OLGA GRIGORYEVA
Entrepreneurship Program Director
Telephone: 408 524-1413
Fax: 408 773 - 8462
Email: olga@
plugandplaytechcenter.com

CANDACE DENTON
Corporate Development Manager
Telephone: 408 499-8930
Fax: 408 773-8462
Email: candace@
plugandplaytechcenter.com

• Saeed Amidi
• John Bautista
• Florian Brody
• Wenceslao Casares
• Susan Choe
• Winston Choe
• Andrew Chung
• Jeff Crowe
• Wilson Farrar
• Mike Hodges
• Tom Kosnik
• Renaud Laplanche
• John Lee
• Elliott Ng
• Luciano Dalle Ore
• Micah Siegel

Saeed Amidi
President and CEO
Plug and Play Tech Center

Saeed Amidi is the Founder, President and CEO of Plug and Play Tech Center. Plug and Play is the premier technology startup accelerator with over 250 companies which collectively have raised an excess of $650 million. Additionally, Saeed is a General Partner in Amidzad. The fund has been investing in technology companies for over 15 years and it holds successful investments in over 70 technology companies some of which are: PayPal, Powerset, Danger, Bix, Powerset, DropBox etc. Saeed is a serial entrepreneur and a seasoned executive with over 28 years of experience in founding, operating, and growing successful companies. He has successfully started and grown businesses both nationally as well as internationally in countries like: Spain, Italy, France, Austria etc.
Saeed's recent passion is inspiring and helping entrepreneurs and startups out of universities. In this respect, he is working closely with MIT, Cornell, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, Santa Clara, Wharton, and Dartmouth to identify great entrepreneurs with a passion to execute on their ideas.
Saeed is an active member of the technology community and a frequent contributor to numerous charitable foundations. He is also an active member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), a world-class network of Fortune 500 CEOs, accomplished serial entrepreneurs, and veteran financial executives.

John Bautista
Partner
Orrick

John Bautista, 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.

Florian Brody
Advisor
VP of Marketing
Visuvi Inc.

Florian Brody is an internationally acclaimed digital media specialist with more than twenty years experience in marketing electronic publishing in Europe and the U.S.
He is the VP of Marketing at Visuvi Inc, a start-up developing visual search technology. He served as head of marketing at YouSendIt, Amazon's A9.com, Red Herring and several start-ups. In 1999 he co-founded and led AlcheMe Inc.
Florian developed developing media solutions and communication strategies for F500 companies, including Kodak, Apple and Accenture and co-invented Voyager's Expanded Books. He served as strategic consultant for the Austrian Government and the European Commission.
Florian studied Computer Linguistics in Vienna, worked as researcher in film theory, and taught at Art Center in Pasadena, the University of Applied Arts, Vienna and held the chair for Multimedia at the Salzburg University for Applied Sciences.

Wenceslao Casares
Co-CEO
Bling Nation

Wenceslao Casares is co-CEO of Bling Nation, a mobile payments company he founded in 2007 and a partner of MECK, Ltd, a private investment partnership. He founded Lemon Bank, a Brazilian retail bank for the poor, in June 2002. Lemon Bank is now the largest microfinance institution in Brazil. He is also the founder of Wanako Games, a US based developer of console videogames that seeks to leverage the creativity of Latin American talent. The company won the "Game of the Year" award for Xbox Live in 2006. Wanako Games was sold to Vivendi Universal (Euronext: VIV).
In 1997 Casares founded Patagon, an Online Brokerage. As the Company expanded throughout Latin America, Casares lived in Sao Paulo, Mexico City, and New York City. The company also expanded into online banking in Spain and Germany. Patagon was the fist Latin American online broker and online Bank. It was sold to the Spanish bank Santander (NYSE: STD).
In 1994 Casares launched Internet Argentina S.A., the first Internet Service Provider in the country. He then sold that Company, in order to establish Patagon. Casares was born in 1974 in a sheep ranch in Patagonia, Argentina. At age 17 he spent a year in Washington, Pennsylvania as a member of the Rotary Youth Exchange program. He then attended the University of San Andres, Argentina's top business school; however, he interrupted his studies in order to start Patagon.
In 1998 he was selected as an Endeavor Entrepreneur, an international non-profit organization committed to identifying, supporting and promoting the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders in emerging-markets. He is an elected member of the World Economic Forum's Global Leaders for Tomorrow (GLT), and attends Davos since 2001. He is also a member of the Young Presidents Organization and has completed the Harvard Business School's Owners and Presidents Management Program.
As part of his philanthropic and non-for-profit activities he served on the board of the Viva Trust and currently serves on the Board of Endeavor. He also has established the Fundacion Sintesis with the goal of inspiring the next generation of social and political leaders in Latin America.

Susan Choe
Founder/Chairman
Outspark

Halo and Kart Rider led Susan back to games to start Outspark, a leading Western online games portal in 2007. Today, millions of people come to play online games and to meet friends in Outspark's Virtual Playground. Now, Outspark is home to global game developers seeking millions of MMOG players.
Prior to Outspark, Susan was the founding COO at NHN USA, a flagship game portal in Asia, NHN/Hangame. Prior to NHN, Susan held many posts at Yahoo. As director of international operations she worked with Yahoo's 25 international countries; as international director of Yahoo! Games in starting premium games growth strategy, and as director of Corporate Development, leading investments & acquisitions across games, communities and music.
Susan also spent seven years in financial services, as V.P. of global Corporate Development for CSFBDIRECT, launching partnerships in the U.K., Japan and Hong Kong, in Research at Merrill Lynch, and at American Express' first online business team in New York.

Winston Choe
Founder
Innoscape

Winston is the Founder/CEO of Innoscape, a Venture Business Development company that has worked with 12 startups to accelerate market-entry; including Funding, M&A, Strategy, Sales & Marketing, Distribution. Innoscape focuses on Mobility, Software, Networking, Services industries and entry into the North America and Asia markets. Winston is also appointed as Executive-in-Residence at the PlugandPlayTechCenter, to expand their Incubator business and also accelerate market-entry for their startups. He previously started two ventures in Mobile Cloud-Computing and Networked-Multimedia, which he developed from concept to commercialization, established global sales and operations, and grew revenues to $4m. Winston has held executive positions at the HP Handheld, Nokia Enterprise, Sun Consumer Mobile, DEC Global Services groups, where he managed carriers, strategic-partners, new market-development, with deals valued at $370m. He holds a B.Math in Computer Science from University of Waterloo, Canada and has completed the Stanford/AeA program in Executive Management.

Andrew Chung
Principal
Lightspeed Ventures

Andrew is a Principal at Lightspeed and covers the cleantech, Internet and software sectors. Other areas of interest include genomics, bioinformatics and online education. Prior to Lightspeed, Andrew worked at Bain Capital and TL Ventures, where he supported leveraged buyout and venture investments in software, semiconductors and healthcare. He also co-founded UberWorks (acq. by NWKC), an e-commerce content aggregation software startup incubated at Trilogy and directed product management at OnStation, a CRM software company. Prior to UberWorks, Andrew was a strategy consultant with Bain & Company in Greater China. Andrew earned his BA in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University and holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Andrew chairs the Cleantech Advisory Board for The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), serves on the Advisory Board for Stanford Energy Crossroads, and is involved with the Clean Tech Open.

Jeff Crowe
General Partner
Norwest Venture
Partners

Jeff joined Norwest Venture Partners in 2004 and focuses on investments in software, Internet, and consumer arenas. He currently serves on the boards of deCarta, Jigsaw, Lending Club, Nano-Tex, Tuvox, and Turn. Jeff is actively involved with Cast Iron Systems.
Prior to Norwest, Jeff served as President, COO and board member of DoveBid, Inc., a privately held business auction firm, which expanded during his tenure via internal growth and acquisition from a $10M revenue run rate to a $120M revenue run rate with 400 employees.
Jeff is on the Management Board of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is active in alumni affairs at Dartmouth. He is also chairman of the board of Hand in Hand Parenting, a non-profit organization focused on strengthening families, and is past chairman of the board of Theatreworks.
Jeff holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar, and a BA in History, summa cum laude, from Dartmouth College.

Luciano Dalle Ore
Executive in
Residence
Plug and Play Tech
Center

Luciano Dalle Ore has extensive expertise as COO, VP of Engineering and CTO in product definition and market research; fundraising; product management and development (in-house and offshore); go-to-market and channel strategy; professional services.   He has developed enterprise applications (traditional and SaaS); NAS/SAN; a multimedia search engine; virtualization, network and storage management.  His successes include the Snap!Server, (driving factor for the acquisition of Meridian Data by Quantum) and an enterprise test management company turnaround culminated by a major sale to British Telecom.  Education: Purdue BSEE, Stanford MSEE.

Wilson Farrar
Founder & CEO
Ask Silicon

ASK Silicon Valley is an International Forum for Entrepreneurs and Innovators. The mission of ASK Silicon Valley is to inspire and facilitate entrepreneurship and innovation around the globe in an effort to assist in the economic development of countries as well as individuals. Prior to founding ASK Silicon Valley, Wilson co-founded and sold two technology companies: iWare (acquired by eMachines) in the consumer internet space; and Midnight Networks (acquired By Teradyne), which provided a B-to-B automated testing systems solution to networking vendors including AT&T, Cisco, IBM and Microsoft. In addition to her own entrepreneurial pursuits, Wilson has consulted and advised numerous start-up companies and major corporations including Hewlett-Packard, Adobe and a subsidiary of Bechtel Engineering. In this capacity, she has held executive level positions in New Business Creation, Enterprise Initiatives and is currently Innovation Analyst for Hewlett-Packard. Wilson is also a mentor with The California CleanTech Open; The Global Social Benefit Incubator; and Stanford University’s Global Entrepreneurial Marketing and New Venture Creation courses. Wilson is on the Astia CleanTech steering committee as well as being on the board of The Missing Peace, an International art exhibit touring from New York, to Spain to Tokyo.

Mike Hodges
Managing Director
ATA Ventures

Mike Hodges joined ATA Ventures in 2006 and became a Managing Director in 2008. Mike has built a reputation as a successful CEO and interim CEO and is credited with several successful turn–around efforts, including Tellium, a Telecom Networking company that began as a technology spinout from Bellcore in 1997 (Tellium completed a public offering of $1.5B in 2001).
Prior to his startup success, Mike’s career from direct operating roles through division president at Spectra-Physics during which time the company grew to a $300M revenue NYSE public company. His more notable positions at Spectra-Physics included Division President Barcode Laser Scanning and Division President Autolab Instrumentation Division.
In a feature article about Mike, Telephony Magazine named him as "The Best CEO You've Never Heard Of." The magazine went on to say, "Mike is money. He's the first guy you should turn to when the game is on the line and the last guy you should ever bet against." Along with Mike's past operating roles, he has worked regularly with several leading venture capital firms as an expert consultant.
Mike provides expert support to the ATA Venture's comprehensive portfolio of companies, as well as seeking new investments for the firm's current and future funds. He currently serves as a Director on the Boards of TeleCIS Wireless, PixSense, Red Condor, Billeo and WaveBender. Mike graduated from U.C. Berkeley, receiving BSEE and MSEE degrees.

Tom Kosnik
Co-Organizer
Consulting Professor
Stanford University.

Tom Kosnik is a Consulting Professor who teaches Global Entrepreneurial Marketing and the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program at Stanford School of Engineering. He is currently collaborating with faculty at The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden and the National University of Singapore to develop a new course entitled Global Entrepreneurial Leadership, which will be delivered in autumn of 2002 using mobile technologies and the Internet. He has also taught a variety of marketing courses at Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Professor Kosnik's research and consulting focuses on five themes: Circles of Influence, Global Entrepreneurial Marketing, Designing Systems that Summon the Spirit, Managing Global Partnerships and Managing Market Risks. He has worked with over 100 startup companies since 1975, and has consulted to leading Information Technology product and services companies including American Management Systems, Apple Computer, Applied Materials, Ernst & Young, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, and Oracle.
Tom also shares his skills and expertise with non-profit organizations by supporting the Business Association of Stanford Engineering Students (BASES), College Kids, Forum for Women Entrepreneurs, Starshine Foundation, and Women's Technology Cluster.

Renaud Laplanche
Founder and CEO
Lending Club

Renaud Laplanche is the Founder and CEO of LendingClub, a social lender which currently works exclusively within the Facebook platform.
Laplanche grew up in France, was trained as a lawyer, completed his MBA before working for New York law firm Cleary Gottlieb in Paris and in New York. He worked for the firm for five years in mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and investment transactions involving technology companies before founding TripleHop Technologies. TripleHop Technologies, the software company that designed MatchPoint, was founded in 1999 and sold to Oracle in 2005.
Laplanche was honored with the HEC "Entrepreneur of the Year" award in 2002 and won the French sailing championship twice, in 1988 and 1990.
Renaud Laplanche earned an MBA from HEC Business School.

John Lee
Director in the
Entrepreneur
Services Group
SVB Capital

John Lee is a director in the Entrepreneur Services Group at SVB Capital. In addition to establishing banking relationships with early stage technology companies, Lee assists entrepreneurs at early and mid-stage technology companies with raising capital through review and feedback on investment materials and strategic, targeted introductions to venture capital firms and other investors. Lee focuses on companies in the hardware and infrastructure software sectors.Prior to his current role at SVB Capital, Lee served as a relationship manager for Silicon Valley Bank's Emerging Technologies Practice, providing commercial banking services to early stage companies in the technology, life sciences, cleantech, and angel and venture capital industries.Before joining SVB, Lee worked at Societe Generale, Union Bank of California, and Bank of America, focusing primarily on technology, communications, and media companies. While completing his undergraduate studies, Lee also worked at Intel, conducting research and analysis of competitive semiconductor design and manufacturing technologies.Lee manages SVB's sponsorship of Stanford BASES, an entrepreneurship organization for Stanford students and faculty members, and MIT/Stanford Venture Lab, the SF Bay Area chapter of the MIT Enterprise Forum, a non-profit organization focused on technology entrepreneurial ventures. He also serves as a coach for Astia, an organization that supports women in entrepreneurship. Lee holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University and is a Chartered Financial Analyst.

Elliott Ng
Co-Founder
UpTake.com

Elliott Ng is co-founder of UpTake.com, the fastest growing new online travel startup since its launch in 2007. He has invested in and advised numerous startups both in China and the United States.
Prior to co-founding UpTake, Elliott served as Director of Interactive Marketing for Intuit's QuickBooks division from 2003 to 2005, where he grew the Web sales channel from $14 mm to over $40 mm in 2 years. In 2001, Elliott co-founded Loyalty Matrix, a profitable customer intelligence and analytics firm that helped clients like Apple Computer, LA Times, 24-Hour Fitness, and Starwood Hotels & Resorts reduce customer attrition and increase customer lifetime value. The firm was acquired in 2006 by Responsys, an email marketing firm. In 1996, Elliott co-founded Netcentives, an e-marketing company which grew to $70 mm in revenues, 200+ customers, managing an aggregate of 50 mm consumer relationships. The company reached a peak market capitalization of $3 billion after its 1999 NASDAQ IPO. Elliott started his career as a product manager of PowerPoint and Word at Microsoft, and also served as summer associate at McKinsey & Company. Elliott holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a AB from Harvard University. Elliott is based in Silicon Valley, married with three children, and enjoys travel, the outdoors, blogging, and virtually all kinds of Chinese food.

Micah Siegel
Advisor
Consulting Professor
Stanford

Micah is a Consulting Professor at Stanford University in the Department of Electrical Engineering, where he teaches EE204 (aka "Introduction to Business for Engineers"), covering New Product Development, Marketing and Finance for Stanford's Engineering and Computer Science graduate students. Prior students of EE204 (in the 1990's) have included the founders of Google, Yahoo! and Junglee (sold to Amazon.com for $180 Million). In addition to Stanford, Micah is a Managing Director at C2C Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm in Palo Alto, where Micah has been sourcing, financing and spinning out seed-stage technology companies for nine years. Through C2C, Micah is a co-founder and founding investor in Affinity Circles (2002), Adapt Technologies (2004, acquired in 2008 by WebVisible), Kuvera Investments (2005), and Kallout (2006). He is also a seed-stage investor (and founding advisory board member) in BioImagene. These companies have raised more than $50M in seed-stage venture capital.
Micah is the co-inventor of several U.S. patents related to electronic advertising and genetic engineering and was recognized in 2003 by MIT's Technology Review magazine, as "one of the top 100 innovators of the world" ("TR100 List") and in 2009 by IAM Magazine as one of the world's 250 "Leading IP Strategists" ("IAM 250"). He was born the oldest of six children and raised in Okemos, Michigan. He graduated from Yale University (Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude) with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and received a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. He can be contacted at micah.siegel@stanford.edu