Management Team
Laurent Gharda
CEO and Founder of LinMin Corp.
Laurent Gharda is a seasoned IT industry veteran with over 25 years of management experience gained at tech companies ranging in size from startups to Fortune 500 multinationals.
He launched LinMin in 2007, bringing sophisticated IT products (LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning) to market in early 2008. LinMin's products are enterprise software products that automate the deployment of Windows and Linux (Red Hat, Novell, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.) systems, packaged for ease of use and at very affordable prices, essentially disrupting the current systems management software industry in the process.
Prior to founding LinMin in 2007, he served as COO then CEO of Open Country, a provider of systems management software. Previously, Laurent served as COO of the Internet company eCode.com, pioneering the development of Internet toolbars and identity management solutions. Laurent also was vice president of marketing at both Phoenix Technologies, a global provider of core system software for PCs, servers and embedded systems, and at Award Software, a BIOS developer subsequently acquired by Phoenix.
Laurent's other executive posts have included vice president of sales at storage and server management provider Veritas Software (now a part of Symantec Corporation), and as president of QualSoft, a company he founded. Laurent also spent ten years in a variety of business development and marketing positions at Hewlett-Packard.
Laurent holds a B.A. degree in Computer Science from the University of
California at Berkeley, and a French National Baccalaureate in philosophy and
modern languages.
Laurent is the sole inventor of US Patent 6,009,520
and co-inventor of US Patents 6,560,702 and 6,564,318, addressing the
manageability of application software, system software and enabling firmware in
computer systems and embedded devices.
Laurent serves on the Boards of
Directors of the open source company CodeWeavers.
Rick Mansfield
Vice President of Research and Development
Rick Mansfield oversees all technical aspects at LinMin, including research, product development and technical support. Rick is a technologist with a successful technical track record in many industries and disciplines.
While working with prestigious organizations such as American Express, AT&T, Dole Foods, First Interstate Banking Services and the State of New Mexico, among others, Rick architected, implemented or managed teams that produced a wide variety of IT solutions including high volume transaction processing systems, real time embedded systems, systems management solutions and more.
From credit card processing and election tabulation systems to Web-based systems management and bare metal provisioning products, Rick has been deeply involved with numerous technologies, operating systems, programming languages and development methodologies.
