About Me

You’ve found the home of Brian Berliner - entrepreneur, investor, open source pioneer, CVS creator, and overall good guy. Some details about me (and some pictures):

The important stuff

• I am the proud father of a smart, talented, and beautiful daughter, Jill.
• Jill graduated from September School high school June, 2004, in beautiful Boulder, CO.
• Jill currently works in the accounting department of Imagine Nation Books and attends Front Range Community College in Longmont, CO.

Professional stuff

• Most recently I was an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Sevin Rosen Funds, a top-tier venture capital firm in Palo Alto. I spent 10 months investigating startup opportunities, bringing in dealflow, and doing due diligence on startup companies in the following markets:
  • Enterprise Software/Systems
  • Open Source and Software as a Service
  • Mobile/Wireless Services
  • Online Gaming/Synthetic Worlds
  • Social Networking/Web 2.0
• I currently serve on the Board of Advisors of Akimbi Systems. Akimbi Systems develops Virtual Lab Automation solutions optimized for use in large software development and test organizations. Manages Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 and VMware ESX Server.
• I was Founder and Founding CTO of Cassatt Corporation. Cassatt was recognized as one of Network World’s 10 Start-ups to Watch” in 2005. Cassatt is a privately-held company funded by Warburg Pincus and New Enterprise Associates, and is creating on-demand IT infrastructure software for large enterprises.
• I was Founder and EVP of Engineering and Product Architecture for Allocity (acquired by EMC in November, 2004). We built storage management and continuous data protection software for Microsoft Exchange servers. Allocity was funded by Mohr Davidow Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, and Sequoia Capital.
• I was Founder and VP of B2B Technologies and Chief Architect for ChannelPoint, building enterprise software for the insurance and financial services industries. ChannelPoint filed their S-1 (available at FreeEDGAR) in March 2000, bursting the Internet bubble for everyone. Sorry. ChannelPoint was funded by Mohr Davidow Ventures, Pacific Venture Group, Validus Partners, Capital Z Partners, GE Capital, and many others.
• I was Senior Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems, and, in 1989, founded Sun’s Rocky Mountain Technology Center in Colorado Springs, CO. I hold 10 Software Patents for non-volatile network caching for Sun.
• I was Senior Software Engineer at Prisma Supercomputers (aka Prisma Technica), a startup company attempting to build the world’s fastest scalar supercomputer compatible with Sun’s SPARC architecture, built out of Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) components in 1988. Too aggressive? Oh yeah.
• I was Senior Software Engineer at Convex Computer Corporation, a vector processing supercomputer company. We did an IPO in 1986. Convex was subsequently acquired by HP as part of their massively parallel computing initiatives.
• I was a student programmer at Compion Corporation, which got acquired by Gould Computer Systems Division. We worked on the FireBreather mini-supercomputer systems, running secure UTX-32.
• I graduated from the University of Illinois with a BS in Computer Science in 1985.

Concurrent Versions System (CVS)

• I am the author of CVS, the most popular source code control tool used by the Open Source community.
• CVS is the backbone of Sourceforge, supporting over 100,000 Open Source projects and 18 million software developers.
• After 14 years of use, CVS was honored with the 2003 USENIX STUG Award.
• I presented the CVS II: Parallelizing Software Development paper at the 1990 Winter USENIX Conference in Washington, DC.
• Some CVS Books (172 more can be found on Google Book Search):
  • Pragmatic Version Control: With CVS, September 2003.
  • CVS Pocket Reference, September 2003.
  • Open Source Development with CVS, August 2003.
  • Professional Java Tools: Real World Ant, JUnit, CVS, Cactus, Bugzilla, Maven, Jmeter, and Xdoctet, August 2003.
  • Essential CVS, June 2003.
  • Version Management with CVS, December 2002.
  • Professional Linux Programming, Chapter 2, September 2000.

Other stuff

• I live in San Jose, CA.
• I ride a 2002 Yamaha FZ1 motorcycle. See it among the aspens in Colorado.
• I am a certified SCUBA diver, trained at Peninsula Diving Center, using the WASI/NASE program (includes SSI, PADI, and NAUI).
• I used to sing (for some definition of “sing”) Tenor in the Boulder Chorale, a 100-voice community choir, where I was lucky enough to do a performance tour through Italy and sing in St. Peter’s Cathedral and the Florence Duomo.
• I spent 7 years doing volunteer Mountain Search and Rescue in the Pikes Peak Region of Colorado for the El Paso County Search and Rescue (EPCSAR) organization. EPCSAR is a member of the Mountain Rescue Association (MRA).
• I was trained as a Wilderness EMT at the Wilderness Medicine Institute (WMI) in Pitkin, CO. Highly recommended.
• I am an experienced mountaineer and have climbed many of the Colorado Fourteener mountains (summits higher than 14,000 feet above sea level).
• I ran four half-marathon races up Pike’s Peak, a 14,000 foot mountain near Colorado Springs, CO. The race was the Pike’s Peak Ascent - 13.1 miles and nearly 8,000 feet of elevation gain. OK, I didn’t really run. I hiked. Here is a hike report for my first race.

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