Board of Directors
Rich D'Amore
Jesse Devitte
Joseph Esposito
John McEleney
Lou Volpe
Rich D'Amore
North Bridge Venture Partners
Rich D'Amore is a co-founder and general partner of North Bridge Venture Partners. Prior to founding North Bridge, Rich was a general partner of Hambro International Venture Fund. Rich is a summa cum laude graduate of Northeastern University, and he received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar. Rich serves on the Board of Trustees at Northeastern University as well as the Boards of Vecco Instruments, Phase Forward and a number of private companies.
North Bridge Venture Partners is an investor in Newforma.
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Jesse Devitte
Borealis Ventures
Village Ventures
Jesse is a Co-Founder and Managing Director of Borealis Ventures, a northern New England-focused early stage venture capital firm that is a member of the Village Ventures national network of early stage venture funds. Jesse has built his career on helping software companies succeed, serving variously as an entrepreneur, public company executive, angel investor, outside director, and industry spokesman.
Jesse was the driving force behind the phenomenal growth of Softdesk from a New Hampshire start-up to a multinational public company. He served on Softdesk's Board of Directors and in a variety of senior operating roles at the company, and directed numerous acquisitions, a successful initial public offering, and ultimately, the sale of the business in 1996 to Autodesk. Jesse subsequently led the integration of the two companies and served on the Autodesk executive staff as the Vice President and General Manager of the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Division.
In addition to being a Director of Newforma, Inc., Jesse is also a Co-Founder and the Founding Investor. He was the former Chairman of Scribe Software prior to its acquisition by The Mustang Group and was a Director of @Last Software prior to its acquisition by Google. He is also the Co-Founder and Founding Angel Investor of Handmark, where he is also a Director. Jesse is the Chairman of virtual construction company Vico Software and a Director of horizontal infrastructure company Envista Software. Jesse is the Chairman Emeritus of the Software Association of New Hampshire, a statewide director of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and serves on the New England Executive Board of TechNet.
Jesse graduated with Distinction from the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs and completed his military service as a member of the White House Communications Agency during the Ford and Carter administrations.
Borealis Ventures and Village Ventures are investors in Newforma.
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Joseph Esposito
Ascentage Group
Joe Esposito has over 30 years of finance and operations experience, especially in growing and developing technology businesses. He is currently a business development advisor for Ascentage Group as well as an advisor to several start-up technology companies.
Joe retired as chief financial officer of SolidWorks Corporation, where he was responsible for all financial, legal and business systems activities, as well as most administrative functions. Joe completed four acquisitions for SolidWorks and managed integration of each business into the company.
Prior to joining SolidWorks, Joe was financial director of new business ventures at Polaroid Corporation, where he was responsible for determining financial and operational structures for acquisitions, dispositions and spin-outs in support of Polaroid’s first coordinated new business development effort. Previously, Joe served as chief financial officer of Polaroid Medical Imaging Systems and held various controllership and treasury roles throughout Polaroid.
Joe serves on the board of directors and as treasurer of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education and chairs its audit committee. He is also chairman of the Advisory Council to the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education concerning school district accountability and assistance.
Joe attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, served as a U.S. Army Captain in Vietnam, received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Boston University, and has a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School. In addition, he is a certified public accountant with both audit and tax experience from Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Company (KPMG Peat Marwick LLP).
John McEleney
CloudSwitch Inc.
John McEleney is chief executive officer of CloudSwitch Inc., www.cloudswitch.com. CloudSwitch provides an enterprise gateway to the cloud. The CloudSwitch software appliance enables enterprises to benefit from the cloud’s dramatic improvements in cost, rapid deployment and scaling.
Prior to joining CloudSwitch, John was the chief executive officer of SolidWorks Corporation, www.solidworks.com, a Dassault Systèmes S.A. company. John’s rise to CEO was built on his strong record of results over a 20-year career in the CAD industry. During his tenure as CEO, annual revenues grew from US $100 million in 2001 to over $350 million in 2007.
Before joining SolidWorks, McEleney held management positions at Computervision, where he was involved in a wide array of functions including marketing and product development. Previously, McEleney ran one of Raytheon’s defense product design and development pre-production teams.
McEleney frequently addresses industry and business conferences, including the prestigious Nantucket Conference and Internet World. He is an expert on subjects such as product development, innovative technologies and business development. He has published articles on CAD-related issues in Design News, Machine Design, and Desktop Engineering magazines.
John has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Rochester, a master’s degree in manufacturing systems from Boston University, and a master’s degree in business administration and marketing from Northeastern University.
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Lou Volpe
Kodiak Venture Partners
Lou Volpe has over 25 years of technology industry experience. As an operating executive, his career includes many successful IPOs and acquisitions, such as the multi-billion dollar purchases of ArrowPoint Communications and GeoTel Communications by Cisco Systems. At Kodiak, one of his portfolio companies had a successful acquisition when IMLogic was acquired by Symantec in January 2006.
In his key role as Kodiak's managing general partner, Lou sets the strategy and growth initiatives for the firm. He focuses on investments across the spectrum of the firm's technology sectors, concentrating on software and services. He is a member of the boards of directors for Kodiak portfolio companies including airwide solutions, Azimuth Systems, Bentley Kinetics, Egenera, GTESS, HighRoads, sentitO Networks and SpaceClaim.
Lou joined Kodiak from ArrowPoint Communications, where he was president, chief operating officer, and a member of the board with responsibility for all of the company's functional organizations and for managing worldwide operations. Under his leadership, ArrowPoint had a successful IPO in March 2000, and subsequently was acquired by Cisco for $5.5 billion in June of that year.
Before ArrowPoint, Lou was senior vice president of worldwide sales & marketing and a member of the board of GeoTel Communications. He joined the company early in its developmental stage, was a major contributor in building its worldwide sales and marketing presence, and was instrumental in guiding the company in its IPO and eventual $2 billion acquisition by Cisco in June 1999.
In previous positions, Lou served as senior vice president of marketing and operations for Parametric Technology Corporation, and also was an executive at Prime Computer. He also has been an active investor and board member for a number of companies including Atria (acquired by Pure) and Softdesk (acquired by Autodesk).
Lou holds a B.A. from Tufts University and an M.B.A. from Boston University.
Kodiak Venture Partners is an investor in Newforma.
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