Charlie Bass, is an American electrical engineer, academic and entrepreneur. He was the co-founder of the networking company Ungermann-Bass in 1979. Led by Ralph Ungermann and staffed by several colleagues from Zilog, Ungermann-Bass helped commercialize ethernet, had a successful IPO, and then was purchased by Tandem Computers. Bass was also co-founder of Parallan Computer in July 1986, a maker of high-specification, multi-processor servers, and Starlight Networks in late 1990, a software company involved in streaming media and Socket Mobile, Inc. in 1992. In 1972, Bass received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Hawaii. He has taught at University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Santa Cruz; and Stanford University, and he worked for Zilog. In 1989, he formed his own venture capital company, Bass Associates. Bass is currently an advisor to Rising Tide, a venture capital partnership.