Praveen Shah

Founder & Managing Director, Advisory

Praveen is a serial entrepreneur and startup CEO with multiple exits. He invests in, partners with, and mentors entrepreneurs, technologists, and physicians tackling fundamental problems facing society. Last decade, he was the cofounder of four, CEO of three, Chairman of another three, and Advisor of 10+ Digital Health, Supply Chain, People Tech, and other early-stage ventures. Five of these 15+ VC-funded startups Praveen led or advised realized a successful acquisition exit. His expertise and interests include building practical and impactful applications AI-ML, Big-Data, IoT, Remote Monitoring, Real-Time Location, SaaS/SaMD, Telehealth, Wearable, and other exponential technologies.

Praveen is also a trusted strategic advisor and change agent to fortune-global and high-growth mid-market companies. He specializes in the business and digital transformation of TMT (Technology, Media, and Telecommunications), Healthcare, Software, and Service verticals. He helps senior client executives craft, communicate, and implement impactful strategies that scale and optimize their businesses.

In his career, Praveen has built and led a big-4 and three boutique consulting practices. He has sold and delivered 200+ engagements to 75+ clients worldwide. He has led their cross-functional teams across five continents. He has architected and program-managed their Customer Experience, Employee Engagement, Lean, Operations Improvement, Quadruple Aim, Supply Chain, Sustainability, and Talent Management initiatives. He has also structured their M&A, Divestiture, Joint Venture, Alliance, Capital Raise, Licensing, Outsourcing, and other business transactions.

Before Mobity, Praveen helped hyper-scale Quovera, a cloud-services firm, from ~$5M to $50M revenue/year, ~40 to 330 employees, and ~$7M to ~$200M valuation within two years. Previously, he built a $10M revenue/year Big-4 Supply Chain consulting practice at KPMG, P&L-managed a $5M/year engineering consulting business for Lehigh University, and managed supplier relations for Philips Consumer Electronics.

Praveen holds a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Savitribai Phule University of Pune (India) and an M.S. in Systems Engineering from Lehigh University (PA, USA).

Pallavi Shah

Managing Director of Transactions

Pallavi is an industry-renowned investment banker, fearless negotiator, and deal-closer. She consistently sources, negotiates, and closes high velocity and premium outcome Technology and IP transactions. Clients covet and retain her as their exclusive sell-side or buy-side transaction advisor for her personal connections to thousands of decision-makers at a multitude of operating, venture capital, and private equity companies globally and her incredible ~90% close rate. She has also served as Board Observer for a Softbank-funded venture.

Before Mobity, as the Head of IP Transactions at a leading mid-market investment bank and transaction advisory Houlihan Lokey (NYSE: HLI), Pallavi closed 50+ transactions within three years. Before HLI, she served HP in various IP Strategy, Product Management, and Business Incubation executive roles. She nurtured, marketed, and monetized HP’s innovations through lucrative Channel, Technology Licensing, and Patent Sales deals. Before HP, Pallavi served Sun (now Oracle) in senior engineering and market development roles. She invented, productized, and commercialized cloud-based streaming media technologies. She cultivated and managed 120+ digital media strategic alliances, and generated $250+ million in new revenue annually for Sun. She chaired the MPEG4-Java international standards committee and contributed to the ISO image/video compression standards. Before Sun, she pioneered and demonstrated the world's first interactive HDTV at Sarnoff Labs of Stanford Research Institute (SRI).

Pallavi is a renowned media spokesperson and published author. Her work is cited by 200+ publications, including by many of the world’s largest mega-cap internet and media companies. She is also the inventor of 18 highly referenced patents worldwide which are cited by 260+ other patents.

Pallavi holds a B.E. in Electronics and Telecom Engineering from the Savitribai Phule University of Pune (India) and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Utah State University (UT, USA). She has passed FINRA Series 79 and 63 certification exams.

Dr. Lacy Kolo

Senior Transactions Advisor

Lacy is a technology-savvy attorney, seasoned finance professional, and trusted boardroom advisor. She provides transaction and strategic advisory services to fortune-global, mid-cap, and private equity clients worldwide. Her specialty and domain expertise includes AI, cyber, high-tech, life science, and medical devices verticals. She helps her clients develop and commercialize their technology and IP by providing them IP strategy, buy-side and sell-side advisory, business alliance, and cross-border transaction services. She also counsels private equity (PE) clients on their technology and IP investments in portfolio companies.

Before, as the Director of Tech+IP at a leading investment bank and transaction advisory Houlihan Lokey (NYSE: HLI), Lacy drove M&A and licensing programs, assessed investments, and structured pre-revenue tech transactions for her mid-cap, fortune-50, and PE clients. In parallel, as a Chair of the M&A Committee of AIPLA (American Intellectual Property Law Association), she developed a 12-month program to teach the nuts and bolts of due diligence to attorneys. Lacy also served Squire Patton Boggs, a prestigious law firm, for 13 years as a Partner in the Washington DC office. As a trusted advisor, she counseled Fortune-2000 and investor clients on acquisitions and divestitures of technology companies and their intellectual property. Previously, as an associate at St. Louis University, she helped divest University’s technologies to generate significant returns. She also served as a business mentor to the MACH37 cyber accelerator startups.

Lacy is a thought leader in the innovation space and a regular presenter at significant conferences worldwide on technology investment, legal strategies, and leadership.

Lacy holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia, a Ph.D. from Saint Louis University, and a J.D. from the Antonin Scalia Law School of George Mason University.

Dr. Brian Kolo

Senior Technical Advisor

Brian is a technologist, mathematician, and entrepreneur. He loves to apply academic mathematics to solve real-world problems. He specializes in artificial intelligence, cloud, cybersecurity, data analytics, data monetization, distributed systems, and natural language processing. He is also an expert in creating high-performance software solutions that efficiently analyze very large amounts (PetaBytes) of data. Brian has created computational linguistics, consumer prediction, cybersecurity, finance, national security, portfolio management, product sentiment, and other solutions for his early-stage, Fortune-100, Government, and Military clients.

Previously, Brian served at the McKinsey Digital Labs as a Digital Expert and Stroz Friedberg (an Aon Company) as Chief Architect. He managed teams of 100+ people and led all NLP and data analytics software development projects. He built cybersecurity solutions that process over 1-billion emails a day for several customer sites, including classified US Government Intelligence installations. Before that. he was the VP of NLP at Opera Solutions. He led an international unstructured data analytics group that build solutions for their Fortune 100 and Government clients. Brian has also founded, operated, and sold multimillion-dollar successful businesses. He founded Harbinger Technologies, grew it into a multimillion-dollar business as its CTO, and successfully sold it to Acxiom Government. Earlier, he was the CEO at Software ESP, a professional services firm specializing in the selection and implementation of Fortune-100 core enterprise applications.

Brian is a registered patent agent. He holds ITIL Expert, PMP, and PgMP certifications. He has authored peer-reviewed publications and impactful patents that have shaped academic mathematics as well as the enterprise software community.

Brian holds a B.S. in Engineering Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Ph.D. in Computational Physics from the University of Virginia, and a J.D. from the Antonin Scalia Law School of George Mason University.

Dr. Atul Kumar, MD MBA

Chief Medical Advisor

Atul is a board-certified gastroenterologist, clinical trialist, and digital health entrepreneur whose work has won national awards. He is currently licensed to practice in Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, New York, and Virginia. As a visiting physician and consultant, he continues to practice gastroenterology, serve patients, counsel administrators, and teach clinicians at several clinics and hospitals.

Atul is a published author, speaker, and expert in the use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) for optimizing care and specifically mitigating inherent biases resulting from training datasets. He has conducted multiple clinical trials and served as the chair of FDA’s GI-ADCOM (Gastrointestinal Drugs Advisory Committee).

Atul is an ultra-high net worth individual (UHNI) and a prolific investor in early-stage private companies. His investment portfolio through multiple syndicates exceeds a hundred startups. He advises portfolio and client companies on various clinical, technical, and other matters including the applications of expert systems for clinicians and conversational AI for patients.

Previously, Atul was senior faculty with patient care, teaching, and research responsibilities at Stony Brook University with joint appointments in Medicine and Mathematics.

Atul completed his clinical training and fellowship at the Emory University. He also earned an MBA in Operations and Finance from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Kim Kaaz

Head of IP Strategy

Renowned for her meticulous analysis, Kim specializes in cybersecurity, AR/VR, display, cloud storage and services, 3D printing, mobility, and other technologies.

Previously, Kim served Hewlett Packard (HP Inc and HP Enterprise) in various senior management roles. She was the lead IP Strategist for several key products and technologies such as large commercial inkjet printers, cloud-based print, augmented reality, flexible displays, e-paper, digital cinema, memory, and mobile printing.

Kim’s IP Strategy work includes Freedom to Operate, in-licensing and cross-licensing negotiations, high-value patent portfolio development, and IP monetization. She performed IP SWOT analysis through mining and patent landscapes. Additionally, she conducted 100+ invention workshops and training across multiple continents which helped generate new IP in key emerging technology areas and created a very strong patent portfolio. Through her IP strategy advisory, several of HP’s IP portfolios originated in printing and expanded into edge computing, caching, and other highly commercialized technology areas leading to $100+ million in new IP licensing revenue for HP.

Kim also managed over 100 software engineers and led the software development in wafer manufacturing control systems, material management systems, and business partner connectivity. She started her career in IT engineering in the areas of customer-facing user interfaces, call tracking systems, and networking infrastructure programs.

Kim holds a B.S. in Computer Software from State University of New York College, a Master's in Management Information Systems from Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry University, and a J.D. from Concord University School of Law.