A self-professed uber-geek and bona fide technology pioneer, Bob Pasker has been building successful technology companies and products for over 25 years. His deep understanding of the software, hardware, and networking industries has led him to design and develop numerous innovative, award-winning products, most notably while he was at WebLogic, a company which he cofounded. He was also principal developer and chief architect of the WebLogic Application Server.
At Kenamea, Pasker was a pioneer in the real-time web and AJAX space. In 1999, he developed one of the first Internet pub/sub and Rich Internet Application systems. At Tribe Computer Works, he led the team that developed the first embedded web-based device management system.
Pasker has also held technology leadership positions at Azul Systems, BEA Systems (Now Oracle), and Digital Equipment, and served as CTO-in-Residence and Venture Advisor at Azure Capital Partners (2006-2010), and as CTO-in-Residence at Accel Partners (2012).
As a technology advisor, he consults with hardware and software start-ups to develop and implement long-term business strategies. He also provides direction on product development, fund raising, sales and marketing, and business development.
Pasker has been an active angel investor for over 14 years and is a mentor at TechstarsNY (in fact, last year, he was named a Top-10 mentor for the Accelerator).
When it comes to investing, his focus is on companies whose products are in core technology, infrastructure, enterprise, and data center, which includes storage, networking, processing, high-performance computing, cloud computing, grid computing, parallel processing, virtualization, data management, transaction processing and application servers, messaging, complex event processing, DevOps/management, mobile, and security.
Pasker graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from San Francisco State University and holds a Masters degree from Brown University.
Investment Arm:
Azure Capital Partners, Venture Advisor, CTO in Residence.
Sector Focus:
Technology and Big Data investments and Advisements
Selected Investments and/or Boards:
AppFog (formerly PhPFog, acquired by Century Tel), Azul Systems (makers of Zing JVM), Cask (formerly Continuuity), Terracotta (acquired by Software AG), Tervela, Tutum (Techstars NY ’14), vCider (acquired by Cisco), Chairish, Musicsoft Arts (makers of DJ Mixer), mint.com (acquired by Intuit), Rixty (acquired by MOL), Stack Overflow, Crowdtwist, Dispatch (acquired by meetup.com), getsatisfaction.com, IrisVR, Jive Software (NASDAQ:JIVE), Kii (was db4o), LocalVox/Nearsay (acquired by Yellow Pages’s parent), matter.io (Techstars NY ’14), OneTrueFan (Acquired by BigDoor), Tealeaf (Acquired by IBM), Mocana, Data Dog, NodeJitsu, Koding, Mashape
Social Media:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Blog
Memorable Quotes:
On how to reach him: “Dear Internet users: please do not send me an email that says ‘Tried to call you, no answer’ if it doesn’t have your phone number.”
On what makes a great developer: “The super-engineers have to have one specific talent, which no one has yet mentioned: they can envision the end-product of the thing they want to build, and they have the skills to start from a clean sheet of paper, and implement that vision. All of the other things mentioned above are important skills, but unless you can see in your mind’s eye that which you want to create and understand the engineering path to making it happen, having all the skills will not make you a member of the 10x club.”
