Brian Berliner

Current

Owner at Sand Hill Venture Consulting (Sole Proprietorship)

Past

Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Sevin Rosen Funds
Founder, EVP, and Founding CTO at Cassatt Corporation
Founder & EVP Engineering & Architecture at Allocity, Inc.

Founder & VP of B2B Technologies at ChannelPoint, Inc.
Senior Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Sr. Software Engineer at Prisma Supercomputers
Sr. Software Engineer at Convex Computer Corporation
IT Operations at Gould Computer Systems Division

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Education

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Recommended

3 people have recommended Brian

Connections

250 connections

Industry

Venture Capital & Private Equity

Websites

Brian Berliner’s Summary

I've co-founded 3 VC-funded startup companies in the last 10 years. Most recently, I was Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) for Sevin Rosen Funds in Palo Alto, CA.

I currently advise, invest in, and assist early stage technology companies in reaching their goals.

I am best known as the author of CVS, an extremely popular Open Source revision control tool, and winner of the USENIX STUG Award for 2003. I have been awarded 10 patents for network file systems and have 1 patent pending for Utility Computing.

Previously, I was Founder, EVP, and Founding CTO for Cassatt Corporation - a company focused on virtualization and automation to build an agile IT infrastructure. I've held various senior executive and engineering positions at companies like Sun Microsystems, Convex Computer Corporation (IPO), Allocity (Acquired by EMC), ChannelPoint, and Prisma Supercomputers.

Brian Berliner’s Specialties:

I focus on the following markets:
- Enterprise IT hw/sw infrastructure, applications, management
- Mobile & Wireless
- "Web 2.0" social networks & ad services
- Open Source software & SaaS
- Synthetic Worlds

Brian Berliner’s Experience

Owner
Sand Hill Venture Consulting (Sole Proprietorship)

(Sole Proprietorship; 1-10 employees; Venture Capital & Private Equity industry)

January 2005 — Present (3 years 7 months)

I am an Early Stage Investor, Advisor, and Executive Coach.

Contact me if you:
- Need help finding Venture Capital investors
- Would like me to assist with your Investor Pitch
- Would like me to review your Business Plan
- Need advice on how to structure your next round
- Have an organization that is under-performing
- Would like me to serve on your Board of Directors
- Would like me to serve on your Board of Advisors
- Would like me to do a business/market assessment
- Would like me to do a technology assessment
- Need assistance with M&A preparedness or strategy

I maintain a blog on Venture Capital, Entrpreneurship, and Technology at http://www.brianberliner.com
Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR)

Sevin Rosen Funds

(Partnership; 11-50 employees; Venture Capital & Private Equity industry)

April 2005 — February 2006 (11 months)

As an EIR for Sevin Rosen Funds, I:

- Investigated and reported on emerging markets
- Maintained a list of 10 biggest opportunities
- Attended all Partner meetings and planning Offsites
- Brought in dealflow
- Participated in due diligence activities
- Worked closely with prospective investment management teams
- Attended 2 Annual Limited Partner meetings
- Assisted with M&A preparedness for Portfolio companies
Founder, EVP, and Founding CTO

Cassatt Corporation

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

May 2003 — November 2005 (2 years 7 months)

As founder and Founding CTO for Cassatt, I was responsible for the product design center, architecture, roadmap, advanced development, corporate strategy, and partner strategy.
Founder & EVP Engineering & Architecture

Allocity, Inc.

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)

January 2001 — October 2003 (2 years 10 months)

As EVP of Engineering, I built the business plan that resulted in an $8M Series A investment by Mohr Davidow Ventures and Redpoint Ventures. I built the engineering team from scratch and oversaw the architecture for a distributed virtualization storage subsystem with continuos backup/recover for Microsoft Exchange servers. Allocity was acquired by EMC in November, 2004.
Founder & VP of B2B Technologies

ChannelPoint, Inc.

(Privately Held; 1001-5000 employees; Computer Software industry)

December 1996 — January 2001 (4 years 2 months)

Founder and Chief Architect of the ChannelPoint Insure product, which was used by insurance carriers to greatly improve the distribution and installation of insurance products. Also, ran a Business Unit which created a B2B Exchange for Life Insurance carriers, general agents, and brokers.
Senior Staff Engineer

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; SUNW; Computer Software industry)

December 1989 — January 1997 (7 years 2 months)

Founder of the first Colorado development site for Sun Microsystems. Contributed to many aspects of SunOS and Solaris. Created PC-CacheFS, a non-volatile caching product for Microsoft Windows systems, which earned 10 patent awards.
Sr. Software Engineer

Prisma Supercomputers

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

September 1988 — December 1989 (1 year 4 months)

Prisma was trying to build the world's fastest scalar supercomputer that also ran the SPARC architecture. Couldn't be built. However, I did a bunch of work to scale SunOS to supercomputer speeds. Also, created and contributed CVS, the Concurrent Versions System, which became the world's most popoular tool for source code revision control.
Sr. Software Engineer

Convex Computer Corporation

(Public Company; 201-500 employees; Computer Software industry)

January 1986 — September 1988 (2 years 9 months)

Convex created the world's first vector-processor mini-supercomputer, which competed quite well against the Cray systems for vector-processing applications. It ran BSD UNIX. I dropped in the NFS subsystem, ported the OS to the multiprocessor version of our box, and wrote drivers for NETEX HyperChannel networks. We took the company public in August, 1986, and Convex was later acquired by HP.
IT Operations

Gould Computer Systems Division

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

January 1984 — December 1985 (2 years)

Was Compion, then acquired by Gould. We worked on the secure version of the UNIX version that ran on the Gould FireBreather mini-supercomputers, UTX-32.