RipCode Management Team

Brendon Mills

CEO, President

Brendon Mills is a serial entrepreneur in the communications technology market. Prior to founding RipCode in 2005, Mills served as founder, CEO and president of GENBAND (General Bandwidth, Inc.). From its inception in 1999, Mills led the company's pioneering efforts in the packet voice equipment industry. During his five years at General Bandwidth, Mills guided the company through one of the telecommunication industry's most tumultuous times, successfully raising $180 million in private capital, developing an award winning VoIP gateway, and securing eight patents and several marquis customers in the burgeoning broadband voice industry.

Mills has also held positions at Cisco Systems and was the director of product marketing for NetSpeed, Inc, a developer of DSL broadband technology acquired by Cisco Systems in 1998.

Prior to NetSpeed, Mills also held positions at Dell Computers and Dallas-based NetWorth, Inc., an Ethernet equipment manufacturer acquired by Compaq Computers.

Mills holds a BA degree from Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.

Brian Alton

Chief Financial Officer

Brian Alton is a seasoned CFO with more than 20 years of diverse financial and operational leadership experience in technology and entrepreneurial firms, including start-ups, high-growth and turnaround companies. Most recently, Alton was a CFO consultant for venture-backed start-ups including Ignite Technologies. Prior, Alton served as CFO of Cyneta Networks.

Prior to joining Cyneta, Alton was president of the restaurant solutions group of Ez2get.com in Dallas, Texas, where he was responsible for the development, sales and support of several software products used by the restaurant industry. He previously was president and CEO of IntegraTRAK, Inc., a specialty telemanagement software company located in Bellevue, Washington. During his tenure with that company, he achieved growth in sales and operating profits leading to the successful sale of the company.

Prior experience includes work as an associate at Smith Rede Capital, a private investment firm, where he provided portfolio companies with a variety of services such as the evaluation of new investment opportunities, capital raising, and management and financial consulting services. He also has been the CFO of a $200M manufacturing firm, the CFO, corporate secretary, and co-owner of a $14M chain of private career schools in the Pacific Northwest, and a vice president at First Interstate Bank of Oregon, where he specialized in corporate lending programs.

Alton earned a BA, Summa Cum Laude, Economics, from Washington State University.

Greg Lowitz

Executive Vice President, Sales

As the Executive Vice President for Sales, Greg Lowitz is leading RipCode's efforts to expand its global sales channels and strategic business partnerships while accelerating the adoption of RipCode's next-generation video delivery appliances and value-added applications.

Lowitz joins RipCode from NetApp Inc., where he headed the company's converged media business, selling multi-million-dollar storage systems to the world's leading media enterprises. Since 2007 he led the global business and sales development effort to establish NetApp's data- and storage-management solutions as the preferred infrastructure for Internet/Web 2.0, telco, broadcast, production, and media-related industries. Previously, he served as a managing director at Avid Technology Inc., where he launched a new systems integrator reseller channel across the company's multiple divisions. Prior to that, Lowitz was vice president and general manager of broadcast sales operations for the Americas at Pinnacle Systems Inc., which Avid acquired in 2005 for approximately $310M. In this capacity, he managed direct and indirect channels that drove more than $35 million in annual broadcast, storage and services revenues. During his six-year tenure with Pinnacle, Lowitz also led marketing efforts for the company's network solutions, content delivery, and broadband solutions/content distribution groups. He started his career at HP in various engineering, business development, and sales capacities.

Lowitz earned both his master's and bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University and holds two patents in video processing and printing. He is based at RipCode's Bay Area office in California's Silicon Valley.

Dan Walsh

Vice President, Operations

Dan Walsh is responsible for RipCode operations including manufacturing, customer service, and information technology. Prior to joining RipCode, Walsh served as Vice President of Operations for Linux Networx, where he was responsible for the company's product management, manufacturing, quality, and information technology teams. Before joining Linux Networx, Walsh was Vice President of Solution Management for Advanced Data Exchange, where he led the company's product management, engineering, customer service and network operations teams. He has also served as Vice President of Operations and Professional Services at E-Stamp and held management positions at Visa International and Kraft Foods.

Walsh earned a Bachelor's degree in Operations and Information Technology from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University.

Jack Brickey

Vice President, Engineering

Jack Brickey is responsible for leading the engineering for RipCode's next generation Internet video applications including On-Demand and live broadcast Stream-to-Stream transcoding solutions. He brings more than 25 years of telecommunications and data communications product development and executive leadership experience to his role at RipCode as vice president of software development.

Prior to joining Ripcode, Brickey was with GENBAND where he was general manager and vice president of engineering. In this capacity, he helped GENBAND grow from a single product company with less than 100 employees to one with seven products and more than 500 employees.

Earlier in his career, Brickey served in various management positions at Pliant Systems, Broadband Technologies and Nortel Networks. Responsibilities there included developing and delivering products for a broad range of switching infrastructure products including Class 4 and 5 switches, digital loop carriers and digital video transport equipment.

Brickey received his bachelor's in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University.

Neal Hartsell

Vice President, Marketing

Neal Hartsell is Vice President of Marketing for RipCode. In this role, he is responsible for strategic marketing, product line management, product marketing, marketing communications, channel and field marketing, and business development. Mr. Hartsell brings over twenty-three years of strategic marketing, product marketing, and product management experience in introducing carrier class and enterprise network infrastructure and data center products.

Mr. Hartsell has also held Vice President of Marketing positions at TippingPoint, 3Com, Crossroads Systems and Surgient Networks. Additionally, he has held senior product marketing management positions at Cisco Systems, ECI Telecom, Northern Telecom, and NetSpeed-a market leading start-up acquired by Cisco Systems in 1998. His product marketing experience has been centered on introducing emerging products and technologies into enterprise, service provider, and commercial data center network environments.

Mr. Hartsell's technology background includes extensive experience in data center, backbone network, broadband acess, network security, rich media delivery, IP, ATM, xDSL, Frame Relay, ISDN, Switched 56, ACD, and the PSTN. He has also started, owned and operated his own marketing consulting business - Ativa Consulting, Inc. - primarily targeted at helping network security appliance companies formulate strategic business planning, marketing planning, and go-to-market execution.

Mr. Hartsell earned a Masters of Business Administration degree from the University of North Carolina and a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University.