Seed investors
Firms that report investing at seed — with the sector focus, cheque range and headquarters currently held for each. A firm spanning several stages appears on each hub it answers.
7,511 firms · page 1 of 157
Pereg Ventures
Mr. Itzhak Fisher is the Founder and serves as Chairman and Partner at Pereg Ventures. He also serves as a Board Member at Nielsen Innovate. He leverages over three decades of mergers, acquisitions and initial public offerings experience, as an entrepreneur, investment manager and acquirer. As the former executive vice president of Global Business Development for Nielsen (until 2014), he was responsible for strategic business development initiatives and mergers and acquisitions that enhanced Nielsen's capabilities. Itzhak deployed over $3 billion of investments for Nielsen, in over 30 ventures, ranging in size from $500,000 investments to over $1.3 billion, and serves as an advisor to Nielsen. Prior to joining Nielsen, Itzhak executed multiple start-up-to sale successes. He was co-founder and chairman of Trendum, a leader in Internet search and linguistic analysis technologies. In 2005, he led Trendum's acquisition of BuzzMetrics, an online word-of-mouth research leader, and negotiated its 2006 acquisition of Intelliseek. Itzhak served as chairman of the combined entity, BuzzMetrics,which was subsequently acquired by Nielsen in 2007 at a $110 million valuation. Following the acquisition, Itzhak served as the Chairman of Nielsen BuzzMetrics, the Executive Vice President of Global Product Leadership and the Executive Chairman of Nielsen's Online division. Previously Itzhak founded and served as president and CEO of RSL Communications (NASDAQ: RSLC), a telecommunications firm with operations in 22 countries across four continents with more than $1.5 billion in revenues. Under Itzhak's leadership, in 1997 the business acquired a majority stake in internet protocol telephony, Delta Three Inc. for $10 million, which was separately publicly listed three years later with an initial public offering over $300 million. Itzhak also led RSL's $33 million investment in Telegate (a German international directory assistance firm) and sold the interest approximately 2 years later for €300 million. In 1997, Itzhak led RSL Telecommunications' listing on the NASDAQ at a valuation of over $1 billion. Itzhak holds a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) from New York Institute of Technology and has pursued advance studies in computer science at New York University.He serves as Executive Vice President of The Nielsen Company with responsibility for guiding the strategy, development and delivery of all Nielsen product solutions to the global marketplace. Prior to this role, Itzhak served as Executive Chairman of Nielsen's Online division. Itzhak has been a prominent entrepreneur in high-technology businesses for three decades, leading numerous ventures through mergers, acquisitions and initial public offering.He is a Co-Founder and serves as the Chairman at Brandsforce.
Homebrew
Mr. Satya Patel is a Co-Founder of Homebrew and serves as General Partner at Homebrew. He also serves as Board Member at the Skimm. He serves as the Chairman at Clementine Labs. He also serves as Advisor at Gogobot and ProsperWorks. Prior to Homebrew, he served as Director of Product Management at Twitter. He joined Twitter from Battery Ventures in early 2011. Mr. Patel joined Battery in 2007 and focused on the software, consumer internet and digital media markets. He served on the boards of BlueKai, Freewheel Media, and Lotame and is a board observer for Angie's List, Bazaarvoice, and Adisn. His prior experience spans more than a decade in online media and software, both in operating and investing roles. Before joining Battery, he spent several years at Google, most recently as Senior Product Manager for AdSense. Beginning in 2003, he helped to build the AdSense business through various partner development and product management activities. Before Google, Mr. Patel was a Senior Product Manager at DoubleClick, leading the company's efforts in the search marketing business. Mr. Patel also worked on various product and operational initiatives for the DART adserving platform, including with both publishers and advertisers/agencies. Earlier in his career, Mr. Patel was a Senior Associate at Impact Venture Partners, an early stage venture capital firm based in New York, where he focused on investments in the Internet software, services and media markets. Representative investments include OpenTable and MessageOne. Mr. Patel began his venture capital career at Geocapital Partners, a trans-Atlantic technology venture capital firm. Representative investments from Geocapital include Homestore, StepStone, and Geneva Technology. He also worked for Monitor Company, the strategy consulting firm, as a strategy consultant in its New York and Tel Aviv offices. Mr. Patel is the co-inventor of 14 pending patents related to online advertising. He also serves on the board of Spredfast and KIPP Bay Area Schools. Mr. Patel graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BS in Finance from the Wharton School and a BA in Psychology from the College of Arts & Sciences. He serves as an adviser at Metamorphic Ventures.
Revolution
Mr. Ted Leonsis is a Co-Founder and serves as Managing Partner at RevolutionGrowth. Mr. Ted serves as Co-Executive Chairman at aXiomatic. He is an Advisor at Echo360. He is a Co-Founder and Chairman is ViewLift. He is the Founder, Partner and Chairman at Monumental Sports & Entertainment. He serves as Senior Advisor at RRE Ventures. He also serves as Chairman at Groupon and AddThis. Mr. Leonsis serves as Board Member at Resonate Networks. He sits on the board of directors of several leading companies ranging from American Express to Groupon. He has been involved with Revolution Growth since its founding, as an investor and Chairman of Revolution Money. He is the founder, chairman and majority owner of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Washington Capitals (NHL), the Washington Wizards (NBA), the Washington Mystics and the Verizon Center. He retired from active management of AOL in 2006, where during the previous 13 years he was an inspirational leader and held a number of senior positions, including vice chairman and president, and worked closely with Steve Case for a decade to build AOL into the world's leading internet company with a market value at its peak in excess of $100 billion. He founded SnagFilms, the internet's leading site for online audiences to find, watch, and share documentary films. He also has been an producer of award-winning documentary films such as Kicking It and Nanking, which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and has won a Peabody Award and an Emmy Award. A third documentary produced by him, A Fighting Chance, aired on ESPN in fall 2010. Early in his career, he was the founder of several technology-enabled consumer companies, including Redgate Communications, where he is crediting with coining the phrase "new media." He has been named Washington's Businessman of the Year, a Washingtonian of the Year, one of the 20 most influential people in sports, and one of the top 10 entrepreneurs of the year. He serves as a board member at CustomInk. He is a Co-Founder and Chairman at SnagFilms. He also serves as a Board Member at Uptake Technologies.
Golden Seeds
Dr. Una Ryan serves as Managing Director at Golden Seeds. She is currently Research Professor of Medicine at BU School of Medicine and serves on its Board of Visitors. Her board positions include AMRI (Lead Director, Nominating and Compensation committees) and MSH (Audit and Compensation committees). Dr. Ryan was most recently President and CEO of Diagnostics For All (DFA), a non-profit organization developing inexpensive diagnostics for global health and agricultural uses. Previously, she was President and CEO of AVANT Immunotherapeutics, Inc, (NASDAQ) a company developing vaccines and immunotherapeutics for cancer, travelers, food safety, and global health, and also a member of its Board of Directors. Prior to AVANT, she was director of Health Sciences at Monsanto Company. Before that, she held a number of positions in academia, including Research Professor of Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Professor of Medicine at the University of Miami School of Medicine. She was also Chair of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, served on its Board, as well as the Biotechnology Industry Organization, New England Healthcare Institute, Board of Associates of the Whitehead Institute, Strategy & Policy Council of the MIT Center for Biomedical Innovation, Massachusetts Life Sciences Collaborative Leadership Council and the Goddard Council on science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. Dr. Ryan holds a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from Cambridge University and BS degrees in Zoology, Microbiology and Chemistry from Bristol University. She received an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Bristol University in 2009. In 2007, Dr. Ryan received the Albert Einstein Award for outstanding achievement in the life sciences. In 2002 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II awarded Dr. Ryan the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to research, development and promotion of biotechnology. She is also an Angel Investor. She also serves as a Board Member at Nativis.
Travel Capitalist Ventures
Mr. Abrar Ahmad serves as Partner TravelCapitalist ventures, the first travel focused private equity and venture capital firm. Since 2010, he’s lead investments in 6 countries in 5 person travel startups to 300 person $100M a year travel companies. He also leads the firms co-investor relationships with leading sovereign wealth and global PE funds and sits on the Board of the NDC Innovation Fund; a historic partnership with the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Starting his 15th year in travel, he is an expert in identifying travel trends to leverage, discerning companies to invest in and tactically shaping a company’s expansion strategy. In October 2014, Travel Capitalist and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) established a "first in travel industry" and "first ever partnership between a trade association and an investment firm" partnership through The NDC Innovation Fund; an early stage investment fund supporting innovation in airline distribution using the New Distribution Capability (NDC) standard. Travel Capitalist was the first to identify FishFishMe (a leading B2B2C fishing charter platform) and Guiddoo (an award winning travel app) as investments and where Mr. Ahmad serves on the Advisory Board. Mr. Ahmad is also a recognized Mentor to in5 (Dubai's leading incubator) companies. Mr. Ahmad is a well-known and selective speaker on emerging travel trends and opportunities, travel monetization and growth strategies and travel focused investments. He has spoken at numerous international events, including The Economist Magazine "Future of Travel Summit" (Madrid), IATA World Passenger Symposium, at Singapore’s Web In Travel, the largest travel conference in Asia, at Dubai Tech Nights, the leading technology group in the UAE and at in5 Innovation Hub, a leading Dubai incubator. He has also spoken on entrepreneurship to the graduating MBA classes of both Tulane University and Loyola University in the United States. He is also an Angel Investor.
Dev C. Ittycheria
Mr. Dev Ittycheria serves as the President, Chief Executive Officer and a Board Member at MongoDB. He also serves as an Operating Avisor at Red Oak Growth Partners. He serves as Advisor at Lead Edge Capital. He also serves as Executive Advisor at OpenView Venture Partners. He also serves as the Board Member and an Advisor at ActionIQ. He is an entrepreneur, operator, and investor who recently joined MongoDB as the company's CEO. He was previously Managing Director at OpenView and, prior to that, a Venture Partner at Greylock Partners, where he got exposed to the inner workings of the venture capital business. Earlier, he was the President of BMC Software, where he was responsible for a business with $1.4 billion in annual revenue and over 4,000 employees. During his tenure at BMC, Dev and his team radically transformed a mature software business to deliver superior financial results that far outperformed its competitors. Previously, Dev was the co-founder and CEO of BladeLogic, one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies of the last decade. After co-founding the business in 2001, he went on to take the company public in 2007, and then sold it to BMC in 2008 for approximately $900 million. Earlier in his career Dev was a pioneer in cloud computing. He co-founded and served as the CEO of Applica, one of the first venture-backed cloud companies. He eventually merged the business with Breakaway Solutions and the combined company went public in 1999. Dev began his professional career at large and growth-stage telecom companies developing advanced broadband services for large enterprise customers. Dev is an investor and a member of the board of directors of AppDynamics, athenahealth (Nasdaq: ATHN), Bazaarvoice (Nasdaq: BV), Datadog, and Signpost. Dev received a bachelor's in electrical engineering from Rutgers University, was awarded the Medal of Excellence, and was recognized by the School of Engineering as its 2010 Alumnus of the Year.
Clear Ventures
Mr. Rajeev Madhavan is a Co-Founder of and serves as the Chairman at Robin Systems. He is a Co-Founder of and serves as General Partner at Clear Ventures. He focuses on early stage technology investments. Rajeev's operational specialties are recruiting, software-oriented technology, product definition, sales acceleration, and scaling. He has been a venture investor in over 35 companies. Prior to founding Clear in 2014, Rajeev founded three successful startups. The most recent, Magma Design Automation, became the 4th largest Electronic Design Automation company in the world under his leadership. Rajeev served as Magma's Chairman and CEO from when he co-founded the company in 1997 through its acquisition by Synopsys in February 2012 for $580 million. Magma was listed on Nasdaq in 2001 and was ranked as the 2nd fastest growing Technology Company in 2005 by Forbes. Magma provided core infrastructure software to mobile pioneers such as Apple, Qualcomm, and Samsung, which was used to design the core processors at the heart of the smartphone era. Prior to founding Magma, Rajeev co-founded and served as President and CEO of Ambit Design Systems, which was acquired by Cadence in 1998 for $280 million. Rajeev also co-founded and served as Director of Engineering of LogicVision, Inc (IPO under LGVN, then acquired by Mentor). Rajeev is a recipient of the Red Herring Top Innovator award, the lifetime achievement award at NITK, India and various other awards. Rajeev earned a bachelor's degree in electronics and communication from KREC, Surathkal, India, and an M.S.E.E from Queen's University, Ontario, Canada. When Rajeev is not working he can be found with his wife and two children, trail running, tending to his rose gardens, or holding court with technologists figuring out what comes next. He serves as Board Member at Virtual Power Systems. He also serves as an Advisor at Innovium.
Next Frontier Capital
Mr. William Price is the Founder and serves as General Partner at Next Frontier Capital. He founded Next Frontier Capital to partner with mission-driven, talented entrepreneurs to build Montana technology companies of impact, utility, value. Will's career spans venture capital investing as well as operational, transactional, and advisory roles at both public and private companies. With a Montana family history dating to the 1870s, Will is passionate about investing in the state's promising future. Prior to Next Frontier Capital, Will served as CEO of Flite, an advertising and analytics platform. During his six year tenure, Will built a market leading organization capable of serving and analyzing billions of ad interactions, sold enterprise customers such as Procter & Gamble, The New York Times, and LinkedIn, raised $24m from leading venture capitalists, including Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, and strategic customers Conde Nast, Jive Software, and Publicis. Will continues to serve on the board of Flite. Previously, Will served as a Managing Director at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, where he focused on SaaS and open source. Will helped lead investments in Mulesoft, Sonatype, SlideRocket, Flite, among others. Will joined Hummer Winblad from Pequot Capital, where he focused on software investing. Earlier in his career Will worked for Morgan Stanley in NYC, Hong Kong, and the ASEAN markets focused on the privatization of state-owned assets. Will represents Next Frontier Capital on the board of SiteOne Therapeutics and Submittable. Will graduated from Harvard College, studied Mandarin at Nanjing University, and earned his M.B.A from Northwestern University, where he graduated at the top of his class. Will writes about venture, leadership, and entrepreneurship on LinkedIn.
Tola Capital
Ms. Sheila Gulati is the Founder and serves as Managing Director at Tola Capital. She is a seasoned software expert with a wide range of experience as a software-focused investment banker, an M&A leader within a tech megacap, a web developer, and a business strategist and business owner for a large software division inside Microsoft. Ms. Gulati blends her financial and strategic acumen with her deep knowledge and passion for software businesses. Ms. Gulati was the business and marketing leader for the Enterprise Application Platform for Microsoft. This responsibility included the company's Database and Developer Platform and Tools businesses, SQL Server, Visual Studio Development Tools, and the .NET platform, contributing $5 billion in annual global revenue. She led a global team that managed all aspects of marketing for the Application Platform product portfolio, including the product definition, value proposition, messaging, pricing and offers, and all external product communication. She co-owned the Enterprise IT strategy for Microsoft to drive a successful major business shift to capture more revenue share and seize new computing trends, including the shift to cloud computing and the evolution of data technologies. Ms. Gulati spent over a decade at Microsoft in other roles, including Developer and Platform Evangelism, Business Management, Corporate M&A, and Strategy. Prior to Microsoft, Ms. Gulati was an investment banker for Robertson Stephens, where she closely partnered with her clients to drive financing, acquisitions, investments, and joint ventures. Early in her career, she spent time as a web developer for public and private sector organizations. Ms. Gulati is a second-generation software entrepreneur. She also serves as Venture Advisor at Unitus Seed Fund.
QED Investors
Mr. Nigel Morris serves as Managing Partner & is the Co-Founder of QED Investors. He serves as Managing Partner at Newid Capital. He also serves as Managing Partner at QED Investors. Nigel Morris serves as an Advisor at Signifyd. He serves as Chairman as Brightbridge Ventures. He is also a Board Member at Nubank. He serves on the board of numerous for-profit companies, including Red Ventures, Klarna, CANCapital, MediaMath, Prosper, and borro. He is also on the board of the Brookings Institution, National Geographic Ventures, ideas42, and the London Business School. Previously, Nigel co-founded Capital One Financial Services in 1994. Under Nigel's leadership, Capital One pioneered an information-based strategy that fundamentally transformed the consumer lending industry. Combining advanced statistical marketing techniques with nascent information technologies, the company reduced costs to conventional borrowers, extended capital to overlooked consumers, expanded internationally, and produced extraordinary returns for investors. During Nigel's ten-year tenure, Capital One's sales grew at a compound annual rate of more than 40%. Over this same decade, earnings per share growth and return on equity both exceeded 20% per year, a financial performance attained by only a handful of American companies. Upon his retirement in 2004, Capital One's 15,000 employees across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom managed over $80 billion of loans for 50 million customers. Generating over $1.5 billion in earnings, Capital One had successfully transitioned from an emerging start-up into an established public company valued at over $20 billion. Nigel has a BSC in Psychology from the East London University and a MBA with distinction from London Business School.
Madrona Venture Group
Mr. Greg Gottesman is a Co-Founder of and serves as the Managing Director and Board Member at Pioneer Square Labs. Greg serves as a Venture Partner at Madrona Venture Group. He also serves as Investment Committee Member at The W Fund. He serves as a Investment Committee Member at The W Fund. In addition to Jobaline, he currently serves on the boards of BuddyTV, Cheezburger, Intrepid Learning Solutions, Nimbic, and WildTangent. Greg is also the founder, current board member, and former CEO of Rover.com, the world's largest pet sitting marketplace. Greg recently served on the boards of Decide (acquired by eBay) and ThisLife (acquired by Shutterfly) and helped manage the firm's investment in Wavii (acquired by Google). He also managed Madrona's investments in Dantz Development Corporation (acquired by EMC), Rendition Networks (acquired by Opsware), Singingfish.com (acquired by Thomson Consumer Electronics), LiveBid.com (acquired by Amazon.com), and AdRelevance (acquired by Media Metrix). Greg serves on the board of UP Global and as the President of the Evergreen Venture Capital Association. He is on the investment committee of the W Fund, a University of Washington-based venture fund. He is the author of three books. Greg is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of Washington Business School, where he teaches a course on Entrepreneurship. Greg graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors and distinction from Stanford University, with honors and distinction from the Harvard Business School, and with honors from Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Currently serves on the boards of Bocada, BuddyTV, Cheezburger, Intrepid Learning Solutions, Jobaline, ThinkFire, and WildTangent. He is a Board Member of Spare5.
IDG Ventures
Mr. Alexander Rosen serves as a Managing Director at IDG Ventures USA. He has been an investor and “consigliere” to early-stage technology entrepreneurs for over 20 years. Today, he focuses on investments in cloud infrastructure, SaaS applications, ad tech, and consumer marketplaces. In particular, he’s passionate about companies at the intersection of consumer and enterprise technologies. Alex currently serves as board director at Chubbies (e-commerce for the weekend), Krux (Data Management Platform software), MindMeld (AI-powered intelligent interfaces), Minted (design-driven e-commerce marketplace), Smartling (translation management SaaS), Tempered Networks (security for industrial IoT), and Uplift (payment management and marketing for online merchants). He also led IDG Ventures’ investments in multiple companies including Appboy, cClearly, Datanyze, Fastly, Indiegogo, Motivate, Nuzzel, Prism Skylabs, Projector, The League, and Trifacta. Previously, he was a General Partner at Sprout Group, where he was head of the Internet and Software group. Alex has been a board member, observer, or investor at Flowdock (acquired by Rally), MyNewPlace (acquired by RealPage), mySimon (acquired by CNET), Quintus (IPO, acquired by Avaya), Fogdog (IPO, acquired by GSI Commerce), Sapient Health Network (acquired by WebMD), SideStep (acquired by Kayak), Rhythms (IPO, acquired by AT&T), and Vidible (acquired by AOL). Alex started his venture capital career as an associate with General Atlantic Partners, served as an advisor to Vector Capital, and developed software for Telcordia and AT&T Bell Labs early in his professional life. He holds BS degrees in electrical engineering and economics from MIT and an MBA from Stanford University.
Blue Startups
Blue Startups is a Top 20 Accelerator in the US (Techcrunch) focused on helping scalable-technology companies compete globally. Blue Startups aims to stimulate economic growth in Hawaii and create new business opportunities by providing promising entrepreneurs with mentorship, access to business expertise, product testing, peer review, pitch development, introductions to investors, and seed funding. Blue Startups was founded with the goal of diversifying Hawaii’s economy by leveraging its unique strengths. Historically dependent on the tourism industry, we envision a Hawaii with a thriving technology sector, creating high paying and interesting jobs for our “keiki” (children). As one of the first accelerators in Hawaii, Blue Startups has been essential in the creation of “Startup Paradise,” now a thriving new startup ecosystem in Honolulu, Hawaii. Founded in 2012, Blue Startups was the brainchild of Henk Rogers and Maya Rogers of the Tetris company and Chenoa Farnsworth of Hawaii Angels. The partners saw an opportunity to leverage Hawaii’s strengths to develop and bring more technology companies (such as Tetris) to the islands. Targeting scalable technology companies that could grow and thrive here, taking advantage of our sector strengths such as tourism and sustainability, and our unique global position between the Asian economies and the West. Blue Startups was founded as a public-private partnership funded by the state of Hawaii, Hawaii Technology Development Corporation, the Tetris Company and private investors. Blue Startups is a part of Beyond the Billion, a pledge campaign aimed at mobilizing a global consortium committed to invest $1 BILLION in women founders.
Norwest Venture Partners
Mr. Sean Jacobson serves as Partner and Venture Investor at Norwest Venture Partners. Sean is a former SaaS executive with broad technology, sales and business development expertise. He focuses on early to late stage investment opportunities in enterprise cloud, including SaaS, mobile-first business applications, B2B marketplaces, VR, AI, and machine learning in the enterprise, and industry cloud solutions in the following sectors: healthcare IT, financial services, real estate, transportation, manufacturing, oil & gas, and agriculture.Sean was previously a venture partner at Emergence Capital Partners where he focused on business cloud investments, after being an executive and advisor at Emergence Capital portfolio companies Hightail and Doximity, respectively. Previously he was VP of Channel Management at Cornerstone OnDemand (Nasdaq: CSOD), a human capital management software-as-a-service provider. Sean helped grow the company from $7 to $75 million in revenue and 300,000 subscribers to over 7.5 million. Before his tenure at Cornerstone OnDemand, Sean was VP of Sales and Partner Development at WageWorks (NYSE: WAGE), a leading provider of consumer-directed spending solutions, which grew from $3 million to $82 million in revenue during his tenure. Prior to WageWorks, he was at Elance, the world's largest marketplace of contractors.Sean holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BBA in marketing, finance and International business from the University of Wisconsin. In addition to serving on the Satmetrix board, he is co-President and co-founder of the HBS Alumni Angels, the largest university-affiliated angel group in the world.
NYC Media Lab
Founded in 2010, NYC Media Lab is dedicated to driving innovation and ultimately job growth in media and technology by facilitating collaboration between the Citys universities and its companies. Launched by a consortium led by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, New York University, and Columbia University, NYC Media Lab's goals include generating research and development, knowledge transfer, and talent development across all of the Citys campuses.The Lab is built on corporate membership. Current member companies include AT&T, ESPN, HBO, Hearst, NBCUniversal, Publicis Groupe, News Corp, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon. Member companies participate in roundtable events on technology issues such as big data and emerging interfaces; connect with one another and with faculty, students, and other university resources; and direct seed research projects on areas of interest to them. Companies choose between three levels of membership; more information can be found here.Seed projects take a variety of forms. For instance, Verizon recently crafted a project analyzing adaptive streaming video services with a team of electrical engineers at NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering. Hearst partnered with a team of design & technology MFA students at Parsons the New School to generate prototype mobile apps. Time Warner Cable teamed up with a computer scientist at NYU School of Engineering to get a view on how various computing trends will affect home bandwidth requirement scenarios in the future. NYC Media Lab brokers these projects; member companies have access to the results. Learn more about seed projects.
Foundry Group
Mr. Ryan McIntyre serves as Co-Founder & Managing Director at Foundry Group. He was a Board Member at ThreatWave. He also serves as Board Member at Roli. He started his career in venture capital at Mobius Venture Capital in January 2000. While at Mobius Venture Capital, Ryan led the firm's investments in Postini (acq. GOOG) and Sling Media (acq. DISH). Prior to joining Mobius Venture Capital, Ryan co-founded Excite in 1993, which went public in 1996 and later became Excite@Home following the $6.7 billion merger of Excite and @Home in 1999. At the time this acquisition was the largest internet transaction to date and created a company that achieved peak revenues of $616 million in 2000. There Ryan held the role of Principal Engineer and was a key technological contributor to the company's search engine and content management systems and also led the design and implementation of Excite's community and commerce platforms. Ryan was also responsible for integrating engineering teams and technologies into Excite's infrastructure following the acquisitions of several companies based in Seattle and Austin. Prior to Excite, Ryan was a member of the technical staff for the Hewlett Packard Division at Oracle Corporation, where he worked on several releases of the Oracle Office platform. Before joining Oracle, Ryan was a software engineer at Canon Research of America, where he focused on the development of optical character recognition algorithms. He serves on Board on Two Bit. He also serves as a Board Member at Sensu. He did his BS (Bachelor of Science) from Stanford University in Symbolic Systems.
Eclipse
Mr. Pierre Lamond serves as Partner at Eclipse Ventures. He also serves as Investor at Eclipse Ventures. Pierre Lamond is a pioneer of the semiconductor industry. He started his career in 1957 as an engineer at Transitron Electronics before joining Dr. Gordon E. Moore's R&D team at Fairchild Semiconductor. While at Fairchild, Pierre oversaw the development of advanced high-frequency transistors and the first generation of digital integrated circuits. Pierre left Fairchild in 1967 to cofound the National Semiconductor Corporation (NSM), where he was vice president and general manager, Integrated Circuits. Following CEO roles at Coherent Radiation and Advent, Pierre returned to National Semiconductor in 1977 to assume the role of chief technology officer and VP, general manager of Advanced Products. In 1981, Pierre joined Sequoia Capital as a general partner, where he played a pivotal role in the expansion of the semiconductor, systems, and software portfolios. While at Sequoia, Pierre was chairman of the board at Cypress Semiconductor (CY), Microchip Semiconductor, Vitesse Semiconductor, Open-Silicon Inc., Redback Networks, Verisity, and Plumtree. He was also a director at Mellanox Technologies and Xoom. Pierre ran, on a temporary basis, engineering departments at Cisco Systems (CSCO) and C-Cube. Pierre spent three years as a general partner at Khosla Ventures serving on the boards of Skybox Imaging (Google), Cogenra, SEEO, Avogy, SeaMicro (AMD) and HeartVista. Pierre was one of the founding members of Eclipse and currently works with: Kindred, Flex Logix, Diassess, Cerebras, and Light.
Spider Capital
Mr. Philippe Suchet serves as a Venture Partner at Spider Capital Partners. Previously, he served as a Chief Strategy Officer at Shopzilla. He was the Chief Executive Officer and a Co-Founder at Zappli. He is an entrepreneur, advisor and investor, in internet companies and in real estate. Prior to that, he was the CEO and co-founder of Kefta, a leader in real-time dynamic/behavioral targeting solutions enabling large corporations to optimize customer experience and boost online sales. He and his team founded Kefta in 2000, gained investment from leading VCs/Angels, launched suite of innovative online marketing solutions, signed dozens of Fortune 1000 companies, survived the internet bubble crash and became profitable after a few years. He and his team then sold Kefta in 2007, to Acxiom Corp (ACXM), a global leader in data and multi-channel marketing solutions. Prior to starting Kefta, he worked for the Boston Consulting Group, Goldman Sachs, Abuzz (acquired by the NYT), and Keeboo. and had the chance to live/work in Asia/Europe/US. In addition, he has built and is currently managing a portfolio of residential properties acquired over the last 20 years. In January 2010, he led New Scholars' first Business Training Workshop for over 50 Sudanese refugees and Kenyans, has seen his and New Scholars' impact firsthand, and is committed to helping New Scholars grow, scale-up, and magnify that impact in East Africa and beyond. He is a graduate of the Harvard Business School, HEC School of Management, and ENSAE.
HealthX Ventures
Mr. Mark Bakken serves as Managing Partner at HealthX Ventures. He founded Bedrock Managed Services & Consulting. He served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the company. He also serves as advisor at Health Enterprise Partners. The epitome of an entrepreneur, he has seen the peaks and valleys of starting, operating and assuming the risks of a new venture. He's come up against payroll, had a few bad hires and even swept the floors early on. Collectively, his companies have done over $360 million in sales, raised more than $38 million in venture capital, and he has successfully bought and/or sold 8 companies. Among his companies is Nordic Consulting, the industry leader in EHR consulting services to organizations using Epic. As CEO, Mark grew Nordic to a #1 ranking in KLAS, where it has been since 2012. Nordic now has over 400 consultants working across 44 states. In 2014, the company was recognized as the 46th fastest growing company in the U.S. Prior to Nordic, Mark started and grew Goliath Networks to be #97 on the Inc. 500 fastest-growing companies list. He sold that company in 2002. He's worked with Eric Schmidt on Novell's Partner Advisory, and was also was asked by Bill Gates to serve on Microsoft's first partner Advisory Council, which he did from 2001-2007. A Badger at heart, Mark grew up in the Milwaukee area before attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he holds a degree in computer science. He serves as board member at Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce.
Aspect Ventures
Ms. Theresia Gouw is the Founding Partner at Aspect Venture Partners. She has also joined as Board Member at Cota Networks. She is an engineer, an experienced entrepreneur, and successful investor in the new mobility space, focused primarily on Consumer, Social Commerce, and Security opportunities. Prior to co-founding Aspect Ventures, Theresia was a partner at Accel for 15 years, with a number of successful exits, including IPOs for Imperva (IMPV), PeopleSupport (PSPT), Trulia (TRLA), and acquisitions of Kosmix (WMT), Xoopit (YHOO) and Zimbra (YHOO). Theresia serves on the boards of several private and public companies. She led the series A or seed rounds in several leading Mobile/Consumer Internet companies (Birchbox, HotelTonight, LearnVest, Trulia, Joyus) and Security Software companies (Imperva, ForeScout, TRUSTe). As an entrepreneur, Theresia was founding VP of Business Development & Sales at Release Software, a venture-backed company that provided SaaS to enable digital rights management and payment technologies for the software industry. Earlier, she worked at Bain & Company and as a product manager at Silicon Graphics. Theresia holds a ScB in Engineering from Brown University, magna cum laude, and an MBA from Stanford University. Theresia serves as a Fellow on Brown University's Corporation Board, vice-chair of DonorsChoose.org and at Stanford co-teaches a course on Venture Capital at the GSB. She also serves on the GSB Advisory Council and DAPER investment fund.
Sand Hill Angels
Mr. Sherman Ting serves as President Emiritus and Board Member at Sand Hill Angels. Sherman has over 25 years of experience in the high technology industry, in engineering, executive management and as an entrepreneur. He is an active investor in start-up ventures. Most recently, Sherman was Founder and CEO of Century A Technologies, a company which built a marketing/sales/support infrastructure in China, for new breeds of Internet-based enterprise software products designed in the US. Previously, Sherman was Vice President at Oracle Corporation, where he founded the HP Products Division and grew the business into the number one product line, with over $300M in product license revenue. While at Oracle, he also established the Asia Products Division to spearhead the cultivation of business in the Asia Pacific region, which later became the fastest growing market for Oracle. As a result, Oracle's Japanese subsidiary experienced one of the most successful high tech IPOs in Japanese history. In addition, Sherman was on the Oracle CEO's hand-picked team to start up a Network Computer business, to revolutionize how people and businesses use the Internet. Prior to Oracle, Sherman held engineering positions at Hewlett Packard, developing relational database systems for HP's cutting edge RISC computer servers and at Intel, developing computer language processors for Intel's advanced chip architecture. Sherman received an MSE in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania.
Walden International
Mr. Steve Ahn serves as Venture Partner at Walden International. He founded Leadis Technology, Inc. in May 2000 and served as CEO from its formation to November 2005. Under his leadership, Leadis rapidly became a leading manufacturer of display drivers for mobile devices. Leadis completed its initial public offering at NASDAQ in June 2004. From 1992 until founding Leadis, Steve held several senior positions at Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. in Korea, including Vice President and General Manager of the LCD Driver Division and Flash Memory Division both of which have eventually grown into multi-billion dollar businesses. Prior to serving in these positions, he was the Senior Manager of the Process Technology Team during which time his team played a major role in the successful development of the world's first 256Mb DRAM in 1994. Steve also worked as a research engineer at Sharp Corporation in Japan from 1989 to 1992 and as a member of the research staff at National Semiconductor Inc. from 1988 to 1989. In 1994, he received the Grand Prize of the Samsung Group Technical Achievement Award for his contribution to the development of the next generation DRAM. Steve also has published over 60 technical papers. Steve holds a B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering from Seoul National University, an M.S. in Materials Science from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University.
T-Mobile Ventures
Mr. John Legere serves as President, Chief Executive Officer and Board Member at T-Mobile. He has served as a director of our Company since April 30, 2013 and is a member of the Executive Committee of our Board of Directors. Mr. Legere joined T-Mobile USA in September 2012 as President and Chief Executive Officer and became our President and Chief Executive Officer on April 30, 2013 upon the consummation of the Business Combination. Mr. Legere has over 34 years' experience in the U.S. and global telecommunications and technology industries. Prior to joining T-Mobile USA, Mr. Legere served as Chief Executive Officer of Global Crossing Limited, a telecommunications company, from October 2001 to October 2011. Before joining Global Crossing, he served as Chief Executive Officer of Asia Global Crossing; as president of Dell Computer Corporation's operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; as president Asia-Pacific for Dell; as president of AT&T Asia Pacific; as head of AT&T's outsourcing program and as head of AT&T global strategy and business development. Mr. Legere serves on the CTIA Board of Directors. Mr. Legere received a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from the University of Massachusetts, a Master of Science degree as an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Master of Business Administration degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University and he completed Harvard Business School's Program for Management Development.
Correlation Ventures
Mr. Trevor Kienzle is a Co-Founder and serves as Managing Director at Correlation Ventures. He helps lead the firm, manages its Bay Area office and leads its information technology, consumer and business services investment practices. Trevor began his venture capital career in 1997. Prior to Correlation, Trevor was a Managing Director of Newbury Ventures, a technology-focused venture capital fund headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. There, he led investments in the technology sector, including in such companies as MetaLINCS (acquired by Seagate) and Onaro (acquired by NetApp). Previously, Trevor was Vice President at GE Equity, the $2 billion venture capital arm of GE Capital, most recently as co-head of the Software Group. He had responsibility for a team of investment professionals managing 26 portfolio companies. He led GE Equity’s investments in Okena (acquired by Cisco) and RSA Security (RSAS) (successful PIPE investment, acquired by EMC) and co-led its investment in Netscreen (NSCN, acquired by Juniper). Trevor also was co-founder and CFO of Loans USA (acquired by Mariner Finance). Prior to that, he worked as a management consultant at Deloitte & Touche as well as Furash & Company, and as an investment banker at Bankers Trust Company. The son of a U.S. diplomat, Trevor has lived in seven foreign countries. He received an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and a B.A. with distinction from the University of Virginia.
WXR Fund
The WXR Fund invests in gender-diverse seed-stage companies that are transforming business and human interaction with spatial computing (VR/AR) and artificial intelligence (AI). We are the only venture firm at the intersection of the next wave of computing and female founders. This is the ideal time to invest in these areas. Similar to the broad impact of the internet, spatial computing will be the next way we will communicate and consume digital content. Combined with the power of artificial intelligence, new companies will be created and most industries will be transformed. Also, diverse teams are building stronger products and companies but female founders still struggle to raise money. There is a BIG opportunity here. One study of over 300 early-stage companies, over the course of 10 years, found that teams with at least one woman founder outperformed all-male teams by 63%. Time after time, research has shown that diverse teams lead to better financial outcomes. Beyond our extensive networks, our deal pipeline comes from an accelerator program. Working closely with companies in the program allowed us to create and test a playbook for supporting portfolio companies. We also support entrepreneurs through the early stages of the start-up with broad relationships across VR, AR, investment and media communities with expertise as a serial entrepreneur and corporate M&A. The next computing paradigm is on the verge of growth and early winners are raising now.
Bay Partners
Mr. Dempsey serves as a Managing General Partner at Bay. He serves as Board Member at Crowdynews. He is a Board Member at Enphase Energy. Through cycles of change, Neal’s investment thesis has been to find entrepreneurs with domain expertise and the fine art of listening. At the end of the day, customers decide whether startups will succeed or not and without listening to customers, entrepreneurs are seldom successful. This thesis has served him well through investments in category creating companies like Brocade, Informatica and Shiva. Neal balances the stresses of his workload by giving back to the community. In addition to serving on over a dozen boards of Bay portifolio companies, he also serves on the Board of EMQ Children and Family Services (a.k.a. Eastfield Ming Quong). Neal’s leadership helped establish the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program at the University of Washington Business School. Neal made the largest gift ever from an alumnus to the University of Washington. Last but not least, Neal is a passionate college sports fan. He is very actively involved with The University of Washington basketball and football programs. To support these athletic programs at his alma mater, Neal sponsored the Dempsey Indoor Training Stadium at the University of Washington. He serves as a Board Member at BoardVantage. He also serves as a board member of Apigee. He is also a Board Member at International Spine & Orthopedic Institute.
Fyrfly VC
Mr. Philipp Stauffer serves as Venture Partner at Allegro Venture Partners. Mr. Stauffer is also a Co-Founder and serves as General Partner at FYRFLY Venture Partners. He an Advisor at Doky and serves as the Board Member at Beekeeper. He brings domestic and international mobile, online, ecommerce, digital marketing, cloud, data-science and enterprise software experience. Philipp is the Founder & CEO of Onor, a start-up in native & immersive marketing. Philipp is also a Founding Principal at Dropimpact, an Innovation Catalyst and Think Tank in Silicon Valley. He was part of the Senior Executive Team at Adchemy (acquired by Walmart) and led strategic sales and client services. Prior to Adchemy, Philipp was a Managing Partner at Accenture focusing on growth strategy and innovation. Most recently he was a Founding Partner of Accenture Interactive (now Accenture Digital), a now leading global marketing practice with more than 4,000 digital marketing and data sciences professionals globally. Philipp is an active investor and advisor to start-ups such as Playspan (acquired by Visa), NoiseToys (acquired by Jawbone), Appstores (acquired by InMobi), PubMatic, Angellist, Powerinbox, Pley, Active Replay, and Philz Coffee among others. Philipp holds a MS in Economics from the University of Applied Sciences in Zurich, Switzerland and an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Innovation Depot
Innovation Depot is a technology center and business incubation program that focuses on developing emerging biotechnology/life science, information technology, engineering, and service businesses and operates in partnership with the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). A public-private economic development effort, Innovation Depot is funded by the Birmingham regional business community, the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham and other leading private foundations, UAB, the City of Birmingham and Jefferson County.Innovation Depot combines the expertise of business incubation professionals with a next-generation facility offering you the space and equipment you need to take your business from concept to reality. Located in the heart of Birmingham, Innovation Depot is just minutes away from UAB, an internationally recognized research university and academic health center, and from the citys legal and financial district. It is located in the heart of the Entrepreneurial District in close proximity to Railroad Park, Regions Field (home of the Birmingham Barons) and the citys thriving downtown housing and restaurant scene. The 140,000-square-foot facility can give your company the room it needs to start and grow. Flexible floor plans and shared conference rooms mean you can dedicate space to whats important to your business as it develops.
Michael F. Powell
Dr. Michael Powell is a Co-Founder and serves as the Chairman at Dauntless Pharmaceuticals. He is also a Board Member at Galera. He serves as Managing General Partner at Sofinnova Ventures. He also serves as Chairman at Checkmate Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Powell serves as a General Partner at Sofinnova Ventures. He also serves as a Director at Ocera Therapeutics. He also serves as a Board Member at Labrys Biologics. He was an early investor in Actelion (SWX: ATLN), InterMune (NASDAQ: ITMN), Anesiva (NASDAQ: ANSV), Orexigen Therapeutics (NASDAQ: OREX), Seattle Genetics (NASDAQ: SGEN), and Threshold Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: THLD), as well as in several private companies such as Ascenta, Intellikine, and Trius Therapeutics. Prior to becoming a venture capitalist, Dr. Powell worked in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry on 20 clinical products, and has authored almost 100 papers and books. Dr. Powell was Group Leader of Drug Delivery at Genentech (1990-97). In 1987, he was part of the founding team of Cytel as the Director of Product Development. Before that he was Scientist and Project Team Leader at Syntex Research. Dr. Powell received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Toronto in 1981, and completed his post-doctorate work in Bioorganic Chemistry at the University of California, where he was subsequently a faculty member.
Think Beyond Plastic Accelerator
Think Beyond PlasticAccelerator, Inc is focused on accelerating early-stage businesses with a proven business model, solid management team and innovative solutions to plastic pollution. These businesses must measurably reduce plastic pollution through their innovation. Our focus is on disruptive innovation especially in the areas of food packaging, medical waste, reduced plastic waste, alternatives to styrofoam as well as innovative Cradle-to-Cradle product design. Entrepreneur Services- Review and analysis of business plan, investor presentation and financials; business guidance, strategy and organizational support- Assistance with building a strong business team- Market and basic SWOT analysis- Broker and guide deals with major customers, suppliers, strategic partners and investors- Direct innovation focus, develop business model, assist with productization of technology, and guidance in defining the target market and the value propositionInvestor Services- Pre-qualified business opportunities tailored to specific interests and needs- Due diligence covering technology, market opportunity, company and teamIndustry Services- Pre-qualified businesses offering solutions in a space identified as a strategic need- Opportunity to work with early stage technologies to help define a product offering that addresses their specific pain points
Founders Co-Op
Mr. Andy Sack is a Co-Founder ad serves as Managing Partner at Founder's Co-Op. He also serves as a Mentor at TechStars. He also serves as Board Member at MightySignal. He is a Board Member at Influence Mobile. He served as a Co-Founder and Executive Chairman at Lighter Capital. Prior to Lighter Capital, Andy was the co-founder and CEO of Judy's Book, a local search social network. Prior to founding Judy's Book in 2004, Andy co-founded three successful Internet technology companies: Kefta, a provider of real-time customer interaction solutions (acquired in 2007 by Axciom); Abuzz, an enterprises knowledge management solution (acquired by New York Times Digital in 1999) and Firefly Network, an Internet company that pioneered internet personalization technologies (acquired by Microsoft in 1997). Andy also spent time as an entrepreneur in residence for SOFTBANK Venture Capital (now Mobius VC). Andy currently serves on the board of and advises a number of companies including: zango, Cooler Planet, and Orange Line Media. Andy was also a founder and board member of Students for Responsible Business, and is a regular lecturer at the University of Washington Business School. Andy received his undergraduate degree from Brown University in 1990 and his MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT.
Tensility VC
Mr. Wayne Boulais is a Co-Founder and serves as Partner at Tensility Venture Partners. He also serves as a Board Member at Anokiwave and Advisor at Hyde Park Venture Partners. Previously, Mr. Wayne Boulais served as General Partner at Apex Venture Partners. He serves as Advisor at Energy Foundry. He was a general partner with investment focus in wireless, enterprise applications, and cleantech. Prior to joining Apex, Wayne was a founding member of the Marsh & McLennan Capital C&I Fund. He was also a partner at Marsh's, Mercer Management Consulting (now Oliver Wyman) developing growth strategies for high-tech clients. Prior to Mercer, Wayne led engineering development teams for Raytheon Corporation. Wayne received his MBA from MIT's Sloan School of Management, and an MS and a BS in Engineering from University of Massachusetts. Wayne currently serves on the boards of Enkata Technologies, IfByPhone, and IQS. He is a board observer of CombineNet. Wayne is also a board member of the Illinois Venture Capital Association and a supporting member of Chicago's Clean Energy Trust. Wayne's previous investments included Broadbeam (acquired by MobileAware), eCredit (acquired by Fidelity Ventures), Imaging Portals (acquired by MWA Intelligence), and RMI Corporation (acquired by NetLogic Microsystems).
NextEquity Partners
Dr. Avadis Tevanian is a Co-Founder & serves as a Managing Director at NextEquity Partners. He also serves as a Managing Director at Elevation Partners. Previously, Dr. Tevanian served as the Software Chief Technology Officer of Apple Inc. from 2003 to 2006. As Software CTO, Dr. Tevanian focused on setting the company-wide software technology direction for Apple. Prior to his tenure as Software CTO, Dr. Tevanian was Senior Vice President of Software at Apple, a role he took on when Apple acquired NeXT, Inc. in 1997. As Senior Vice President of Software, Dr. Tevanian led the software engineering team responsible for the creation of macOS and worked as part of Apple's executive team. Before joining Apple, he was Vice President of Engineering at NeXT, Inc. and was responsible for managing NeXT's engineering department. Dr. Tevanian started his professional career at Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a principal designer and engineer of the Mach operating system upon which Nextstep, and now macOS and iOS, are based. Dr. Tevanian is a former board member of Tellme Networks, Inc., an internet telecom company acquired by Microsoft. He holds a B.A. degree in mathematics from the University of Rochester and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.
Icon Ventures
Mr. Paul Sallaberry serves as Venture Partner at Icon Ventures. He serves as the Chairman of the Board at Seal Software. He was a Member of the Board of Directors for Quest Software, an information technology and systems management company that recently became a part of Dell. He provided strategic guidance to Quest as it developed, manufactured, and supported software used in a variety of industries. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of Acquia, a commercial open-source software company that concentrates on products and services for Drupal. Mr. Sallaberry also sits on the Board of Advisors for PureStorage , Liquid Robotics, and Calypso Software. Aside from his work as a board member, he holds a spot on the University of California, Davis Graduate School of Management Dean’s Advisory Council and the Board of Trustees of the UC Davis Foundation. He is also a Trustee of Sacred Heart Schools and a Venture Partner at Jafco Ventures. Before taking up his current duties, he spent eleven years with Veritas Software, now Symantec, as Executive Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations. Earlier in his career, he worked with software companies such as Oracle, Applied Data Research, and Dorado Software. He holds a degree from the University of California, Davis.
Metro Community
Metro Community Development is a Certified CDFI, an approved Small Business Administration (SBA) intermediary micro loan lender and a member of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Indianapolis with focus on serving the Flint MSA, Shiawassee, Lapeer, North Oakland and Saginaw MSA. These resources create the opportunity of leveraging public and private financing for community stability and economic development. The Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) Business Loan Program has been established to assist in the creation of new jobs and to expand businesses in the Mid-Michigan area with low interest loans for those who do not qualify for traditional lending. The Enterprise Loan program provides low interest loans over $50,000 and up to $200,000. These funds can be used as leverage for financing with other lenders and direct loans for business expansion and job growth. The Enterprise Loan can be used for equipment, building upgrades, commercial purchases, inventory, and working capital. Metro Community Development has partnered with Michigan Corps and Team KIVA to provide assistance for clients to participate in 0% interest loans up to $5,000. These loans are crowd funded on the KIVA website by private lenders within the community.
MergeLane
Ms. Sue Heilbronner is a Co-Founder and serves as Chief Executive Officer at MergeLane. Ms. Sue Heilbronner is a Co-Founder of Shinesty and also serves as its Board Member. Sue has been a CEO, President, or Chief Marketing Officer for digital marketing and ecommerce companies since the earliest days of the internet. She began her career as an attorney – last as a federal prosecutor with the US Department of Justice. She transitioned to business by founding an online baby gift company in 1999, which she later sold when she joined Discovery Communications, parent company of Discovery Channel and 15 other international networks. Since Discovery, Sue has led companies in the interactive travel, digital publishing, ecommerce, and online education sectors. Two of these firms had successful exits. Sue has the privilege of serving as a mentor in the international Techstars Accelerator program and an Adjunct Professor of Law and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado Law School. She is an avid angel investor in companies with amazing founding teams working on problems she cares about. She has been mentoring tremendous young talent throughout her career. Sue earned a B.A. from Oberlin College and a J.D. and M.A. from Duke University.
Tabreez Verjee
Mr. Saad Khan is a Co-Founder and serves as Partner at Uprising. He also serves on the advisory board for start-up Lending Club, and is a founding member of the FilmAngels. Previously he sat on the board of directors for Blekko, Luminate and Jobvite, a company that developed an on-demand recruitment application to drive and manage talent acquisition for small to mid-sized enterprises. He served as Partner at CMEA Capital. Prior to joining CMEA, he was a Venture Partner and led the advisory services group at Garage Technology Ventures (GTV), a seed stage venture fund. During his career at Garage, he focused on emerging technology investments in the software and digital media space, working closely with many companies including TripleHop (acquired by ORCL), cFares, and Savage Beast (Pandora). Before GTV, he worked for the IBM alphaWorks group in Cupertino, CA, focusing on commercializing IBM R&D. he also worked for the Strategic Planning and Business Development Groups at the Walt Disney Company, helping to develop the strategic and operating plans for ABC, ESPN and Disney's e-businesses. He received a B.S. degree in Symbolic Systems and an A.B in Economics with Honors in Science, Technology, and Society from Stanford University.
Harrison Metal Capital
Mr. Michael Dearing is the Founder at Harrison Metal Capital. He serves as the Board Member & Advisor at Signal Sciences. He also serves as an Advisor at Kepha Partners. He currently teaches at Stanford University. Previously, he spent more than six years at eBay. As SVP & General Merchandise Manager of eBay North America, he was responsible for more than $1.7B in annual revenues and nearly $20B in gross merchandise sales across thousands of merchandise categories. He also led the development of many of the features and services of the eBay.com site including Buy It Now, eBay Stores, ProStores, and Want It Now. Mr. Michael also designed and built the company's first onsite, direct, and product marketing teams to leverage the world's largest database of online consumer activity. Prior to eBay, he held leadership positions at Industrial Shoe Warehouse, The Walt Disney Company and Bain & Company. He also serves as a Board Member at Grand Rounds, Flite, Good Eggs, ZipZapPlay, MoPub, Metaresolverand 500px and Adstack. Mr. Dearing joined the d.school faculty at Stanford University. He holds an AB in Economics with a focus in economic history from Brown University, as well as an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School.
Impact Seven
Impact Seven’s mission is to impact communities and lives through socially-motivated investment and service. We serve as an alternative lender to businesses looking to start, grow and thrive. We offer opportunity to people and businesses that may not be able to find it elsewhere because, while still rigorous, our processes are rooted in common sense. Our loans range from a few thousand dollars to a few million, but each client is as important as the next. An experienced alternative lender, we are a statewide, private, nonprofit community development corporation that works diligently to help our clients reach their full potential. Impact Seven has assembled a group of funds from public and private sources to create a small business lending pool, our Revolving Loan Fund. This fund is designed to assist growing and start-up businesses in our Wisconsin communities. Eligible borrowers are any emerging, expanding or existing businesses in the state of Wisconsin, and some counties in Minnesota, not considered “sin businesses” by federal regulations. Loans from this fund can range anywhere from $10,000 to $5,000,000. Impact Seven can help to facilitate additional funding needs with trusted partners for projects of any size.
Merus Capital
Mr. Peter Hsing is a Co-Founder and serves as Managing Director at Merus Capital. Peter has over 20 years of technology industry experience. Before co-founding Merus, Peter was Managing Director of the Corporate Strategy Group at Microsoft, where he led a team in identifying and evaluating several $1 billion+ growth opportunities. Under his mandate, he and his team successfully committed Microsoft to investing in Cloud services, from the acquisition of Microsoft's first SaaS offering to driving the strategic and business cases for Azure and Exchange Online. Peter was also a member of Microsoft's Corporate Development team focused on online consumer services, digital media, and interactive entertainment in the U.S. and Asia. Prior to joining Microsoft, Peter was an Associate in JP Morgan's Telecom, Media & Technology investment banking group and Private Placements team in Hong Kong and a management consultant with Price Waterhouse in their Dispute Analysis and Corporate Recovery Services group. He started his career in technology in 1988 as a marketing intern with IBM. Peter holds an MBA in Finance from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and a BS in Industrial Engineering from Columbia University.
Chicago Ventures
Mr. Stuart Larkins serves as Co-Founder, Investment Committee Member & Partner at Chicago Ventures. He is an Internet entrepreneur and digital marketing expert with more than fifteen years of experience leading Internet companies and start-up organizations. Mr. Stuart is a Co-Founder and Partner of Chicago Ventures. He was Senior Vice President and part of the founding management team at Performics. During his eight years at Performics, he helped lead the business through rapid growth and subsequent acquisitions by Doubleclick, Hellman & Friedman, Google, and Publicis. He was also involved in many online advertising industry groups and associations, such as the IAB, Yahoo Search Advertiser Council, MSN Search Committee, and the Google SEM Council. In addition to his involvement with the Chicago Ventures, Mr. Larkins is the Founder and Managing Partner of Twin Capital, where he is an investor in early-stage interactive marketing service and technology companies. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Shedd Aquarium, a member of the Economic Club of Chicago, and a member of the Springboard Foundation. He holds a B.S. in Economics from Southern Methodist University.
AlphaPrime Ventures
Mr. Alessandro Piol serves as Partner and is a Co-Founder at AlphaPrime Ventures. Mr. Piol is a Co-Founder and serves as General Partner at Vedanta Capital. He serves as an Advisor at U-Start. He led investments in Arbortext (acquired by PTC), Cadis (Aspect Development), Cast Iron Systems (IBM), Digital Persona, LogLogic (TIBCO), ONI Systems (IPO in 2000), Portal Software (IPO in 1999), Torrent Networking (Ericsson), and Verisign (IPO in 1997) among others. In 1991, he co-founded AT&T Ventures where he led investments in BBN Planet (Verizon), Classic Sports Network (now ESPN Classic), Multex (IPO in 1999), Redgate Communications (AOL), and Spectrum HoloByte (Microprose/Hasbro). In 1995, Alessandro became a partner at Invesco Private Capital. Before working as a venture capitalist, Alessandro spent several years developing compilers in Fortran, co-founded the AT&T-backed graphics supercomputing business Pixel Machines, and worked as director of Strategic Partnerships for AT&T Computer Systems. Alessandro received an MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1985. He received an MS and BS in Computer Science from Columbia University in 1982 and 1979, respectively.
Engineering Capital
Mr. Ashmeet Sidana serves as Founder, Managing Partner & Chief Engineer at Engineering Capital. He served as a General Partner at Foundation Capital. He is a seasoned executive who came to Foundation Capital with a combination of 15 years of experience ranging from startups to establishing companies. His experience spans engineering, sales, marketing and product management. Most recently, he was at VMware where as Dir. of Product Management he was responsible for multiple products including Virtual SMP, P2V and their flagship product, ESX Server. At VMware, he helped grow ESX Server from early pilots to widespread worldwide deployment in mission critical systems by Fortune 500 companies. Prior to VMware, Mr. Sidana was CEO of Sidana Systems, a successful enterprise-software company that pioneered Docsan for publishing very-large (terabyte) documents. He bootstrapped Sidana Systems from inception through growth and to its acquisition by Doclinx. He served as the Board Member at Simply Hired. He is presently a board member at FreeWheel Media. He began his professional career at Hewlett-Packard and later Silicon Graphics, holding various technology roles.
Tahoma Ventures
Mr. John Ives is the Founder of Tahoma Ventures. After earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of ColoradoBoulder and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis, John was a product manager at Spectra Logic in Boulder. There, he focused on solid-state storage devices (SSD) and memory systems.He moved on to Symbios Logic, Ft. Collins and Colorado Springs, where he worked for the high-performance data-storage I/O standard product semiconductor business, and then went on to co-found Serano Systems, a fabless storage semiconductor company also in Colorado Springs. John was at the helm of the companys early sales, marketing and business development efforts prior to Seranos acquisition by Vitesse Semiconductor in 1999.John has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur since 1997. He is co-founder of Chips on the Deck, a networking organization for Colorado-based semiconductor, EDA and embedded system entrepreneurs. He is also the founder of Boulder Angels, which organizes the activities of active, professional angel investors in Boulder County.
Gary M. Lauder
Mr. Gary Lauder is a Co-Founder and serves as a Managing Director at Lauder Partners. He has been a venture capitalist since 1985, investing in over 80 private companies. He is also Chairman of ActiveVideo Networks. Other directorships: OnLive, net2tv, Promptu, MediaFriends and ShotSpotter. Investments are primarily in television/IPTV technology and WWW arenas. In the 1980's, he worked at the venture firms of Aetna, Jacobs & Ramo Technology Ventures, as well as Wolfensohn Associates. He holds a BA in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania; a BS in Economics from the Wharton School; and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is the co-creator of the Aspen Institute's Socrates Society with Laura, his wife. He is a member of the inaugural class of the Aspen Institute's Henry Crown Fellowship Program. He has had a working cable modem (usually) in his home since 1994. He is co-inventor of 12 patents, has spoken at over 100 industry forums, and, since 1992, has published several articles about the future of the cable industry...that he still stands by.
Vertex Ventures US
Dr. Sandeep Bhadra serves as a Partner at Vertex Ventures US. He joined Vertex in 2017 and focuses primarily on cloud infrastructure, data-driven business applications and cybersecurity. At 21, as a freshly minted electrical engineer, he helped set up and operate India's first WiFi hotspot and felt how transformative technology could be for business users, how hard infrastructure was to operate at scale and how demanding business buyers could be. Most recently, he was a Principal at Menlo Ventures where he focused on investments in infrastructure and data/machine-learning driven applications-my investments there include Platform9, Signifyd, Unravel Data and Clarifai. Prior to that, he was with Cisco's Corporate Development team learning how a market leader uses inorganic strategies to grow and transform itself. While there he worked on Cisco's investments in MapR, Platfora, Moogsoft and acquisitions of Metacloud, tail-f and Memoir Systems. He holds both a B.Tech from IIT Madras and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in Electrical Engineering, and an MBA from INSEAD.
1Sharpe Ventures
1Sharpe Ventures (1SV) is an early-stage venture fund backing founders reimagining FinTech, PropTech and the trillion-dollar built world industries: construction, real estate, hospitality, commerce, logistics, and climate. We invest in category-defining businesses transforming the picks and shovels of how we experience, transact, and own real estate. Our team has founded multiple billion-dollar venture-backed tech companies (like Roofstock, Lessen, Kiavi, Azibo) in addition to billion-dollar real estate portfolios. We saw a gap in scalable, strategic capital for proptech founders in the earliest stages, so we built a platform based off of our experience in the trenches. We are investing out of $90M fund in pre-seed, seed, and series A rounds – typical check size if $1-$2M and we can lead or follow. Our venture fund is connected to the broader 1Sharpe Capital, a $3Bn+ asset management firm investing in real estate and credit – which brings an in-house sandbox of real estate assets, access to capital markets, and a deep bench of real estate, lending, and operating expertise.
Moment Ventures
Mr. Clint Chao is a Co-Founder and serves as General Partner at Moment Ventures. He is also a Co-Founder and serves as Managing Director at Formative Ventures. He invests in emerging technologies start-ups in areas such as communications, wireless, and next-generation Internet solutions. He brings years of start-up operating experience including marketing, sales and business development to Formative Ventures. Prior to co-founding Formative Ventures, he served as vice president of marketing, sales, and business development at SkyStream Networks (acquired by Tandberg TV). Under his leadership, SkyStream formed partnerships with industry leaders such as AOL Time Warner, HP, Microsoft, RealNetworks, Lucent Technologies, Mitsubishi, and Philips. He served as a Board Member at SOASTA. He has also served as senior director of marketing at C-Cube Microsystems and held numerous sales and sales management positions at Motorola Semiconductor. He earned a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California at Berkeley.