Rosum Investors and Board of Directors


Rosum is backed by a team of venture capitalists and individual investors with a history in creating vibrant, valuable businesses.

James Spilker, Jr., Ph.D. — Chairman and Co-Founder
Skip Speaks
James F. Gibbons, Ph.D.
Bill Tai — General Partner, Charles River Ventures
Lara Druyan — General Partner, Allegis Capital
Stephen Stuut — CEO TruePosition


Dr. James Spilker, Jr. — Chairman and Co-Founder
James Spilker completed a B.S. in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University in 1955 followed by an M.S. Electrical Engineering, in 1956 and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, in 1958. Both graduate degrees were received from Stanford University. Jim has pursued parallel careers in industry and academia. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Engineering, a Life Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Institute of Navigation (ION), a recipient of the ION Johannes Kepler Award, and a recipient of the Hall of Fame Award from the GPS Joint Program Office and the US Air Force. Between 1973 and 1999, Jim was founder, Chairman, and CEO of Stanford Telecommunications, Inc. Jim served on the advisory boards for several Internet access and ASIC related companies, as well as the Board of Advisors for the Stanford School of Engineering, the Board of Advisors for the USC School of Engineering, the US Congressional Advisory Board for the International Space Station, and the US Air Force GPS Independent Review Team. He was chairman of the Technical Activities Board for the IEEE Communications Sciences Institute, and a consulting professor at Stanford University. Jim's expertise includes Spread Spectrum techniques, Orthogonal and Multicarrier CDMA, vector delay lock tracking, cable modems, coding schemes, broadband internet access, network management, fixed wireless in multipath channels, adaptive equalization, general relativistic effects, signal propagation, and the Global Positioning System (GPS). He originated various forms of the Delay Lock Loops used in almost all cellular CDMA and GPS receivers. He was also the co-architect of the original GPS system, and the next generation GPS L5 codes.

Skip Speaks
Skip Speaks has over twenty years of telecommunications experience in the network operator and the wireless equipment manufacturing and vendor business. Until 2003, he served as a member of the board and CEO for Kyocera Wireless Corp, a San Diego-based wireless handset manufacturer. Speaks is currently serving on the Board of Directors for Glenayre Technology Inc. and on the Board of the San Diego Telecom Council. He joined Rosum Corporation as CEO in 2003. Speaks also serves on Triton Network Systems' Board of Directors and he was CEO for this startup broadband microwave equipment manufacturer that he and the management team took public during the summer of 2000. Prior to Triton, Speaks spent thirteen years at Ericsson, and most recently served as Executive Vice President and General Manager for Ericsson's Wireless Division, where he was responsible for sales and deployment of Ericsson's wireless communications infrastructure in the United States and helped navigate the company through a significant restructuring in order to better address the impact of the convergence of data and voice over wireless networks. Speaks earned a Bachelor of Science Degree for Civil Engineering from West Virginia Institute of Technology and is a registered professional engineer.

James F. Gibbons Ph.D.
James F. Gibbons received a B.S. degree at Northwestern University in 1953 and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1956. He was appointed Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University in 1964. In 1983, Professor Gibbons was named Reid Weaver Dennis Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford. Gibbons then served as the Dean of the School of Engineering at Stanford from 1984 to 1996. Dr. Gibbons invented Tutored Video Instruction, which is widely used at Stanford and elsewhere for continuing education of engineers. He also founded SERA Learning Technologies, dedicated to solutions for pressing social problems, including the education of children of migrant farm workers and anger management for at-risk teens. Dr. Gibbons has served on several committees advising the Presidential Science Advisor during the Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations. In addition to being on the Board at Rosum, Gibbons is a member of the Board of Directors at Lockheed Martin and Cisco Systems. He is a fellow at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the National Academy of Science(NAS), and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

Bill Tai — General Partner, Charles River Ventures
Please see Bill's biography at Charles River Ventures' website.

Lara Druyan — General Partner, Allegis Capital
Please see Lara's biography at Allegis Capital's website.

Stephen Stuut — CEO, TruePosition
Please see Stephen's bio at the TruePosition website.

Rosum closed a $15M Series B preferred stock financing in April 2008. Click here to read the press release.

Rosum closed a $16M Series A preferred stock financing in April, 2003. Click here to read the press release.

For investor information, please contact Matthew Lewis, CFO.