Board of Directors
Andy Roberts – Chairman
Andy Roberts was appointed as Chairman at SurfKitchen in July 2005. He held several senior management positions within ICL between 1982 and 1993 and then served as chief executive of Data Sciences plc between 1993 and 1997. Following the successful turnaround at Data Sciences the company was acquired by IBM in March 1996. In 1997 he served as president of the Computing Services and Software Association and remains active in support of the Association. He is Chairman of Kewill plc, and has an extensive network in the industry and City. He lives in Surrey, UK and is married with three sons.
Michel Quazza — Chief Executive Officer
An International Executive, Michel has many years of business experience with telecommunications and software companies across the globe. Prior to his CEO role at SurfKitchen, he was Head of Business Development in EMEA for Openwave, having previously held a number of corporate roles with Openwave in Silicon Valley. His experience at Openwave included building its Product Management team after the merger of Phone.com and Software.com, and line of business responsibilities as General Manager of its Mobile Infrastructure Business Unit.
During his career, Michel has held sales, marketing and business development roles with Octel Communications (acquired by Lucent), Global One (JV between Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom and Sprint) and France Telecom.
He is passionate about the mobile telecoms industry and has a strong focus on building successful business and product strategies.
Michel holds an MSc in Mechanical Engineering from the French “Grande Ecole” Ecole Centrale Paris, with follow-on studies at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a native of France, and also speaks fluent English and German.
Kaj-Erik Relander — Director
Kaj-Erik Relander's extensive executive management experience, domain knowledge and network of international contacts strengthen Accel's expertise in Europe. Before joining Accel, Kaj-Erik was President and CEO of Sonera Corporation, the progressive Finnish telecommunications company. Prior to this assignment, Kaj-Erik held a number of other senior management positions during his seven-year tenure with Sonera. He was instrumental in transforming the company into an innovative, publicly traded company with diverse international operations which cover both fixed network and mobile communications and services.
Prior to joining Sonera in 1994, Kaj-Erik served as Director at SITRA, a Finnish Technology investment company. At SITRA, Kaj-Erik was responsible for private equity investments in technology growth companies in information technology.
Kaj-Erik has served on the Board of Directors at a variety of international companies including Ledstiernan (based in Sweden), Helmet Capital Fund, F-Secure, A-Company, H&B Advisory Board, Printing Network of Europe, Kreatel (in Sweden) and Axiomlab (in the U.K.) as well as TietoEnator, SmartTrust, Turkcell (in Turkey), VoiceStream Wireless (in the U.S.) and Zed.
Kaj-Erik earned his master's degree in Economics from the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration with majors in International Economics. He later received an M.B.A. from the Helsinki School of Economics and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Bill McHale — Director
Bill McHale has successfully led management teams of software companies in the United States and Europe for more than 15 years before joining Argo Global Capital as a partner in January 2006. He was the CEO of Cerebrus Solutions, a telecom software company based in the UK, from 2002 until selling the company to Neural Technologies, Ltd in 2005. From 1997 until 2002, Bill was the Chairman and CEO of DSET Corp., a telecom software company, which he led through a successful IPO on NASDAQ in 1998. During his five years at DSET, the company was often recognized as one the fastest growing and profitable software companies in America by a variety of major business publications. Prior to DSET, Bill spent seven years running early stage companies in the software sector and during the first half of his career spent 15 years in sales and marketing positions at IBM, Wang Laboratories and Digital Equipment Corporation. He is a graduate of Villanova University and was a Lieutenant in the US Navy.
Bill also serves on the BOD for Actix, Ltd., Neural Technologies Ltd., uReach Technologies, Inc. and Sylantro, Inc. as well as playing an advisory role in many other Argo investments.
Maisy Ng — Director
Maisy founded ADD Partners, venture capitalists, after a ten-year career in technology and venture capital. Previously, she worked at Vertex Management, a Singapore-based multi-national private equity firm, where she headed their London-based European office and was involved in 15 of the 20 European deals that Vertex closed from 1996 to 1999. Prior to this, she spent 7 years in the semiconductor industry, as a chip designer in both Silicon Valley and Singapore before moving into product marketing.
Balaji Bal — Founder
Balaji is SurfKitchen’s co-founder and the originator and developer of SurfKit. He has extensive experience in developing solutions for the internet, with e-commerce as a main focus. SurfKitchen is his second start-up; in 1996, he founded ScreenSpace GmbH, a Switzerland-based web and multimedia company. ScreenSpace has implemented internet solutions for several Swiss corporations and has designed and developed swissartwork.ch, the premium Swiss art and photography portal. Balaji’s expertise and vision in wired and wireless internet technology is well-recognised by the industry. He studied Computers and Architecture in India and he currently resides in Switzerland.
