Robert Yamashita

Mr. Yamashita is Co-Founder and Managing Director of Cogentic Advisors, a boutique strategic advisory firm to technology startups and VCs, specializing in strategy, corporate development, and M&A. He is also a Registered Representative at Rainmaker Securities, focused on capital raising, pre-IPO secondaries, and M&A. Robert also held posts at many successful startups including C-Cube Microsystems (acquired by LSI Logic for $878M), Cypress Semiconductor (acquired by Infineon for $10B), DivX Inc., and others. Prior to Cogentic, Mr. Yamashita was most recently an Associate Partner at IBM Global Services, where he drove $10M strategic engagements to support the deployment of IBM’s Watson Artificial Intelligence platform. As the V.P. of Strategy and Business Development for THX (Lucasfilm), he led intellectual property licensing and professional services. In two years as Business Unit Director for a software startup, he grew revenues by 4x to power its $165M IPO. He also led consortia and alliances that enabled Sony to generate $300M of incremental revenue in 3 years. Robert holds a B.S. with Honors in Engineering and Applied Science from the California Institute of Technology and is recently focusing on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Mr. Yamashita holds Series 7 and 63 securities licenses.