Dear Friends, Customers, and Partners,

As you may have heard, on January 20th, after 21 years of building and running one of the finest vendors of simulation software in the defense industry, I will be stepping down as CEO of MÄK.

I will transfer my responsibilities and duties as CEO to Dan Schimmel, a man with an excellent background in managing, growing, and leading software and information services companies. Dan is as passionate about upholding the standards and ideals of MÄK as I am. Under his trusted direction and leadership, MÄK will continue to be a pioneer in the simulation industry, growing, innovating, leading, and providing our customers with solutions to their hardest problems. Since it will be hard to keep away from MÄK for good, I will remain a consultant and advisor on an ongoing basis.

As I reminisce about the last 21 years, from my partner John and I huddled around a space heater in the basement of my home in Cambridge, to brainstorming with Congressman Randy Forbes on the founding of the US Congressional Modeling and Simulation Caucus, I feel immensely fortunate to have been associated with some of the finest people in the world. From MÄK’s cadre of world-class professionals developing and selling our products, to our partner companies that banded together with us to form the ecosystem of defense commercial vendors, to policy-makers in the US DoD who took a chance on this weird idea of buying commercial items, to the dedicated community of the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) who created the level playing-field of open standards, to our savvy customers who understood and deeply appreciated the cost and time-savings of the COTS model, and finally to my mentors at VT Systems and Singapore Technologies who adopted MÄK and showed me how large multinational corporations worked, I am honored, humbled, and blessed by an embarrassment of riches in experience that few entrepreneurs could ever hope for.

As I look forward to some well-deserved rest and next adventures, I have no doubt that the meaningful connections and strong bonds I’ve cultivated over the years will stay with me as personal friendships and partners for future business endeavors.

So lastly, I want to thank you all, for your business, your support, your loyalty and above all your camaraderie. Together we have made this industry what it is today and I could not be more proud.

Best regards,

Warren Katz
Co-founder and CEO, VT MÄK

Full press release available here.