Paul joined Ventures West in 2005 and brings technology and market experience in such areas as open-source software, consumer technologies, broadband communications, semiconductors, and medical devices. He has more than 15 years of experience with early-stage companies in various roles, including founder, investor, analyst, and director. He has served on a half-dozen private company boards, and he currently serves on the boards of directors of Marqui and Dabble DB.

Paul has been involved in the formation and/or success of many technology companies, including ActiveState (sold to Sophos), StockPickr (sold to TheStreet.com), NetSift (sold to Cisco), and others. He has been the Executive Director of a pre-seed fund in San Diego out of which has come 19 companies, many of which have attracted subsequent venture investment, and all of which are based on world-class intellectual property in diverse areas, ranging from life sciences to materials and software.

In addition, Paul was President and founder of GrokSoup, the first hosted blogging company. Paul founded that company in 1999, and grew it to be the largest in the market by early 2001.

Before starting GrokSoup, Paul created and led the technology equity research practice at HSBC James Capel, a multinational brokerage firm. Transactions with which he was involved created more than a billion dollars in public-market value.

Paul also serves as Senior Fellow of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a private, nonpartisan foundation that works with partners to advance entrepreneurship in America and improve the education of children and youth. In this capacity, he develops new programming opportunities for Kauffman in the areas of entrepreneurship, innovation, and capital markets.

Paul is an often-cited authority on technology, finance and markets. He has written and lectured extensively on these subjects, with columns and quotations in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, TheStreet.com, and many other publications. He is a sought-after commentator who appears regularly on CNBC, as well other media outlets. Paul wrote the widely-cited "Feeding Time" for Harvard Business Review, an article which presaged the current era of realtime technologies, syndication, and distributed content.

Paul earned a B. Engineering from Carleton University, an M.B.A. (Finance) from Queen's University, and a Ph.D. in Information Technology and Economics from the University of Western Ontario. He divides his time between La Jolla, California, and Vancouver, British Columbia.

Location: Vancouver, BC

Dabble DB - Dabble DB has created a hosted product for the online storage, sharing, and manipulation of data. www.dabbledb.com

Marqui - A provider of Content Management delivered as an online service. www.marqui.com