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OakStone Ventures was originally conceived and Founded by Frank
R. Robles and Peter Kaminski. It began as a vehicle for their
investment activities.
General Partner
Mr. Robles developed the original idea for metropolitan gigabit
Ethernet (GigE) based Carriers, and founded the industry leader
Yipes Communications. The formation of this new market segment
spawned new service providers and vendors targeting carrier grade
feature sets for 1 GigE and 10 GigE.
Mr. Robles is an entrepreneur and investor with extensive experience
in starting and building companies as part of the original founding
team as well as assisting startups in general as part of their
core team and as a seed investor. Mr. Robles operating roles have
included Board member, CEO, VP Operations, VP Corporate Development,
General Manager, Software Engineering Manager, Software Engineer
and QA Manager.
Some of the companies Mr. Robles has played a role in include:
Yipes Communications, OakStone Ventures, NanoSpace, Agile Media,
Kana Communications, Ascencia, YY Software, Netscape, AlphaBlox,
HP, Siebel Systems, Netcom, Apple Newton, Coactive Communications,
EPYX Software, MEI, BOA and Tecla Software.
Mr. Robles is also a Senior Associate of Foresight Institute.
Email: frobles@oakstoneventures.com
General Partner
Peter J. Hawkins for the past 20 years has been managing, selling
and investing in the information technology industry. Before joining
OakStone Venture Partners, Mr. Hawkins was the Managing Director
of Aspen Capital, a venture capital company. His investments include,
Yipes Communications and Digital Reflections, Inc. Prior to starting
Aspen Capital, Mr. Hawkins co-founded three Silicon Valley startups,
MCS, Priority Computer Parts and Western Computer Group. Mr. Hawkins,
through his companies, was successful in selling IT products and
services to some of the largest Fortune 1000 companies (GE, IBM,
Wells Fargo Bank, Bank of America, Hughes, Federal Reserve Banks,
and Sprint Corporation). Some of his successes include supplying,
and managing the integration of all microcomputer for both Sprint
Corporation and Charles Schwab & Company on a nation-wide basis.
Mr. Hawkins has experienced a wide range of operating roles,
which include; Board of Directors, President, Vice President of
Sales, Vice President of Operations, Director of Sales and Marketing.
Mr. Hawkins is a Senior Advisor to two network infrastructure
companies; Calypso Networks Inc. and 4Digital Communications.
Email: phawkins@oakstoneventures.com
General Partner
Mr. Kaminski has over 22 years of experience in informations
and communications technologies and over 20 years of experience
with early-stage companies. A pioneer in Internet services, Mr.
Kaminski founded Yipes Communications with Frank R. Robles and
Jerry Parrick and headed its information systems department as
VP Technology Development. With Mr. Robles, Mr. Kaminski co-founded
and operated NanoSpace, a regional Internet services provider
that later changed focus and was renamed to Yipes Communications.
Prior to joining Yipes, Mr. Kaminski was the founding technical
development lead for Kana Communications, defining core portions
of Kana's electronic customer relationship management product,
and NETCOM Online Communications, where he developed NETCOM's
innovative and award-winning graphical Internet browser, NetCruiser.
Mr. Kaminski was also a key contributor to the original PointCast
browser and to Hewlett-Packard's early Marcom website.
Mr. Kaminski was an early proponent of public access to the
Internet, and in 1993-94 published the widely-distributed "Public
Dialup Internet Access List," or PDIAL, which helped tens of thousands
of the first "netizens" find their way to the Internet.
Working in 1992 with Arkenstone, a non-profit technology development
organization, Mr. Kaminski developed and published the industry-standard
Speech Synthesizer Interface Library, an API which allows computer-based
reading systems to connect in a standard way to a variety of speech
synthesizers.
Mr. Kaminski's wide-ranging software and systems development
also includes deep experience with Internet protocols, user interfaces,
interactive systems, real-time programming and digital graphics.
Email: kaminski@oakstoneventures.com
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