The Roda Group The Roda Group The Roda Group - Principals




Roger Strauch
Roger Strauch
Chairman
Dan Miller
Dan Miller
Managing Director
 
  The Principals of The Roda Group are successful entrepreneurs with extensive experience in the development of high technology companies. They support the talents of exceptional entrepreneurs to create companies that are, or have the opportunity to become, market leaders in their respective fields.

Roger Strauch
  ROGER A. STRAUCH
 

Roger Strauch is chairman of The Roda Group, an early stage venture capital group, based in Berkeley, California. Roger co-founded the firm with Dan Miller in 1997. The firm is focused on investment opportunities that address the consequences of climate change, stress on the Earth's natural resources and the increased demand for low carbon energy. The Roda Group is lead or co-lead investors in: Svante, which has developed a post-combustion CO2 capture technology for industrial emissions and direct air capture; Gridtential Energy, Inc., which has developed an advanced battery that incorporates semiconductor wafers inside the battery to greatly increase performance in energy storage applications; and Axine Water Technologies, which has developed a low cost and chemical-free solution for treating industrial wastewater.

Roger is an investor in and advisor to PicsArt and SoloLearn - mobile apps developed in Armenia. With over 80 million monthly users, PicsArt is a mobile suite of creative picture editing tools and a community of artistic content creators. SoloLearn is a mobile based code learning application, with over 1 million monthly users, providing programming language courses.

Mr. Strauch is the former Chairman of the Board of Directors of Cool Systems, the manufacturer of Game Ready, a medical physical therapy system, which was sold to Halyard Health (NYSE:HYH) in 2018.

The Roda Group was the largest investor in Solazyme, now known as TerraVia (Nasdaq: TVIA), a renewable oil and bioproducts company and the leader in algal biotechnology. The Roda Group led or co-led every round of the company’s financings. In 2011 Solazyme set an industrial biotech funds raising record of $227M when they priced their IPO.

He was CEO and former chairman of Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com) a leading search engine on the web. Mr. Strauch was a board member and former CEO of Symmetricom, now known as Microsemi (Nasdaq: MSCC), a public telecommunications equipment manufacturer. In 1983 he co-founded TCSI Corp., a telecom software company. As TCSI’s chairman and CEO, Mr. Strauch led the company from a start-up to a successful IPO in 1991 and secondary public offering in 1996. Prior to TCSI, he was a communications system engineer and project manager for Hughes Aircraft's (now Boeing) Space and Communications Group.

Mr. Strauch is Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley. He is a member of the Engineering Dean's College Advisory Board of University of California at Berkeley. He is the recipient of the 2002 Wheeler Oak Meritorious Award from the University of California at Berkeley. In 2006, Mr. Strauch and his wife Dr. Julie Kulhanjian were named and honored as "Builders of Berkeley". Mr. Strauch endowed the Roger A. Strauch Chair in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and co-founded the William Saroyan Endowment for Armenian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Mr. Strauch is an Executive Member of the Board of Trustees of the Berkeley Repertory Theater, winner of the 1997 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. Roger was the recipient of the 2010 Helen C. Barber Award from the Board of Trustees for a Trustee who serves the Berkeley Repertory Theatre with unique distinction. With Mr. Miller, he helped establish the the Roda Theater at the Berkeley Repertory Theater and the Ask Jeeves Planetarium at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, California.

Mr. Strauch is a member of the Madison Council, a philanthropic advisory board to the Librarian of Congress.  He is also on the Board of Trustees of the Northside Center for Child Development, a mental health social services agency in Harlem, New York City. In 2013, Roger accepted the Mamie Clark Award in honor of his aunt Dr. Hilde Mosse, one of the first caucasian child psychiatrists to work in Harlem.

Mr. Strauch is the Chairman of the Paros Foundation which supports arts and education organizations in Armenia. Roger co-founded and was an owner of ICON Communications, a broadband ISP in Armenia utilitizing WiMax technology. He is a Life Trustee of the Armenian Assembly of America.

For forty years, Roger has been a licensed amateur radio operator - he holds an extra class license. His current call sign is KD6UO and it was WA1KZE.

Mr. Strauch earned a Bachelor of Science degree, with distinction, from Cornell University and Master of Science degree from Stanford University, both in electrical engineering. He holds two patents in the area of wireless communications.


 

Dan Miller
  DANIEL H. MILLER
 

Dan Miller is Managing Director of The Roda Group, a seed-stage venture capital group focused on clean technology. Dan co-founded the firm with Roger Strauch in 1997.

Mr. Miller serves on the Board of Directors of Gridtential, a Roda affiliate that will fundamentally advance the way we store energy.

Mr. Miller was previously the president and member of the board of Ask Jeeves, Inc. (now Ask.com), a former Roda Group affiliate. He has served on the boards of other former affiliates including PolyServe (now owned by HP), SightSpeed (which was acquired by Logitech), and Solazyme (IPO May, 2011).

Prior to The Roda Group, Mr. Miller was Executive Vice President of TCSI Corporation, a company he co-founded with his Roda Group partner, Roger Strauch. TCSI (now owned by Rocket Software) is a leading provider of integrated software products and services for the global telecommunications industry. Prior to TCSI, Mr. Miller was a systems engineer at Hughes Aircraft's (now Boeing) Space and Communications Group where he was responsible for designing communications payloads for commercial communications satellites.

Mr. Miller is a member of Cornell University's Faculty Computing and Information Science and School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Advisory Boards. He is also was a founding board member of the Pacific Pinball Museum, a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching art, history, and science through pinball.

Mr. Miller was a 20-year member of the board and former President of the Foundation Board of Trustees of the Chabot Space & Science Center. At Chabot, Dan spearheaded the development of a climate change exhibit and web site for kids called Bill Nye's Climate Lab, featuring Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Dan is a leading speaker on the urgent need to address climate change, including at the COP15 conference in Copenhagen. An online version of his talk is considered one of the top climate talks by The Sanders Institute and other groups. Mr. Miller was a volunteer member of the Biden-Harris energy and environment policy committee prior to the election. Dan collaborates with world renowned climate scientist James Hansen on advancing Fee and Dividend carbon pricing policies.

Dan received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, with distinction, from Cornell University and his Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He holds three patents in the areas of compression technology and wireless communications systems.