Management Team

Pejman Makhfi
Founder and Managing Director

Pejman Makhfi is a Silicon Valley technology veteran, serial entrepreneur and angel investor in the high-tech industry. Pejman has more than eighteen years of progressive experience in providing consultancy services and best practices to entrepreneurs, technology investors, and forward-thinking Startups.

Widely known as a leader in the field of Business Process Management and Knowledge Modeling, Pejman has an extensive background in the software and financial industries and has been the key architect for several award-winning industry leaders such as FinancialCircuit and Savvion.

His background includes:

CTO position at FinancialCircuit, a company recognized as the technological innovator for financial industry and awarded as Silicon Valley's Ninth Fastest-Growing Private Company in 2003. (Acquired by LPL)

CTO position at TEN (The Enterprise Network), a top Silicon Valley technology incubator hosting more than fifty Start-ups. Pejman managed TEN’s R&D as well as advised startups on the issues and trends affecting early stage and emerging growth companies. TEN has helped launch of many companies, including eBay, iPrint, Xros, Vertical Networks, Right Works, and Intruvert Networks.

VP of Solutions at Savvion, where he defines the roadmap and manages all solution development activities for Telecom, Financial Services and Life Sciences industries.

Director of Venture Development at Singularity Institute, Managing Director of a private angel group and a member of Venture Mentoring Team where he provides assistance and guidance to several early-stage companies.

Mr. Makhfi holds a B.S./M.S. degree in Computer Science from Dortmund University in Germany and is a Scrum Master (CSM), an internationally licensed Project Manager (PMP) as well as a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt (SSBB) in continuous business improvement. He has authored multiple Patents and standards and is an active contributor to organizations such as "IEEE Neural Networks Society", "American Association for Artificial Intelligence" and “American Society for Quality”.

Mr. Makhfi is the author of numerous articles, including Heptalysis – A Methodic Approach to Venture Management and NPDI Processes (to manage New Product Development and Introduction).

 

Chutta Ratnathicam
Managing Director

Having served as CFO, Chutta has twenty seven years experience in Finance and Executive management with Conway (NYSE CNW) a $4+ billion publicly traded global transportation and logistics company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. He held several positions in its subsidiaries and the corporate office. Experience in CFO functions, Finance, Strategic Planning, Investor relations, International Operations and sales, Internal Audit and Financial Accounting and Information Technology.

Chutta currently serves on the Board of Directors of Franklin Resources Inc, a $3+ billion Financial Services Company headquartered in San Mateo, California and is on Advisory Board of California State University, School of Business.

Chutta holds an MBA from University of Portland and has been a Member, Council of Financial Executives, the Conference Board.

 

Cirrus Shakeri
Managing Director

Cirrus Shakeri has been in the forefront of applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to building enterprise software for more than 15 years. His focus has been on process automation, information management, and big data analytics in a wide range of domains and industries. He has deep technical know-how in many areas of AI including semantic technologies, machine learning, knowledge graphs, natural language processing (NLP), recommendation systems, automated sense making, and multi-agent systems. He has applied AI technologies in enterprise software including engineering design automation, supply chain optimization, enterprise performance management, customer support optimization, enterprise recruiting, eLearning systems, situational awareness for first responders, enterprise social networks, enterprise knowledge management and many more.

Previously, Cirrus was a senior director at the office of the CTO at SAP working on technology trend analysis and technology scouting, building prototypes and frontrunner applications, putting together technology strategy for legacy systems and platform renewal, co-developing products with customers, and technical/scientific research. Cirrus has also worked for small and medium size companies and because of that he is of the opinion that startup and small companies should leverage their speed and agility to innovate fast while large corporations should rely on their strength in scaling up (and out) the innovative products that small companies build.

Cirrus has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, a master’s degree in control systems, and a Ph.D. in the applications of artificial intelligence in engineering. He is a US patent holder and has published in academic journals and has given talks at industry conferences.

 

John West
Managing Director

John has a broad business and technical background that includes International Business Development, Direct/Indirect Sales, and Marketing on top of solid Product Development and Engineering foundation for a wide variety of enterprise-level software products.

John was a Channel and Alliance Sales executive at NetManage having joined them when they acquired Librados, a highly successful open-source software vendor where he had been an advisor from the start of the company.

As a Business Development specialist at BEA for 6 years, John drove revenue growth through worldwide channel programs and major accounts sales initiatives leveraging strategic ISV and SI partners and spearheading new technology introductions. In this role he lived in Tokyo for two years helping them to become the fastest growing region in the world growing over 200%.

Before that John ran Product Marketing and Product Development in global systems vendors ICL, Fujitsu, and Sperry Univac driving breakthrough developments in fault tolerant computer systems.

John is known best for his exceptional strategic planning and product positioning skills due to his technology plus business background on top of Math/Economics education. He has a Bachelors degree in Math and Economics from Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota and attended University of Minnesota MBA program.

 

Ali Bassir
Managing Director

Ali has over 16 years of leadership experience in the High Tech industry, with principal focus in Telecom, M&A, Competitive Research, Due Diligence and Social Media.
He has proven leader with extensive operations and management experience in line, staff and consulting roles with budget management responsibility for up to $50M. His background includes:
Maintaining and Dealing with local and multi-national facilities demands in a seamless fashion. Managing vendor negotiations, including development of RFP, proposal review, Global vendor selection, and contract negotiations. Managing clients’ Web Hosting development to enable B2B, B2C e-Commerce, Social Media, and SEO.
Enabling extranet infrastructure, storage, and product development.
Managing projects deploying global WAN/VPN using ATM, IPL, Frame Relay, Ethernet, DSL, & WiFi. Vendor Management. Vendors included: AT&T, Verizon, Level 3, & Time Warner.
Clients include: Sun Microsystems, Cisco, DirecTV, Megapath, Litton, Nestle, Western Financial, SCE, Blue Cross, Kaiser, Blue Shield, Polycom, Wepex, American
Saving Bank, Winstar, Toyota, Wells Fargo, BofA, SGI, Disney, Samsung, Pioneer
as well as a number of small to medium businesses.

 

Robert Walstra, PhD
Managing Director

Bob brings to VentureChoice a 20-year track record in new-business creation, market development, and technology sales serving in executive positions in the start-up and enterprise sectors.

Prior to VentureChoice, he headed sales, marketing, and business development for one of the leading enterprise software companies in Identity and Access Management, which was acquired by IBM. Before that he established a database-as-a-service start-up as the leading vendor in the online-media sector. As a co-founder, he created an entirely new business in Tax Technologies and delivered global tax compliance systems to public companies in the high-tech sector. He established European sales operations with offices in Amsterdam, London, and Rome for his first start-up.

Before joining start-up community, Bob launched Hewlett-Packard's early and successful presence in electronic banking and electronic commerce delivering installations with banking and telecom conglomerates in the US, Japan, and Europe. He started with HP as an R&D project manager in parallel system design, followed by an assignment to create HP's software factory.

Bob holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, and an engineering degree in Applied Mathematics from the Twente University in The Netherlands.