Alex Fielding

Alex Fielding co-founded Wheels of Zeus with Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak in 2001. When Wheels of Zeus started, however, Mr. Fielding said on a MyMac.com podcast interview in 2006, it wasn't started to help people find their kids or dogs or high value assets, it was started to help people avoid speeding tickets. "The Wheels of Zeus GPS based system would take AVL, Automated Vehicle Location, data from police cars and display their exact position on your in-car GPS navigation system in real-time. So, when you would go for a drive on the highway, you'd see the exact pin-point location of every police cruiser around your location.", said Mr. Fielding.

Mr. Fielding started his career at Cadence and DEC where he worked as an engineering contractor part-time while still in high school and later college. He then went to Cisco Systems for a brief stint before landing at Apple Computer in 1996; he was seventeen years old. Joining Apple Computer at a time of chaos and reorganization, Alex started out in QA of Network Protocols in the R&D group. He went on to Server Engineering, where he stayed, until Steve Jobs returned to Apple Computer through the acquisition of NeXT. Steve Jobs shortly thereafter outed Apple Computer CEO, Gil Amelio, and CTO Ellen Hancock. The Server Hardware Engineering team, that was tasked at the time with building AIX servers, Apple's Network Server 500 and 700, then code-nammed "Shiner", was laid off in a massive reduction in force (RIF). Of almost 300 people in the Server Engineering Team, Alex was one of five that were left after the RIF. Alex moved onto the Network Driver group where he held the title Engineering Manager until his departure in 1999. Some speculate, as in Bill Simon's book iCon: Steve Jobs biography, that Mr. Fielding left due to personal tensions between Steve Jobs and himself.

Two days after departing Apple Computer, Mr. Fielding found himself at Exodus Communications working again for Ellen Hancock, Exodus' CEO but now tasked with an entirely different role. This time Fielding was tasked in a Sr. Staff Engineering role at what was soon to become the World's largest data center. Exodus hosted many of the largest dot com companies of the time including eBay, Google, Yahoo, Geocities, MSN, Hotmail, and many others. Mr. Fielding was reassigned the role of West Coast Manager for the Platinum Engineering Team that was responsible for the largest companies on the internet including Merrill Lynch, Franklin Templeton, Honeywell, Charles Schwab, Google, eBay, iDrive, Yahoo, Geocities, Hotmail, MSN, Microsoft, Disney, totaling a large percent of the over $1 Billion in revenue annually for Exodus. Mr. Fielding stayed with Exodus until the dot com bust in 2001 and left to start Wheels of Zeus with Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak. Mr. Fielding left Wheels of Zeus in 2002 to start Ripcord Networks, where he is currently President and CEO, with Gil Amelio, Ellen Hancock, Steve Wozniak, and Mike Connor. Ripcord is developing a next generation platform for converged devices, codenamed "Canopy". The platform has been speculated to be based on FreeBSD Unix and has an anticipated release date of Q4 2007.

Mr. Fielding is currently on the board of directors of Ripcord Networks, and CAWEW. He is an advisor to the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department, San Jose Role Model Program, Network Physics, EDUSS, and a donor to UNICEF. Prior elected board positions included ones with ARIN and other industry organizations. Mr. Fielding is a former member of MENSA and SVASE.