Bob Haya

Bob Haya is a Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur and angel investor who has founded or co-founded multiple technology companies over roughly three decades. He holds a BS in Electrical & Computer Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He is currently President and Founder of Createlabs, a venture incubator through which he backs and helps build early-stage startups.

His best-known venture is SyntheSys Research, a Menlo Park, California test-and-measurement equipment maker founded in 1989 by identical twins Tom and Jim Waschura (both ex-Ampex engineers). Haya, a roommate of the founders, provided early marketing and sales leadership and the physical space where the company got its start — the first BitAlyzer bit-error-rate tester was developed in the garage of Haya's residence in the Emerald Hills area of Redwood City, and Haya is credited with coining the product name "BitAlyzer." SyntheSys Research operated for about 24 years and was acquired by Tektronix (a Danaher subsidiary) in 2010.

Beyond SyntheSys Research, Haya founded a string of other companies: VR Depot, a simulation and virtual-reality input-device business whose technology was licensed by Logitech (operated ~16 years); BlueKite, focused on wireless internet technologies; CoPortal, which built B2B and enterprise application integration (EAI) tools; Ride.com, which was sold; and MyOwnEmpire, a Yahoo-style portal concept built around a patent-pending model for mass equity ownership of internet companies. His entrepreneurial activities have been covered by outlets including CNN, U.S. News & World Report, Dow Jones, Red Herring, Business 2.0, ZDTV, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Herald, Salon, and the San Jose Business Journal.

According to his own company materials, the teams Haya assembled have included operators who previously held managerial roles at major technology companies such as Google, Excite, Netscape, E*Trade, Cisco, and Match.com — reflecting a network-heavy, operator-led approach to building ventures.

• Invests at the seed / angel stage in early-stage technology startups, consistent with his profile as a founder-operator turned backer.
• Draws on a deep-tech and hardware pedigree (electrical engineering, test instrumentation) alongside consumer-internet and enterprise-software experience — so his interest spans devices/hardware, wireless/internet, VR/simulation, and B2B platforms.
• Favors founder-led teams staffed with experienced operators; his own ventures deliberately recruited managers from top-tier tech companies (Google, Netscape, Cisco, etc.).
• Operates through Createlabs as an incubator model, suggesting he prefers hands-on involvement (advisory, company-building, marketing/go-to-market help) rather than purely passive capital.
• Note: Haya has not published a formal, quotable investment thesis, and specific check sizes or fund parameters are not publicly disclosed.