Tim Wright | Chairman, GrandBanks Capital
Jon Chait | Partner, Dace Ventures
Tim Wright
Exit41 Board Chairman & General Partner, GrandBanks Capital
Tim has over 20 years of operating experience in various technology industries. The combined value of the exits Tim has been involved with is over $17 billion. Tim has also overseen 39 mergers and acquisitions during his operating career. Tim brings a wealth of operational and technology experience to the team.
Prior to joining GrandBanks Capital, Tim held several key operating roles at Geac Computer Corporation Ltd. (TSX: GAC; NASDAQ: GEAC) reporting directly to the CEO, a global enterprise software company that addressed the various needs of the office of the CFO in Fortune 2000 companies. Most recently, Tim was the CEO of all of that company’s business outside the U.S. (Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and Pacific), responsible for approximately $220 million of Geac’s $440 million in total revenue and responsible for managing 1,300 people in 20 countries. Geac was a leader in the Business Performance Management market space, and in March 2006, was acquired by private equity firm, Golden Gate Capital, for $1.0 billion in cash. This acquisition represented a more than a 300 percent appreciation in the market capitalization of the business during his tenure with the company. Prior to Tim being named CEO of Geac’s non-U.S. businesses, he was a Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, as well as a Chief Information Officer responsible for handling the company’s strategic direction regarding technology and new products.
From November 1999 through December 2002, Tim served as a Senior Vice President, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Officer at Terra Lycos S.A. (NASDAQ: TRLY; MADX: TRR), a company possessing the largest global footprint of any Internet group at the time. Tim started with Lycos, Inc., working for Highland Capital Partners’ Managing General Partner Bob Davis, who was Lycos’ CEO. Tim was Lycos’ CTO at the time of its sale to Terra Networks, S.A. in 2000 for over $12 billion. With a presence in 42 countries and content in 19 languages, the company’s technology reached 116 million unique users per month and noted 2.3 million combined paying users and communications customers. Tim was responsible for management of the Technology Organization across all of the Terra Lycos business lines, driving the strategy, planning, budgeting, engineering, operations and internal systems. He oversaw 750 staff members in 10 development centers around the world and was responsible for managing an average budget of over $350 million in capital spending and operating expenses. Tim was also responsible for the integration efforts of nine companies that were acquired by Terra Lycos during his time with the company, including Gamesville, a SOFTBANK Venture Capital investment led by Charley Lax.
From 1992 through October 1999, Tim worked for The Learning Company (“TLC”) in a variety of roles, including Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer. At TLC, Tim was responsible for the management and integration of 25 acquired company technologies into the existing TLC systems. Throughout his more than eight years at TLC, Tim played an integral role in the development and growth of the company, including its $3.8 billion sale to Mattel in May 1999. At the time of the sale, TLC was the number one player in consumer education and home productivity software markets as measured by PCData. Tim also worked on the design and development of various software titles while serving as Vice President of Research and Development, including American Heritage Dictionary, Calendar Creator, Labels Unlimited and Photofinish.
Tim received his Bachelors of Science degree, summa cum laude, from City University in London. Tim is currently a member of the Board of Directors for LookSmart, Ltd. (NASDAQ: LOOK) and is a member of both the Compensation and Audit Committees. He served on the Advisory Boards for both Storage Networks (NASDAQ: STOR) and Teradata, and is a frequent speaker at various industry events. Tim also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Brimmer and May School in Newton, Massachusetts.
Jon Chait
Partner, Dace Ventures
Jon Chait has over 25 years of experience in building high-growth technology, digital media and service companies as an investor, entrepreneur and former operating executive. Before teaming on founding Dace, Jon was a principal and partner-nominee at Pod Holding (now Pod Venture Partners) in Boston, MA and Stockholm, Sweden, investing in early-stage ICT convergence and consumer ventures. Jon was actively involved with Pod’s existing investments in Peppercoin (sold to Chockstone), ServiceFactory (sold to Birdstep), Corestreet, OzVision and others. Previously he served as managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, a VC seed fund and investment bank. Jon also was CEO and founder of Reality Bytes (sold to Lightpaths), a new media entertainment publisher and leading middleware solutions provider to multimedia PC and video graphics OEM’s. He earlier held engineering, marketing and management positions at Lotus Development Corp., (now IBM/Lotus). Jon currently serves on the boards of auctionPAL, LocaModa, Mall Networks and as board observer for EveryScape.
Chet Barnard
CEO, Exit41
Chet Barnard brings over 30 years of business and sales strategy to Exit41. He is widely recognized as a leader in repositioning companies and having a passion for ‘top line’ growth through strategy, sales and business development. Prior to joining Exit41, Chet was Managing Partner of The Accelerator Group. In this role, he provided many early-to mid-stage companies with repositioning direction and tactical Go-to-Market strategies to help them accelerate sales and business development performance. He formed The Accelerator Group when Strategic Management Group (SMG), Inc., a simulation software firm, was acquired in 2005. At SMG, Chet was Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President, and was responsible for the operations, sales and strategic alliances of the business. Clients at SMG included nearly 20 percent of the Fortune 500, and Chet formed key relationships with leading software and services companies like SAP, Siebel and EDS.
Before SMG, Chet was a Chief Executive Officer and President at IBA, Inc., where he repositioned the company from both a market and organizational perspective, delivering 50 percent top-line growth within 24 months. This growth fueled significant ROI to investors, when IBA was acquired by ServiceSoft Technologies.
Earlier in his career, Chet was Founder & CEO of The Excalibur Group, a Systems Integration company focusing on ERP Solutions that was later purchased by Baan Investments, the parent company for Baan Software; he also led the sales & marketing efforts for Arthur Andersen where his team was responsible for growing the consulting business nationally from $50M-$500M in four years.
Chet has also served on various Boards of Directors of enterprise software and services companies. Chet has a B.S. in Mathematics from Northeastern University.