Tom Steding

Dr. Steding is a senior corporate executive with an excellent track record in founding and growing successful businesses based on complex, leading edge technologies. He has been CEO or active Chairman of eight high tech companies. He is currently the founding CEO of TransGeneos, a commercial space biotech company being founded with Dr. Larry DeLucas, former astronaut and head of the Center for Biological Science and Engineering at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. He also is was recently Chairman and Interim CEO of Liquid Engines, Inc, a tax software company founded by Ed Lazear, now Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, and Nobel Laureate Mike Spence. Earlier in 2006 he was founding CEO of Stion Corp, a nanotechnology solar photovoltaic company funded by Khosla Ventures, and recently completed its second funding round of $15M. He is also Chairman and Founder of Quadrix Partners, a leadership consulting organization providing powerful leading edge training for creating high execution organizations. Previously he was CEO of Astoria Software, a venture-backed Xerox spin-off in structured document management for complex applications. Dr. Steding was President & CEO of Metacode Technologies, a Web infrastructure company, sold to Interwoven in November, 2000. Prior to that he was President & CEO of RedCreek Communications, a virtual private network company named by PC Week as “One of the top 15 companies to watch in 1999.” He was Founder, President and CEO of Pretty Good Privacy, Inc., an Internet encryption startup also listed by PC Week as “one of the companies to watch in 1997.” He has served as Vice President and General Manager, Communications Infrastructure Division of Novell, Inc.; Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Systems Division and Vice President, Marketing, Network Systems Division of 3Com Corporation; Vice President, Marketing and Sales for Sony Microsystems; Vice President, Business Development for Ardent Computer Corporation; Executive Vice President, Member, Board of Directors, Senior Vice President, Operations Group and Systems Group, and Director of Strategic Planning for Systems Control, Inc. Dr. Steding holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Berkeley, California, and a MS in Management (Sloan Fellow) from Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Stanford, California. He is the co-author of Built on Trust – How to Gain Competitive Advantage in Any Organization, Contemporary Press, 2000, and The Execution Handbook, currently in manuscript. Dr. Steding has extensive experience in capital transactions and achieving premium company valuations. His leadership in 3Com helped instigate a turnaround that eventually took the stock price from $5 to over $220. He sold Metacode, a pre-revenue company, to Interwoven for $150M seven months after arriving as CEO. As an advisor to HotRail, a Tech Farm company specializing in high speed channel and cache-coherent switched fabrics, he repositioned the company and got it sold for $400M in less than six months. All of his full-time CEO assignments have resulted in operations that are, in one form or another, still in existence. Overall, his leadership has resulting in nearly $100M in committed venture capital and well over half a billion dollars in capital transactions.