Jake Berzon
Cell: 1.415.305.3456
Email: jake @ iqsp . com
Web: www.iqsp.com

Objective: Director / Senior Product Management position with a mid to large size software company.

Summary:

• Nineteen years of experience: people and product management, hardware engineering and software development.
• International experience with Japanese, Spanish, German and Russian companies.
• Product experience in Software, Mobile, Storage, Network and Semiconductors industries.
• Effective communicator with excellent written and verbal communications skills. Able to deliver / improvise top-notch presentations to large companies' CEOs without notice.
• Named inventor on 2 U.S. issued patents; recipient of multiple company awards and educational excellence honors.
• Published in a magazine and several newspapers; frequently participated in conferences, forums and on standards committees.
• Keywords: HDD, SAN, RAID, SCSI, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, 1394a, LAN, TCP/IP, GSM, DAMPS, C++, Java, J2EE, J2SE, J2ME, Perl, CGI, ASP, PHP, HTML, XML, Windows, Unix, Linux, DNS, HTTP, .Net, WebSphere, Application Servers.

Employment:

International Quality Software Products, LLC, Denver, CO (12/01 - Present)

Founder and VP of Product Management.

• Conceived, created and marketed RussianTimes.Com - a Russian America infotainment portal.
• Developed and maintained the original proof of concept site and chose tools for future web site development under severe budget constraints.
• Negotiated zero net cost design, development and content partnerships. Secured lucrative advertising and sponsorship agreements.
• Developed an innovative network of sites market penetration strategy, eventually bringing eight leading local sites in major cities throughout the English-speaking world into the network – largest such network in the world.
• Set strategy for future market penetration, territorial expansion and growth based on member site local content delivery.
• Used innovative marketing techniques to promote the concept and encourage local content editor participation.
• Added a well known brand of printed media Odesskiy Listok and a major event planning company, Russian Lounge to further cement our hold on the market.
• Took the company to profitability. Customers include Comcast, New York Life, San Francisco Opera, LA Kings, UC Berkeley, Monterey Institute for International Studies, UCLA, University of Southern California and many others.

Brokat Mobile Technologies, San Jose, CA (7/00 - 12/01)

Director of Product Management.

• Full responsibility for all of company's Beaverton, OR based products, including budgets, product strategy and product roadmaps.
• Lead an Oregon-based team of 54 engineers and three product managers to deliver world class Application Server, Object Cache, Mobile and Digital Rights Management Products.
• Created and lead a cross-functional team geographically distributed in Germany, Spain, Oregon and California.
• Worked closely with the CEO, CTO and the VP of Marketing to define the company.
• Created investor presentations and interactive product demos for potential investors.
• Supervised generation of MRDs and competitive analysis of current offerings, using internal and external secondary as well as hands-on primary research. Evaluated current product offering and product plans relative to competitions.
• Negotiated licensing deals and technical product and general business partnerships with First Data, Sun, Microsoft, VeriSign, AmDocs, WebGain and others.

Talk City, Inc., Campbell, CA (10/98 - 7/00)

Senior Product Manager.

• P&L responsibility for all Talk City community products, including clubs and homepages. Also responsible for viral marketing and the Talk City product integration strategy.
• Established a closed-loop product planning process, including members of cross-functional teams and result tracking to create product roadmaps and MRDs.
• Built and managed activities of cross-functional team (engineering, community, marketing, business development, finance) to take products from cradle to grave, communicating continuously with all team members.
• Defined requirements for internal research focus groups, surveys, polls and customer interviews. Used Personify to effectively beacon pages and identify user behavior. Analyzed internal and third party research to enhance product usability and add value to identified customer segments.
• Performed competitive analysis of current offerings, using internal and external secondary, as well as hands-on primary research. Evaluated current product offering and product plans relative to competitions'.
• Established plans for increasing traffic through search engine optimization and encouraging users to register by participating in the beFree affiliate program.
• Defined product launch plans and strategy to ensure success of all Talk City community products in the marketplace. Created plans for product lifecycle extension.
• Performed ROI calculations and revenue forecasts for future products, monitor performance and make adjustments to product plans based on results.
• Found creative ways to increase inventory available in high CPM targeted areas and brought innovative revenue opportunities to increase consumer products revenue.
• Facilitated product-brainstorming sessions. Managed creation of product plans into formal MRDs, and through product specification stage to released products. Insured effective communication of product requirements to Engineering, Creative and Quality departments.
• Worked with business development and OEM product management to negotiate partner contracts that enhance Talk City Homepage product value.
• Established use of internal reporting tools to measure performance. Applied secondary media measurement research by Media Metrix to ensure effective online and offline campaigns.
• Presented product pitches to upper level executives of Excite, Kodak, Hearst Media and other potential technology investors.

NEC Electronics, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (11/95 - 10/98)

Senior Product Marketing Manager.

• Built a cross-functional team with representatives from legal, operations and engineering departments to screen potential partners on technical and business basis and to create supplier agreements.
• Led single chip controller plus data channel chip integration efforts for CD-R, CD-R/W and DVD products.
• Set strategy, developed marketing plans, performed feasibility studies, and brought in development and fabrication partners.

Strategic Marketing Manager.

• Led NEC strategic marketing efforts in the RAID mass storage semiconductor arena. Partnered with DataPath engineers to take products from cradle to customer design wins.
• Matrix managed a team of product engineers and marketing specialists to create collateral, including customer presentations, specification overviews, sales FAQs and marketing brochures.
• Developed 1394, MR preamp and data channel marketing plans and proposals. Participated in the 1394, SCSI and FC international standards processes.
• Used traditional engineering product documentation, competitive analysis and outside information sources to create training, technical and marketing presentations on interface technology and data channels. Edited all data channel external documentation.
• Worked with legal department and outside legal counsel to file data channel related patents.
• Built up an internal lab to support EPRML data channel products. Represented NEC at the IDEMA test and measurement group activities.

Hitachi America, Ltd., Brisbane, CA (2/94 - 11/95)

Senior Applications Engineer.

• Built up a disk drive lab to support data channels, preamps and motor driver design wins.
• Provided customer support for data channel and preamp products. Worked with designers in Japan on channel and preamp product plans.
• Made technical marketing customer presentations on PRML data channels. Trained sales and marketing on data channels and MR heads / preamps.
• Represented Hitachi at the IDEMA test and measurement group activities.

Maxtor Corp., San Jose, CA (9/91 - 2/94)

Senior Read / Write Engineer.

• Designed from scratch and prototyped a magnetics reliability add-on for a tribology CSS tester.
• Designed heads / media experiments for a 3.5" high capacity SCSI fully embedded servo product and performed them on a Guzik spin-stand.
• Conducted evaluations of SSI, Hitachi, Plessey and National Read / Write chip sets.
• Optimized zoning parameters, channel timing and Phase Lock Loops.

Read / Write Engineer.

• Designed and implemented a 33-zone Read / Write channel for a hybrid servo 2.5" 250 MB IDE and SCSI drives.
• Developed software to automate engineering drive testing and margin analysis.
• Conducted evaluations of Hitachi, AD, SSI and AT&T single chip Read / Write channels. Performed Phase Lock Loop filter calculations and simulations.

Seagate Technology Inc., Minneapolis, MN (6/87 - 9/91)

Electrical Engineer.

• Led a Read / Write channel team to zone a 5 1/4" drive to 1.2GB capacity.
• Invented a concurrent ZBR and write pre-compensation zoning method. Participated in advanced channels R&D.
• Developed a reliability tester for an MR heads Read / Write channel.

Associate Electrical Engineer.

• Wrote a filter evaluation / design / synthesis software package. Developed software and hardware for drive evaluation and testing.
• Patented a reduced phase error restart Phase Lock Loop.
• Worked on (1,7) and (2,7) Read / Write channels for 5 1/4" and 8" dedicated servo drives.

Education:

San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA

MBA Courses and Seminars: International Marketing, Operations Analysis, Accounting, Macro and Micro Economics, Marketing, Business Law, Legal Environment of Business, Managing at a Distance, Time Management and Business Dealings with Japanese, How to Think Like a CEO.

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN

1991 A.B.D. for a Ph.D. in Control Science. GPA: 4.0
1989 M.S. in Electrical Engineering with Mathematics Minor. GPA: 3.8

University of Colorado, Boulder, CO

1986 B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
1986 B.S. in Applied Mathematics. GPA: 3.7