Gary P. Smaby — Vice President and Senior Analyst at Piper Jaffray Companies

Mr. Gary P. Smaby is a Principal at Smaby Group, Inc. Mr. Smaby is a Co-Founder and Principal at Quatris. He serves as the Managing Director and the VC-in-Residence at the Carlson School of Management's MBA program at the University of Minnesota. Mr. Smaby began his career in the IT industry in 1974 when he founded Realcom Corporation. Over the next eight years, he launched and built several successful new ventures. He was Equity Analyst of Piper Jaffray Companies, Research Division. In 1982, Mr. Smaby joined Piper Jaffray as a Vice President and Senior Analyst to set up an emerging technology group. At Piper, he built an international reputation as a leading Wall Street analyst in the IT sector, encompassing a broad spectrum from high performance workstations and supercomputers to networking and decision support systems. Mr. Smaby served as Managing Director of Technology Research in 1986. Mr. Smaby served as the President of the Minnesota Venture Capital Association. He served as Managing Director of Needham & Company, LLC until 1988. He served as Research Analyst at Needham & Company, LLC, Research Division. During his Wall Street tenure, Mr. Smaby observed and analyzed hundreds of businesses and witnessing first hand the critical elements that separate successful technology ventures from the failures. In the process, he developed an extensive network of personal contacts among industry leaders. In forming Smaby Group in 1989, Mr. Smaby set out to use his experience and contacts to keep clients abreast of trends shaping the advanced computing landscape. Over the last decade, his retainer clients have included corporate giants like AT&T, Cray, HP, IBM, Intel, SGI, Sun, and Unisys as well as many high-profile start-ups. Mr. Smaby served as Executive Chairman at finEye Corporation. Mr. Smaby serves as Chairman of Algos Preclinical Services, Inc., Pontus, and Iconoculture. He serves as a Director of TradeAir.com Inc. and CEB Iconoculture, Inc. He serves on the Board of the Finstad Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. He serves on the External Advisory Board for the Deep Computing Institute at IBM TJ Watson Research Laboratory. He served as Director of CorVu Corporation until October 25, 2004. Mr. Smaby is frequently called upon to give an industry perspective to the media as well as from the speaking platform at major industry conferences, seminars, and forums. He is often quoted in the national trade and business press, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fortune, and Business Week and has had numerous appearances on national television programs, including Adam Smith's Money World and ABC's Business Journal. Mr. Smaby also serves as a guest lecturer to the Carlson School of Management's M.B.A. program at the University of Minnesota. He is a 1971 cum laude graduate from St. Olaf College.