Ray Rothrock, Partner, joined Venrock in 1988 and after more than 20 years and over 40 investments, his passion for building companies continues. He currently serves on the public board of Check Point Software Technologies, an alumni investment, and a number of private company boards including Aria Systems, CloudFlare, CoreTrace, RedSeal Systems, Tri Alpha and Transonic Combustion. His venture capital career has its roots at Yankee Atomic Electric as a nuclear engineer, at Sun Microsystems and with two failed startups. In addition to venture capital, Ray  has served on the Board of Trustees of the Texas A&M Foundation.  He currently serves on the Visiting Committee of the MIT Nuclear Science and Engineering Department and on the board of directors of the NVCA. Ray received his B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University, his S.M. in Nuclear Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Prashant Shah, Managing Director, joined Hummer Winblad Venture Partners in December 2000. He has been instrumental in many investments including Baynote, Bridgestream, Cenzic, InMage, Jareva Technologies, Krillion, Scalent, SyncVoice, Tizor and Voltage Security. He also observes a number of these boards. In addition, Prashant is an active Charter Member of TiE Silicon Valley (www.tiesv.org), where he is Chair of the Software SIG; and a member of the Board of Trustees for Astia (www.astia.org).

Prior to Hummer Winblad, Prashant spent many years defining and launching high tech products. His background spans all seven layers of the OSI stack with product management roles at enCommerce (acquired by Entrust), Cypress Semiconductor and AT&T. Prashant received a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Rob Hayes, Managing Partner, joined First Round Capital in 2006.  Rob came to First Round Capital from Omidyar Network where he was their first venture investor.  He led most of Omidyar Network's initial venture capital deals and later built and ran the technology investing group. Prior to joining Omidyar Network in 2004, Rob was at Palm where he started up their corporate venture fund.  While in that role he also managed the strategy effort around Palm OS that led to the spinout of PalmSource.  Rob started at Palm as product manager for the initial device-independent releases of Palm OS.  During this time, Rob was responsible for the versions of Palm OS on dozens of devices including the initial Treo products. Rob previously spearheaded complex, system-level product development efforts at companies such as Geoworks and Go Corp where he focused on building products for the Japanese market. He began his career with the Japan External Trade Organization, studying international trade issues and building relationships between US and Japanese businesses, at a time when trade friction between the two countries was at its peak. Rob has an MBA from Columbia University and a B.A. in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley.

Steve Bengston heads the Emerging Company Services (ECS) group at PricewaterhouseCoopers.  ECS acts as “mentor capitalists” for young, high potential companies Before joining PwC, Steve had 20 years of experience in a variety of marketing, business development and general management roles at several high tech companies in the Bay Area.  Most recently, he was Pres/CEO of ynot.com, a leading international emarketing and greeting card company.   Previously, he was VP Marketing & Business Development at Worldview Systems, an Internet travel pioneer.  At Worldview, Steve helped launch and market Travelocity with Sabre Interactive. Steve has a BA in Economics and MBA from Stanford University.  He works closely or sits on the Advisory Board at Churchill Club, SVASE,  Life Science Angels,  Bay Bio, and the Stanford/MIT Venture Lab, has taught classes on start ups at UC Berkeley, San Jose State,  Santa Clara Law School, Hastings Law School, and Stanford,  and is active in a variety of other organizations in the Bay Area targeting entrepreneurs and investors. He is a frequent moderator/panelist at both university and industry sponsored events.

BlueRun Ventures
Burr Pilger Mayer, Inc.
Claremont Creek Ventures
Fenwick & West, LLP
Intel Capital
Javelin Venture Partners
Morrison & Foerster LLP

Physic Ventures
Reed Smith LLP
San Francisco Business Times
Siemens Technology-to-
   Business Center
Silicon Valley Bank
Wood Philips