Vivek Wadhwa Joins rollApp Advisory Board

We are proud to announce that Vivek Wadhwa - the “Silicon Valley’s most provocative voice"– has joined rollApp as an Advisor.

"In the new world of computing, tablet-like devices will dominate. Yet we will still want to have our Windows-based PC apps. I see rollApp filling this important void” - Vivek said about our company.

Vivek Wadhwa is a Vice President of Academics and Innovation, Singularity University; Fellow at Stanford Law School; Visiting Scholar, School of Information, UC-Berkeley; Director of Research, Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization, and Exec in Residence, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University; Senior Research Associate, Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School; Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Halle Institute of Global Learning, Emory University.

Wadhwa helps students prepare for the real world; lectures in class; and leads groundbreaking research projects. He is also an advisor to several start-up companies, a columnist for The Washington Post and Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and writes occasionally for several international publications. Prior to joining academia in 2005, Wadhwa founded two software companies. Since joining Duke University, in August 2005, he has researched globalization, its impact on the engineering profession, and the sources of the United States’ competitive advantage.

Wadhwa’s report on engineering education dispelled many common myths about India’s and China’s graduation rates’ being an order of magnitude greater than those of the U.S. Though both countries graduate many more “engineers” than the U.S. does, their definitions of those terms are loose and include everyone from mechanics to trade-school graduates. Elite institutions in both countries do turn out world-class engineers, but the numbers are small.

Subsequent research revealed why companies were going off shore and highlighted new trends in the globalization of R&D and innovation. To explain how India was achieving success despite its weak education system, Wadhwa published a seminal research report that analyzed its surrogate education system and workforce-development practices. Indian companies, in particular, have become global centers of excellence in high-skill areas, including software development, chip design, pharmaceutical research, and advanced engineering tasks such as aircraft-engine design. Wadhwa found that the best Indian companies simply accepted the inadequacy of the the country’s education system and developed their own, highly innovative, training programs that more than compensated for it.

Wadhwa’s research on American competitive advantages focused on entrepreneurship, skilled immigration, and university-research commercialization. This revealed key insights into the age, education background, and motivation of tech entrepreneurs. He also documented that more than one in four U.S. technology startups from 1995 to 2005 was founded by an immigrant. These immigrants tended to be highly educated, with strong backgrounds in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Wadhwa found that a flawed immigration system had created a backlog of more than a million skilled workers who were waiting for permanent-resident visas and that this backlog had the potential to cause a sizeable brain-drain of talent from the U.S. to other countries and a weakening of U.S. competitiveness.

Wadhwa’s research has been supported by several grants from the Kauffman Foundation and by the Sloan Foundation. Wadhwa has collaborated with highly regarded academics from Harvard, Duke, NYU, UC-Berkeley, and other universities. His work has been cited in more than 2,000 national and international media outlets over the past five years and has garnered the attention of policy makers. Wadhwa has spoken at dozens of conferences, including those of the National Governors Association and the National Academy of Sciences.

Before joining Duke University, Wadhwa was a technology executive known for pioneering change and innovation. He started his career as a software developer and gained a deep understanding of the challenges in building computer systems. His quest to help solve some of I.T.’s most daunting problems began at New York–based investment banking powerhouse CS First Boston, where he was Vice President of Information Services. There he spearheaded the development of technology for creating computer systems that was so successful that CSFB decided to spin off that business unit into its own company, Seer Technologies. As Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Wadhwa helped grow the nascent startup into a $118 million publicly traded company.

With the explosive growth of the Internet, Wadhwa saw an even greater opportunity to help businesses adapt to new and fast-changing technologies, and started Relativity Technologies. As a result of his vision, Wadhwa was named a Leader of Tomorrow by Forbes.com, and Relativity was named as one of the 25 coolest companies in the world by Fortune Magazine. Wadhwa holds an MBA from New York University and a B.A. in Computing Studies from the University of Canberra, in Australia. He is founding president of the Carolinas chapter of The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TIE), a non-profit global network intended to foster entrepreneurship. He has been featured in thousands of articles in worldwide publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, and Science Magazine and has made many appearances on U.S. and international TV stations, including CNN, ABC, NBC, CNBC, and the BBC.

rollApp Integrates With 4shared

You know that rollApp’s mission is to give you access to a myriad of applications on the go. You can create, access, modify and save any of your files on the fly - all you need is a browser, no software downloads required.

Today, rollApp integrated with 4shared, one of the most popular internet resources offering free online storage where users can upload, store, access and share music, video, photos and any other files. According to Alexa, one of the leading web information providers, 4shared is ranked #88 in the world, with over 144,470 links in, over 132 million unique global users each month, over 11 million daily visits, and 317TB daily file transfers.

4shared service allows users to store up to 10GB for 6 months for free, or choose from a number of generous, flexible and cost-effective storage options.

So far rollApp users were able to work with there files, stored at DropBox or Google.Docs. Now rollApp users will also be able to create and easily save their files on 4shared!

So what are you waiting for? Start creating, storing and sharing! sign up for your rollApp account!

Mike Gurevich Joins rollApp as an Advisor

Richard Wirt Joins rollApp Advisory Board

Today Richard Wirt, a senior technology executive with 35 years of experience in the computer industry has joined rollApp’s advisory board.

Richard, M.S., Ph.D., was a Vice President and General Manager of Intel Corporation’s Software and Solutions Group. He developed and nurtured the Intel software group from when he founded it in 1982 to a 3000 person worldwide operation in 2007. Working closely with Intel Capital, Dr. Wirt made many successful worldwide investments including 10 large acquisitions of software companies. Operating at the highest executive level, Dr. Wirt worked with Intel industry partners such as Microsoft, Dell, Oracle, HP, IBM, NEC, Fujitsu, Redhat, and many others, building ecosystems to grow Intel’s processors’ market while maintaining more than 85% market share. In 2007 Dr. Wirt also served as Chief Scientist and Executive Vice President at In-Q-Tel, a technology investment group that supports the U.S. government. Currently Dr. Wirt serves as Managing Director, General Partner at Oxantim Ventures, as well as an advisor to a few technology companies.

rollApp Gets 350K in Seed Funding from TMT Investments

rollApp is pleased to announce an investment by TMT Investments (http://www.tmtinvestments.com) – a UK-based investment firm established in 2010 that operates in the technology, media and telecommunications sector.

rollApp has agreed to sell new shares representing 10% of rollApp’s equity capital (posttransaction) for an aggregate consideration of $350,000. Definitive agreements for the transaction have been entered into on 19 August 2011 (“Effective Date”).

In addition, TMT has been granted an option to increase its investment in rollApp by subscribing for any number of new shares to bring TMT’s shareholding in rollApp up to 25%. The exercise date and price for the option shares will depend on the terms of a potential third party investor’s investment in rollApp.