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Brian R. Smith is the founder of S3 Ventures and serves as its Managing Director. At age 29, he founded and served as Chairman and CEO of Crossroads Systems (Nasdaq: CRDS). He led Crossroads through five rounds of venture, strategic and mezzanine financing and to a successful IPO in 1999. Brian ran Crossroads as a public company for nearly four years. In this role, Brian was an early pioneer in Storage Area Networks (¡°SANs¡±), which are industry standard solutions today. For his efforts, he was awarded the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2000. He spent the first seven years of his career in electrical engineering positions holding product development roles within the Technology Group of the IBM Corporation.