About Us
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About Us
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Leadership Team
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Peter Fredericks has over 30 years of experience as a technology entrepreneur and investor. In the mid 1980s, Peter founded his first company, ManageWare, which developed the award-winning software, Compete!. Peter served as CEO until the company’s successful sale to Computer Associates (now Broadcom). Since then, Peter has helped found and finance numerous technology companies across industries, several of which have gone public or been acquired. In information technology, he arranged venture capital for Phobos, prior to the company’s acquisition for over $250 million by Sonic Wall (now Dell), and supported the PIPE for iMergent (now NYSE: EXE) which returned 30x to investors while he served as director; in healthcare technology, he provided the first-round capital for immunotherapy company CancerVax, which went public (Nasdaq: CNVX, now sold) and has been an early investor in other healthcare startups; in fund management, he has been a director from inception of North of South Emerging Markets fund, which has won a Eurohedge Award as Best Emerging Markets Equity fund. He has served on numerous other private and public technology company, charity, and fund boards, and authored articles on use of AI software. He was recognized by the Republic of Austria for his contributions to that country’s technology economy and selected as Honorary Consul for Austria in San Francisco. Peter began his career as a strategy consultant at The Boston Consulting Group in Munich. Peter holds an A.B. with distinction from Stanford, an MBA with high distinction as a Baker Scholar from the Harvard Business School, and a PhD from the Vienna School of Economics.
Dr. Alexandra Haessler invented and continues to refine the technology underlying FemPulse. She is a fellowship trained Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgeon, who practices in San Francisco in a multi-specialty physician-run medical group, in a leadership role. Prior, Dr. Haessler founded and ran a successful private practice, San Francisco Urogynecology. Dr. Haessler has presented and written on various aspects of urogynecology and routinely provides educational lectures to OB/GYN departments regionally. Her professional memberships include the American Urogynecological Society (AUGS), the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG), the American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists (AAGL), the International Continence Society (ICS), the International Urogynecologic Society (IUGA), the Society for Urodynamics, Female Pelvic Medicine & Urogenital Reconstruction (SUFU), and the North American Neuromodulation Society (NANS). She has served as a consultant to leading companies in female urology, including Allergan, American Medical Systems (acquired by Boston Scientific), and Ethicon/Johnson & Johnson. Her training includes a 3-year accredited fellowship in Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery at UCLA/Harbor LA County, following OB/GYN residency at UCLA. She earned her B.A. in Zoology summa cum laude at the University of California Santa Barbara and her medical degree from Dartmouth Medical School.
Bruno Strul has over 30 years of medical device design and manufacturing experience. He is the founder and CEO of Apical Instruments, where he assembled a team of highly skilled electronics, electro-optical, software, industrial, mechanical, quality, and manufacturing professionals. Product lines include radio frequency / electro-surgical generators, including gynecology applications for companies such as Minerva Surgical (Nasdaq: UTRS). Dr. Strul is an expert in the delivery of energy across tissue and has over 50 issued patents reflecting unique and imaginative solutions. These patents have formed the basis of the IP for several companies. Dr. Strul received his PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University.
Mike Daniel has more than 30 years of regulatory, clinical, and quality experience and has been a consultant for multiple medical device companies over the past 25 years. Mike is President of Daniel and Daniel Consulting, a leading West Coast medical device consulting firm. He has familiarity with a broad range of medical devices, including: implantable heart assist devices (Novacor), in vitro diagnostics (SKD), in vivo diagnostic and imaging devices (Mauna Kea Technologies), endometrial resection/ablation devices (FemRx), coronary and peripheral catheters (LuMend, FHT, Kerberos), coronary anastomotic devices (Coalescent), left atrial appendage clips (LAAx) and general surgical implantable clips (Coalescent), wound and incision closure devices (ZipLine), implantable bronchial valves (Emphasis), gastrointestinal (GERD) and bariatric devices (Endogastric Solutions), vascular access devices (Vascular Pathways), femoral access closure devices (Cardiva), ENT devices (SinuSys), and arthroscopic, endoscopic, and percutaneous robotics (Intuitive Surgical, Hansen Medical, NeoGuide, ROBODOC). Mike holds a BS in Microbiology from Michigan State University, a MS in Biology from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and an MBA from UC Berkeley.
Kim Khoe has over 25 years of experience in the medical device regulatory affairs and quality assurance fields. Kim’s quality experience includes setting up companies’ quality management systems, hosting FDA and 3rd party audits, as well as auditing medical device manufacturers, having been a lead auditor for European notified body Underwriters Laboratories (UL) for 11 years. In the regulatory arena, she has filed several FDA 510(k) submissions resulting in clearances and also obtained CE marks for medical products. Kim manages quality assurance for Apical Instruments, after previously serving as QA manager for Supersonic Imagine, M2 Medical, Satiety, and Cardiva Medical. Kim holds a BSEE in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Hawaii.
Jeff Korn has been a corporate attorney in practice since 1982. From 1982 to 1999, he was a partner in the law firm of Kosto & Rotella, PA, specialized in commercial litigation and business practice. Since 1999, Jeff has served as corporate counsel and board member of several public companies, including Prosofttraining.com and Flanders Corporation (both NASDAQ companies now sold), and Crexendo, Inc., a NYSE company, where he serves as Chief Legal Officer. Jeff has also served as corporate counsel, business advisor, and early investor for numerous private technology startups. He holds a B.A. from the State University of New York at New Palz and a J.D. from Stetson University.
David Williams brings a combination of financial, legal, technical, and tax expertise to financial management. Since 2004, David has served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Equity Management Group, which provides asset management, tax consulting and financing. From 1996 to 2004, David acted as an independent consultant in financial transactions, taxation, and venture capital. Mr. Williams served as Chief Financial Officer and tax counsel at Wilshire Equities Corp., from 1987 to 1990 and as President from 1990 to 1996. From 1980 to 1987, Mr. Williams rose from a junior staff member to director position at Arthur Young & Co., a public accounting firm. Mr. Williams is a certified public accountant in California and Nevada and holds a J.D. degree in law and taxation from the McGeorge Law School at University of the Pacific. Mr. Williams graduated from Stanford University with an M.S. in engineering finance and a B.S. in biological science with honors.
Thomas Huber leads FemPulse GmbH’s operations headquartered in Vienna. Thomas has over 30 years of experience in executive roles across industries heading operations, technology, and finance. In 2008, he launched executive advisory firm LH Vermarktungs GmbH. Prior, he served as Senior Vice President of Techdata (now TD SYNNEX, NYSE: SNX), a distributor and solutions aggregator for the IT ecosystem active in 100+ countries. Thomas also served as Director, DACH (Germany/Austria/Switzerland) Business Transformation for Accenture. Earlier, he advanced to being COO and CFO of the Austrian REWE Group, with revenues of € 4.4 billion. He has served as Advisory Board Member for firms such as Unicredit-Bank Austria, as well as Asst. Professor for Marketing at Vienna University of Economics. He received a Master’s of Business and Computer Science from the Technical University of Vienna and a PhD from Vienna University.
About Us
Board of Directors
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Peter Fredericks has over 30 years of experience as a technology entrepreneur and investor. In the mid 1980s, Peter founded his first company, ManageWare, which developed the award-winning software, Compete!. Peter served as CEO until the company’s successful sale to Computer Associates (now Broadcom). Since then, Peter has helped found and finance numerous technology companies across industries, several of which have gone public or been acquired. In information technology, he arranged venture capital for Phobos, prior to the company’s acquisition for over $250 million by Sonic Wall (now Dell), and supported the PIPE for iMergent (now NYSE: EXE) which returned 30x to investors while he served as director; in healthcare technology, he provided the first-round capital for immunotherapy company CancerVax, which went public (Nasdaq: CNVX, now sold) and has been an early investor in other healthcare startups; in fund management, he has been a director from inception of North of South Emerging Markets fund, which has won a Eurohedge Award as Best Emerging Markets Equity fund. He has served on numerous other private and public technology company, charity, and fund boards, and authored articles on use of AI software. He was recognized by the Republic of Austria for his contributions to that country’s technology economy and selected as Honorary Consul for Austria in San Francisco. Peter began his career as a strategy consultant at The Boston Consulting Group in Munich. Peter holds an A.B. with distinction from Stanford, an MBA with high distinction as a Baker Scholar from the Harvard Business School, and a PhD from the Vienna School of Economics.
Dr. Alexandra Haessler invented and continues to refine the technology underlying FemPulse. She is a fellowship trained Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgeon, who practices in San Francisco in a multi-specialty physician-run medical group, in a leadership role. Prior, Dr. Haessler founded and ran a successful private practice, San Francisco Urogynecology. Dr. Haessler has presented and written on various aspects of urogynecology and routinely provides educational lectures to OB/GYN departments regionally. Her professional memberships include the American Urogynecological Society (AUGS), the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG), the American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists (AAGL), the International Continence Society (ICS), the International Urogynecologic Society (IUGA), the Society for Urodynamics, Female Pelvic Medicine & Urogenital Reconstruction (SUFU), and the North American Neuromodulation Society (NANS). She has served as a consultant to leading companies in female urology, including Allergan, American Medical Systems (acquired by Boston Scientific), and Ethicon/Johnson & Johnson. Her training includes a 3-year accredited fellowship in Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery at UCLA/Harbor LA County, following OB/GYN residency at UCLA. She earned her B.A. in Zoology summa cum laude at the University of California Santa Barbara and her medical degree from Dartmouth Medical School.
Flip served as the long-tme Managing Director of InterWest Partners, a venture capital firm located in Menlo Park, CA. He joined the IW team in 1982 and built a highly successful career in venture investing. With a background in engineering, he has invested in multiple areas of information technology, including semiconductors, computing and networking equipment, and infrastructure and applications software. Flip was a board member of Xilinx (XLNX), a publicly-held company, from 1984 to 2016 and Chairman from 2009 through 2015. He is a board member and/or advisor to several CEO’s and privately-held companies. Flip also served on the advisory board of Storm Ventures II and is a past president of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists. From 1973 to 1980, Flip worked in engineering management at IBM, where he managed both chip design and systems integration for several IBM office automation products. Flip earned his M.B.A. from Harvard University and received his M.S. and B.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University. He has one international and two U.S. patents. Flip’s prior investments include CIENA (IPO 1997, CIEN), Convey Computer (Acquired by Micron, 2015), Copper Mountain Networks (IPO 1999, CMTN), Edify (IPO 1996, EDFY), Kalpana (Acquired by Cisco in 1994), Lightera (Acquired by CIENA in 1999), Nanogen (IPO 1998, NGEN), Network Computing Devices (IPO 1992, NCDI), PlaceWare (Acquired by Microsoft in 2003), Power Integrations (IPO 1997, POWI), Ramp Networks (IPO 1999, RAMP), Rendition (Acquired by Micron in 1998), Sitera (Acquired by Vitesse in 2000), SpectraLinear (Acquired by Silicon Labs in 2011), Stratacom (Acquired by Cisco in 1992), Xilinx (IPO 1990, XLNX)
Darrin has over 20 years of experience in product development, R&D, operations and business development in a variety of medical device markets. He currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of Pulse Biosciences (Nasdaq: PLSE), a medical device company using a proprietary platform technology called nano-pulse stimulation. Previously, he served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Progyny, a female health care company. He also served as the CEO/President at Gynesonics, a venture backed women’s health care company focused on the minimally invasive treatment of symptomatic uterine fibroids, where he led the company from an early development stage to a mature clinical stage while raising more than $40M in venture investment. He also served as the Executive Vice President of R&D, Clinical Research, Regulatory Affairs and Operations at Conceptus Inc., a publicly held women’s health care device company, then acquired by Bayer. Earlier in his career, he served as the Chief Technology Officer of RF ablation company RITA Medical Systems, where he was responsible for R&D, operations, and business development functions. Darrin began his medical device career advancing to CTO at Computer Motion, a robotic system manufacturer acquired by Intuitive Surgical. Darrin is a named inventor on 57 U.S. patents and has led the development and launch of more than a dozen medical devices during his career. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Robert Taub is a serial entrepreneur and investor in several pharmaceutical and medical device companies. He gained an MBA at INSEAD and held various general management and sales and marketing positions with Monsanto, Baxter Travenol Laboratories and the Revlon Health Care Group. Robert later became an entrepreneur in the pharmaceutical and medical fields in the 1980’s. He is founder and executive chairman of Nyxoah (Nasdaq: NYXH), which is developing neurostimulation therapy for sleep disordered breathing conditions, as well as Chief Executive Officer of Man and Science, which is developing neurostimulation therapy for headache disorders. Prior to Nyxoah and Man & Science, he co-founded and co-managed Octapharma, a human plasma protein company for 12 years. He also founded and managed Omrix Biopharmaceuticals throughout a NASDAQ IPO followed by the acquisition by Johnson & Johnson. He became the lead investor in Neuroderm, a Parkinson’s disease pharmaceutical company, where he served as Chairman through its Nasdaq IPO and sale to Mitsubishi-Tanabe.
Jeff Korn has been a corporate attorney in practice since 1982. From 1982 to 1999, he was a partner in the law firm of Kosto & Rotella, PA, specialized in commercial litigation and business practice. Since 1999, Jeff has served as corporate counsel and board member of several public companies, including Prosofttraining.com and Flanders Corporation (both NASDAQ companies now sold), and Crexendo, Inc., a NYSE company, where he serves as Chief Legal Officer. Jeff has also served as corporate counsel, business advisor, and early investor for numerous private technology startups. He holds a B.A. from the State University of New York at New Palz and a J.D. from Stetson University.
David Williams brings a combination of financial, legal, technical, and tax expertise to financial management. Since 2004, David has served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Equity Management Group, which provides asset management, tax consulting and financing. From 1996 to 2004, David acted as an independent consultant in financial transactions, taxation, and venture capital. Mr. Williams served as Chief Financial Officer and tax counsel at Wilshire Equities Corp., from 1987 to 1990 and as President from 1990 to 1996. From 1980 to 1987, Mr. Williams rose from a junior staff member to director position at Arthur Young & Co., a public accounting firm. Mr. Williams is a certified public accountant in California and Nevada and holds a J.D. degree in law and taxation from the McGeorge Law School at University of the Pacific. Mr. Williams graduated from Stanford University with an M.S. in engineering finance and a B.S. in biological science with honors.
Advisory Board
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Dr. Dmochowski is a professor in the Department of Urology and vice-chairman of urologic surgery of the Medical Center at Vanderbilt University. He is also a clinical assistant professor in surgery at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. He has published more than 85 articles and book chapters, 200 abstracts, and has given over 100 presentations at various national and international meetings. He serves on the editorial board for the World Journal of Urology, Neurourology and Urodynamics, International Journal of Urogynecology, and the American Urological Association Office of Education CD-ROM Series, and as a reviewer for the Journal of Urology and Urology. Dr. Dmochowski has been granted the Zimskind Award from the Urodynamics Society for his accomplishment in clinical treatment for incontinence. Dr. Dmochowski is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a member of the American Urological Association and the International Continence Society. His current research interests are outcomes of incontinence therapies, with a particular emphasis on quality of life issues, and practice standardization and guidelines.
Dr. Krames is recognized as a worldwide thought-leader in the field of pain medicine and neuromodulation. He was until recently Medical Director of the Pacific Pain Treatment Center in San Francisco, which he founded in 1987. Dr. Krames is the immediate past-president of the International Neuromodulation Society (INS), Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of NEUROMODULATION, technology at the Neural Interface, the Journal of the INS, is a co-founder of the National Pain Foundation (NPF) and a founder of the North American Neuromodulation Society (NANS). Dr. Krames presently sits on the Board of the INS and has served on the Boards of the NANS, the American Academy of Pain Medicine, The American Board of Pain Medicine, the World Institute of Pain and the NPF. Dr. Krames is co-author of three books titled, “Pain Medicine, Tools of the Trade”, “Operative Neuromodulation” and “Neuromodulation”, has authored or coauthored more than 90 publications and has spoken world wide over 350 times on pain medicine and neuromodulation. Dr. Krames has been honored by numerous awards and honors from his colleagues, most recently the “Giants in Neuromodulation” award by the INS in 2013.
Dr. Brill was the director of Minimally Invasive Gynecology and Surgical Training at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, where he also served as Chair, New Technology Committee for Obstetrics and Gynecology. He is an internationally recognized pioneer and expert in gynecologic endoscopy and minimally invasive surgical techniques. His numerous publications, textbook chapters, courses, and a recently published textbook cover a wide range of subjects, including advanced techniques in minimally invasive surgery and the science of energy-based surgical devices. He is the past president of both the American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists (AAGL) and the Board of Directors of the AAGL/Society of Reproductive Surgeons Fellowship in Minimally Invasive Gynecology. He has also served as a member of the Food and Drug Administration Obstetrics and Gynecology Device Panel and as a consultant to the FDA.
Ben joined the other medical experts on the FemPulse Advisory Board, after previously advising the founders informally. Ben is an MIT-educated engineer, who has become a leading medical device executive and innovator in Silicon Valley over the past 30 years. Ben has served as Vice President of product development at Ventritex (implantable defibrillators, acquired by St. Jude Medical), Vice President of R&D for Pacesetter, CTO/COO of NeuroPace (responsive electrical stimulation for epilepsy), and most recently CEO of Autonomic Technologies (neurostimulation for headache). He has served on the boards of numerous medical companies, including Inspire Medical Systems, Angelmed, and Proteus Digital Health. He serves on the board of the recently-launched Neurotechnology Innovations Translator (NIT) formed in collaboration with over a dozen partners, with a mission to develop and commercialize pioneering neurotechnology solutions. Ben is a named inventor on over 100 patents and patent applications.
Jim Long has since 1982 been a founder, CEO, and investor, building successful businesses in the technology industry, developing new technologies and patents, and advising startups and venture capital firms; most recently at Gabriel Venture Partners, where he invested in consumer internet and cleantech. Jim began his venture capital career after graduation from business school in 1982, when he joined Fred Adler Ventures. In his four years at the firm, Jim was acting CEO at several turnarounds and worked with veteran VCs Jim Swartz and Arthur Patterson, prior to them founding Accel Partners. Jim has since done projects with leading venture firms such as Accel Partners, Crosspoint Venture Partners, IT-Farm (Japan), and Sequoia Capital. His venture experience includes Linkware (acquired by Ungermann-Bass), TiMetra (acquired by Alcatel), Ruckus Wireless (NYSE: RKUS), Ready Systems (acquired by Mentor), and Jibe Networks (acquired by Citrix). His entrepreneurial experience includes being founder/CEO of Rioport, founder/CEO of Starlight Networks, and founder/VP marketing of Tolerant Software, which became Veritas. Jim also lead one of the first digital music pioneers, RioPort, Inc. Jim serves on numerous technology company and community service boards. He holds a BS in electrical engineering and computer science from UC Berkeley and an MBA with distinction from the Harvard Business School.
