… And Announces Advisory Board Members

Still in stealth, Liqid Inc. has named its first official group of advisors.

Liqid advisors include technology veteran, business leader and author David Bradford; serial entrepreneur and advanced-technology investor Brian Hinman; and data center technology visionary Anil Rao. The advisor committee consists of a team of individuals set to help Liqid build upon the company’s business strategy and accelerate time to market.

“The talent, expertise and caliber of our advisor committee is a testament to Liqid, our vision and the problems we are solving,” said Jay Breakstone, CEO, Liqid. “It’s an honor to have each of these individuals onboard to help execute on our mission and to fundamentally change the way resources are used and managed in the data center. With the committee’s expertise and involvement, Liqid will accelerate its ability to cultivate strong partnerships and to build a world class organization. As a young company, augmenting our team with the best and the brightest individuals helps fortify a strong foundation for our future success.”

David Bradford is working with Liqid on strategic planning, organizational effectiveness and groundwork for an esteemed team. A business leader with more than 30 years of experience in the computer industry, he has a reputation for accelerating the growth and performance of game-changing organizations. Most recently he held CEO and board-level roles at HireVue, where the enterprise software company grew sales 1,400% and raised more than $90 million. From 2009-2010, he was CEO and chairman at Fusion-io, where he prepared the company for a successful IPO and recruited Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak as its chief scientist. During that time Fusion-io was named most innovative company in America. Prior to Fusion-io, he was SVP and general counsel at Novell, where he led a series of acquisitions, public offerings and business development activities. During his time at Novell the company grew from $70 million in annual revenue to more than $2 billion. He has served in an advisory role to a number of organizations including Omniture (acquired by Adobe) and Pervasive Software (acquired by Actian).

“Liqid is one of the most exciting young companies I’ve had a chance to work with in recent years,” Bradford said. “The team is truly innovative. It is delivering a fresh perspective and paramount change to data center solutions by solving real world problems in today’s rapidly changing IT landscape.”

Brian L. Hinman is co-founder and CEO at Mimosa Networks. He is helping the Liqid team shape its investment and business strategy and build valuable partnerships. As a serial entrepreneur, he has a 30-year track record of building and investing in a variety of tech companies. He was a venture partner at Oak Investment Partners from 2006-2015, focusing on investments in information technology and clean energy. Before that he co-founded and was CEO at 2Wire and Polycom Inc. He also co-founded and served as VP of engineering and director at PictureTel. He previously served on several Oak portfolio boards and currently serves as a director of Phononic Devices.

“The Liqid team is onto something big,” said Hinman. “They have the potential to bring a much needed transformation to the IT space. I’m excited to be a part of it.”

Anil Rao brings more than 20 years of experience in data center technologies. He is helping the company establish key relationships to best define product-market fit. In 2007, he founded SeaMicro, bringing the concept of microservers into the industry and paving the way for new data center computing architectures. The company was acquired by AMD in 2012 for $350 million. He continued to serve as the corporate VP of products at AMD. Prior to founding SeaMicro, he served as the senior director of product management and marketing at Juniper Networks, where he led business strategy, product definition and product marketing for the $100+ million per year application acceleration business unit. Prior to Juniper, he served as director of product management at Force10 Networks and played a key role in Force10’s success in supporting many of the world’s largest data centers and carrier networks including Google, Yahoo! and Level 3 Communications.

“The solution Liqid has developed is impressive,” Rao said. “They are commercializing technology never before seen in the IT space. The team offers a unique vision to what’s required in order to keep up with the growing demands of data centers.”