Kurt Weingarten

Kurt is a technology entrepreneur in lasers and photonics of both VC-funded and self-funded start-ups. He founded and led Time-Bandwidth Products, a producer of ultrafast laser products, through the acquisition by Lumentum (Nasdaq LITE, previously JDSU) in 2014. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford University, developing an ultrafast picosecond laser to measure high-speed integrated circuit performance. After Stanford, Kurt worked at Lightwave Electronics in Silicon Valley from 1988 to 1993, pioneering one of the first commercial diode-pumped picosecond lasers. He then founded Time-Bandwidth Products in Zurich, Switzerland in the mid-1990's to develop simple, robust ultrafast mode-locked lasers for scientific and industrial applications based on SESAM technology. The company was acquired by JDSU in January 2014 to accelerate the adoption of these products into the growing industrial market for ultrafast lasers. Kurt’s experience includes company financing including venture capital, company M&A, technology licensing, team building, production scale-up, go-to-market strategies for high-end photonics products, global customer and supply chain approaches. He currently works out of Zurich, Switzerland, helping to catalyze start-ups in technology and photonics in Europe and worldwide.