Catalyst Management Team
Jeffrey J. Newman
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
As a longtime Silicon Valley executive, Jeff brings his vision, leadership quality and depth of strong alliances and relationships with an industry-wide global network to enabling the success of Catalyst. Based on his extensive experience in managing people to grow businesses, Jeff launched Catalyst Operating, LLC, in 2000, at the request of the venture capital community. He designed the services company to accelerate the time to market for technology companies via managed access to the Catalyst Fellow Network,TM a closely-managed global intelligence network of over 400 of the most influential senior corporate executives. Catalyst has been significant in the development and market entry of many venture funded companies as well as public companies repositioning into new markets.
Prior to founding Catalyst, as President & CEO of Quest Associates, a consulting firm he founded in 1986, Jeff was instrumental in enabling several highly visible turnarounds in the technology industry. Through re-building the entire management teams, Board of Directors and crafting Advisory Boards in alignment with his clients new strategic roadmap, Quest was integral to the successful liquidity of Vantive Software (acquired by Peoplesoft for $433M, now part of Oracle), Frame Technology (acquired by Adobe Systems for 7x revenues) and Valid Logic Systems (acquired by Cadence for $198M in 1991). In addition, Jeff built the core management teams and Boards of Directors for a multitude of high-growth private technology companies, such as Arcot Systems, SonicWALL, Chordiant Software, Tripath among others. Through Quest, Jeff operated in markets from silicon to systems and strengthened his global executive network which became the core of the Catalyst Fellow NetworkTM, a confidential intelligence network of thought leaders brought together to receive protected access to exclusive technologies and various industry relationships and opportunities.
Jeff began his career in 1982 as the Vice President and General Manager of Chase International (Executive Search Division), based in New York. Jeff attended Cornell University and the University of Miami, Florida, where he played football for the Hurricanes. In his spare time, Jeff enjoys spending quality time with his wife and three children, attending sporting events and is an avid sportsman himself - coaching his kids in several sports while keeping up his own regimen of athletics.
Anne M. Newman
Co-Founder and Sr. Principal
Anne, a founding member of Catalyst, has played a significant role in growing the Catalyst Fellow NetworkTM and managing several portfolio companies including Spansion, Solid Information Technology, Sygate, Geotrust, Baypackets, Applied Identity, ipUnplugged among others. Anne brings an extensive background in business operations, client management, organizational development, and executive recruitment to the company.
She joined Catalyst in January of 2001, from Quest Search Associates, specializing in placing executive management teams for technology companies. Anne was instrumental in formulating and managing the plan to merge Quest with Catalyst to support the company’s fast growth rate and need for key talent. From 1995 – 2001, she served as VP Operations for Quest, with P&L responsibility for the best of breed services business founded in 1986. At Quest, Anne built and managed a team that successfully delivered quality Board of Director and Executive hires for several multi-billion dollar clients, including Cisco, Sprint, and Intel as well as placed complete management teams for privately-held companies. She was responsible for all aspects of running the business and was the visionary behind Quest’s revolutionary client pricing model, “Premier Staffing Partnerships”. Prior to her leadership role at Quest, Anne was the top revenue-producing Executive Recruiter in the company’s history and the youngest Consultant hired.
Anne received her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology with an emphasis in Organizational Development and a minor in Spanish, from Santa Clara University with Magna cum Laude Honors. She was elected to serve as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the nation's oldest academic honor society. Anne also served as “Miss Greater San Jose” 1994, The Miss America Scholarship organization and is still involved with the program today as a volunteer, interview coach and judge for local and state scholarship pageants. She is married and enjoys spending time with her three step-children and two Toy Poodles, especially in Lake Tahoe and any of the Hawaiian Islands.
Jim Gast
Managing Partner
Jim has 24+ years of successful management, investment and advisory experience having worked with high-growth, leadership, and early-stage software and high technology companies in a wide range of disciplines including business development, strategic planning, M&A, sales, operations and R&D. Jim uniquely overlays his business leadership experience with a solid technical competency.
Jim currently serves as Managing Partner of Catalyst Operating Advisors, LLC. Catalyst is a professional services firm launched in 2000 by Jeff Newman with the charter to accelerate time-to-market for technology, infrastructure and communications companies, providing an industry-wide and global-reaching platform for connectivity, innovation and business transactions.
Prior to Catalyst, Jim was a Partner at Vanenburg Capital Management, a highly successful VC fund which included major investments in WebEx, Inc. (which had a successful IPO in 2000 and was acquired by Cisco in 2007 for $3.2B) and TopTier Software (which was sold to SAP for $400M in 2001).
Jim’s early career began at Oracle Corporation where he held various technical, operations and management positions during Oracle’s pre-IPO startup and post-IPO high growth phases. Following Oracle, Jim joined pre-IPO Baan Company where he held increasingly responsible operations and strategic business development positions. During this time, Jim helped Baan grow from a privately-held, $15M European ERP company with no U.S. presence to a publicly-held, $700M, global ERP, SCM and CRM industry leader with a market cap in excess of $6.0B.
Jim holds an MBA degree from the University of Santa Clara’s Leavey School of Business and received his BS degree from the University of California at Davis. He lives with his wife and 3 children in Saratoga, CA. Jim is an avid tennis player and in his spare time coaches his son’s Jeff and Eric who are both nationally-ranked junior tennis players.
Scott Colgan
Associate
Over the past sixteen years Scott has played various technical and business roles within Silicon Valley hi-tech b-to-b and b-to-c companies—holding positions in marketing, sales, operations and web development. He blends a unique set of business experience and technical skill to help client’s bring about practical innovation.
As a member of the Catalyst Operating team, Scott is focused on business execution and new company creation activities. Early in his career, he held regional sales and business development positions with early stage ISV companies serving groupware, enterprise application integration (EAI) and mobile GPS markets, positioning new products and technology platforms into Fortune 500 corporate accounts and partner channels. Scott also co-founded and managed a successful web marketing and development firm servicing clients in the Hi-Tech, Venture Capital, Academic and Community Foundation arenas.
In 2003, Scott joined McAfee's world-wide consumer division where he led ISP, web portal and retail channel teams, managing high-profile accounts including Microsoft, AOL, Comcast, Cox Communications, Telefonica, Terra, BestBuy and Staples. He collaborated with international teams, delivering best practices and program strategy to partners around the world and was responsible for multi-million dollar spend programs, packaging and retail product launches, and on-and-off shelf acquisition and installed-base marketing campaigns.
Scott joined TiVo's corporate marketing team in 2006, where he managed the web marketing organization in charge of producing the company's online properties and marketing initiatives. In this position, Scott led rapid development technical teams and provided strategic guidance and execution for TiVo’s mobile marketing program.
Scott holds a B.S. degree in Business Administration from the University of San Diego. When not working with clients, Scott enjoys spending time with his family. He is an avid sports fan, has a fond appreciation for community and approaches life as he does business, with opportunity and optimism in mind.
Dave Pyle
Technical Staff
David brings 11 years of product management and web development experience to Catalyst. Early in his career, David worked for several web-based start ups, eventually settling at CNET where he worked on the development of their comparison shopping engine, Shopper.com.
Following CNET, David worked as a private consultant architecting and developing web applications before going back to graduate school. After this, David moved to San Antonio, Texas where he taught computer programming at San Antonio College. As a member of the Catalyst Operating Team, David acts as a technical lead, offering expertise across a broad range of technologies.
David attended the University of Southern California on a Trustee Scholarship and as a National Merit Scholar. He graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. degree in Environmental Biology (which included a semester abroad studying wildlife in Kenya). He also holds a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of California, Los Angeles, with an emphasis in micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS). David spends most of his free time with his family and trying to stay in shape so that he can keep up with his kids.
Rich Heaton
Technical Staff
Rich is a highly technical, execution-focused entrepreneur, with experience building and architecting products and organizations from the ground up in both startup and large company environments. Rich is currently Vice President of Corporate Development at Violin Memory – a startup in Mountain View, Ca offering high performance solid-state storage arrays for the Virtualized Data Center. Rich joined Violin in May, 2011 and is responsible for strategic engagements and Customer Engineering/Technical Marketing Engineering.
Prior to Violin, Rich was Director of Engineering at Cisco Systems in charge of a large team developing Cisco’s Data Center Application Delivery Controller/ LoadBalancing platforms, such as the ACE20 and ACE30 service line cards for the Catalyst 6500 Data Center Switch as well as the ACE4710 appliance. Before this, Rich was Director of Engineering for the Cisco Catalyst 4500 Ethernet Chassis switches. With this background, Rich has a unique perspective on the development and delivery of all elements of the data center, including switching, routing, servers, applications and storage.
Rich re-joined Cisco in December 2006 as a result of Cisco’s acquisition of Greenfield Networks, where he was Co-Founder and Vice President of Software. Greenfield Networks, based in Santa Clara, CA, was a semi-conductor startup focused on the Metro-Ethernet space, with lead funding from top venture firms. At Greenfield, Rich was involved with a broad range of activities, including raising investment, co-architecting Greenfield’s products and working with customers. Prior to co-founding Greenfield in 2001, Rich worked at Cisco delivering some of Cisco’s highest volume and highest revenue platforms – the Catalyst 2900XL, 3500XL and 3550 Ethernet switches.
Rich holds a BASc in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada.