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Entrepreneur and visionary Dr. Naveed Sherwani is a well-known and respected semiconductor industry veteran with over 35 years of engineering and executive management experience. He has founded/co-founded 17 companies and raised $820M+ in funding from leading venture capital firms, which has created $3B+ in value.
Dr. Sherwani is passionate about promoting the semiconductor industry on the global stage, and has worked tirelessly to remove barriers to innovation, foster education around the world, and lead many entrepreneurs to not only launch their companies, but to achieve unicorn status.
While serving in various roles as president, CEO, or chairman, Naveed has been recognized as the leader of the “Most Respected Private Semiconductor Company” a record five times by the GSA (Global Semiconductor Alliance), the premier semiconductor industry membership body.
During his tenure as chairman, president and CEO of SiFive, he grew the company from a team of 20 worth approximately $20M to a global company with a team of over 500 worth of $2B. Naveed also co-founded a Federation comprised of four other silicon companies (StarFive, SemiFive, LeapFive, and ChinaFive). Each Federation company has a distinct strategic, regional, and vertical focus to maximize the value, creation and adoption of RISC-V. He has led eleven finance rounds, raising over $350M. The combined valuation of the Federation companies has crossed $1.3B. Naveed currently serves as the chairman of the main Federation.
In 2003, Naveed co-founded Open-Silicon, a pioneering company that reduced the cost of ownership of ASICs and greatly simplified the development process. Based on a $45M investment by prominent VC’s such as Sequoia, Norwest, and Interwest, Open-Silicon exited at $252M in a sale to a private equity group.
From 1993 to 2003, Naveed was at Intel, serving in various capacities, starting with design technology and culminating with the role of general manager of Intel Microelectronics, a division that he co-founded. A highlight of Naveed’s tenure at Intel was the design and wide deployment of Athena, which greatly improved automation of various microprocessor projects across the corporation. Naveed was a recipient of the prestigious Intel Achievement Award.
From 1988 to 1994, Naveed was a professor at Western Michigan University where he graduated several master’s and PhD students over the years. Many of his students have become famous on their own accord by founding many companies and serving in major international companies.
As a researcher and academic, Naveed focused on ASICs, VLSI, EDA, combinatorics, graph theory, and parallel computing. He has written several books including the textbook on chip design, Algorithms for VLSI Physical Design Automation, which is a standard textbook in graduate classes in most leading universities throughout the world. He has also authored over 125 technical articles on various aspects of VLSI physical design automation and ASICs, which have been published in leading publications and conferences, with several of them receiving best paper awards.
Naveed holds a PhD in computer engineering from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and an engineering degree from NED University of Engineering and Technology, Pakistan.
Visit Naveed’s LinkedIn page to learn more.
Kapil Shankar has over 25 years of marketing and business development experience in the digital and analog semiconductor space. He is also a successful visionary, founder and leader with extensive experience in strategic planning, fundraising, operations, and revenue/sales growth.
Prior to joining GSG, Kapil was the vice president of marketing and business development for the Core Markets Group at Xilinx/AMD.
Prior to joining Xilinx/AMD, Kapil was the founder and CEO of AnDAPT, Inc., a manufacturer of advanced programmable power management ICs. In this role, he successfully raised Series-A funding with three large venture capitalists. AnDAPT grew to become a pioneer in adaptive analog technology for enterprise, data center, networking, and telecom.
Earlier in his career, Kapil had a vision for broadening the scope of FPGAs to address low power handheld applications such as smartphones, tablets, cameras, medical instruments and more. This prompted him to launch SiliconBlue Technologies, a manufacturer of ultra-low power programmable devices for mobile and consumer electronics. In his role as founder and CEO, Kapil built the vision, culture, financial model, product direction, central value proposition and business strategy for the company, and secured a strong tier-one customer base including Samsung, LG, Google, Sharp, ZTE, Huawei and more. He successfully delivered investor returns by finding an acquisition partner, an investment banker, negotiating value and managing the exit transaction. SiliconBlue Technologies was acquired by Lattice Semiconductor. Kapil stayed with Lattice where he served as corporate vice president and general manager of the Consumer Business Unit. In this role, he integrated the SiliconBlue business, engineering and operations into Lattice’s core strategy for growth and competitive differentiation. He also was instrumental in helping the SiliconBlue/Lattice iCE product line reach triple-digit millions in revenue for smartphones and other mobile handhelds.
Prior to launching SiliconBlue and working for Lattice, Kapil held various executive management positions at Xilinx where he spearheaded the company’s strategy to penetrate new markets. He raised the “Spartan” business to $500M over the span of five years and built relationships with tier-one customers including Sony, Panasonic, Hitachi, Sharp, Harmon Becker, Mercedes, Bosch, HP, Dell, and more. Kapil also helped grow the company’s FPGA business from $300M to $1.2B over a five year period and helped establish several departments within the company to scale Xilinx’s systems and processes.
Kapil earned dual master’s degrees in electrical engineering and computers and system engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and he earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Delhi College of Engineering.
Visit Kapil’s LinkedIn page to learn more
Fawad Laique is a senior management and leadership executive with nearly three decades of experience in business development, finance transformation, stakeholder engagement, client relationships, and strategy and planning. His background includes consulting and auditing roles with worldwide clients in diversified sectors including financial services (wealth and asset management, commercial and investment banking, insurance), sovereign wealth fund, automotive and real estate entities.
Fawad has a proven track record of orchestrating the delivery of solutions that improve companies’ operational and financial performance. This includes not only managing established operations but launching and leading the transformation of startups.
Prior to joining GSG, Fawad was a partner at EY where he established and led the Financial Accounting Advisory Services (FAAS) line in the KSA and was the MENA FAAS markets leader. In this role, he was responsible for strategy, operations, client relations, quality, risk management and knowledge sharing. His achievements include helping to grow the FAAS practice from approximately 20 people and two partners in 2013 to more than 400 staff and 20 partners that exceeded revenues of $70M in 2021. During his tenure at EY, Fawad also served as the FAAS Bahrain leader from 2013 – 2017, and was head of assurance at the Jeddah office, from 2011 to 2013, where he grew the assurance revenue to its highest level.
Other career accolades include serving as an audit partner of a large investment bank during its exit from Chapter 11, where Fawad was responsible for ensuring compliance with regulatory conditions and auditing standards, and the investment banks successful sale of the $7B portfolio. He also successfully led numerous audits of complex regulated entities in Bahrain including private equity and commercial banks, as well as traditional commercial and retail banks.
During Fawad’s early career, he served as head of corporate banking at Habib Bank Limited in Bahrain, and manager of corporate banking at Deutsche Bank. In both positions he was responsible for growing the corporate banking loan portfolio and minimizing loss ratios.
Fawad earned a bachelor’s degree in commerce at Karachi University. He is certified as a fellow chartered accountant via the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan, a CPA in the United States, an honorary member of AAOIFI, and a certified independent director from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan.
Visit Fawad’s LinkedIn page to learn more.
Lars Christian Hülsmann has over 25 years of experience in corporate and project finance, M&A, restructuring, large-scale project management, risk and portfolio management, and strategic conception. He is also a successful founder, company builder and entrepreneur who is recognized for his talent in strategic planning, revenue/sales growth, and cost management within a variety of sectors including IT and digitalization, energy and clean technology, and finance.
In addition to his role at GSG, Lars is the CEO and founder partner of Wallberg Capital Management, which is an advisory and consulting group that connects top performing companies with international investors.
Prior to joining GSG, Lars served as chief commercial officer at Kaiserwetter Energy Management, a leading renewable energy startup in Germany. In this role, he was instrumental in the company’s rapid growth and expansion via worldwide sales to institutional clients (asset managers and banks), utilities and more.
Throughout his career, Lars has served on the executive boards of directors of several organizations including ACON Actienbank AG in Munich, ACON Group AG in Munich, and Unicorn Investment Bank B.S.C. in Bahrain where he oversaw all lending transactions and multiple M&A transactions. He has also served on the supervisory boards of other organizations including NASCO Energie & Rohstoff in Germany, Open-Silicon in San Jose, and Unicorn Capital in Chicago.
Earlier in his career, Lars served as the acting COO for Dresdner Kleinwort in London, a globally active Investment Bank where he was credited for defining the company’s operating model and overseeing the successful rollout of the Basel II project.
He also held several other positions as a strategy manager at ACCENTURE, the world’s leading Consultancy firm or at HypoVereinsbank (member of Unicredit Group) where he was responsible for corporate structure and strategy, risk management, cost management, and more.
Lars earned his degree in business administration from Ludwig-Maximilians-
Universität in Munich.
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Joe Chen is a senior-level executive with over 30 years of experience in the international semiconductor industry where he has a proven track record of orchestrating rapid business growth.
During his career, Joe has spanned the entire semiconductor industry chain, from equipment to manufacturing to design, and has served in various roles including marketing executive, regional managing director, and CEO. He is well known for his keen insight and problem-solving skills and possesses a unique perspective on company development from the standpoint of the investor. Joe has achieved unparalleled revenue growth, especially in China and the rest of Asia.
Joe has earned many accolades throughout his career. He served as CEO of Goke Microelectronics, a public company in China with annual revenues of 400 million yuan and a market capitalization of 5 billion yuan. In this role, he transformed the company’s organizational structure, strengthened its product position through alliances with foreign technology partners, actively improved the balance sheets, added new revenue streams, and reduced spending.
When Joe served as vice president of sales and marketing for GlobalFoundries in Greater China, he led the team to a CAGR of more than 36% for four consecutive years (with annual revenues of more than $700M). He actively promoted FDSOI technology, while expanding the customers in 28nm, 40nm, 65/55nm, and 180/130nm product lines.
As vice president of sales and marketing for ams AG Greater China, Joe successfully expanded the company from a dozen to over 50 full-featured teams in six months, quickly developed sales strategies, achieved high morale throughout the teams, and presented a clear and executable plan to global management that resulted in $1B in revenue over five years.
During his tenure at Teradyne, he served as engineer, account manager and general manager where he managed a team of professionals who achieved high standards of customer satisfaction and unprecedented market share in the fabless, foundry and OSAT industries. He progressed to the role of managing director of Teradyne Asia, where he was responsible for more than $1.3B in revenue. He continued to expand Teradyne’s business and presence with key customers including TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix, Sony, Renesas, Mediatek, and YMTC.
In his role as vice president of operations, sales, and marketing at Amlogic, Joe managed the company’s cost control, ensured product quality, shortened the manufacturing cycle, and maximized inventory turnover to enable the company’s digital photo frame products to achieve global leadership.
Joe earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from California State University, Northridge, and completed the EMBA program at the University of Southern California.
Visit Joe’s LinkedIn page to learn more.