Primary Job Title Venture Partner Primary Organization 
Formative Ventures
Location Santa Clara, California, United States Regions San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley, West Coast Gender Male
Doug Laird is Founder and CEO at Cswitch, a fabless semiconductor startup creating the next generation of SOC solutions. He founded the Company after serving as an Entrepreneur in-Residence at Charles River Ventures, a venture firm he joined in 2002. Laird has 25 years experience building high performance computer systems and microprocessors. Laird
most recently was a founder and the Executive Vice President of Product Development at Transmeta Corporation (NASDAQ: TMTA). Laird managed all aspects of engineering of Transmeta's smart microprocessor which enables low power and high performance laptop computers.
Prior to founding Transmeta, Laird managed the Advanced Development Group in the Sun Microelectronics Division of Sun Microsystems. His research group looked into advanced areas of computer architecture, low power and high performance circuit design, and architectural tools.
From 1992 through 1995, he was responsible for the packaging, workstation/server system interface, and worked with the silicon supplier, Texas Instruments, for the UltraSparc I project at Sun Microsystems.
Prior to 1995, Laird managed the Sparc development at LSI Logic, and was an early developer of Gigabit Ethernet at UltraNetwork Technologies. Prior to UltraNetwork, he developed mainframes and supermini computers at National semiconductor and ROLM Mil-Spec.
Laird has an MSCS degree from Santa Clara University, and a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
