Ron Davies

I have known Tom since he was the CFO of Smart Systems International(SSI) in the 1990s. I was on the Board of Directors and a personal friend of Joe Riley, the Founder and CEO of SSI. Both Joe and I come from Silicon Valley. Tom was a key part of the start-up team at SSI and a critical contributor to the early development of the company and its subsequent success. Tom demonstrated key financial and business leadership stretching beyond the role of a typical senior financial executive. Indeed, after the death of the Founder, Tom and I closed an $11MM equity financing that was essential to the company´s survival. The success of the financing was in large part due to his financial expertise as the CFO, and his infectious energy and enthusiasm to get the deal done, and bring the Company to financial safety. Tom was also intimately involved in sales and all other areas of operations. After Joe´s death, the responsibility to bring SSI to safety and later to success was on my and Tom´s shoulders.

After the financing and when I joined as President and CEO, Tom and I worked closely on a daily basis building a formidable business platform that poised SSI for rapid future growth. Tom´s input and help reached far beyond the financial area and into every other part of the Company´s operations. With Tom´s help, we moved SSI (a company that previously was out of cash and had few solid sales prospects) to profitability and ongoing operations within months of the close of the financing. Tom was a pleasure to work with, to coach and mentor. And now, it´s great to see how he has continued to mature into a seasoned business executive and has grown leaps and bounds beyond just a financial guy. I am delighted to recommend Tom and wish him continued success in his career.