In addition to starting three companies (two of them with VC funding), I've had the good fortune of being an early employee at two startups that became industry giants: Google and, at the very beginning of my career, Sun Microsystems.

Most recently (2008-2012), I worked at Google as Engineering Director and Innovation Agitator. This was my second "tour of duty" at Google, I first joined Google from 2001 to 2002 as Director of Engineering where, among other things, I managed the launch of AdWords.

I've co-founded 2 venture-backed companies: Velogic Inc. (acquired by Keynote Systems in 2001) and Agitar Inc. (acquired by McCabe in 2008).   I am particularly proud of the amazing innovation Agitar brought to market through Agitator – here's a list of awards we have won for it.

My current passion is innovation through pretotyping and tools to enable pretotyping.  Pretotyping's tag-line is: "Make sure you are building the right it before you build it right."  Check out the fledgeling www.pretotyping.org for more about the subject.

I was born in Rome, Italy, but I live and work in Mountain View, CA, my adopted home-town in the heart of Silicon Valley (and home to Google, Sun and the two startups I founded.)