Press Release
PacketHop Names Jonathan Spira as Chief Financial Officer
Seasoned Executive Deepens Management Team
BELMONT, CA - April 11, 2005 - PacketHop, Inc., a leader in mobile mesh networking software for instant wireless group communications, today announced the appointment of Jonathan Spira as Chief Financial Officer. Spira, a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and Fortune 100 companies, will oversee all aspects of PacketHop's finance, accounting and administration.
"Jonathan brings a strong financial and operational background to PacketHop and has a proven track record of growing companies dramatically and profitably," said Michael Howse, president and chief executive officer of PacketHop. "His expertise in successfully building early stage technology firms will be invaluable as we prepare to aggressively grow our business this year."
Spira's appointment comes as PacketHop is expanding its business in response to the growing demand for secure, instantaneous wireless group broadband communications. PacketHop's standards-based software and applications easily load onto virtually any off-the-shelf laptop, tablet or PDA — enabling every device to send, receive and route data and to immediately form a mobile mesh broadband network which can operate with or without wireless access points. By making infrastructure completely optional, PacketHop delivers coverage wherever and whenever groups congregate and need instant wireless broadband communications. PacketHop is initially focused on meeting the mission-critical needs of the public safety and homeland security markets; the company will subsequently enter the consumer and enterprise markets.
Prior to joining PacketHop, Spira served as chief financial officer at EDA software developer Atrenta, CRM solution developer ePeople and Knowledge Management software leader Autonomy, where he led the company's highly successful initial public offering. He has also held senior finance and planning positions in Fortune and Global 100 firms The Walt Disney Company, PepsiCo and Nestlé. Spira started his corporate finance career at Peat Marwick where he served as a consultant in the Merger and Acquisitions practice.
Spira holds a master's degree in business administration from Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management where he was awarded the University's Robinson-Appel Humanitarian Award and a bachelor's degree in economics from Kenyon College.
About PacketHop
PacketHop, Inc. develops mobile mesh networking software which enables instant wireless group communications for commercial enterprises, government organizations and consumer markets. The company's software enables 802.11 standards-based devices to create extended Wi-Fi hot-zones on the fly – autonomous mobile mesh networks – which can securely operate with or without access points. By making infrastructure completely optional, PacketHop delivers coverage wherever and whenever instant wireless broadband communications are needed – with greater resiliency, reliability and robustness than any other comparable technology. Along with the company's device agnostic mobile mesh networking solution that enables rapid and cost-effective deployments, PacketHop offers the Aware™ suite of multimedia applications including real-time multicast video, resource tracking, instant messaging and white boarding. Founded in 2003 and based in Silicon Valley, Calif., PacketHop is funded by venture firms U.S. Venture Partners, Mayfield and ComVentures. For more information on PacketHop, please visit www.packethop.com.