Cliff Hirsch, Publisher

        After graduating from Cornell with B.S, M.B.A, and Master of Electrical Engineering degrees, Cliff Hirsch has spent the past thirteen years immersed in the semiconductor industry, working at AMD, Cypress Semiconductor, and Alliance Semiconductor. He’s designed the products, marketed the products, and sold the products.
        His broad-based experience includes everything from proprietary RISC processors, GUI accelerators, FPGAs, ASICs and VHDL compilers to highly volatile commodity memories. He’s worked with key customers, reps., and distributors worldwide including many of the industry’s most prominent customers — including IBM, Lucent, Sun Microsystems, Bay Networks, NEC, 3COM, Cascade and countless others.
        From the very beginning of his career, Hirsch has been fascinated with the "mystique" of the startups. While others were starstruck with the Intels of the world, he took up the quest to find the "Davids among the Goliaths" — the companies that had the products, the energy, and the vision to become tomorrow’s leaders.
        Hirsch was also aware that there simply was no source a busy executive could turn to for concise, actionable news on the hot startups that could make — or break — careers.
        So, Semiconductor Times was launched in 1996. It’s skyrocketing circulation and worldwide readership attest to the fact that many others in our industry also realize the vital importance of tracking the hottest startups. And, with Semiconductor Times, this need is now quickly and efficiently met.
        To satisfy the demand for concise and actionable startup information in other market sectors, Hirsch launched Telecom Trends in November 1998.
        Hirsch has served as a moderator and advisor for several Fabless Semiconductor Association events, the Semiconductor Venture Fair, Dow Jones MicroVentures conference and TIE's Semiconductor & Manufacturing Forum. He has given a presentation on building a successful startup before a 500+ person audience for the Fabless Semiconductor Association. He writes the “On The Fabless Horizon” column for the Fabless Semiconductor Association (now the Global Semiconductor Alliance). And he is an active advisor and investor in the semiconductor and next generation network arenas.
        In his spare time, Hirsch enjoys his family, tennis, skiing, and flying, and has served as a board member, president, vice president of operations, and treasurer of his tennis club.

Mike Gagnon

Mike Gagnon has focused on semiconductor, wireless and network infrastructure technologies during his career as a strategic advisor, VC, CEO/serial entrepreneur and Fortune 1000 executive. During that timeframe, he has achieved exits to $300M, increased shareholder value from $600M to $3.2B and raised $275M in funds from venture capital and corporate sources.

As co-founder of GTV Capital and Partner with Vista Ventures, his semiconductor investments have included SiGe Semiconductor, DAFCA and SOSI (acq. by TranSwitch).

He has also served as President of Acacia Networks, VP of Sales & Marketing at Anadigics (IPO, ANAD) and held several executive positions with Analog Devices (ADI) and TRW LSI Products (acq. by Motorola).

Mike has participated in numerous venture review committees, including NSTI (nanotechnology), MIT entrepreneur forums and several others. He is co-chairman of TIE's Semiconductor & Manufacturing Forum and a charter member of the entrepreneur venture mentor program at UMASS.

He has an MBA from California State Univ., a BSEE from UMASS, studied strategic planning at Harvard Univ. and is a graduate of the Venture Capital Institute.