VLAB

Space Exploration: Not Just for Billionaires Anymore
2011-09-20 18:00 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Stanford GSB: Cemex Auditorium at the Knight Management Center, 655 Knight Way, Stanford, CA, 94305, United States
Space Exploration: Not Just for Billionaires Anymore ***Video Available***
Companies are launching in 10, 9, 8, 7…

When

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshments
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q&A

Where

Stanford Graduate School of Business, Cemex Auditorium

655 Knight Way, Stanford, CA 94305-7298

Map: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba/contact/GSB_KMC_finalMap.pdf

Parking Information:

Parking Structure VII, 655 Knight Way off Campus Drive (located under Faculty Building West @ Knight Mgmt Ctr)
Street Parking on either Serra Street or Galvez Street
Parking Lot located at Bonair Siding Road and Campus Drive.

Event Description:

Advances in payload and transport technology have made it easier than ever for entrepreneurs to launch into space – some for less than even $1M in capital. Entrepreneurs are now exploring opportunities with new rocket launchers, novel uses of affordable small satellites, space tourism, and even space-based power generation and extraterrestrial mining. The space market is already a $280B business.
Come discover companies disrupting the science and business of space travel and taking advantage of this new low cost paradigm in space exploration. Key questions to be explored by a panel of industry leading CEOs and founders include:

How can entrepreneurs successfully launch new ventures in the space industry?

Is cooperation from NASA a must have?

Can you really bootstrap your way into space?

What is the role of data and analytics in space?

How much capital does it really take to be successful?

What business models are most effective?

How can a software entrepreneur take advantage of this new ecosystem?

Space has always been a breeding ground for new technologies that later integrate into our everyday lives. Discover the latest developments and learn how private investors and businesses are providing new solutions for the Earth-bound.

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Online Registration is now closed. Any available tickets can be purchased at the door.
Moderator:

Amaresh Kollipara, Founder and Managing Partner of Earth2Orbit

Presenter:

Rich Pournelle, Senior Vice President of Business Development, NanoRacks

Panelists:

William Pomerantz, Vice President, Special Projects, Virgin Galactic
Bob Richards, Co-founder and CEO, Moon Express
Al Tadros, Vice President, Civil and DoD Business, Space Systems/Loral

Amaresh Kollipara, Managing Partner of Earth2Orbit, LLC and Strategic Consultant

Amaresh Kollipara is a seasoned strategy consultant, financial advisor, and entrepreneur with international expertise. He is a Founder and Managing Partner of Earth2Orbit, a global provider of satellite launch services, and he co-produced the first and second annual Space Venturing Forum, an entrepreneurial event hosted by the National Space Society. He is also a Principal of the Space Angels Network. Within the Strategy group of Accenture he managed key strategy offerings and recommendations for Global 500 clients. He has been influential in multi-million dollar private equity deals and in assisting clients to strategically allocate large-scale investments. Amaresh holds an MBA degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and a B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology (Neurobiology) from the University of California at Berkeley.

Rich Pournelle, Senior Vice President of Business Development, NanoRacks
NanoRacks provides quality hardware and services for the U.S. National Laboratory onboard the International Space Station. Rich has been involved in commercial space for over ten years. Prior to NanoRacks, Rich worked for investment bank Near Earth helping aerospace companies raise capital. Rich spent eight years working at Mojave Spaceport as Director of Business Development for XCOR Aerospace. Rich served as Professional Staff for the Committee on House Administration where he helped create the THOMAS legislative information system. Rich holds a BA in Political Science from UCLA.
William Pomerantz, Vice President, Special Projects, Virgin Galactic
An explorer with a lifelong dedication to opening the space frontier. Will is the Vice President for Special Projects at Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, the world’s first space line. Virgin Galactic is building on the legacy of the award-winning SpaceShipOne, bringing a fleet of commercial spacecraft into service for private, civil, and scientific passengers. Will is a Trustee of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS), the world’s largest student space organization. Will and Diana both occasionally serve as coaches for ZERO-G, which operates weightless parabolic flights. To date, Will has logged more than 45 minutes of weightlessness.
Dr. Robert Richards, Co-founder and CEO, Moon Express
Dr. Robert (Bob) Richards is a space entrepreneur and futurist. He is a Co-Founder of the International Space University, Singularity University, SEDS, the Space Generation Foundation and he currently serves as CEO of Moon Express, Inc. (MoonEx), a privately funded lunar transportation and data services company. Bob is an evangelist of the “NewSpace” movement and has been a catalyst for a number of commercial space ventures. In 2005 Bob received a Doctorate of Space Achievement (honoris causa) from the International Space University for “distinguished accomplishments in support of humanity’s exploration and use of space.”

Al Tadros, Vice President, Civil and DoD Business, Space Systems/Loral
Al Tadros is Vice President of Civil and DoD Business at Space Systems/Loral (SS/L). In this role he is responsible for applying SS/L’s best value solutions to U.S. Government mission needs, developing and maintaining relationships with U.S. Government agencies and managing sales and marketing activities. Mr. Tadros has worked at SS/L for more than 20 years in increasingly responsible positions and has most recently helped to draw attention to the value commercial satellite technologies and system solutions bring to government missions.
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Affiliate Event - SVASE: Leveraging Corporate Partnerships & Investors
2011-08-04 18:00 - 20:30 | Cooley LLP, 3175 Hanover Street, Palo Alto, CA, 94304, United States
Affiliate Event: SVASE: Leveraging Corporate Partnerships & Investors

SVASE Main Event: Leveraging Corporate Partnerships & Investors, Co-hosted with GABA

A SVASE Event

Cooley LLP, 3175 Hanover Street, Palo Alto, CA 94304
Thursday, August 4, 2011
6-8:30 PM
http://www.svase.org/events/main-event-raising-capital-early-stage-technology-startups
Pre-registered Affiliates – $29

Learn about the key fundamentals of successful corporate investing programs, alliances and commercialization process from some of Silicon Valley’s leading Corporate Partnerships and Venture Funds. Looking for Corporate Venture Funding or Partnerships?

Panelists include Saleem Qadir, X.commerce, PayPal & eBay, Venu Pemmaraju, Intel Capital, David Hartwig, SAP, Anand Kamannavar, Applied Ventures, Moderated by Danielle Naftulin Reed, Cooley.

Beyond Bricks and Clicks: Smart Phones and Smart Shopping
2011-06-21 18:00 - 20:30 | Stanford University: S. Mark Taper Foundation Conference Center, Jacobson-Sorensen Hall, Munger Building 4, 554 Salvatierra Walk, Stanford, CA, United States
Beyond Bricks and Clicks: Smart Phones and Smart Shopping ***VIDEO AVAILABLE***

When

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshments
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q&A

Where

S. Mark Taper Foundation Conference Center
Jacobson-Sorensen Hall, Munger Building 4

554 Salvatierra Walk
Stanford University

Event Description:

Near Field Communications (NFC), Geo-location services, and augmented reality (AR) are disrupting the consumer shopping experience while increasing sales and margins for brick and mortar retailers.
Putting interested buyers in front of relevant shelves at local stores is a huge monetizable opportunity for mobile platforms. 400,000 new Android devices are enabled each day, 60-70M phones are shipping with NFC this year alone and 15% of Tier 1 retailers are integrating mobile e-commerce platforms. Come discover how start ups in mobile are making shopping a whole lot smarter.
The panel will discuss a whole host of challenges and opportunities in the mobile retail space including:

How does a 20% conversion-rate for brick and mortar retail stores, (compared to 3-5% max online) create an opportunity for new companies?

Will consumers welcome or fear new shopping features?

Does the type of product or the market impact the preferred buying experience?

In the world of augmented shopping via mobile devices, will we see a shift away from online commerce?

Is mainstream NFC penetration at critical mass yet? What other technologies will emerge to supplement the platform and empower elements of the ecosystem? What will be the impact on commerce?

Moderator and Panel:

Aaron Emigh, CTO and Co-Founder, Shopkick, Inc. (Presenter)
Nitzan Shaer, Managing Director and Founder of High Start Group (Moderator)

Bob Borchers, General Partner, Opus Capital
Ben Hedrington, Director of Web Strategy, Best Buy Co. Inc
Matt Weathers, VP Product, ShopSavvy

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BIO’s
Panelists:
Aaron Emigh, CTO and Co-Founder, Shopkick, Inc.

Aaron Emigh is the CTO and cofounder of Shopkick, Inc. He has also served as EVP and GM of Technology at Six Apart, CTO of Rojo Networks, Managing Director of Radix Labs, and CEO of CommerceFlow.
Aaron’s work spans mobile, social media, security, consumer internet, anti-spam, networking, storage, e-commerce, data compression, multimedia, vision, machine learning, and operating systems. He is a named inventor on over 70 issued and pending US patents, and has presented original research at numerous conferences and research colloquia, including RSA, APWG, DIMACS, TIPPI, SFECTF, ISSA, MAAWG, ITTC, and the AAAS.
Aaron is a member of the US Secret Service Electronic Crimes Task Force and the US-DHS Infosec Technology Transition Council, a Research Fellow of the Anti-Phishing Working Group, and a technical advisor to the Financial Services Technology Consortium.

Bob Borchers, General Partner, Opus Capital

A mobile and consumer marketing veteran with more than 20 years operating experience, Bob Borchers comes to Opus Capital from Apple, Inc where he served as Sr. Director of Worldwide Product Marketing for the iPhone. At Opus Borchers is focused on investments in mobile applications and services as well as adjacent opportunities in both hardware and software.
As part of the original iPhone team, Bob was instrumental in the development, launch and global expansion of the revolutionary iPhone, iPhone OS, App Store. While at Apple he also led the Nike+iPod partnership, expanded the iPod accessory ecosystem, and forged relationships with every major auto company to provide iPod integration.
Prior to Apple, Bob was Vice President of Marketing at FusionOne, a pioneer in creating and marketing mobility solutions. Bob also spent six years at Nokia where he co-founded and served as Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the Vertu business unit. Before his career in the mobile industry, Bob worked for Nike, Inc. in Beaverton, Oregon, where he led efforts in product and service personalization. He began his career doing research and development in prosthetics.
Bob holds a Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and a Masters Degree from a joint program between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Harvard Medical School in Health Sciences and Technology. He has more than 30 patents granted or pending.

Ben Hedrington, Director of Web Strategy, Best Buy Co. Inc

Ben Hedrington leads the mobile web businesses as part of Emerging Platforms at Best Buy.
Throughout his eight years at the company he continues to explore, discover and drive forward what is possible on the web in places where others could not yet see. His work made possible Best Buy’s early involvement in Mobile putting them in a leading position today for their mobile customers. With similar energy and vision, Ben saw a need to reinvent how a company can show up there for its customers: with the real people, voices and personalities inside the company creating an open web based tool in the process.
This led to his co-creation of Best Buy’s Twelpforce, two thousand plus Best Buy associates ready to help you on social media channels. Best Buy’s Twelpforce has been highly acclaimed and cataloged in a number of recent books.
Ben writes on occasion at buildcontext.com on web topics and trends.

Nitzan Shaer, Managing Director and Founder of High Start Group

Nitzan Shaer is the Managing Director and Founder of High Start Group, a consulting firm focused on helping startups and Fortune 500 companies define and launch breakthrough products. Nitzan holds a track record of successfully leading new product innovations at Skype, Microsoft, and multiple venture backed startups. He is frequently invited to speak on mobile commerce and how to drive consumer adoption of innovative products.
Prior to High Start Group, Nitzan founded and managed the Mobile Product Group at Skype, where he led the development and marketing efforts to enable Skype on mobile phones. Prior to Skype, Nitzan worked at Microsoft, where he managed the development of three emerging products in the Mobile and Embedded Division. Nitzan also led venture investments in his role as EIR at Flybridge Capital Partners, and served as Chief Operating Officer and Board Member at MOBIVOX, a consumer mobile startup.
Nitzan served as a Captain in the Israel Air Force and graduated first in his class from the Air Force Academy. He graduated summa cum laude with a BS in Engineering from Technion and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. Nitzan is currently a board member and investor in a number of startup companies

Matt Weathers, VP Product, ShopSavvy

Matt Weathers is VP Product for ShopSavvy. He is currently focused on strategies for user engagement and mobile commerce. Prior to joining ShopSavvy in January 2011, Matt led the product team at PayPal Mobile, where he built out its product suite for three business lines including P2P payments, eBay mobile checkout, and mobile ecommerce services. Matt also oversaw strategy planning for entering offline payments market with NFC. Before running PayPal Mobile, he worked in PayPal’s merchant services business on the first set of merchant integrations including Apple and Dell. Most recently, he led the product, design and research teams for the turnaround of eBay France. His team reversed a 30% declining market by introducing a new business line for local inventory. The local listings business was conceived and launched in 14 weeks, and added 1 million listings within 6 months—an eBay record. In his early career, Matt ran the telecommunications practice at G2 Research (acquired by Gartner) and engaged in mobile and Internet strategy projects at the McKenna Group. He cut his teeth on Product Management at WEGO Systems in the late ‘90’s which created social communities for publishers and corporations. Matt has an MBA from UC Berkeley and a double bachelor’s degree in Economics and International Relations with distinction from UCLA

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Energy Harvesting: Power Everywhere
2011-04-19 18:00 - 20:30 | Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School, Stanford, CA, United States
Energy Harvesting – Power Everywhere ***Video Available!***

Online registrations are now closed
A few tickets will be available at 6pm at the door depending on availability

When

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshments
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q&A

Where

Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Graduate School of Business

Event Description:

Three factors are reaching a tipping point to open up new vistas in Energy Harvesting: cheaper, smaller, long-lasting batteries; Super low power CPUs and digital signal processors; and innovations in the energy harvesting devices themselves. Benefits range from the convenience of eliminating wiring clutter and frequent battery replacement, to the enabling of new applications where prohibitive wiring or battery costs are avoided altogether.
The cost of finding and replacing batteries at frequent intervals for small devices such as wireless sensors and building & industrial controls is a challenge. Scavenging energy from the environment is becoming more attractive. There are over 500 products based on perpetually powered technologies ranging from simple light switches, which are powered by simply pressing the switch, to more complex devices that measure the integrity of the rotating blades on military helicopters. It is estimated that this segment of the market alone will yield an approximate $1.2B opportunity by 2014.
Growth in renewable energy itself will drive increased demand for energy storage capacity. Batteries represent about a $39B market, which will grow to $50B over the next five years; with rechargeable batteries leading the way. Energy harvesters are one approach in charging these batteries.
The military, security and aerospace industries with a projected market potential of over $1B, heavily rely on electronics that require field power where there are no convenient outlets for recharging batteries. In the battlefield soldiers use portable electronic systems, which can include communications equipment, thermal sights, night-vision goggles, GPS and portable or laptop computers. All of this equipment needs a lightweight and long lasting source of power. Our featured presenter shares exactly such a solution with us, with a product that harvests ambient energy generated by human motion.
Enhancing energy and power capacity in mobile and consumer devices may be the inflection point in guiding energy harvesting from a niche market into the mainstream “high volume” consumer market. Other possible use cases may include perpetually powered devices for monitoring traffic and road conditions, or sniffing out pesticides and other toxins. “Is there a new App for that?”
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The following companies will be demoing their exciting products at the event

Topics to be explored:

Applications beyond the wireless sensors
Business models to profitability
Will energy harvesting finally make smart cities a reality?

Moderator and Panel:

Rex Northen, Executive Director of the Cleantech Open (Moderator)
Yad Garcha, CEO, BionicPower (Presenter)
Robert Andosca, Founder & CTO, MicroGen Systems
Dr. Cyril Vancura, Investment Director, Robert Bosch Venture Capital
Dr. Ahmad Baghai Dowlatabadi, Founder & CEO, Aivaka
Nicholas Fowler, Chairman & CEO, Perpetua Power Source Technologies

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BIO’s
Moderator:
Rex Northen, Executive Director of the Cleantech Open

The Cleantech Open is the world’s largest clean technology business competition. As founder and CEO of technology companies in both Europe and the United States, Rex is an entrepreneur with a long history of building and managing technology companies and successful teams. He has worked with hundreds of diverse companies, ranging from startups to global corporations. Rex has led the Cleantech Open since January 2009, overseeing the growth of the California-based nonprofit from its Bay Area roots to a national organization with regional operations based in Silicon Valley, Seattle, Denver, Minneapolis and Boston. He has also directed the establishment of the Global Cleantech Open in partnership with the Kauffman Foundation. Northen holds an M.A. from the University of Oxford.

Presenter:
Yad Garcha, CEO, BionicPower

Yad Garcha is founder, director and CEO of Bionic Power. Mr. Garcha’s venture-capital background spans nearly two decades in the biotech, medical device, and pharmaceutical sectors. A former senior vice-president at GrowthWorks Capital, Mr. Garcha also worked at the Business Development Bank of Canada. As a VC, Mr. Garcha backed Angiotech, Anormed (sold to Genzyme) and Creo Products (sold to Kodak). Mr. Garcha earned a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology from the University of British Columbia, and an MBA from the University of Western Ontario.

Panelists:
Dr. Cyril Vančura, Investment Director, Robert Bosch Venture Capital

Cyril Vančura is an Investment Director at Venture Capital (RBVC) unit of Robert Bosch LLC based in Palo Alto. He focuses on finding investment opportunities for RBVC in North America, technical evaluations, and technical due diligence. Before joining RBVC, Cyril was at the Reseach and Technology Center of Robert Bosch in Palo Alto, where he worked on novel MEMS processes, power harvesting for autonomous systems, and photovoltaic technologies. Prior to this, Cyril conducted research in the field of CMOS-based MEMS sensors for biological and chemical applications during his Ph.D. thesis. Cyril holds a Ph.D. and a diploma (masters) in physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland.

Robert Andosca, Founder & CTO, MicroGen Systems

Mr. Robert Andosca (www.linkedin.com/in/randosca) is the Founder, President and CTO of MicroGen Systems, Inc., located in Ithaca, NY at the Cornell Business and Technology Park. MicroGen is developing a patent-pending MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) based piezoelectric vibrational energy harvester (PZEH) micro-power generator.

Mr. Andosca’s professional experience ranges from operational to technical management, business development, and the design and development of MEMS and semiconductor products. Mr. Andosca has held senior level positions at the Infotonics Technology Center, Lilliputian Systems, Umicore, Corning IntelliSense/IntelliSense, Clare Corporation and Lockheed Martin. Mr. Andosca will complete his Ph.D. on energy harvesting from The University of Vermont (UVM) in Materials Science (expected 2012). He holds an M.S. in Materials Science from UVM, and B.S. degrees in Mathematics/Physics from USNH, Keene State College.

Dr. Ahmad Baghai Dowlatabadi, Founder & CEO, Aivaka

Ahmad is the founder of Aivaka. He has over 20 years of experience in the field of analog, power management and RF systems. He has led research and product development activities in various areas in both large publicly traded and small private firms. Currently Ahmad and his team are focused on producing power management solutions for energy harvesting and ultra low-power electronic devices where efficiency is the most important criteria. He holds a Ph.D. from Georgia Tech, is a registered Professional Engineer (PE) in State of California, and is Senior Member of IEEE. He has been a member of various technical IEEE conferences and journals, and has been published in IEEE publications.
Nicholas Fowler, Chairman & CEO, Perpetua Power Source Technologies

Mr. Fowler is a technology veteran, entrepreneur, and angel investor. Spanning 25 years with Hewlett-Packard, Mr. Fowler managed global businesses, developed company strategies, and led the creation of major new businesses including notebook computers, PDAs, printing services, and Internet sales and support. Following his HP career, Mr. Fowler established Orion Ventures and Corvallis Venture Group, seed stage investment funds. Mr. Fowler is Chairman and CEO of Perpetua Power, a thermoelectric power startup; Executive Chairman of ZAPS Technologies, a spectrophotometric startup; and CEO of Advanced Material Recovery, innovator in membranes for energy storage and desalination. Mr. Fowler sits on the Boards of several businesses as well as charitable organizations. Mr. Fowler holds a B.A. in Economics and an M.S. in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management from Stanford University.

Online registrations are now closed
A few tickets will be available at 6pm at the door depending on availability

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Social TV: Broadcast Crowd Meets Cloud
2011-03-15 18:00 - 20:30 | Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School, Stanford, CA, United States
Social TV: Broadcast Crowd Meets Cloud ***VIDEO AVAILABLE***

When

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where

Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School

Event Description:
Social TV extends the experience of content with social networks across a new constellation of devices and platforms. Discover how entrepreneurs are accelerating the migration of TV from an isolated, a social single-screen experience to an increasingly interactive and social consumer experience while increasing values for advertisers.
Internet and mobile applications have made the world more social than ever before and TV is going through the same social transformation. The 2011 Superbowl is also known as the “Social Bowl”. Estimate is that two-thirds of the Superbowl viewers between 18~35 used a smart-phone to interact with the Ads.
While some say Connected-TV is the way of the future, others claim it’s destined for slow adoption. Connected-TV alone will not achieve the social experience consumers are seeking. Social TV seamlessly integrates content and social activities across TV, web, and mobile devices.
Come see how entrepreneurs are creating new breeds of applications offering creative ways to enhance user experience and attempting to monetize in the world of television entertainment.

MODERATOR

Michael T. Yang, Managing Director, Comcast Interactive Capital

PANEL

Greg Dudey, VP, Visual Displays UX Lab, Samsung Electronics
Itzik Cohen, Co-Founder & CEO, ClipSync
Sina Khelil, Founder & CEO, Vualla
Edgar Villalpando, Senior Vice President, ActiveVideo

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Registrations are now closed.

Predictive Analytics: The Consumer Crystal Ball
2011-02-15 18:30 - 20:30 | Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School, Stanford, CA, United States
Predictive Analytics: The Consumer Crystal Ball ***Video Available!***

When

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where

Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School

Event Description:
Whether you’re a wall street trader or Internet media buyer, knowledge is power. Engaged web users are now providing in-depth data about their actions and desires, powering a new generation of Predictive Analytics (PA).
Facebook, nearing 600 million active users, is the shining example of the meteoric rise of the engaged user. Through online engagement, users eagerly reveal more about themselves than slow old big-budget research studies could ever hope to uncover.
A new wave of PA start-ups are powered by social media, engaging brand awareness sites, on-line gamers, and always-on mobile web users. With APIs, platform providers create a virtuous circle – generating opportunities for start-ups and increasing the relevance of their platforms. Fueled by on-line ad spending approaching $50B, PA start-ups, their media buying customers, and venture capitalists are racing to discover the relevant insights which can predict users’ needs and next actions.

We will explore start-ups creating and marketing data about engaged users.
Will web properties with data about engaged users share the data gems?
What’s in it for the engaged user? How do they benefit?
What about the giants? (Legacy media, media buyers, giant ad firms, on-line retailers, on-line content providers)?

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MODERATOR

Michael E. Driscoll, Ph.D. – Chairman and Founder, Dataspora
PANEL

Omar Tawakol, Chief Executive Officer, Bluekai (Presenter)

Scott Burke, Senior Vice President, Yahoo!, User Data and Analytics

Matthew J. Barkoff, Vice President, Badgeville, Media & Entertainment

Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, Partner, Accel Partners

BIOS

MODERATOR
Michael E. Driscoll, Ph.D. – Chairman and Founder, Dataspora
Michael E. Driscoll has a decade of experience developing large-scale databases and data mining algorithms within industry, government, and academic institutions. He founded and until 2008 served on the board of CustomInk.com, an Inc. 500 online retailer. Michael has a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from Boston University and an A.B. from Harvard College.

PRESENTER
Omar Tawakol, Chief Executive Officer, Bluekai
As Chief Executive Officer at BlueKai, Omar is responsible for the overall management, growth, and vision for the company’s groundbreaking exchange business. Prior to founding BlueKai, Omar was the Chief Advertising Officer of Medio Systems, the leading provider of mobile search and advertising solutions for carriers such asVerizon and TMobile. Before Medio, at Revenue Science, has Chief Marketing Officer and General Manager, he led the company’s behavioral targeting businesses, providing services for many of the largest Internet publishers. At Revenue Science, he actively engaged key industry leaders in defining standards for behavioral targeting.

Omar earned his Master of Computer Science and Industrial Engineering degrees from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Engineering degree from MIT. While at Stanford, he was a computer science researcher at both the Stanford Logic Group and HP Software Labs. Omar’s research on formalizing content was published in the American Association of Artificial Intelligence. Omar is also an active speaker and commentator on topics such as behavioral targeting, mobile advertising, and consumerprivacy. He was listed in Media Magazine’s Media 100 for 2008.

PANELISTS
Scott Burke, Senior Vice President, Yahoo!, User Data and Analytics
Scott Burke’s User Data and Analytics group at Yahoo!, is responsible for company-wide consumer and advertiser analytics. At Yahoo!, analytics drive decision-making, iterative experimentation, and thought leadership. Yahoo! analyzes petabytes of data on a continuous basis to generate information, knowledge, and insights for Yahoo!’s industry-leading consumer and advertiser experiences.
In five years at Yahoo! Burke has led marketplace engineering; and the content and video platform organizations. Before Yahoo!, Burke was VP of engineering at PacketHop which commercialized mobile mesh networking applications for public safety. He led application services at SEVEN, an enterprise wireless company serving the world’s top mobile operators. He was CTO and VP of engineering at WebMD leading infrastructure teams for the premier consumer health portal. Burke started as a computational physicist at Hewlett-Packard and holds a BS in physics and computers from Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California.

Matthew J. Barkoff, Vice President, Badgeville, Media & Entertainment

Matthew Barkoff joined Badgeville as VP Sales, Media and Entertainment where he is responsible for driving new business strategy and managing Media and Entertainment. With over 15 years of experience in start-up enterprise and SaaS technology companies, Matthew is working to help media companies drive engagement on websites and mobile using social loyalty techniques.
Before joining Badgeville, Matthew was Vice President of Sales, Media & Entertainment at Clickability, where he led the team to 20x revenue growth. He has served in various business executive management positions at 7 start-ups including Cadabra Inc. (acquired by Overture in 2000 (formerly GoTo.com)) where he was Director of Business & Corporate Development, and Netmosphere (acquired by Critical Path in 1999) where he was Director of Enterprise Sales.
Matthew graduated from UC Davis in 1995 with a degree in Economics and a minor in Computer Science. He was part of a two year program called the Sacramento Entrepreneurship Academy, where he discovered his passion of start-ups, and what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.

Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, Partner, Accel Partners

Theresia focuses on internet and software investments with specific interest in social commerce, vertical media, security and consumer internet/mobile apps.Theresia was responsible for Accel’s investments which have had successful acquisition or IPO exits including AdECN (MSFT), CRS Retail Systems (EPIC), Interlace Systems (ORCL), PeopleSupport (PSPT), Xoopit (YHOO) and Zimbra (YHOO); and was part of the Walmart.com (WMT) investment team. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of several private companies in the both the consumer internet (Glam Media, LearnVest, ModCloth, Trulia) and security sectors (Imperva, TRUSTe, Webroot).

Prior to Accel Partners, she was founding VP of Business Development & Sales at Release Software, a venture-backed company whose products enabled digital rights management and payment technologies for software. Earlier, she was a management consultant at Bain & Company and a product manager at Silicon Graphics.
Theresia serves as a Trustee on Brown University’s Corporation Board, on the board of DonorsChoose.org and as a member of Stanford’s DAPER Investment Fund. She holds an Sc.B. in Engineering from Brown University, magna cum laude, and an M.B.A. from Stanford University. She is also a board member of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).

Theresia has contributed to Fortune.com, appeared on CNBC’s Women in Power series, Venture Capitalist Superstar. Read Theresia’s presentations and articles: an overview presentation on Accel’s Digital Media Portfolio, a profile of Theresia from The new Valley Girls article in Fortune Magazine, her opinion piece for Fortune.com, and a NY Times Article about the Accel Growth Fund.

This event is sold out. Registrations are now closed.

Please click here to log into your VLAB account before registering

Entrepreneurs: Uncensored - Legal Series 3
2011-01-25 18:00 - 20:30 | SNR Denton, 1530 Page Mill Road, Suite 200, Palo Alto, CA, 94304-1125, United States
VLAB and SNR Denton present Entrepreneurs Uncensored – Legal Series! **SOLD OUT**
Speaker Series 3 – Start-Up Capital – Best Practices for Funding New Ventures **SOLD OUT**

When
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
6:00PM to 7:00PM – Registration and Networking
7:00PM to 8:15PM – Main Event
Where

SNR Denton
1530 Page Mill Rd.
Suite 200
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1125

Event Description:
This three part series provides entrepreneurs business, tactical and legal education. Presented by experienced industry CEOs, venture capitalists and lawyers, the series will offer insights on cutting-edge issues faced by entrepreneurs today.
Series 3: Start-Up Capital – Best Practices for Funding New Ventures
So you have the next killer idea. Raising start-up capital could be the difference between serving a handful of customers versus millions of customers. But raising startup capital is so daunting! Luckily today, there are many options for funding startups, but finding and securing “smart money” takes diligent research, good negotiating skills, and, above all, an unflagging commitment to launching your new business.

Come join us as our experienced panel guides you on the key factors that matter when it comes to raising capital. When is the right time to raise venture capital? Which type of investor is best suited for your startup: angels, venture capitalists, strategic investors, potential partners, other investment sources? How should you position your business vis-à-vis each capital source? What can you do to make your company stand out from the crowd? Which investor(s) should you choose? Interact with a panel of VCs, angels and attorneys to discuss the best practices for each role to contribute to the success of your startup.

Moderator

Daniel Zimmermann, Partner, SNR-Denton
Speakers
Sergio Monsalve, Principal, Norwest Venture Partners
Dror Berman, Innovation Endeavors
John Ricci, CEO, US Angels Investors

For any questions, please email ebf@vlab.org

This event is COMPLETELY SOLD OUT.

NO ticket can be sold at the door.

Vision Computing: The Eyes of the Machine
2011-01-18 18:00 - 20:30 | Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School, Stanford, CA, United States
Vision Computing – The Eyes of the Machine

When

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011
6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where

Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School

Event Description:
More than a third of the human brain’s energy is dedicated to visual processing. Images are our primary medium for the perception of the world and our eyes have been the only means of interpreting these images.
Today’s search engines are incapable of searches using images instead they sift through mountains of text to recognize key terms. With the advent of computer vision algorithms, faster computing and prevalence of digital cameras, visual perception using computers is now possible. These technologies propel the search market into advanced image and video based searches enabling more meaningful discovery of rich content.
Breakthroughs in the ability to recognize shapes such as faces, emotions and places from mere image pixels are becoming a reality in our modern lives. Microsoft’s XBOX Kinect is a significant first step in that direction.
The text based web search and aggregation is a multi-billion dollar industry, it is only a matter of time when the rich media search embarks on this wagon. Discover how entrepreneurs are leveraging their complex mathematical computer vision know-how into highly profitable business models that will bring about new ways to discover, organize information and bring about the next wave of advanced computing and machine learning.
Come join us at the next VLAB event as we analyze, interpret and discuss along the following questions

Will visual computing simply make it possible to process more content or will it create a new paradigm for how we search?
Who are market leaders in this space who are changing the dynamics of the vision computing?
Could the agile startups outrun the giant corporations to the next prize in computing?
What are the security concerns with collecting and interpreting personal information such as facial features? Is there a scope for careful anonymity?

MODERATOR
Ezra Roizen, Ackrell Partners
Ezra Roizen is a partner with Ackrell Capital, a boutique investment bank, where he focuses on advising emerging digital businesses on matters of M&A, financing and corporate strategy. Previously Ezra was a Vice President with Rutberg & Company, a mobile and digital media focused investment bank. Ezra has co-founded two technology companies: Montclare Technologies, Inc., an Internet consulting and development firm where he was the CEO and Convoy Corporation (now part of Sybase) where he was the Director of Business Development. Ezra has also served as the Vice President of Business and Product development for Aircraft Technical Publishers, an aviation information services provider. Ezra is frequent speaker and emcee at technology conferences and is the co-host of Vator Box a show on emerging companies on VatorNews.com. Ezra holds an M.B.A. from a combined program of Columbia University’s Columbia Business School (where he earned beta gamma sigma honors) and the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business (where he earned a Haas community service fellowship). He also holds a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, Davis (with Minors in English and History). Ezra is the Chair of the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Alumni Relations Council. You can see Ezra’s full LinkedIn profile here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/roizen

PRESENTER
Laurent Gil, CEO of Viewdle
As CEO of Viewdle, Laurent leads the company’s technology, marketing, business, and corporate development strategy. Prior to Viewdle, Laurent spent over five years in investment banking as a senior investment banker in corporate finance and capital markets at the French investment bank Credit Agricole. During his MBA at Wharton, Laurent helped establish a boutique investment bank in Brazil, which completed large transactions in the telecom sector in Latin America. He co-founded and served as CFO of TAHO, a wireless internet service provider in Rio de Janeiro, which raised U.S. $10M in 2001 to develop a broadband wireless internet network in Latin America. Before leaving Brazil, he co-created IdeaValley, the leading provider of electronic paper in Latin America. Most recently, Laurent spent two years in West Africa deploying wireless networks in high schools, for a non-profit organization he founded.

PANELISTS
Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Assistant Professor, Director of Vision Lab, Stanford University
Fei-Fei Li is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department, at Stanford University, where she is the Director of the Vision Lab. Her areas of interest include Computer Vision — representation, learning, and recognition of objects, scenes, and events in static images and dynamic video sequences, and Human Vision – the use of psychophysics and neurophysiology tools to understand the underlying neural mechanisms of high-level visual perception. She previously held the role of Assistant Professor at Princeton University and the University of Illionois, Urban-Champaign. Fei-Fei has received numerous awards including the Stanford Terman Fellowship, Google Research Award, and Microsoft New Research Faculty Fellowship. She received her PhD in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology, and her BA in Physics from Princeton University. Notably, Fei-Fei spent a year in 1999-2000 doing Tibetan medical research.
Eghosa Omoigui, Founder & Partner, Echo Ventures
Eghosa Omoigui is founder and managing partner of EchoVC Partners, a new San Francisco Bay-based early stage venture capital firm that focuses on making investments in innovative technology startups across the globe. Prior to this, Eghosa was with Intel for nearly 10 years and his last role was as Director, Strategic Investments, Consumer Internet & Semantic Technologies. In the latter role, he acted as a senior investment professional in the world’s largest stage-agnostic technology venture capital organization, focused on platform-agnostic web services and digital media-based investment opportunities in the consumer internet. Due to a 10+ year passion for all things semweb/semtech/data, Eghosa also drove Intel Capital’s investment focus on next generation semantic technologies and the real-time web. Representative investments include Retailigence, Stipple, SpeakerText, Inflatable Spaces, Betaworks, Sense Networks, Voxify, Yatra, BuzzInTown, Cerebra, SmartZip and TextDigger (acquired by Federated Media).
Prior to joining Intel, Omoigui worked in several start-ups in senior management positions and has variegated experience as a corporate and securities law firm lawyer, in-house counsel and turnarounds/restructuring advisor. Eghosa attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College and has been admitted to the Bar in Nigeria, New York and Oregon . Eghosa lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his 3 kids, a miniature poodle and a supersized german shepherd.
Munjal Shah, Google, Founder of Like.com
Munjal Shah is Co-founder and CEO of Riya Inc (makers of Like.com). Together with Burak Gokturk, he co-founded the company in August of 2004. Munjal is a serial entrepreneur who focuses on building companies from zero to millions in revenue. Prior to Riya he was co-founder and CEO of Andale Inc, a provider of software to eBay merchants. While he was CEO, Andale grew from 0 to double digit millions in revenue. Prior to Andale, Baan, IBM, and a startup called Blaxxun Interactive. Munjal started his career in artificial intelligence, writing software for Agouron Pharmaceuticals that predicted the efficacy of anti-HIV drugs. Like.com was acquired by Google.
BusinessWeek declared Munjal one of the Top 10 up and coming CEOs in 2001. Munjal sits on the advisor board to a number of very early stage startups including: Yousendit, Auyptima (sold to Oracle), Pubmatic, and MesmoTV. He is a charter member of TIE (The Indus Entrepreneur) in Bangalore and writes a blog sharing his experiences as an entrepreneur herehttp://munjal.typepad.com. He received his Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University and his Bachelors in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego.
Dr. Eitan Sharon, CTO and Co-Founder of VideoSurf
Dr. Eitan Sharon, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer for VideoSurf, is leading the company’s innovative computer vision and search technology. He took a leave of absence from the tenure-track Assistant Professorship he held between 2005 and 2007 at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in order to lead VideoSurf’s technology team. Dr. Sharon received his B.Sc. in mathematics from Tel-Aviv University in 1995 and his Ph.D. in computer science and applied mathematics from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2002. From 2003 to 2004 Dr. Sharon was a Visiting Research Associate at Brown University in the Division of Applied Mathematics. He then went on to hold postdoctoral fellowships at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley and University of California, Los-Angeles
Online registrations are now closed.
Tickets will be available for purchase at the venue.

VLAB Innovation: "Out of the Labs" Holiday Party
2010-12-07 18:00 - 20:30 | Autodesk Gallery, The Landmark Building, One Market Street, 2F, San Francisco, CA, United States
VLAB Innovation – “Out of the Labs” Holiday Party **SOLD OUT**
Immerse yourself in the bleeding edge of technology and spend an evening with scientists from the Valley’s elite research labs and discover the next wave of innovations waiting to be commercialized by passionate entrepreneurs.

When

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010
6:00pm – 8:30pm

Where

Autodesk Gallery
The Landmark Building, 2nd Floor
One Market, San Francisco, CA
Map
** Recommendation **
Enter The Landmark Building from Market Street and use the first lobby of elevators to come up to the 2nd floor. There will be NO event signage on the 1st floor.

Event Description
Networking can be a drag so we’re doing something a little different. Come join us at the award winning beautiful Autodesk Gallery, a space filled with inspiration and innovation to meet people who are actually interested in talking about what you want to talk about — not just awkward small talk.
We’re bringing the best and brightest scientists from Silicon Valley labs and having small group discussions that will be facilitated by our evening’s host who will focus the topics discussed by each group . Topics will be based on VLAB’s events in 2010, including cleantech, mobile, and more.
Once you’ve met the scientist or business person of your entrepreneurial dreams, wander over and connect with VLAB’s extensive network of venture capital advisors and supporters from VC firms around the world.
VCs attending include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Canaan Partners, Partech International, The Halo Fund, BlueRun Ventures, Austral Capital Partners, iGlobe Partners, and more.
In a discussion led by Richard G. Caro, Founder and CEO, TangibleFuture Inc, some of the elite researchers and top executives from premier research labs such as PARC Research, SRI International and Lawrence Livermore Labs discuss & present cutting edge technologies developed in their labs.

A Word From Our Sponsors:
There will be plenty of hors d’oeuvres and wine from Marita’s Vineyard.

In addition, Ancien Wines and Farella-Park will provide white wines.

We’re piloting a new networking tool provided by Presdo Match (from the creators of LinkedIn). Please be sure to opt-in during your ticket purchase and RSVP. Enhance your experience at the event. We’d love your feedback at sponsorship@vlab.org

Moderator

Richard G. Caro, Founder and CEO, TangibleFuture, Inc.
Dr. Richard G. Caro is founder & CEO of TangibleFuture, Inc., where he helps managers and entrepreneurs create and grow businesses based on innovative science and technology — in fields such as life sciences, communications, and cleantech. He is also founding member of Acceleration Co-op, a global “expert crowd”; and an angel investor.
Prior roles include Managing Director at RHK, a provider of advisory services to the communications industry; CEO (founder) of Vital Insite, a venture-backed, medical device start-up developing noninvasive monitoring products; and CTO of Summit Technology, a pioneer in the laser refractive surgery (LASIK) business. Before entering industry, he was a member of the research staff at Stanford University.
Richard has been responsible for the development of a number of successful products and has 23 issued patents. He received a B.Sc. degree from Melbourne University, Australia, and a D.Phil. in experimental physics from Oxford University — where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
Presenters
SRI International

Silicon Valley-based SRI International is one of the world’s leading independent research and technology development organizations. SRI, which was founded by Stanford University as Stanford Research Institute in 1946 and became independent in 1970, has been meeting the strategic needs of clients and partners for more than 60 years. Perhaps best known for its invention of the computer mouse and interactive computing, SRI has also been responsible for major advances in networking and communications, robotics, drug discovery and development, advanced materials, atmospheric research, education research, economic development, national security, and more. The nonprofit institute performs sponsored research and development for government agencies, businesses, and foundations. SRI also licenses its technologies, forms strategic alliances, and creates spin-off companies.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory(LLNL) is a Department of Energy National Laboratory under contract to Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. With an annual budget of approximately $1.5B, LLNL performs research and development in nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship, nuclear nonproliferation, detection systems for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction, and inertial confinement fusion research in the National Ignition Facility, the world’s largest and most powerful laser system. Large scale simulation and experimental science are at the core of LLNL’s capability. This research has yielded significant benefit to the US economy. LLNL has a strong history of entrepreneurial activity ranging from computer codes such as DYNA3D, commercialized as LSDYNA by Livermore Software Technology Corporation, which has revolutionized the field of automobile crash simulation saving the industry $Billions, to rapid PCR commercialized by Cepheid, and which currently monitors the US mail for “anthrax letters”. Literally hundreds of commercial products have sprung from LLNL intellectual property with annual sales of those products exceeding $400M.
PARC

A premier center for commercial innovation, PARC, a Xerox company, is in the business of breakthroughs. We work closely with global enterprises, entrepreneurs, government agencies and partners, and other clients to invent, co-develop, and bring to market game-changing innovations by combining imagination, investigation, and return on investment for our clients.
For 40 years, we have lived at the leading edge of innovation, merging inquiry and strategy to pioneer technological change. PARC was incorporated in 2002 as a wholly owned independent subsidiary of Xerox Corporation – enabling us to continue pioneering technological change but across a broader set of industries and clients today.
Companies around the world come to PARC so they can see their opportunities become reality… and generate revenue. They value us for our scientific rigor, industry knowledge, proven track record, IP portfolio, and comprehensive research and prototyping facilities – resources found nowhere else in a single organization – so they can accelerate their time to market, reduce risk, and build new revenue streams with lasting competitive advantage.

Get ready to do some great Event Networking at VLAB!

See who’s attending > Request to meet > Exchange messages >

Schedule times to meet one-on-one at the event

Created by the creators of LinkedIn, Presdo Match is an innovative networking service, event networking 2.0. Meet the attendees easily and securely…entrepreneurs, investors and industry experts
Look for a welcome email in your Inbox to begin…

BART
The BART Embarcadero station is a 2-min walk from The Landmark Building and Autodesk Gallery. Four of the five BART lines serve the Embarcadero station, so getting there and back is a breeze. BART stations provide free parking after 3p, so find the station that is closest to you at www.bart.gov.Then, ride BART.
CARPOOL
Zimride.com provides an easy online tool already customized for our VLAB Holiday Party, where you can schedule to receive or give rides to the event. Check out this option at http://bit.ly/a11SD3.
PARKING
Google Maps show several parking options. http://bit.ly/cAa9Dy. Prices vary.
Some samples include:

Rincon Center, 121 Spear Street, SFO

Evening rate (5p to 12a, weekday)
$10.00 regardless of length

Embarcadero Center, 3 Embarcadero Center, SFO

Evening rate (5p to 12a, weekday)
$3.00 / hour

75 Howard Garage, 75 Howard Street, SFO

Evening rate (4p to 11p, weekday)
$8.00 regardless of length

De-Classifying Education: How Entrepreneurs Are Expanding the Boundaries of Global Learning Beyond the Classroom
2010-11-16 18:00 - 20:30 | Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School, Stanford, CA, United States
De-Classifying Education **Video Available**
How entrepreneurs are expanding the boundaries of global learning beyond the classroom

When

Tuesday, November 16, 2010
6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where

Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School

Event Description:
The best education has traditionally been reserved for the elite, but the advancements in technology promise to break down the barriers to knowledge. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics – in 1996, about two-thirds of public schools had Internet access and by 2003 even least funded schools could boast near universal access to the Internet.Entrepreneurs are introducing platforms for social networks, user-focused learning, and real-time participation. Many of these innovators believe they may have the “golden goose” of education which allows structured information to be better disseminated. As the VC’s are seeking profit in higher institutions and abandoning K-12 to government grants and well-known philanthropists, these renegade entrepreneurs are walking away with some healthy profits.
Meet these visionary entrepreneurs who are creating a brighter tomorrow by leveraging today’s technology as they address questions such as

Can programs initially funded by grants establish strong enough business models to make them sustainable and ultimately profitable?
Can online education be as engaging as the physical classroom?
Are these claims a new line of the “same old rhetoric” or will entrepreneurs be able to change a seemingly “hopeless” industry and finally be able to make lasting changes
How to be profitable while revolutionizing the field of education?

On November 16, we will convene a panel of education entrepreneurs, visionaries, and established defenders of the status quo to discuss disruptive innovations in education.

MODERATOR

Lisa Petrides, President and Founder of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education

Lisa Petrides, Ph.D. is president and founder of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (www.iskme.org) an independent, nonprofit research institute in Half Moon Bay, CA, that conducts social science research in education, develops research-based innovations, and facilitates field building to improve knowledge sharing. Petrides has led research that contributes to the ways in which those in both K-20 formal and informal education foster the creation and sharing of information, apply it to well-defined problems, and create knowledge-driven environments focused on improved learning and organizational success. She also brings extensive experience as an innovator working at the forefront of understanding how developments in open source, social networking, resource use, and social media can impact—and already have impacted—educational practice and policy. This includes the creation of OER Commons (www.oercommons.org), an open source teaching and learning network that supports and facilitates the creation, sharing, and modification of open educational resources. Dr. Petrides is a former visiting scholar at Stanford University and professor in the Department of Organization and Leadership at Columbia University, Teachers College. She received a Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University and an MBA from Sonoma State University, and was a postdoctoral fellow in Educational Policy Research Division at Educational Testing Service. Petrides is widely published and has given many keynote addresses.

PRESENTER

Osman Rashid, CEO and Co-Founder, Kno, Inc.Osman Rashid, is a serial entrepreneur and pioneer in education technology. His first foray into this market was in 2003 with Chegg.com,the leading online textbook rental service, as its co-founder, founding CEO and remains its chairman. In 2009, Rashid co-founded and became the CEO of Kno, Inc., Kno.com. Kno is a digital textbook tablet and education platform launched in June 2010. Previously, he held founder and executive roles at software companies. Osman received the 2009 Ernst& Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Rashid received his BS in electrical engineering from University of Minnesota and originates from Pakistan. Osman is married to Renee and they have two daughters who will go to college and learn everything there is to know, on the Kno.

PANELISTS

Salman Khan, Founder of Khan Academy

Salman (Sal) Khan is the founder and faculty of the Khan Academy–a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Most known for its collection of over 2000 videos produced by Sal, which are now the most used video education resource on the Internet (over 1.1 million unique visitors this past month), the Khan Academy also offers software for practice and assessment and has developed into a full virtual school. Salman was recently profiled in Fortune Magazine as “Bill Gates’ Favorite Teacher” and the Khan Academy now has the Bill and Melinda Gates as their primary funder. As part of the 10^100 initiative to fund ideas that will change the world, Google recently awarded the Khan Academy $2 million to translate the content into the world’s major languages and further build out the virtual school. Prior to starting the Khan Academy, Sal worked as a senior analyst for two Bay Area hedge funds. Sal has an MBA from Harvard Business School. He also has three degrees from MIT: an M.Eng. and B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science and a B.S. in mathematics.

Glen Moriarty, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder NIXTY

Glen Moriarty, chief executive officer, brings educational and marketing expertise gained over years of service in the academic and software industries. Moriarty is responsible for the strategy, direction, and growth of NIXTY. He co-founded Scholar360 (now Edvance360) in 2005 and grew the company into a leading provider of elearning software and services. He wanted to something truly disruptive, so along with his co-founders, he launched NIXTY. NIXTY combines powerful technology with open education to meet the outrageous goal of empowering education for everyone. Moriarty believes that the future of education will be transformed through collaboration, technology, and globalization. He lives with his wife, Nicole, and their three children Colin, Madeleine, and Avery in Virginia Beach, VA.
Philip Bronner, Novak Biddle Venture Partners

Philip Bronner joined Novak Biddle Venture Partners in 1999 and is focused on investments in information technology. Prior to joining Novak Biddle he founded a media technology company. In addition, he served as a management consultant with McKinsey & Co. in New York advising high-tech clients on corporate strategy and worked as a software engineer at IBM. Phil earned a BS in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University; a Juris Doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Law; and a Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Phil currently serves on the Alumni Advisory Board for Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science and is a board member for In2Books, a Washington, DC-based reading and literacy program.

Entrepreneurs: Uncensored - Legal Series 2
2010-10-26 18:00 - 20:30 | SNR Denton, 1530 Page Mill Road, Suite 200, Palo Alto, CA, 94304-1125, United States
VLAB and SNR Denton present Entrepreneurs Uncensored – Legal Series!
Speaker Series 2 – ‘Internet Security for Startups: Enforcement and Compliance.’ Presented by John P. Tomaszewski, Shane McGee, Tarique Mustafa, Matthew Prince and Ethan Kurzweil

When
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
6:00PM to 7:00PM – Registration and Networking
7:00PM to 8:15PM – Main Event
Where

SNR Denton
1530 Page Mill Rd.
Suite 200
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1125

Event Description:
This three part series provides entrepreneurs business, tactical and legal education. Presented by experienced industry CEOs, venture capitalists and lawyers, the series will offer insights on cutting-edge issues faced by entrepreneurs today.
Series 2: Internet Security for Startups: Enforcement and Compliance
If your startup transmits, handles, or stores sensitive information using the Internet, do you know the rules and industry standards around how you must collect, use, protect, disclose and manage that information? On the compliance side, what are the requirements for content protection, incident response, breach notification, privacy, and records management related to personally identifiable information? Do your colleagues know the best practices to protect your intellectual property?
Panelists from an online security company, a global law firm and a major venture capital fund will answer these questions. You will get advice on the issues surrounding transmitting and storing personally identifiable information, user-generated content, intellectual property, and other types of content.

REGISTER NOW!

Moderator

* John P. Tomaszewski, General Counsel, TRUSTe
Speakers
* Ethan Kurzweil, Vice President, Bessemer Venture Partners
* Tarique Mustafa, Founder/CEO/Chairman, nexTier Networks
* Shane McGee, Partner, SNR Denton
* Matthew Prince, CEO & Co-Founder, CloudFlare
For any questions, please email ebf@vlab.org

Get ready to do some great networking at VLAB!

See who’s attending > Request to meet > Exchange messages >
Schedule times to meet one-on-one at the event

Created by the creators of LinkedIn, Presdo Match is an innovative networking service, event networking 2.0. Meet the attendees easily and securely…entrepreneurs, investors and industry experts

Look for a welcome message in your Inbox “from: Presdo Match” and activate the service to start power networking.

We look forward to seeing you at SNR Denton!
Service provided by

Detailed Bios
John P. Tomaszewski, General Counsel, TRUSTe

John is responsible for all of TRUSTe’s legal affairs and for providing legal and business counsel to the Chief Executive Officer and the Board of Directors. He also ensures that the organization’s online safety programs are built on a strong legal framework. John makes certain that TRUSTe’s enforcement and compliance efforts are thorough, transparent, and defensible.
Prior to joining TRUSTe, while in private practice, John served as Chief Privacy Officer of CheckFree Corporation (now Fiserv) and has provided advice to companies on secure eCommerce. He frequently lectures on secure e-commerce and public key infrastructure (PKI). John graduated from St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas, where he was the solicitations editor of the Law Journal. He completed his undergraduate work at the University of Texas, Austin.
Shane McGee, Partner, SNR Denton
Shane is a partner in the Internet and Data Protection practice of SNR Denton’s Washington, DC office. Shane also manages investigations, computer forensics and Denton’s electronic discovery lab to help his clients respond to discovery requests and subpoenas. He helps clients create, implement, and maintain programs to protect intellectual property and litigates against infringers.
Shane counsels clients on issues involving information technology systems and the Internet, including incident prevention and response; identifying and mitigating liability for unsecured systems; and regulatory compliance. Shane’s experience includes auditing websites and other information portals; responding to FTC inquiries regarding companies’ privacy policies and practices; and negotiating settlements for alleged violations of privacy policies.
He received his J.D. from the University of Cincinnati where he was a student articles editor for the University of Cincinnati Law Review. Shane has served on the International Trademark Association’s (INTA) Special Committee on the Internet and Meetings Committee.
Ethan Kurzweil, Vice President, Bessemer Venture Partners
Ethan Kurzweil focuses on consumer-Internet, Internet-services, mobile and Web-technology investments. Ethan managed Bessemer’s investments in Playdom (acquired by Disney), Zoosk, Crowdflower, ReputationDefender and Goodmail. He is a board observer for those companies as well as for Smule, Billshrink, Delivery Agent, MashLogic and Nominum. He is on the board of OpenCandy and Mailrank, an internal BVP incubation.
Prior to joining Bessemer, Ethan worked at Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life. He held positions at Dow Jones & Co., culminating in identifying and launching new business ventures. He also managed the turnaround of the international editions of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones’ acquisition of Factiva.
Ethan earned an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School and a BA in economics from Stanford University. While an undergraduate, Ethan co-founded S-S-B Technologies (now SSB-Bart Group), a provider of software and services that make the Web accessible to users with disabilities, and served as founding director of business development.
Tarique Mustafa, Founder/CEO/Chairman, nexTierNetworks
Previous to nexTier Networks, Tarique founded Network Utilities that built a wireless infrastructure and security platform. Tarique was the CTO of Andes Networks that offered a SSL Security Appliance that was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2003. Most recently, Tarique served as Principal Architect at Nevis Networks where he was responsible for building next generation Security Monitoring and Security Event Correlation technology for Intrusion Detection/Prevention (IDS/IPS) and SSL/IPSec.
Tarique has held key technical positions with Symantec, DHL Airways, MCI WorldCom and EDS. Tarique has several patents pending and has published many research publications in areas of computer and network security, software architecture and database technologies.
Tarique holds master’s degrees in Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Southern California (USC) and was awarded the Rotary International Scholarship for Computer Science studies from USC based on his doctoral studies in Computer Science.
Matthew Prince, CEO & Co-Founder, CloudFlare
Matthew wrote his first computer program when he was 7, and hasn’t been able to shake the bug since. After attending the University of Chicago Law School, he worked as an attorney for one day before jumping at the opportunity to be a founding member of a tech startup. He hasn’t looked back. CloudFlare is Matthew’s third entrepreneurial venture. On the side, Matthew teaches Internet law as an adjunct professor, and is a certified ski instructor and regular attendee of the Sundance Film Festival.
Matthew holds a degree in English and Computer Science from Trinity College. He graduated with highest honors from the Harvard Business School where he was a George F. Baker Scholar and was awarded the Dubliner Prize for Entrepreneurship. He earned a JD from the University of Chicago and is a member of the Illinois Bar. He teaches technology law as an adjunct professor at the John Marshall Law School where he serves on the Board of Advisors for the Center for Information Technology and Privacy Law. He is also the co-founder of Project Honey Pot, an open source community of more than 100,000 web administrators tracking online fraud and abuse.

For any questions, please email ebf@vlab.org
REGISTER NOW!
Please click here to log into your VLAB account before registering

Blue Tech: Is Water's Dry Spell Over?
2010-10-19 18:00 - 20:30 | Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School, Stanford, CA, United States
Blue Tech: Is Water’s Dry Spell Over? **Video Available**
An exclusive event hosted by MIT/Stanford Venture Lab and Imagine H20

When

Tuesday, October 19, 2010
6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where

Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School

Event Description:
Current water technologies are not effectively delivering what is needed by the world: more water, cleaner water, at lower cost and less energy. Evidence continues to build that an increasing number of places need more useable water. Entrepreneurs and their new, more effective technologies are poised to disrupt the status quo, to help provide relief from a growing water crisis in some places.

The world’s population
tripled between 1900 and 2000
; water use grew six fold. World demand for water will likely continue to outpace population growth creating a rare, explosive opportunity for entrepreneurs; experts predict the human population will grow 25% to 7.5 billion by 2020. Consider what that will do to the world’s need for water. Entrepreneurs are needed and many are already seeing opportunities in this worldwide, growing market. And, the lessons shared at the event can help others facing similar large-scale challenges in areas such as energy.Please join us for a fresh look at water, the next big focus in cleantech.

Topics to Be Explored:

Why are there so few VC investments in water given the demonstrated need for new solutions?
Are there opportunities for IT to play a bigger role in water?
Where and what are the biggest opportunities in water for entrepreneurs?
What can cleantech entrepreneurs learn from water start-ups?

Moderator

Susan Leal, Harvard University, Senior Fellow; Co-author of “Running out of Water”

Presenter* & Panelists

David Stanton*, APTwater, CEO & President
Aaron H. Mandell, Oasys Water, Co-Founder, CEO and President
Lee Ng, PhD., Siemens Technology-to-Business Center, Director of Venture Technology
Chris Berkner, PureSense, Chief Executive Officer

Online Registration is Closed. Additional Tickets available at the door!

Learn more about
Imagine H20
EVENT SPONSOR: Economist Intelligence Unit

MODERATOR

Susan Leal, Harvard University, Senior Fellow; Co-author of “Running out of Water”
Leal has just completed a book exploring the solutions to the world’s impending water crisis. She co-authored the book with Harvard’s Engineering Professor Peter Rogers. They combine their managerial and academic backgrounds to provide their prescription for the crisis. The book Running Out of Water (published by Macmillan) was released in late August 2010.Prior to the fellowship, Leal ran the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC). The SFPUC delivers water to 2.5 million customers in the San Francisco Bay Area and also provides hydroelectric and clean renewable power to the Bay Area and California Central Valley communities.
Leal earned a B.A. in economics and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a member of the District of Columbia bar, the Advisory Board of the Department Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley and is an Associate of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard.

PRESENTER

David Stanton, APTwater, CEO & President
Mr. Stanton joined APTwater, Inc. as President and Chief Executive Officer in 2010. Before joining APTwater, Inc., Mr. Stanton held the positions of Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer for SouthWest Water Company.Previously, Mr. Stanton served as an Executive Vice President of Earth Tech, Inc., a division of Tyco International. At Earth Tech, Mr. Stanton led the International Asset Management Division focused on design, build, operation and financing of water and wastewater projects worldwide. He also served as Earth Tech’s interim Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Corporate Development where he was responsible for all financial functions and acquisition growth strategies focused on water technology and service companies.
He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.

PANELISTS

Aaron H. Mandell, Oasys Water, Co-Founder, CEO and President

Aaron Mandell co-founded Oasys Water, Inc. in 2008 where he currently serves as President and CEO. His business career began as the co-founder of GreatPoint Ventures, an early stage venture creation firm, and since then has expanded to the founding of several cleantech/energy companies including GreatPoint Energy (coal gasification), Coskata (waste-to-fuels), and Altarock (enhanced geothermal power).With a devoted interest in the water industry and a technical background in groundwater hydrology and environmental engineering, Aaron has had the opportunity to work with and learn from two world-renowned water scientists; Dr. George Pinder, regarded as the father of groundwater modeling and Dr. Gideon Dagan, recipient of the 1998 Stockholm Water Prize. Aaron obtained his B.S. and M.S. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Vermont and has held visiting scientist appointments at MIT and Tel-Aviv University.

Lee Ng, PhD., Siemens Technology-to-Business Center, Director of Venture Technology

Lee Ng is the Director of Venture Technology at Siemens Technology-to-Business Center based in Berkeley, California.

Dr. Ng joined Siemens Technology-to-Business Center in 2009 to fund innovative technology ideas and early stage startups. She leverages her experience to develop new technologies and launch new business ventures for TTB. Her current focus lies in industrial automation, drive technologies, water and energy. Before Siemens, Lee worked at Agilent Central Research Laboratories as the Business Director of New Business Creation. Prior to that, she was at Hewlett Packard and Ampersand Ventures.

Lee holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Engineering from MIT, with minors in economics, finance, and strategy.

Chris Berkner, PureSense, Chief Executive Officer

Chris Berkner has extensive experience in start-up management including business analysis and software development. He founded AnalyViz, a 7-person consulting company that specialized in business intelligence dashboards. His diverse client base included AIG, Pfizer, and Avery-Dennison. Previously, he was Vice President of Systems and Programming Guinness Telli*Phone Corp., where he spearheaded the launch of the company’s first three products.For over 19 years, Chris has engaged his passion for green technology and renewable energy. He has held a renewable energy research internship at Stanford’s Material Science Deapartment where he discovered a new method for controlling pore size in organic nanostructured materials for photovoltaics. He also spent a summer at Princeton University studying the economic and environmental implications of Brazil’s biomass energy program. Chris graduated with honors from UC Santa Cruz with a B.A. in Business Economics. In addition, he has taken extensive coursework in chemistry and engineering at San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley.

Online Registration is Closed. Additional Tickets available at the door!

Learn more about
Imagine H20

EVENT SPONSOR:
Economist Intelligence Unit

Entrepreneurs: Uncensored - Legal Series
2010-09-28 18:00 - 20:30 | Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, 1530 Page Mill Road, Suite 200, Palo Alto, CA, 94304-1125, United States
VLAB and Sonnenschein present Entrepreneurs Uncensored – Legal Series
Speaker Series 1 – ‘Top 10 mistakes entrepreneurs should avoid when launching a startup’. Presented by Drew Houston, Dave McClure and Carl Showalter.

When
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
6:00PM to 7:00PM – Registration and Networking
7:00PM to 8:15PM – Main Event
Where

Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal
1530 Page Mill Rd.
Suite 200
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1125

Event Description:
This three part series provides entrepreneurs business, tactical and legal education. Presented by experienced industry CEOs, venture capitalists and lawyers, the series will offer insights on cutting-edge issues faced by entrepreneurs today.
Series 1: Top 10 mistakes entrepreneurs should avoid when launching a startup
Many startup ideas fail to ever be launched and many, many fail within the first year or two. By knowing what not to do before launching a venture, an entrepreneur can convert that knowledge into a recipe for success just by negating. Come join us as our star panel discusses the common mistakes that lead to startup failures.

Moderator

* Craig Menden – Partner – Corporate Practice, Venture Capital/Emerging Growth Company Group, Sonnenschein

Speakers

* Drew Houston – CEO, Cofounder – DropBox
* Dave McClure – Angel Investor, Founder of Startup2Startup and GeeksOnaPlane

* Carl Showalter – General Partner, Opus Capital

For any questions, please email ebf@vlab.org

mHealth: Jailbreaking Health Care
2010-09-21 18:00 - 20:30 | Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School, Stanford, CA, United States
mHealth: Jailbreaking Health Care

When

Tuesday, September 21, 2010
6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where

Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School

Event Description:
mHealth, or Mobile Health, promises to revolutionize the delivery of health care around the globe. As cell phones, smartphones, and other mobile devices become more ubiquitous and integrated into our daily lives, does that mean diagnosing, treating, or preventing disease could be a click away anywhere in the world?
On the iPhone platform alone, there are 2,228 applications that fall under the medical category and entrepreneurs have already started to develop the next wave of innovative medical applications across the Android, Windows Mobile, iPhone, and on proprietary medical device platforms. How can entrepreneurs embrace this mobile medical revolution?
Topics to Be Explored:
* Will mobile technology reduce in-person doctor visits and help mitigate the doctor shortage?
* Will mobile wellness applications motivate people to focus on preventative health?
* Can mHealth help developing countries by providing access to medical care to almost anyone simply through a cell phone connection?
* How can mHealth technology companies navigate the current health care system including regulatory bodies such as the FDA, HIPAA and data privacy policies, and the payer reimbursement model?
Moderator
Dr. Chris Wasden, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Managing Director, Strategy & Innovation, Health Industries Advisory
Presenter
Wilson To, Mobilife, Founder
Panelists
Anand K. Iyer, Ph.D., MBA, Well Doc, President and CEO
Patrick Chung, Partner, NEA
Michelle Snyder, SVP Strategic Marketing, Epocrates

Entrepreneurs: Uncensored 3
2010-07-27 18:00 - 20:30 | Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School, Stanford, CA, United States
VLAB presents Entrepreneurs Uncensored!
Speaker Series 6 – ‘How I Pivoted to Success Through Effective Iteration and Innovation’. Speakers from Google, IDEO and Kleiner Perkins. The last of the six part speaker series highlighting the valley’s boldest entrepreneurs.

When
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
6:00PM to 7:00PM – Registration and Networking
7:00PM to 8:15PM – Main Event
Where

Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School

Event Description:
Successful companies start off with a business model that seems to make sense. But the key to their success lies in innovatively iterating their business model to one that helps them scale and exit. So join us for the final chapter of our Entrepreneurs Uncensored series as we take a look at what it takes to build a successful business. We have an all star panel lined up with Marissa Mayer (Google), Tim Brown (IDEO) and Randy Komisar (Kleiner Perkins & Getting to Plan B).

Moderator

Ravi Belani – Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Speakers

Marissa Mayer, VP Search Product and User Experiece, Google
Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO
Randy Komisar, Partner at Kleiner Perkins and Author of Getting to Plan B
Bios

Marissa Mayer, VP Search Product and User Experiece, Google
Marissa leads the company’s product management efforts on search products – web search, images, news, books, products, maps, Google Earth, Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Health, Google Labs and more.
She joined Google in 1999 as Google’s first female engineer and led the user interface and web server teams at that time. Her efforts have included designing and developing Google’s search interface, internationalizing the site to more than 100 languages, defining Google News, Gmail, and Orkut, and launching more than 100 features and products on Google.com. Several patents have been filed on her work in artificial intelligence and interface design. In her spare time, Marissa also organizes Google Movies – outings a few times a year to see the latest blockbusters – for 6,000+ people (employees plus family and friends).
Concurrently with her full-time work at Google, Marissa has taught introductory computer programming classes at Stanford to more than 3,000 students. Stanford has recognized her with the Centennial Teaching Award and the Forsythe Award for her outstanding contribution to undergraduate education.
Marissa has been featured in various publications, including Newsweek (“10 Tech Leaders of the Future”), Red Herring (“15 Women to Watch”), Business 2.0 (“Silicon Valley Dream Team”), BusinessWeek, and Fast Company. In 2008, at 33, Marissa became the youngest woman ever to be included on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list (#50).
Graduating with honors, Marissa received her bachelor’s degree in symbolic systems and her master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University. For both degrees, she specialized in artificial intelligence. She also holds an honorary doctorate of engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology.

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO
Tim Brown is CEO and president of IDEO. An industrial designer by training, Tim has earned numerous design awards and has exhibited work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Axis Gallery in Tokyo, and the Design Museum in London. He takes special interest in the convergence of technology and the arts, as well as the ways in which design can be used to promote the well being of people living in emerging economies.
Tim advises senior executives and boards of Fortune 100 companies and has led strategic client relationships with such organizations as the Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and Steelcase. He is a board member of the Mayo Innovation Advisory Council and the Advisory Council of Acumen Fund, a not-for-profit global venture fund focused on improving the lives of the poor. Additionally, he writes extensively, with articles in the Harvard Business Review, The Economist, and other prominent publications. His book on how design thinking transforms organizations, Change By Design, was released by HarperBusiness in September 2009.

Randy Komisar, Partner at Kleiner Perkins and Author of Getting to Plan B
Randy Komisar joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2005 as a partner. For several years prior, Randy worked with entrepreneurs creating businesses with leading-edge technologies.
He was a co-founder of Claris Corporation, served as CEO for LucasArts Entertainment and Crystal Dynamics, and acted as a “virtual CEO” for such companies as WebTV and GlobalGiving. He is a founding director of TiVo and serves on the Global Advisory Board for the UCSB Institute for Energy Efficiency. Earlier, Randy served as CFO of GO Corporation and Senior Counsel for Apple Computer, following a private practice in Technology Law.
Randy holds a BA in Economics from Brown University and a JD from Harvard Law School. He is a lecturer on entrepreneurship at Stanford University and author of the best-selling book The Monk and the Riddle, as well as several articles on leadership and entrepreneurship. He is also the co-author of a new book on managing innovation, Getting to Plan B. Randy frequently speaks here and abroad on such topics.

Ravi Belani, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Ravi Belani is an Associate at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Ravi also led the firm’s investments in Komli and Pubmatic. Prior board directorships include TinyPictures (acquired by Shutterfly, NASDAQ: SFLY) and Personiva (acquired by Glam Media). Ravi brings experiences with new ventures and established firms to his role. Prior to Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Ravi worked in product management at software startup Zaplet (acquired by MetricStream). Ravi has also worked in product management at enterprise software company Extensity (IPO’d then acquired by GEAC) as a Mayfield Fellow. As a management consultant at McKinsey and Company’s San Francisco office, Ravi worked with Fortune 500 hi tech and biotech companies on a range of strategic issues, including market attractiveness assessments, pricing, channel strategy, and new product development processes. He has also worked at Medtronic on wireless communication technologies for remote patient monitoring and in equity research at Bridgewater Associates.
Ravi is a Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi graduate of Stanford University, holding a BS with Distinction and MS in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management. Ravi also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. As a Board Fellow at Harvard, Ravi served the Global Board of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs). Ravi is also a graduate of the Kauffman Fellows Program.
For any questions, please email ebf@vlab.org

Entrepreneurs: Uncensored 2
2010-06-22 18:00 - 20:30 | Fenwick & West LLP, 801 California Street, Mountain View, CA, 94041, United States
Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Fenwick & West and VLAB present Entrepreneurs – Uncensored!
Speaker Series 5 – ‘How to negotiate a great deal on your term sheet’ with DFJ, Fanbase and Fenwick & West LLP.

When
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
6:00PM to 6:30PM – Registration and Networking
6:30PM to 7:45PM – Main Event
7:45PM to 8:30PM – Networking

Where
Fenwick & West LLP
Silicon Valley Center
801 California Street
Mountain View, California 94041

Event Description:

Term sheets are a vital aspect of any financial agreement when securing angel or venture capital funds. A company will often be obligated to the arrangement for many years so it is important that entrepreneurs understand the “what, why and how” of a term sheet before entering into talks with financiers.

Come join us to learn how to successfully negotiate a term sheet from Warren Packard, Nirav Tolia and Cindy Clarfield.

Online registrations are now closed

There will be some tickets available at the door.
Panel

Warren Packard, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Managing Director
Nirav Tolia, Co-founder & CEO, Fanbase
Cynthia Clarfield Hess, Partner, Corporate Group, Fenwick & West LLP

Bios

Warren Packard, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Managing Director
Warren Packard is a Managing Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He currently serves on the Boards of Anagran, CastTV, EoPlex, Media Lario, Microfabrica, Primet Precision Materials, and SeaMicro. Warren also leads the firm’s investments in BinOptics, CallGate, Hola!, ooma, Ruba, and YeePay. Prior to joining the firm, Warren co-founded Angara Database Systems, a main memory relational database company, which was acquired by Personify. Prior to co-founding Angara, he was an Associate at Institutional Venture Partners, investing in early-stage technology companies. Before IVP, Warren was a Senior Principal Engineer in the Advanced Product Development Group at Baxter International. Warren is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University and holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering: Smart Product Design. He received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Nirav Tolia, Co-founder & CEO, Fanbase

Nirav Tolia is currently co-founder and CEO of Fanbase Inc. Nirav has spent the last 11 years working at early-stage, pioneering consumer Internet companies. His experience lies in the areas of online community, user-generated content, e-commerce and social networking. He has served as an advisor and consultant to several consumer Internet companies, including aSmallWorld, Simply Hired and Zillow.

Nirav was also the co-founder and chief executive officer of Epinions, one of the first Web sites to introduce the mainstream use of online community and user-generated content. Over a four-year period, he successfully raised $45 million in venture financing, led the company to profitability and oversaw its 2003 merger with DealTime. He began his career as an early employee of Yahoo!, working in the production and marketing departments. He also co-founded and served as president of Round Zero, a prominent non-profit organization and networking forum for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Nirav is originally from Odessa, Texas.

Cynthia Clarfield Hess, Partner, Corporate Group, Fenwick & West LLP

Ms. Clarfield Hess practices in the firm’s Mountain View, California, headquarters and concentrates on counseling emerging growth companies, venture capital financings, mergers and acquisitions, and public offerings (representing both companies and underwriters). Ms. Clarfield Hess represents a wide range of high technology companies, ranging from privately held start-ups to publicly traded companies. Ms. Clarfield Hess has lectured on the topics of venture capital investments, start-up company issues and initial public offerings at various seminars sponsored by state bar associations and other organizations. Ms. Clarfield Hess is a member of the State Bars of California, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Oregon. She received her undergraduate education at Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, in 1985. She received her J.D., cum laude, from The Cornell Law School in 1988, where she served on the Cornell International Law Review

For any questions, please email ebf@vlab.org

Monitor, Analyze, Control: The Software Side of Energy Efficiency
2010-06-15 18:00 - 20:30 | Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School, Stanford, CA, United States
Monitor, Analyze, Control: The Software Side of Energy Efficiency **Video Available!**

When

Tuesday, June 15, 2010
6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where

Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School

Event Description:
Many consider energy efficiency the easiest path to immediate gains in reducing carbon emissions and counteracting the ever-increasing cost of energy. As an example, Al Gore contends that turning American television sets fully off rather than using standby mode will eliminate the need for a 1,000-megawatt coal-fired generating plant.
Be it televisions or office lights, energy use can be dramatically curtailed just by improving the monitoring and control mechanisms through software-enabled solutions developed by today’s entrepreneurs. Venture capitalists recognize the opportunity too, so investments in energy are up; energy efficiency leads the way with 39 funding rounds in first quarter 2010. We see the impact all around us here in California where policy makers and business leaders have understood the importance of energy efficiency for over thirty years, thus leading the nation in reducing energy use on a per capita basis during that period.
Now, a new wave of innovation emerges as increased incentives and market demand drive entrepreneurs to develop energy efficient solutions in which software plays a unique role. Many companies, both large and small, leverage the data-rich ecosystem where every point of energy use now can be monitored, analyzed and controlled. This access to data will change everything from building design to product development to consumer behavior.
Come join us and learn more about the opportunities, changes and implications. This growing sector provides fertile ground for discussion.
Topics to be explored:

What will it take to be a winner in this sector? And, how early will we know who the winners are?

How important are strategic alliances?

Is there room for more start-ups? If so, where?

How will the sector evolve in the coming five years? Continued growth? Consolidation?

What are the implications when every point of energy use can be monitored, controlled and analyzed?

Register Now!!

Please click here to log into your VLAB account before registering

MODERATOR

Eric Wesoff, Senior Analyst, Greentech Media

Prior to joining Greentech Media, Eric Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. Mr. Wesoff has become a well-known, respected authority and speaker in these fields. He also was the publisher of the Venture Power newsletter, a subscription-only newsletter covering venture-capital investment in renewable energy.

Eric’s expertise covers solar power, fuel cells, biofuels and advanced batteries. His strengths are in market research and analysis, business development and due diligence for investors. He frequently consults for energy startups and Silicon Valley’s premier venture capitalists.

From 1988 to 1996, Eric served as product marketing manager for Siemens Optoelectronics, where he oversaw complex product lines and managed relationships with global customers. He then became the U.S. marketing and sales manger for Akzo Nobel Photonics, which was acquired by JDS Uniphase. Eric later served as the sales director for Dicon Fiber Optics, where he was responsible for selling millions of dollars of fiber-optic telecom-equipment. He has consulted for Merck, JDSU, Coherent, IBM and scores of other firms, governments and organizations.

PRESENTER:

John Steinberg, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, EcoFactor
Prior to founding EcoFactor, John was Director of Corporate Business Development for Electronics for Imaging, where he had a leadership role in $500M in transactions. He was also founder and President of Bebop Incorporated, and co-founded Involved Professionals Against Cancer, a 501(c)(3) stressing hands-on involvement with pediatric cancer patients at Long Beach Memorial Hospital.
John is a graduate of Stanford Law School, where he was an Associate Editor of the Stanford Law Review. He received his undergraduate degree (with honors) from Oberlin College, where he majored in Economics and Government, and was Phi Beta Kappa.
John has been issued 12 US patents for inventions in such diverse fields as digital photography, networked printing, and various mechanical devices. He has served on the Board of Directors of Long Beach Youth Centers and the Board of Advisors of the Tech Coast Venture Network. John has been a featured speaker at multiple cleantech industry events, including the Behavior Energy and Climate Change Conference.

PANELISTS:

Dharmesh Thakker, Vice President, Advanced Technology Ventures
Dharmesh joined ATV in 2007 as a member of the firm’s Cleantech and IT Infrastructure practice areas. He observes on the boards of AltaRock Energy, Calisolar, Nuventix, Qumu, and Sub-one Technology. He is a founding member and Co-President of the Wharton Cleantech and Energy Network and also serves on the Cleantech Advisory Board at TiE.
Dharmesh brings ten years of business development, product strategy and sales experience at start-ups and public companies. Previously, he was the Director of Corporate Business Development at Keynote Systems (NASDAQ: KEYN) where he supported acquisitions in the wireless and video infrastructure sectors and established alliances with H-P, Computer Associates and European VARs. Previously, he was a member of the founding team at InterNetwork (acquired by FinePoint Technologies). He was part of the early strategy consulting team at Manhattan Associates (NASDAQ: MANH), and served briefly in the Investment Banking team at Thomas Weisel Partners.
Dharmesh received his M.B.A. from The Wharton School and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.

Danie
l Yates, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, OPOWER
Daniel Yates is the CEO and Founder of OPOWER, an 85-person Smart Grid and Energy Efficiency software company that partners with utilities to engage their customers to drive large-scale measurable and verifiable reductions in energy usage through a combination of behavioral science, data analytics and software expertise.†
Prior to founding OPOWER, Dan was Founder and CEO of Edusoft, the leading educational software company providing assessment platforms to US public school districts. Dan led the company from inception to national success and sold the 150-person, $20M revenue company to Houghton Mifflin in 2004.
After leaving Houghton Mifflin, Dan embarked on a year-long adventure with his wife, driving from the Arctic Sea in Alaska to the southern tip of South America. During this trip, Dan became aware of the shocking degradation of the environment, and he subsequently resolved to dedicate his life to sustaining what’s left of our beautiful natural world.
In 2009, Dan was named a “Tech Titan” by Washingtonian magazine and was a finalist for the Ernst and Young 2009 Entrepreneur of the Year award for the Greater Washington region.
Dan received his B.A. in Computer Science, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Harvard University.

Da
vid
Hsieh, Vice President of Marketing, Emerging Technologies, Cisco
David Hsieh is a seasoned executive with over 20 years of experience in building and marketing software and services. At Cisco he has marketing responsibility for Cisco’s Emerging Technologies—innovative new businesses created from an internal venture model. Prior to Cisco, Hsieh was a co-founder of FaceTime Communications, a leader in instant messaging solutions for large enterprises. He also served as an VP of Products at WebEx, entrepreneur-in-residence at Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), Vice President of Product Marketing at Sybase and Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and Business Development at LBMS. Hsieh is a graduate of Northwestern University.

The Business of the Brain
2010-05-18 18:00 - 20:30 | Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School, Stanford, CA, United States
The Business of the Brain **Video Available!**

When

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment

7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where

Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School

Event Description:
Brain-Computer Interfacing (BCI) promises a quantum leap in human interaction with technology—enabling our thoughts and emotions to control devices and enabling devices to know what were “really thinking” and feeling. Currently, there are more than 300 million brain toting people in the United States alone, making the opportunities for BCI products far-reaching.
BCI is bringing fresh and often unexpected perspectives to established industries, from entertainment and transportation to medicine and information systems. In this emergent phase of consumer-related BCI, innovators are redefining sleep management, gaming, user interfacing, courtroom evidence, and national security—and this is only the beginning.
For the first time, neuroscientists and savvy entrepreneurs, from a number of traditionally unrelated industries, are teaming up to move BCI technology out of research and medical labs and into our everyday lives. The Business of the Brain event will address the challenges and opportunities of this exciting revolution, including limitations of wet sensors, noise interference, government regulation, novel user interfaces, designing industry-specific BCI applications and the cost engineering of current applications.
Meet the minds behind this wave and find out how entrepreneurs are using the way we think to drive the future of technology.

MODERATOR

Christie Nicholson
Freelance Science Journalist; Contributing Editor, Scientific American
Christie Nicholson is a science journalist based in New York. She hosts and produces Scientific American’s 60-Second Psych, which covers the latest research in neuroscience. Last year she participated in Discovery Channel’s Neuroethics Salon, that culminated in her co-authoring a Nature paper on communicating ethical issues in neuroscience. This year she spoke on brain-machine interfaces at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, TX. She is an on-air contributor to Web and TV shows on Slate, Scientific American, Discovery Channel and the Science Channel. A graduate of Columbia University’s School of Journalism, she co-created the “Science of Sex,” that won two Webby Awards. Currently a contributing editor at Scientific American, she teaches Web journalism each summer at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

PRESENTER

David P. Dickinson
President & C.E.O., Zeo, Inc.
After a long career with four Fortune 500 corporations, Dave is now the Chief Executive Officer of Zeo, Inc. (f/k/a Axon Labs), an early stage startup founded by an entrepreneurial team of computer science and engineering students at Brown University.

Prior to Zeo, he was the Chief Operating Officer and a division President/CEO of StemCyte, a global umbilical cord blood stem cell banking company. In addition, Dave has held numerous executive positions including Director and President/CEO of Pericor Science, and Vice President, New Ventures, and Vice President, Global New Business Development/Innovation for the Mead Johnson Nutritionals Division of Bristol-Myers Squibb after starting his career in brand management with Johnson & Johnson Consumer Products and sales with Procter & Gamble. Dave received a B.S. in Industrial Economics from Union College in 1977 and an MBA in Marketing from Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management in 1982.

PANELISTS

Lawrence A. Farwell, PhD
Chairman & Chief Scientist, Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories
Dr. Farwell invented Brain Fingerprinting, a scientific technology for detecting concealed information in the brain using EEG. It proved over 99% accurate at the FBI, CIA, and US Navy, was ruled admissible in court, and helped catch a serial killer and free an innocent murder convict.

He invented the first EEG-based brain-computer interface, using EEG to communicate to a computer. He patented a system using brainwaves in detection of Alzheimer’s. He conducted pioneering research using brainwaves to determine the impact of advertising. He is a Harvard graduate, former Harvard research associate, and Chairman and Chief Scientist of Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories, Inc. TIME Magazine selected him to the TIME 100: The Next Wave, the innovators who may be “the Picassos or Einsteins of the 21st Century.”

James Sullivan
VP of World Wide Sales, NeuroSky
James Sullivan brought over 25 years of experience in high-tech sales experience in both hardware and software, to the NeuroSky founding team. Through his success developing OEM/ODM relationships and technology partnerships he was able to identify the unique opportunity of creating a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) platform technology that focuses on usability and low cost.
Prior to NeuroSky Jim was involved in several early stage and start up opportunities, and was part of explosive growth and success on more than one occasion including an IPO and follow on Public Offerings. His success has included tenures at Lanier, Canon, Arrow Electronics, Novell and Nuance Communications.

Timothy Chang
Principal, Norwest Venture Partners
Tim brings a combination of operational, technical and international business experience to NVP. He focuses on investments in mobile, gaming, digital media, and also leads NVP’s investment practice in China and Asia-Pacific. Tim led NVP’s investments in and joined the boards of directors of ngmoco, Lumos Labs, Brite Semiconductor and 3jam. He also led NVP’s investment in PCH International, a turnkey global supply chain services firm based in Shenzhen. Tim is a board observer working closely with Borqs, deCarta, Double Fusion and Veveo.

Jamie Hyneman
Host of Mythbusters and Serial Entrepreneur
Jamie Hyneman is now best known as the host of the Discovery Channel’s Emmy-nominated program, “MythBusters.” He has worked on 800-plus commercials and feature films, holds several patents, has a degree in Russian linguistics from Indiana University, an engineering degree from University of Maine, and a Doctor of Engineering Degree from Villanova University (both honorary). He has been a Screen Actor’s Guild member for over a decade, is a member of the International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators, a member of the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, and a lifetime member of the California Teacher’s Association.

Today, while his work for the Discovery Channel occupies the majority of Hyneman’s professional time, he is actively involved in developing cutting edge technologies and prototypes for a variety of industries, ranging from defense and aerospace to green vehicle design.

The Future of Video
2010-04-27 18:00 - 20:30 | Fenwick & West LLP, 801 California Street, Mountain View, CA, 94041, United States
Draper Fisher Jurvetson and VLAB present a special event – The Future of Video

When
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
6:00PM to 6:30PM – Registration and Networking
6:30PM to 7:45PM – Main Event
7:45PM to 8:30PM – Networking

Where
Fenwick & West LLP
Silicon Valley Center
801 California Street
Mountain View, California 94041

Event Description:
The way we consume video is inexorably changing. YouTube alone sees a full day’s worth of video content (24 hours) uploaded to its servers every minute. The iPhone changed everything in regard to consumption of video on the go and now the iPad is shepherding in a new generation of smart mobile platforms that will enable video consumption to be richer and more flexible than ever seen. Content, conduit, and consumption are all expanding. What will the next phase of the video ecosystem look like and how will it be monetized? What metaphor will dominate how end consumers navigate the unfathomably large volumes of video available? Who will win in the new value chain?

Moderator

David Price, VP Business Devlopment, Harmonic Inc

Panel

Erick Hachenburg, CEO – Metacafe

David McIntosh, CEO – Redux
Margaret Stewart, Head of User Experience – YouTube
Michael Yang, Venture Partner – Comcast Interactive Capital, Former VP Yahoo Media Group
Paul Wehrley, Co-founder and COO of Clicker, former VP Strategy IAC

Register Now!!

Please click here to log into your VLAB account before registering

For any questions, please email ebf@vlab.org

Bios
David Price, Vice President, Business Development and Corporate Communications – Harmonic Inc
David is responsible for pioneering Harmonic’s leading position in digital video broadcast, contribution, distribution and IP-based delivery technologies. An experienced speaker, he has presented at many conferences throughout the world. He has over 27 years experience in the telecommunications industry and is currently Vice President of the MPEG Industry Forum. Mr. Price was selected in 2003, 2004 and 2009 as one of the “Euro 50” by Cable & Satellite Europe. Originally, an electronics engineer on the design team of the world’s first CAT scan system, he graduated from CIT with a Fellowship MBA and has an Honors Bachelors degree in Cybernetics, Instrument Physics and Mathematics.

Erick Hachenburg, CEO – Metacafe
Erick brings more than 15 years of experience in market creation, global expansion, operations and publishing to his role as Metacafe CEO.

Prior to joining Metacafe, Erick was Electronic Art’s senior vice president of global online publishing and managing director of EA China. In this role, he developed and led key strategic initiatives, including the company’s entry into the digital distribution of retail games. Erick joined EA following the company’s 2001 acquisition of Pogo.com, the industry leader in the casual games market that he founded and built to nearly 1.5 million subscribers.

Erick began his career as an intellectual property attorney at Fenwick & West. He holds a JD from Harvard Law School and a BS in Electrical Engineering from University of Illinois.
David McIntosh, CEO – Redux

David is the founder and CEO of Redux, a crowd sourced video company that taps into users’ friends and people that share their interests to deliver a uniquely addictive and personalized entertainment experience. David previously co-founded the mobile photo sharing site, Fotodunk, which was acquired by iLike, and while at Prosper, built most of the site’s loan performance visualizations. BusinessWeek named Mr.McIntosh one of the top 25 US Entrepreneurs under 25 in 2007.

Margaret Stewart, Head of User Experience – You Tube

Margaret Gould Stewart manages the User Experience Team for YouTube. Prior to that, she spent two years leading Search and Consumer Products UX at Google.
Margaret has been a practitioner and manager in the field of User Experience for over 10 years. After graduating from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program in 1995, Margaret consulted extensively with New York media companies such as the New York Times, Time-Warner, and Scholastic to develop many of their first forays into the web.
She subsequently joined Tripod, Inc, the pioneering homepage building site and online community, in 1995 as its first Creative Director. Tripod was acquired by Lycos, Inc in 1998. Margaret served as General Manager of Tripod.com and Angelfire.com, and then as Senior Director of Network Design and Integration for the Lycos Network. In 2005, she joined Wachovia as its Web Usability Manager. She relocated to California in early 2007 to join Google, and in early 2009 moved to YouTube to lead their user experience team. Over the course of her career, Margaret has had the privilege of managing the user experience of 5 top 10 most visited websites in the world.
Margaret has served on the jury for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards, and is a frequent speaker about design, user experience, creative management, and the changing landscape of media at a variety of industry events such as the TED Conference, Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience Conference, and The Future of Design Conference at the University of Michigan.

Michael Yang, Venture Partner – Comcast Interactive Capital
Michael is a Venture Partner at CIC based in our Silicon Valley office. He is involved in sourcing, identifying, and evaluating new investment opportunities and is actively part of the decision making process at the fund. Prior to joining CIC, Michael was a Vice President/General Manager at Yahoo! in the Media Group as well as the Local Markets & Commerce Division. During his tenure at Yahoo!, he managed Yahoo! Autos, Yahoo! Real Estate and Yahoo! Health; co-led Yahoo! Shopping; and was part of the team that formed Yahoo!’s strategic alliance with the Newspaper Consortium. Previously, he was a Principal with Atlas Venture, a trans-Atlantic venture capital firm, where he focused on early stage enterprise software and IT investments in New England. Earlier in his career, he served as senior director of product marketing and business development for Zaplet, a venture-backed collaboration software company, and was a member of AOL’s Business Affairs team which focused on e-commerce and interactive marketing partnerships. Michael graduated from Harvard University with an MBA. He also graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BS in Economics from The Wharton

Paul Wehrley, Co-founder and COO – Clicker
Paul leads all business operations functions at Clicker. Prior to founding Clicker, Paul spent nine years at Ask.com / IAC in both operational and M&A roles. As Ask’s VP Strategy & Operations, he oversaw the Ask P&L, drove its strategic planning process, and managed the company’s business development group. Previously, as Ask’s VP Corporate Development, he completed over 15 M&A transactions, including the acquisitions of Teoma Technologies, Interactive Search Holdings, and Bloglines. Before working at Ask, Paul was a Financial Analyst in the mergers & acquisitions group at Volpe Brown Whelan & Co, a San Francisco-based technology investment bank. Paul holds a BA in Economics from Stanford University. rd University.

Innovation, Inspiration, and Fundraising: Secret Recipes from Leading VCs
2010-04-26 18:00 - 20:30 | Fenwick & West LLP, 801 California Street, Mountain View, CA, 94041, United States
Innovation, Inspiration and Fundraising – Secret Recipes from Leading VCs
Tips and strategies from leading VC’s in the valley.

When
Tuesday, April 26, 2010
6:00PM to 7:00PM – Registration and Networking
7:00PM to 8:15PM – Main Event
Where

Fenwick & West LLP
801 California Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
Event Description:
Venture capitalists invested $21.8 billion in 3,277 deals in 2010, an increase of 19 percent in dollars and a 12 percent rise in deals over the prior year according to latest MoneyTree Report, which tracks the industry. The rise in venture investments in 2010 represents the first time the annual investment level has increased since 2007.
Now that you have decided to launch a company, how do you ensure that you have the right recipe for a successful business? What does it take for an innovative idea to land a top investor in its early days? How do investors gauge the chances of success for a startup beyond early days? How do they partner with entrepreneurs to ensure a successful exit?
Our event panel, consisting of top notch silicon valley investors, will discuss their secret recipe for picking the right startups early on and helping them become successful businesses.
This event is a special VLAB fundraiser event for Japan Tsunami Relief. All ticket proceeds will be donated to American RedCross.

Moderator

* Peter Sims, Author, “LITTLE BETS”, speaker, and entrepreneur
Speakers
* Howard Hartenbaum, August Capital
* Jeff Clavier, SoftTech VC
* Rob Coneybeer, Managing Director, Shasta Ventures

For any questions, please email ebf@vlab.org

Detailed Bios

Peter Sims
Peter Sims is an author, LITTLE BETS, speaker, and entrepreneur. He was the coauthor with Bill George of True North, the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek best-selling book. His next book is Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, from Simon & Schuster: Free Press. His work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Tech Crunch, and Fortune and he’s a contributor to the Reuters, Fast Company, and Harvard Business Review blogs. He received an M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business where he and several classmates established a popular course on leadership and has had long collaboration with faculty at Stanford’s Institute of Design (the d.school). He frequently speaks or advises at corporations, associations, and universities, including Cisco Systems, Eli Lilly, Current Media, Qualcomm, and Stanford University. Previously, he worked in venture capital with Summit Partners, a leading investment firm, including as part of the team that established the firm’s London Office.
He lives in San Francisco and his great-great-great grandfather, Jacob Gundlach, founded Gundlach Bundschu (GunBun) in Sonoma, California’s oldest family-owned winery, which is run today by his cousins who, unlike Peter, know a lot about wine.

Howard Hartenbaum, Partner, August Capital
Howard Hartenbaum joined August Capital in 2008. Prior to joining, he served as a General Partner at Draper Richards LP where he was the founding investor in Skype and a former member of the board of directors where his achievement resulted in his joining the Forbes Midas List of top venture capitalists.
Before entering the venture capital field, Howard was at Hughes Electronics, where he was responsible for supporting business development, marketing and sales of satellite, information security and automotive technologies developed by HRL Laboratories. He also worked in engineering positions in ergonomics and user experience at Honda Motor Company and manufacturing at Teledyne Relays.
Howard has worked overseas for a total of ten years in Luxembourg and Japan. He is a graduate of M.I.T.
Current Investments: Bubbli, Livemocha, Memolane, Pixazza, and RelayRides.
Previous investments: Skype (acquired by eBay – EBAY), Photobucket (acquired by Fox Interactive Media – NWS), Bebo (acquired by AOL – TWX), Netkraft (acquired by Adea Solutions) and DimDim (acquired by Salesforce.com – CRM)
Jeff Clavier, SoftTech VC
Jean-Francois “Jeff” Clavier is the Founder and Managing Partner of SoftTech VC, one of the most active seed stage investors in Web 2.0 startups. Since 2004, Jeff has invested in close to 100 consumer internet startups (Fund I, Fund II, Fund III) in areas like social media, monetization, search, gaming or B2B/B2C web services. These investments are typically located in Silicon Valley, New-York and Boulder. With over 20 years of operational, entrepreneurial and venture capital experience, Jeff is able to add relevant perspective and value to his companies as they grow from inception to maturity, and hopefully, success.
In 2007, Jeff was recognized as one of the 13 “Web 2.0 King Makers” by (late) Business 2.0. BusinessWeek named him one of “The 25 Most Influential People on the Web” in 2008, and one of the “Top 25 Angels in Tech” in 2010. He was also nominated in the “Best Angel” category at the Crunchies in 2009 and 2010. He is often noted for his investments in categories such as “passion-centric communities” or online gaming, or for having sold a number of his Web 2.0 startups to the likes of Yahoo, AOL, Intuit or more recently Twitter and Groupon.
In September 2007, after successfully investing as a business angel, Jeff announced the formation of SoftTech VC II, L.P. – a $15M seed fund backed by a mix of institutional and private investors to invest in 60+ consumer Internet companies over 3 years.
Some of Jeff’s representative investments include Mint (Intuit), Brightroll, Truveo (AOL), Userplane (AOL), Rapleaf, Ustream, Milo (eBay), Blekko, Eventbrite, Tapulous (Disney), DNANexus, FanBridge, BillFloat,…
Rob Coneybeer, Shasta Ventures
Rob Coneybeer brings to Shasta Ventures deep experience in building startup companies. Prior to co-founding Shasta Ventures, he was a general partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA) where he led 15 early-stage investments in core infrastructure technologies spanning semiconductors, software and networking equipment. Prior to joining the venture capital industry, Rob served as a lead integration and test engineer in the Astro Space division of Martin Marietta. While at Martin Marietta, Rob helped build the first EchoStar spacecraft.
Rob’s current areas of active interest include mobile, wireless, and sensors, as well as technology applications that leverage new infrastructure technologies in novel and creative ways. He is particularly interested in startups that have discovered creative new approaches to connecting the “real world” to the Internet, whether via smartphones, low-cost sensors, or other innovative new devices.
Rob earned a Master of Science in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from the University of Virginia. He also holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was named a Palmer Scholar.

For any questions, please email ebf@vlab.org

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Please log into your VLAB account before registering

Dissecting the High-Tech Term Sheet: A Look at the Latest Trends and Structural Issues in VC Investing
2010-04-15 18:00 - 20:30 | Sonnenschein, 1530 Page Mill Road, Suite 200, Palo Alto, CA, United States
Sponsor Event: Sonnenschein Presents, CEO Bootcamp
Dissecting the High-Tech Term Sheet: A Look at the Latest Trends and Structural Issues in VC Investing
Featuring:

North Bridge Venture Partners
Cali X. Tran, Principal

Sequoia Capital
Christopher Olsen, Partner

Blumberg Capital
Bruce K. Taragin, Managing Director

Sonnenschein Venture Technology Group
Daniel R. Zimmermann, Partner

When: Thursday, April 15, 2010
8:00 am – 10:00 am

Where: Sonnenschein, 1530 Page Mill Rd. Suite 200, Palo Alto, CA

RSVP Here!
Please indicate:
…if you are a member of VLAB
…your profession (and optionally, your interest)

Contact Maria DeLuca at mdeluca@sonnenschein.com with any questions.

A Sprout Incubator event.

Sonnenschein Venture Technology Group is ranked in the Top 10 nationally by Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst. Our CEO Boot Camp Series brings together senior management of emerging growth technology companies and leaders in the tech sector for an informal discussion of industry trends and topical issues.

Entrepreneurs: Uncensored
2010-03-30 18:00 - 20:30 | Fenwick & West LLP, 801 California Street, Mountain View, CA, 94041, United States
Draper Fisher Jurvetson and VLAB present Entrepreneurs – Uncensored!
Speaker Series 4 – ‘”How I beat my competition by out-executing them’ with Gurbaksh Chahal and Lyle Fong”.

When
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
6:00PM to 6:30PM – Registration and Networking
6:30PM to 7:45PM – Main Event
7:45PM to 8:30PM – Networking

Where
Fenwick & West LLP
Silicon Valley Center
801 California Street
Mountain View, California 94041

Event Description:
You have the right idea for your business. You have recognized your target. You are focused on making your service ubiquitous and coping with growing pains. You equate success with managing the customer experience. You want to be unique.

The myth in the valley is if you want to start a business, you have to be different from the very beginning. Not true at all. Out-executing the competition to get to parity and then innovating to trump competition works very well too.

Come join Gurbaksh Chahal and Lyle Fong as they discuss how ideas are overrated and how one can compete on execution.

Moderator

Ravi Belani, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Panel
Gurbaksh Chalal – Founder & CEO, gWallet
Lyle Fong – CEO & Co-Founder, Lithium

Bios
Gurbaksh Chahal
Gurbaksh is a die-hard internet entrepreneur. In January 1999, he started his first company, ClickAgents at the age of 16. It was one of the first ad networks focused around performance based advertising. Eighteen months later he sold it for $40 million to ValueClick
In January 2004, he launched his second company, BlueLithium. The company was focused on data, optimization, and analytics and became a pioneer of behavioral targeting. BlueLithium was named one of the top 100 private companies in America three years in a row by AlwaysOn, and in 2006, it received highest honor as Top Innovator of the Year. (Previous winners included Google, Skype, and Salesforce.com.) On September 4th, 2007, Yahoo! announced that it was acquiring BlueLithium for $300 million in cash.
He has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Bonnie Hunt, EXTRA, Neil Cavuto, among others, and has been profiled in such publications as The New York Times, Entrepreneur magazine, and The San Francisco Chronicle.
Chahal is also an international best selling author of “The Dream,” the true to life inspirational tale of his entrepreneurial journey. In September 2009, Chahal launched, gWallet, a virtual currency platform for social media.
Lyle Fong
Lyle is responsible for the strategic direction and corporate vision at Lithium. He assumed the role of CEO in December, 2006.
Prior to starting Lithium Technologies, Lyle co-founded GX Media, where he was the CTO. He drove the development of Gamers.com, which was rated the #1 independent gaming portal by Nielsen NetRatings. Lyle was instrumental in raising a total of $15M in funding led by CMGI, negotiating multi-million dollar technology licensing deals with Dell, Sony, AltaVista, and Ziff-Davis, and spearheading the spin-off of Lithium Technologies. Lyle was also the driving force behind the creation of technologies for professional gaming, including a global rankings system, tournament engine, and a real-time match reporting and spectating system. These technologies were the key success factors behind the AMD PGL, the most successful and highly acclaimed professional gaming league to date with over 100 million media impressions, and also numerous tournaments for Sega.
Before Lithium Technologies and GX Media, Lyle launched two other startups – a specialized computer services business which has since expanded into one of the largest ISPs in China and a software consulting business, NetStreams.
Lyle studied at UC Berkeley, majoring in Computer Science, where he received the Hewlett-Packard Scholarship Award and National Youth Leadership Award.

Ravi Belani
Ravi Belani is an Associate at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, where he serveson the boards of DesiHits, Redux, LiveMedia, TinyPictures, YieldSoftware, and Vizu. Ravi also led the firm’s investments in Komli andPubmatic.
Ravi is a Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi graduate of Stanford University, holding a BS with Distinction and MS in IndustrialEngineering and Engineering Management. Ravi also holds an MBA fromHarvard Business School. As a Board Fellow at Harvard, Ravi served theGlobal Board of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs). Ravi is also a graduateof the Kauffman Fellows Program.

For any questions, please email ebf@vlab.org

The Internet of Things: Sensors Everywhere
2010-03-16 18:00 - 20:30 | Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School, Stanford, CA, United States
The Internet of Things: Sensors Everywhere ***SOLD OUT***

When

Tuesday, March 16, 2010
6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where

Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School

Event Description:

Today, an increasing number ofpervasive and connected sensors are intelligently monitoring our dailylives and contributing to the rapid dissolution of the divide betweenour physical and digital worlds. This sensor revolution is creating anew layer of the Internet — what some analysts and researchers callthe “Internet of Things”.

Driven mainly by innovations inpower consumption, size and ubiquitous connectivity, sensors aregathering and reporting data on a variety of areas including medical,transportation, energy, security, general consumer and industrialmanufacturing.
Gartner reports “By year end 2012, physical sensors will create 20 percent of non-video internet traffic.”
Come discover how new companies are addressing sensor-based market opportunities.

What sensors are currently embedded in the world, what data are they producing and how are businesses leveraging that data?
The coming 5 years promises to hold an explosion of ubiquitously embedded devices and sensors. Where will these sensors be and what will they do? And how will the data and analytics be of value to businesses and consumers?
What will be the primary pain points in a world characterised by sensors everywhere?
What are the top opportunities for start ups in the space and what will business models look like?

MODERATOR

Michael Chui, Senior Fellow, McKinsey Global Institute

PRESENTER

Anant Agrawal, Co-Founder, Cantaloupe Systems

PANELISTS

Dr. Peter G. Hartwell, Senior Researcher, HP-Labs
Warren Hogarth, Venture Capitalist, Sequoia Capital
Henry Holtzman, Chief Knowledge Officer, MIT Media Labs
Andrew M. Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Proteus Biomedical

BIO’S
Michael Chui, Senior Fellow, McKinsey Global Institute
Michael Chui is a Senior Fellow of the McKinsey Global Institute. He is based in San Francisco, CA, where he directs research on the impact of information technologies, such as Web 2.0 and the Internet of Things, on business and the economy. He has served clients in the High Tech, Media and Telecom industries on strategy, innovation and product development, IT, sales & marketing, M&A and organization. His research has been cited globally in publications such as Fast Company, The Times, and Les Échos.

Michael holds a B.S. in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University and earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Cognitive Science, and a M.S. in Computer Science, from Indiana University. His Ph.D. dissertation, entitled “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For: Web Searching as Query Refinement,” examined Web user search behaviors and the usability of Web search engines.
Prior to joining McKinsey, Michael served as the first Chief Information Officer of the City of Bloomington, Indiana, where he re-architected the enterprise architecture using Open Source technologies and led a project that resulted in Bloomington becoming the first community in the world to offer both live and archived video streaming of public meetings on the Web.
Before that, Michael was founder and executive director of HoosierNet, Inc, a nonprofit cooperative Internet service provider that provided dial-up and broadband access to the Internet to consumers, nonprofits, governments and businesses.

PRESENTER
Anant Agrawal, Co-Founder, Cantaloupe Systems

Anant Agrawal is the Co-founder, Director and Head of Sales and Marketing for Cantaloupe Systems, Inc. of Berkeley, CA. Cantaloupe Systems is the leading provider of wireless remote machine monitoring systems and software management services for the Vending industry. More than 120 of this country’s largest vending operators employ Cantaloupe’s “Seed” Wireless Monitoring and SaaS Solutions. Currently, these vendors have equipped over 40,000 of their machines with Seed units and between 3,000 and 4,000 new units are being added each month.
Since its inception in 2002, Cantaloupe Systems has received numerous industry awards for its innovative technology and its achievements as well as being recognized by leading business publications. Forbes Magazine, in its December 14, 2009 edition, began its two page article on Cantaloupe with the headline; “Cantaloupe Systems brings order to vending’s chaos.” In addition Cantaloupe has been profiled in the prestigious Inc. 500 and the SF Business Times Fastest Growing Private Companies lists.

Anant has held several leadership positions including supply chain management, financial controls, product management and engineering before heading up Cantaloupe’s Sales and Marketing efforts. Anant holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a B.A. in Economics from UCLA.

PANELISTS
Dr. Peter G. Hartwell, Senior Researcher, HP-Labs
Dr. Peter G. Hartwell is currently a senior researcher at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, California. As a member of the Information and Quantum Systems Lab, he is the lead of the Central Nervous System for the Earth (CeNSE) team developing a broad sensing system to bring environmental awareness to information technology infrastructure. CeNSE was selected one of 20 “World Changing Ideas” in the December 2009 issue of Scientific American. Peter has extensive experience in commercializing silicon MEMS products, working on advanced sensors and actuators, and specializes in MEMS testing techniques. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1992 with a B.S.E in Materials Science and from Cornell University in 1999 with a PhD in Electrical Engineering. He did brief post doctoral work at HP Labs before joining the staff in 2000. His work at HP has been documented in numerous technical papers, patents, and articles in publications such as The New York Times, Forbes, IEEE Spectrum, and EETimes.
Warren Hogarth, VC, Sequoia Capital
Warren is a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital focusing on clean technology and energy investments. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 2008, Warren completed his PhD in Chemical Engineering, where he developed fuel cell technology. During this time, he was a visiting Fulbright Scholar to Princeton University and a Guest Scientist at Germanys Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. Warren has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Queensland. In addition to being early stage investors in such companies as Apple, Cisco and Google, Sequoia’s current investments in the wireless/sensor space include eMeter, eCardio, SynapSense, Jasper Wireless, Quantenna and Ruckus Wireless.
Henry Holtzman, Chief Knowledge Officer, MIT Media Labs
Henry Holtzman has been a member of the MIT community since 1981, joining the Media Lab as a researcher when it opened in 1985. Currently, he is the Lab’s Chief Knowledge Officer, director of the Digital Life consortium, and director of the Information Ecology research group. In addition, Holtzman directs the Lab’s CE 2.0 initiative, a collaboration with Media Lab sponsor companies to formulate the principles for a new generation of consumer electronics that are highly connected, seamlessly interoperable, situation-aware, and radically simple.

Holtzman has led research projects in the areas of tangible networking and image compression, resulting in desktop applications for RFID such as the Smart Mousepad, multicast network architectures for multimedia, IP television, scale-free image representation, and knowledge-based video representation. As a member of the MPEG standardization committee, he helped to define MPEG-2 video technology, used in DirecTV, DVD, digital cable, and digital TV broadcasting. Holtzman has been granted multiple patents for his inventions.

Holtzman has extensive experience with RFID, computer programming, hardware design, operating systems, and network architecture. He was founder, CEO, and CTO of Presto Technologies, Inc., a Media Lab spinoff that introduced the “Internet of Things” to the market, including many novel uses for RFID. He received his MS in media arts and sciences, and his BS in computer science, both from MIT.
Andrew M. Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Proteus Biomedical
Mr. Thompson is President, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Proteus Biomedical and has led the company since inception. His vision for Intelligent Medicine is focused on expanding global access to care, dramatically increasing the value delivered by drugs and creating a sustainable model for innovation that leverages computer technology in healthcare.
Mr. Thompson began his career as an industrial trainee at Metal Box PLC. Later he was a management consultant with Booz Allen & Hamilton specializing in operations management. For the last 20 years he has lived in Silicon Valley and focused on the start-up and development of technology based medical businesses. Companies that have completed successful IPOs or have been acquired by Fortune 100 businesses where he played an important role include: Cell Genesys (NASDAQ IPO), Cytotherapeutics (NASDAQ IPO), Abgenix (NASDAQ IPO), CardioRhythm (acquired by Medtronic), FemRx (NASDAQ IPO, acquired by J&J), Northstar Neuroscience (NASDAQ IPO) and QRx Pharmaceuticals (ASX IPO).
Andrew Thompson grew up in the United Kingdom and was educated at Cambridge University, where he gained an M.A. in engineering. He was a United Kingdom National Engineering Scholar from 1982 to 1985. He also holds an M.A. in education from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
He is married with five children and lives in Portola Valley California. Andrew is active in his community as a soccer coach, Sunday school teacher, Cub Scout Den Leader and School Board Member.

Biofuels 2.0: Sustainable Startups - from Garage to Gargantuan
2010-02-16 18:00 - 20:30 | Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School, Stanford, CA, United States
Biofuels 2.0: Sustainable Startups – from Garage to Gargantuan

When

Tuesday, February 16, 2010
6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where

Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School

When

Tuesday, February 16, 2010
6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where

Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School

When

Tuesday, February 16, 2010
6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where

Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School

Event Description:

Biofuels 1.0 focused on using traditional techniques to derive ethanol from food crops. While many companies saw initial success, increases in the cost of food combined with falling oil prices sent ripples through the entire biofuels industry. A new generation of startups, Biofuels 2.0, is once again tackling the opportunity in liquid fuels. Some innovative technologies also offer alternatives to the use of fossil fuels for plastics, fertilizers, and commercial chemicals — creating additional ways to leverage investments and diversify markets.Armed with lessons learned, new business models, advancements in biotechnology, and an evolved understanding of how to minimize and control social and environmental impacts—all eyes are set on claiming a substantial portion of the global $3 trillion+ petroleum-based fuels market.
A panel of industry leaders, including early-stage biofuel CEOs, will discuss whether biofuels 2.0 can really provide sustainably better solutions, and how a new generation of companies are going from Garage to Gargantuan.
* Sustainability of business models, scaleability, and environmental impacts
* Opportunities for small, bootstrap startups in the biofuels value chain
* How failures in biofuels 1.0 are creating new opportunities in 2.0
* Counterpoint: The dark side of the revolution
* How to know if a company is sustainable
* Exit strategies and cheap oil: What models are most viable? What do VCs think about Biofuels 2.0?
* Industry partnerships: How best to use them to scale
* Informatics and genomics: Exponential drivers for development
This event is co-sponsored by BayBIO.org, the voice of the Bay Area biotechnology community, and CleanTech.org, the preeminent local investment community focused on game-changing technologies.

Moderator:

Jim Lane, Editor/Publisher of the BioFuels Digest

Jim Lane is Editor & Publisher of Biofuels Digest, the world’s most widely-read biofuels daily. He also publishes Biomass Digest, Biofuels Digest Asia, Geothermal Digest, and World Biofuels Markets. Biotech Digest launches later this year. He is author of nine books – most recently Citizen Cane: Essays for New Days in Bioenergy; his tenth, The National Energy Solution, is being published serially in the Digest this year. Jim was formerly a Senior Principal Consultant in clean energy at KEMA; prior to that, a group publisher at Reed Elsevier. He started his career at Harper’s. Lane has a BA from the University of Washington.

Presenter:

Jack Oswald, CEO of SynGest

Jack Oswald is CEO of SynGest Inc. and a nationally-recognized entrepreneur focused on commercializing and deploying clean energy solutions. His current focus is at the intersection of energy and agriculture a.k.a. “The Three F’s: Food, Fertilizer and Fuel”. SynGest is committed to the commercialization of a novel process to convert non-food biomass (e.g. corn cobs, wood chips, etc.) into highly valuable nitrogen fertilizer (NH3). Jack has been developing a National Clean Energy Strategy and to that end was a contributing member during the campaign to President Obama’s Energy and Environment Policy Advisory Group and was on the steering committee for Clean Tech For Obama (CT4O). He was also a member of the steering committee and has been elected to the board of the Clean Economy Network Foundation (CENF) (www.cleaneconomy.net). He is also serving as a Special Delegate to the U.S.-China Clean Energy Forum, an organization focused on large scale clean energy collaboration between the U.S. and China. Jack is also a member of Environmental Entrepreneurs’ (E2) (www.e2.org) DC Advocacy Strike Team. As a member of the Full Circle Fund (www.fullcirclefund.org, hands-on philanthropy) Jack co-led with Josh Becker a team to create the Green Cities California (www.greencitiescalifornia.org) web repository for sharing municipal best practices in sustainability. Jack is also an avid pilot holding Commercial, Multi-engine and Instrument Ratings/Certificates.

Panelists:

Eric McAfee, CEO AE Biofuels

Eric McAfee is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist with a lifelong commitment to agriculture and renewable energy. After growing up on a farm near Fresno, California, he co-founded Organic Pastures Dairy Company, a raw milk dairy and distribution company that is now the largest in the United States, and McAfee Farms, a producer of organic almonds. Mr. McAfee is a founding shareholder of Pacific Ethanol (Nasdaq: PEIX), a leading ethanol producer in the Western United States, and also a founding shareholder of several publicly-held energy companies: Evolution Petroleum (Amex: NGSY), Pacific Asia Petroleum (symbol: PFAP), Particle Drilling Technologies (Nasdaq: PDRT), and World Waste Technologies (symbol: WDWT). During his career, Mr. McAfee has funded more than twenty-five companies as a principal investor, and has founded six public companies with a combined high market value of $4 billion. In 2007, Mr. McAfee was awarded the Opportunity International Founder’s Award for his work related to third world development through biofuels. OI is one of the world’s largest micro-finance companies, with more than 1 million clients annually in 35 countries. Mr. McAfee graduated as the Dean’s Medalist from the Fresno State University business school, and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School Private Equity and Venture Capital program and the Stanford Graduate School of Business Executive Program.

David Berry, MD, PhD, Partner, Flagship Ventures (Co-founder LS9, Joule Biotech)

David Berry is a Partner at Flagship Ventures, having joined Flagship in 2005 while completing his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. David was previously awarded a Ph.D. through the MIT Biological Engineering Division, where he studied the biological effects of complex sugars with advisors Professor Ram Sasisekharan and Professor Robert Langer. David also did his undergraduate work at MIT, graduating in 2000 Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi, with a degree in brain and cognitive sciences. He was named as a member of the MIT Corporation – its Board of Trustees – in 2006. David’s work has led to 11 peer-reviewed publications, over 20 patents and applications, as well as over twenty-five awards and honors including the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Student Prize in 2005 for invention and innovation. David was also named as the Innovator of the Year by Technology Review in its 2007 TR35 list of world’s top 35 innovators under the age of 35.
At Flagship, David focuses on investing in and founding early stage life science and cleantech ventures. In 2005, he co-founded and helped launch LS9, and more recently co-founded Joule Biotechnologies where he previously served as the founding CEO. In addition, David serves on the Board of Directors of CGI Pharmaceuticals and works closely with several other portfolio companies.

Paul Bryan, PhD, Biofuels VP-Technology, Chevron Energy Technology Co.

During 12 years with Chevron, Bryan has been an R&D engineer, an R&D team leader, and most recently, manager of Chevron’s R&D Alliance in Perth, Australia. Previously he worked for Cargill and Union Carbide, and he held academic positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Colorado School of Mines. Bryan’s educational background includes a B.S. in chemical engineering from the Pennsylvania State University, a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and postdoctoral work in applied thermodynamics at the Ecole des Mines, Paris. He has been active in a variety of industry and professional organizations, including the Separations Division of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the North American Membrane Society, the Gas Processors Association, and the Gordon Research Conferences.

Leandro Vetcher, Co-founder & VP Business Development, Green Pacific Biologicals
Leandro Vetcher combines biotechnical expertise and a deep understanding of early-stage growth strategies in cleantech and life sciences. He is a biotechnologist with years of experience in plant biotechnology and drug development. He has had important roles in biotech business development and pharma M&A, and has also consulted with biofuel companies developing strategies for the commercialization of high-margin alternative products. He has an MA in Biotechnology from Columbia University and an MBA from the MIT Sloan.
As co-founder at Green Pacific Biologicals, he developed the business and strategic plan of the company. As responsible for business development, he led the licensing of key technologies, the efforts for a seed-round of financing and is focused in establishing strategic partnerships for biofuels and renewable consumer chemicals.

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Entrepreneurs: Uncensored 5
2010-01-26 18:00 - 20:30 | Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School, Stanford, CA, United States
Draper Fisher Jurvetson and VLAB present Entrepreneurs – Uncensored!
Speaker Series 3- “How my company leap-frogged with the help of funding partners”.

When
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
6:00PM to 6:30PM – Registration and Networking
6:30PM to 7:45PM – Main Event
7:45PM to 8:30PM – Networking

Where
Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School
(click for directions & parking information)
Event Description:

Is venture capital still the lifeblood of start-up companies? With so much conflicting advice on funding needs, this whole raising-money thing can seem a little like applying to college: Everyone has a different idea about what it takes to succeed.
Is it as simple as a having a defendable technology or business model, paying customers, a proven team, a solid business plan and a clear exit strategy to garner interest from venture capitalists?
What is the best route for you? Should you bootstrap to build personal equity in your venture or seek funding at an early stage? Come listen to the view points of successful institutional venture capitalists and angel investors.

Limited Seating. Reserve your seats soon!

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Moderator

Ravi Belani, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Panel
Howard Hartenbaum – August Capital
Josh Kopelman – First Round Capital
Mike Maples – Maples Investment
Dave Strohm – Greylock
Bios

Howard Hartenbaum – August Capital
Howard Hartenbaum joined August Capital in 2008. Prior to joining, he served as a General Partner at Draper Richards LP where he was the founding investor in Skype and a former member of the board of directors where his achievement resulted in his joining the Forbes Midas List of top venture capitalists.
Before entering the venture capital field, Howard was at Hughes Electronics, where he was responsible for supporting business development, marketing and sales of satellite, information security and automotive technologies developed by HRL Laboratories. He also worked in engineering positions in ergonomics and user experience at Honda Motor Company and manufacturing at Teledyne Relays.
Howard has worked overseas for a total of ten years in Luxembourg and Japan. He is a graduate of M.I.T.
Current Investments: Pixazza, Swoopo
Previous investments: Skype (acquired by eBay – EBAY), Photobucket (acquired by Fox Interactive Media – NWS), Bebo (acquired by AOL – TWX) and Netkraft (acquired by Adea Solutions)
Josh Kopelman, First Round Capital
Josh has been an active entrepreneur and investor in the Internet industry since its commercialization. In 1992, while he was a student at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Josh co-founded Infonautics Corporation – an Internet information company. In 1996, Infonautics went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange.
Josh founded Half.com in July of 1999, and led it to become one of the largest sellers of used books, movies and music in the world. Half.com was acquired by eBay in July 2000 — and Josh remained with eBay for three years, running the Half.com business unit and growing eBay’s Media marketplace to almost half a billion dollars in annual gross merchandise sales. In late 2003 Josh helped to found TurnTide, an anti-spam company that created the world’s first anti-spam router. TurnTide was acquired by Symantec just six months later.
In addition to being an active angel investor, Josh has served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Comcast Interactive Capital – a $350 million venture capital fund affiliated with Comcast Corporation.
In 2001 Josh and his wife created the Kopelman Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on angel philanthropy to provide “start-up” grants to social entrepreneurs. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Main Line Health, suburban Philadelphia’s most comprehensive healthcare resource, operating four of the region’s most-respected hospitals. He also serves on as a member of the advisory boards for Wharton Entrepreneurial Center and the Weiss Tech House at the University of Pennsylvania.
Josh earned a Bachelor of Science degree cum laude in Entrepreneurial Management and Marketing from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Mike Maples, Maples Investment
Mike Maples, Jr. is the managing partner of Maples Investments, and was recently named as one of “8 Rising VC Stars” by Fortune Magazine for his investments in business and consumer technologycompanies. Before becoming a full-time investor, Mike was an entrepreneur and operating executive who worked in a variety of senior management roles in high-growth companies. His background spans a variety of markets including consumer technology, small business, and the enterprise, and he has led various functions in product development, marketing, business development, and corporate strategy.
Before founding Maples Investments, Mike co-founded Motive, Inc., the world’s leading broadband software company in 1997, and played key roles in its growth from raw start-up through sales of more than $75 million. Motive was one of the only successful technology IPOs in 2004, and the most successful infrastructure software IPO for the prior three years. At Motive, Mike was General Manager of Motive’s Corporate Business Unit, as well as Chief Marketing and Strategy officer.
Prior to Motive, Mike was responsible for worldwide product marketing at Tivoli Systems, where he managed the company’s product portfolio from its early-stage development through its 1995 IPO and growth to a $750M line of business within the IBM Software Group. Mike began his professional career at Silicon Graphics, where he served in business development and product marketing roles.
In his spare time Mike is an amateur artist, movie-maker, and calligrapher. He holds an Engineering degree from Stanford University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and a guest-lecturer on entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, Stanford University, Princeton University, and the University of Texas.

Dave Strohm, Greylock
Dave joined Greylock in 1980 and opened our west coast office in 1983. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Harvard Business School.
Dave is on the board of AtHoc, Bounty Jobs, Cuil, CoWare, EMC Corporation, OpenDNS, Progreso Financiero, richrelevance, SuccessFactors, Tabula and VMware.
Dave also led Greylock’s prior involvement with companies such as Doubleclick (Nasdaq:DCLK), Forte Software (acquired by Sun Microsystems), Kiva Software (acquired by Netscape), Legato Systems (acquired by EMC), Decru (acquired by Network Appliance), Internet Security Systems (acquired by IBM), Mentor Graphics, Mobile Automation (acquired by iPass), ccMail (acquired by Lotus/IBM), and Cygnus (acquired by RedHat), Net Effect Systems (acquired by Ask.com), Octane Software (acquired by Epiphany) and Wily Technology (acquired by CA).
Ravi Belani
Ravi Belani is an Associate at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, where he serveson the boards of DesiHits, Redux, LiveMedia, TinyPictures, YieldSoftware, and Vizu. Ravi also led the firm’s investments in Komli andPubmatic.
Ravi is a Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi graduate of StanfordUniversity, holding a BS with Distinction and MS in IndustrialEngineering and Engineering Management. Ravi also holds an MBA fromHarvard Business School. As a Board Fellow at Harvard, Ravi served theGlobal Board of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs). Ravi is also a graduateof the Kauffman Fellows Program.

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Data Exhaust Alchemy: Turning the Web's Waste into Solid Gold
2010-01-19 18:00 - 20:30 | Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School, Stanford, CA, United States
Data Exhaust Alchemy – Turning the Web’s Waste into Solid Gold

When

Tuesday, January 19, 2010
6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where

Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School
(click for directions & parking information)

Event Description:

The internet and social media create a mountain of random, unstructured, and at times ephemeral data by-products, which may appear to be trash. Yet, one person’s trash is another’s treasure.From FaceBook to Netflix, people are spending more time sharing their thoughts, opinions, plans and perspectives as they socialize and conduct business online. With each of these Internet exchanges traces of information,or Data Exhaust, are left behind. When correlated or combined, these snippets can provide insight into political views, professional achievements,purchasing behaviors, and demographic information—pinpointing trend setters and leading indicators. Brilliant innovators now re-purpose this data stream, aggregating and analyzing the data to provide new products or services.
Consumers realize that the data they voluntarily contribute can help them and others make decisions, providing true value—improving their movie selections on Netflix, their music selections on Pandora, career paths of a company’s employees on Linkedin, and which sellers can be trusted on Ebay. In turn, they want to be treated fairly as individuals by the companies they utilize and support.
This event brings together experts, entrepreneurs, and investors to explore the business opportunities arising from the innovative ways Data Exhaust is being harnessed.

Moderator:

Roger Magoulas, Research Director, O’Reilly Media Inc.
Research Director at O’Reilly since 2004, Roger has been involved in data warehouse and quantitative analysis roles for more than 16 years both as an internal resource and as a consultant. At O’Reilly, Roger is involved in both quantitative and qualitative analysis, building a data warehouse infrastructure, including a multi-terabyte jobs data mart, and research projects covering big data, Facebook applications, geolocation technologies and other topics.
Prior to O’Reilly, Roger worked as a data warehouse consultant, helping build data warehouse and analysis infrastructures for organizations like the San Francisco Opera, the Alberta Motor Club, QAD Software, DigitalThink and Ofoto (Kodak Gallery), often deploying open source tools and platforms. Before consulting, Roger ran the research team at Sybase and helped build an early data warehouse at Pacific Bell.
Roger has an MBA from the Haas School of Business at Cal Berkeley, and BA degrees in Computer Science from Cal State Hayward and Finance from the University of Connecticut.
Panelists:

JB (Mike John-Baptiste) CEO, PeerSet
JB spent the last 14 years fueling technology companies where his emphasis has ranged from b2c and b2b digital media to financial technology. In all cases JB has played key roles in steering his companies into new markets with new partners. As CEO of Peerset, JB is responsible for evolving the Company’s product set, expanding the marketplace for customers and partners and seeking additional investment capital for future growth.
Before joining Peerset, JB was SVP at JumpTV a digital video company operating international tv and sports sites. He managed a 23-person team responsible for sales and distribution, sports programming, account management and distribution alliances.
JB spent five years in financial technology startups and five years at two investment banks including Robertson Stephens where he was a founding member of the Private Capital Group. During his four years with the firm he assisted dozens of entrepreneurs in obtaining venture capital and contributed to successful public offerings with digital pioneers such as Excite and CBS Sportsline.
JB is a resident of San Francisco and a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in Economics.

Dr. DJ Patil, Chief Scientist and Sr. Director of Product, LinkedIn
Dr.Patil is responsible for all analytics projects including reporting, web analytics, as well as products on the site that take advantage of leveraging LinkedIn’s unique data set. Some of their products include, People You May Know, Who Viewed My Profile, and the recommendation engines.
Previous to LinkedIn, Dr.Patil was a Distinguished Research Scientist and the Director for Strategy, Product, and Analytics of Corporate Architecture at eBay Inc. He’s conducted research in a wide array of areas as faculty at the University of Maryland where he helped start a major research initiative on numerical weather prediction. In 2001 he jointly received a 21st Century Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation for innovative and ground breaking work on characterizing the complexity of weather. Two of his research papers are currently ranked #1 and #9 as the most cited papers in their areas.
As an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow for the Department of Defense, Dr. Patil directed new efforts to leverage social network analysis and the melding of computational and social sciences to anticipate emerging threats to the US. He also co-chaired a major review of US efforts to prevent bioweapons proliferation in Central Asia and co-founded the Iraqi Virtual Science Library (IVSL). In 2006 the Iraqi Ambassador to the US hailed the IVSL as one of the most important projects for education and helping Iraqi scientists, doctors, and engineers rebuild their country.
Jeff Hammerbacher, Vice President of Products and Chief Scientist, Cloudera
Jeff was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Accel Partners immediately prior to co-founding Cloudera. Before Accel, he conceived, built, and led the Data team at Facebook. The Data team was responsible for driving many of the applications of statistics and machine learning at Facebook, as well as building out the infrastructure to support these tasks for massive data sets. The team produced two open source projects: Hive, a system for offline analysis built above Hadoop, and Cassandra, a structured storage system on a P2P network. Before joining Facebook, Jeff was a quantitative analyst on Wall Street. Jeff earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics from Harvard University.
Mark Breier, General Partner, In-Q-Tel
Mark Breier is an author, investor, and public speaker. His background includes 15 years as technology executive and 10 years in packaged goods marketing. His experience includes VP of Marketing at Amazon.com, CMO at Plantronics, and CEO of Beyond.com. Mark’s early years include marketing roles at General Mills, Kraft Foods, and Dreyer’s/Edy’s Grand Ice Cream. Mark grew up in Bethesda, MD and has a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University and M.B.A from Stanford Business School. He is an author of a management best-seller, 10 Second Internet Manager, blogger (http://10secondtips.blogspot.com), and is the founder of “The Great Turtle Race” www.GreatTurtleRace.com. He lives in Los Altos Hills, CA with his wife and 3 boys (8, 15, and 18).

Pablos Holman, Futurist, Inventor, Security Expert, and Notorious Hacker
Pablos holds a unique view into both breaking and building new technologies. At Komposite, he consults on bizarre invention and design projects that assimilate new technologies. Previously, Pablos created thigh holsters for cell phones; helped build the world’s smallest PC; spaceships at Blue Origin; artificial intelligence agent systems; and the Hackerbot, a WiFi-seeking robot. Pablos is working at the Intellectual Ventures Laboratory where a wide variety of futuristic invention projects are under way including a fission reactor powered by nuclear waste; a machine to stop hurricanes; a tool for deep brain surgery; and tools to help eradicate malaria.

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Virtual Goods: Runaway Growth Opens New Opportunities to Monetize
2009-12-08 18:00 - 20:30 | Sun Microsystems Auditorium SCA03, 4030 George Sellon Circle, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Virtual Goods: Runaway Growth Opens New Opportunities to Monetize
Special Event from MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (VLAB) and SVASE. Sponsored by Sun Microsystems. Location is at Sun Microsystems in Santa Clara (not Stanford GSB)

When
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshments
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where
NOTE: Location is NOT at Stanford

Sun Microsystems Auditorium SCA03. Limited Capacity!
4030 George Sellon Circle, Santa Clara, CA 95054
Click HERE for map.

Online Registration Closed – Some tickets may be available at the door!
Online ticket sales close 5pm Monday December 7 or when Sold Out. Sell-out is likely! Please sign in before registering if you are already a member of VLAB

Event Description:
Virtual Goods are quickly becoming a powerful new online monetization model, with users buying gifts, swords, clothes, and other digital items to enhance their experience in social networks and games. Today the market for Virtual Goods (VG) is already $1 Billion in the United States alone, and is expected to grow 80% to $1.8B next year, according the authors of the report “Inside Virtual Goods”. In Asia, the market is already seven times that of the United States, $7 Billion, per the Virtual Goods Online October 2009 report. And more amazingly, in China, VG revenues actually exceed on-line ad revenues.

What are the best monetization strategies?
Do the secondary markets enhance the value of virtual goods?
What is the impact of financial regulations on the secondary markets?
What has contributed to the rise of independent creators of virtual goods?
Why is Asia so far ahead of the US, and what are the implications?

Come hear bold entrepreneurs talk about their business models and the online ecosystem for Virtual Goods and find out!

Moderator
Justin Smith, Founder, Inside Network

Justin Smith is the founder of Inside Network, the first and only service dedicated to providing business information and market research to the Facebook platform and social gaming ecosystem. Justin serves as Editor of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games, and manages Inside Network’s AppData and PageData services as well. Prior to Inside Network, he was formerly Head of Product at Watercooler, one of the leading application developers on the Facebook Platform. Prior to Watercooler, Justin was an early employee at Xfire, the largest social utility for gamers, which was sold to Viacom in 2006. Justin holds a degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford University

Panelists
Brian Balfour, Founder and VP Product Marketing, Viximo
Brian Balfour is the Founder and VP Product Marketing of Viximo which provides virtual good solutions to social networking, online dating, and casual gaming sites that enable and grow their virtual goods revenue. Prior to founding Viximo, Brian managed new product initiatives at ZoomInfo, and was founder of multiple online community startups, including the first college specific social network in early 2003. In addition, as a founding member of Betahouse, a co-working space for technology entrepreneurs, and co-founder of PopSignal, one of Boston’s largest professional networking organizations, Brian is actively contributing to the growth of Boston’s technology startup scene. Brian holds Bachelor’s degrees in Sports Business, Economics, and Applied Statistics from the University of Michigan.
Jude Gomila, Co-Founder and President, Heyzap
Jude Gomila is co founder and President of Heyzap. Funded by Union Square Ventures and Y Combinator, Heyzap is building the largest distributed online gaming platform. Heyzap monetizes through the sale of virtual goods inside the flash games and provides monetization, social and analytics APIs to game developers. Jude was born in London, UK and attended the UK’s Cambridge University and graduated with Honors in Engineering and Management. During his final year of University he started Sugar Global, a digital photo frame brand, making sales to UK stores including Harrods, Selfridges, Amazon and Firebox.com. Sugar products were featured in the What Hi-Fi Magazine’s Expo 2007. In 2004, Jude was awarded the Technology Partnership Award for excellence in Design while at Cambridge University and in 2005, the IBM EMEA Top Student Award. Jude Gomila also mentors at Seedcamp week in Europe and conducts interviews for intruders.tv
Bill Grosso, CTO and SVP Product, Live Gamer

As CTO and SVP of Product for Live Gamer, Mr. Grosso is responsible for the efforts of the technology and product teams,tailoring product offerings to customers’ needs and delivering the right solutions to Live Gamer’s global customer base. Previously, Mr. Grosso served as CTO for virtual economy platform provider Twofish, which was recently acquired by Live Gamer, where he headed the Twofish Elements product roadmap, platform development and engineering organizations. As an active participant in the software development community, Mr. Grosso has published two books and more than 20 journal articles. He also served as a long-time board member for SDForum, and has held various chief architect and executive engineering roles at companies including Engage, Echopass and Hipbone. He received his Masters of Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Owen Mahoney, CEO, Outspark

As Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Electronic Arts, Owen was responsible for worldwide mergers and acquisitions and business development, and led all acquisitions from November 2000 to January 2009. Owen also has substantial operating and deal-making experience in Asia. Prior to joining EA, he served as Vice President with consumer technology company Xenote, Inc., where he oversaw business development for domestic and international operations. Before joining Xenote, Owen served as Vice President of International at PointCast Inc. where he was responsible for setting up and running its Japanese joint venture. Owen also held a variety of management posts with other technology companies including Claris Japan, Inc, Radius Inc. and Ray Dream, Inc. (now MetaCreations) where he oversaw sales, marketing, and business development for the Asia/Pacific region. Owen graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Asian Studies from the University of California at Berkeley, and studied Japanese law and political science at the University of Tokyo graduate department of law. He is fluent in Japanese and lived in Japan for five years.

Online registration closed – Some tickets may be available at the door

Please sign in before registering if you are already a member of VLAB.

SSDs: Game-Changing Technology for Better, Bigger, Faster Apps and App Dev
2009-11-17 18:00 - 20:30 | Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School, Stanford, CA, United States
SSDs: Game-Changing Technology for Better, Bigger, Faster Apps and App Dev

When

Tuesday, November 17, 2009
6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where

Arbuckle Lounge and Bishop Auditorium at Stanford Business School
(click for directions & parking information)

Event Description:

Described as “stupid fast,” solid state drive (“SSD”) technology is causing a dramatic shift in consumer rich areas, such as gaming and social networking. Exponential shifts in performance are also opening up new opportunities in large database applications. Some companies, such as MySpace, are opting in as well for the greener footprint that SSD technology provides. Faster and greener spells opportunity for the startup world.An SSD-enabled, networked world promises near real-time access and performance. Give us HD in 3D and ultrafast games! Delivering high performance across multiple platforms will require a range of new applications, some of which are already being developed. Come learn more about the rise of SSD technology and how it’s powering transformation and creating opportunity for entrepreneurs:

What are the developments in SSD’s and the impact on enterprise and consumer applications.
Given the widespread emergence of SSD, what problems are still to be solved, creating opportunities for startups in hardware and software?
What are the implications of faster access times to rich media and databases?
Will the physics of solid state providing faster access times and lower energy burden (i.e., longer battery life, reduced energy costs) create a paradigm shift?
What will application developers need to know to be ready for this evolution in storage and memory technology?

Moderator
Tom Coughlin, President, Coughlin Associates
Panelists

Bill Watkins, Former CEO, Seagate *NEW UPDATE*
David Bradford, CEO, Fusion-io

Mike Chenery, President, Pliant Technology

Mike Speiser, Managing Director, Sutter Hill Ventures
Sam Pullara, Chief Technologist, Yahoo! Inc.

Registrations Closed. Walk-ins are welcome and on-site tickets are available.

Bios

Tom Coughlin, President, Coughlin Associates
Tom is a widely respected storage analyst and consultant. He has over 30 years in the data storage industry with multiple engineering and management positions at high profile companies.
Dr. Coughlin has many publications and six patents to his credit. Tom is also the author of Digital Storage in Consumer Electronics: The Essential Guide, which was published by Newnes Press. Coughlin Associates provides market and technology analysis (including reports on several digital storage technologies and applications and a newsletter) as well as Data Storage Technical Consulting services. Tom is the publisher of the 2009 Digital Storage in Consumer Electronics Report, the 2009 Media and Entertainment Storage Report as well as the 2009 Survey on Storage for Professional Media and Entertainment.
Tom is active with SMPTE, SNIA, IDEMA, the IEEE Magnetics Society, IEEE CE Society, and other professional organizations. Tom is the founder and organizer of the Annual Storage Visions Conference (www.storagevisions.com), a partner to the International Consumer Electronics Show, as well as the Creative Storage Conference held in association with the NAB show (www.creativestorage.org). Tom is also the chairman of the annual Flash Memory Summit. He is also a Leader in the Gerson Lehrman Group Councils of Advisors and a member of the Consultants Network of Silicon Valley (CNSV). For more information on Tom Coughlin and his publications. go to www.tomcoughlin.com.
Bill Watkins, Former CEO, Seagate
Bill Watkins has served as Seagate’s chief executive officer from 2004 through January 2009.
Prior to being CEO, Watkins, 56, was previously Seagate’s president and chief operating officer, a position he had held since 2000. During that time, he was responsible for the company’s hard disc drive operations, including recording heads, media and other components, and related R&D and product-development organizations.
Watkins joined Seagate in 1996 with the company’s merger with Conner Peripherals. In 1990, Watkins established the Conner Disk Division and managed its success through the merger with Seagate. Prior to joining Conner Peripherals, Watkins held executive positions with Domain Technology, where he managed the MINT (Magnetic Information Technology) disc media manufacturing process.
Watkins graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Science degree in political science from the University of Texas. He currently serves on the board of directors of Maxim Integrated Products, Flextronics and Vertical Circuits Incorporated in addition to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. In December, 2006 he was named Knight Commander “Dato” by the Governor of Penang, Malaysia and received Distinguished Friends of Singapore medal from S.R. Nathan, President of Singapore.
David Bradford, CEO, Fusion-io

David Bradford is the Chief Executive Officer of Fusion-io which has developed what many have hailed as the “World’s Fastest Storage Device.” The award-winning ioDrive is a solid state storage device that accelerates data flow through any corporate enterprise. David joined Fusion-io as a Consultant in June of 2008, as Senior Vice President in September of 2008, and as Chief Executive Officer and Board Member in February of 2009. Recently he helped convince Steve Wozniak, Inventor of the Apple Computer, to join the company as its Chief Scientist.
David brings nearly 30 years of experience in technology leadership to Fusion-io. He is a proven business leader who has used innovation and foresight to play a significant role in shaping the expansive growth of the world of Information Technology. From April 2005 to June 2006, Mr. Bradford served as a Partner for the law firm of Greenberg Traurig working out of their Orange County, California office. From July 2000 to April 2005, Mr. Bradford worked as a consultant to a number of private equity funds, General Counsel to Dynix Corporation, a leading supplier of Library Software and Services, and General Counsel to Utah Governor Jon M. Huntsman’s Transition team. Mr. Bradford served as Senior Vice President, General Counsel of Novell, Inc., a networking software company, from 1985 until July 2000.
Mr. Bradford received a B.A. in Political Science and a J.D. from Brigham Young University and an M.B.A. from Pepperdine.

Mike Chenery, President, Pliant Technology
Mike Chenery is a co-founder and president of Pliant Technology, an SSDsupplier founded in 2006. Before starting Pliant, he spent 12 years asthe vice president of HDD advanced engineering at Fujitsu ComputerProducts of America. At Fujitsu, he developed and managed the creationof an advanced architecture development group, as well as the designand introduction of three new serial interfaces. Under Chenery’sleadership, the launch of these products helped dramatically enhancethe market perception of Fujitsu’s technical leadership capabilities. He has 40 years of experience in the storage industry, and has heldmanagement positions with Memorex, Unisys, Andor Technology, andMicropolis Corporation. Chenery holds the equivalent of a B.S. inElectrical Technology from the South-East London Technical College.
Mike Speiser, Managing Director, Sutter Hill Ventures

Mike joined SHV from Yahoo!, where he was vice president of community products including Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Profiles and Bix. Mike joined Yahoo! in February 2007 through the acquisition of Bix, where he served as president and CEO. Prior to co-founding Bix, Mike served as vice president and technical advisor to Symantec Chairman & CEO, John Thompson. Previously, he was vice president of product marketing and product management at Veritas, which was acquired by Symantec. Mike also co-founded Epinions, worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, and was an analyst with CS First Boston. Mike holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, where he graduated as a Baker Scholar, and a B.A. from the University of Arizona.
Sam Pullara, Chief Technologist, Yahoo! Inc.
Sam Pullara is vice president and chief technologist at Yahoo!. While at Yahoo!, Pullara has led the Yahoo! Application Platform, played key roles in business and technology strategy, including business development and M&A, and also contributed to a variety of tech technology programs and initiatives, including work on grid computing (e.g., Hadoop), virtualization and large scale reliable data systems. Before Yahoo!, Pullara founded Gauntlet Systems while an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Accel Venture Partners . Pullara is a board member of the OpenSocial Foundation, founded by Yahoo!, Google and MySpace. He also contributes to open source projects and volunteers his time to the Java Community Process through participation in several expert groups. Pullara has a M.S. in Physics from Northwestern University and a B.S. in Physics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).

Registrations Closed. Walk-ins are welcome and on-site tickets are available.

MITEI on the Road: What MIT Is Doing about Changing the World of Energy
2009-11-04 18:00 - 20:30 | Silicon Valley Bank, 3005 Tasman Drive, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
MITEI on the Road: What MIT Is Doing about Changing the World of Energy
When

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment

7:00pm – 9:00pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where

Silicon Valley Bank, 3005 Tasman Drive, Santa Clara, CA 95054

Event Description:

Please join us for a very special opportunity to learn all about the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI). The topic includes the research being conducted at MIT in the area of solar photovoltaic and other renewable technologies. The featured speakers are Tonio Buonassisi, professor of Materials Science and Engineering, one of the foremost MIT faculty members in his field and Daniel Enderton, the Executive Director of the Sustainable Energy Revolution Program (SERP). This is a rare opportunity to get the inside scoop on MIT innovative technologies and cutting edge research and programs in the field of energy.

MIT President Susan Hockfield announced energy as one of the three strategic initiatives for MIT.
MITEI pairs the Institute’s world-class research teams with key players across the innovation spectrum to help accomplish two important goals: improving today’s energy systems and creating tomorrow’s global energy marketplace.
Learn more at
http://web.mit.edu/mitei/

Space is limited and the event is expected to sell out. VLAB members can register as MITCNC members to get the $30.00 rate! Please register now! (link)

Speakers
Tonio Buonassisi – Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering

Research Interests: adoption of renewable energy technologies, and photovoltaics in particular, via breakthroughs in efficiency, cost reduction, de-bottlenecking, and increased materials utilization. http://pv.mit.edu

Daniel Enderton, Executive Director of the Sustainable Energy Revolution Program (SERP)

SERP is the network of renewable energy research activities at MIT developed through the MIT Energy Initiative. The flagship program is in solar energy technologies, with growing programs in bioenergy, wind, geothermal and waves/tidal as well as the complementary areas of storage, grid and materials. Responsibilities include program and resource development focused on growing new research programs as well as coordination of existing programs.

About CNC:

The MIT Club of Northern California is run entirely by volunteer MIT alumni. The club organizes hundreds of events every year, serving approximately 8300 alumni in the Northern California area. Each year, the club publishes three newsletters; club members are also notified of upcoming events through a weekly email announcement. Since the Club does not receive funding from MIT, it is funded primarily from event fees, alumni donations and corporate sponsorships. Organization is led by a leadership team of over 20 alumni officers with a distinguished board of directors overseeing club operations.

This Event is kindly sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank www.svb.com

Entrepreneurs: Uncensored 4
2009-10-27 18:00 - 20:30 | Silicon Valley, CA, United States
Draper Fisher Jurvetson and VLAB present Entrepreneurs – Uncensored!
A six part speaker series highlighting the valley’s boldest entrepreneurs.
Event Description:
Each event in the series will be a case study providing meaningful advice on how to get to a meaningful startup milestone, like first paying customer or product launch. The event series will be a sequential progression of milestones in the trajectory of a startup, from product launch to exit.
Speaker Series 1 – “How I got to my first paying customer” with Max Levchin and Mike Cassidy
When
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
6:00PM to 6:30PM – Registration and Networking
6:30PM to 7:45PM – Main Event
7:45PM to 8:30PM – Networking

There is a nominal fee of $35 to attend.
Where
Silicon Valley/Bay Area (location disclosed to invitees)
Come and join us for the series and listen to Max Levchin and Mike Cassidy who have changed the industry and in the process have set a gold standard as role models for the next generation of entrepreneurs. Listen to how they managed to get their first paying customer.
This event is by invitation only.

Please fill up this form if you are interested in attending this event. We will email you an exclusive invitation for this two hour event.

Moderator
Ravi Belani, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Speakers
Max Levchin, Founder, CEO & Chairman, Slide
Mike Cassidy, Former CEO, Ruba, Xfire, Direct Hit

Bios
Max Levchin, Founder, CEO & Chairman
Max is the CEO and visionary behind Slide, the largest social entertainment company in the world and developer of the most engaging applications on social networks. Max is also renowned as the co-founder of PayPal, an expert in combating online fraud and one of the hardest working entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Before starting Slide, he incubated several other start-ups, including Yelp, where he currently sits as Chairman of the Board. Max started PayPal in 1998, took the company public in 2002 and then sold it to eBay for more than $1.5 billion at the age of 26. Originally from Kiev, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union), Max moved to Chicago at the age of 16 and later received his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Max sits on the board of several other companies and trains for triathlons when he’s not obsessing over Slide’s business.
Mike Cassidy, Former CEO, Ruba, Xfire, Direct Hit
Mike Cassidy has been the Co-Founder and CEO of four start-ups: Ruba, Xfire, Direct Hit, and Stylus Innovation. Visual travel guide and tour site Ruba helps travelers all over the world share their favorite places and experiences. Xfire helps gamers play online with their friends much more easily. Xfire is also an instant messenger and peer-to-peer file download system designed just for gamers. Xfire has over 10 million registered gamers in over 100 countries. Viacom/MTV acquired Xfire for $110 million. Direct Hit was a revolutionary Internet search engine whose customers included MSN, Lycos, AOL, and dozens of others. Ask Jeeves acquired Direct Hit for $500 million. Stylus Innovation’s flagship product was the award winning computer telephony software Visual Voice. Mike is on the Board of Advisors of Jazz at Lincoln Center and is on the Visiting Committee Board of the MIT Media Lab. Mike studied jazz piano at the Berklee College of Music. Mike has a BS and MS in Aerospace Engineering from MIT. He graduated from Harvard Business School.
Ravi Belani
Ravi Belani is an Associate at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, where he serves on the boards of DesiHits, Redux, LiveMedia, TinyPictures, Yield Software, and Vizu. Ravi also led the firm’s investments in Komli and Pubmatic.
Ravi is a Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi graduate of Stanford University, holding a BS with Distinction and MS in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management. Ravi also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. As a Board Fellow at Harvard, Ravi served the Global Board of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs). Ravi is also a graduate of the Kauffman Fellows Program.

I am interested in attending. Click here!
For any questions, please email ebf@vlab.or
