About Us
RentExpert was founded by serial entrepreneurs, Dr. Ganapathy Krishnan, John Guthrie, and Kalyani Krishnan. All of us have families and we realized that it was no fun staying in a hotel room, despite the fancy front lobby. We also realized how difficult it was to book a vacation home successfully. This led to the idea of creating a powerful website that is valuable not only to property owners but also to renters.
Board of Directors
Bob Hawk
Director
Mr. Hawk brings a wealth of expertise and contacts to his role on RentExpert's board, and provides guidance and support for the company's strategic endeavors. He has had various CEO-level leadership positions at major telecommunications companies and has guided numerous private companies through financings and initial public offerings.
Prior to joining the board of RentExpert, Bob was President and CEO of U.S. West Multimedia Communications, Inc. where he was responsible for the MediaOne cable business and the Time Warner partnership until he retired in 1997. From 1986 until 1995, he was President of the Carrier Division of U.S. West Communications, Inc. Prior to that, he was Vice President, Marketing and Strategic Planning for CXC Corporation, a high-technology start-up and before that was Director, Advanced Systems Development for ATT/American Bell.
During 1997-2002, Bob served as a Special Limited Partner of Crosspoint Venture Partners. During that time, he served on the boards or advisory boards of twenty companies that went public. Bob currently serves as a director of Covad Communications (Nasdaq) and Centillium Communications (Nasdaq) and several private high-technology companies.
Yuri Pikover
Director
Mr. Pikover has been instrumental in a series of Southern California tech companies. In 1993 he co-founded Calabasas-based Xylan Corporation, which invented network-wide switching technology and grew to over $300 million in revenues in four years. Xylan was sold to Alcatel for $2 billion in 1999. Mr. Pikover then moved on to be CEO of Access 360, based in Orange County, which pioneered automated organization-wide access control, and which was sold to IBM in the depths of the tech downturn. Most recently, Mr. Pikover has been a leader in developing systems that support automotive dealerships.
Dr. Ganapathy Krishnan
Co-founder, President, CEO, and Director
Krish is a graduate of IIT Chennai in India and has two Masters degrees and a PhD in Computer Science. He taught Computer Science for 8 years at Stetson University before he became an entrepreneur. Krish founded Intelligent Software Solutions, a leader in license management software, and sold it successfully to Network Commerce. He was CTO and EVP at Network Commerce for over 4 years. He then joined MusicNet (now MediaNet) as CTO and SVP and was responsible for the large scale deployment of MusicNet’s infrastructure with AOL and Real Networks. Following that, he co-founded Zetta Systems with John Guthrie and Kalyani Krishnan and sold it successfully to Overland Storage. He is an advisor to RNA Networks which was just funded by Menlo Ventures and also an advisor to several other startup companies. He is an active angel investor, member of TIE Seattle and a limited partner in Divergent Partners, LLC.
What People Say About Krish...
John Guthrie
Co-founder, CTO, Vice President of Products, and Director
John started working with Dr. Krishnan at Intelligent Software Solutions and was part of the team that was acquired by Network Commerce. As Chief Architect, he was responsible for scaling the web architecture of Network Architecture to thousands of servers. John then worked at Cobalt Networks as Enterprise Architect before co-founding Zetta Systems with Dr. Krishnan.
Kalyani Krishnan
Co-founder, Vice President of Finance, and Director
Kalyani has a Masters in Accounting from Mumbai University, India and a MBA in General Business from Stetson University She was responsible for managing the finances and operations of both Intelligent Software Solutions and Zetta Systems, Inc She leveraged her strong financial skills at both startup companies. In addition, she managed the due diligence process and negotiated the merger and sale of both companies.