April 22, 2009
Corporate Bios
Eric Klein, VP Java Marketing
Eric is a product marketing executive with extensive experience developing and marketing best-in-class consumer and media solutions that include hardware, software, and service components. His passion is creating products and platforms that intuitively solve real customer problems at the intersection of mobile, consumer, location based services, and entertainment. As Sun's VP of Marketing for Java, Eric's team is responsible for the strategy, roadmap, strategic partnerships, and marketing for Sun's Java platform. His last role before joining Sun was as the Senior Director of Product Marketing at Dash Navigation, a KP/Sequoia startup that shipped the world's first two-way connected personal navigation device, the Dash Express. He has previously enjoyed product roles at Real Networks, Palm, and Apple, and has started or played an early role in a number of Bay Area startups.
Nagraj Kashyap, VP Qualcomm and Head
Nagraj is Vice President, Qualcomm Ventures, and heads up worldwide activities for the group. Nagraj has over 12 years of experience in the telecommunications industry. Prior to his current role, he worked in various engineering and management capacities at Nortel, 3COM, Motorola, PRTM and Qualcomm.
Nagraj currently manages and actively serves as a board observer for Qualcomm Ventures investments in Airplay Networks, GoTV Networks, Novarra, Obopay, Triage Wireless and WaveMarket. Nagraj has an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management and an MS in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin.
Ofer Ronen, Former CEO of Sendori
Ofer is General Manager of Sendori and leads strategy development and day-to-day operations. Ofer co-founded Sendori and sold it to IAC December 2008. Previously, he was a partner at Big Red Ventures, a seed level investment firm. In addition, he led the development of Web applications at U.S. Trust, managed online magazine subscription systems at Time Warner, and founded a b-to-b e-commerce startup named Karanga. Ofer completed the accelerated MBA program at Cornell and holds a MS/BS in computer engineering from the University of Michigan.
Kuk Yi, Managing Partner & Corporate VP
Kuk is the Managing Partner of Best Buy Capital, the venture investment team of Best Buy, the leading global retailer of consumer technology products and services. He is responsible for leading all the investment activities to create a portfolio of opportunities for Best Buy's growth while encouraging the adoption of new technologies, solutions and services for the consumer technology ecosystem. Kuk was also a founding member of Best Buy's corporate development team when he joined in 2004 where he was responsible for supporting strategic transactions, including acquisitions and investments. Prior to Best Buy, Kuk was a Senior Investment Manager at Samsung based in Korea and a Senior Associate at ABN AMRO Capital.
Hans van Rietschote, Senior Director, Technology Scouting Group Symantec Corporation
Hans is currently at Symantec and leads the technology scouting group which is part of the office of the CTO. His team's mission is to discover and evaluate 3rd party disruptive technologies and monitor the top ten technology trends that will impact Symantec. Before Symantec, Hans worked at the Philips Research Center in the Netherlands and spend 10 plus years working at AT&T networks systems (now part of Alcatel Lucent). He has a Msc in Applied mathematics and an MBA in Business Telecommunication. He also has the easiest email address: Hans at Symantec dot com
Anand Iyer, Evangelist
Anand joined Microsoft in January 2005 as an Evangelist, Microsoft's ambassador to the Silicon Valley community. During his tenure there, he has been in the midst of several Microsoft launches. He has spoken at over a hundred conferences on a variety of topics. Anand is actively involved in the startup and the open source and standards communities in the Silicon Valley. Anand works closely with Microsoft's Emerging Business Team empowering startups to launch their businesses on the Microsoft platform. Before joining Microsoft, Anand worked for Cisco Systems' New Business Ventures team, pioneering XML-based manageability solutions. During his five-year tenure as a Technical Lead and Software Engineer, Anand worked closely with customers to fine-tune his product features. Anand has extensive experience in software methodologies, and has worked on several development platforms. Anand has also earned two patent awards related to manageability solutions on networking platforms. In June 2006, Anand was also responsible in co-founding an organization aimed at bringing technical community managers together, called the Global Network of Technology Evangelists (GNoTE). Anand graduated from Purdue University with a degree in Computer Engineering. He goes by the online alias "artificialignorance" and blogs at http://artificialignorance.net. When he is not blogging, you can find him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/anandiyer.
Mark Trang, Director of ISV Marketing & Programs
He is responsible for helping developers, entrepreneurs and ISVs build Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications using the Force.com platform and go-to-market as a salesforce.com partner. Prior to joining salesforce.com, Mark co-founded CogentWare, a SaaS startup, serving as VP of Product Management. Previously, he was a founding employee and led product marketing at SupplyAccess, a venture-backed supply chain software company. He began his career at Deloitte Consulting where he implemented enterprise software technologies at Fortune 500 companies. Mark graduated as a Regents Scholar with a B.A. in political science from UCLA and a M.B.A. from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Connie Sheng, Director of Global Investment
Connie Sheng is the director of global investment at Foxconn, a leader in electronic manufacturing services industry. In this role, she manages the venture investment program for the company with emphasis on technology startups in US. Prior to joining Foxconn, she had worked in Morgan Stanley and Berksford Partners, a boutique investment bank consulting firm. Connie was also COO of Shanghai National Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology, a government-funded VC incubator in Shanghai China. Previously she co-founded and worked as CFO of Blootech, a wireless technology startup. Connie started her high-tech career from HP and worked there for many years in various technical, marketing, and business management positions.
A graduate of the top-ranked HEC School of Management in France, Bernard has held a number of positions in innovation and entrepreneurship in the US and in Europe. Before joining HP’s Corporate Ventures group, Bernard headed startup advisory firm Breakthrough Venture Partners, helping Bay Area companies such as Adura Technologies, the recipient of the 2006 California Clean Tech Award, Power Assure, recipient of the 2008 Award, and Funambol, a provider of open source mobile messaging applications.
Bernard started his career with a corporate venture capital fund for a large energy and new materials conglomerate on the East Coast and in Europe. He then joined RTL Group, the largest publicly-listed European entertainment network and was tasked with putting a brand new set-top box on the market in 6 months from decision to delivery. While at RTL, he served on the Board of Directors of Multivision, the first European pay-per-view service. He then was on the founding team of an RTL joint venture called TPS, a Paris-based satellite TV service, where he negotiated over $250M in deals with as cable operators such as France Telecom, Suez and Time Warner Cable and TV channels such as CNN and MTV.
Bernard then consecutively joined a new Intel division that developed and marketed internet appliance platforms sold via operators; struck strategic partnerships at VC-backed MetaTV (acquired by Comcast); was CEO the of Nucleonet, a security appliance startup and then became an advisor at the startup accelerator Technology Ventures Corporation, where he helped early stage companies raise $20M in 1 year.
Christopher M. Chase, Vice President
Chris is a partner on a six-person wealth management team that advises individuals and families on strategies for growing and preserving their wealth. He is also focused on helping founders and other highly concentrated shareholders of privately-held technology companies implement pre-liquidity tax, trust and estate planning strategies. This advice can be immensely beneficial to an entrepreneur heading toward a liquidity event. In addition, Chris provides his clients with direct access to all of the resources throughout Credit Suisse including Investment Banking, Research, Real Estate, Lending and Tax, Trust & Estate Planning. Chris began his career on the options trading desk of the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange in San Francisco, later joining a large West Coast commodities trading firm in Los Angeles. He then relocated back to San Francisco in 1999 to join Montgomery Securities (later acquired by Bank of America) where he worked in the Private Client Services group until moving to Lehman Brothers in 2004. After 5 years with Lehman, Chris and his team moved to Credit Suisse. He holds a Bachelors Degree in Economics and Business from East Carolina University and is series 3, 7, 63, and 66 registered with the NASD.
Leonard T. Auletto, Chief Marketing Officer
Leonard T. Auletto is responsible for the strategic marketing direction of the firm including the development of all marketing communications, print advertising, public relations, media relations, seminars, sponsorships, events, CRM and web site design as well as business development programs for the individual practice areas of the firm.
Prior to joining Hood & Strong LLP, Len had been for nine years the Director of Legal Marketing and Associate Publisher for the Daily Journal Corporation, a publisher of newspapers and magazines for the legal industry that included California Lawyer. He has also held executive marketing and business development positions at Dun & Bradstreet Inc., Standard & Poor's corporation, Citicorp and SRI International.
Len graduated from New York University with a B.S. in Economics and has completed both the Marketing Management Program and Advanced Management College at Stanford University.
Gerd Goette, Managing Partner
Gerd is Managing Partner, based in Palo Alto, CA . He specializes in investments in energy, communications and industrial solutions. His investments include Broadlight, Dune Networks, IP-Unity Glenayre, Kagoor Networks (acquired by Juniper Networks), Myrio (acquired by Siemens), Reactive NanoTechnologies and Verimatrix. In addition he manages SVC's investments in G2 Microsystems, Prenova and SmartSynch. With more than 20 years of worldwide industry experience, he combines a strong technical background with wide-ranging operational skills. Prior to joining Siemens Venture Capital in September 2000, Gerd held the position of Vice President and Head of CableTV Solutions in Siemens Information and Communication Networks.
Teresa V. Pahl, Partner
Teresa V. Pahl's legal expertise includes matters involving general corporate law, securities law and real property law. Her corporate and securities practice includes a range of public and private equity and debt financings, representing both publicly traded and private companies in a wide variety of industries and markets such as high technology, consumer products, professional services, and banking. Transactions have included private and public offerings of equity and debt securities, venture capital funding and design of complex capital structures.
Teresa is actively involved with the Software Development Forum, where she has lectured on legal issues facing emerging companies in the technology market.
Todd Rumberger, Shareholder
E. Thom ("Todd") Rumberger Jr. works with start up and emerging growth stage companies in the internet, software, communications, semiconductor, media and entertainment industries, and with the venture capital firms, other private equity investors and investment bankers involved in such companies. Formerly with a Silicon Valley based venture capital firm, his practice focuses on representing start-up and emerging growth companies in matters ranging from formation, capitalization, and key executive employment matters to early and later stage financings (convertible debt and preferred equity), strategic partner and customer agreements, and acquisitions. Todd also handles general corporate matters and transactions, with wide-ranging experience in domestic and international mergers and acquisitions, buy-outs, complex commercial joint ventures and strategic partnering (with a special emphasis on Russia and Eastern Europe), and commercial space ventures.
Laurie Lumenti Garty, Managing Director, Entrepreneur Services Group
Laurie Lumenti Garty is a managing director in the Entrepreneur Services Group at SVB Capital where she manages the company's relationships with universities, incubators, angel investors and a number of seed stage investors in the Bay Area. Prior to joining SVB Capital, Garty was the manager of Silicon Valley Bank's Emerging Technologies Practice, where she led a team focused on early stage companies that were bootstrapped or backed by angel investors. Before joining Silicon Valley Bank, Garty was a lender and a director in the Venture Capital Group at Comerica Bank. Previously, she was the director of strategic alliances for Ditto.com and a business relationship manager for iOwn; two Bay Area startup companies.
Karen Northup, Founder and CEO
Karen founded Corefino after serving as chief financial officer at successful, venture-backed technology companies. These include Scout Media, where she served as CFO through the company's successful acquisition by Fox Interactive; Rivals.com, where she recruited and trained a 35-member accounting staff and successfully directed the company through its initial public offering; and Telocity (now DirecTV), where she was instrumental in raising a US$134 million mezzanine round of financing. Karen also held management positions with GlobalCenter, including a key role in its acquisition by Global Crossing, and with PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
John Bautista, Partner, Orrick
John Bautista is a partner in the Silicon Valley office, is a member of the Emerging Companies Group, which advises emerging companies and venture capital firms. Before joining Orrick, he was a co-founder of Venture Law Group and served on the Executive Committee. Mr. Bautista previously practiced at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati. Mr. Bautista focuses on emerging companies, and represents both public and private high-tech companies and venture capital funds in many areas, including corporate and securities law, venture capital financings, mergers and acquisitions, public offerings, public company representation, and technology licensing.
Participating Universities:
