Laura Black
Managing Director

Telephone: (650) 561-1241
Email: lblack@needhamco.com

Laura Black joined Needham & Company in 1999. Laura has over 20 years experience in high-technology, business strategy and finance. At Needham, she has served as a senior banker on over $5 billion of public financings and M&A advisories, including several transactions in the IT infrastructure market. She previously served as head of corporate finance at Black & Company, where she raised over $500 million of public equity capital for Pacific Northwest companies and completed numerous M&A and strategic advisory assignments. Laura previously served as director of M&A for TRW Avionics & Surveillance Group (ASG), where she evaluated acquisition candidates, managed direct investments and divestitures, and raised venture capital to back spin-off companies. She began her career at TRW as a hardware and systems design engineer. She earned an MS in Management from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and also holds an MSEE from Santa Clara University and a BSEE from the University of California at Davis.

Samir Desai
Managing Director

Telephone: (212) 705-0486
Email: sdesai@needhamco.com

Samir Desai joined Needham & Company in 2002. Samir’s experience includes a wide variety of equity, debt and private placement financings and advisory assignments for a large number of technology clients over the last 10 years. At Needham, his primary focus is on software and services companies. Samir has been the lead advisor on a number of IPOs, follow-on and private placement offerings, as well as buy-side and sell-side M&A transactions related to a large number of enterprise, application, network and infrastructure software companies. Prior to joining Needham, he was a vice president in the Technology Investment Banking Group at Credit Suisse First Boston/Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, where he focused on clients in the Enterprise Computing, Software and Internet Consulting Services sectors. Prior to CSFB/DLJ, Samir worked at Cowen & Company, in its Technology Investment Banking Group. He also worked at Salomon Brothers Inc, in its Mergers and Acquisitions Group. He earned an MBA with Honors from the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business and a BA in Government and Economics cum laude from Dartmouth College.

Jeff Liu
Managing Director

Telephone: (650) 561-2227
Email: jliu@needhamco.com

Jeff Liu joined Needham & Company in 2009. Jeff serves as the Head of the Software Investment Banking Group. His experience includes a wide variety of equity, debt and private placement financings and advisory assignments for a large number of technology companies over the last 15 years, including clients such as ANSYS, Inc., CA Inc., EMC Corporation, Neustar, Inc., SAP AG, and Symantec Corporation. Most recently, Jeff was the Head of software investment banking at Bank of America.  Prior to that, he was an executive-in-residence at New Enterprise Associates in Menlo Park. Earlier in his career, Jeff headed the software investment banking team at Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown and served as an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company in London and in San Francisco. He graduated from Harvard University, has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a JD from Stanford Law School.

James Reilly
Senior Advisor

Telephone: (650) 561-1259
Email: jreilly@needhamco.com

James Reilly joined Needham & Company as a Managing Director in the Menlo Park office in 2004 and became a Senior Advisor in 2008. Jim has executed more than 125 equity IPOs and follow-on offerings, private placements, convertible and non-convertible debt and M&A transactions for a broad spectrum of technology companies. He has more than 20 years of experience as a technology oriented investment banker, first at Dillon, Read & Co. in New York, where he started the technology banking practice, and then at Hambrecht and Quist, which he joined in 1999 to head up the Systems and Semiconductor practice. He earned a BA in Economics and Computer Science at Columbia University and is a member of the Board of Directors of PFSWeb, Inc., a publicly traded technology services provider based in Plano, TX.