Dave Asprey

Current

• VP Technology, VP Business & Corporate Development at Blue Coat Systems
• President and Chairman at Smart Life Forum
• Angel Investor / Advisory Board Member at Privately Held

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Past

• Vice President, Marketing & Technology Strategy at Zeus Technology
• Director, Technology Strategy at Citrix Systems
• Director, Product Management at Citrix Systems

• Director, Product Management at NetScaler
• Strategy Consultant at Privately Held
• Sr. Director, Product Management at Speedera Networks
• Director, Strategic Planning at Cable & Wireless
• Director, Strategic Planning at Exodus Communications
• Program Manager & Founder, Web & Internet Systems Engineering Program at University of California, Santa Cruz
• Internet Business Application Architect at 3Com
• IT Manager at Bradshaw North
• IT at Salesmark
• IT at Gould Medical Foundation
• Early Internet Journalist (Self-employed)
• Entrepreneur at E-commerce pioneer (Sole Proprietorship)

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12 more...

Education

• University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School
• California State University
• University of California, Santa Barbara

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Recommended

55 people have recommended Dave

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Internet

Dave Asprey’s Summary

Technology strategy and marketing executive with experience in strategic planning, product management, corporate & business development, from startup to F500, for service providers, telcos, software, networking, virtualization, CDN, cloud computing, and SaaS.

I'm an expert in creating and marketing products for IT because I started my career on the CIO path. Think of me as a CTO type who can make eye contact, knows how CIOs think, and likes to negotiate deals. I'm an accomplished public speaker and presenter with thousands of hours in front of audiences. My writing has been published by the NY Times, Fortune, Salon.com, and GigaOm. Wharton MBA with MIS and CompSci undergrad work.

STRATEGY
• Owned strategic planning for the Citrix virtualization group (~ $700m) & prod mktg for desktop virtualization
• Co-founded 1200 person Professional Services group, owned BoD-level strategy for Exodus Communications
• Sat on IBM's highest level customer advisory board and multiple VC advisory boards incl JP Morgan
•On startup Advisory Boards in systems mgt, virtualization, networking: Commendo, Collation (IBM), Afara (Sun), Netscaler (Citrix), Skywave, Breakthrough, Inkra Networks (Cisco/Savvis)

PRODUCT
•Executive roles in Product Management and Marketing for networking, software, SaaS, virtualization
•Full PLC - concept to launch
•Primary press/analyst tech spokesperson for 2 public companies (one $30B, one $1.5B)
•Published author- articles, whitepapers, books

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
•Owned partner deals with VMware, MSFT, Brocade, IBM, Accenture, BEA, telcos, startups
•Founder of Application Delivery Alliance

CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT
•Led tech due diligence (from $60m-$8B deals)
•Acquirer, acquiree and BKK experience

COMMUNITY
•Built University of California UCSC Internet Engineering program; taught >1800hrs in 5yrs
•Chairman smartlifeforum.com nonprofit
•Yogi, expert nutritionist, meditator

Dave Asprey’s Specialties:

Product management, product marketing, strategic planning, CTO, application acceleration, cloud computing, WAN optimization, web infrastructure, performance management, HTTP caching, compression, hosting, collocation, data center, ISP, MSP, ASP, Utility Computing, IT, Performance and Availability, CDN, Systems Management, autonomous computing, venture capital, life extension, angel investing, alternative health, vitamins, supplements, nutrition, yoga, SaaS

Dave Asprey’s Experience

• VP Technology, VP Business & Corporate Development

  Blue Coat Systems

  (Public Company; bcsi; Computer Networking industry)

  November 2008 — Present (1 year 1 month)

  I have 3 primary responsibilities at Blue Coat.
  
  I serve as Blue Coat's primary spokesperson and evangelist, working frequently with press and analysts, communicating and shaping our technology strategy for Application Delivery Networking. Internally, I work with product and engineering teams to make sure the company takes advantage of disruptive technologies like virtualization, cloud computing, and SaaS. I was one of the core team of 5 people who created Blue Coat's SaaS strategy.
  
  I lead the team responsible for all business development activities, including relationships with Microsoft, VMware, Brocade, Symantec, HP, Dell, Tandberg, Polycom, Adobe, RSA, etc., along with the broader Technology Integration Partner program. I grew the team to focus on the Blue Coat relationships with Oracle and SAP. In a recent quarter, my team was responsible for $6 million in co-selling, $5 million in reselling, and renegotiating royalties to save ~$1.25m. We generated more than $11,000 net revenue per hour spent on Business Development!
  
  I founded the Application Delivery Alliance to help F5, Cisco, Citrix, Brocade, Blue Coat and other companies reduce customer confusion around Application Delivery, expanding the market and reducing sales cycle time.
  
  I am responsible for corporate development (M&A) activities across the company, including creating and delivering M&A business cases, performing diligence, and evaluating deals, both inbound from bankers, and outbound strategic opportunities.

• President and Chairman

  Smart Life Forum

  (Health, Wellness and Fitness industry)

  January 2002 — Present (7 years 11 months)

  Smart Life Forum is a non-profit 501(c)3 based in Palo Alto, with 135+ members who attend our monthly meeting on the 3rd Thursday of the month at 7:30 pm. See SmartLifeForum.org for details.
  
  Our members range from people wanting to get more life out of their years to highly sophisticated anti-aging and preventive wellness oriented laypeople and physicians.
  
  Each month, we provide a short forum for our members to raise questions or new findings on health, then invite leading experts in alternative health to present to our members, One of our advisors is a top-ranked antiaging physician (who runs antiaging.com) and another is the leading authority on cognitive enhancement (smart drugs).
  
  Past speakers include Aubrey de Grey (Cambridge-based creator of the SENS aging model), Julian Whitaker (chelation poineer and author of "Reversing Heart Disease"), John Gray (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus), Bruce Lipton (The Biology of Belief), and Bruce Ames (Berkeley mitochondrial aging expert).
  
  I'm 100% certain that Smart Life Forum has shared knowledge that has transformed the health of many people, and in some cases even saved lives.
  
  I've been a board member of Smart Life for several years now, and now serve as President and Chairman.

• Angel Investor / Advisory Board Member

  Privately Held

  (Venture Capital & Private Equity industry)

  January 1999 — Present (10 years 11 months)

  I'm on the advisory boards of several large VCs, and I selectively invest in technology or alternative health startups, either pre-A round or with no venture investment forecasted. I primarily invest in companies where my expertise and network can provide some strategic value to the company, in industries I already understand. I frequently sit on these companies' advisory boards or assist them with the next level of funding. One of my recent investments was followed by Battery, Sierra, and Canaan, and others have been acquired by IBM and Sun.
  
  I am very busy with my day job and family so please be aware of what I look for in an investment before contacting me. At this time, I am managing my existing portfolio and not looking for additional new investments until the economy improves, although I am still working with startups and VCs as a board member or in an advisory board capacity.

• Vice President, Marketing & Technology Strategy

  Zeus Technology

  (Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry)

  July 2007 — September 2008 (1 year 3 months)

  Zeus is in the application delivery industry, aka load balancing. Competitors include F5 Networks, Cisco, Citrix, Foundry. Zeus sells software, virtualization-based appliances, and hardware. 50-100 employees, UK based, revenues <$50m, growth rate >50%.
  
  I joined Zeus as VP Technology Strategy, a CTO-like role, but was promoted to VP Marketing. My UK/US team was responsible for strategy, product management, product marketing, pricing, channel marketing, and marketing communications
  
  Key accomplishments:
  •Positioned the company to take advantage of cloud computing, creating innovative utility-based pricing that differentiated Zeus from hardware players, resulted in several cloud service providers proactively contacting us, and more than 140 hardware appliances being replaced with Zeus software
  •Positioned Zeus as the only privately held ADC company to make it in Gartner's prestigious Magic Quadrant
  •Major new product release at Interop

• Director, Technology Strategy

  Citrix Systems

  (Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; CTXS; Computer Software industry)

  July 2006 — May 2007 (11 months)

  I owned the strategic planning function for Citrix's $700M Virtualization Systems Group, reporting directly to the CTO. I spent a lot of time on virtualization and SaaS business and technology models. I also ran early product marketing efforts for the launch of Citrix Desktop Server and the Citrix Dynamic Desktop Initiative, a cross-vendor desktop virtualization initiative to encourage interactivity between VMware, XenSource, Citrix, and ecosystem partners. I moved to this position at Citrix after leading technical due diligence for the Application Networking Group (NetScaler) to acquire and integrate Orbital Data, resulting in the creation of the WANScaler product line. I left to spend a few months at home with a new baby and to focus on advisory boards and early stage startup strategy consulting while I shop for a new gig.

• Director, Product Management

  Citrix Systems

  (Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; CTXS; Computer Networking industry)

  July 2005 — July 2006 (1 year 1 month)

  Citrix acquired NetScaler, where I was Dir of Prod Mgt - described in that section.

• Director, Product Management

  NetScaler

  (Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Networking industry)

  January 2004 — July 2006 (2 years 7 months)

  I managed the product feature set for optimization functions including WAN optimization, caching, network compression, application acceleration, performance monitoring, and TCP optimization.

• Strategy Consultant

  Privately Held

  (Internet industry)

  January 2003 — June 2005 (2 years 6 months)

  I offer strategic consulting to help companies achieve specific measurable goals. My work includes strategy development, market sizing, competitive analysis, venture funding, product management, training, and business process analysis. In addition, I write technical articles for product marketing functions and book-length pieces (recently for PriceWaterhouseCoopers). I spend a lot of time with customers, investors, analysts, marketing, product management, engineering, and corporate boards. I'm great at helping companies understand how to sell products into IT organizations, including segmenting, messaging, value proposition, pain points, product marketing, pricing, etc.

• Sr. Director, Product Management

  Speedera Networks

  (Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Internet industry)

  March 2003 — May 2004 (1 year 3 months)

  Created FlexComputing, the first service in the CDN industry able to run any application on any OS, resulting in about $2.5 million in sales, arguably one of the first cloud computing services to be launched, combining virtualization and data center automation
  2 patents filed
  Created SpeedRank, a KeyNote-like index comparing performance of 100 public web sites across 5 verticals that generated hundreds of leads
  Full web site redesign through outsourcing to India
  Various other product management and product marketing duties including writing white papers, creating presentations, service pricing, cost modeling, financial modeling, etc.
  Thought leadership through data center markup language (DCML) standards body work

• Director, Strategic Planning

  Cable & Wireless

  (Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; CWP; Internet industry)

  September 2001 — March 2003 (1 year 7 months)

  Cable & Wireless acquired Exodus Communications; please see my description under Exodus Communications.

• Director, Strategic Planning

  Exodus Communications

  (Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; EXDS; Information Technology and Services industry)

  October 1998 — March 2003 (4 years 6 months)

  I developed technology strategy, identified opportunities, and worked cross-functionally to execute investment, partnering and acquisition transactions. I met with >100 early startups who would have an impact on the internet infrastructure space.
  
  I created, funded, and helped launch the Performance on Demand service, one of the 1st working examples of utility computing and data center automation, a predecessor to modern cloud computing.
  
  I was a founder of the Professional Services Group, which grew to 1200 people generating >$200m annually. This was a major intrapreneurial effort that was not tied into the hosting business until we had a $17m run rate.
  
  I also served as Exodus' primary technology spokesperson for press and analysts, and conducted dozens of interviews with the media & spoke at conferences (including ISPCon, WebHeads, TIE, Giga Middleware Conferences, VC events, Comdex, etc.)

• Program Manager & Founder, Web & Internet Systems Engineering Program

  University of California, Santa Cruz

  (Educational Institution; 501-1000 employees; Computer Networking industry)

  October 1998 — March 2002 (3 years 6 months)

  I managed the Web & Internet Systems Engineering Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz office in Silicon Valley. In addition to setting curriculum and hiring instructors, I created five different classes, including:
  *Web Systems Architecture & Protocols
  *E-business Product Technology Survey
  *Hands on Web Site Systems Administration
  *Business Class Internet
  *ASP Architecture
  Each class lasted 10 weeks with up to 30 hours of lecture, and I taught up to 16 classes per year on evenings and weekends. The classes were for working professionals; 90% of whom had advanced degrees already. I believe the total number of professionals who have attended one of my classes is about 1500 people.
  
  Teaching is the best way I know of to really learn a new subject. I am grateful to have been able to spend so much time teaching so many smart people - I'm sure they taught me as much as I taught them.
  
  I would love to teach again sometime.

• Internet Business Application Architect

  3Com

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; COMS; Computer Networking industry)

  May 1997 — October 1998 (1 year 6 months)

  I went to 3Com to help put a web interface on their SAP installation. I ended up working on high-end web search engines, log file analysis, web content management, document management, and intranets. I spent a lot of time on EAI solutions, particularly with TIBCO before they went public. I brought CIOs from Fortune 500 companies into 3Com and demonstrated our TIBCO installation, increasing 3Com sales by $10 million, and adding many marquee customers for TIBCO. I was also part of the deal where 3Com embedded TIBCO's protocol into 3Com NICs.

• IT Manager

  Bradshaw North

  (Privately Held; 501-1000 employees; Wholesale industry)

  1995 — 1997 (2 years )

  Ran all network and Windows servers for a mid sized food brokerage. Built the first intranet in the industry and used it to integrate the 7 companies that we acquired in one year. Built a frame relay & ISDN network to connect a dozen locations. Ran all desktop support operations for 500+ users in 3 states. Implemented Citrix. Introduced email to the company and deployed Lotus Notes. Other normal IT duties including EAI, vendor negotiation, VAR management, light coding, license management, monitoring, etc.

• IT

  Salesmark

  (Internet industry)

  1995 — 1997 (2 years )

  See the Brandshaw North description - SalesMark bought Bradshaw North.

• IT

  Gould Medical Foundation

  (Privately Held; 1001-5000 employees; Hospital & Health Care industry)

  1995 — 1997 (2 years )

  PC support manager for 500+ seats in about 10 buildings in one metro area. Responsible for all desktop installs, purchasing, and helpdesk support. Ran GroupWise servers and Novell servers.

• Early Internet Journalist

  Self-employed

  (Self-Employed; Myself Only; Writing and Editing industry)

  January 1995 — December 1996 (2 years )

  I wrote articles on early internet technologies for PC Novice, PC Today, Home Office Computing, and other magazines. I specialized in "how to use the Internet" articles, and I contributed to early books on Internet marketing. I wrote a review of Netscape 1.0 vs NCSA Mosiaic that was published nationally!

• Entrepreneur

  E-commerce pioneer (Sole Proprietorship)

  (Sole Proprietorship; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)

  January 1992 — December 1995 (4 years )

  I paid my way through my undergraduate studies in Computer Science by selling caffeine T-shirts over the Internet to more than a dozen countries. This was long before the Internet was commercialized, before spam, before Amazon, and even before AOL could spell "Internet." I was profiled in Entrepreneur Magazine, and about 40 or 50 other national publications, including Home Office Computing and The Miami Herald. I was probably one of the first 10 Internet entrepreneurs. Too bad I couldn't even spell "VC" back then...

Dave Asprey’s Education

• University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School

  MBA , Business , 2002 — 2004

• California State University

  BS , Computer Information Systems , September 1994 — May 1995

• University of California, Santa Barbara

  4 yrs study... , Computer Science , September 1990 — May 1994

  I wrote a lot for the Daily Nexus!

  Activities and Societies:

  Entrepreneur Club Founder and President
  I paid my way through school by starting my own company (and working at Baskin Robbins one year!)

Additional Information

Dave Asprey’s Interests:

stragegic planning, disruptive technologies, data center automation, utility computing, systems management, marketing analytics, international travel, product management, anti-aging, antiaging, life extension, alternative medicine, vitamins, nutritional supplements, heavy metal toxicity, mercury poisoning, smart drugs, cognitive enhancement, brain hacking, EEG biofeedback, electronic meditation, yoga

Dave Asprey’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• career opportunities
• consulting offers
• new ventures
• job inquiries
• expertise requests
• business deals
• reference requests
• getting back in touch