William McCullen
United States
Mr. Alexander Fries is the Co-Founding Partner of Alpana Ventures. He is the Founder of PolyTech Ventures. He serves as Chief Operating Officer at Zikon. He serves as Board Member at Car IQ. He serves as Board Member at Mila. He was a Co-Founder of PlaySpan. He is the Founder of Ecosystem Ventures. He serves as Board Member at Tinamu Labs and enersis. He began his career as a telecommunications analyst for Credit Suisse and went on to build and prepare MCI WorldCom in Switzerland for the liberalization of European telecommunications. He then moved on to work as Executive Vice President of sales and marketing for Advance Visual Communications, a Boston-based venture-backed content company sold to USWeb, and as a senior market manager for Europe and Latin America at Lucent Technologies Wireless Broadband Division. He brings over 20 years of progressive experience in founding, funding, and managing global businesses that provide technology, products, and services to telecommunication operators, enterprises, and consumers. His most recent entrepreneurial experiences include the co-founding of Playspan Inc (e-commerce & micro-payment platform for online gaming) and sold to VISA International in 2011, SDK Biotechnologies Inc. (Diagnostics), and PURE SWISS AG (Beverage brand). In 2001 he also co-founded the ETH spin-off SVOX AG, a venture-backed company in Switzerland, where he led the marketing, business development, and strategic partnerships teams and sold to Nuance Communications Inc in 2011. He is the founder of the European-American Angels Club, a Silicon Valley-based organization that actively invests in European startups. He also heads the Club Entrepreneur, a sub-chapter of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce in Northern California, where he is also a member of the Board of Directors. In 2010, he was also appointed to the Board of the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative, the first of its kind in Switzerland. He received a BA in finance and an M.B.A. in telecommunications and international marketing from the University of San Francisco. Prior to moving to the United States, he accomplished a Swiss Banking Diploma at UBS.
Individual/Angel
