Veteran Exec Kevin Hell, former DivX Head, Named On-Ramp Wireless CEO

On-Ramp Wireless, DivX, Palm, People, Kevin Hell

After raising at least $44 million in venture capital and demonstrating its wireless networking technology in smart grid field trials, San Diego’s On-Ramp Wireless is ready to significantly expand and diversify its operations. As part of that move, the company today named veteran executive Kevin Hell as president and CEO.

His appointment takes effect today. Hell, 48, was previously the CEO of San Diego-based DivX, the video codec developer. During his eight-year reign at DivX, Hell expanded and diversified the company’s licensing business, negotiated deals with major Hollywood studios, and made two successful acquisitions. He also oversaw the 2010 sale of DivX to Novato, CA-based Sonic Solutions in a deal valued at $323 million—just months before Santa Clara, CA-based Rovi acquired the combined Sonic-DivX business for about $720 million.

After the sale of DivX, Hell took on a key role for CommNexus, San Diego’s nonprofit technology industry group, overseeing an expansion of its free EvoNexus program that more than doubled the size of San Diego’s free startup incubator. Hell stepped out as the incubator’s part-time chairman earlier this year, after CommNexus had established a second EvoNexus facility for Web and mobile app startups in downtown San Diego.

Joaquin Silva, who founded On-Ramp Wireless in 2008, will remain to assist with Kevin’s transition and take on other duties. In an e-mail this morning, Silva writes, “My plan is to stay with the company and run corporate development and business development, partnerships.” The company raised $10.1 million in June, and was working to raise another $10 million to $20 million by the end of the year.

Under Silva, On-Ramp developed its Ultra-Link Processing system, an M2M wireless networking technology that can

Pages: Page 1, Page 2

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.