We are pleased to announced the following disruptive speakers for TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2011:
Founder, Mightybell
Gina Bianchini is the co-founder and former CEO of Ning, an online platform for creating your own social network for anything. She stepped down from the CEO position in March 2010. Previously Gina was the Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at Harmonic Communications. She has also worked as a Director of Business Development and Investor Relations at CKS Group and as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs.
Partner, Sequoia Capital
Roelof Botha is a partner at Sequoia Capital focusing on financial services, cloud computing, bioinformatics, consumer internet and mobile companies. Roelof sits on the boards of Aliph, Eventbrite, Mahalo, Meebo, Nimbula, Square, TokBox, Tumblr, Unity and Xoom. Roelof is a champion of consumer Web plays and considers himself as “just another consumer.” Roelof’s previous investments at Sequoia include Insider Pages and YouTube. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 2003, Roelof served as the Chief Financial Officer of PayPal during its sale to eBay. Earlier, he worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company. Roelof is a certified actuary (Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries). Roelof was listed as #23 on Forbes’ 2007 Midas List, which identifies venture capital’s most successful professionals.
Idealist, Applied Platonics
Josh likes to think of himself as a nerd. Generally speaking, he is an avid tinkerer and builder. Applied Platonics is his electronics kit business. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s gradually making progress, and has been really fun. In 2006, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with two degrees: one in Mathematics, and the other in Linguistics. By day, he develops software and helps machines learn.
Investment Partner, Google Ventures
Wesley Chan is an Investment Partner on the Google Ventures team. He is based out of Seattle, WA. At Google, he is an early employee and fun-loving entrepreneur, where he is tasked with scouting new opportunities and turning them into disruptive billion-dollar businesses. Two of his favorite products he’s founded and launched include Google Analytics and Google Voice. Wesley is a recipient of Google’s founder award–the company’s most prestigious recognition–for leading the development of Google Toolbar and building out Google’s early client efforts. Wesley also holds five US Patents from his work on starting the business for targeted display advertising at Google. Additionally, Wesley has held positions as a research lead at HP Labs, a Program Manager at Microsoft, and holds both Masters and Bachelors degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT where he did his graduate research at the Media Laboratory. He was selected as a top TR35 young innovator by Technology Review magazine in 2010.
Co-founder, Turntable.fm
Billy Chasen is the Co-founder of Turntable.fm. Before Turntable.fm, Billy Chasen was the Founder and CEO stickybits.com. Prior to stickybits, Chasen was on the founding team of betaworks, where he created chartbeat.com, a real-time analytics service and firef.ly, a chat service. Chasen has a B.S. in computer science from the University of Michigan. His art website is located at billychasen.com and his blog is anerroroccurredwhileprocessingthisdirective.com
Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Chi-Hua Chien joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2007. At KPCB he focuses on investments in the iFund (mobile applications), consumer internet, and digital media infrastructure. Prior to KPCB, Chi-Hua worked with Accel Partners as a Venture Advisor and Associate focusing on software as a service, consumer Internet, and online advertising infrastructure. Chi-Hua was instrumental in Accel’s investments in AdECN (acquired by Microsoft) and Facebook, while also working on the firm’s investments in BitTorrent, fbFund, Glam, Trulia, and YuMe Networks. Previously, Chi-Hua was the Director of Marketing at hosted software provider Coremetrics, where he led the marketing and inside sales teams as the company grew from 20 to more than 200 customers. He also served as the company’s interim CFO through two rounds of venture funding. Chi-Hua’s prior roles include corporate development at Google, business development at start-up eCoverage, and investment banking with Morgan Stanley’s Technology Group.
Managing Partner, SoftTech VC
Based in Palo Alto, California, Jean-Francois “Jeff” Clavier is the Founder and Managing Partner of SoftTech VC, one of the most active seed stage investors in Web 2.0 startups. Since 2004, Jeff has invested in more than 20 consumer Internet companies developing new concepts (such as social media) or revisiting “old” ideas with a new set of economics and technologies. In 2007, Jeff was recognized as one of the 13 “Web 2.0 King Makers” by Business 2.0, and is often noted for his investments in categories such as “passion-centric communities,” or for having already sold five of his companies in the past two years through successful M&As. Jeff’s 19 years of operational, entrepreneurial and venture capital experience enable him to add relevant perspective and value to the companies in which he invests.
General Partner, Benchmark Capital
Matt Cohler is a General Partner at Benchmark Capital. He’s responsible for identifying investment opportunities in Internet-related services, in addition to working closely with companies across the firm’s portfolio. Previously he served as the VP of Product Management at Facebook, where he led the development of new strategic initiatives for the company. As the seventh employee at Facebook, Matt has worked with the team during many critical growth phases. Previously Matt was Vice President and General Manager at LinkedIn, where he was a member of the founding team. Prior to LinkedIn, Matt was a consultant in McKinsey & Company’s Silicon Valley office and worked in Beijing for AsiaInfo, the Chinese startup that built the infrastructure for the Internet in mainland China. Matt’s writings on the startup economy have been published in Harvard Business Review. He holds a bachelor’s degree with honors and distinction from Yale University.
CTO, Pandora
Tom Conrad leads the Pandora product organization, which includes product management, user interface design, software development, and network operations. Over the years, Tom has led numerous engineering and product design teams across a wide range of applications – from operating systems and enterprise software to video games and consumer web sites. Before joining Pandora, Tom was the Vice President of Engineering at Kenamea, Inc. where he led the teams responsible for the design and development of an award-winning Internet-scale messaging system.
Tom previously was the Technical Director for the successful video game series “You Don’t Know Jack.” Past experience also includes engineering management positions at Berkeley Systems, Relevance Technologies, Documentum, Pets.com, and Kenamea. Tom began his career at Apple Computer developing user interface elements for the Mac OS. Tom holds three U.S. patents and a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan.
CEO & Co-founder, about.me
Tony Conrad is CEO & co-founder of about.me (acquired by AOL in December 2010). He is also a Founding Venture Partner at True Ventures where he serves on the Board of Directors of Automattic (WordPress), appssavvy, StockTwits, RescueTime, PastFuture (GDGT), KISSmetrics, 20×200, FREEjit, Small Batch (Typekit), WeGame and led True’s investment MakerBot & Plancast. Tony also serves as a Special Advisor to AOL Ventures. Previously, Tony co-founded Sphere which was acquired by AOL in April, 2008. In addition, Tony has served on the Board of Directors for Oddpost (acquired by Yahoo), Iconoculture, MusicNow (acquired by Circuit City), and Centive (acquired by Xactly). Tony also played an active role managing investments in Post Communications (NASDAQ: NTVS), QuinStreet (NASDAQ: QNST), Danger (acquired by Microsoft), Sabrix and Stonyfield Farms (acquired by Groupe Danone).
Co-founder, Intuit
Scott Cook started his career at Procter & Gamble, where he learned about product development, market research, and marketing. He soon began using the insights he was learning there to look for an idea for a company of his own. That idea came to him one day when his wife was complaining about paying the bills. With personal computers just coming out at the time, Scott thought there might be a market for basic software that would help people pay their bills. He launched Intuit in 1983, which today offers software and online products to help individuals and small companies manage their finances. Scott Cook, a founder of Intuit, has been a director of Intuit since March 1983 and is currently Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board. He served as Intuit’s Chairman of the Board from February 1993 through July 1998. From April 1983 to April 1994, he also served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Intuit. Mr. Cook also serves on the boards of directors of eBay Inc., and The Procter & Gamble Company. Mr. Cook holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Southern California and a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, where he serves on the dean’s advisory board.
Angel Investor, SV Angel
Ronald Conway has been an active angel investor for over 15 years. He was the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds (1998-2005) whose investments included: Google, Ask Jeeves, Paypal, Good Technology, Opsware, and Brightmail. Ron was recently named #6 in Forbes Magazine Midas list of top “deal-makers” in 2008 and is actively involved in numerous philanthropic endeavors. Ron is Vice Chairman of the UCSF Medical Foundation in SF, Board Member of The Tiger Woods Foundation, and SF Homeless Connect, and on the Benefit Committee of Ronald McDonald House, College Track, and the Blacked Eyed Peas-PeaPod Academy Foundation.
Product Designer & Manager, Quora
Rebekah previously worked at the arcade in the mall where she was quickly promoted to cashier. Many years later she was a Product Design Lead at Facebook, building and designing interfaces as well as overseeing the Product Design, Communication Design & User Experience teams.
Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
John Doerr is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Together with KPCB’s partners, John has backed many of America’s best entrepreneurial leaders, including:
* Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt: Google [GOOG]
* Jeff Bezos: Amazon [AMZN]
* Scott Cook, Bill Campbell: Intuit [INTU]
* Andy Bechtolsheim, Scott McNealy, Bill Joy, Vinod Khosla: Sun [SUNW]
* And the founders of Compaq, Cypress, Macromedia and Symantec
These ventures have created more than 150,000 new jobs. In 1974 John joined a small chipmaker, Intel, just as they invented the legendary 8080 microprocessor. (He feels he was very lucky, in the right place at the right time). He worked in engineering, marketing and became a top-ranked sales executive. John joined KPCB in 1980 and soon started Silicon Compilers, a VLSI CAD software company, and @Home, the first broadband cable Internet service. Eric Schmidt calls John “one of Google’s best board members.” And Jeff Bezos says, “Doerr (and Kleiner) is the center of gravity in the Internet.” John has also been part of several big failures, most famously GO Corporation, chronicled by Jerry Kaplan in the book “Startup”.
Founding Partner, Freestyle Capital
Josh founded and sold two successful Internet businesses for a combined $400mm and is now making early stage investments through Freestyle Capital. Josh is a founding partner in Freestyle Capital, an early stage venture fund focused on the Internet and technology sectors. Mr. Felser was the CEO and co-founder of Crackle (formerly Grouper), an Internet video community, acquired by Sony for $65 million in 2006. Until February of 2001 he was General Manager of AOL Time Warner’s music brands’ Spinner, Winamp and Shoutcast. In October 1997 he became co-founder and President of Spinner.com, a leading Internet music destination until its 1999 purchase by America Online for $320 million. From 1994 to 1996 he was Head of business and product development in Qwest/U.S. West’s Multimedia Group. From 1990 to 1994 he was an executive with News Corp., working with Fox Inc. in Los Angeles and BSkyB in London. Mr. Felser obtained a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Duke University in 1986 and an M.B.A. in Marketing from Duke’s FUQUA School of Business in 1990.
President of the Applications and Commerce Group, AOL
Brad Garlinghouse is President of Consumer Applications at AOL since September 2009. Until 2008 Brad served as SVP of Communications & Communities at Yahoo, which includes the world’s most popular webmail product, Yahoo Mail, Messenger and Groups. During his tenure, Brad has also overseen the primary starting points to the Yahoo network, including Yahoo.com and My Yahoo Brad is the author of the infamous Peanut Butter Manifesto, which received significant press for his vision for Yahoo to realize its full potential. Brad joined Yahoo in 2003. Prior to joining Yahoo, Brad served as CEO of Dialpad Communications. Earlier in his career, Brad led VC investments in communications and Internet businesses at @Ventures. He also spent time in leadership roles at @Home Network and SBC Communications.
Co-founder, Turntable.fm
Seth creates and invests in really awesome companies. Most recently he and Billy Chasen created turntable.fm, an addictive social music service. In 1995, Seth founded Sitespecific, which pioneered online advertising solutions for companies like Duracell and Travelocity. It was acquired by CKS Group in 1997. In 1999, Seth joined Fred Wilson as Entrepreneur in Residence at Flatiron Partners where he built a practice in “pervasive computing,” investing in companies Kozmo, Modo and Vindigo. In 2002, Seth created Majestic Research, the first Wall Street research firm to mine primary data for hedge funds to forecast the financial performance of public companies. Majestic Research was acquired in 2010 by Investment Technology Group (NYSE: ITG).
In 2005, Seth started Root Markets with renowned Salomon Brothers trader Lew Ranieri and the Chicago Board of Trade to create the first financial exchange for online mortgage leads. Seth started SocialMedia.com in 2007 which makes ads more relevant across the Web with a unique social advertising platform. SocialMedia was acquired in 2011 by LivingSocial. In 2007, Seth created the pre-eminent start-up ghetto Pier 38 in SanFrancisco, which houses Dogpatch and dozens of other startups. In 2010, Seth co-founded Stickybits, which connects digital media to real-world objects via barcodes. Seth has served on the board of the Internet Advertising Bureau, where he co-chaired its Social Media committee and helped architect the first set of best practices in social advertising. Seth was the original investor in Web 2.0 pioneer del.icio.us which was acquired by Yahoo! in 2005, and was one of the first investors in Etherpad which was purchased by Google in 2009. Mr. Goldstein holds a BA in Literature from Columbia University’s Columbia College. Following school in 1993, he started Riverbed Media, which created interactive projects with contemporary artists Robert Wilson and William Forsythe. Seth lives in Marin, CA with his wife and two sons.
Partner, Y Combinator
Paul Graham is a partner at Y Combinator. He is also the author of On Lisp (1993), ANSI Common Lisp (1995), and Hackers & Painters (2004). In 1995, he and Robert Morris started Viaweb, the first ASP, which in 1998 became Yahoo! Store. In 2002 he discovered a simple spam filtering algorithm that inspired the current generation of filters.
Co-founder, Causes
Joe Green is a Co-Founder of Causes, a popular Facebook and MySpace application.
Co-founder & CEO, Ustream
A native of Riverside, Calif. John Ham is the co-founder of Ustream and its Chief Executive Officer. John founded Ustream in March 2007 with partner Brad Hunstable, with whom he studied at West Point, as well as Dr. Gyula Feher, lead technologist. John has been a featured speaker at National Broadcasting Association, Web 2.0 Expo, Digital Hollywood, Always On, Streaming Media, Red Herring 100 and others. John has shown propensity for entrepreneurship from a young age, and began trading equities and options when he was 16. While at West Point, John interned with NASA and the New York Stock Exchange and went on to receive his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from West Point. Upon graduation, he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Army. While in the Army, John was selected as a Commander and later selected to be the Aide to the 19th TSC Commanding General in South Korea.
Principal Hardware Engineer, Microsoft
Steve manages the Sensors and Devices group at MSR Cambridge and is interested in a broad range of technologies within the themes of ubiquitous computing and interaction. These include novel sensors, flexible electronics, new displays, wireless communications, ubiquitous and mobile devices. The cross-disciplinary group aims to leverage its skills across both hardware and software layers to deliver compelling new user experiences, collaborating with researchers from other labs and different disciplines where appropriate. The ultimate goal of this research is to better understand how advances in technology will impact traditional computing and the ways in which people use and interact with computing devices.
Prior to joining Microsoft Research, Cambridge, Steve was the Technical Director of the Cambridge Auto-ID Lab, where he helped both to develop and to evangelise an RFID-based successor to the barcode for tracking goods through supply chains. Steve also co-founded an RFID training and consultancy company. Before that, he worked as a Research Engineer at the Olivetti and Oracle Research Lab, which later became AT&T Laboratories Cambridge. He have also worked at the Xerox Research Centre Europe at Cambridge (formerly known as EuroPARC).
Partner at Greylock, and Co-Founder and Executive Chairman at LinkedIn
Reid joined Greylock Partners in 2009. His areas of focus include consumer Internet, enterprise 2.0, mobile, social gaming, online marketplaces, payments, and social networks. Reid likes to work with products that can reach hundreds of millions of participants and businesses that have network effects. An accomplished entrepreneur, executive and angel investor, Hoffman has played an integral part in building many of today’s leading consumer technology businesses, including LinkedIn and PayPal. He possesses a unique understanding of consumer behavior and the dynamics of viral businesses as well as deep experience in driving companies from the earliest stages through periods of explosive growth.
Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional networking service, in 2003. LinkedIn is thriving with more than 63 million members in 200 countries around the world and a diversified revenue model that includes subscriptions, advertising and software licensing. Hoffman led LinkedIn through its first four years and to profitability as Chief Executive Officer,
Founder, Khosla Ventures
Vinod Khosla was a co-founder of Daisy Systems and founding Chief Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems, where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. Sun was funded by longtime friend and board member John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In 1986 Vinod switched sides and joined Kleiner Perkins, where he was and continues to be a general partner of KPCB funds through KP X. Through the years there, with other partners, he took on Intel’s monopoly with Nexgen/AMD (the only microprocessor to have significant success against Intel, sold to AMD for 28 percent of AMD), incubated the idea and business plan for Juniper to take on Cisco’s dominance of the router market, formulated the very early advertising-based search strategy for Excite, and transformed the moribund telecommunications business and its archaic SONET implementations with Cerent (sold to Cisco for $7B)
Partner, Google Ventures
Joe Kraus is a partner at Google Ventures, Google’s private market investment arm. His primary focus areas are: mobile internet, payment and financing services, gaming and local services. Previously Joe was a Director of Product Management at Google. Before joining Google he co-founded Excite, JotSpot, and DigitalConsumer.org. After the acquisition of Jotspot by Google in 2006, Kraus worked on OpenSocial, Google’s effort to develop API standards for social networking platforms. Joe graduated from Stanford University in 1993 with a BA in Political Science.
Co-founder, Katalyst Media
Ashton Kutcher started his career as a model, and then starred as Michael Kelso on “That 70’s Show”, which ran for a successful nine years on Fox. During his time on the show, he founded a film and TV production company, Katalyst Media, with partner Jason Goldberg. Together they have produced hit television shows like “Punk’d” and “Beauty and the Geek”, as well as the features “The Butterfly Effect” and “Guess Who”. Today, Katalyst is producing several new television shows including “Opportunity Knocks”, debuting on ABC on September 23, the upcoming “Game Show In My Head” for CBS, and an untitled reality show co-production with Tyra Banks for ABC. Katalyst just wrapped production on the feature “Spread”, starring Ashton and Anne Heche. Ashton can also be soon be seen in the upcoming “Personal Effects”, co-starring Michelle Pfiffer and Kathy Bates. Katalyst’s internet department produces several viral video internet campaigns. Ashton and Jason were listed in Details magazine’s “Mavericks” of 2006 and The Washington Post just named Ashton #3 on their list of “Most Innovative Celebrities in Digital Media”.
President, CBS Interactive
Jim Lanzone is President of CBS Interactive. He was previously the CEO of Clicker, which has been billed as a TVGuide for programming available on the Internet. Clicker launched in beta at TechCrunch50 on September 14, 2009 and was acquired by CBS in March 2011. Jim is the former CEO of Ask.com. After leaving Ask, Lanzone took a position as the Entrepreneur in Residence at Redpoint Ventures. Previous to his role as CEO of Ask.com, Lanzone served as senior vice president and general manager of Ask.com US, leading product management, marketing and engineering for the Company. Lanzone joined Ask.com as vice president of product management in 2001.
CEO, Get Satisfaction
Wendy Lea is the CEO of Get Satisfaction, a community-based platform that helps companies engage their customers through open and transparent conversations that increase customer satisfaction, product insight and enhance customer loyalty. Wendy founded The Chatham Group, where she currently serves as an angel investor, strategic advisor and board member for a long list of startup companies. Wendy chairs the board for The Forum of Women Entrepreneurs & Executives (FWE&E.org) and serves on the board of Silicon Valley Social Venture Capital (SV2.org). She was recently recognized as a Top 100 Woman of Influence in Silicon Valley.
Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Aileen Lee is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; she joined in 1999. Her primary area of focus is working with consumer-oriented digital companies. Aileen has worked closely with the teams at companies such as ShopKick, Zazzle, Bloom Energy, Miasole, Blue Nile (NASDAQ: Nile), Friendster (acquired by MOL Global), Good Technology (ccquired by MOT), Tellme (Acquired by MSFT). She currently works with companies including Callaway Digital Arts, Offermatic, One Kings Lane, Plum District and RMG Networks (formerly Danoo), where she was founding CEO for two years. Prior to joining KPCB, Aileen worked at Gap Inc. in various operating roles. These included product management and marketing for Gap Online, as special assistant to Gap Inc.’s CEO, and in business development. She has also worked for Odwalla and for The North Face in brand and product marketing. Aileen began her career at Morgan Stanley in technology mergers & acquisitions. She has a Bachelor of Science from MIT and an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.
City of San Francisco
Edwin M. Lee, 58, is the 43rd Mayor of the City and County of San Francisco. The former City Administrator, Lee was appointed unanimously as successor mayor by the Board of Supervisors on January 11, 2011 to fill the remaining year of former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s term, who was sworn in as California’s Lieutenant Governor on January 10, 2011. Lee is the first Asian-American mayor in San Francisco history.
In 2010, Mayor Lee was appointed to a second term as City Administrator by Mayor Newsom and his appointment was confirmed unanimously by the Board of Supervisors. As City Administrator, Mayor Lee spearheaded government efficiency measures and reforms that reduced the size and cost of government, from reducing the vehicle fleet to consolidating departments and back office functions to save tax dollars. He implemented the City’s move to cleaner vehicles and an infrastructure to support electric vehicles and green City government. Mayor Lee also developed and oversaw implementation of the City’s first ever Ten Year Capital Plan to guide our capital priorities and infrastructure investment.
General Partner, Sequoia Capital
Douglas Leone is a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital focusing on internet, software and communication investments. Doug currently sits on the boards of Aruba Networks, Aster Data Systems, Alion, Birst, CafePress, Color, Hayneedle, MedExpress, Meraki, RingCentral, Service-Now and Zirmed. Doug’s previous investments at Sequoia include Agitar Software and SourceForge Inc. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 1988, he held sales and sales management positions at Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Prime Computer. Doug is a true powerhouse in the world of venture capital, with a critical mind and engaging personality.
Founders Fund
Max Levchin the founder and CEO of Slide, which creates and distributes popular Web applications on Facebook, as desktop widgets, and elsewhere. He is also the chairman of local review site Yelp. Prior to Slide he was the co-founder and CTO of PayPal, which was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.
Founding Partner, CODE Advisors
Michael Marquez is a founding partner of CODE Advisors. Previously he was the Executive Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development for CBS Interactive. Marquez previously served as Director of Corporate Development at Yahoo, working directly with its executive management team on all acquisitions, investments and major strategic initiatives. In this role, Marquez played a leading role in the acquisition of 15 companies throughout the world, including Oddpost, Verdisoft, del.icio.us, Bix and Jumpcut. Before going to Yahoo, he also served as a banker at Robertson Stephens, one of the preeminent Internet investment banks. Prior to that, Marquez was a founding member of the Internet Center of Excellence at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), which at the time was charged with overseeing the firm’s first foray into the Internet, as well as developing website strategies for clients.
Chief Scientist, bit.ly
Hilary Mason is the Chief Scientist at bit.ly, where she finds sense in vast data sets. Her work involves both pure research and development of product-focused features. She’s also a co-founder of HackNY, a non-profit organization that connects talented student hackers from around the world with startups in NYC. Hilary recently started the data science blog Dataists and is a member of hacker collective NYC Resistor. She has discovered two new species, loves to bake cookies, and asks way too many questions.
VP, Location and Local Services, Google
As VP, Google, Marissa Mayer leads the product management and engineering efforts of Google’s local, mobile, and contextual discovery products including Google Maps, Google Maps for Mobile, Local Search, Google Earth, Street View, Latitude and more. At 35 years old, she is also the youngest member of Google’s executive operating committee. During her 11 years at Google, Marissa has led product management and design efforts for Google web search, images, news, books, products, toolbar, and iGoogle. She started at Google in 1999 as Google’s 20th employee and first woman engineer. Marissa’s contributions and leadership have been recognized by numerous publications including the New York Times, Newsweek and BusinessWeek. Fortune magazine has listed her for the past 3 years on their annual Most Powerful Women’s list, and she was the youngest ever to appear on the list. In 2010 Marissa was honored by the New York Women in Communications, Inc. with a Matrix Award. She also been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and Woman of the Year by Glamour Magazine. Marissa serves on the board of various non-profits, including the Smithsonian National Design Museum, the New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Marissa received her B.S. in Symbolic Systems and her M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University. For both degrees, she specialized in artificial intelligence.
Venture Capitalist & Founding General Partner, 500 Startups
Dave McClure is a venture capitalist & the founding general partner at 500 Startups, an internet seed fund and startup accelerator program in Mountain View, CA. Dave has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over twenty years, and has worked with companies such as PayPal, Mint, Founders Fund, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare, Twilio, Simply Hired, O’Reilly Media, Intel, & Microsoft. He also likes to play ultimate frisbee when his knees don’t hurt. Dave has been an investor in over 100 startup companies including: Mint (acquired by Intuit), SlideShare, Twilio, FeeFighters, SendGrid, Credit Karma, Wildfire Interactive, Bit.ly, CrowdFlower, KissMetrics, TeachStreet, MyGengo, Mashery, and Simply Hired, among many others.
From 2008-2009, Dave managed FF Angel LLC, a seed-stage investments program at Founders Fund, and in 2009 he also managed fbFund, the Facebook seed fund and incubator program. From 2007-2008, Dave was a consultant and advisor to several startups including Mint.com and oDesk. From 2005-2006, Dave launched and ran marketing for job search engine Simply Hired. From 2001-2004, Dave was Director of Marketing at PayPal (acquired by eBay in 2002), where he started & ran the PayPal Developer Network program. Prior to PayPal, Dave was a database consultant & programmer for several companies, including Microsoft and Intel. In 1994 he founded Aslan Computing, an internet and e-commerce firm later acquired by Servinet/Panurgy in 1998.
Founder, Flipboard
Longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mike McCue founded Flipboard in early 2010, together with former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll. Flipboard is widely recognized as the first social magazine for iPad. Inspired by the beauty and ease of print media, Flipboard?s mission is to fundamentally improve how people discover, view and share content across their social networks. There are Facebook and Twitter sections that let readers quickly flip through the latest stories, photos and updates from friends and trusted sources. Because Flipboard renders links and images right in the magazine, readers no longer have to scan long lists of posts and click on link after link – instead they instantly see all the stories, comments and images, making it faster and more entertaining to discover, view and share social content.
Vice Chairman, Cross Commerce Media
Before becoming involved with CCM, Mr. Messer served as the Chairman and CEO of LinkShare until its sale to Rakuten for $425m in 2005. Under Mr. Messer’s leadership, LinkShare was recognized by Deloitte and Touche for two consecutive years as the fastest growing technology company in the New York Region. In 2005, Mr. Messer was awarded the prestigious Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the New York Region. Mr. Messer is an Affiliated Research Fellow at the Columbia University Institute of Tele-Information (CITI) and is considered an expert in cyber-communications and telecommunications. He holds a J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York and a B.A. from Lafayette University.
Co-founder, Asana
Dustin Moskovitz is a co-founder of Facebook and, more recently, Asana, a startup tackling the problem of workplace collaboration. At Facebook, he was a leader in the technical staff, where he oversaw the major architecture of the site. He was also responsible for the company’s mobile strategy and development. Starting Facebook with founder Mark Zuckerberg from their dorm room, Dustin has been instrumental in the growth and development of the site since its inception. Dustin attended Harvard University as an Economics major for two years before moving to Palo Alto, California to work full time at Facebook.
CEO & CTO, Space Exploration Technologies, Co-Founder & CEO, Tesla Motors
Elon Musk is an entrepreneur and a co-founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors and Space Exploration Technologies. He is chairman/CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, and chairman of SolarCity. Musk was born and grew up in South Africa, the son of a South African engineer and a Canadian-born mother who has worked as a New York City dietitian and modeled for fun. His father inspired his love of technology and Musk bought his first computer at age 10 and taught himself how to program; by the age of 12 he sold his first commercial software, a space game called Blaster.In March 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and email payments company. One year later, X.com acquired Confinity, originally a company formed to beam money between Palm Pilots, and the combined entity focused on email payments through the PayPal domain, acquired as part of Confinity. In February 2001, X.com changed its legal name to PayPal. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for US$1.5 billion in stock. Before its sale, Musk, the company’s largest shareholder, owned 11.7% of PayPal’s shares.
CEO, FindTheBest.com
Kevin O’Connor serves as the CEO of FindTheBest.com, a website designed to aid consumer decision-making online. Previous to FindTheBest, Kevin founded O’Connor Ventures, a VC firm that specializes in technology startups. Kevin was also CEO, Founder, and Chairman of DoubleClick. In March of 2008, Doubleclick sold to Google in for US$3.1 billion. O’Connor also helped launch other software entities including ICC and Internet Security Systems (Nasdaq: ISSX). He started ICC with Bill Miller and Michael Schier in 1983 in Cincinnati, Ohio. At ICC he held the position of VP of Research but as a coder and he developed many of ICC’s products. O’Connor has written a book, “Map of Innovation : Creating Something Out of Nothing” which was published in 2003. Kevin graduated with honors from University of Michigan and holds a BS in Electrical Engineering. He now lives in Santa Barbara and is married with three children.
Managing Partner, MPi Holdings
A native of India, Michael, aka Mukesh, grew up in the Middle East, coming to the US in 1977 for college. He got his MBA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1982, and BSc at Auburn University in 1980. Michael started his career at Goldman Sachs in 1982, developing the firm’s equities business in the Middle East, with high net worth family offices and sovereign wealth funds. His focus spanned Internet sectors from software, access, infrastructure, and wireless to online commerce and content companies worldwide. Michael was the lead research analyst for the IPOs of Internet companies like UUNET, Yahoo!, eBay, DoubleClick, Webex, Real Networks, Exodus, Equinix, amongst many other pioneering companies, as well as covering companies like America Online and Netscape. He was an Institutional Investor ranked analyst for several years. Michael also helped build the Internet Research effort Goldman Sachs, which eventually comprised of many analysts covering major internet segments around the world. Michael now serves on various advisory boards of start-up internet companies. As an active investor, he is focused on both private and public, technology-driven opportunities.
President, iLike
Hadi is an entrepreneur and angel investor. As an entrepreneur, he was on the founding teams of Tellme and iLike. As an angel investor and startup advisor, Hadi’s portfolio includes Facebook, Zappos, Dropbox, OPOWER, Flixster, Bluekai, and many others. A graduate of Harvard University, Hadi began his career during the browser wars in the 1990s, when he was Microsoft’s Group Program Manager for Internet Explorer. After the release of IE 5.0, Hadi co-founded Tellme Networks. Tellme was acquired by Microsoft for a reported $800 million. Hadi was General Manager of MSN.com during MSN’s only year of profit, where he delivered 30% annual growth and incubated Start.com (now Live.com). After leaving Microsoft a second time, Hadi co-founded iLike with twin brother Ali Partovi, and together they built the leading music application on the Facebook platform. in 2009, iLike was acquired by MySpace where both Partovis worked as Senior Vice Presidents. Hadi is a strategic advisor to numerous startups including Facebook, Dropbox, OPOWER, and Bluekai. He is also an active angel investor with a wide range of investments.
Managing Director, Menlo Ventures
Shervin Pishevar is a technology entrepreneur, published researcher, and technology incubation expert and who has raised nearly $40M in venture funding for his startups. He is the founder and executive chairman of SGN, one of the leading social and mobile gaming companies. Currently, Shervin is an active angel investor or advisor in such companies as Aardvark, Thread.com, Gowalla, and Kissmetrics.
Previously, Shervin was the founding president and COO of Webs (formerly Freewebs), one of the largest social publishing communities in the world with over 30 million members and growing, with one million members added every 60 days. He has also co-founded such companies as Hotprints to revolutionize the personal printing and direct marketing world and Hyperoffice, a leading SaaS provider for small businesses. Shervin was a member of the Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) policy working group that helped create the Obama Technology and Innovation Plan.
Product Director, Ads at Facebook
Gokul Rajaram is Product Director, Ads at Facebook, where he helps drive Facebook’s advertising product strategy and roadmap. Prior to Facebook, he was cofounder and CEO of Chai Labs, a semantic technology company. Chai Labs was acquired by Facebook in 2010. Prior to Chai Labs, Gokul was Product Management Director at Google, where he played a key role in starting and growing Google’s Adsense business and was called “Godfather of AdSense” by Fortune Magazine. Gokul holds an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School, a MS in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, and a B.Tech in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, where he was awarded the President of India’s Gold Medal for being class valedictorian.
CEO, Lala Media, Inc.
Geoff Ralston has been an investor in, board member of, and advisor to a variety of start-up companies, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area. Most recently, Geoff was the chief executive officer of Lala Media, Inc., an innovative cloud music start-up in Palo Alto which was purchased by Apple in December of 2009. Geoff worked at Yahoo! from 1997-2005 after their 1997 acquisition of Four11 Corp. At Four11 Geoff was the VP of Engineering and led the creation of Yahoo! Mail’s predecessor, RocketMail. At Yahoo! Geoff was Senior Vice President and general manager of the Communications Business Unit and then served as the company’s Chief Product Officer from 2003-2005. Prior to Four11, Geoff was the creator of the popular LookUP! Internet white pages and do-it-yourself home page service. Geoff holds a BA in Computer Science from Dartmouth College , an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University , and an MBA from INSEAD, the European Institute of Business Administration.
Author of The Lean Startup
ERIC RIES is an entrepreneur and author of the popular blog Startup Lessons Learned. He co-founded and served as CTO of IMVU, his third startup, and has had plenty of startup failures along the way. He is a frequent speaker at business events, has advised a number of startups, large companies, and venture capital firms on business and product strategy, and is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Business School. His Lean Startup methodology has been written about in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, the Huffington Post, and many blogs. He lives in San Francisco. His first book THE LEAN STARTUP will be published by Crown (a division of Random House) September 13, 2011. www.theleanstartup.com
Co-founder, Webshots
Narendra Rocherolle has been engaged in consumer web development since 1994. He served as a co-founder of Webshots which was sold to Excite@Home in 1999. He and his partners purchased the assets back in 2001 and grew the company until a sale to CNET Networks in 2004. In 2005, he co-founded 83 Degrees as a small incubator to build innovative products built around open APIs and social media. In 2009, the incubator was recast as The Start Project as an experiment in pairing new products with business operators and financing. Narendra was interviewed by Michael Arrington in March 2006.
Co-founder, Milk
Kevin Rose is an angel investor and serial entrepreneur. He is the Co-Founder of Milk and previously the founder of Digg and WeFollow. Rose also co-founded Revision3, and Pownce (acquired by Six Apart). In addition, Rose is also the co-host of the tech news podcast Diggnation and founder of Foundation, a private newsletter and podcast.
Co-founder and CEO, Tasty Labs
Joshua Schachter is the founder of delicious, a popular bookmark-sharing service founded in late 2003 and acquired by Yahoo in 2005. In January 2009 Joshua Schachter joined Google. Joshua also created geoURL, a location-URL reverse directory, and was a co-creator of Memepool.
Founder and President, Felicis Ventures
Aydin Senkut is the Founder and President of Felicis Ventures. He has been named one of the top 25 tech angels by Businessweek and was featured as one of the top 8 up and coming VCs by Forbes’ Midas List. Felicis Ventures portfolio encompasses over 50 companies including Bump, Brightroll, Disqus, DNANexus, Dropcam, Inkling, Justin.tv, Meraki, Room 77, Rovio, Shopify, Weebly and Yume. In the last four years, 19 Felicis backed start-ups have been acquired by firms such as Google, Twitter, Groupon, Microsoft, AT&T, Disney, Ebay and Intuit.
Prior to starting Felicis Ventures, Aydin was Google’s first product manager and launched its first 10 international sites in 2000. He then became the first International Sales Manager at Google, responsible for world-wide licensing deals. Before joining Google, Aydin was a product manager at SGI. He has a BS in Business Administration with Honors from Boston University, an MBA from the Wharton School and an MA in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. He speaks five languages: English, German, French, Portuguese and Turkish. Aydin is a benefactor to the University of Pennsylvania and UCSF. Aydin sits on the boards of Imageshack, Massive Health and the Wharton Entrepreneurial Program. He’s been featured in Businessweek, New York Times, Economist, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Financial Times Germany, and San Francisco Chronicle
Partner, Greylock Partners
James Slavet is a partner at Greylock. His primary areas of investment focus are e-commerce, online advertising, and Web-enabled consumer services. James leads Greylock’s investments in Auditude, High Gear Media, One Kings Lane, Redfin, Revision 3 and TellApart and is actively involved with Groupon and LinkedIn. He previously represented Greylock in its investments in Farecast (acquired by Microsoft) and Kongregate (acquired by Gamestop).
Co-founder, iFixit
Luke Soules is a co-founder of iFixit, an online collaborative database of repair manuals for everything. He started iFixit with his friend Kyle in a dorm room at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.
Co-founder, Yelp
Jeremy co-founded Yelp Inc. in July 2004 with former colleague and friend Russel Simmons. Prior to Yelp, Jeremy was the VP of engineering at PayPal. He left PayPal in the summer of 2003 to attend the Harvard Business School. Upon completing his first year at HBS, Jeremy joined an incubator started by Max Levchin (co-founder of PayPal) for a summer internship. It was there that he was reunited with his old colleague Russel Simmons and the two teamed up to create a vibrant community around local information. Jeremy holds a B.S. in computer engineering from the University of Illinois.
Founder, Launchpad LA
Mark joined GRP Partners in 2007 after having worked with GRP for nearly 8 years as a two-time entrepreneur. Most recently Mark was Vice President, Product Management at Salesforce.com (NASDAQ: CRM) following its acquisition of Koral,where Mark was Founder and CEO. Prior to Koral, Mark was Founder and CEO of BuildOnline, the largest independent global content collaboration company focused on the engineering and construction sectors, which was acquired by SWORD Group (PARIS: SWP). Earlier in his career, Mark spent nearly ten years working for Accenture in Europe, Japan and the U.S. Mark received a BA in Economics from the University of California, San Diego, and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He is a dual citizen of the US and the UK. Mark founded Launchpad LA, a program designed to help mentor LA’s most promising first-time startup CEO’s. He runs the Southern California Venture Capital Alliance (VCA) and is on the board of advisors for the venture capital fund of the UCSD Rady School of Business.
Co-founder, Instagram
Kevin Systrom is a co-founder of Instagram, a photo sharing application for the iPhone. He also founded Burbn, an HTML5-based location sharing service. Kevin graduated from Stanford University in 2006 with a BS in Management Science & Engineering—he got his first taste of the startup world when he was an intern at Odeo that later became Twitter. He spent two years at Google—the first of which was working on Gmail, Google Reader, and other products and the latter where he worked on the Corporate Development team. Kevin has always had a passion for social products that enable people to communicate more easily, and combined with his passion for photography, Instagram is a natural fit.
Managing Partner, Founders Fund
Peter is Clarium Capital’s President and the Chairman of the firm’s investment committee, which oversees the firm’s research, investment, and trading strategies. He is also a managing partner at The Founders Fund. Before starting Clarium, Peter served as Chairman and CEO of PayPal, an Internet company he co-founded in December 1998 and was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in October 2002. Prior to founding PayPal, Peter ran Thiel Capital Management , the predecessor to Clarium, which started with $1 million under management in 1996. Peter began his financial career as a derivatives trader at CS Financial Products, after practicing securities law at Sullivan & Cromwell. In addition to managing Clarium, Peter is active in a variety of philanthropic and educational pursuits; he sits on the Board of Directors of the Pacific Research Institute and on the Board of Visitors of Stanford Law School.
Angel Investor
Yossi Vardi is an Israeli investor most famous for being the original investor in ICQ – the first Internet-wide instant messaging system. Vardi has invested in over 50 tech companies in diverse areas of software, energy, Internet, mobile, cleantech, and others. Vardi has been an active civil servant in Israel through projects involving energy and infrastructure. He also co-founded Alon, an Israeli oil company. Vardi acted as an advisor to the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program on issues of energy in the developing world. Vardi has received many awards including The Prime Minister Award, The Industry Award, Entrepreneur of the Year (Tel Aviv University), and the CEO!’s Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame from the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization.
Co-founder, Squid Labs and CEO, Instructables
Eric J. Wilhelm, Ph.D. is the Co-founding partner of Squid Labs and CEO of Instructables. Instructables is a website, created by Eric in 2005, specializing in user-created and uploaded do-it-yourself projects, which other users can comment on and rate for quality. Instructables is dedicated to step-by-step collaboration among members to build a variety of projects. Users post instructions to their projects, usually accompanied by visual aids, and then interact through comment sections below each Instructable step as well in topic forums.
Eric earned his SB, SM, and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT, where he developed methods to print electronics and micro-electromechanical systems using nanoparticles. Eric co-founded Squid Labs in order to have impact through early-stage innovation. He spun Instructables out of Squid Labs as an independent company, which he now runs with a passion. He loves building kite-powered contraptions, cooking breakfast, and demystifying technology so that even his Grandmother can use it.
Partner, Accel Partners
Richard joined Accel in 2006 & has led Accel’s investment in Angry Birds (Rovio) and serves on the boards of Atlassian, the leader in software for streamlining product development; SunRun, the leading provider of residential solar power; MoPub, a leader in mobile ad platforms; Qwilt, a provider of video optimization technology; Getjar Networks, the largest mobile development community and open mobile app store; Parature, a leader in SaaS based customer support.
Rich previously led Accel’s investment and served on the Board of Admob (acquired by Google), as well as 3LM, an Android enterprise startup (acquired by Motorola Mobility). Prior to Accel, Rich was SVP/GM at Openwave and previously. Rich also founded and chaired the Messaging Anti Abuse Working Group, a consortium of ISPs and technology providers working together to combat internet abuse.
Previously Rich was the Chief Marketing Officer at Covad Communications, the DSL provider. Preceding Covad, he was a management consultant for McKinsey & Company, focusing on software and consumer technology. Rich started his career as a Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble Mr. Wong holds a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received his MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Previously Rich was the Chief Marketing Officer and EVP/GM of Value-Added Services at Covad Communications, the DSL provider. Preceding Covad, he was a management consultant for McKinsey & Company, focusing on software and consumer technology. Rich started his career as a Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble
Partner, Charles River Ventures
George Zachary joined Charles River Ventures in 2004. He brings more than 17 years of operating and investing experience in computing and consumer technology. George’s focus is on building great services and software technology companies. George led CRV’s investments in Areae, Geni.com, GoTV, Millennial Media, Skyrider, SocialMedia Networks and Twitter and is a board member at Twitter. (Source : Charles River Ventures website – http://www.crv.com/CRVPartners/Zachary.html)
Partner, Perkins Coie
Lior Zorea is a Partner in the Menlo Park office and a member of the firm’s Emerging Companies practice group. Lior has a corporate and securities law practice encompassing venture capital, debt and other private financings, public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance and general business counseling. Lior focuses on representing emerging growth technology companies and their founders in the information technology space including the internet, software, digital media and semiconductor sectors.