Vidient has new top executive

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--In late January, video analytics firm Vidient Systems announced a new president and chief executive officer, Steve Goldberg. He has a science background, with a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from UC Santa Barbara and a MSEE and BSEE from Washington University, and has been chief executive at both Arcwave, a wireless networks manufacturer, and Verticom, a provider of radio subsystems. Both companies were based in northern California. Most recently, he was entrepreneur in residence at Venrock Associates, a Silicon Valley venture capital fund, where he had been identifying opportunities in the wireless, security and networking markets. Brooks McChesney, Vidient's chief executive since its founding in 2003 when it spun out of NEC Labs, will remain with the company serving as executive vice president and continuing in his role promoting Vidient's video analytic software, SmartCatch. Goldberg said he and McChesney have already developed a good working relationship. "People's eyebrows go up when there's a change like this," Goldberg admitted. But, "He's got four years of experience in this space, and I am absolutely looking forward to leveraging that ... Just having been a CEO a couple of times, there were some distinct reasons why it was appropriate to pass the baton to me." He said his time at Venrock had him primed to work in the security market. As an outsider looking in at Vidient, Goldberg said the company has consistently "taken the high ground," emphasizing education and technical support over the size of the sale. "I'm a big believer in the soft sell in that sense," he said. "The need is there and growing and folks want this stuff, but the technology has to be matched to the application. I'm going to make sure that when people look at companies in this marketplace, Vidient are the guys who are going to give it to them straight." He said that was a lesson he learned in the high-tech space previously. "The goal here is that less touch is better," he said. "The holy grail is that you take something out of the box and plug it in and it works. That's everyone's goal."