Teoh speak with you. It's a It's a real honor. Do you try and provide my perspective in terms of where I am today? I embarked upon a 20 plus year career across a variety of things, and I, um I don't know that if I was any at any particular point in time, I could project forward for you and predict what I would be going today. So it's much easier to sit here and look back across the variety things that I've done, um, that have allowed me to ultimately arrive to this destination. And I would say a fairly common theme along the way for me has been to explore and continually put myself in new situations where I really focused on expanding my knowledge and my experience through a variety of things. And I've been really fortunate to have worked xom, significant companies and along my professional evolution. I've been exposed to some tremendous individuals, and at each of those inflections, I learn and progressively took on more and more responsibilities that soon I don't know that there was some grand plan or vision. It's a series of steps and, you know, as as they say, If you want to run a marathon, you focus on the 100 ft in front of you. So I would I would say that you have the approaches band to really keep my head down on do a bit of a job as I could and whenever assignment or responsibilities I have and continuing to push myself towards places discomfort as measured by what I was doing, what I was learning. And, uh, you know what? I was being exposed. So it's a pretty general answer, but at the highest level, I say it's been a series of steps and insurance of the incidences that really kind of have shaped me on the way. Um, you know, early on, I'm an electrical engineer. I, uh, by education from the undergraduate standpoint on I get engineering work for the first few years. But I realized very quickly because both personal circumstances and interests, uh, that I was gonna gravitate more towards the business side, and that recognition early in my life put me on a particular trajectory that influence the responsibilities, the holes the company's individuals I've worked with that I worked for on and as I took on, more responsibilities that work for me. So I think I was always very interested in the intersection of technology and business and making sure that I could really, um, veil, uh, being at that intersection and and, you know, being impactful in some way. So, no, if I had to be a little bit or specific about it, I think you know, I started out in the semiconductor industry and work for companies like National Semiconductor else I logic on. And now then I had an opportunity to move into the software industry. Uh, that was predicated by a company called Synopses who ultimately became a leader in the EAA industry and forcing myself to aggressively work in different technology areas gave me the opportunity to learn different things on and and after synopsis, I was there for about seven years. I got a call. Teoh join Broadcom. It's approximately employees over 51st person hired in the Bay Area on at that time dot com waas, an inconsequential private company with no revenue. Very few people really heard of them, but the management team and what they were doing is very compelling. And so, by putting myself in a situation to explore and take chances and constantly, you know, test myself. I think it's it's created opportunity for me because I've been blessed to work with on for some of the brightest. You know, most have a bunch of people in the in the tech sector and finally, on the startup that I'm doing today, uh, our Kiss is a high Cristian networking software company. My previous startup was purchased by Easy Chip, where I became president. We ultimately sold easy chip to a public company called HELOCs, and one of the challenges that we had in the complex semiconductor industry was software. If you didn't have to write software for complex system level semiconductor products, it rendered the solution less effective. And one of our challenges and, like previous company, was always the software component of the solution. And so between having spent a lifetime in the semiconductor industry and knowing that software was going to be very critical, I was naturally interested in putting myself in a new area to learn, and I knew that it would be powerful if done well. And then I was fortunate enough to meet our CEO and also one of our founders of the company who really at tremendous domain expertise and vision for what needed to be built and so kind of intuitively understanding that software would be an opportunity coupled with this really compelling eventual that had a vision. Um, that's ultimately how we started our kiss and, you know, three years forward, a pretty company Council Special company world today, so

a software company really be hyper scale networking software company, and we build what is called a network operating system. And it's really a solution to very complex, uh, software solution that serves as the operating system or switches robbers and in general communication devices. And so, by way of analogy, for those people who are not familiar what Windows is to a PC or server. Uh, Archies in our product, the Orkest operating system, which we call our less Arco s uh is the coral parity of windows for a switch or lower. And and so we are in principle of software company. It's a very difficult area, requires tremendous of main expertise. And one of the approaches that we've taken is to go to first principles to really design a modern day solution that takes advantage of all of the accidents in the industry. And, uh, and we were frankly able to do that by a combination of again having a very brilliant visionary, cto new, uh, what needed to be built and their surrounding ourselves with some of the most capable individuals in the world to build that problem. And so I asked, we embarked upon the company to surface project the first you eats. Oh, it was, uh it was less about knowing what to build. Because we have a domain expertise and a sense of what was needed that was ultimately validated by companies in the marketplace. Apple helped design and guide us on our first no product features and functionality. We have feedback from LinkedIn feedback for many other consequence shell branding since the industry and, uh, that reinforced and helped die. The functionality and features said that was needed on a really first, a few weeks of the company are not unlike any company. You have to get incorporated. You have toe do a lot of of the quote unquote Monday things to stand up in operation on, uh, it's his trivial is having a name and finding a domain name that you can you can secure, which is more challenging. And it would appear these days on end, you know, having the legal structure and legal entity in place literally the first unique. So what you do. But really, that is somewhat process centric and somewhat bureaucratic in nature. I'm only simply bringing it up because it's easy to overlook that aspect. of it. And so, for those of you that are aspiring, ultimately start your own business, making sure that you have the right legal counsel making sure that you're really thinking through the structure of your company, the name of how you're going to incorporated, where it's going to be incorporated, the governance structure. All of these offensive things are important to get in place. Very straightforward. Uh, it's not difficult, but it's also easy to overlook them and trivialize them if you not, So I would recommend making sure that you're talking about as you market problem something. And at the end of the day, making sure you have clarity about the market on about how you're going to distinguish yourself and the people that you are able to assemble those air the top three areas that in aggregate for any venture you should be thoughtful about. And then finally, you have to think about how you're going to fund it, because because every every endeavor needs to make sure that it has. The resource is to sustain itself on. And so you know, if I if I look at you know, maybe those five areas there is the that the legal formation and all of the can you want to see kind of practices around forming a company. You have to be clear about the market, the product and why it's going to be differentiated team that you can assemble and then making sure that the entirety of it is adequately funded to achieve. You know, whatever key milestones and objectives you have with the compliments of resource is so those were those were some of the things you think about in the beginning. Um and you know it for me. At a personal level. This is not my first Never. I've been privileged to work at some small early stage companies that became very consequential. And so I was able to minimally observe others more senior responsibilities and develop you know, a sense of what is needed. I also waas in venture capital industry in a formal capacity. So I've really seen what it takes the form of company and get it off the ground from very earliest stages. I was privileged. Teoh have started my own previous company once before prior darkest. So the combination of these experiences make this somewhat second nature, and I mentioned that not to talk about some of the things that were done but more relevant. It's that as you think about starting something, find individuals who can service a mental who conserve as a guy on and can be a real time counselor to you because it's it's not always a straight line more, uh, more high level you focus on if we keep the conversation at 100,000 ft. Uh, the steps that you would take are very consistent for any company, but a so they say, You know, the devil is in the details goddess in details. And so if you progressively come lower and lower and really start looking at your specific endeavor, having a group of individuals that conserve as sandy boards and as councillors to us, you embark upon this journey so you can never have too much gray matter to. Many thought Fels are experienced individuals help out you because these things are dynamic. And while they they appear to move in a straight line, there's always some no, you know, some some curve or some atypical thing that's hard to predict, that you're going experience and all of these things could be solved. There's no problem that cannot be solved. Just having the right mindset, rate, decision making process and the right people die to you.

We knew from the very onset that we wanted to build a product that, um would be differentiated and would be an alternative to what giants like Cisco and Arista offered marketplace. And we knew that we could not do that by simply being a A software system level integrator. And by that I mean taking open source products in the marketplace and integrating it together. It's, I think, a fool's game to basically say that you're going to provide compelling alternatives that are differentiated across performance scale operational velocity in the overall value that you provide. And you're gonna do that against these market leaders by simply taking open source code and being a glorified system integrator. So we knew that that approach was not going to work. We knew that in order to build something consequential, you really needed to go back to first principles and build it in a purposeful manner. And so we had clarity about what the architecture and what the me waas and we are blessed to be in a market that is governed by standards. And so, um, we you what the specs war so speak. And when you have to refine those to really provide a differentiated solution. So in that area we had a fair amount of clarity. And that was also reinforced by customer feedback now having back media that we really would need an exceptional team to execute the mission. And and so as a result, approximately the 1st 30 people in our company were handpicked and very clearly identified early on. And it's through a combination of our our existing team, where they have firsthand knowledge and previously worked with these individuals. And so we knew what their strengths for there was a trust based relationship. Uh, we knew that we wanted individuals who have a combination of deep technical expertise and domain expertise were very house of social product builders and at the same time had an aspiration to be part of essentially their own company. And so, from a cultural perspective, we're very open. We're very inclusive. We believe in empowerment on. We believe in transparency on we really scribe in each of those dimensions and so asks me thought about the individuals. Not only do we want them to be really consequential in a subject matter expertise area, but we wanted them to be a good cultural fit as well. We wanted people that were team wanted, that we're collaborative, that we're not the center now that we're really mission driven to create and build a product that would transform the industry. And so we have the privilege of having a very long list of names and and it's because of the seniority of our team having worked with them and developed, you know, these these bonds of these relationships. And then we systematically, uh, looked to bringing these individuals on board. Now in large public companies, often times they trying hold these subject matter experts as asses captive members of their team. Oftentimes, in our industry there well compensated and and and so how do you structure, uh, the overall equity and how you balance the personal and professional aspirations that each individual has to also be practical about making sure that if we do a job, that it will create opportunity in every dimension. We were very thoughtful about that as well, so I think we looked at things holistically. It's not just one dimension. It's not just having the best technologists in the best engineer. It's not just having the best team But it's not just making sure the structure of how they're able to come on board and have you help them migrate from a more stable, steady state tight, um, large company existence into a smaller one. The combination of those things was all factored in, And, uh, no, the details very individual, but in aggregate, you have to look at that. Another thing that we've done is that I even did this stay interview everybody that comes into our company for me. I and very collaborative focused on ensuring that we have a team. And so a composition composition of our team dynamics on and the amount of overall effort that we spend, ensuring that we maximize fit in a mutual way between our company and those that we bring on board and those individuals that choose to join us. After all, they also have a 50% voting decision. We're not unilaterally making this decision. Both parties have, as I like to say, 50% vote in the outcome. And so from that standpoint, we are very thoughtful about making sure the soft skills are as thoroughly vetted as to eat as the harder skills and a big part of that for me is you know what intrinsically drives an individual. How collaborative and team oriented are They are the century. Are they re center. And in order to build the right team, you really have You really have to have people that, uh, a re centric. And so we we look for that in our in our hiring and were very thorough. Careful.