VyOS Team

Board of Advisors

• 

  Jacob Smith

  Jacob's professional background centers around digital infrastructure, open source software, and marketing, with a detour into classical music. He was co-founder of bare metal automation company Packet — backed by SoftBank, Dell Capital, Samsung Ventures, Third Point Capital, and others — which was acquired by Equinix in 2020.

  At Packet and then Equinix, Jacob focused on product strategy, customer success, product-led growth, startups, developer relations, and open source. In addition to establishing the Developer Relations practice at Equinix, he also helped to roll out the company's first specialist sales organization and augment a scaled $8B sales-led revenue engine with PLG and self-service motions.

  A professional bassoonist by training, Jacob was principal bassoonist with the Academy of Vocal Arts Opera Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia, and others for many years. He now lives in Vermont, USA.

• 

  Zachary Smith

  Zachary grew up in Southern California and began playing the double bass in the local public school music program. During high school, Zac studied with Dennis Trembly of the Los Angeles Philharmonic before attending the Juilliard School in New York City.

  After graduating from Juilliard in 2001, Zac moved on to a career as an entrepreneur, building several companies in the cloud computing, payment processing and Internet infrastructure industries, including early Linux hosting company Voxel (acquired Internap) and bare metal cloud Packet (acquired Equinix). Zac is a committed champion of entrepreneurs, with over 50 investments via his fund Humans of the Internet (HOTI).

  Zac lives in Manhattan with his family, leads the Operating Board for Pursuit.org and continues to play the double bass in local community orchestras.

• 

  Chris Grundemann

  Chris Grundemann is a passionate, creative technologist and a strong believer in technology's power to aid in the betterment of humankind. In his current role as Managing Director at Grundemann Technology Solutions he is expressing that passion by helping technology businesses grow and by helping any business grow with technology.

  Chris has been using technology, marketing, and strategy to build businesses and non-profit organizations for two decades. He holds 8 patents in network technology and is the author of two books, an IETF RFC, a personal weblog, and a multitude of industry papers, articles, and posts. He is a co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for FullCtl, the interconnection automation company; as well as a co-founder of the Network Automation Forum, the organization behind the AutoCon series of events.

  Chris is the creator and co-host of The Imposter Syndrome Network Podcast, focused on encouraging the next generation of digital infrastructure engineers. He is also a co-founder, Director, and Chair Emeritus of IX-Denver and the Chair of the Board of Directors of OIX the global data center and interconnection standards body. He has held previous volunteer positions with CO ISOC (which he founded), ISOC-NY (Vice President), ARIN, NANOG, SANOG, AfPIF, CEA, UPnP, DLNA, RMv6TF, and several others.

  Chris has given presentations in 34 countries on 5 continents and is often sought out to speak at conferences, NOGs, and NOFs the world over.