Held Consulting

Jerry Held has been a successful entrepreneur, executive and investor in Silicon Valley for over 40 years. He has been involved in managing all growth stages of companies from conception to multi-billion dollar global enterprises. He is currently CEO of Held Consulting LLC. Dr. Held is chairman of Tamr and Madaket Health. He serves on the boards of... NetApp (NTAP), Informatica and Copia. From 2014 to 2017 he was executive chairman of MemSQL and continues as an advisor. From 2006 to 2010, he served as executive chairman of Vertica Systems (acquired by HP) and lead independent director of Business Objects from 2002 to 2008 (acquired by SAP). In 1998, Dr. Held was CEO-in-residence at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Through 1997, he was senior vice president of Oracle Corporations server product division, leading a division of 1,500 people and helping the company grow revenues from $1.5 billion to $6 billion annually. Prior to Oracle, he spent 18 years at Tandem Computers, where he was a member of the executive team that grew Tandem from a startup to a $2 billion company. Throughout his tenure at Tandem, Dr. Held was appointed to several senior management positions, including chief technology officer, senior vice president of strategy, and vice president of new ventures. He led the initial development of Tandems relational database products. Dr. Held received a B.S. in electrical engineering from Purdue, an M.S. in systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, where he led the initial development of the INGRES relational database management system. He also attended the Stanford Business Schools Executive Program. Dr. Held is also a member of the board of directors of the Tech Museum of Innovation.Read More