William Zimmer, Director and Founder

Zimmer has been a technical visionary in the computer and software industry for more than 30 years. He managed a major Systems Software Business for Digital Equipment Corporation, and was responsible for engineering, marketing and sales of software products to the U.S. government and NATO allies. Zimmer also served as the Chief Information Officer at American Science and Engineering, responsible for the profitable management of $1M to $40M projects – an experience that seeded the vision for GoBiz. Lastly, Zimmer managed R&D and product development for many startups, and has always been active in software development, web-based architectures, and the creation of new technologies.  These include founding the Usability Engineering group that invented ‘Contextual Inquiry’ and many other techniques used by Microsoft and other major software vendors.

Zimmer founded GoBiz, identified the market, developed the initial business plan, and created the intellectual property behind GoBiz’s Java engine (patent application).

Dr. Mahendra R. Patel, Director

Patel has a long and accomplished career as both an executive and technical director in the computer and communications industries. Prior to his retirement from Compaq in 2000, Patel was Vice President of the CMGI Alliance Office, Andover, MA, and responsible for the relationship between Compaq and CMGI. Patel also served as Vice President and General Manager of the Industry Solutions Division (ISD) for Compaq, Marlborough, MA, focused on providing solutions for Communications, Financial Services, Manufacturing and Public Sector industries. He was also Vice President of Systems Engineering and was responsible for co-engineering ISV partner's software on Digital platforms.

Patel enjoyed a long technical career at Digital including Technical Director of the Systems and Communications Engineering Group, the Systems and Clusters Group, the Distributed Systems Group, and the Network and Communications Group. He is the author or co-author of 14 technical papers, and well-known lecturer, and is on the Board of Directors for EntComm, Spryance, NEOS, and GoDec. Patel has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Manchester, U.K., and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cambridge, U.K.

Frederick A. Wang, Director

Wang's professional background spans over 30 years in the computer industry, with particular strengths in marketing and strategic planning. Over the past 10 years, he has concentrated on helping new companies get off the ground. Most recently, he was the CEO and co-founder of Beacon Tower Technologies Corporation, a privately held start up company creating JAVA software infrastructure products. Wang was Vice President of Strategy at Sandy Bay Networks, having joined them from one of their investors. Prior to that, he was a Special Limited Partner at Venture Investment Management Company (VIMAC), a Boston-based Venture Capital firm, focused on start-up and early stage companies. Before VIMAC, Wang served as President and CEO and co-founder of The athink Group, a start-up Internet enterprise.

Previously, as President and COO of Wang Laboratories, Inc., he led the company to over $3 billion in revenue - ranking it within the Fortune 250. Working with the R&D engineers, sales management and key customers, Wang created the strategy and implemented the plans that brought the company to a world leadership position in the word processing market. Wang holds a Masters degree in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, a PMD Certificate from Harvard Business School, and a Bachelors of Science in Applied Mathematics from Brown University.

Henry Crouse, Director

Crouse is a senior manager with extensive experience in the high-tech industry.  He joined Digital Equipment Corporation as a start-up and helped build it into the second largest computer company in the world. He was responsible for supplier relationships during this intensive growth period.  He then managed international Manufacturing-Europe for three years. Crouse served as VP Strategic Relations for DEC, expanding the engineering development capability through partnerships, investments, and acquisitions.  He became the Interim President of the Open Software Foundation, a computer industry consortium focused on standard setting for the Unix operating system.

After leaving DEC, Crouse founded the TJ Strategy Group with Ted Johnson and Ed Savage. Crouse brought a unique team of senior management professionals together with a wide range of expertise, spanning mergers and acquisitions through high-tech engineering. This team has a successful track record with ten clients in the first eighteen months as well as one spin-off, Apposite Technology, a networking firm built around some of the pioneers of the Internet. A second spin-off in the business software industry is underway. Examples of key startups were: MatrixOne, Inc. GigaNet, Eprise, Marketing Perspectives, Intelligent Data Interchange - an ERP system based cooperating objects where each object managed a single business function; and SkyMedia, a satellite-based online retail shopping business that simulated the in-store experience of shopping.