Entrepreneurial Best Practices Series

A diverse panel of early-stage investors will give you their perspective on what they really need to see in a pitch in order to fund your company.  There will be a brief presentation on the essential elements of an investor pitch, and then the audience will have the opportunity to ask questions of the panelists. We promise you will come away with a different perspective on VCs and angels, and get a better understanding of how to deal with the process before, during, and after the pitch.

Morgenthaler Ventures has been in the venture capital business for more than 40 years, steadily investing through every market cycle. Throughout that time, Morgenthaler has worked with exceptional entrepreneurs to help build companies of value. Among the many Morgenthaler-funded companies that have gone public or were acquired are: information technology companies Apple, Siri, NexTag, Nuance Communications, Synopsys; and life science companies, Ardian, IPC- The Hospitalist Company and Perclose. Current portfolio companies include Evernote, Lending Club, Practice Fusion, OncoMed, GlobeImmune and Catalyst Biosciences.

The program starts with food and networking at 6:30pm. The presentation will open at 7:00 pm. There is no registration for this event. For more information about the Entrepreneurial Best Practices Series, call 510-642-4255 or email lester@haas.berkeley.edu.

MODERATOR

Rebecca Lynn (MBA/JD 08)
Partner
Morgenthaler Ventures

Rebecca joined Morgenthaler’s Menlo Park office in 2007, and she focuses on early-stage investments in Health2.0, financial services and mobile.  She serves on the boards of Lending Club and Pageonce, and she is a second on the boards of Adara Media and Socrata. She was also the first institutional investor in Practice Fusion.

Rebecca began her career at Procter and Gamble’s corporate headquarters where she worked in international new product market entry. She spent time in both Cincinnati and Mexico City developing new products for the market and launching a new category in Latin America. She then joined NextCard as an early employee and spent four years at the company. At NextCard, she led product development efforts and later served as the Vice President of Marketing where she managed one of the top five largest online marketing efforts. NextCard was the first online credit card company, and it went public in 2000 with a $1.3B market cap. After NextCard, she ran her own consulting business focusing on online marketing for financial services and affiliate marketing.

Rebecca passed the California State Bar and has a focus on intellectual property litigation and corporate law. Rebecca is an inventor on several issued patents, and she was published in the Berkeley Law and Technology Journal.

Rebecca holds a B.S. from the University of Missouri in Chemical Engineering and a JD/MBA from the Haas School of Business and UC Berkeley School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley.

FEATURED SPEAKERS

Gary Little

Partner

Morgenthaler Ventures

Gary was named to the 2008 and 2009 Forbes Midas 100 lists honoring the most successful and influential people in venture capital. He focuses on Internet services and software investments. His investments include NexTag (2/3 acq. by Providence Equity), Netli (acq. by Akamai), TimesTen (acq. by Oracle) and KnowledgeNet (acq. by Thompson). Gary currently serves on the boards of Evernote, Rhythm NewMedia, Voltage Security, Jaspersoft, MuleSoft and Adara Media. He is a board observer and assists with Morgenthaler’s investments in Practice Fusion and Lending Club.

Gary joined Morgenthaler Ventures in 1997. Previously, he served in several roles at Apple Computer, including SVP of Apple’s Power Macintosh Division, VP Sales Americas, and Sr. Dir of Marketing for Apple’s Pacific division (China, Japan, Asia, Latin America, Canada).

Previously, Gary spent seven years at Sun Microsystems as Director of Product Marketing, Director of Asia Pacific Marketing (including a posting in Hong Kong), and as Group Manager of Industry Marketing. Before Sun, he held sales and marketing positions at IBM. Gary began his career as an IC design engineer for TRW’s microelectronics research labs. Gary earned an MBA from Harvard University and a BSEE from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Jason Lettmann

Principal

Morgenthaler Ventures

Jason Lettmann joined Morgenthaler in 2009 and is a Principal on the Life Science Team. Jason is based in Menlo Park, CA, and invests in the life science and medical device sectors. He serves on the Board of Relievant Medsystems and Second Genome Inc., is a co-founder and on the Board of Tarsus Medical, and is a Board observer at Ardian (acquired by Medtronic), Cabochon Aesthetics, The Foundry and Moximed.

Before joining Morgenthaler, Jason was a Vice President at Split Rock Partners where he focused on early-stage venture investments in medical devices and the life sciences. During his time at Split Rock, Jason was actively involved with the founding of Zyga Technologies as well as with several start-ups founded at ForSight Labs and the Foundry incubators. He also was involved with the firm’s investments in Evalve (acquired by Abbott Labs), Entellus Medical, EBR Systems, Mirabilis and Miramar Labs.

Prior to Split Rock, Jason’s experience includes tenure with Guidant Corporation’s Compass Group which focused on corporate venture and business development as well as a consultant with Accenture’s Health and Life Science practice where he advised clients across the medical device, pharmaceutical and health payer sectors. Jason also previously worked as a genetic research analyst at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

Jason holds an M.B.A. with distinction from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and a B.A. with honors from the University of Iowa.

Alex Mehr
Co-Founder
Zoosk

Alex Mehr (@alexmehr) is the co-founder and co-CEO of Zoosk, the largest romantic social network. Zoosk's 15 million monthly active users come from 70 countries and the product is available in 25 languages. Zoosk's 2011 revenue surpassed $97M -- doubling year over year. Alex started Zoosk in 2007 out of his living room in Berkeley while attending the MBA program at Haas School of Business. To date, the company has raised over $40M in venture financing..

Zoosk co-founders Alex Mehr and Shayan Zadeh met in Iran as students at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran in the 1990s.

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