Choon Shim, Managing Director

Mr. Shim is a 25 year industry veteran with extensive experience managing Information Technology organizations at such software companies as Widearea Systems, Qovia, Widearea Data Systems, BMC, EMC, and Merant.

Mr. Shim is a highly regarded in the corporate finance area with the experience of executing more than 30 M&A transactions during his career. Mr. Shim has experience in the entire M&A process including target search, analysis, due diligence, structuring, financing and closing. Mr. Shim has extensive experience in raising and managing capital during his tenure at startup to mature public companies.

Mr. Shim is a well know industry expert and authored “Practical VoIP Security”, “Community Works!”, and "Strategies for Telecommunication Venture Capital". He is the prime inventor of 7 US Patents in IT area. He is a frequent speaker at academic and industry conferences.

Mr. Shim was previously awarded the Executive of the year by the Tech Council of Maryland and was selected as one of the Top 25 CEOs by the Gazette of Politics and Business. Mr. Shim is an Industry Advisory Board member of Townson University, and Advisor to Samsung Networks.

Zimri Putney, Managing Director

Zimri Putney is a founder and Managing Director of NextGen Capital, LLC, the managing company of two early stage venture funds focused on funding promising technology companies in the mid-Atlantic region of the US.  Investors were primarily senior executives in the private and government sectors who were in a position to assist in finding and vetting promising investment opportunities, and assisting the companies as advisors and directors.  The company had a number of notable successes.

Prior to this Mr. Putney served for ten years in management of integrated electronics research and development at IBM and for nine years as a senior executive of the most successful photovoltaic company of the era, Solarex Corporation, which we successfully sold to Amoco Oil Company and now does business as BP Solar.  Mr. Putney has an SC.M in Physics from Brown University and B.S. Physics, with honors, from Syracuse University.

Carl Eckstein, Managing Director

Mr. Eckstein is co-founder and Managing Director of NextGen Capital, L.L.C., a Senior Partner of Sundial Strategies and Project Management and Control, Inc. and a Director of Widearea Systems, Inc. In total Mr. Eckstein has over thirty years experience as a venture capitalist, consultant and the owner of two software firms that were respectively engaged in geographic information systems and information technology systems development. As co-founder of Putney and Eckstein, Inc., his focus was mergers and acquisitions, and strategic management. As a principal with Arthur Young, a manager at Price Waterhouse, and a systems engineer at IBM, Mr. Eckstein helped re-engineer businesses to leverage emerging information technology. Mr. Eckstein designed the first integrated enterprise solution for a client of IBM, and the first Wiki, utilized to answer citizen inquiries at the Federal Communications Commission.

Raffy Ekhsigian, Chief Financial Officer

Mr. Ekhisigian was the founding CFO of NextGen Capital, L.L.C. For over 20 years Mr. Ekhsigian has demonstrated executive leadership particularly in corporate financial and organizational management, capital formation, negotiation, strategic planning, investor relations and business development. As Senior Vice President - Finance (Chief Financial Officer/Chief Operating Officer) for a real estate development and investment firm Mr. Ekhsigian oversaw a $400 million portfolio. As Chief Financial Officer of a speech-recognition software application, Mr. Ekhsigian structured and raised the firm’s debt and equity for the seed, bridge and institutional investor rounds. As Co-founder/Director of a subsidiary for $70MM Alaskan Native Owned Company, Mr. Ekhsigian was responsible for developing the business plan, strategy, policies and business development. Mr. Ekhsigian earned an MBA from George Mason University, a BA in Economics from Whittier College, is an honorary member of Omicron Delta Epsilon economics society, was a Level II Chartered Financial Analyst candidate and a graduate of the Dale Carnegie Sales Training Institute.