VLAB

WiMAX Broadband Convergence: Emerging Fixed and Mobile Revenue Opportunities
2007-12-11 18:00 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Intel SC12 Auditorium, 3200 Juliette Lane, Building SC12, Santa Clara, CA, 95052, United States
WiMAX Broadband Convergence: Emerging Fixed and Mobile Revenue Opportunities
Special Event from MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (VLAB) and SVASE. Sponsored by Intel Corporation. Location is at Intel in Santa Clara (not Stanford GSB)
6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Hors D’oeuvres
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A
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Location:
Intel SC12 Auditorium, Building SC12
3200 Juliette Lane, Santa Clara, CA, 95052 (directions )
Opening Remarks – Sriram Viswanathan , GM of WiMAX Program Office, Intel Corporation
Moderator:
Berge Ayvazian, Chief Strategy Officer, Yankee Group
Panelists:
Rama Shukla, VP Mobility Group & Director, WiMAX Program Office, Intel Corporation
Rehan Jalil, President and CEO, WiChorus
P. Kelley Dunne, CEO, Digital Bridge Communications
Sandesh Patnam, Partner and CFO, Bay Partners
Tom Gruba , Senior Director of Marketing for MOTOwi4 WIMAX, Motorola

Event Description:
WiMAX Broadband Convergence
Emerging Fixed and Mobile Revenue Opportunities
The demand for mobility and broadband will be satisfied only with true mobile broadband services and the technology that can support them. At the forefront of the evolution to mobile broadband, and with the support of several industry heavyweights, WiMAX looks to be the leader for extending broadband to underserved areas and driving the Mobile Internet. WiMAX has gained momentum in the last year and is set to have a major impact on the converging fixed and mobile broadband.
The panel discussion will explore these topics, and provide further insights to the following questions:
o Where do key industry players stand on incorporating WiMAX into their existing strategies?
o Will 2008 be the breakout year for WiMAX and what is its role in shaping the mobile Internet of the future?
o What opportunities do these represent for aspiring entrepreneurs?
o Where are the current opportunities to monetize in WiMAX?
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Bios:

Moderator:

Berge Ayvazian
Chief Strategy Officer
Yankee Group
As chief strategy officer, Berge Ayvazian oversees Yankee Group’s new growth mission, providing thought leadership for the firm’s research, consulting and events in the mobile, telecom, IT, applications, media and entertainment industries worldwide. Working with the company’s diverse research groups, Ayvazian ensures Yankee Group is aligned with clients to help them visualize, navigate and generate value from current and future business opportunities. As a senior industry analyst and consultant, Ayvazian directs a wide range of research and consulting projects across a broad group of topics, including communications industry structure, broadband service provider strategy, mobile network infrastructure, enterprise networking strategy, information technology and applications.
Ayvazian has directed more than 100 consulting projects forecasting product and service markets, assessing strategies and analyzing investment opportunities in the telecommunications, wireless, computer, internet, cable and broadcast TV industries. He is currently leading several new research, consulting and product initiatives on the convergence of broadband and mobile network technologies, and the emerging business strategies of mobile broadband service providers. He recently led the launch of Yankee Group’s new research and consulting practice, Municipal Broadband Technologies & Services. He also plans to launch a Yankee Fellows program and form a company advisory board later this year.
Ayvazian is Yankee Group’s principal public spokesperson and has served as conference chairman and keynote speaker for the company’s Telecom Industry Forums and Enterprise Network Decision Summits. He is currently the co-chairman of Trendsmedia’s WiMAX World Conference, keynote speaker at W2i Digital Cities Convention and a featured moderator of a CIO panel on wireless and broadband at Telefonica’s fourth annual Leadership Conference of the Americas.
During his nearly 20-year career at Yankee Group, he served as strategy director for the Reuters Research and Advisory unit and was a consultant and researcher with Kalba Bowen Associates. In addition, Ayvazian was the company chief executive officer from 1999 through 2001. Web site is http://www.saffo.com

Panelists:

Rama Shukla
VP Mobility Group & Director, WiMAX Program Office
Intel Corporation
Dr. Rama K. Shukla is Vice President of the Mobility Group and Director, WiMAX Program Office at Intel Corporation. Dr. Shukla joined Intel in 1979.
Previous to his current assignment, Dr. Shukla has held a number of technical and business management positions spanning 28 years of his career with Intel Corporation. These include positions such as Engineering Manager and Centrino® Platform Program Management in Mobility Group, General Manager & Director of the Silicon based Photonics Optical Components business group and various positions ranging from individual technical contributor to group manager/director involving the development of Silicon IC process and associated packaging/interconnect technologies.
Dr. Shukla received his master’s degree in solid state chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India & Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1979. He holds several patents and has published numerous papers related to silicon device processing and assembly technologies. He received IEEE Manufacturing Technology of the Year Award in 2000 for leading IC industry transition to flip-chip laminated package & interconnects technologies at Intel Corporation.
Rehan Jalil
Founder and CEO
WiChorus
Rehan has over 15 years of technical management and sales experience in telecommunications, networking, and multi-core processors. Prior to WiChorus, he was the chief architect for Aperto Networks and played diverse leadership roles in technology and sales. Aperto was a key contributor of technology that became part of IEEE802.16 and was a founding member of WiMAX Forum. He developed multiple generations of broadband wireless silicon, carrier-grade base stations and terminals, and also brought multi-million dollar orders. These systems are used to deploy networks globally, in over 75 countries, by more than 400 operators. At Sun Microsystems, he helped develop one of the industry’s earliest advanced multi-core multithreaded processor for throughput computing and graphics applications. Part of the technology is now used in Sun’s 32-threaded Niagra and Rock processors. At Siemens, he managed projects related to system-level design and implementation. He also contributes to social entrepreneurship projects and is a charter member of OPEN Silicon Valley. He has over 18 patents pending and graduated with an MSEE from Purdue University.
P.Kelley Dunne
Chief Executive Officer
Digital Bridge Communications
Kelley Dunne was formerly Executive Vice President, Operations for Verizon Avenue, the Verizon subsidiary focused on providing bundled communications services to concentrated communities nationwide. Mr. Dunne’s responsibilities included leadership of Network Operations, Program Management, Customer Care, and Field Operations for Verizon’s multi-dwelling unit and concentrated community markets. He was also responsible for initiating and leading Verizon’s rural broadband trials nationwide. Previously, Mr. Dunne held positions as Vice President of HR, Vice President of Provisioning and Customer Care, and Director of Carrier Services at OnePoint Communications prior to Verizon’s acquisition of OnePoint in 2000. Mr. Dunne has over 15 years experience in the field of telecommunications, including 7 years with AT&T and Bell Labs, where he held management positions in Network Operations, Data Network Planning, and Network Security. In addition, Mr. Dunne served as an enlisted serviceman and later as an Army Officer in the US Army’s Signal Corps. Mr. Dunne received his BS degree in Communications Systems Management from Ohio University and his MS degree in Information and Communications Sciences from Ball State University.
Sandesh Patnam
Partner and CFO
Bay Partners
Sandesh is a Partner and CFO at Bay. Prior, Sandesh was with TeleSoft Partners, where he co-led investments in Aarohi Communications (acquired by Emulex), Amberwave Systems, Redclover Networks, Sierra Design Automation (acquired by Mentor Graphics), Validity Sensors, Xambala and Xpedion Design Systems (acquired by Agilent Technologies). He was also associated with Ikanos Communications (Nasdaq: IKAN), Lara Networks (acquired by Cypress Semiconductor), Catamaran (acquired by Infineon) and Empowertel (acquired by IP Unity).
Before TeleSoft, Sandesh was at Malleable Technologies (acquired by PMC-Sierra), an early stage startup developing a VoIP chipset. There, he had a variety of roles from design engineering to product marketing. Prior, Sandesh was at MIPS/Silicon Graphics, where he was involved in developing next-generation computing architectures and microprocessors. He has also spent time at Integrated Device Technologies (IDT), Cirrus Logic and Tandem Computers (acquired by HP)
Tom Gruba
Senior Director of Marketing for MOTOwi4
Motorola
Tom Gruba is the Senior Director of Marketing for the MOTOwi4 WiMAX within the Home and Networks Mobility business of Motorola. Gruba started marketing Motorola’s wireless broadband products with the 2002 launch of its award winning Canopy(R) wireless broadband portfolio.
He has been with Motorola for ten years and has served in various business development and marketing roles in both Motorola Networks and the Internet Content and Software Group. Prior to joining Motorola, Gruba was at ATT Bell Laboratories, ATT Network Systems and Lucent Technologies for 13 years where he held numerous management roles in engineering and product marketing.
Gruba earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Aurora University in Aurora, Illinois, and an Associate in Applied Science degree from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois.

Sriram Viswanathan
GM of WiMAX Program Office
Intel Corporation
Sriram Viswanathan is managing director of Intel Capital and general manager of the WiMAX program office. As the head of the mobility sector, Viswanathan is responsible for investments on a worldwide basis in the mobile area. He is also responsible for the mobile content and services sector, mobile communications sector and mobile platforms sector. In January 2007 he also assumed responsibility for leading Intel’s WiMAX efforts, acting as the corporate focal point for our customers and business partners in this strategic effort for Intel.
Previously, Viswanathan served in a variety of positions for Intel Capital, including director of the eHome and broadband sectors and director of the mobile communications sector. He also served as director for the Hollywood/media programs, leading Intel’s activities in the media industry in support of Intel’s content efforts.
Viswanathan joined Intel in 1993 as a technical marketing engineer for corporate demos, responsible for showcasing Intel’s leading technologies in industry events supporting Intel’s top executives.
Viswanathan received his bachelor’s degree in physics from American College in 1984. In 1987, he received his second bachelor’s degree in computer science and automation from the Indian Institute of Science. Viswanathan received his master’s degree from UCLA Anderson School of Business in 1997.

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Directions
3200 Juliette Lane, Santa Clara, CA, 95052

Web 3.0: New Opportunities on the Semantic Web
2007-11-20 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
Web 3.0: New Opportunities on the Semantic Web
Robert Cook from Metaweb, Nova Spivack from Radar Networks, Alex Iskold from Adaptive Blue and Paul Kedrosky from Ventures West, moderated by Paul Saffo.

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Moderator:
Paul Saffo, Technology Forecaster and Consulting Professor,
Stanford University
Panelists:
Robert Cook, Co-founder and Executive VP of Product Development,
Metaweb
Nova Spivack , CEO and Founder,
Radar Networks
Alex Iskold , CEO and Founder,
Adaptive Blue
Paul Kedrosky , Venture Partner,
Ventures West
Event Description:
We are well into the current era of the Web, commonly referred to as Web 2.0.
What lies on the horizon? Will Web 3.0 usher in the long awaited vision of the semantic web, as proposed by “Father of the Web” Tim Berners-Lee more than ten years ago?
Join us for a lively panel session where some of the best emerging companies in the semantic web space present their different approaches to realizing the vision. The panel will address questions such as: How can we best implement the vision of the semantic web? What will we do with the web once it is structured with semantic information? What new applications will appear? Where is the consumer value and how should it be marketed? What new businesses can be built on top of the semantic web that are not possible today? Will the semantic web ultimately bring about a new intelligence that surpasses that of humanity, sparking a new era of non-biological evolution?
Join us and bring questions of your own – help us uncover the future of the web!
Bios:
Moderator:
Paul Saffo
Technology Forecaster and Consulting Professor
Stanford University
Paul is a forecaster and essayist with over two decades experience exploring long-term technological change and its practical impact on business and society. He currently teaches at Stanford University and is a fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. He was the founding chairman of the Samsung Science Board and serves on a variety of other boards including the Long Now Foundation and the Singapore National Research Foundation Science Advisory Board. He is also an advisor to 3i Venture Capital and has served as an advisor and Forum Fellow to the World Economic Forum. He is on a research sabbatical from Institute for the Future where he has worked since 1985. Paul’s essays have appeared in numerous publications, including The Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Wired, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, The New York Times,and the Washington Post. Paul is also a columnist for ABCNews.com, writing on technology and innovation issues. Paul holds degrees from Harvard College, Cambridge University, and Stanford University. His web site is http://www.saffo.com
Panelists:
Robert Cook
Co-Founder and Executive VP of Product Development
Metaweb
Robert Cook co-founded Metaweb Technologies in July 2005. At parent company Applied Minds, Robert led the San Francisco office as Director of Knowledge Product Development. Since the start of his career, Robert has played the role of author, designer and programmer for myriad software applications. Robert’s first computer was an Elf II, which used the same microprocessor as the Voyager, Viking and Galileo spacecraft. At the young age of 15, Robert created database software for a small publishing company. He followed this first piece of work by publishing a number of computer games through Broderbund. This early work included the classic game Gumball as well as the Atari 400/800 and Commodore 64 versions of Karateka. Robert later designed the game D/Generation and acted as the technical director for The Last Express.
Robert holds a BS in Computer Science from Yale University.
Nova Spivack
Founder and CEO
Radar Networks
Nova Spivack is a technology visionary and entrepreneur with nearly two decades of experience in pioneering ventures. In 1994, Mr. Spivack co-founded EarthWeb, one of the first Internet companies, where he was Executive Vice-President for Products, Strategy and Marketing. EarthWeb went public in 1999 and resulted in the Nasdaq’s largest IPO single-day percentage point gain up to that point, spawning a wave of Tech IPOs. Mr. Spivack left EarthWeb’s board of directors in 1999 and began advising startups and angel investing. During the down-years of the post-Internet-bubble, EarthWeb’s content properties were acquired in 2000 by Internet.com. The company’s Dice.com property remained a strong stand-alone business until it was acquired for approximately $200 million in 2005.
While at EarthWeb he helped key cultural institutions and businesses develop their first large-scale Web presences, including the New York Stock Exchange, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, BMG Music Club, Sony, AT&T, US West, and others. He also helped to catalyze the adoption of Java technology by leading the production of large on communities for the IT professionals, including Gamelan.com, Developer.com, and Datamation.com.
Prior to EarthWeb, Mr. Spivack worked in a variety of roles from technology marketing to software engineering at artificial intelligence and next-generation computing ventures including Individual, Inc., Ray Kurzweil’s pioneering OCR company, Kurzweil Computer Products which was sold to Xerox, and at Danny Hillis’ legendary supercomputing venture, Thinking Machines. Mr. Spivack is also the founder of Lucid Ventures, an early-stage incubator that originated the technologies that are now Radar Networks. Mr. Spivack is a co-founder of the San Francisco Web Innovators Network (SFWIN), a network of several hundred technology innovators and business leaders who meet monthly in the Bay Area.
Mr. Spivack has extensive experience working on knowledge representation and the Semantic Web, and has authored and helped to design several large (500 to 3000 class) ontologies in the OWL language, the W3C open standard for ontology specifications. Mr. Spivack has also been a lead advisor to SRI International on the DARPA CALO program, a distributed research program encompassing several hundred top researchers across over 20 major research institutions focused on next-generation semantically-aware machine learning applications, and in particular on the IRIS Semantic Desktop project. Also with SRI and Sarnoff Laboratories, Mr. Spivack helped to co-found nVention, SRI’s in-house technology incubator.
Mr. Spivack has co-authored several books on Internet strategy and technology and led the EarthWeb Press publishing imprint with Macmillan Computer Publishing, one of the largest computer book publishers, which resulted in a series of publications by leading authors on technology. He has been featured and cited in Business Week, CNN, CNBC, CBS Evening News, CNN-FN, Discovery Channel, The New York Times, Washington Post, WIRED Magazine, Chronicle of Philanthropy, Communications Week, Interactive Week, Internet World, Reuters, Newsweek, Red Herring, Silicon Alley Reporter, Interactive Age, Web Week, Java Developer’s Journal, and has spoken at numerous conferences and industry events. Mr. Spivack also helped to invent key technologies for interactive television and Web convergence in the early days of the Web, as well as several pending patents for Radar Networks.
Mr. Spivack has a long-time interest in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, emergent computation, knowledge management and the emerging Semantic Web. As a grandson of management guru Peter F. Drucker, Mr. Spivack shares his family’s heritage of interests in management theory, nonprofits, and knowledge work. In addition, he has been a student of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, art and culture for nearly 20 years and has pursued this interest extensively in monasteries, refugee camps and communities in Nepal, India, Europe and the USA. Mr. Spivack focuses his philanthropic activities on helping to fund the preservation of Tibet’s unique wisdom culture as a world-heritage treasure for the benefit of future generations.
Mr. Spivack has a BA in Philosophy, with a focus on cognitive science and artificial intelligence, from Oberlin College and a CSS degree from the International Space University a NASA-funded graduate professional business school for the space industry. In 1999 Mr. Spivack’s interest in space gave him the opportunity to help pioneer the early days of space tourism when he flew to the edge of space with Space Adventures and did micro-gravity parabolic flight training with the Russian air force.
Mr. Spivack’s weblog, Minding the Planet, focuses on Radar Networks and emerging technologies and can be read at http://www.mindingtheplanet.net
Alex Iskold
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Adaptive Blue
Alex launched AdaptiveBlue because he was inspired by the vision of a personalized web. He is passionate about building elegant software that helps people save time and makes their online experience effective and enjoyable.
His previous startup, Information Laboratory, was focused on applying the ideas of Complexity Science to software engineering. Alex and his team developed a tool, called Small Worlds, which automatically identified structural problems in large-scale software systems. After Information Laboratory was acquired by IBM, Alex worked in the IBM Automated Software Quality group as an architect.
Alex regularly contributes to influencial Read/WriteWeb blog and Web 2.0 journal. You can see some of his articles in here, and read more in his blog at http://alexiskold.wordpress.com.
Paul Kedrosky
Venture Partner
Ventures West
Dr. Kedrosky is a venture capitalist, media personality, and entrepreneur. He is a sought-after speaker; an analyst for CNBC television; a columnist for TheStreet/RealMoney; the editor of Infectious Greed, one of the best known business blogs on the Internet; and he is frequently quoted in major publications around the world.
Most recently he has been the Executive Director of the William J. von Liebig Center in San Diego, California. Using an innovative seed capital program, the Center catalyzes the commercialization of technologies from the internationally-ranked University of California, San Diego.
He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, where he is focused on entrepreneurship, innovation, and the future of risk capital. He is also a venture partner with Ventures West, Canada’s largest institutional venture capital firm. In the latter capacity his interests include consumer technologies, media, semiconductors, and life sciences. He is currently on the board of Marqui Corporation, a marketing automation software firm, as well as Dabbledb, a hosted data management company.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Kedrosky founded the technology equity research practice at HSBC James Capel. As a highly-ranked technology equity analyst, transactions with which he was involved created in excess of a billion dollars in public market value. Dr. Kedrosky was one of the first analysts to cover Internet companies, as well as making early and timely calls in networking and communications.
Dr. Kedrosky has also been a successful entrepreneur. In 1999 he financed and launched one of the first hosted blogging services, GrokSoup. The service grew to more than a thousand subscribers. Relatedly, he wrote for Harvard Business Review what is widely regarded as the seminal article on dark matter and syndication technologies.
Dr. Kedrosky is a sought after media personality. He has hosted a television program, “Profiles on Innovation”, that is available on cable in the U.S., as well as on the web (at www.ucsd.tv). He has written influential columns for Business 2.0 magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Harvard Business Review, and others. He has also appeared on many media outlets, including CNN, PBS Newshour, ABC Nightline, and the New York Times, and he can be seen frequently on CNBC’s “On the Money”. He maintains one of the best known technology, venture capital, & finance blogs at http://paul.kedrosky.com.
Dr. Kedrosky currently divides his time between La Jolla, California, and Vancouver, British Columbia.

Introducing the Seventh Sense: Location Awareness
2007-10-16 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
Loopt mobile application

Introducing the Seventh Sense: Location Awareness
I’m here, where are you?

Speaker:
Sam Altman, CEO, Loopt
Moderator:
Rajeev Chand, Director of Research, Rutberg & Co
Panelists:
Russ McGuire, Director of Corporate Strategy, Sprint Nextel
Michael Sharon, Co-founder, Socialight
Jodi Sherman Jahic, Principal, Voyager Capital
Rick Witham, Business Development Manager, Nokia

Event Description: We perceive and interact with our world through sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. As more of us are increasingly “connected” through cell phones and the Web, the evolution of location based services (LBS) stands to dramatically enhance our lives. Come and discover the incredible capabilities and services that are already available to us as well as the cutting edge technologies around the corner. A distinguished panel of experts spanning the ecosystem of LBS will share and discuss the opportunities and challenges that await, including mobile search and social networking. The event features Loopt, Nokia, Sprint/Nextel, Socialight and Rutberg & Co.

About VLAB:
The MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (VLAB) is the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the MIT Enterprise Forum, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the growth and success of high-tech entrepreneurial ventures by connecting ideas, technology and people.

The Post-Wii Gaming Boom: Controlling the Money via Interface, Content, and Platform
2007-09-18 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
Emotiv Project Epoc

The Post-Wii Gaming Boom
Controlling the Money via Interface, Content, and Platform

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Speaker:
All panelists to present,
Moderators:
Mike Zyda, Director,
USC GamePipe Laboratory
Tim Chang, Principal at
Norwest Ventures
Panelists:
Lars Buttler, Co-Founder and CEO,
Trion World Network
Tim Chang, Principal,
Norwest Venture Partners
Nam Do, Co-Founder and CEO,
Emotiv Systems
Jim Greer, Co-Founder and CEO,
Kongregate
Hans Lee, Cofounder and CTO,
Emsense

Event Description: What is next for the gaming industry? A not-so-quiet revolution has taken place recently with Nintendo quickly capturing market share with the sales of its new gaming system. Sony and Microsoft released significantly faster, more capable machines at roughly the same time, but lacked Wii’s ability to interact in a novel way with the user. Will this revolution in the way humans interact with computers and gaming systems continue? Or will the next revolution be more about the games themselves? Will the big revenue come from massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG), which have captured the attention of more than 15 million users globally? Or is the next big thing the combination of a social network and the dissemination of user generated games? Will we control future games with our minds? How can you measure the quality of a gaming experience? Come join VLAB on September 18th as we seek to unearth the answers to these questions and more.

Two key industry moderators will trade off shooting challenging questions at the speakers.

Mike Zyda is the architect of the hit game America’s Army, Director of USC GamePipe Lab, and will query our speakers on how their approaches will create more compelling gaming experiences.
Tim Chang, Principal at Norwest Ventures, will poll our speakers on the changing economics of the gaming world.

About VLAB:
The MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (VLAB) is the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the MIT Enterprise Forum, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the growth and success of high-tech entrepreneurial ventures by connecting ideas, technology and people.

The Battle of the Mobile Operating Systems
2007-06-19 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
The Battle of the Mobile Operating Systems
Symbian, Linux, RIM, Palm and Windows Mobile prepare to do battle against the iPhone while the gPhone lurks.

Speaker:
James Ready, Founder & CTO,
MontaVista
Moderator:
Scott Raney, Partner,
Redpoint Ventures
Panelist:
Todd Brix, Director, Product Planning and Partner Development, Mobile Communications Business,
Microsoft Corp.
Tomihisa Kamada, Co-Founder, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer,
ACCESS CO., LTD
Bill Weinberg, Analyst and Consultant,
Linux Pundit
Christy Wyatt, Vice President, Ecosystem and Market Development,
Motorola, Inc.
Event Description:
Those involved in the mobile industry will remember for generations June of 2007. The looming introduction of the iPhone could shift how we think of our mobile devices. Will our previously smart phones get a life and become more fun? How will the dominant mobile operating systems and the handset manufacturers that build compelling mobile experiences on top of these OS’s evolve in today’s changing market?
The mobile OS market is narrowing down to Symbian, Linux, RIM, Palm and Windows Mobile. How will the mobile OS market react to the functions of the iPhone? Will Linux phones transition from Asia to the rest of the world? What is Palm’s strategy moving ahead? What will be Sun’s strategy with the SavaJe’s mobile operating system? Are there upstarts moving in to change the game? How will RIM’s strategy change as they expand beyond their hardware?
This event will bring together several players in the mobile ecosystem as we work together to understand what is next on the Mobile OS world stage.

Speaker:
James Ready
Founder & CTO
MontaVista
Jim, with over 25 years of technical and entrepreneurial experience, is a recognized authority in the embedded systems and real-time software industry. Co-founder of Ready Systems, he pioneered the development of the first commercially viable, real-time operating system (RTOS) product – the VRTX real-time kernel.
Ready Systems, founded in 1980, merged with Microtec Research in 1993, went public in 1994, and was acquired by Mentor Graphics in 1995. During this period, Jim served as Ready Systems’ President, and as chief technical officer (CTO) at Microtec/Mentor.
Jim founded MontaVista in 1999 to provide the Linux operating system to the embedded systems market, and to offer embedded-system expertise to the open source Linux community.
Moderator:
Scott Raney
Partner
Redpoint Ventures
Scott Raney is a Partner with Redpoint Ventures focusing on infrastructure and software investments in the enterprise, wireless, and consumer segments. Scott serves on the board of directors of mig33 and LetsTalk, and is involved with Redpoint’s investments in Cortina Systems, JumpTap, Mobilygen, MobiTV, and Kodiak Networks.
Prior to joining Redpoint, Scott served as Senior Manager of New Products with NorthPoint Communications, a data CLEC providing nationwide DSL services. Scott managed NorthPoint’s first consumer product and led product development of other new products. Prior to NorthPoint, Scott worked as a management consultant at Bain & Company, where he helped clients in the private equity and telecommunications industries. Previously, Scott was the Director of Engineering for VideoPort Technologies, a developer of videoconferencing hardware.
Panelist:
Todd Brix
Director, Product Planning and Partner Development, Mobile Communications Business
Microsoft Corp.
Todd Brix directs Product Planning and Partner Development for the Microsoft Mobile Communication Business.
In this role, Todd leads the team responsible for defining and driving product plans and partnerships for the Windows Mobile software platform and related mobile applications and services.
Todd has worked at Microsoft for going on 9 years in a variety of product management, marketing and planning roles: Windows Server, Windows Embedded and, for the last 3+ years, Windows Mobile.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Todd worked in program management at Silicon Graphics and Intel. Todd earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the University of Washington, and holds a MBA from the Harvard Business School
Tomihisa Kamada
Co-Founder, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer
ACCESS CO., LTD
Dr. Tomihisa “Tomy” Kamada co-founded ACCESS CO., LTD. in 1984 with the current CEO, Toru Arakawa. Since that time, ACCESS has grown to become the world’s leading provider of software solutions for the mobile and beyond-PC markets. Principal ACCESS technologies include ACCESS Linux(R) Platform(TM), a complete software platform for Mobile that combines a Linux core with middleware, applications and Garnet(TM) VM (Garnet OS is one of the world’s first and most successful mobile operating systems); NetFront(TM) Mobile Client Suite, a comprehensive client software suite for mobile devices; and NetFront Browser, an advanced, full-featured Internet browser widely recognized as one of the leading browsers in the world.
As chief technology officer for ACCESS, Dr. Kamada oversees all technologies and R&D within the group companies. ACCESS technologies were central to the development of the world’s first successful mobile data service and are now deployed in millions of devices. ACCESS software is incorporated not only in most mobile phones in Japan, but also some 1100 mobile phone models, totaling some 378 million devices worldwide, and growing by millions each month.
Dr. Kamada also plays a key role in ACCESS’ ongoing overseas expansion, as CEO of ACCESS Systems Americas (the former PalmSource Inc.), and vice-chairman of subsidiaries in Europe and China.
Dr. Kamada has been recognized globally as a leader in communications and mobile technology. He is the developer of “Compact HTML,” an innovative subset of HTML for small information appliances. The technology was submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to be assessed for standardization. In 2000, Dr. Kamada was selected by EE Times as the “2000 Architect of the Internet.” In 2001, he received an award from Japan’s Ministry of International Affairs and Communications for his outstanding contributions to the development of communications technology in Japan.
Dr. Kamada received a Doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Tokyo.
Bill Weinberg
Analyst and Consultant
Linux Pundit
Bill Weinberg brings two decades of open source, embedded and open systems, telecoms, and other technology experience to his role as Independent Analyst and Consultant at Linuxpundit.com. He also serves in a part-time executive capacity at Linux Phone Standards Forum (LiPS).
Previously, at Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) he served as Senior Technology Analyst and also managed the OSDL Mobile Linux and Carrier Grade Linux Initiatives. Prior to OSDL, Bill was a founding team-member at MontaVista Software, helping to pioneer and ultimately to establish Linux as the leading platform for intelligent devices. In his extensive and varied career, Bill also worked at Lynx Real-Time Systems, Acer Computer Brazil, and Microtec Research.
Christy Wyatt
Vice President, Ecosystem and Market Development
Motorola, Inc.
As Vice President, Ecosystem and Market Development for Motorola, Christy Wyatt is responsible for building a healthy software economy around Motorola’s products through the development and management of Motorola’s partner, ISV and developer ecosystem. Christy and her organization are responsible for all aspects of ecosystem development including partner recruitment/management, tools and technical services, and go-to-market programs. Christy also leads platform marketing and vendor management for software.
Prior to joining Motorola, Christy served as Worldwide Developer Relations Director at Apple Computer where she was responsible for partners, global alliances and evangelism. Before her time at Apple, Christy was Senior Director at Palmsource Inc. responsible for their licensing and developer relations teams where she grew the developer community from 3,000 to 200,000 with over 14,000 applications.
Christy has also held key technical, sales and business development roles at Sun Microsystems, JavaSoft and ESRI and she currently serves as Motorola’s board member for the Linux Foundation, LiMo Foundation, and Eclipse Foundation.

Concept-to-Company: Widgets to Riches - Monetization Strategies for Emerging Web Services Platforms
2007-05-15 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
A Concept-to-Company Event
Widgets to Riches: Monetization Strategies for Emerging Web Services Platforms

Speaker:
Ed Anuff, CEO,
Widgetbox
Moderator:
Ann Winblad, Co-Founding Partner,
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
Panelist:
Max Mancini, Senior Director of Platform and Innovation,
eBay
Adam Sah, Architect, Google Gadgets,
Google
Lance Tokuda, CEO and Founder,
RockYou!
Event Description:
Every year, the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (VLAB) has the honor of hosting a special session called Concept-to-Company, moderated by Ann Winblad, the co-founding partner of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. This year’s Concept-to-Company will focus on Widgetbox, an open web widget marketplace and syndication platform. With the recent proliferation of widgets, widget companies entering the marketplace, and the atomization of content and services, what opportunities do entrepreneurs and VCs see as ways to capitalize on this current trend? Is there a profitable business model for the current trend of decoupling content and services from their source — pushing revenue generation to the distributor as opposed to the creator?
Please join speaker Ed Anuff, moderator Ann Winblad and industry leading panelists as they explore how the widgetization of the web will impact the way we maximize the potential of online communication, efficiency, and revenue generation.

Speaker:
Ed Anuff
CEO
Widgetbox
Ed has over 10 years of experience in general management and marketing of consumer, developer, and enterprise technology products. Prior to his position as CEO of Widgetbox, Ed co-founded Epicentric, a leading vendor of enterprise portal solutions. He became the VP of Portals and Collaboration at Vignette after they acquired Epicentric in 2003. Prior to founding Epicentric, he was Director of Product Management at HotWired and General Manager for the HotBot.com search engine, which was a partnership between Wired and Inktomi.
Moderator:
Ann Winblad
Co-Founding Partner
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
Ann Winblad is the co-founding Partner of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. She is a well-known and respected software industry entrepreneur and technology leader. Her background and experience have been chronicled in many national business and trade publications.
Ann has over 25 years of experience in the software industry. She began her career as a systems programmer at the Federal Reserve Bank. In 1976 Ann co-founded Open Systems, Inc., a top selling accounting software company, with a $500 investment. She operated Open Systems profitably for six years and then sold it for over $15 million. Prior to co-founding Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Ann served as a strategy consultant for prestigious clients such as IBM, Microsoft, Price Waterhouse, and numerous start-ups. In addition, Ann has co-authored the book Object-Oriented Software and has written articles for numerous publications. Ann received a BA in mathematics and in business administration, as well as an MA in education and international economics from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. Ann also has an honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of St. Thomas.
Ann has served as a Director of start-up and public companies and currently serves as a director of Dean & Deluca, Intacct, Market Wire, The Knot and Voltage Security. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of St. Thomas and is an advisor to numerous entrepreneur groups.
Panelist:
Max Mancini
Senior Director of Platform and Innovation
eBay
Max Mancini is responsible for eBay’s Developer’s Program and Disruptive Innovation in eBay’s Marketplaces business. In his innovation leadership role, Max drives idea creation across the business, and directs innovation projects, new business strategies and product investment. For the eBay Developers Program, Max enables third-party developers to extend the eBay marketplace by creating solutions that make it faster, easier and safer to buy and sell on eBay. In his previous roles at eBay, Max led an engineering team of 70+ developers responsible for development on eBay Stores, merchandising, registration, sign-in, trust & safety, and customer support tools. He also led the product and technology teams for Kijiji, eBay’s local community classifieds websites, as well as eBay’s New Business Ventures.
Prior to joining eBay, Max spent a number of years at startups in various business and technology roles. Most recently, he was the CTO & VP of Engineering at Cranite Systems, a wireless network security company, and President & CEO of Consumer Review, a Web portal delivering consumer-generated product information. Max has been an adjunct faculty member at Santa Clara University and served as a Military Intelligence officer in the U.S. Army and Army Reserves.
Adam Sah
Architect, Google Gadgets
Google
Adam Sah is the architect of Google Gadgets. Prior to Google, Adam was a founding engineer at several startups, among them Inktomi and Sensage, where he is a member of the board. He holds several patents in databases and web systems.
Lance Tokuda
CEO and Founder
RockYou!
Lance is the CEO and founder of RockYou, the leading provider of widgets on the web. Incorporated in 2006, RockYou serves over 100M widget views a day. Prior to RockYou, Lance was a VP & CTO in consumer (Iconix) and enterprise (Open Harbor) web services. He was also employee four at Resumix, now Yahoo! HotJobs. Lance has multiple patents in text extraction, document categorization, and email (pending) and has received the American Association of Artificial Intelligence Award of Innovation for work on spatial text understanding. He received his Bachelors and Masters in Electrical Engineering from the University of Hawaii and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas.

The Next Wave in Online Ad Distribution Networks
2007-04-17 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
The Next Wave in Online Ad Distribution Networks

Speaker:
Ori Cohen, Founder,
Skyrider
Moderator:
Rich LeFurgy, General Partner,
Archer Martin
Panelist:
Mitchell Davis, Former CEO of Massive, Inc.,
Massive
Brian Fitzgerald, President & Co-founder,
Gorilla Nation
Mark D. Kvamme, General Partner,
Sequoia Capital
William Urschel, CEO,
AdECN
Event Description:
This forum will examine new ways online ad inventory is being created and sold. We will feature three exciting companies (SkyRider, ADECN and Gorilla Nation) as well as insights from top industry experts.
We live in a world where digital advertisers are increasingly limited by the availability of quality online inventory. In response, there has been a surge of entrepreneurs devising new distribution models to extend inventory or eliminate existing inefficiencies inherent in ad networks. Early on, some of these innovative startups have been snapped up by bigger players as evidenced by recent acquisitions of Massive by Microsoft and dMarc by Google. Radio, video, mobile phones, shopping malls, games, billboards, and peer-to-peer networks are just some of the innovative distribution alternatives surfacing — all focused on taking a piece of the growing online advertising pie.
This event will feature several exciting companies including:
Skyrider: This Sequoia Capital-backed start-up allows content owners to include ads in video files over peer-to-peer networks. While initially some P2P networks were involved in illegal file-sharing, today many P2P client applications (file sharing, instant messaging, internet telephony applications, software updates) are transitioning to legal, pay-per-song or advertising-sponsored models that fairly compensate copyright owners. Representing over 60% of all Internet backbone traffic, P2P networks are now viewed as the next global channel for content distribution and targeted marketing because of advantages in computing power and distributed bandwidth capabilities that reduce the costs practically to zero.
AdECN: A start-up producing the first real-time, auction-based exchange for online display advertising. It works much like a stock exchange, AdECN aims to solve the transitory supply and demand problems ad networks face. A member of the AdECN exchange buys on the exchange for its advertisers and sells on the exchange for its publishers.
Gorilla Nation: The largest online advertising sales representation company, Gorilla Nation exclusively handles media sales for over 400 high traffic, high quality websites in select vertical markets.
Please join us as our distinguished panelists discuss the issues, opportunities, and innovative approaches in online advertising.

Speaker:
Ori Cohen
Founder
Skyrider
Ori Cohen is a business and technology pioneer, leading innovation in the telecom and video arenas. Prior to founding Skyrider, Cohen founded Narus, a global leader in software and technology for the telecom industry and government agencies. Cohen had previously served as Vice President of Business and Technology Development for VDOnet, an early leader in internet video. Additionally, Cohen served as Chief Executive Officer for IntelliCom Ltd. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Imperial College in London, U.K.
Moderator:
Rich LeFurgy
General Partner
Archer Martin
Rich LeFurgy is General Partner at Archer Martin, advising and investing in early stage digital media companies. He is a Director at X+1 (Chairman), Blue Lithium, Fathom Online and Associated Content, is an advisor with Fraudwall Technologies, Glam Media and Viewpoints Networks, and has consulted with AOL.com and Google. LeFurgy was a Venture Capitalist in digital media at WaldenVC (1998-2005), Founding Chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (1996-2001), and Head of Sales for Starwave Corporation and later the Walt Disney Internet Group (1995-1998). Prior to that, he was on Madison Avenue at NW Ayer for 17 years from 1978-1995. LeFurgy has long been recognized as one of interactive industry’s leaders and was awarded the IAB’s first Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004. In 2000, he was one of the first inductees to Advertising Age’s Interactive Hall of Fame, along with Jeff Bezos, Jerry Yang and Steve Case.
Panelist:
Mitchell Davis
Former CEO of Massive, Inc.
Massive
Mitch has 10 years of experience in technology and software development with expertise in middleware software, online media and general management. Most recently, he was founder and CEO of pioneer in-game advertising company Massive, which was acquired by Microsoft last year. He is a former Senior Vice President of Encyclopedia Britannica, where he spent three years heading the Britannica.com and CD Rom business units. In this position, he oversaw P&L responsibility and coverage for the ad sales team, business development, editorial, production, product development and international offices. Mitch has a track record of success in entrepreneurial ventures as co-founder of Digital Rights (acquired by Liberty One) and founder of Parcelhouse (an international middleware software developer). Mitch has 12 years of integrated agency experience at APM Consulting and Maine Marketing. He received a Bachelor of Commerce Degree in marketing from the University of New South Wales, Australia.
Brian Fitzgerald
President & Co-founder
Gorilla Nation
Brian Fitzgerald is co-founder and President of Gorilla Nation Media, LLC, the world’s largest online ad rep firm. Mr. Fitzgerald began his career as an intellectual property attorney at MGM Studios, went on to represent some of the entertainment industry’s largest independent film distributors, and co-founded Celebrity Blvd. prior to Gorilla Nation.
Mark D. Kvamme
General Partner
Sequoia Capital
Mark Kvamme focuses on software and services investments. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 1999, Mark was Chairman of USWeb/CKS and Chairman and CEO of CKS Group prior to the merger with USWeb. Earlier in his career Mark was a Director of International Marketing for Wyse Technology, the President and CEO of International Solutions, and was a founding member of Apple France. Mark has a BA in French Economics and Literature from the University of California at Berkeley.
William Urschel
CEO
AdECN
Mr. Urschel founded AdECN, the first and only real-time auction-based exchange for online advertising, which launched in October, 2005. From 2002 to 2003, Mr. Urschel was CEO of publicly-traded ExperTelligence,(OTC: EXGP), selling that company in 2003. Previously, Mr. Urschel started and ran a number of successful technology companies, all located in Santa Barbara. In 2000, he started The Narrative Press, a digital book publishing company with over 100 titles, which he sold in December 2005. In 1994, he started Alliance Manufacturing Software, which quickly became a leading publisher of MRP/ERP software to small and mid-sized manufacturers. He graduated from Princeton University in 1978 with a degree in history.

Next-Generation Search: The Hope, the Hype, and the Chutzpah
2007-03-20 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
Next Generation Search: The Hope, the Hype, and the Chutzpah

Speaker:
Barney Pell, CEO and Co-founder,
Powerset
Moderator:
Mike Sigal, CEO and Co-founder,
The Guidewire Group
Panelist:
Christine Herron, Director,
Omidyar Network
Phyllis Reuther, CTO,
MCN (Mobile Content Networks)
Munjal Shah, CEO and Co-founder,
Riya
Event Description:
A new crop of startups are hoping to stake their claim in the lucrative search landscape by refining and improving search capabilities. In the past two years more than 30 search engine companies have been funded, reflecting a renewed optimism that Google isn’t the final word in search. Search-engine companies such as Vivisimo, Powerset, Hakia, MCN (Mobile Content Networks), ChaCha, Riya and Snap are moving forward with the idea that fortunes can be made — even if only a small portion of Google’s vast revenue streams can be diverted away from the ubiquitous 800-pound gorilla.
We have put together a group of hot new search companies along with their audacious and innovative leaders. Powerset, which has been touted recently in the NY Times, will be debuting soon with it’s proprietary natural language search capabilities; Riya has launched a new product, Like.com, to tap into using visual search technology in the promising arena of online shopping; and MCN (Mobile Content Networks) has launched the industry’s first real-time mobile search solution. Join moderator Mike Sigal, CEO of the Guidewire Group, Christine Herron, Director of Omidyar Network, and our panelists as we explore the challenges and opportunities for next generation search.

Speaker:
Barney Pell
CEO and Co-founder
Powerset
Barney Pell, Ph.D. (CEO) For over 15 years Barney Pell (Ph.D. Computer science, Cambridge University 1993) has pursued groundbreaking technical and commercial innovation in A.I. and Natural Language understanding at research institutions including NASA, SRI, Stanford University and Cambridge University. In startup companies, Dr. Pell was Chief Strategist and VP of Business Development at StockMaster.com (acquired by Red Herring in March, 2000) and later had the same role at Whizbang! Labs. Just prior to Powerset, Pell was an Entrepeneur in Residence at Mayfield, one of the top VC firms in Silicon Valley.
Moderator:
Mike Sigal
CEO and Co-founder
The Guidewire Group
Mike Sigal is Co-founder and CEO of Guidewire Group. Mike brings to Guidewire Group a 20-year record of building innovative technology-based businesses for existing and emerging global companies. Previously, he ran a strategic advisory and interim management consulting firm, with clients such as the Daily Mail General Trust, Fresher Information Corp, IDG, Office Depot, Pacific Bell, Philips Electronics, Synoptics and the U.S. Postal Service.
He has lived and worked in Europe, providing marketing and business development services to technology companies as they developed their trans-Atlantic strategies. As director of DASAR, producer of the annual European Technology Roundtable Exposition (ETRE) conferences, Mike built communities which fostered relationships among technology industry executives and investors.
An entrepreneur at heart, Mike has founded a number of technology ventures, including FM Waves and WiFinder. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
Panelist:
Christine Herron
Director
Omidyar Network
Christine Herron is a director at Omidyar Network, where she invests in both participatory content and communications infrastructure. Prior to Omidyar Network, Christine held operational roles with Mission Research, NetObjects, and Microsoft, and co-founded both Cycle Partners and Mercury2. Christine started as an investor with Geocapital Partners, where she funded early Internet and network infrastructure businesses such as Netcom and AXON Networks. Her current board participation includes Backfence, Collaborative Drug Discovery (CDD), Common Sense Media, Digg, Nickel Tour Productions, and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. Christine was ranked among the Top 20 Women in Technology in 2000 by AltaVista and holds degrees from Stanford University and Columbia University.
Phyllis Reuther
CTO
MCN (Mobile Content Networks)
Phyllis has fifteen years of industry experience, including seven years as a Carnegie Mellon University computational linguistics researcher and four years with Documentum leading their enterprise search architecture and strategy activities.
Munjal Shah
CEO and Co-founder
Riya
When CEO and Co-Founder, Munjal Shah, took a look at his 38,015 and growing digital photo collection, he saw the need for a tool to help him find the photos he wanted. He also believed that there were many others out there who had the same need. With his prior experience as the CEO and Co-Founder of the successful eBay seller auction management service, Andale he knew nothing was impossible and set out to put together a team to make it happen.
Munjal has an MS in Computer Science from Stanford, a BS from UCSD and was nominated one of the top 10 “Up and Comers” in Business week in 2001. He has previously worked for Baan, IBM and Blaxxun, and co-founded Round Zero, a Web 1.0 networking forum for early stage entrepreneurs.
Munjal is also one of those guys that everybody instantly likes. He’s not only a nice guy with great ideas and passion, but he can also blog like a pro. Part of this is due to the fact that he has a passion for life and doesn’t believe in limitations.

Young Leaders of Silicon Valley
2007-01-16 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
Young Leaders of Silicon Valley

Speaker:
Moderator:
Ram Shriram, Founder,
Sherpalo Ventures
Panelist:
Garrett Camp, Founder,
StumbleUpon
Angus Davis, Founder,
Tellme
Omar Hamoui, CEO,
AdMob
Seth Sternberg, CEO,
Meebo
Zaw Thet, CEO,
4INFO
Event Description:
VLAB is kicking off its 2007 season by presenting some of Silicon Valley’s youngest and brightest entrepreneurs. Come join us for an evening where we put the spotlight on these young entrepreneurs to reveal the facts and dispel the myths behind the makings of hot startups and young moguls. Whether you’re interested in becoming the next baby billionaire or would like to hear some sage advice from this group of go-getters, this VLAB event promises to provide an evening of insightful and inventive dialogue.
Our moderator Ram Shriram will quiz the panelists about what it takes to not only create the right buzz for their products and companies, but also to secure the funding and build upon it. Garrett Camp of StumbleUpon, Angus Davis of Tellme, Omar Hamoui of AdMob, Seth Sternberg of Meebo, and Zaw Thet of 4INFO have had great success in starting and growing their online and mobile startups. They are also familiar faces of the Web 2.0 movement.
We look forward to your participation!

Speaker:
Moderator:
Ram Shriram
Founder
Sherpalo Ventures
Ram Shriram is a founding board member of Google Inc. and 247customer.com. As a technology industry insider for over 25 years, he has worked in companies large and small across all functional areas and through fluctuating business cycles. Shriram started Sherpalo in January, 2000, with the goal of applying his wealth of operating and company building experience to promising early stage ventures. In 2006, Shriram was named one of the top three dealmakers in high-tech by Forbes magazine.
Panelist:
Garrett Camp
Founder
StumbleUpon
Garrett is an adaptive information systems researcher who completed his Masters degree in Software Engineering at the University of Calgary. He has researched evolutionary algorithms, knowledge retrieval and web usability while at UofC, and voice recognition as an intern at Nortel. At StumbleUpon, Garrett fulfills a key technical role: he is responsible for the high-level design of StumbleUpon’s client-server applications.
Angus Davis
Founder
Tellme
Angus co-founded Tellme with Mike McCue in February 1999. He works across the company to develop business and technology strategies to guide Tellme’s products and strategic direction. Prior, Angus facilitated Tellme’s entry into the travel and transportation markets, managed Tellme’s product line transition to serve Fortune 500 clients and led production of the 1-800-555-TELL consumer voice portal.
Angus joined Netscape Communications in 1996, bypassing college after an initial summer internship to become the company’s youngest fulltime employee. While at Netscape, Angus was a product manager for the Netscape Communicator Web browser. He was responsible for fostering developer relations, prototyping next generation browser technology, representing the company on standards committees, contributing to company strategy on legal matters and working on the AOL/Netscape merger.
His first telecommunications endeavor began mischievously at Phillips Academy Andover, where he hacked into a campus phone system so fellow students could make free long-distance calls. A native of Rhode Island, Angus lives in Providence.
Omar Hamoui
CEO
AdMob
Omar is an entrepreneur with deep roots in the mobile industry. After earning a degree in Computer Science at UCLA, Omar founded and ran several companies in mobile software and services. At the time, he was frustrated by the lack of available options when it came to promoting and monetizing mobile products. Omar realized that mobile service and content firms needed better ways to advertise and make money on the mobile Web. While earning his MBA at the Wharton School, Omar began to think more seriously about the untapped potential of mobile advertising, and created AdMob to address this growing opportunity. Today, Omar has taken a leave from Wharton to focus on AdMob, and is now running one of the fastest growing and most innovative companies in the mobile world.
Seth Sternberg
CEO
Meebo
Seth is responsible for all things business at meebo, which he co-founded with Elaine & Sandy. Prior to meebo, Seth worked at IBM in Corporate Development leading M&A transactions and working on strategy and venture capital initiatives. Seth flies airplanes, rides motorcycles, and rollerblades. Seth majored in Political Science at Yale, and withdrew from Stanford business school during his second year to concentrate on meebo.
Zaw Thet
CEO
4INFO
As the CEO and co-founder of 4INFO, Zaw Thet sets the company strategy, oversees product offerings, corporate alliances, business development and corporate communications. Prior to founding 4INFO, Zaw led business development at Spoke Software, a leading Silicon Valley CRM solution provider, and was the general manager of the company’s flagship Team Edition product. He has held positions within emerging technology management for IBM and was the CEO and co-founder of GetInventory, a web-based supply chain management company. Zaw has also held special consulting roles with numerous organizations including a past advisory role with the San Francisco 49ers.
Zaw is a member of the Silicon Valley 100 and is a frequent moderator and speaker at conferences including Silicon Forum, Dialog, Mobile Entertainment Summit, and the Kelsey Group. Zaw s entrepreneurial pursuits have been featured in many publications including: The New York Times, San Jose Business Journal, Chicago Tribune, and International Herald Tribune. He also writes a well-read blog on new technology at: http://www.zawthet.com
Zaw holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was a Soros Fellow and the youngest person to ever graduate from Stanford’s business school. He received his BA from Stanford University in Political Science with a minor in Computer Science, where he was a President’s Scholar.

A Special Evening with Geoffrey Moore
2006-11-15 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
A Special Evening with Geoffrey Moore
Best-selling author of Crossing the Chasm and Dealing with Darwin

Speaker:
Moderator:
Geoffrey Moore, Managing Director, TCG Advisors; Venture Partner,
Mohr Davidow Ventures
Panelist:
Dean Drako, President and CEO,
Barracuda Networks
Quentin Gallivan, President and CEO,
Postini
Gary Steele, CEO,
Proofpoint
Event Description:
Join acclaimed author and venture capitalist Geoffrey Moore and three veteran CEOs from online security and communication management companies (Barracuda Networks, Postini, and Proofpoint) in exploring what it takes for businesses to thrive in this highly competitive global marketplace.
Geoffrey, whose books include Crossing the Chasm, Dealing with Darwin and Inside the Tornado, will explore insights on the latest developments in the online security space, revenue generation, viral marketing, business model strategies, and other issues critical to the survival of startups.

Speaker:
Moderator:
Geoffrey Moore
Managing Director, TCG Advisors; Venture Partner
Mohr Davidow Ventures
Geoffrey Moore is a best-selling author and venture partner at MDV. Recognized for his expertise in market development and business and investment strategies, he serves as an advisor to many of MDV’s portfolio companies, drawing upon best practices derived from his extensive work with technology startups.
Geoffrey has made the understanding and effective exploitation of disruptive technologies the core of his life’s work. His books, Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, The Gorilla Game, and Living on the Fault Line are best sellers and required reading at leading business schools. Highly regarded as a dynamic public speaker, Geoffrey is the founder of The Chasm Group and currently is managing director of TCG Advisors. Earlier in his career, he was a principal and partner at Regis McKenna, Inc., a leading high tech marketing strategy and communications company, and for the decade prior, a sales and marketing executive in the software industry.
Education: He holds a bachelor’s degree in literature from Stanford University and a doctorate in literature from the University of Washington.
Panelist:
Dean Drako
President and CEO
Barracuda Networks
Dean Drako brings to Barracuda Networks a successful history in building companies and products. Prior to co-founding Barracuda Networks, Dean was founder, president and CEO of Velosel Corporation, a leader in product information management. Prior to Velosel, Dean founded Boldfish (now a part of Siebel Systems), a provider of enterprise messaging solutions. Dean was also founder, president and CEO of Design Acceleration, Inc. (now a part of Cadence Design Systems), maker of the popular SignalScan, a suite of design analysis and verification tools. Holder of over 16 patents in various disciplines, Dean has served as entrepreneur in residence at SoftBank Venture Capital and vice president of Engineering at the 3DO Company and project leader at Apple Computer. Dean is a frequent speaker at industry events, including INBOX: The Email Event and NGN Conference. Dean holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
Quentin Gallivan
President and CEO
Postini
Quentin Gallivan is the chief executive officer and president of Postini. Quentin brings over two decades of sales and management experience in the high technology industry to Postini, most recently as executive vice president of worldwide sales and services at VeriSign. Prior to joining VeriSign, Quentin was the vice president and general manager of the Asia Pacific and Latin America regions at Netscape Communications Corporation. He also spent 13 years with GE Information Services (GEIS), where he had full profit-and-loss responsibility for the GEIS business in the United States, Canada, and Latin America. Quentin holds a B.A. degree in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Gary Steele
CEO
Proofpoint
Gary Steele brings a broad range of enterprise software experience to the company. Before joining Proofpoint, Mr. Steele served as the CEO of Portera, an applications company delivering solutions for the professional services industry. Under Mr. Steele’s leadership, Portera raised more than $100M in capital from some of the leading venture capitalists including Kleiner Perkins, IVP, and American Express, and grew the business from its initial concept to $20M in revenue. Prior to Portera, Mr. Steele served as the vice president and general manager of the Middleware and Data Warehousing Product Group at Sybase, Inc., an organization of more than 350 people, spanning four geographies and generating $150M in revenue. In this capacity, he initiated and spearheaded all new Internet projects targeted at the enterprise. Mr. Steele’s prior experience includes business development, marketing, and engineering roles at Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard. He holds a B.S. degree in computer science from Washington State University.

Enterprise 2.0: Revolution in Software Development and Delivery?
2006-10-17 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
Enterprise 2.0: Revolution in Software Development and Delivery?

Speaker:
John Roberts, CEO and Co-Founder,
SugarCRM
Moderator:
Mary Coleman, Director,
Walden International
Panelist:
Antony Brydon, CEO and Co-Founder,
Visible Path
Ivan Koon, CEO,
YouSendIt
Ross Mayfield, Founder & CEO,
Socialtext
Event Description:
VLAB has assembled an exceptional panel of CEOs to discuss a timely topic: Enterprise 2.0. John Roberts leads one of the most innovative software businesses today, Ross Mayfield is one of the thought leaders who coined the term Enterprise 2.0 and Antony Brydon leads a high profile company with a team of top investors and advisors. Mary Coleman , who was the CEO of a CRM company in the early 90s – long before the term CRM was introduced – will moderate this exceptional panel.
Wikipedia ignited the debate on Enterprise 2.0 when it deleted the term from its website. The debate has raged on and even experts do not agree on the definition and significance of Enterprise 2.0. What remains clear is that 1) the software industry is reemerging after a long slump, 2) a new class of enterprise applications are making inroads in the enterprise, and 3) innovative software development and delivery models are creating powerful disruptive waves to the existing players.
Come hear this outstanding panel explore the meaning of Enterprise 2.0 and the controversy surrounding it.

Speaker:
John Roberts
CEO and Co-Founder
SugarCRM
John Roberts, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of SugarCRM, is a pioneer in the open source enterprise application space as one of the three founders of SugarCRM. John co-led the product design of Sugar Open Source. Having strong business, marketing, business development and product management experience, John has introduced open source as the only viable contender to the established proprietary CRM solutions. John brings a strong enterprise CRM applications track record spanning 14 years.
Prior to co-founding SugarCRM, John held product management and sales engineering positions at E.piphany, BroadVision, Baan/Aurum Software and IBM. John holds a BS in Business from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Moderator:
Mary Coleman
Director
Walden International
Mary joined Walden International in 2002. Prior to joining WI, she was CEO of Rightworks, an e-procurement and trading exchange software firm, which was acquired by I2 Technologies. She joined Rightworks from Internet Capital Group, where she had been a Managing Director focusing on investments in enterprise software and internet infrastructure including companies such as Rightworks. Prior to Internet Capital Group, Mary was the CEO of the Baan Company, a leading European ERP software firm. She attained this position after selling Aurum Software, a customer relationship management software firm, where she was the CEO, to the Baan Company, after taking Aurum Software public on NASDAQ. Earlier in her career Mary served as a Vice President of Marketing in several high technology firms.
Mary studied electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Panelist:
Antony Brydon
CEO and Co-Founder
Visible Path
As CEO and Co-Founder of Visible Path, Antony focuses on new technologies, strategic direction and new market opportunities. Prior to founding Visible Path, Antony served as CEO of IUMA, a leading digital music company, which he sold to EMusic in July 1998. Following the sale, he joined the executive team that sold EMusic to Vivendi-Universal in June 2001. From 1995 – 1998, Antony was an analyst at R. B. Webber & Company, a strategy consulting firm and venture fund in Palo Alto, CA. At Webber & Company, he developed business strategies and evaluated new market opportunities for ERP, CRM and SFA companies. Antony graduated from Yale University with a degree in psychology and philosophy and coursework in statistics.
Ivan Koon
CEO
YouSendIt
Ivan Koon is CEO of YouSendIt, Inc. a start-up delivering enterprise-level file transfer solutions to business and consumer clients. Most recently he was SVP of the Acrobat Intelligent Document Business Unit at Adobe inc. and before that president of the New Technologies Division at BEA Systems. Earler, Koon served in a variety of executive management roles at S2 Systems, including president and COO from 1997 to 1999. He has also held engineering and management positions at Shared Systems and Digital Switch. Koon serves on the board of multiple Internet start-ups. He holds a B.Sc. in mathematics and computer science from the University ofTexas at Arlington.
Ross Mayfield
Founder & CEO
Socialtext
Ross Mayfield is a serial entrepreneur with over 10 years of startup executive management experience and a focus on helping people and companies communicate effectively. He co-founded and served as President of RateXchange (AMEX:RTX), the leading B2B commodity exchange for telecom. RateXchange reached $1 billion market capitalization, raising over $45 million in equity and debt. Most recently, Ross served as VP of Marketing for a Fujitsu spinout developing enterprise software for the telecommunications industry, and as Interim VP of Marketing for an Immersive Group Simulation provider to military and homeland defense markets. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from the UCLA and completed the Management Development for Entrepreneurs (MDE) program at the Anderson School of Business.

Television Breaks Out of the Box: The Mad Rush to Go Mobile
2006-09-19 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
Television Breaks Out of the Box
The Mad Rush to Go Mobile

Speaker:
Philip Alvelda, Chairman, CEO & Cofounder,
MobiTV
Moderator:
Rafe Needleman, Editor-at-Large,
CNET
Panelist:
Seamus McAteer, Cofounder, Chief Product Architect & Senior Analyst,
M:Metrics
Scott Raney, Partner,
Redpoint Ventures
Daren Tsui, Cofounder & CEO,
mSpot
Event Description:
According to Gartner, annual sales of mobile devices will surpass 1-billion units in 2009. With increased capabilities and a sub-2-year upgrade cycle, mobile devices are where the action is — information, collaboration, commerce, social networking, personalized/location-based services, and especially, multimedia entertainment! In this September forum, we will share the experience of early pioneers and vision of the mobile future, which is fast approaching.
Join VLAB moderator Rafe Needleman in a spirited exploration of mobile entertainment featuring Philip Alvelda, Chairman, CEO & Co-founder of MobiTV. MobiTV bravely launched its first service in 2003 with Sprint, at a time when cell-phone transmission rates were painfully slow. Fast forward to July 2006, a zippier world and a brand new $70 million “C” round of financing — MobiTV appears to be leading the pack in the U.S. Will it be enough? We will hear from Palo Alto-based mSpot, an industry analyst and a VC who has serious money on the table.
Every week, the potential field of competitors grows larger and more diverse (ranging from start-ups such as GoTV and Sling Media to Apple). Standards and alliances are forming; technologies are evolving from unicast to broadcast and multicast; and all contenders are looking for ways to accelerate consumer adoption. There is a lot at stake as new upstarts seek to move television from the big screen to one on-the-go. Join us in an exploration of the elements of risk and success in this highly sought-after space.

Speaker:
Philip Alvelda
Chairman, CEO & Cofounder
MobiTV
Dr. Phillip Alvelda is a cofounder of MobiTV and serves as its Chairman and CEO. Since launching MobiTV in 2000, Alvelda has played an instrumental role in managing the company’s growth from a start-up to being the first and only global television network for cell phones.
Previously, Dr. Alvelda was the founding Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of The MicroDisplay Corporation, a manufacturer of ultra-high resolution miniature displays for portable systems and low cost HDTVs. Prior to MicroDisplay, Dr. Alvelda was a developer of spacecraft hardware and software systems for image processing and data compression at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Dr. Alvelda holds a Bachelor’s degree in Physics from Cornell University and received his Masters and PhD degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Moderator:
Rafe Needleman
Editor-at-Large
CNET
Rafe Needleman is editor at large for CNET Networks. He writes about Web-based products and startups. Rafe has been a technology editor and writer since 1988. His experience and perspective makes him a keen judge of what works and what doesn’t, which he discusses in his blog posts on CNET.com and News.com, and his column, “Works for Me.” Previously, Rafe wrote “Catch of the Day” for Red Herring. He has written for Business 2.0, Always On, and Release 1.0. He has also edited several publications, including Byte Magazine, where he was editor-in-chief.
Panelist:
Seamus McAteer
Cofounder, Chief Product Architect & Senior Analyst
M:Metrics
As cofounder, chief product architect and senior analyst at M:Metrics, McAteer determines how services are shaped to match client needs. He is also the company’s primary evangelist.
McAteer has been analyzing the wireless industry since its inception and has been assisting clients in the wireless and portable computing sectors since the early 1990s. Most recently, McAteer was managing partner at Zelos Group, a boutique advisory services firm focused on wireless and voice applications. Prior to founding Zelos Group, McAteer was a director and research fellow with Jupiter Research, where he headed Jupiter’s coverage of new technologies and services. Before joining Jupiter, McAteer focused on wireless services and pervasive computing as a senior analyst with SRI International.
McAteer is frequently sought as a speaker and expert commentator. He has been quoted in numerous international media outlets, including: the New York Times, USA Today, Nikkei Weekly, Wired Magazine, the Associated Press and a variety of trade journals. He has made frequent TV and radio appearances, commenting on technology issues for CNN, Fox News, NPR and TechTV. McAteer often speaks at prestigious industry events.
He received an undergraduate degree at Trinity College Dublin, and a Diploma in Advanced Marketing Techniques from the Dublin Institute of Technology.
Scott Raney
Partner
Redpoint Ventures
Scott Raney is a Partner with Redpoint Ventures focusing on infrastructure and software investments in the enterprise, wireless, and consumer segments. Scott serves on the board of directors of LetsTalk and is involved with Redpoint’s investments in Caymas Systems, Cortina Systems, JumpTap, Mobilygen, MobiTV, and Kodiak Networks.
Prior to joining Redpoint, Scott served as Senior Manager of New Products with NorthPoint Communications, a data CLEC providing nationwide DSL services. Scott managed NorthPoint’s first consumer product and led product development of other new products. Prior to NorthPoint, Scott worked as a management consultant at Bain & Company, where he helped clients in the private equity and telecommunications industries. Previously, Scott was the Director of Engineering for VideoPort Technologies, a developer of videoconferencing hardware. Scott began his career at Andersen Consulting as a member of the Advanced Technology Group where he assisted clients in the telecommunications industry.
Scott holds a B.S.E.E., with high distinction, from Duke University and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.
Daren Tsui
Cofounder & CEO
mSpot
Daren is a cofounder of mSpot and serves as its CEO and a member of the Board of Directors. Daren has 16 years of entrepreneurial experience including 12 years of media business development. He is responsible for leading the overall vision of the company as well as planning the product distribution strategy.
Prior to mSpot, Daren was the vice president of business development at Enpocket, a global mobile media company providing integrated entertainment and marketing services, responsible for U.S. mobile carrier relationships and business development. In addition, he oversaw Enpocket’s Japanese operations including sales, product marketing and professional services.
Daren joined Enpocket as a result of the SkyGo acquisition, an early pioneer in mobile marketing funded by VeriSign, Vanguard Ventures and others. At SkyGo he was the president, cofounder and a member of the Board of Directors. Daren was responsible for building the global strategy to work with mobile carriers, multi-national brands and interactive agencies. As a part of that strategy, SkyGo won a highly competitive contract with Vodafone KK in Japan as the exclusive mobile marketing technology provider.
Prior to founding SkyGo, Daren was the vice president of data integration at AltaVista, where he worked with a variety of domestic and international media companies launching online portals contributed to the growth of the company to one of the ten most trafficked sites on the Web.
Daren came to Alta Vista from Pantheon, where he was cofounder and served as vice president of product marketing and development. In 1997, he led the merger of Pantheon and Zip2, creating the dominant technology provider in the local yellow pages, directions and mapping space.
Prior to founding Pantheon, Daren began his career at SPRY where he helped develop the company’s award winning software “Internet in a Box,” which won “PC Magazine Product of the Year 1994” and one of the pioneer products in the Internet browser market.

AlwaysOn Stanford Summit: CEO Showcase
2006-07-25 18:00 - 20:30 | Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States
AlwaysOn Stanford Summit: CEO Showcase
AO & MIT/Stanford Venture Lab CEO Showcase
vent Description:
AlwaysOn has again joined forces with the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (VLAB) to produce the popular.CEO Showcase program. A subset of the Summit, The AO & MIT/Stanford Venture Lab CEO Showcase program highlights 50 emerging companies that will present their businesses to a panel of industry insiders and a standing room only audience. The top three companies will be given the opportunity to present to the audience on the main stage at the end of the event.

The AO2006: Stanford Summit will showcase the AO100, with selected industry expert keynotes. The AO100 is a premier list of private companies that have demonstrated leadership among their peers in market traction measured by revenue or customer growth, and game-changing approaches and technologies that are likely to disrupt existing markets and entrenched players. In order to make the AO100 list, companies had to be peer-nominated. AlwaysOn received more than 1,000 nominations from venture investors, investment bankers and other industry experts for the AO100.

Consumer Robotics: Rise of the Machines
2006-06-20 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
Consumer Robotics
Rise of the Machines

Speaker:
Bob Christopher, CEO & Co-founder,
Ugobe
Moderator:
Chris Shipley, Executive Producer, DEMO Conferences; Co-founder,
GuideWire Group
Panelist:
Khalid Al-Ali, Director of Robotics,
Carnegie Mellon University – West; CEO, Senseta
Robert Capps, Senior Editor,
Wired Magazine
Jason Morella, Regional Director,
FIRST – For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology
Warren Packard, Managing Director,
Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Event Description:
Have we finally reached a nexus today that combines culture, and trends, and affordable technology to make consumer robotics a viable market opportunity? The June forum will examine market and venture capital investment opportunities in the category of consumer robotics.
The Japan Robotics Association forecasts the worldwide robotics market (service and personal) to double in size over the next five years, approaching nearly $13 billion. Most recently, consumers have warmed up to robotics, early on with the likes of Furby, a plush toy that exhibited realistic form-factors and Lego Mindstorms, the programmable play set. The latest consumer robotics to hit the shelves include Robosapien, an affordable, mass-marketed humanoid robot, and Roomba, a robotic vacuum, and its sidekick, Scooba, a floor-scrubbing mechanical disk.
Startup Ugobe, creators of Pleo, a genetic descendant of Furby, develops robotic technology that transforms inanimate objects into creatures capable of exhibiting life-like movements and behaviors. Similar to the Terminator’s advanced robots, Pleo supersedes Furby’s single motor and microprocessor, sporting 8 processors that control 14 motors and receive signals from 38 sensors. It can also write its own code as it learns from its own experiences.
The driving vision behind the Ugobe team is to marry people’s emotional connections with technology. With consumers embracing virtual avatars and characters, such as Laura Croft and Super Mario, is there a budding opportunity to make screen-to-table products that are brand extensions of popular virtual characters? Come join this forward-thinking event, as VLAB brings together a panel of experts to discuss and debate how to form a business model that works.

Speaker:
Bob Christopher
CEO & Co-founder
Ugobe
A seasoned entrepreneur, Bob Christopher has founded and led a number of successful start-up companies in the technology and consumer markets. Mr. Christopher helped launch the Voice-over- IP industry through the creation of ISPtel, an international clearinghouse connecting over 35 of the world’s largest phone companies.
Understanding market challenges and visionary opportunities, he has helped companies in their formative stages to develop market strategies, partnerships, operations and launch consumer and enterprise products. Mr. Christopher’s leadership skills have attracted talented management teams, industry alliances, strategic advisors and partnerships that are needed to execute on emerging business models. Both an excellent communicator and team builder Bob is able to lead diverse teams and inspire great performance that drives bottom line results.
An experienced executive leader, Mr., Christopher has contributed to the success of Zentera, Five 9, Circle 24, ValuCircle, Jopari, Mercotel, and NextSport
Moderator:
Chris Shipley
Executive Producer, DEMO Conferences; Co-founder
GuideWire Group
Chris Shipley is a leading technology and product analyst. Best known as the executive producer of the DEMO Conferences for IDG Executive Forums, Shipley has helped technology companies bring more than 1,000 new products to market since 1996. As a founding partner and editorial director in Guidewire Group, she consults with emerging technology companies in the U.S. and Europe to identify market opportunities and accelerate products to market. Fortune Small Business Magazine placed Shipley on its “Top 10 Minds in Small Business,” and the San Jose Business Journal named her a “Woman of Distinction.” She has often been cited as a leading influencer by Marketing Computers magazine. Shipley has covered personal technology since 1984 and has worked as a writer and editor for a variety of technology and consumer media. She is currently authoring a book on the social impact of technology-driven change.
Shipley holds BAs in Literature and Communication Arts from Allegheny College and pursues knowledge and understanding relentlessly.
Panelist:
Khalid Al-Ali Ph.D.
Director of Robotics
Carnegie Mellon University – West; CEO, Senseta
Dr. Khalid Al-Ali is a Senior Fellow and Director of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University’s west coast campus. He is also the President and CEO of Senseta, a robotic sentry and patrol platform provider for the security industry. At both NASA Ames Research Center and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL), he has been the principal investigator, project lead, and senior scientist on key projects involving advanced control sytems, intelligent avionics, novel power systems, planetary rovers and robots, spacecraft, and autonomous exploratory vehicles for Lunar, Martian, and Antarctic missions. He also serves as a member and principal test pilot for unmanned aerial vehicles for NASA Ames’ Intelligent Avionics Program. He founded the Carnegie Mellon Innovation Laboratory (CMIL) and directs its activities, where he is leading efforts to create compact, highly capable mobile autonomous vehicles covering ground, air and space operations. Some of these platforms are already used by NASA Ames and NASA JPL as research test beds for NASA-relevant technologies and educational tools to excite students about robotics, science and engineering. Dr. Al-Ali holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.
Robert Capps
Senior Editor
Wired Magazine
Robert Capps has been covering technology for over 10 years. He is currently a Senior Editor at Wired magazine, where he edits news and feature stories. Robert is considered the publication’s go-to-guy on robotics, last penning Wired’s February cover article “The 50 Greatest Robots of All Time.” Previously he was the magazine’s Products Editor, responsible for tracking consumer electronics, toys, and other cool gear. Before coming to Wired, Robert was the Editor-in-Chief of MacAddict magazine.
Jason Morella
Regional Director
FIRST – For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology
As a Regional Director for FIRST, Jason works with local planning committees and sponsors to help plan and organize Regional Robotics Competitions in California, the Pacific Northwest and Arizona. Jason also assists schools in the Western United States to implement the FIRST Robotics Competition program and helps provide guidance, resources and training for teachers to include it in their curricula. He has integrated the FIRST program into a continuation school (schools for at risk-students removed from other city high schools due to drug use, gangs, poor attendance or performance, etc) and was the recipient of the 1998-1999 San Jose Unified School District Teacher of the Year award.
Warren Packard
Managing Director
Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Warren Packard is a Managing Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He currently serves on the Boards of 422 inc., Anagran, BinOptics, Eoplex, Imago Scientific Instruments, Media Lario, Ooma and Xfire. Mr. Packard also led the firm’s investments in Feedburner , Hypernex, Microfabrica, Primet Precision Materials, Chilisoft (acquired by Sun Microsystems), Digital Impact (NASDAQ: DIGI), Direct Hit Technologies (acquired by Ask Jeeves), Enviz (acquired by Keynote Systems), Fogdog Sports (acquired by Global Sports), and NetMind (acquired by Puma Technology).
Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Packard co-founded Angara Database Systems, a main-memory relational database company, which was acquired by Personify. Prior to Angara, he was an Associate at Institutional Venture Partners, investing in early-stage technology companies. Before IVP, Mr. Packard was a Senior Principal Engineer in the New Business and Advanced Product Development Group at Baxter International. In this position, he led professionals from product development, marketing, and manufacturing in the design and manufacture of next-generation kidney dialysis machines. During his tenure at Baxter, Mr. Packard received a number of domestic and international patents for his engineering work – including designs of silicon-based micro-electromechanical systems. Mr. Packard 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.

Ad Model Madness: How to Monetize New Media Channels and Make Ad Revenue Real
2006-05-16 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
Ad Model Madness
How to Monetize New Media Channels and Make Ad Revenue Real

Speaker:
Jason Feinsmith, CEO and Co-Founder,
Accomplice
Robert A. Leathern, VP and GM,
Root Markets
Moderator:
Mark Kvamme, Partner,
Sequoia Capital
Panelist:
John Cate, Vice President, National Media Director,
Carat Fusion
Philip J. Kaplan, CEO,
AdBrite
Gokul Rajaram, Product Management Director, Google AdSense,
Google
Event Description:
Several innovative startups will participate as this forum delves into examining a range of ad-driven business models that are tapping emerging media channels from mobile phones, to the desktop, to advertising marketplaces. Attendees will receive an overview of a wide-range of companies in this space and will hear from two featured companies whose founders will discuss novel ways to turn profits in the new media sector.
Over the past few years, the market has seen a proliferation of new media channels go mainstream. From blogging to online video, to podcasting, to mobile TV and gaming, these emerging media channels present new avenues of distribution and revenue opportunities. Advertising is one of the primary streams of revenue that startups are hoping to monetize. With these waters still unchartered however, there remain many unknowns for all constituents involved from Madison Avenue, to the investor community, to entrepreneurs disrupting traditional advertising, to consumers who will ultimately decide which approaches win. Founders from the panel of startups will share their unique perspectives, invaluable insights and steps they are taking to make their ad model succeed. Experts will round out the panel to interject real-world perspective and advice to the entrepreneurs.

Speaker:
Jason Feinsmith
CEO and Co-Founder
Accomplice
Accomplice addresses a pervasive problem for 75 million professionals: how to manage all the things you and your team need to do to achieve your goals. Accomplice delivers a networked desktop application that organizes your activities (todo’s, goals, related notes) and synchronizes them with your team. In so doing, Accomplice captures the timely intent of its users, while offering a persistent channel for content delivery. Meanwhile, advertisers hunger to reach these same busy people via cost-effective and well-targeted channels. Accomplice accurately matches relevant ads from advertising networks with users based on their timely intent. Just as advertising via search is effective because it leverages what the user is searching for, activity advertising works because it leverages what the user needs to get done.
Accomplice was born out of fourteen years of iteration by CEO, Jason Feinsmith, addressing activity management problems. Prior to Accomplice, Jason Feinsmith was an executive at Silicon Storage Technology, a business unit manager at Xilinx, and at Intel, he was in sales and was part of the Intel Inside(r) program. He has a B.S. from Cornell University, and a CS Masters and MBA from Stanford University.
Robert A. Leathern CFA
VP and GM
Root Markets
Rob was a founding member of ROOT’s Advisory Board before joining the company full time in January 2006. Prior to joining ROOT, he was General Manager of Advertising at LinkedIn. At LinkedIn, Rob was responsible for all advertising strategy and revenues, and helped craft acquisition programs that increased LinkedIn’s global user base to over 5 million professionals. Rob worked as an investment banker in New York with ING Barings Furman Selz, and then spent four-and-a-half years as an Internet and technology analyst with Jupiter Research and Nielsen//NetRatings. He received the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) designation in 2003. During his time at Jupiter and Nielsen, Rob assisted clients with their online business strategies, revenue models, marketing and consumer adoption. As an industry commentator and thought leader he spoke at numerous events including before the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and was frequently sought out by media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CNBC, Bloomberg, Fortune and Business Week. In late 2003, he moved to NexTag where he drove multi-million dollar revenue increases in NexTag’s online consumer lead generation business, and designed and built leading-edge adserving and consumer marketing technologies. Rob received a B.S. in Computer Science and Economics from Dartmouth College.
Moderator:
Mark Kvamme
Partner
Sequoia Capital
Mark Kvamme is a Sequoia Capital US partner and focuses on services and software investments. He is currently a Director of AdBrite, Cast Iron Systems, EMN8, LinkedIn, Mark Logic, MotoSport.com, Popular Media and StrongMail Systems. He is also involved in portfolio companies including FON Wireless and PodShow. Previously, he had been a Director of Corvigo (acquired by Tumbleweed Communications) and Allocity (acquired by EMC Corporation). Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 1999, Mark was Chairman of USWeb/CKS and Chairman and CEO of CKS Group prior to the merger with USWeb. Earlier in his career Mark was a Director of International Marketing for Wyse Technology, the President and CEO of International Solutions, and was a founding member of Apple France. Mark has a B.A. in French Economics and Literature from the University of California at Berkeley.
Panelist:
John Cate
Vice President, National Media Director
Carat Fusion
John drives Carat Interactive’s media planning and buying services. These services include all forms of digital media as well as cross-media programs that include direct response elements of traditional vehicles. His focus has been on a number of Carat’s larger clients including Kodak, Ofoto and TiVo. John spearheaded the launch of Carat Interactive’s blogging practice and is working closely with clients to determine how best to integrate blogging into their overall marketing programs. He oversees Carat’s behavioral marketing practice, combining pre-marketing segmentation and post site visit re-targeting. Ultimately the practice will merge the behavioral offerings of several major providers, providing a single-source publisher agnostic resource for behavioral targeting.
John has almost 20 years of traditional and online media experience working with major agencies including McCann-Erickson, Chiat Day and Leftfield LLP. His clients have included Sun Microsystems, Nestle Beverage Company, multiple divisions of SBC, Levi’s, and Microsoft. He has a B.A. in Advertising from School of Journalism & Mass Communication, San Jose State University.
Philip J. Kaplan
CEO
AdBrite
As CEO of AdBrite, Philip J. Kaplan sets corporate strategy and oversees all operations and product offerings. Prior to founding AdBrite, Philip founded and sold several businesses, including PK Interactive, a software company that developed Web-based applications for clients including Toyota and Mead Paper. Philip also founded Fu**edcompany.com, which was Yahoo! and Rolling Stone’s Site-of-the-Year, and #6 in TIME Magazine’s “Best of 2000”. Previously, Philip held engineering and management roles at Booz-Allen & Hamilton and Think New Ideas. Philip is the bestselling author of F’d Companies: Spectacular Dot-com Flameouts (Simon & Schuster) and has a Bachelor of Science, cum laude, from Syracuse University.
Gokul Rajaram
Product Management Director, Google AdSense
Google
As Product Management Director for Google AdSense, Gokul Rajaram develops and implements the product strategy for Google AdSense, an advertising program that enables publishers to monetize their websites while making their site more useful for visitors. In this role, Rajaram’s duties include defining new features and enhancements to the AdSense program and working with engineering on implementation.
Earlier in his career, Rajaram was a Technical Lead at Juno Online, an early internet service provider that is now part of United Online, the second largest ISP in the US. At Juno, he was part of the team that developed Juno’s online advertising platform. Rajaram has also worked as a Software Engineer at Sun Microsystems, and as a Product Manager at Onetta, a telecom hardware company.
Rajaram earned his M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School of Management, his M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, and his B.Tech in Computer Science from the Indian institute of Technology, Kanpur, where he was awarded the President of India’s Gold Medal for being class valedictorian.

Concept-to-Company: Strategies for Swimming with the Sharks
2006-04-18 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
Concept-to-Company
Strategies for Swimming with the Sharks
Moderated by Ann Winblad

Speaker:
Jamie Lerner, Chairman and CEO,
Cittio
Moderator:
Ann Winblad, Co-founding Partner,
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
Panelist:
Sandeep Johri, VP Strategy & Business Planning,
Hewlett-Packard Company
Deborah Magid, Director, Software Strategy,
IBM Venture Capital Group
Elisabeth Rainge, Director, Network Management,
IDC
Event Description:
Every year, the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (VLAB) has the honor of hosting a special session, called Concept-to-Company, moderated by Ann Winblad, co-founder of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Ann Winblad is a well-known and respected software industry entrepreneur and technology leader who has been chronicled in many national business and trade publications.
This year’s Concept-to-Company event will focus on the business formation of Cittio, a network management software company founded in 2001. No doubt, many people may question the viability for a startup to enter this mature market – where IBM, HP and other large companies own a majority share. Why would any VC decide to fund a start-up in this space?
Jamie Lerner, CEO of Cittio, will discuss how investors and entrepreneurs can find clever ways to disrupt a mature industry. Our panelists from HP and IBM will talk about how they hope to be nimble enough to foil that plan. Join us at our annual VLAB special event and let us know your insights about where the action will be.

Speaker:
Jamie Lerner
Chairman and CEO
Cittio
Jamie Lerner has over 13 years of experience in both software development and management of high growth companies. Currently, Mr. Lerner is the CEO of JJ Labs Inc., an enterprise software company that delivers WatchTower, a leading system monitoring and management tool. In 2001, Mr. Lerner founded JJ Labs to address the need for cost-effective, easy-to-use, enterprise management software that he found was not available in the industry while managing thousands of servers at XUMA.
In 1997, Mr. Lerner and long time friend Joe Cha founded XUMA, Inc. to serve the rapidly growing need for Internet services. At XUMA, Mr. Lerner served as Chairman of the Board, co-CEO and Chief Technology Officer. He and Mr. Cha raised over $50M of venture funding from top tier VCs Menlo Ventures, Dell Computer, Broadview Capital Partners, Intel, The CIT Group and IDG Ventures. Mr. Lerner and XUMA s management team grew XUMA to 340 employees and over $20M of annual revenues in just two years. XUMA served over 90 domestic and international customers, including Cannon, Logitec, Bristol Meyers Squib, Bayer, Boeing, Riverdeep, Chase H&Q, General Electric, PG&E and Aegis Insurance.
At XUMA, Mr. Lerner focused on building three business units, a product business, a managed services business and a professional services business. By 1999, he was managing over 200 software engineers located in San Francisco, Las Vegas and New York in addition to three data centers, housing over 10,000 computing devices, running 24×7 operations. In early 2001, as the need for Internet hosting services slowed down drastically, XUMA was sold to an adjacent competitor and ceased operations.
Prior to co-founding XUMA, he served for three years as Senior Software Architect and Product Manager at Platinum Technology, where he was responsible for leading a successful programming team that created SQL Station, the industry leading development tool for Oracle, Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server. Under Mr. Lerner’s management, SQL Station won two PC Week Lab Analyst awards and annual revenues grew from $40K to over $12M.
Prior to working at Platinum, he spent three years at Andersen Consulting as a Senior Consultant, where he specialized in building high productivity development environments, and created a developers’ toolkit for Andersen’s consultants to use in the field. While at Andersen Consulting, he worked with such notable customers as Pacific Gas & Electric and United Airlines.
Moderator:
Ann Winblad
Co-founding Partner
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
Ann Winblad is the co-founding Partner of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. She is a well-known and respected software industry entrepreneur and technology leader. Her background and experience have been chronicled in many national business and trade publications.
Ann has over 25 years of experience in the software industry. She began her career as a systems programmer at the Federal Reserve Bank. In 1976 Ann co-founded Open Systems, Inc., a top selling accounting software company, with a $500 investment. She operated Open Systems profitably for six years and then sold it for over $15 million. Prior to co-founding Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Ann served as a strategy consultant for prestigious clients such as IBM, Microsoft, Price Waterhouse, and numerous start-ups. In addition, Ann has co-authored the book Object-Oriented Software and has written articles for numerous publications. Ann received a BA in mathematics and in business administration, as well as an MA in education and international economics from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. Ann also has an honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of St. Thomas.
Ann has served as a Director of start-up and public companies and currently serves as a director of Dean & Deluca, Intacct, Market Wire, The Knot and Voltage Security. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of St. Thomas and is an advisor to numerous entrepreneur groups.
Panelist:
Sandeep Johri
VP Strategy & Business Planning
Hewlett-Packard Company
Sandeep Johri is Vice President of Strategy and Business Planning. Sandeep is responsible for the overall strategy, M&A, acquisition integration and the portfolio investment for the OpenView business unit, a ~$900M business. He is responsible for overall strategy of the software business and has been an instrumental part of the team that developed the “Adaptive Enterprise” strategy which has resulted in the OpenView business growing 2X of market over the last 3 years. During his tenure at HP, he has led the acquisition and successful integration of 8 software companies valued at ~$750M.
Prior to HP, Johri was an Executive-in-Residence at Mayfield Fund, a leading venture fund in Silicon Valley. Prior to that Johri was the CEO and Founder of Oblix, a leading provider of enterprise Identity Management solutions. Oblix was funded by leading Silicon Valley investors and was acquired by Oracle in 2005. In 1999, Johri co-founded eBoodle, an e-commerce comparison shopping service. Johri led the negotiations with various potential acquirers and successfully completed the acquisition of the company by BizRate (acquired by EW Scripps).
Prior to Oblix, Johri was with Silicon Graphics as staff to Ed McCracken, where he assisted McCracken in his responsibilities as co-chair of President Bill Clinton’s Information Infrastructure Advisory Council (NII). Prior to SGI, Johri was a principal with the technology and telecom practice at Gemini Consulting, an international management consulting company. He has an MBA from Stanford University, a Masters in Industrial Engineering from Wayne State University, Detroit, and Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from Pune University, India.
Johri currently serves on the board of BlueLane (a Security startup), Livedeal (online local classifieds website) and Persistent Systems (outsourced software development company based in India) and as an advisor to several other startups.
Deborah Magid
Director, Software Strategy
IBM Venture Capital Group
Deborah Magid is Director of Software Strategy in IBM’s Venture Capital Group. Deborah builds ecosystems for IBM by sharing insights about emerging markets, technologies, and business models with venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. As a member of IBM’s software strategy team, she also brings insight form the venture community into the development of IBM’s growth strategies, identifies new business opportunities with portfolio companies, and shares views on innovation and growth areas of the market. Deborah is a frequent spokesperson on topics of relevance to entrepreneurs and investors, and is on the board of SDForum, the Silicon Valley emerging technology network. Previously, Deborah held various positions in marketing and product design and development at IBM, Taligent, GE and AT&T. Deborah holds degrees in cognitive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Connecticut.
Elisabeth Rainge
Director, Network Management
IDC
Elisabeth Rainge is Director of IDC’s Network Management and related network software programs. Ms.Rainge’s research and analysis of enterprise network as well as service provider infrastructure markets examines the challenges and opportunities of the business and technology upheavals that are facing and network and telecom management users and suppliers. This includes business service management as well as LAN/WAN operations. Her specific areas of coverage include service assurance, service delivery, management architectures and best practices such as ROI analysis.
Prior to joining IDC, Ms. Rainge was involved in product management, marketing and market research at an IDC customer.

From R&D to ROI: Building a Sustainable Bio-Nano Products Company
2006-03-21 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
From R&D to ROI
Building a Sustainable Bio-Nano Products Company

Speaker:
David Macdonald, President & CEO,
Nanomix, Inc.
Moderator:
Faysal Sohail, Managing Director,
CMEA Ventures
Panelist:
Wasiq Bokhari, Managing Partner,
Quantum Insight
Michael Knapp, President & CEO,
Cambrios Technologies
Srinivas Rao, CEO & CTO,
Molecular Nanosystems, Inc.
Event Description:
Transforming a start-up culture focused on fundamental R&D into a market-focused product commercialization culture is a daunting challenge faced by many early-stage companies operating at the convergence of biotechnology and nanotechnology. There are so many potential opportunities to explore, and such a wide variety of challenges to manage. Creating well-defined products matched to real market needs requires thoughtful discipline. Novel platform technologies and applications also require carefully crafted business models to ensure that the full value of an innovation is captured. Completing this transformation usually requires the introduction of new skill-sets into the company.
Nanomix is developing a pipeline of industrial and medical detection and sensing devices, based on its Sensation(tm) technology platform. These nanoelectronic devices use ultra-sensitive carbon nanotube detection elements combined with proprietary functionalization chemistries to achieve unprecedented detection sensitivity and specificity. Sensation devices can be deployed across a broad range of applications where the benefits of nanoelectronic technology – low power consumption, small form factor, and high sensitivity – offer breakthrough performance advantages and enable immediate access to critical information. Nanomix is located in Emeryville, California. For additional information, please visit the Nanomix web site at http://www.nano.com/.
David Macdonald, CEO, will discuss the transformation of Nanomix’s initial R&D culture into a commercial business, with a pipeline of innovative products coming to market. David will focus on how he’s laying the groundwork to consistently generate new products and new streams of revenue, the basis for long-term success. Topics will include the thought process that led to focusing on the medical sensor market, defining a business model that captures the full value of the technology platform, matching product and process strategies with opportunities and partners, and the personal challenges involved in leading the transition.
The event moderator and panelists have been chosen for their experience in both life sciences and nanotechnology, and with the convoluted process of transforming academic research breakthroughs into market-leading products. They will bring a range of informed and challenging perspectives to bear on the question of how to create a successful business in this complex space.

Speaker:
David Macdonald
President & CEO
Nanomix, Inc.
David Macdonald, joined Nanomix in March of 2004, bringing over 20 years of product development and commercialization experience. Mr. Macdonald has successfully built several high performance teams that achieved aggressive goals in technical product and service environments, developing and launching hundreds of products sold directly in the United States and Western Europe, and through independent distribution relationships worldwide. Mr. Macdonald served as President and COO of Nichols Institute Diagnostics (a division of Quest Diagnostics), as President and CEO of Progeny Systems and Medical Electronic Systems, in operational roles at Behring Diagnostics and Nova Biomedical, and most recently as the Senior VP of Global Operations and Business Development at Nanogen. Mr. Macdonald holds BS and BA degrees from Northeastern University, and an MBA degree from Babson College.
Moderator:
Faysal Sohail
Managing Director
CMEA Ventures
Faysal Sohail joined CMEA Ventures in 2002 as a Managing Director. CMEA focuses on companies that exploit exponential Moore’s Law trends to develop new technologies that provide order of magnitude improvements in specific application domains. Faysal is currently on the Board of Directors of Alien Technology, Applied Wave Research and Inovys. Before joining CMEA Mr. Sohail was CEO of Cadabra Design Automation, and managed its acquisition by Numerical Technologies, where he served as Sr. VP of Worldwide Field Operations. Previously, Faysal was Senior VP of Corporate Strategy for Synopsys. In 1990, he founded Silicon Architects, acquired by Synopsys in 1995. Earlier, Faysal worked in IC design engineering and marketing at Actel and LSI Logic. Mr. Sohail holds a BS in computer engineering from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) where he serves on the College of Engineering Advisory Board.
Panelist:
Wasiq Bokhari PhD
Managing Partner
Quantum Insight
Wasiq is a co-founder of Quantum Insight, where he works with Fortune 500 clients to commercialize materials and nanotechnology with applications in energy, IT and medicine. Wasiq also works with entrepreneurs, start-ups and venture funds to help emerging nanotechnologies cross the valley of death. Before Quantum Insight, he was a co-founder and Senior VP of Products at Clickmarks, an enterprise infrastructure software company, acquired by Semotus Solutions. Wasiq received his PhD in physics from MIT, where he studied under Nobel laureate Jerome Friedman, and participated in discovering the top quark particle at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in 1995. He is an author of more than 50 scientific and technical publications, and is cited as an inventor on 8 US patents. Wasiq co-authored a recent report on the potential of nanotechnology for the California Commission for Science and Technology (CCST), and is a co-founder and Steering Committee Chair of the MIT-Stanford-Berkeley Nanotechnology Forum. Wasiq currently works with the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology on issues related to energy.
Michael Knapp PhD
President & CEO
Cambrios Technologies
Dr. Knapp is a scientist and entrepreneur who has helped grow several companies from the R&D stage to commercial success. Prior to joining Cambrios, Dr. Knapp co-founded Caliper Technologies (now Caliper Life Sciences), where he played an integral role in the creation and development of the company. As VP of Corporate Development he configured the company’s technology access program and drove the creation of partnerships with larger pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. He also created the Applications Developer Program that enabled applications of Caliper’s microfluidic technology in other fields. In addition, Dr. Knapp co-founded Amphora Discovery Corp., a chemical genomics company that was spun out of Caliper with independent funding and management. Before starting Caliper, Dr. Knapp served as President and Scientific Director at Molecular Tool, Inc., a genetics technology company that he co-founded. Previously, Dr. Knapp was on the staff of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University and was Scientific Director of Genetica SARL, an affiliate of Rhone Poulenc SA. Dr. Knapp holds a B.S. in Biology from Trinity College (Hartford) and a Ph.D. in Medical Microbiology from Stanford University.
Srinivas Rao PhD
CEO & CTO
Molecular Nanosystems, Inc.
Dr. Rao has over 20 years of product development and commercialization experience in the electronics industry. Prior to Molecular Nanosystems, he served as VP of Technology at Solectron, where his responsibilities included product development and deployment of support programs in engineering design, test and assembly. Previously, he held senior technical positions at Raychem, Eastman Kodak Labs, and RCA Labs. He has received numerous honors including EP&P’s Engineer of the Year (2000) and the ‘Outstanding Achievement Award’ at RCA. Dr. Rao holds six issued patents and has authored several papers. He serves on the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Nanotechnology (BRTFN), a joint federal-state venture to promote California as a national and worldwide center for research, development, and commercialization of nanotechnology. Dr. Rao holds a BS in metallurgy from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, and MS and PhD degrees in metallurgy and materials science from the Stevens Institute of Technology.

The Next Wave of Web 2.0: Is AJAX Where the Action is?
2006-02-21 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
The Next Wave of Web 2.0: Is AJAX Where the Action is?

Speaker:
Scott Dietzen, President and CTO,
Zimbra
Moderator:
Om Malik, Senior Writer at Business 2.0,
Gigaom
Panelist:
Larry Augustin, Chairman,
VA Software
Sam Ramji, Director, Emerging Business,
Microsoft
Pradeep Tagare, Senior Investment Manager,
Intel Capital
Event Description:
VCs and entrepreneurs are talking about a “funding frenzy” in the AJAX powered applications space. What is AJAX? It is the special sauce behind a new generation of rich internet applications such as Google Maps, Yahoo’s Flickr, and a plethora of emerging Web 2.0 applications.
While some technology pundits are dismissing AJAX as nothing but a cool technology that enables web applications to act like desktop applications, others are claiming that there is more to AJAX then enhanced user interfaces. Many of the emerging AJAX companies have adopted disruptive business models that have successfully displaced incumbents’ offerings.
Come and hear several break-out companies, including Zimbra, which are on the cutting-edge of Web 2.0. The panel will explore the source of value in AJAX, the viability of new business models, and the impact on software and user experience.

Speaker:
Scott Dietzen PhD
President and CTO
Zimbra
Prior to Zimbra, Scott was CTO of BEA Systems where he was the principal architect of the technology strategy for the WebLogic product family, which drove the company from $61 million in revenue for the year prior to WebLogic’s acquisition to over $1 billion. He was also one of BEA’s top spokespersons with customers, business partners, analysts, and the press. Scott came to BEA in 1998 via the $200+ million acquisition of WebLogic, a pioneer in Java and web application technology. He is widely credited with helping put together the J2EE standard, launching the Web application server category, launching the Java Community Process, and driving the web services collaboration with Microsoft and IBM. Prior to WebLogic, Scott was Principal Technologist for Transarc (acquired by IBM), a developer of distributed transaction and information sharing systems. In addition to working on Internet infrastructure since 1991, Scott has managed teams focused on sales, marketing, product management, and standards. He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science and B.S. in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.
Moderator:
Om Malik
Senior Writer at Business 2.0
Gigaom
Om is a senior writer for Business 2.0 magazine in San Francisco since 2003. Prior to that Om was a senior writer for Red Herring focusing on the telecommunications sector. Om has often appeared on several television shows such as Business Week Television (on ABC Network); BBC Television & Radio; CNNfn; CNBC and TechTV. He maintains a highly regarded blog on the next generation internet.
His first book, Broadbandits: Inside the $750 billion telecom heist, was released on May 15, 2003. Before joining Red Herring in July 2000, Om was part of the founding team of Forbes.com where he was a senior editor. His writings have also appeared in newspapers and magazines such as The Wall Street Journal, Business 2.0, Brandweek, and Crains, New York Business. In 1999, Om left Forbes.com to join Hambrecht & Quist Asia Pacific as an investment manager, thus crossing over into the venture capital business.
Om graduated from St. Stephens’ College in New Delhi with an honors degree in chemistry in 1986. Om has also contributed to several Indian publications including the Economic Times and The Week, India’s leading news weekly.
Panelist:
Larry Augustin
Chairman
VA Software
Larry Augustin, CEO, founded VA Software in 1993 as a PhD student in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. A strong advocate of collaborative software development, Augustin was the visionary behind SourceForge.net , which quickly became the world’s largest Open Source development Internet site following its launch in November 1999. Augustin serves on the board of directors for OSDL, the Open Source Development Lab, and Linux International. Prior to VA Software, Augustin was a research associate in the Program Analysis and Verification Group (PAVG) at Stanford University where he worked on rapid prototyping languages, software engineering, hardware verification, and software prototyping environments. Prior to Stanford, he worked as a systems engineer on high-speed switched digital services at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Larry Augustin holds a PhD and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and a BSEE from the University of Notre Dame.
Sam Ramji
Director, Emerging Business
Microsoft
Sam is responsible for building alliances with venture capital firms and their portfolio companies in the Software as a Service and Application Development domains, covering Open Source Software, AJAX, and emerging technologies. He focuses on identifying synergy with VC-funded portfolio companies and partnering with them to develop and market offerings complementary to the Microsoft platform.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Sam was Director of Business Development at BEA Systems in the WebLogic Integration division, where he helped drive the business from $20 to $100M revenue. Sam has worked at 5 startups, including Ofoto (now Kodak), where he was Director of Engineering, leading the web and middleware teams. Sam has developed desktop, server, and web applications in COM/DCOM and J2EE on Windows, Unix, and Macintosh.
Sam holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Cognitive Science from the University of California at San Diego.
Pradeep Tagare
Senior Investment Manager
Intel Capital
Pradeep is a Sr. Investment Manager at Intel Capital focusing on investments in the enterprise software space. Prior to Intel Capital, Pradeep was the Founder/CEO and later VP Products at Yopa Inc, a venture-backed company that developed a mobile applications software platform. Yopa was acquired by XDrive Technologies in 2001. Pradeep served as VP Product Management at XDrive after the acquisition.
Before Yopa, Pradeep was instrumental in BroadVision’s early success by driving the Financial Services product line. Pradeep honed his technical skills in the software division of Intel Corp developing large scale distributed computing applications, and at Inference Corp. developing carrier-grade expert systems applications.
Pradeep holds a MSEE from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a BEEE from the University of Bombay, India.
Pradeep is a member of Kauffman Fellows Class 10 and is currently serving his fellowship under mentor Keith Larson at Intel Capital in Santa Clara, CA.

User-Generated Content and the Future of Media
2006-01-17 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
User-Generated Content and the Future of Media

Speaker:
Evan Williams, CEO,
Odeo, Inc.
Moderator:
Randy Haykin, Founder and Managing Director,
Outlook Ventures
Panelist:
Jim Barton, Co-founder, CTO, and Senior Vice President of Tivo,
TiVo Inc.
David Hornik, General Partner,
August Capital
Gary Stein, Senior Analyst,
Jupiter Research
Event Description:
The internet has evolved into a realm where people are not only consuming media content, but also participating in creating content. The availability of online connectivity and simple content creation tools are putting media power in the hands of consumers. User generated content, such as podcasting, blogging, and video-blogging, has emerged as a vastly growing market.
With few technical and regulatory limitations, people are busy creating content to publish on the internet. Many entrepreneurs are making bets that content created by consumers is a viable and sustainable business model.
Leaders in this space will join a panel to discuss what the market is witnessing and the emerging business models. In addition, key uncertainties will be discussed such as issues of quality control and the affect on traditional media outlets.

Speaker:
Evan Williams
CEO
Odeo, Inc.
Evan Williams is the co-founder and CEO of Odeo, Inc. — a new company focused on giving people new ways to record and share audio. In 1999, as CEO of Pyra Labs, he co-created Blogger.com, one of the first blogging tools, and helped define the blogging phenomenon. Evan sold Pyra Labs to Google in 2003, where he served as a product and engineering manager until October 2004. In 1994, Evan started his first Internet company, in Nebraska, where he grew up amongst the cornfields. He now lives in San Francisco with his girlfriend and her cat and can be found on the web at evhead.com.
Moderator:
Randy Haykin
Founder and Managing Director
Outlook Ventures
Randy Haykin is a founder and Managing Director of Outlook Ventures, an
early-stage software-focused fund he established in 1996. For the past
nine years he has been investing in software firms in the consumer,
enterprise and infrastructure sectors. He led the firms early
involvement at Overture, and has represented Outlook on the Boards of Reconnex, Loyalty Lab Bridgestream, NetBrowser Communications, nSite Software, Impulse Network (acquired by Inktomi ” N: IKTM), eTeamz (merged with Active Networks), Voquette (merged with Semagix), Qbiquity (acquired by Collabrys) and, Logilent (merged with Toolwire, Inc). Much of Randy’s work as a VC has been in the area of user-generated content, including hands-on work with Yahoo, AOL Greenhouse, SBC @Hand service, Electric Minds, eCircles, Active Networks, and Classmates.com.
Prior to Outlook, Haykin held various senior sales and marketing positions in the high technology arena over the past 19 years with high-profile companies such as Yahoo!, Viacom, Paramount, BBN, IBM, and Apple Computer.
Randy served as the founding Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Yahoo!, where he was responsible for building the company’s marketing team, establishing agency relationships and generating initial business model and advertising sales for Yahoo. Haykin served as interim VP Marketing at NetChannel, which was successfully acquired by America Online in 1998. He has also served as part of the core team that launched America Online’s Greenhouse, a successful venture incubator.
Haykin holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Organizational Studies from Brown University, magna cum laude, and an MBA from Harvard’s Graduate School of Business. He is the author of “Demystifying Multimedia” (Random House, 1993). Randy enjoys “soccer-parenting”, playing the guitar and family outings with his wife, Patty and three daughters, Elise, Julianna and Kayla. He is on the Governing Board of Opportunity International, a non-profit that provides micro-loans for 3rd World countries and the Board of the American Cancer Society.
Panelist:
Jim Barton
Co-founder, CTO, and Senior Vice President of Tivo
TiVo Inc.
At TiVo, Jim sets the technical vision for the company, including our product, service and partnership roadmaps. In addition to responsibility for all product development, his special area of emphasis is on the software and digital video streaming technologies behind the TiVo Service.
Prior to co-founding TiVo, Jim was President and CEO of Network Age Software, Inc., a company he founded to develop software products targeted at managed electronic distribution. The concepts he developed at Network Age form the foundation of the TiVo Personal TV Service.
Jim began his executive career at SGI, holding a position as Vice President and General Manager of the Systems Software Division, and continued with executive roles in both operational management and R&D organizations within the company. While at SGI, he became the lead system software architect of the Full Service Network in Orlando, Florida, in which he worked to develop the only large-scale interactive television system to be put into operational service. He also served as CTO of Interactive Digital Solutions Company, a joint venture of Silicon Graphics and AT&T Network Systems created to develop interactive television systems.
Prior to joining SGI, Jim held technical and management positions at Hewlett-Packard and Bell laboratories in the areas of operating system and networking technology and product development. Jim holds a B.S.E.E. and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
David Hornik
General Partner
August Capital
David Hornik is a General Partner with August Capital. He invests broadly in information technology companies, with a focus on consumer-facing software and services, enterprise applications and infrastructure software. Prior to joining August Capital, Hornik was an intellectual property and corporate attorney at Venture Law Group, Cravath Swaine & Moore, and Perkins Coie LLP. Hornik teaches business and law at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and writes about the venture capital industry in VentureBlog. Hornik sits on the board of Six Apart and has been an investor in or advisor to When.com, Evite, Ofoto and Tickle, among other user-generated content services.
Gary Stein
Senior Analyst
Jupiter Research
Mr. Stein is the Senior Analyst for online advertising and marketing for Jupiter Research; he also focuses on the Consumer Packaged Goods industry. Topics that Stein covers include advertising formats, rich-media, media purchasing tactics, marketing strategies, and consumer behavior online.
Mr. Stein writes a column on marketing for the online journal ClickZ and maintains a Weblog covering online marketing trends. He has appeared on CNN, in The Wall Street Journal, and in many newspapers and trade journals. He also teaches a class at San Francisco State on strategic interactive marketing and design.
Prior to joining Jupiter Research, Mr. Stein worked as the Senior Strategist at Red Sky, an interactive marketing and advertising agency, where his clients included Procter & Gamble, The Coca-Cola Company, Lands’ End, and Nike. Before Red Sky, he worked at Poppe Tyson. Hen started his career at Mactivity, Inc., a firm focused on tradeshows and publications targeting the then-emerging interactive services market.
Mr. Stein holds a B.A. in English and M.A. in American Literature from California State University at Chico, and currently lives in San Francisco.

A Brave New (Virtual) World: Commerce and Community in Virtual Societies
2005-11-15 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
A Brave New (Virtual) World
Commerce and Community in Virtual Societies

Speaker:
Philip Rosedale, Founder & CEO,
Linden Lab
Moderator:
F. Randall Farmer, Virtual Worlds Pioneer & Community Strategist for Yahoo!, Inc.,
Yahoo!
Panelist:
Bill Gurley, General Partner,
Benchmark Capital
Will Harvey, CEO,
IMVU
Job Lawrence, Product Manager, Market Intelligence,
IGN Entertainment (Div. of Fox Interactive)
Event Description:
To an increasing degree, personal self-expression and social interaction are migrating from the physical world to on-line virtual worlds. By breaking down geographic limitations and providing greater control of how one is perceived by other users, virtual societies have proven an increasingly appealing environment for social interaction.
Numerous business models have emerged to capitalize on this virtual interaction and character personalization. Key questions this panel will explore include what opportunities exist to monetize this shift, what are the underlying social implications for increasingly living in virtual worlds, and what tensions are likely to arise as a larger percentage of social interaction and commerce moves to the virtual domain?

Speaker:
Philip Rosedale
Founder & CEO
Linden Lab
Philip Rosedale has an extensive background in the development and pioneering of streaming technology, having built his first computer in 4th grade, and started his first computer software company while still in high school. In 1995 he developed FreeVue, a low-bitrate video conferencing system for Internet-connected PC’s, resulting in the acquisition of his company in early 1996 by RealNetworks. For 3 1/2 years, Rosedale served at RealNetworks as Vice President and CTO, where he was responsible for the development and launch of RealVideo, RealSystem 5.0, and RealSystem G2. In 1999 Rosedale returned to San Francisco, joined Accel Partners as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, and began the basic research that would become the technology behind Linden Lab. Rosedale holds a BS degree in Physics from the University of California at San Diego.
Moderator:
F. Randall Farmer
Virtual Worlds Pioneer & Community Strategist for Yahoo!, Inc.
Yahoo!
For more than 30 years, Randy has been connecting people with each other
using computers as the mediating technology. He co-created: one of the
first forums, the first Trek MUD, the first graphical MMOG with the
first avatars, the first virtual MMOG currency, the first virtual
information marketplace, the first fully distributed virtual world
platform, the first no-plugin web session platform, Yahoo’s 360 project,
and more.
Panelist:
Bill Gurley
General Partner
Benchmark Capital
Bill Gurley joined Benchmark Capital in 1999 after spending two years as a partner with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Before entering the venture capital business, Bill spent four years on Wall Street as a top-ranked research analyst, including three years at CS First Boston focusing on personal computer hardware and software. His research coverage included such companies as Dell, Compaq, and Microsoft, and he was the lead analyst on the Amazon IPO. In both 1995 and 1996, Bill was a member of the Institutional Investor All-American Research Team.
Prior to his investment career, Bill was a design engineer at Compaq Computer, where he worked on products such as the 486/50 and Compaq’s first multi-processor server. Before Compaq, he served in the technical marketing group of Advanced Micro Devices’ embedded processor division. For the past seven years, Bill has authored the Above the Crowd newsletter which focuses on the evolution and economics of high technology businesses.
Investments: Avamar Technologies, Business.com, Crossgain (acquired by BEA Systems), Engim, JAMDAT (JMDT), Linden Lab, OpenTable, Nanosolar, Nordstrom.com (acquired by Nordstrom), Shopping.com (SHOP), Tropos Networks, and Zillow.com, Inc.
Other Affiliations: Advisory board of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas.
Education: MBA from the University of Texas, 1993; and a BS in computer science from the University of Florida, 1989. Chartered Financial Analyst.
Above the Crowd
“The Revolutionary Business of Multiplayer Gaming”
http://www.abovethecrowd.com/atc/2004/10/the_revolutiona.html
Will Harvey
CEO
IMVU
Will Harvey is the Founder and CEO of IMVU, the maker of the world s greatest 3D instant messenger and also the Founder of www.there.com, the maker of the first 3D virtual world for socializing online. Will has an academic background in computer science and search, a professional background in networking software, and an artistic background in video game development, stretching back to when he wrote a world wide best selling video game at the age of 15.
Before founding There, Will ran the dynamic media products at Adobe Systems, including AfterEffects and Adobe Premier, the world’s leading video editing program. Will came to Adobe when Adobe acquired Will’s previous company, Sandcastle, which Will had founded to develop network technology to enable low latency interaction over the internet. Prior to Sandcastle, Will served as Vice President of Engineering at Rocket Science Games in San Francisco, where he led the company’s transition from full motion video based games to games focused on
interactivity.
During school, Will founded and ran several successful game development companies while simultaneously earning his Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctorate degrees in computer science from Stanford. Will’s doctoral thesis introduced several important search algorithms that are now used commercially in manufacturing scheduling. Will’s game companies produced Platinum and Gold game titles including Zany Golf, Immortal, and Music Construction Set, with combined sales of over a million units. Will has filed 8 patents related to networking, graphics, and automated scheduling. He wrote his first commercial video game, Music Construction Set, at the age of 15.
Job Lawrence
Product Manager, Market Intelligence
IGN Entertainment (Div. of Fox Interactive)
Not Available.

Extreme Telemedicine: Critical Care Goes Virtual
2005-10-18 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
Extreme Telemedicine: Critical Care Goes Virtual

Speaker:
Brian Rosenfeld MD, Co-founder, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer,
VISICU
Moderator:
Molly Coye, Founder and CEO,
Institute for the Future Health Technology Center
Panelist:
Thomas McKinley, Co-founder and Managing Partner,
Partech International
Arnold Milstein, US Healthcare Thought Leader,
Pacific Business Group on Health
Sean Wieland, Managing director and Senior Research Analyst,
Health Care IT at Piper Jaffray
Event Description:
Futuristic visions of the use of information technology in medicine have been promoted for decades. In spite of this, true innovations in the delivery of health care have only recently been introduced on a broader scale. Brian Rosenfeld M.D., co-founder of VISICU, will present the technology and business model for the ultimate electronic ICU. The panel will explore where the next health care IT innovations will come from, what obstacles stand in the way of their availability and what needs to be done to ensure that the use of information technology in medicine delivers on its promises.

Speaker:
Brian Rosenfeld MD
Co-founder, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer
VISICU
Dr. Rosenfeld has practiced critical care for more than fifteen years and is currently an adjunct associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine, medicine and surgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Prior to founding VISICU, Dr. Rosenfeld was medical director of two critical care units at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. He received the Shannon Award and grants from the National Institutes of Health for his research on stress-induced changes in blood coagulation and he was principal investigator on numerous ICU clinical research trials. He has published over fifty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and numerous scientific abstracts. He developed the first application of a smart monitoring system that provides hospital-wide management of patients with myocardial ischemia and co-developed a comprehensive personnel and equipment triage system for evacuating critically ill soldiers for the U. S. Air Force.
Dr. Rosenfeld graduated magna cum laude, special honors, biology from the University of Pittsburgh in 1975. He graduated from Temple University School of Medicine in 1980 and then trained in internal medicine, pulmonary medicine, anesthesiology, and critical care. He was selected chief resident while at Johns Hopkins during his anesthesiology and critical care fellowship. He has been inducted as a fellow in both the College of Critical Care Medicine and the College of Chest Physicians.
Moderator:
Molly Coye MD, MPH
Founder and CEO
Institute for the Future Health Technology Center
Molly Coye, founder and CEO of the Health Technology Center (Health Tech), a not-for-profit research organization, is a distinguished innovator and leader in both the public and private sectors of healthcare. HealthTech is dedicated to advancing the use of beneficial technologies for healthier people and communities. Through Dr. Coye’s oversight, HealthTech provides its Partners with independent trusted information and tools about the impact of technologies in health care so that they may make appropriate decisions about advancing and improving their delivery systems.
Prior to HealthTech, Dr. Coye served as health director for two states, executive in health delivery system and health software development firm, and advisor to investors in emerging healthcare technologies, has been leader looking for opportunities to innovate and improve healthcare. Dr. Coye is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) and most recently appointed to the American Hospital Association Board of Directors.
Dr. Coye is also a member of the Institute of Medicine, was a member of the IOM Committee on the Quality of Healthcare in America, and chaired the IOM Committee on Access to Insurance for Children. A former trustee of The California Endowment and the China Medical Board Dr. Coye has received a variety of honors. A sought after speaker, Dr. Coye has presented to health care and hospital leadership as well as provided testimony for state and national government initiatives.
Fluent in Spanish and Chinese, she has also served as a consultant with the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization. Dr. Coye received both the Doctor of Medicine and Master of Public Health degrees from Johns Hopkins University.
Panelist:
Thomas McKinley
Co-founder and Managing Partner
Partech International
Tom McKinley, Managing Partner and Co-Founder
Tom is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Partech International and has over 25 years of investment experience with a successful track record of helping several entrepreneurs build successful technology companies. His past investments include Ascend Communications (ASND acq. by Lucent Technologies), Medicode (acq. by Ingenix) and VeriFone (PAY). Most recently Tom has led the firm’s investment activities in the healthcare IT and financial services sectors.
He also currently serves on the boards of U.C. Berkley’s Entrepreneurs Forum and the World Venture Summit. Tom is an active member of the Health Management Academy (HMA) and an active supporter of the University of San Francisco’s Entrepreneurship Program. As an alumnus, Tom maintains close ties with Stanford Business School as well as Harvard University, where he serves as class secretary.
Tom sits on the board of directors of current portfolio companies Decisionview, Radianse and VISICU.
Tom received an undergraduate degree in Economics from Harvard University, an MS in Accounting from New York University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Arnold Milstein MD, MPH
US Healthcare Thought Leader
Pacific Business Group on Health
Arnie Milstein is the Medical Director at the Pacific Business Group on Health and the National Health Care Thought Leader at William M. Mercer Inc. His work focuses on improving managed care programs for large purchasers and government.
Dr. Milstein’s 30 book chapters and published articles have centered on managed care program design. A member of NCQA’s national committee to develop HEDIS and the Performance Measures Coordinating Committee, Business Insurance magazine selected him as “one of the 20 people who has made a difference in employee benefits management in the past 20 years.” Last year’s New England Journal of Medicine’s series on employer sponsored health insurance described him as a “pioneer” in employer efforts to advance quality.
In January 2002 Dr. Milstein was named to the Strategic Advisory Council of the National Quality Forum (NQF).
Dr. Milstein holds a medical degree from Tufts University and a master’s degree in health services planning from the University of California, Berkeley. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University. He is an Associate Clinical Professor at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center and a Worldwide Partner at Mercer.
Sean Wieland
Managing director and Senior Research Analyst
Health Care IT at Piper Jaffray
Sean Wieland is a managing director and a senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, focusing on health care information technology and health care services. Wieland has 13 years’ experience in health care information technology, including six years on the sell-side. Prior to joining Piper Jaffray in 2005, Wieland was a senior research analyst at WR Hambrecht and Prudential Securities. Prior to joining the sell-side, he spent seven years in the industry, working in multiple roles at IDX Systems Corporation, most recently as a senior sales executive, where he learned firsthand about the need for technology in the health care setting. Wieland earned his master’s degree in business administration and his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Vermont.

Vertical Search: Show Me The Money!
2005-09-20 18:00 - 20:30 | CA
Vertical Search: Show Me The Money!

Speaker:
Scott Rafer, President and CEO,
Feedster
Moderator:
Barney Pell, EIR,
Mayfield
Panelist:
Paul A. Flaherty, VP Product/Strategy,
TalkPlus
Reid Hoffman, CEO and Chairman,
LinkedIn, Ltd
Dion Lim, VP Business Development,
Simply Hired
Event Description:
Remember the heydays of the first generation Internet search engines like InfoSeek and AltaVista and then of course, our darling Google? Vertical Search is now one of the hot new topics buzzing around the Internet industry and the investment community today. It refers to specialized search technologies that focus on narrow niches like a specific industry such as travel or health or new Web-based communication tools like blogs. Users can much more effectively find what they are looking for – be it cheap plane tickets or to find out what the investor community thinks about a certain technology. Businesses have much more effective way to reach their target customers. But the big question, as with first generation search, is Where is the Money? Though there is no question that there is value for vertical search, who is willing to pay for it? At the September 20th VLAB event, Scott Rafer, CEO of Feedster, will present how his company is building a business around providing vertical search for listings, news, and blogs, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Barney Pell, Entrepreneur in Residence at the Mayfield.

Primer: made available from Dave B. Hill, President and CEO, Looksmart, Ltd.
What is Vertical Search? It is a specialized search engine tha mines data for one narrow niche of the marketplace, such as jobs, travel or blogs. Because the data sources are so fragmented, there seems to be an opportunity to massage the data and present it in a manner that is simple to use and easy to consume.
Definition:
Vertical search is about “providing essential (versus exhaustive) search content and related tools for people who have a passion, need or repetitive task,” says Dave Hills.
Bringing together two types of search:
Broad search – need-based without knowledge or opinion of where to find information, products or services; consumer needs to case a wide net.
Vertical search – still need-based, but the consumer has knowledge and needs greater concentration in one form of results.
Vertical search is not new, and has been around for a number of years, starting with travel and real estate. The explosion of services recently is due to the ever growing amount of advertising dollars shifting to search marketing, and the lower cost of development for new entrants. The space will be segmented by content or by audience, and will leverage partially on technology and partially on human editors. These vertical search sites will also provide a valuable service for one aspect of life.

*Errata notice: We regret that the attribution for Dave Hills’ quote, which was used in the flyer that we handed out at the September 20th event on Vertical Search, was inadvertently omitted during the production process. The text of the primer has been corrected and we have added the text of the primer to this web site above. We have also made the correction on the flyer. We offer our sincere apologies to our esteemed colleague Dave Hills and his team at Looksmart, Ltd. – Louise Velazquez, Chair, MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (VLAB), September 30, 2005.

Speaker:
Scott Rafer
President and CEO
Feedster
Scott Rafer is President and CEO of Feedster, a fast-growing blog search engine and advertising network. Feedster delivers more relevant, and timely information by continuously collecting data from over 13 million RSS content feeds. Before Feedster, Rafer co-founded WiFinder, the Wi-Fi hotspot directory; BookBroadband, the broadband hotel finder; Fresher Information, RSS indexing way too early; and FotoNation, a creator of connected photography solutions. Previously, Rafer led the Internet products group at Kodak Hollywood and worked in investment banking at Needham & Company. For school, Rafer graduated from the Management of Technology program at the University of Pennsylvania.
Moderator:
Barney Pell PhD
EIR
Mayfield
Dr. Barney Pell is currently an Entrepreneur in Residence at Mayfield, a Venture Capital Firm based in Silicon Valley. He is exploring and evaluating early-stage companies in the areas of search, information management, human interfaces and social software. Prior to joining Mayfield, Barney was Technical Area Manager for the 80-person Collaborative and Assistant Systems (CAS) area within the Computational Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center. Dr. Pell received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cambridge University in 1993, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and his B.S. degree in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University in 1989, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was a National Merit Scholar. From 1998 to 2000, Dr. Pell was Chief Strategist and Vice-President of Business Development for StockMaster.com, a provider of internet-based stock-market analysis tools. Dr. Pell helped StockMaster.com grow from $500,000 to $5 million in revenue in 2 years, when the company was acquired by Red Herring Communications in July, 2000. From 2000 to 2002, Dr. Pell was Vice President of Strategy for Whizbang! Labs. a provider of advanced text processing and search engine software. Whizbang created Flipdog, an online recruiting site that automatically built the world’s largest jobs database extracted directly from corporate websites, which was acquired by Monster.com.
Panelist:
Paul A. Flaherty PhD
VP Product/Strategy
TalkPlus
Paul A. Flaherty, Ph.D. received his doctorate in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1994, for his work in computer architecture, digital radio communications, radio science and RF engineering. He is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on communications protocol design. After Stanford, Dr. Flaherty joined Digital Equipment Corporation’s Network Systems Laboratory, where he invented and managed the Alta Vista search engine, generating over $4.5 Billion in value for DEC. Since then, he has worked as a corporate strategist and management consultant both independently, and for firms such as Zindigo and Accenture. Author of the forthcoming book, “A Better Mousetrap: Corporate Strategy for Emerging Technology”, Paul has delivered international keynotes for COMDEX, Internet World, DECUS, and other trade shows in the US, Canada, Barbados, Brazil, Argentina, Japan, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, and the Czech Republic.
Reid Hoffman
CEO and Chairman
LinkedIn, Ltd
Reid Hoffman was previously EVP at PayPal (Nasdaq: PYPL), where he was in charge of all external relationships and payments infrastructure. Reid serves on the board of directors for Grassroots.com, JumpStart Technologies, Talk To The Future, TreasureGames, SixApart, and the International Media Project and on the board of advisors for EZCab and WeAttract. He is an angel investor in Ironport, Friendster and Nanosolar. Earlier in his career, he worked at Apple Computer, Fujitsu Software Corporation, and SocialNet.com. He holds a B.S. in Cognitive Science from Stanford University and a Master’s in philosophy from Oxford University, and won the Dinkelspiel Award and a Marshall Scholarship while at Stanford.
Dion Lim
VP Business Development
Simply Hired
Dion is the creative spark that plugs us in to the great companies and technology Silicon Valley has to offer. An experienced entrepreneur, his resume reads like a short history of the Internet itself: co-founder of Epinions.com (now Shopping.com), COO at Chinese portal Sina.com, Director of Biz Dev at Quote.com (now Lycos), co-founder of the “dot-com Petri dish” Round Zero, marketing exec at Schwab (ok, we’re pretty sure he’s making up so me of this stuff) and way back when: excel jockey at Morgan Stanley and due diligence grunt at H&Q. In fact, the only startup we know he didn’t have a hand in is Initech… although he does have a certain penchant for red Swingline staplers.
