Former Knology president Todd Holt has signed on as president of Synapse Wireless while Royce Ard, who worked with Holt at Knology, was hired as vice president of marketing.
In his new job, Holt is responsible for directing the custom product offerings and horizontal market businesses in Synapse’s core market of cloud-enabled, machine-to-machine (M2M) communication solutions. Synapse said it would draw on his experience in corporate strategy, mergers and acquisitions, capital structure and IPOs to help direct the rapid growth planned for the company.
“Todd brings to Synapse over 15 years of effective business leadership in dynamic, high growth environments and has a successful track record building companies to significant scale,” said Wade Patterson, CEO of Synapse Wireless. “He is an excellent match to help us leverage the competitive advantages of our SNAP wireless mesh network platform into a much wider range of M2M solutions and markets.”
Holt spent the last 15 years of his career at Knology before the company was acquired by WideOpenWest (WOW) last year for $1.5 billion.
While at Knology, Holt also served as the company’s chief financial officer and directed Knology’s “edge out” strategy for acquiring systems adjacent to the company’s footprint.
Holt played a key role in growing Knology from startup to over $500 million in annualized revenue and approximately $200 million in EBITDA, as well as taking the company public in 2003.
“Joining the Synapse team and leading the expansion of cloud services as a seamless interface to M2M networks is an exciting and important next step for the company,” Holt said. “M2M communications, also known as the ‘Internet of Things,’ is poised for significant long-term growth and Synapse is at the very core of its development.”
Prior to Synapse, Ard was vice president of sales and marketing for Knology. He has more than 25 years of experience in high tech industries, including industrial sensor technology, telecom, e-commerce and publishing.
Synapse is a majority-owned subsidiary of McWane Inc. Customers include Freescale, Panasonic, Atmel, Silicon Labs and ST Microelectronics.
