Management Team

Robb Smith

Robb is a founder and Partner of the firm and currently sits on the boards of directors of Alere Medical, RetailOne, modeMD, and National Car Wash Systems. He spearheaded formation of the Nevada Ventures Nanoscience Program at the University of Nevada, Reno and was chosen as one of the “Top 40 Under 40″ in Nevada by the Nevada Business Journal and the 2002 SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the State of Nevada. He is a founder and former President of the Reno-Tahoe chapter of the global Entrepreneur’s Organization. He is Certified in Financial Management, a Certified Management Accountant and is a Trustee of the Nevada Musuem of Art. He holds a degree in Finance, with distinction, from the University of Nevada, Reno, where he is a guest lecturer on new venture finance. He is a graduate of the Venture Capital Institute.

His blog is here.

Chris Howard

Chris is a founder and Partner of the firm and and has sat on the boards of RetailOne and PowerDomain. He is presently the CEO of Northstar Investors, a Nevada-based holding company. He was a founder, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Health-Tech Management, Inc., a national health services company. Prior to that, he was the Chief Financial Officer of Pioneer Industries, and Controller and Operations Manager of Jensen Tools. Chris was formerly a management consultant with Grant Thornton LLP and Ernst & Young LLP. He is an adjunct faculty member at the Graduate School of Business, University of Nevada, Reno. He graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Economics and from Santa Clara University with a Master of Business Administration. He is a Certified Management Accountant, a Certified Management Consultant, a Certified Professional Consultant to Management and a Certified Business Counselor.

Advisors

Lawrence Lieberman

Mr. Lieberman (“Lawrie”) has over 25 years of experience in technology companies with financial and strategic roles including mergers and acquisitions, licensing, partnering and alliances, strategic equity and debt investments, and corporate control. He has strong connections with a broad array of regional, national, and international technology companies, venture capitalists, financial institutions, and emerging entrepreneurs. He has held several senior management positions including, most recently, Senior Group Vice President of Business Objects (BOBJ, enterprise software), corporate development posts at Apple Computer, Senior VP posts at Kaleida Labs (joint Apple/IBM authoring software) and co-founder or Chief Financial Officer at emerging technology companies including LifeMasters (healthcare), Silvar-Lisco (CAD/CAE software), and ParaMagnetic Logging (energy technology). He was a Vice President at boutique investment bank Bourgeois Fils.

He served as Dean of Admissions of the Stanford Business School from 1976 to 1981. Mr. Lieberman has served on the boards of LifeMasters (healthcare), Instranet (database infrastructure), RetailOne (supply chain management), modeMD (healthcare software/devices), Kaleida Labs, Silvar-Lisco, Panonica (enterprise dashboard software), and Mitem (pattern recognition software). He is Chairman of the Strategic Advisory Committee for UNR’s College of Engineering, a board member of Research Ventures Inc. (University of Nevada Reno/Desert Research Institute IP commercialization arm) and on the Computer Science Board for Sierra Nevada College. Mr. Lieberman received his BA from Dartmouth College in 1972, and his MBA from the Stanford Business School in 1975.

Nicholas A. Cummings, Ph.D., Sc.D.

Dr. Cummings is an entrepreneur and preeminent visionary in the behavioral health industry. A former president of the American Psychological Association (APA), Dr. Cummings was chief psychologist for the Kaiser Permanente health system in the 1950s, and later founded American Biodyne, the nation’s first and largest psychology-driven managed behavioral health organization (MBHO). Among the many organizations he has started he founded or co-founded the National Academies of Practice, the American Managed Behavioral Healthcare Association (AMBHA), and the California Psychological Association. He is a recipient of psychology’s highest honor, the Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Practice. He is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, Claremont Graduate School and Adelphi University. He has been awarded five honorary doctorates and has been celebrated as the foremost entrepreneur in psychology.

Dr. Cummings was a member of President Kennedy’s Mental Health Task Force and President Carter’s Mental Health Commission. He has written over 400 journal articles and 41 books, 6 of them with his daughter. He is Distinguished Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. He chairs the boards of directors of both The Nicholas & Dorothy Cummings Foundation, Inc. and the University Alliance for Behavioral Care, Inc., and he is president of the Cummings Foundation for Behavioral Health.

Stuart FeiginMr. Stuart Feigin was a pioneer of Oracle Corporation. With 2006 revenues of over $14 billion and a market capitalization of $80 billion, Oracle is the world’s largest supplier of database software for information management. Mr. Feigin was one of the original product designers and programmers and managed a diverse set of business management functions through the company’s founding stages until his departure in 1997. Prior to Oracle, Mr. Feigin held several important design positions in the software field for companies such as Trilogy Systems, Amdahl Corporation, USC Information Sciences Institute, and UCLA. Mr. Feigin was the founding Limited Partner of Nevada Ventures, LLC, Nevada’s first venture capital firm and has been a Limited Partner of venture capital and private equity funds of Goldman Sachs Mezzanine Partners II, the Entrepreneur’s Growth Fund, Goldman Sachs Private Equity Partners, the Goldman Sachs Exchange Fund, the Deutsche Bank Exchange Fund, and BT Alex Brown Private Equity Fund I. Mr. Feigin is on the Board of Advisors for the College of Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno.