George Lauro

25 years as a Venture Capitalist, Investment Banker and Board Executive funding & building technology companies. Has been a Partner at 3 Silicon Valley VC Funds and Board Director at 7 public and 26 private companies. Built several tech companies to high-value M&A or IPO exit. Former Managing Director at Wasserstein Perella, a leading Wall Street Private Equity & Leveraged Buyout firm. Launched and ran Wasserstein’s Silicon Valley VC/LBO office in Palo Alto. Head of Tech VC investing. Member of Wasserstein Investment Committee. Led and syndicated 34 VC equity financings and PE control deals. Completed 19 M&A transactions, several at over $500M valuation. Was Managing Director of Technology Commercialization at IBM World HQ. Managed a team that launched multiple IBM spinouts from Watson Research Lab, including wireless Silicon Germanium RF, that ramped to over $1B revenue business.

Began career as an MIT engineer developing inertial guidance systems for spacecraft and ICBM nuclear missiles at MIT Aero/astro dept and Draper Lab. Attended Brown (BSEE), The Wharton School (MBA) and MIT (MIT/Draper Fellow, grad studies aeronautical engineering).
Prolific inventor with 23 patents awarded in nuclear ICBM guidance systems, wearable electronics, GPS, RFID

Has served as a Board Director of 7 public, 26 private companies-Peregrine Semiconductor (Nasdaq:PSMI), Lightwave Logic (Nasdaq:LWLG), World Energy (OTC:WEGY), Westinghouse Solar (Nasdaq WES), Triscend (ACQ: Xilinx), SMaL Camera (ACQ:Cypress Semi), HOMEE, Qusion (ACQ: Emcore), Hotrail (ACQ:Skyworks), Sensera (ASX:SE1), and 25 others. Board Chairman and Interim CEO.

Board seats have included:

• Publicly traded Peregrine Semiconductor (Nasdaq:PSMI,silicon on sapphire mixed-signal ICs)
• Publicly traded Software Publishing Corp (Harvard Graphics/NASDAQ:SPC)
• Publicly traded Lightwave Logic (Nasdaq: LWLG, organic polymer high-speed photonics)
• Publicly traded Akeena/Westinghouse Solar (Nasdaq:WES, solar power systems)
• Publicly traded World Energy (OTC:WEGY, hydrogen power systems)
• Inno360 (SAAS platform for accelerating enterprise Open Innovation)
• Euclid Discoveries (model based video compression solution)
• Corista (digital pathology image analytics/collaboration platform)
• ChipX (structured ASICs acquired by GiGoptix)
• Visual Composites (3D printing of complex high temp ceramic components)
• Triscend (configurable embedded processors acquired by Xilinx)
• Qusion (40G Indium Phosphide modulators acquired by Emcore)
• SandCraft (MIPS-based superscalar control plane processors acquired by Raza Micro)
• SmaL Camera (CMOS imagers acquired by Cypress Semiconductor)
• HotRail (terabit switch fabric silicon acquired by Conexant)
• TEAC Aerospace (LBO-digital image recorders acquired by Goodrich