Krutal Desai, Founder, Sponge
Sahil Jain, co-Founder, WebMynd Corp.
Raymond Lei, Founder, ooshirts
Alamgir Mand, CEO and President at Taggstr

[bios & video]

April 4 -

Penny Herscher, President and CEO, FirstRain
[bio & video]

April 11 -

Stephen G. Newberry, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors,
Lam Research
[bio & video]

April 18 -

David Stanton, President & CEO, APTwater, Inc.
[bio & video]

April 25 -

Matt Flannery, Co-Founder and CEO , Kiva.
[bio & video]

May 2 -

IDEAFEST
[video]

Fall 2010 Videos

September 20

Dr. Bob Epstein
Entrepreneur

BIO & VIDEO

September 27

John Scharffenberger
Founder, Scharffenberger Chocolate Maker

Interview in The Ethicurean

VIDEO

October 4

Ori Sasson
Partner, Primera Capital

BIO & VIDEO

October 11

Fred Reid
CEO of Flexjet, co-founder, Virgin America

BIO & VIDEO

October 18

Myra Goodman
Co-founder, Earthbound Farm

BIO & VIDEO

October 25

Jeff Drezner
CEO & Founder, Clinical Care Options
BIO & VIDEO

November 1

Jason Kincaid from TechCrunch

Owen Thomas from VentureBeat

Krutal Desai from Sponge
BIOS & VIDEO

November 15

Mitchell Kertzman, Managing Director, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
BIO & VIDEO

November 22

Panel of small business owners in food related businesses
VIDEO

November 29

IDEAFEST
VIDEO

Spring 2010 Videos

February 2

Jim Healy
Sofinnova Ventures

BIO: http://www.sofinnova.com/team_detail.php?sort=all&id=37

VIDEO

February 9

Randy Komisar
author, The Monk & the Riddle
General Partner, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers

BIO: http://www.kpcb.com/team/index.php?Randy%20Komisar

VIDEO

February 16

Rob Chandra and Byron Deeter
General Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners

BIO: http://www.bvp.com/Team/Rob-Chandra.aspx

VIDEO

February 23

T. Gary Rogers, former Chairman and CEO, Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream

BIO: http://www.frbsf.org/news/releases/2004/1213.html

VIDEO

March 2

Ken McElvain, Co-founder Synplicity

VIDEO

March 9

Mitch Kapor
Founder, Lotus Development Corporation, Partner, Accel Partners

BIO: http://www.kapor.com/bio/index.html

VIDEO

March 30

Chris Anderson, Editor, editor-in-chief, Wired Magazine,
author of The Long Tail: http://www.longtail.com/about.html

VIDEO

April 6

Lata Krishnan
Chief Financial Officer, Shah Capital Partners

BIO: http://www.shahcap.com/lata.html

VIDEO

April 13

Nathaniel David
Venture Partner, Arch Ventures

BIO: http://www.archventure.com/venturepartners.html#david

VIDEO

April 20

Jonathan Abbot
President and Chief Executive Officer, WGBH Boston

BIO: http://www.wgbh.org/about/leadership_bios.cfm

VIDEO

April 27

Panel Discussion:

Mary Canales, founder, Ici Ice Cream
http://www.ici-icecream.com/story.html

Kara Lind, founder, Kara’s Cupcakes
http://www.karascupcakes.com/about.html

Amanda West, founder, Amanda’s
http://www.amandas.com/about_us.html

VIDEO

More about the Panelists:

Amanda West, Founder and CEO Amanda’s Restaurants
Amanda West is founder of Amanda’s Feel Good Fresh Food restaurant, which opened July 2008 in Downtown Berkeley. Amanda’s serves natural-meat burgers, baked fries, salads, and fresh-made sodas. Amanda West is a Board Member of the Downtown Berkeley Association, a member of the Buy Local Berkeley Executive Committee, and an Advisory Board Member of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers Buy Fresh Buy Local program. Amanda has spoken at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, UC Berkeley, and Berkeley City College.

While launching the restaurant, Amanda ran an independent consulting business from with projects that included a Global Site Strategy for Cisco Systems, market and strategic planning for Third Avenue Consulting, a Flexible Work program for Cisco Systems, offering marketing strategy advice to a stealth mode security start-up, launching and managing Balsam Hill’s first retail outlet, and assisting in research for P.F. Chang’s new concept, Taneko Japanese Tavern (through The Culinary Edge).

Amanda received her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB). As an intern through the GSB’s Entrepreneurial Summer Program, Amanda created a retail marketing and distribution plan for Niman Ranch. Before the GSB, Amanda spent over five years in strategy, marketing, product management, and real estate roles at Sun Microsystems and Cisco Systems. Amanda earned a bachelor’s degree in Economics and a minor in Spanish from Stanford. Amanda enjoys yoga, running, swimming, hiking, and working on her beginning Hebrew.

Kara Lind

Kara's Cupcakes is the vision of executive pastry chef, Kara Lind. A somewhat rebellious child, Kara's sweet tooth is almost legendary in her family. The daughter of a dentist, Kara's love for sweet treats was discouraged by her parents. She learned early in childhood to hide candy and other sweets throughout her family home.

This appreciation of sweets is among Kara's earliest and strongest memories. As an advertising sales executive and passionate home baker, Kara realized the importance of following her dreams and enrolled in pastry school. With the goal of furthering her baking skill set, she diligently embraced this program.

A small word of mouth cupcake catering business soon was born. It quickly became so popular that demand for her cupcakes exceeded her ability to fill the orders. Before long the first Kara's Cupcakes bakery and retail store opened in San Francisco, followed by a retail outlet in historic Ghirardelli Square.

Even now, a new mom with five busy stores selling her famous cupcakes, Kara can still be found most mornings working in the kitchen with her dedicated pastry staff. She visits the farmers markets regularly, looking for inspiration, and sourcing seasonal items for upcoming cupcakes flavors. Thankfully, as the owner of a cupcake bakery she no longer needs to hide sweets, preferring to share her new finds.

Mary Canales

After many years working in professional kitchens including a 9 year tenure as pastry chef at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Mary opened Ici in September 2006. Inspired by her passion for ice cream, Mary set out to create a place of her own where fresh, natural and beautiful things were made and shared with a sensitive and appreciative community of fellow dessert enthusiasts. Ice cream is not only her favorite food, it affords her endless opportunities to express her creativity. While the fine dining plated desserts she created at Chez Panisse were challenging and delicious, ice cream provided a new venue within which she could take flights of fancy with flavors and textures within a relatively tightly focused context. Of course, to achieve this Mary uses only the finest ingredients. She sources them from local farms and producers that employ organic and/or sustainable practices. In addition, Mary wanted to build a supportive work environment in which employees could thrive as collaborators, expressing their own creativity and deepening their passions. All of this takes form at Ici where you will find Mary in back dreaming of all things sweet. Mary lives in Oakland with her husband, Paul, and their two wonderful daughters

Fall 2009 Videos

Bruce Chizen	Former Adobe CEO & Chairman Bruce Chizen speaks on Corporate Entrepreneurship September 22, 2009. Bruce Chizen describes what was key to his successful entrepreneurial initiatives within Adobe. This includes how he structured new initiatives as Chairman and CEO, including PDF, so that they could thrive outside of the business unit structure in the start-up years. More about Bruce Chizen

John Dougery	Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship in India John Dougery and Mark Sherman, September 29, 2009. Both Mark and John discuss the current state of venture capital, and underscore why U.S. venture firms have begun investing in India. Both speakers also suggest what makes any startup fundable and attractive to venture capital firms. More about John Dougery More about Mark Sherman

Dr. Aart de Geus	Growing, and Growing with the Entrepreneurial Firm Dr. Aart de Geus, October 6, 2009. Dr. de Geus speaks to how founders can grow, and grow with their entrepreneurial firms. Included in this discussion are the three stages of growth necessary for both the startup, and the founder, in order create a viable and sustainable company. More about Dr. Aart de Geus

Speaker Biographies

Bruce Chizen

Mr. Bruce R. Chizen is a Venture Partner and Member of Advisory Board of Voyager Capital. He is also a Senior Adviser at Permira Advisers Ltd. which he joined on February 11, 2009. Mr. Chizen was a Strategic Adviser of Adobe Systems Inc. Mr. Chizen serves as an Advisor of Voxa, Inc. He served as Chief Executive Officer of Adobe Systems Inc. from December 2000 to December 1, 2007 and its President from April 2000 to January 2005. Mr. Chizen's customer-focused vision was ... transforming Adobe from a desktop software business to a technology platform provider for consumers, creative professionals, and enterprises at Adobe Systems Inc. Under Mr. Chizen's leadership, Adobe was expanded its presence in the enterprise through its Intelligent Document Platform strategy, addressing a growing market need to connect paper-based processes with corporate data systems. While evolving Adobe's market strategy and extending its customer reach, he maintained its legendary employee culture. He joined Adobe upon the closing of the acquisition of Aldus Corporation in August 1994 as Vice President and General Manager of Consumer Products Division. From December 1997 to August 1998, he served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Graphic Products Division and from August 1998 to April 2000, he served as Executive Vice President of worldwide Products and Marketing at Adobe Systems. During this time, he closely aligned marketing functions and product development to effectively respond to market dynamics with customer-focused solutions. Prior thereto, Mr. Chizen served as Vice President and General Manager for Consumer Division of Aldus Corporation from February 1994 to August 1994. In 1987, he joined Claris Corporation as a founding Senior Manager and served as its Vice President of Sales and worldwide marketing from November 1992 to February 1994. He served as Vice President and General Manager of Claris Clear Choice for Claris Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple Computer, Inc. In 1983, he joined as Eastern Region Sales Director of Microsoft Corporation. From 1980 to 1983, he worked in Mattel Electronics' merchandising group, helping grow it to a $500 million business. He started his career in the consumer Electronics business during the first wave of growth in the video game market. He has been Director of Oracle Corp. since July 2008. He has been a Director of Voyager Capital since 6 August, 2008. He has been an Independent Director of Synopsys Inc. since April 2001. Mr. Chizen has been a Director of Adobe Systems Inc. since December 2000. He serves as President of the board of directors for the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose. He serves as Board Observer at Elemental Technologies Inc. Mr. Chizen studied BS from Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He received a bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College, City University of New York.

John Dougery

John has been a venture capitalist for 12 years, most recently co-founding Inventus Capital to focus on early stage investments in companies based in Silicon Valley and India. Prior to venture, John held a variety of operating roles in the computer industry, most notably with Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics during their high growth years. He hold both a BA and MBA from U.C. Berkeley, and is a native of San Francisco.

Mark Sherman

Bio will be available shortly.

Dr. Aart de Geus

Aart J. de Geus Co-Founded Synopsys Inc. in December 1986 and has been its Chief Executive Officer since January 1994. Since December 1986, Dr. de Geus has held a variety of positions, including Senior Vice President of Engineering and Senior Vice President of Marketing. He served as the President of Synopsys Inc. from 1992 to 1998. From 1982 to 1986, Dr. de Geus was employed by General Electric Corporation, where he was the Manager of the Advanced Computer-Aided Engineering ... Group. He served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Logic Modeling Corp. He has been the Chairman of Synopsys Inc. since February 1998. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of Silicon Valley Leadership Group. From 1986 to 1992, Dr. de Geus served as the Chairman of the Board of Synopsys Inc. He served as the Chairman of the Board at Electronic Design Automation Consortium and serves as its Vice Chairman. He has been a Director of Synopsys Inc. since 1986 and Applied Materials Inc. since July 24, 2007. He serves as a Member of the Board of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, TechNet, the Fabless Semiconductor Association. Dr. de Geus is active in the community and is well known for his Philanthropic endeavors, particularly in promoting education in math and science. Dr. de Geus holds an M.S.E.E. from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Southern Methodist University. Dr. de Geus was made a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1999.

[top of page]

UGBA 96 Letters & Science 5

Introduction to Entrepreneurship

Video Archive

Spring 2011 Videos

Fall 2010 Videos

Spring 2010 Videos

Fall 2009 Videos

Speaker Biographies

UGBA 96
Letters & Science 5