Joe Markee Is a Managing Director of Express Ventures. He brings to Express extensive experience in early stage company formation, capital raising, corporate management, and public and private corporate governance. Joe’s startup experience encompasses Primary Access as a founder and senior manager, Copper Mountain Networks as founding CEO, CTO and Chairman, and Figure 8 Wireless as CEO. Joe serves on the boards of Dot Hill Systems (HILL) and Metalink, LTD (MTLK). A BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Davis as well as 15 years of product development experience provide Joe with the experience to quickly evaluate technology opportunities.

As CEO, Joe took Figure 8 Wireless from its initial business plan and fund raising in January of 2004 to the sale of the company to Chipcon ASA of Norway in March or 2005. Chipcon was subsequently purchased by Texas Instruments in January of 2006 for $200M. Figure 8 developed ad hoc mesh networking software for wireless device networking using the Zigbee standard.

Prior to Figure 8, Joe was co-founder and founding CEO of Copper Mountain Networks (founded 1995). Copper Mountain produced subscriber access (DSL) and broadband remote access server solutions for facilities-based carrier networks. As Chairman and CTO, Joe helped take the company public in May 1999. Annual revenues at the time were approximately $100M and the market capitalization of the company was in excess of $1B before the market correction in late 2000.

From 1988 to 1995, Joe was co-founder at Primary Access, a remote access server company which was sold to 3Com Corporation in 1994 for $170M. In addition to initial product development, Joe held senior management positions as VP Operations and VP Quality and Support.

Joe was also a founder and served as President of the San Diego Telecommunications Council (recently renamed Commnexus). He has been honored with awards for his contributions to San Diego's high-tech business community, including Master Entrepreneur.