Mr. Brian Smith

SManaging Director

S3 Ventures

Brian serves as a managing director of S3 Ventures. At 35, he co-founded the Convergent Investors Fund, a $70M early-stage venture capital firm. For the past five years, Mr. Smith has served as managing director of Convergent Investors, where he oversaw the investment of approximately $34 million in 10 companies. At age 29, he founded and served as chairman and CEO of Crossroads Systems (Nasdaq: CRDS). He led Crossroads through five rounds of venture, strategic and mezzanine financing and to a successful IPO in 1999. In this role, Mr. Smith was an early pioneer in Storage Area Networks ("SANs"), which are industry standard solutions today. For his efforts, Mr. Smith was awarded the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2000. Mr. Smith spent the first seven years of his career in electrical engineering positions holding product development roles within the Technology Group of IBM Corporation.

Mr. Smith earned a BSEE with honors from the University of Cincinnati and an MSEE from Purdue University. He served on the board of Chicory Systems (acquired by CEVA) and Crossroads Systems (Nasdaq: CRDS). He currently serves on the board of Conformative Systems, Inc., StoredIQ, Nanotechnologies, Inc., and TeraVicta Technologies, Inc.