Shawn Abbott

Bio

As a technologist, entrepreneur, executive, venture capitalist and educator, Mr Abbott has over twenty years experience in technology-based businesses. As President of Rainbow Technologies (NASDAQ: RNBO) commercial operations, he consolidated three divisions, built a management team to return the US$70 million business to profitable growth, and positioned it for a successful sale in 2004 at nearly one-half billion USD. As corporate Chief Technology Officer, he was responsible for strategy and instrumental in the creation and leadership of a new business that quickly grew to US$10 million revenue per quarter. Prior to joining Rainbow, Mr Abbott established and built the AND group, which pioneered the encryption-based CD-ROM software distribution system used on several million discs. Under his leadership, AND was consistently profitable and grew to twenty staff before sale. Mr Abbott has served as a board member to numerous private and public companies internationally and is an experienced angel investor. As a general partner with SpringBank TechVentures, he has helped numerous technology companies develop. He is an accomplished public speaker, having presented at more than one hundred conferences on Internet security and business topics, and taught software design courses in several countries. He is past chair of the Banff Venture Forum. Mr Abbott is a primary inventor of "USB Keys", holding a key patent in the area. He has written numerous articles and feature pieces for industry publications, and contributed the chapter on hardware cryptography to McGraw Hill's "ICSA Guide to Cryptography". He holds a BSc in physics from the University of Alberta and has done post graduate study at the University of Calgary, Stanford, and UC Irvine.