Augie Lien and the Art of Starting Again

On March 5, 2010, Augustine “Augie” Lien’s resignation as chief executive of Cardiva Medical took effect. He had helped build a company with more than 75 employees and three launched products. Rick Anderson would become interim CEO. Lien would keep his seat on the board. A founder was changing chairs, and the company would carry on.

There is something refreshingly ordinary about the mechanics. A date. A successor. A continuing responsibility. Startup biographies tend to hurry toward the acquisition announcement, where the numbers are larger and everyone’s suit seems to fit better. This moment deserves a longer look. It catches Lien between creating an organization and allowing other people to lead it.

By 2021, Cardiva would have a buyer. By then, Lien had already started Aulisa. Those overlapping stories offer a way into a career often compressed into a list of companies: his work as a founder exists alongside a much longer history in operations. The interesting question is what happens between putting an idea into motion and making a business capable of continuing.

The apprenticeship before the founder

Lien’s education spans four universities. In Taiwan, he earned a BS from National Cheng Kung University and an MA from National Chengchi University. In California, he earned an MS from Stanford and an MBA from Santa Clara University. His Stanford engineering profile places his studies there in 1971–1973. His graduate subjects included statistics in Taiwan and operations research at Stanford.

His early working years also predate the companies for which he is now known. His career chronology includes Diablo Systems from 1976 to 1980 and Four-Phase Systems from 1980 to 1984. These were computing businesses. Before Aulisa, before Cardiva, before the later succession of startup names, there was an apprenticeship in an earlier Silicon Valley.

That sequence is useful because it puts some distance between Lien and the familiar image of a founder arriving fully formed with a pitch. His résumé contains years spent inside other organizations. Starting a company would become one part of his working life; running pieces of companies had already occupied another.

The four degrees add a pleasing complication. An education section can look like a ceremonial preface, something to skim before reaching the action. Here it introduces two recurring interests: technical work and the organization around it. The later job titles make that combination more visible. The founder’s name eventually goes on the door; someone must still arrange what happens behind it.

A résumé full of operations

At Nellcor, Lien served as director of worldwide operations. At Menlo Care, he was executive vice president of operations. At Gynecare, his experience included senior vice president of operations. At Embolic Protection, he served as chief operating officer. There is a persistent word here, and it rarely receives top billing in a company’s origin story.

Operations is an expansive responsibility hiding inside a modest noun. It directs attention toward how an organization works, how responsibilities connect and how a product reaches a customer. Lien’s titles place him in that part of the business repeatedly. They also give his later founder role a history: he had occupied seats responsible for execution before taking the chief executive’s chair.

The companies had different corporate destinations. Nellcor eventually became part of Medtronic. Menlo Care joined Johnson & Johnson. Gynecare went public and was acquired by Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon business. Embolic Protection was acquired by Boston Scientific. A short biography can line up these names like trophies. The operations titles give the list more texture.

They locate Lien within teams and organizations rather than assigning every outcome to one person. Companies change through the work of many people, and an acquisition can arrive well after a particular executive’s tenure. His career becomes more interesting when those distinctions remain visible. The record contains participation, responsibility and succession, as well as founding.

The people around the desk

At Cardiva, the surrounding team comes into sharper focus. In January 2008, the company announced Malcolm Farnsworth as vice president of finance and chief financial officer, and Tara Zerby as vice president of business development and marketing. Lien, then chairman and CEO, welcomed the expertise they would bring to the company’s growth.

Farnsworth had previously been Gynecare’s chief financial officer. The same company name therefore appears in two careers that later intersect at Cardiva. That is a concrete connection in Lien’s professional world: the organizations on his résumé were also places where other executives accumulated experience. A list of businesses can also be a map of people.

Another transition followed in October 2009. Cardiva president Glenn Foy departed to become CEO of Innovative Energy. Lien thanked him for six years of contributions and described the company’s development from an early startup into a commercial business with product development, manufacturing and sales capabilities. His description distributed the work across functions, giving the organization a fuller shape.

These appointments and departures supply a less theatrical account of entrepreneurship. People join. Their responsibilities become more specific. People leave for another opportunity. The company needs arrangements that survive each change. A founder may be the most recognizable person in the room, but the room gets considerably more interesting when the other chairs are occupied.

“I owe a sincere thank you to the outstanding employees of Cardiva”

Augie Lien, March 2010

The eleven years after the handoff

Lien’s own departure from the CEO role followed in March 2010. He stayed on the board, while Anderson took interim executive responsibility. It was a change in his relationship with the business rather than a disappearance from it. The distinction matters in a career that would soon include a new company.

In January 2021, Haemonetics announced its agreement to acquire Cardiva for $475 million upfront, with as much as $35 million in additional consideration tied to sales growth. John Russell was Cardiva’s president and CEO at the time. Haemonetics recorded the completed acquisition on March 1, 2021, almost eleven years after Lien’s CEO resignation took effect.

The interval deserves its own space on the page. Eleven years allows the reader to see successive periods of leadership rather than a single straight line from founder to sale. Lien’s early work belongs in Cardiva’s history. So does the work done by the executives and employees who continued afterward. Both fit without squeezing either out.

For a founder’s biography, that is a useful change of scale. A business can contain several leadership chapters within one corporate name. The acquisition announcement tells us where Cardiva eventually landed. The earlier handoff shows how long a company’s story can keep developing after its founder moves to a different seat.

A company with two addresses in its history

Lien founded Aulisa in 2012, initially in Palo Alto. A Taiwan company followed in Taipei in 2013. In September 2018, Aulisa Medical USA was incorporated as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Taiwan business. The order is worth keeping straight: a California beginning, a Taipei operating headquarters, then a formal American marketing and sales subsidiary.

Taipei’s responsibilities extend across research and development, manufacturing, finance, accounting, quality systems, human resources and commercial functions. The US subsidiary handles marketing and sales in its market. This gives the two locations specific jobs. The geography has an organizational purpose, with responsibilities attached to each side of the company.

Lien returned to Taiwan in 2013 after more than 30 years living in the United States. His ambition for Aulisa included encouraging investment in Taiwan and creating employment opportunities. That gives the company’s development a personal dimension: after a long American career, he was helping establish a business in the place where his university education had begun.

The employment ambition adds another consideration to the company story. Alongside products and commercial plans sits the prospect of people finding work. At Aulisa, the functions assembled in Taipei give that intention a practical setting: development, manufacturing and the departments needed to support them. A company taking root needs more than a founder at its center.

Capital, colleagues and another presentation

In January 2022, Aulisa announced a $13 million Preferred Series A financing. It also announced Kenneth Abriola’s appointment as vice president of sales and marketing. The pairing gives the news a practical dimension: new capital arrived alongside an executive charged with sales leadership, marketing execution, new channels and a wider commercial presence.

Abriola brought more than 30 years of sales experience. For Lien, this was another point where a company’s next stage included an experienced colleague taking responsibility for a defined part of the business. The financing amount is easy to remember. The appointment describes some of the work the company wanted to do with its backing.

On March 18, 2025, Lien presented Aulisa at LSI USA. The appearance put him back in a familiar professional setting: explaining a company to an audience of potential partners, investors and industry peers. A recording preserves that public part of the job. The founder who had changed chairs at Cardiva was still making the case for his next enterprise.

Read across the career, and the recurring scenes become quite concrete. Universities in Taiwan and California. Operations responsibilities inside several companies. Colleagues joining a management team. A CEO handoff with a continuing board seat. A new business taking shape across two countries. A financing announcement accompanied by a hire.

Lien’s biography has plenty of corporate outcomes, but these smaller arrangements give it movement. Starting again requires another group of people, another allocation of responsibilities and another stretch of work. With Aulisa, he returned to those particulars. After decades of company names, the next chapter still needed someone to explain it, someone to sell it and people to make it run.