Michael Cerda

Artist, Blogger, Entrepreneur, Marketer, Musician, Performer, Sales specialist, Startup, Technologist, World traveler

[Update: I'm now an EIR at Venrock Associates in Palo Alto. I'll be starting something up real soon.] I am the CEO and co-founder of Jangl (formerly Buzzage). Here’s my story. While going to college at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo I held jobs at KFC, Mobil Oil, and played in a band. I learned quickly that fast food and oil weren’t for me, and playing in a band for a living could be a long road to hoe. With a B.S. in Industrial Technology in hand and a family, I moved North to the center of the technology universe. I grew up professionally in the broadband access and services space. At Netopia, I built a sales distribution channel among ISPs for some of the early ISDN routers. At Livingston/Lucent I sold remote access servers to the same ISPs. At Redback I sold broadband remote access servers to the same ISPs as well as the phone companies. At Procket I did the same with high density routers, although more on the business development end. At Trapeze I built partnerships with other Internet plumbing companies for wi-fi systems. Starved for doing something cultural and community oriented, I started The Yoga Company, a brick and click lifestyle services and goods company. The Yoga Company became the de facto yoga destination in the San Ramon Valley, attracting the rock stars of the yoga world. I began to really thrive on starting new ventures at this point, and so started a company that would leverage the years of technology exposure, yet apply it at the consumer level. I co-founded Ooma, a voice over IP product and service company. In that process I learned that for something to take hold with consumers, it needed to be without barriers. I also recognized the convergence opportunity that had been so long talked about, finally reaching the market. With that, I partnered with Ben Dean to start Jangl (formerly Buzzage). Here we are. I still play in a band actually, and now Ben plays with me. I don’t eat fast food, and I drive a hybrid. Some things never change;)).

Doing things that are culturally relevant, leveraging things I know and things I'm discovering. Also, making music, creating, making something from nothing.

A disaster recovery system that allows people in-region of a disaster, connect by phone with loved ones.

Business Development, Music, Web Communications, Yoga

My first TED was 2007. After day one, I was in my hotel room dreaming about what I could do that would be more impacting and useful than anything I'd ever done. I've done benefit music CDs, raising money for medical research and environmental causes. But how could I leverage my technology background and the kinds of things I had been creating in my own startup. I stayed up late that night vetting an idea for a service that would service the public in times of disaster. It would be a service that allowed loved ones to communicate by phone, when typically calls within disaster regions don't work. As of the time of this writing, I've got a prototype working for this service, and plan to scale it this year. This is something I wouldn't have been inspired to do, nor found the time to do, if I hadn't attended TED. Here's a link to the post I blogged about it that very night: http://cerdafied.typepad.com/cerdafied_voip_mobile_web/2007/03/purpose.html

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