Company Profile

John Bishop joined Librestream as President & CEO in 2019 after working with the company since 2011 as an independent director of the Board.

John is recognized as a digital video industry expert and pioneer through leadership positions at companies such as Akamai, the global Content Delivery Network leader, where he was Chief Technology Officer.  Prior to Akamai, John led Strategic Video Initiatives at Cisco Systems following the acquisition of Inlet Technologies in 2011, a media technology company John co-founded that enabled the transformation of a $4T Television industry to online streaming.

Before starting Inlet, John held several leadership positions at Osprey Technologies, a media technology company enabling an analog to digital transformation setting the stage for the development modern day online streaming world, leading pre-sales, product management and business development.

Geoff J. Catherwood is a partner in the Industrial, Clean and Energy Technology Venture Fund. He joined BDC in 2001.

Geoff is a registered professional engineer who has 14 years of experience in industrial automation and process control. Prior to joining BDC, he worked for Bailey Canada and Asea Brown Boveri, two large multinational industrial process automation suppliers. Geoff has diverse operational experience in the process automation industry, including field service, system commissioning, engineering, management and sales. He administers the ICE portfolio in Western Canada and is active on the boards of several early-stage companies. He also volunteers in a number of programs promoting entrepreneurship, including New Ventures BC, an annual business plan competition.

Geoff holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of British Columbia and an Executive MBA from Simon Fraser University. He has also completed the Canadian Securities Course.

After beginning his career as a litigation associate in a large New York firm, Steven Peri held senior legal positions at two Fortune 500 companies. He re-entered private practice as the co-founder and partner of Peri & Stewart, LLC, a New York area law firm where he represented a large number of privately held and foreign based companies in their US legal affairs. These efforts included management of sophisticated litigation, internal investigations and the drafting and negotiation of contracts, technology licenses and transactional documents, such as acquisition agreements.

In 2005, Mr. Peri became the Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Tandberg, ASA a publicly traded video conferencing company which was later acquired by Cisco Systems, Inc. In September 2011, Mr. Peri returned to private practice and the representation of a diverse group of clients, serving as the de facto General Counsel for several of them.

Steven Peri has been active in numerous business and charitable organizations. He is an Executive Trustee of the American Scandinavian Foundation and has served as the President of the Norwegian American Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Peri holds a JD degree from the University of Pennsylvania law school and an AB in History, cum laude, from Princeton University.  He is admitted to practice in the States of New Jersey and New York, as well as the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the District of New Jersey and the Court of International Trade.

Jim Richardson is a retired Vice President of James Richardson & Sons Limited and the current President and Director of Westmead Limited.  A graduate of Queens University, Jim has a broad business background and is an investor in several technology and oil and gas companies. He is extremely active in the community being Senior Manitoba Director of Ducks Unlimited, Past Chair of the Nature Conservancy of Canada (Manitoba Region), and a trustee of the Richardson Foundation Inc.  He was Chair of Sport for the 1999 Pan American Games, Past President of Big Brothers of Canada, and has served on the boards of numerous other community organizations.

Jim is on the Board of Directors of several private Canadian companies including LibreStream Technologies Inc., Monteris Medical Inc., PSI Peripheral Solutions Inc., Telpay Incorporated, Tundra Oil and Gas Ltd, Lombard Realty Limited, and James Richardson & Sons Limited.  In addition, Jim is a member of the Investment Committee of the Lex Capital Partners LP Fund, and the Lex Energy Partners Funds I, II, and III.

Hai is a Senior Investor at the Canadian Business Growth Fund (CBGF). He is primarily focused on leading the investment team’s activities in transaction origination, execution, and portfolio management. In addition, he assists the CEO in management of the Fund.

Hai has over 17 years of experience in private equity and investment banking. He is passionate about working with entrepreneurs and has a track-record as an active partner with portfolio companies.

Prior to CBGF, Hai worked at Regimen Equity Partners, Signal Hill Equity Partners, and TD Capital (TD Bank’s merchant banking group). Hai graduated with an MBA from Columbia Business School and received a Bachelor of Science degree from McGill University. He also holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.

Charles Vaslet is a Partner with Emerald Technology Ventures with more than 10 years of venture capital experience.

Prior to joining Emerald, Charles held the position of Vice President with ABB Equity Ventures, one of the world’s leading engineering companies, responsible for the development of large renewable energy projects in Europe. Previous to ABB, Charles led the business development activities of the cogeneration business of Innogy, a large UK electric utility, and has ten years of power utility experience, both engineering and commerce in the fields of renewable energy and thermal energy plants.

He currently serves on the Boards of Emergya Wind Technologies, P97 Networks, Senscient and River Basin Energy. In addition, Charles spearheads the European Energy Venture Fair, the preeminent European cleantech investor conference. Charles graduated with a Bachelor degree with Honours in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Leeds and a Master of Business Administration from Henley Management College.

Ben Weinberger is the co-founder and CEO of Digitalsmiths, the technology leader in the field of video search and recommendations. Under his leadership, Digitalsmiths developed game-changing video discovery solutions that are being adopted by several of the biggest names in cable, satellite, telco and broadcast . The company’s product, Seamless Discovery, revolutionized the speed and ease with which consumers can find personally relevant, engaging video content across multiple sources of entertainment and devices.

In February 2014, Ben was instrumental in Digitalsmiths being acquired by TiVo for $135 million in a move to expand on new opportunities to commercialize and deploy TiVo’s cloud based services and technologies to operators in conjunction with TiVo’s renowned user interface. Since the acquisition, Ben lead Digitalsmiths’ efforts in Latin America and Europe.

Ben also serves on the boards of the Southern Illinois University Alumni Association and Council for Entrepreneurial Development, a Durham, North Carolina nonprofit. Ben graduated with honors from Southern Illinois University.