Stephan Ouaknine
MANAGING PARTNER
Stephan Ouaknine is the founder and Managing Partner of Inerjys. With over 20 years of proven experience as an entrepreneur and investor, Stephan has been a visionary leader across multiple technology sectors, from telecommunications to clean technology. His career has spanned three high-tech ventures, working arduously on-the-ground to create significant shareholder value with three successful exits. He is known for his dynamic, results-oriented style and his commercialization focus in building self-sufficient and profitable companies. Stephan founded Inerjys with the insight that new deployment approaches and innovative technologies could overcome the challenges of the cleantech sector and power a better tomorrow.
Prior to Inerjys, Stephan founded Blueslice Networks, a leading provider of evolved Subscriber Data Management (eSDM) solutions for telecom carriers. Stephan led Blueslice from its foundation in 2001 until its acquisition in 2010 by Tekelec (NASDAQ: TKLC), which was subsequently acquired by Oracle (NYSE: ORCL). Stephan’s other successes include Emblaze (LSE: BSD), a next-generation mobile multimedia company which reached a $6 billion valuation during his tenure, and Airslide Systems, a leader in next generation signalling which merged with Cantata Technology and later acquired by Dialogic (NASDAQ: DLGC).
Stephan is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, the TED community, a speaker at the United Nations’ annual COP and a recipient of the Annual Honoree Award from the Canadian Technion Society. Considered as a thought leader, he is frequently invited to keynote speaker sessions on entrepreneurship, investing and the clean energy sector at global events. Stephan also currently sits on 6 company boards, including 2 as Chairman.
Dave Furneaux
ADVISORY PARTNER
Dave Furneaux has spent his 20 year career as a company builder and investor. During this time, he has played active roles in building some of the leading technology and Internet companies in North America. He also started and operates 2 investment companies; BlueIO and Kodiak Venture Partners.
A sample of successful companies include Aironet (IPO and acquired by Cisco Systems), ALIS (acquired by Karl Zeiss), Auroranetics (acquired by Cisco Systems), Enfora (Acquired by Novatel), Extreme Packet Devices (acquired by PMC-Sierra), Philsar (acquired by Skyworks), RMI (acquired by Broadcom), Smartcells (acquired by Merck) and Watchfire (acquired by IBM). Recent successes include BLAZE.io's acquisition by Akamai, WHERE.com's acquisition by EBAY, Channel Advisor's IPO on the NYSE and Appnexus's acquisition by AT&T.
Areas of interest include transformational technologies applied to personalized medicine, security, agriculture and food technologies and sustainable power generation.