investor focused on helping to grow businesses in his hometown of Los Angeles where he lives with his wife and son. This Summer he continues his relentless pursuit of growing the finest tomatoes on the westside. Dave holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor.
Innovator In Residence
Innovator In Residence
Aled is the Executive Chairman of “IoTium”, a SaaS provider for the secure Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) with offices in U.S. India, Japan, and Australia. Backed by John Chambers (Chairman Emeritus, Cisco), Honeywell & GE Ventures, IoTium focuses on the massive increase in small sensors collectively capable of huge computational power. Miles joined TeleSign Corporation as Chief Executive Officer in 2016. In 2017 he sold the company to BICS, (a Proximus, Swisscom, MTN joint venture) for $300m. In 2018, Aled was retained as CEO to drive post acquisition growth and full integration.
From 2009 to 2015, he served on the executive committee of Symantec Corporation reporting to the CEO. He held responsibility for the global ‘Norton’ business unit navigating the $2 billion, 2,500-person consumer division. In 2014/15, Miles also rescued the Latin America geography, returning it to double-digit growth & winning the region’s largest-ever deal (worth $45m).
In 2007, he relocated from the U.K. to the U.S. when he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Cineflex Camera Systems LLC in Los Angeles. A global gyro-stabilized camera manufacturer for film and television, Cineflex provided the aerial cinematography in the landmark BBC series"Planet Earth" and "Frozen Planet” (winning a technical Emmy).
Recognizing the opportunity for application in different industries, Miles pivoted the company toward law enforcement & defense surveillance. The team added militarized technology and software systems acquiring defense contracts with the governments of the U.S., U.K., Japan, Brazil, Thailand, and the U.A.E. before ultimately selling the business to General Dynamics in 2009.
Under the Presidency of H.R.H. The Prince of Wales, Aled serves on the board of the National Conservatoire of Wales and since March 2019 is an advisor to the Welsh Government, working closely with the Minister for International Relations: Baroness Morgan. He is a board member of Wildstar.tv founded by the executive producers and directors of the award-winning BBC documentary “Planet Earth”.
Published on July 1st, 2021
Last updated on March 13th, 2024