James Spoto, Kairos Microsystems Corporation on Entrepreneurship

Winter Quarter 2010 Entrepreneurship Seminar Series

Featuring James Spoto
Former President and CEO
Kairos Microsystems Corporation

Location: McDonnell Douglas Engineering Auditorium
Free and open to the public

The Entrepreneurship Seminar Series provides a real-world introduction to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship.  Through a series of presentations by prestigious entrepreneurs and industry leaders, participants will explore the various organizational, strategic and financial challenges facing successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs.  Topics include start-up strategies, business idea evaluation, business plan writing, and introduction to venture capital. 

For a complete listing of Entrepreneurship Seminar Series guest speakers, please visit http://www.eng.uci.edu/events/entseminars.

About the Speaker:
James Spoto has over 30 years of executive and technical experience in the semiconductor and EDA industries at companies like Conexant, Harris and Cadence. He is presently an independent investor and advisor for several companies in a variety of areas including semiconductors, medical devices, materials, EDA, and logistics.

Spoto recently completed a six-year stint as the president and CEO of Applied Wave Research, where he led the company to profitability and sales growth from $7 million to over $20 million. At AWR, he concluded two highly-valued funding rounds and a successful acquisition of a European EDA company.

Before AWR, Spoto served as senior vice president of platform technologies at Conexant Systems from 1997 to January 2001. In that position, he managed a central technology organization consisting of about 300 employees. His responsibilities included the development of the core technology portfolio for Conexant, including semiconductor processes, packaging, design automation, and intellectual property reuse.

From 1988 to 1997, he was vice president of engineering and co-founder of the Analog Division of Cadence. In this role, he was instrumental in building this new division from conception to an organization of 100 electrical and software engineers. He was responsible for the R&D and operational support of some of Cadence’s most unique and lucrative products.

Spoto started his engineering career with six years as an analog circuit designer and later became director of CAD at Harris Semiconductor (now Intersil). He graduated from the University of Florida with bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering.  Spoto is on the Engineering Advisory Boards of the University of Florida and UC Irvine. He is also a member of IEEE and Tau Beta Pi.