Ron Lachman

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A specialist in OEM/ISV software licensing business models, Ron's track record and history of success in technology companies between startup and mid-life (<$20M) is invaluable.

At heart, Ron is a networking and systems software entrepreneur who began his life as a "Technology Angel" about 10 years ago following the sale of his consulting group Lachman Associates to Eastman Kodak's Interactive Systems subsidiary in 1989 (deal value roughly $20M). This was resultant to his role as a joint developer of NFS™ with Sun Microsystems, and the creation of Lachman Streams TCP™ that became bundled with the Unix™ operating system.

Following the sale of Lachman Associates to Kodak, he served as the Executive Vice President at Interactive Systems Corp., heading that business unit for Kodak for four years. He is a cofounder of Praxsys, the developers of the WABI product which emulates Windows on Unix, and sold Praxsys to Sun Microsystems in 1992.

Ever the entrepreneur, Ron reincarnated Lachman Technology to pursue new product ideas in networking products, data archival and storage management. Lachman Technology/Associates licensed roughly 4 million copies of networking protocols (mostly in the UNIX OEM marketplace), and was a technology leader in hierarchical storage management. Legent Corporation acquired Lachman Technology in 1994 (deal value $30M gain), and Ron became vice president for Open Systems strategy before leaving in 1995 to co-found, co-fund and build the management team of a number of networking or software related companies. Computer Associates acquired Legent in 1995.

Ron currently serves as a senior advisor/board member capacity to many different technology companies in the fields of distributed computing and Internet commerce.

He resides with his wife and family in Chicago, enjoying life in the Midwest and supporting many charitable organizations and special programs (http://www.lachman.org/donations.html).

Ezra Goldman

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Ezra Goldman has a 25-year history in the high-technology market, as a software architect and project development leader, general corporate manager, facilitator of strategy and marketing, and mergers and acquisitions.

He puts that experience to use as one half of Lachman Goldman Ventures, a private angel/seed investment partnership that helps launch very early stage Internet and network companies. Together with his partner, Ron Lachman, Ezra actively advises and lends a hand as needed at any of the many portfolio companies.

Before focusing exclusively on hands-on early-stage investing Ezra was Vice President for Systems Integration at global integrator SHL Systemhouse where he helped build the Chicago/Midwest practice from startup to over $30M.

Ezra was vice president of marketing for the services and technologies division at Kodak's INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation. Before that, he managed the systems development and integration services and founded the business unit that produced the leading networking software products for UNIX System V: NFS and TCP/IP protocols. The licensing of these products to over 75 major computer manufacturers accelerated the adoption of open Internet protocols.

Ezra holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Illinois. A long time ago Ezra was a member of the UNIX systems development team at AT&T Bell Laboratories and contributed to a number of pioneering implementations of UNIX systems including the large-scale UNIX/370 project and he can still pass, occasionally, as technically clueful.