Mobile365

Mobile365 enabled the first mobile data service (text messaging) in the US. We noticed in 2000 that text messaging was growing fast as a service in Europe and Asia, but had been lagging in the US. At the time, a US mobile phone could message another phone in the same carrier, but messages would not travel across carriers. Different carrier standards and lack of connectivity created these artificial barriers. Terry Hsiao (ex-Nextel) and co-founders Bill Backrach and Bill Peters started the company to solve this problem. We were the lead early investor in the company. Our thesis was that a reliable third party intermediary would catalyze action among carriers to connect and enable a large growing market. A per transaction messaging fee would allow the company to share in the growing market. Mobile365 is a great example of how we work with companies: we advised on strategy, helped recruit management, helped secure follow-on funding from other investors, recruited additional board members, and helped negotiate the sale of the company. The company was acquired by Sybase in 2006 for $425MM. It has become the global leader in carrier interconnectivity partner and enablement of new data services.

Thanasis Delistathis

A native Grecian, Thanasis has an innate ability to spot trends early and accurately predict how they will be adopted globally. He has invested in entrepreneurs whose technology brought text messaging mainstream in the United States, movies to the Web, radio to your phone and the ability to buy couture straight from the runway. Thanasis brings two decades of experience to his entrepreneurial teams and access to to a premier set of syndicate investors as companies quickly scale. Before he became a venture capitalist, he spent three years providing corporate restructuring and financial strategies for 20 public subsidiaries and early-stage technology opportunities that are now part of Thermo Fisher Scientific. He started his career at McKinsey & Co.

Todd Hixon

Todd invests broadly in information technology businesses, with emphasis on companies that use “deep” technology to create commercial value.  Currently Todd serves on the Board of Directors of EveryScape and is a contributor to Forbes. Before co-founding New Atlantic Ventures in 2006, Todd was a managing partner of DFJ New England Fund from 2000 to 2006, and previously a Senior Vice President with The Boston Consulting Group, where he managed two venture portfolios, built the Technology and Communications Practice to $100 million of revenue, and managed the firm’s information technology and knowledge management functions. He earned his BA in Physics from Princeton University (summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) and he holds his MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar.

Scott Johnson

Scott is an early-stage technology venture capital investor with a specialty in online advertising, e-commerce, and enterprise software. Scott particularly likes frictionless business models, and to eliminate process inefficiency and find opportunity in automation. Prior to co-founding NAV.VC and its predecessor, DFJ New England, he oversaw the east coast investments for Cambridge Technology Capital Fund, the venture capital arm of global system integrator, Cambridge Technology Partners. In 1996 he co-founded InterSense, Inc., now part of Gentex Corporation. Scott began his career writing C code as an early employee of Cambridge Technology Partners.