xAd Board of Directors
Together with senior management, xAd’s board of directors helps drive our strategy for mobile advertising and product development. Comprised of business leaders, mobile consultants, executives and investors, xAd’s board is directly involved with our policies and development operations in an effort to keep us on pace with the future of mobile technology. With the experienced leadership of our board members, we have an efficient mobile-management system in place to ensure we remain on the cutting-edge frontier of mobile-local advertising.
Dipanshu “D” Sharma
Founder & CEO, xAd
For over a decade, D has found new ways to leverage technology and to improve business models for entrepreneurs and innovative companies. His tenure in the mobile space began at Nokia, where he was associated with several wireless initiatives for mobile handsets: browsers, user interfaces, developer programs and design. Due to new wireless technologies that he developed, D went on to hold several published patents.
After Nokia, D founded V-Enable and LocalAdXchange in 2001 with the goal of conquering mobile-local search and advertising in the U.S. In 2009, he spun xAd out of the V-Enable brand. In addition, D is responsible for co-founding RockeTalk — India’s fifth-largest mobile-traffic site — and Kadonk — the top Microsoft Project Viewer.
D holds specialized management/entrepreneurship degrees from UC San Diego and Finland’s Helsinki University of Technology. His master’s degree is in computer science from Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya (Indore, India), and his bachelor’s degree is in computer science from India’s Delhi University.
D’s credentials include TeleFusion’s “Technology Leader of the Year” (2003) and a nomination for Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” (2005). In addition to xAd’s board of directors, he is a board member at Kadonk,Veracity Wireless and WikiSeer
Steven Murray
Chairman, SoftBank Capital
Steven possesses over 20 years of experience with high-growth, technology-based businesses, including sourcing and managing venture investments, all aspects of mergers and acquisitions, and significant corporate finance and accounting. Steven started at Deloitte, where he specialized in serving numerous high-growth, tech-based businesses, including Primark Corporation, Harcourt General and IDG.
In 1997, Steven joined SoftBank Capital, where he has been a senior executive responsible for billions of dollars of complex structured monetization strategies: initial public offerings, secondary public offerings, mergers, private sales and more. He also served as SoftBank Capital’s partner in charge of financial and legal affairs, and his current role is partner.
Steven serves on the boards of several other private companies, including Grab Networks, Echo360, Mobile Posse, Nellymoser, Pivot Solutions, Sermo, VoodooVox and Ziplist. Previous boards he served include Rivermine, NLG, Viacore and Webhire. He is a certified public accountant and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from Boston College.
Anders Richardson
Director, Palisades Ventures
Anders is active in all aspects of deal sourcing, due diligence and execution for Palisades Ventures. Prior to co-founding the firm, Anders worked in the Investment Banking Division of DLJ, in addition to focusing on public and private placements of debt and equity securities as well as buy-side and sell-side M&A advisory services in a variety of industries.
Having previously been a board member at Lucix Corporation, Avexus and Language Weaver, Anders is currently on the boards of xAd, SOA Software, Polaris Wireless and Apacheta. He received a B.A. from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Jason Green
Director, Emergence Capital
With over 15 years of experience in venture capital, Jason is a founder of and a general partner at Emergence Capital. Prior, he was general partner with USVP, as well as an associate and Kauffman Fellow with Venrock, which is a venture-capital arm of the Rockefeller family. Other previous employers include Muzertechnika; Bain & Company; and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe.
Jason’s success also includes leading early-stage venture investments for companies such as DoubleClick, aQuantive, Visual Networks, SuccessFactors and Ask Jeeves. In addition to xAd’s board, he also currently serves on the boards of private companies such as Lotame, TouchCommerce, ServiceMax, ResponseLogix and Yammer.
A chairman emeritus, Jason serves on the board of the Center for Venture Education and the Kauffman Fellows Program, the leading educational fellowship in venture capital. In addition, he is chairman of the West Coast Research Center for Harvard Business School and is on the HBS Global Advisory Board. He is a founding board member of Endeavor, a nonprofit serving the needs of entrepreneurs in emerging markets.
Jason graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in economics from Dartmouth College, along with an MBA (with distinction) from Harvard Graduate School of Business, where he was selected for the Charles Williams Fellowship for post-graduate research in entrepreneurship and finance.
Emerick Woods
Independent Board Member
Emerick has led and founded a number of early- to mid-stage high-technology companies, as well as completed two initial public offerings. Recently, he was appointed CEO at Talari Networks, a venture-backed company providing WAN virtualization solutions to enterprise customers.
Prior to Talari Networks, Emerick served as CEO of Global IP Solutions (GIPS), a publicly listed company that provides media-processing software for voice-over IP (VoIP) and video-conferencing solutions acquired by Google. Under his leadership, GIPS increased its revenue by 400 percent within 18 months.
Even earlier, Emerick served as CEO of Vicinity Corporation, where he completed an initial public offering that raised $125 million. Subsequently acquired by Microsoft, Vicinity Corporation provided a location-based services platform for many of the world’s leading brands. Emerick has also been a chief executive at several venture-backed companies; held a variety of management and executive positions at Quarterdeck, Symantec, Central Point and Microcom; and served in consulting positions at McKinsey & Company and Booz Allen & Hamilton.
Emerick holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Yale University. He is also active as a board director for several nonprofit and private companies.