Prior to joining Proteus, Mr. Karan was the Founder and Managing Partner of Woodside Capital Partners ("WCP"), a boutique investment bank headquartered in Silicon Valley specializing in merger and acquisitions, capital raising, and financial strategy to high growth companies.

Mr. Karan has over 25 years of investment banking and corporate advisory experience, including twelve years at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. During his years in New York, Mr. Karan participated in the execution of over $5 billion of debt and equity financings, and merger and acquisition transactions, as well as a wide range of other debt, equity and hybrid security offerings. Mr. Karan brings a unique perspective regarding the aggregation of assets (including IP), capital raising, partnership negotiation, and exit strategy that are integral to the life cycle of emerging, high-growth companies.

Mr. Karan was also the founding CEO of an internet-based e-commerce company named OneDemocracy. That company was sold to Voter.com in June 2000.

Mr. Karan holds an MBA from Dartmouth's Amos Tuck Business School (Tuck Scholar, 1980), a BA in Economics from Dartmouth College (Cum Laude, 1979), and an MA in Comparative Philosophy and Religion (1996). He is currently on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), Silicon Valley Chapter; completed Stanford's Directors' College in 2005; and was a past Scientific Advisory Board member of the VC-Angel Roundtable of Silicon Valley. Mr. Karan enjoys reading philosophy and is an avid cyclist and competitive swimmer. He lives with his wife, a Clinical faculty member at Stanford Medical School, and twin daughters in Woodside, California.