| Team |
 |
| Keiji Miyagawa, President & CEO, Founder |
| Since December 1995 when he founded PRAG in
San Francisco, he has assisted many US start-up and turnaround
companies to grow by providing capital and executing marketing
strategy. ---- They are Archetype Interactive (acquired
by the 3DO in May, 1996), MyPoints.com (invested by
Dai Nippon Printing in April, 1997 and completed an IPO in
August, 1999), Access Authority (local revenue in Japan
reached US $ 30 million every year during1996-1998) and The
Big Network (invested by Draper Richards L.P. in April,
1999 and acquired by eUniverse in August, 1999). Before founding
PRAG, he underwrote 15 IPOs of Japanese venture businesses
and Japanese subsidiaries of U.S. companies at Nikko Securities
(1988-1993). Between 1991 and 1993, he designed the detailed
structure of strategic partnership agreement between Oracle
USA and Nippon Steel including an IPO plan of their
joint venture, Oracle Japan. Prior to investment banking days,
he was working at Toyota group's trading company between 1983-1988
and in charge of exporting Toyota, Hino and Daihatsu vehicles
to Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, etc. With a distributor
in each country, he developed marketing & sales campaign targeting
migrant workers who earned foreign currency in Saudi Arabia
and the UAE. He received a BA in Business & Commerce from
Japan's esteemed Keio University (1983). He received his MBA
from the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley (1995).
He is also a Charter Member of the Security Analyst' Association
of Japan (since 1991). He speaks English, Japanese and conversational
Mandarin. |
| Alex Barkaloff, Senior Partner |
| Since 2002, Mr. Barkaloff has specialized in
assisting Japanese IT companies (enterprise software and
mobile technologies) in US entry. He has 23 years of work and incubation
experience in IT industry. He is very good at incubating ventures
in the wireless communications, enterprise software and media/entertainment
space. He has extensive contacts with US and European wireless
technology companies such as Nokia, Sprint Nextel, Symbian,
Nellymoser and others. During the 1995-1998 timespan, he worked
for Oracle as Senior Managers of Business Development
and Global Operations. He created the first globally unified
sales and operations infrastructure for the Oracle Developer
Program (ODP) and managed strategic accounts, including Documentum,
OLAP vendors and ISDI (Prudential). Between 1991-1994 timespan,
managed the East Europe for the PSION, a global market
leader in the field of mobile computing. During the 1986-1991
timespan, he provided business consulting service in the Xerox's
PC-based knowledgeware product, Tandy's GriD (pen technology)
and the world's first commercialized data compression technology
based on JPL's Hypercube massively parallel-processing effort
as an independent consultant. During the 1979-1985, he worked
for NASA as an SE. He received a B.A. of Economics degree
from Willamette University. |
| Reno Marion, Senior Partner |
| Since 2002, Mr. Marioni has also specialized
in assisting Japanese IT companies (enterprise software and
mobile technologies) in US entry. As an experienced
entrepreneur, he also held executive-level product marketing
and business development roles at other industry-leading
companies such as Marimba, Infoscape, and Sun
Microsystems where he managed and drove the creation and
launch of several large Java and OS-related products
including NeXTSTEP (now Apple Mac OS X), Solaris, Java
products, and Castanet among others. He was also a
software engineer for the San Diego Supercomputer Center
(NCSA). Marioni won the 2004 Webby Award (Broadband)
for PBS|POV as a coproducer and has occasionally written
articles for WIRED on Digital Video/Media. He is a
Fellow at the
Royal Geographical Society in London. He received
a B.A. of Computer Science/Mathematics from UC San Diego. |
| Red Gillen |
| He is a founding Partner of Redrock Consultants.
(http://www.redrockconsultants.com)
he has considerable experience in international marketing
and payment solution development. He worked as VP, Business
Development at RateStream.com, a provider of foreign currency
exchange rate web software. At Visa International,
as a Director in the Commercial Card Products Group, oversaw
development and marketing of payment products for the B2B
market. His marketing skills are also drawn from his work experience
at Coca-Cola and Panasonic - he has conducted business
in the US, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore,
Malaysia, China, the UK, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands,
South Africa, Mexico, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil,
Chile and Australia. He received his MBA from the Haas School
of Business at U.C. Berkeley (1995). He speaks Japanese and
English. |
| Shinya Matsuoka |
| He joined PRAG as Senior Consultant in August,
1998 to evaluate client's technology. As a founder of Openwave
Japan (formerly Software.com), he has spearhead Product
& Service Definition and Development team for the last 7 years.
He locally lead developing scalable email server and MVNO
enabling software centered for Japanese major mobile carriers
and ISPs. The most recent initiative includes leading the
Rich Web initiative for its messaging portfolio. During the
March, 1995-July, 1998 timespan, he architected various media
related software such as multi-user server software for games
and chat, audio conferencing software, 3D animation streaming,
and virtual chat space for interactive television at Silicon
Graphics USA. During the 1988-1992 timespan, he was working
for Omron Corporation designing windowing system and various
toolkit in their workstation business unit. He got an MS of
Computer Science from U.C. Santa Barbara (1994) and an MS
in Physics from University of Tokyo (1983). He speaks Japanese
and English.
|
| Hiroshi Nishikawa |
| Mr. Nishikawa has given
marketing consulting services to many Japanese IT companies
through his own consulting entity, Caminos
Corporation (http://www.caminos.jp/top.html)
in 1996. Prior to his founding Caminos, during the 1968-1993
timespan, he worked for IBM Japan, where he was the first
leader who introduced IBM Information Network and ROLM CBX
to Japanese market. At IBM Japan, he also played
a leading role in developing Japanese banking settlement
network system and further developed Time Division Multiplexer
(TDM) with Mitsubishi Electric as OEM product. After this
telecom project, he incorporated a joint venture with Sumitomo
Electric Industry to launch LAN system integration business.
He has deep knowledge not only about telecommunications but
also about IBM legacy system, Client-Server software, IC,
and multimedia products. During 1993-1994, he worked for Oracle
Japan, where he established alliances with Japanese manufacturers
(such as Kyocera, Pioneer, Hitachi, Toshiba and others) for
Video On Demand System based on Oracle Video Server and Oracle
Media Object. He received a B.A. of Economics from Japan's
esteemed Sophia University. He speaks Japanese and English.
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