• Angel investor: selective; check sizes <=$100K

• Adviser

• Prototyping

• Interim engineering executive

Ken Keller is a veteran of Silicon Valley software startups that have impacted over 1/3 of a billion people:

• co-founder: Cadence (SDA half), IGN, Collectrium

• initial team: excite employee #1 (Director of Engineering), Frame employee #2 (Chief Researcher), High Level Design Systems engineer #3 (VPE), Guardant Health (adviser)

• TAB: Tumbleweed, Accela, Playhaven

Ken received his PhD in computer science at UC Berkeley under Professor Richard Newton. (Ken donated the Richard Newton Room at CITRIS.) His thesis, An Integrated Circuit CAD Framework, invented a platform for integrated EDA (Electronic Design Automation) apps. His layout editor, KIC (Ken's IC editor), was used to design chips like the SGI geometry engine. Cadence was formed to commercialize his apps. 

He won the Hertz Fellowship. He received his BS in applied math (CS concentration) from CMU where he helped define the CS major.