Startforce, Inc.

Startforce is the leading provider of Web Desktop services used by businesses of all sizes around the world. A Web Desktop is a desktop environment that you can access instantly from any computer with any web browser. Startforce is based in San Francisco, CA and is backed by globally known venture capital firms.

Vision Statement

Startforce was founded by Jin Koh with the vision to host the world's desktops virtually. He believes that desktops should be hosted in secured locations on the Internet so people can simply log in from any computer using any web browser. With movements every day towards cloud computing, Startforce believes a whole new generation of very low cost, browser-only computers will naturally emerge. It is our belief that the next billion people who will be going online will simply be logging in to Web Desktops from low cost computers.

To host a billion Web Desktops, we realized that we would need to make some pretty big yet fundamental technological breakthroughs. The delivery of Web Desktop services hosted on the web must be extremely scalable and must be able to host billions of desktops with ease. Additionally, high performance and an extremely responsible user-interface experience are mandatory. Users should not and will not be able to tell the difference between a local desktop versus that of a hosted desktop experience even if the user were to be connected from remote locations over high latency networks. Finally, these Web Desktops must be capable of running all kinds of applications, whether it be Windows applications or Web applications under a consistent and predictable desktop environment.

To accomplish this goal requires originality, innovation and vision. We began by looking at what other companies have done to accomplish desktop virtualization. Traditionally these companies would host Windows on the server-side and spawn virtual machines for each user. These virtual machines would be delivered pixel by pixel, literally as images through proprietary protocols to a proprietary client. Startforce does not believe this is the right approach or solution for our vision. This approach will certainly run into performance, scalability and high cost issues if they were to attempt to provide such services in scale.

Ultimately, we found that there is really no desktop designed to run on the web today. We must invent one. So we went ahead and did just that. We designed and developed from ground up a new kind of desktop we called a "Web Desktop." Startforce Web Desktops use standard AJAX technologies to render desktop interfaces that are delivered to web browsers via standard HTTP protocol without the need to install any proprietary plug-ins. Consequently, our web desktops are fast, highly scalable, cost effective and truly universal.

There's an enormous market for us to serve. We chose to start out by serving the enterprise market. The enterprise demand for VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), HVD (Hosted Virtual Desktops), and DaaS (Desktop as a Service) are very big and yet we found they have been underserved. We believe we have a highly differentiated approach and the right solution to serve this market. Today, with some of the world's most forward-thinking companies adopting us in addition to strategic alliances with world-leading thin client vendors, we continue to realize our vision of hosting desktops on the web - one desktop at a time.

Management Team

Jin Koh, CEO and Founder
While Jin was attending Berkeley, he started ShareSpace, an on-demand enterprise dataroom service company. ShareSpace was acquired by Asahi Net, a leading Japanese Internet Service Provider. While spending time in Japan, Koh helped start Nuvoiz as an R&D arm of a Wimax service provider in that region. Koh returned to Silicon Valley to found Startforce developing hosted virtual desktop solutions for the enterprise market. Koh has also lectured at the graduate level on entrepreneurship and technology at Tokyo University and Keio University. Currently, he resides in San Francisco

Michael Williams, GM
Michael has extensive experience spanning more than 22 years in global enterprise sales and sales management in high growth and transforming industries. He has served in executive sales leadership roles at NetSuite, Zantaz, both Inc500 Fastest Growing Companies, and Exodus Communications. Under his leadership, these companies experienced triple digit sales growth and developed world-class sales machines. Michael is a Graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the Founder of The Silicon Valley VP Sales Executive Forum.

Wes Rose, CFO
Wes is the CFO for Startforce and his firm, The Brenner Group, is responsible for Startforce's finance and accounting activities. His role at The Brenner Group, Silicon Valley's leading interim financial management firm, is Senior Vice President and he manages the firm's Accounting and Finance Group. Wes brings more than 20 years of general management and operational experience in venture capital backed technology companies, having served as CEO or COO with five early stage companies.

Jonathan Pappas, Engineering Manager
Jonathan graduated from Columbia University in 2006 with a major in Economics and concentration in Computer Science. After graduation, Jonathan founded JPInnovate, LLC out of New York City. Known as JPI, Jonathan provided technology consulting services to a variety of enterprises in the financial industry. Jonathan then moved to Silicon Valley to found Boredat, Inc., a Redpoint-backed consumer Internet service geared towards college students. Today, he's returned to his enterprise roots and heads engineering efforts at Startforce.

Jeff Maruyama, Executive Director
Jeff is a graduate of University of California at Berkeley. He serves as chairman in i-Research, Inc. and i-Fund, a private venture fund. He currently sits on the board for Startforce. He is on the Board of Trustees for the Japanese Community Cultural Center of Northern California. He was a previous board member at Coyote Pt. Museum. Jeff currently spends most of his time on business/partner development and investment strategy.

Yozo Kaneko, Director and CEO NGI Group
Working in the investment banking division at Lehman Brothers Securities, Yozo Kaneko gained invaluable experiences in fund procurement and mergers and acquisitions. Thereafter he was involved with the startup of a Japanese venture capital company in Singapore to conduct investment activities and fund procurement. Next Yozo became the only Japanese working at Draper Fischer Jurvetson in Silicon Valley, where was responsible for investments in the Asia Pacific region. In 2002 he established Upstairs Inc. and became its representative director and began providing incubation office services. In December 2004 Upstairs was sold to NETAGE Capital Partners, at which point Yozo became a director of the company. He now serves as a director of NETAGE Group. Yozo is also a graduate of Strategic Studies at the Fujisawa campus of Keio University.

Hironobu Yoshikawa, Principal Mitsui Ventures
Mr. Yoshikawa puts his eyes on early stage information technology investments. Prior to his joining Mitsui Ventures in February 2007, he had been for Red Hat Inc. since 2001, where he was a business development and alliance manager to OEM business channels and Hosing channels in Asia-Pacific area. He has been certified as Red Hat Certified Engineer. Collaborative Researcher, Division of University Corporate Relations, the University of Tokyo. Yoshikawa earned a BA from School of Letters, Arts and Sciences 1 at Waseda University, in Tokyo.

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