Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum

One of the fastest growing segments of the Web 2.0 universe is the range of applitions that allow members of social platforms to control and enhance their on-line experience: add wallpaper to your MySpace page; add a slideshow to your Facebook page; create your unique persona on line; etc. These developers are creating the tools you can use. and they're building great young companies in the process.

Jia Shen, co-founder and CTO of RockYou, and Troy Young, CTO of Video Egg, will lead our discussion of these companies, what they are doing and where the opportunities lie.

Jia Shen is the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of RockYou. He has focused extensively on graphic design and usability throughout his professional web development career spanning over 10 years. Prior to RockYou, Jia has held management roles leading the user interface and technical solutions teams at Open Harbor, and managing the majority of engineering at Iconix. Jia started working on scalable consumer applications at shopping tools internet provider Bluedog, a Stanford based startup, and was part of the original team at Bell Laboratories which developed the VoiceXML format into the W3C standard. In addition, Jia's experience has spanned enterprise sales and professional services functions, as he closed transactions and integrated with large multi-national corporation customers like Mitsubishi, Tyco, Flextronics, and DHL. Jia has a double major in Computer Science and Computer Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

Darian Shirazi is the Chief Executive Officer of Redux. Dairan began his career in Silicon Valley at the age of 15 while working for eBay, where he worked with the team responsible for the implementation for the online marketplace's 2003 makeover of "Sell Your Item". After working for two summers during high school at eBay, Darian joined Facebook as one of company's first fifteen employees. At Facebook, Darian worked as a front-end software engineer, playing a role in the release of the August 2005 redesign, High School Expansion, NewsFeed, and several other features. After working for two years at Facebook, Darian left to start his own company with his college classmates. In December 2006, Darian raised $1.65M at the age of 19 from Gilman Louie and Peter Thiel. Darian completed three semesters at the University of California, Berkeley in the field of Philosophy.

Joyce Park is the Chief Technology Officer of Renkoo, Inc. Joyce is the co-founder of Renkoo.com, a social-event planning site. Renkoo has also launched the popular Booze Mail and Haikoo Zoo apps on the Facebook platform. Joyce is the founder of 106 miles, a networking group among Silicon Valley engineering entrepreneurs. Prior to starting Renkoo, Joyce was a dev at Friendster, KnowNow, and Epinions. She was educated at the University of Chicago.

Kevin Chou is the CEO of Watercooler Inc, the world's largest television fan community online. Kevin has led the company from founding to over fifteen million registered fans of television entertainment across numerous social networks online. Prior to Watercooler, Kevin spent several years at the global venture capital firm Canaan Partners, investing in digital media, consumer internet services, and online advertising companies, deploying part of the firm's $2.3 billion of capital. Earlier in Kevin's career, he advised some of the largest public technology companies on M&A and corporate finance as part of Deutsche Bank's investment banking arm in San Francisco. Kevin has a BS from Haas, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

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