Mark Davis
Chief Executive Officer
Mark has been at the center of the networked storage and virtualization revolutions since their inception. He launched the first Fibre Channel disk array in 1994, and was instrumental in growing Sun Microsystems from a non-player to the largest Unix storage vendor within five years. After a stint as VP of marketing at industry icon StorageTek, Mark repositioned ConvergeNet as the inventor of SAN-based storage virtualization, resulting in a $340M acquisition by Dell. After an instrumental role in the IPO of Evolve Software, Mark returned to the storage industry, working on multiple virtualization projects. Before co-founding Virsto, he was CEO of storage resource management vendor Creekpath Systems, where he engineered its acquisition by Opsware (now HP).
Alex Miroshnichenko
Chief Technology Officer
Alex’s knack for creating innovation in virtualization and storage dates from the early 1990s, when he joined a tiny company of storage pioneers called Veritas Software. In a dozen years there, he established himself as a brilliant technologist at the core of major innovations ranging from the Veritas File System and the Veritas Database Edition for Oracle, to the industry’s first viable storage software appliance technology and early explorations of a then-nascent virtualization technology called Xen. Alex was one of the backbone engineers as Veritas (now Symantec) grew from an inconsequential startup to a $2B giant. After Veritas, Alex became VP of engineering and CTO of digital archiving provider PowerFile, then served as CTO at backup software vendor Acronis. In 2007, Alex’s experience gave him unique insight into the problems of storage management under virtual servers, leading him to co-found Virsto.
Serge Pashenkov
Vice President, Engineering
Time and again over the past two decades, Serge has demonstrated a talent for building software development teams from the ground up, and for inventing advanced technology to deliver the simplest solutions. Most recently, he did it at PowerFile, where he hired the team, led the design, and managed delivery of three major releases of on-spec and on-time system software for a sophisticated data archive appliance. Serge also innovated at Veritas Software, where his advanced technology teams delivered a patented fault-tolerant software platform, a content-aware storage system, and new levels of application scalability for modular computing. Also at Veritas, he ran engineering for the industry’s first software-only, network attached storage platform. Serge is a veteran of several startups in the storage, networking, and telephony industries; Virsto is his first as a co-founder.
Rafael Santini
Vice President, Sales
After successful outcomes with four startups and nearly twenty years of sales excellence, Rafael is well known for bringing new products to market and building scalable processes that drive customer adoption. Rafael’s most recent startup success was his instrumental role in Citrix’ $500M acquisition of XenSource. As a key member of the XenSource executive staff, his leadership resulted in a network of 150 resellers that delivered over 400 customers in the company’s first year of sales. At Citrix, Rafael’s team exploited a previously untapped route to market, launching new products with Dell, HP and Hitachi Data Systems. Prior to XenSource, Rafael’s sales leadership and consistent revenue growth was a significant factor in Marimba’s IPO and acquisition by BMC. Rafael was also a significant contributor to Compuware’s acquisition of EcoSystems, and Demax Software’s purchase by OpenVision (now Symantec).
Mindy Anderson
Director, Product Management
Mindy has been involved in innovation across virtually every aspect of infrastructure software, from operating systems to appliances to storage management. Early in her career, she brought to market leading edge clustering and high availability technologies at both Veritas Software and CLaM Associates. The founders of StorageApps, who recognized her talents when they were her customers, recruited her from Veritas to lead product management for their startup. The result was one of the industry’s first storage virtualization appliances and a $350M acquisition by Hewlett Packard. After several years developing technology and investment/M&A strategy as chief of staff to the storage CTO at HP, Mindy joined open source leader Red Hat, where she strengthened market presence for both enterprise server and desktop oriented products.
