Vancouver’s LX Ventures Inc. announced that it has formed an advisory board with the addition of three seasoned technology entrepreneurs. David Baxby, Co-CEO of Virgin Group; Lance Tracey, Co-founder and Chairman of Peer 1 Networks and; Reza Kazemipour, CEO of Oris4 and veteran Silicon Valley executive with several successful company exits have created the new board with will also operate independent of management.
David Baxby joins the board, having joined Virgin Management in 2004 to establish the Sydney office as the CEO of the Asia Pacific region. Since then he has served as a Director of Virgin Mobile, Virgin Active, Virgin Money and Virgin Australia with responsibility for the Group’s investments in these businesses. Mr. Baxby moved to Shanghai in 2006 to establish a number of startup businesses in the Asia Pacific region and in 2008 moved to Geneva to assume responsibilities for the Virgin Group’s investments in Aviation. In 2008, he joined the Board of Virgin Atlantic, Virgin America and Air Asia X and became Chairman of Virgin Unite in Australia, the Virgin Group’s charitable foundation. In 2011, he was named the Co-CEO of Virgin Group with responsibility for all of Virgin Group’s global investments. In July 2012, he moved to Singapore to focus on opportunities in the Asia Pacific region.
Lance Trace who Co-Rounded PEER 1 Hosting with Mark Teolis in 1999. Until its acquisition in January 2013 by Cogeco Cable for $526 million, he sat as the chairman of the Board of Directors and between 2005 and 2007 took over as the president and chief executive officer. Lance has long been a technology enthusiast, and has been involved in a variety of high-tech ventures throughout his career. A serial entrepreneur, Lance has co-founded Sutton Group Realty Services, Internet Direct, E-xact Transactions and Bryght.com. Today, he is an active early-stage investor who recently joined forces with Boris Mann to launch Full Stack, a new investment vehicle they’re calling “napkin capital.”
Reza M. Kazemipour has more than 20 years of experience in sales, strategy, investments and business leadership roles in the software industry. Mr. Kazemipour is currently CEO of Oris4, an enterprise cloud search service, and serves as a board advisor to many Silicon Valley, and Canadian start-ups, as well as a mentor to accelerators/incubators like GrowLab, UpWest Labs, and Media Camp (a Turner Broadcasting unit). Prior the advisory roles, Mr. Kazemipour was CRO at Ryma Technology (Acquired by OneDesk), CEO/Founder of AltosMedia, and an “EIR”, Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Clearstone Venture Partners. He held executive management positions at Siderean (Acquired by OpenText), Fast Search & Transfer (Acquired by Microsoft), Cerebra (acquired by Webmethods), and Selectica.