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Entrepreneurs Forum |
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Best Practices Series |
Sean Foote |
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Bob Ackerman is Managing Director and Founder of Allegis Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm he founded in 1996. As a venture capitalist, Bob applies capital and his own experience as an operating executive and startup founder to working with entrepreneurs to build market leading technology-based businesses from creative and disruptive ideas. Prior to forming Allegis Capital. Bob was the founder and Chairman of InfoGear Technology Corporation, a venture-backed startup company that designed and built the original iPhone® – integrating web and telephone functionality into the first internet appliances. InfoGear was acquired by Cisco in 2000 for more than $300M. Previously, Bob was the CEO of UniSoft Corporation, a leading UNIX systems house operating globally to systems software services to OEM customers around the world. |
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Ajay Bam is a serial entrepreneur with 12 plus years of experience in the web/mobile software industry. Ajay has lectured, advised and mentored young startups and lives the mantra of innovation and entrepreneurship. He is a frequent speaker at entrepreneurship conferences. Ajay previously co-founded Modiv Media (previously MobileLime), a venture capital funded company providing retail and mobile commerce solutions for the super market industry, which was acquired in March, 2012 by Catalina Marketing – the leader in point of sale marketing space. Ajay served at Modiv Media as a co-founder, CTO and Head of products. He is currently a board advisor to two funded startups – Ecurv in the area of electricity management and Padlocs, a point of sale products company. Previously Ajay worked in senior product management and analyst roles at Nokia and Lehman Brothers. He also served on the board of BirdStreet, a non-profit serving “after school education and activities” for the underprivileged students in Boston public schools. Ajay holds a MBA from Babson College as Olin Scholar and Kaufmann fellow, a M.S. in Software engineering from East Tennessee State University, and a B.S. in Computer Science from University of Mumbai, India.
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Kurt Beyer is a former naval aviator and professor at the United States Naval Academy and teaches Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Berkeley Haas Business school. Currently Kurt advises start-ups and executives in Silicon Valley through Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and lectures regularly on technical innovation. Prior to joining MSSB he was the founder and CEO of a digital media services company and has authored multiple patents (pending) on high-speed digital data processing. Kurt’s book, published by the MIT Press, Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age, was named a top ten science/technology book for 2010 by the American Library Association. Kurt received a BS in Engineering and History from the United States Naval Academy (Annapolis), MA in Economics from Oxford University, and his PhD from the UC Berkeley. He lives in Mill Valley with his wife and two sons. (Haas profile)
Courses: Perspectives on Entrepreneurship (undergraduate); Entrepreneurship (MBA and undergraduate)
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Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur with over 30 years of start-up experience in Silicon Valley. Since 1978 Steve has been a founder or participant in eight startups. Steve’s last company, E.piphany, started in his living room. Steve’s other start-ups include two semiconductor companies (Zilog and MIPS Computers), workstation company (Convergent Technologies), supercomputer (Ardent), computer peripheral supplier (SuperMac), military intelligence systems supplier (ESL) and video game company (Rocket Science Games). These resulted in 5 IPOs and three very deep craters. His operational roles have ranged from CEO to VP of Marketing. Steve is the author of a text on Customer Development: The Four Steps to the Epiphany. In 2010 he was awarded Teacher of the Year in the Berkeley/Columbia MBA program. Steve serves on the board of Audubon California, California League of Conservation Voters, Peninsula Open Space Trust and U.C. Santa Cruz. In 2007 Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed him to the California Coastal Commission. (Haas profile)
Courses: The Lean Launchpad (MBA) |
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David Charron has been working in the field of entrepreneurship and innovation for over 20 years, working with Xerox PARC, Stanford and MIT and various national laboratories. He has been a founder of three companies, most notably Scientific Learning Corporation, a publicly traded neuroscience company founded on technology from UCSF. He is the Executive Director of the Berkeley Innovative Leader Development Initiative at the Haas School of Business. At the Lester Center he runs the incubation program, and has crafted several new initiatives to improve the chances for Berkeley students and their ventures. He has travelled extensively overseas helping develop entrepreneurial ecosystems. He holds an engineering degree from Stanford and an MBA from Berkeley. (Haas profile)
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Mark Coopersmith is Managing Director of The Argonauts Group where he restructures, grows and drives enterprise value at companies ranging from VC-backed ventures through global corporations. Previously he led the $300mm Global Technology Brands group at Newell Rubbermaid and co-founded and built a $150mm consumer products and online commerce division for Sony. He was the founding CEO of pioneer online payments company WebOrder which is now part of Motorola; and earlier in his career was a strategy and M&A consultant with Ernst & Young. Mark has advised global enterprises such as Intel, DirecTV, T Rowe Price and Sony, and has also worked with numerous innovative earlier stage companies. Mark teaches Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, where he also mentors many aspiring entrepreneurs and teams. He is an alumnus of UC Berkeley, where he earned his B.A. and MBA degrees. (Haas profile)
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John Danner is Senior Fellow at the Lester Center. An experienced management consultant and entrepreneur, he has advised senior executives of multi-billion-dollar international enterprises on strategy, value management and business growth, as well as management teams of emerging ventures on competitive positioning, marketing and product strategy. His clients include leading companies in healthcare, energy, entertainment, food products, telecommunications and information and startups in energy management, e-commerce and supply chain integration. He has designed and successfully launched several new business initiatives for client organizations over the past twenty-five years. Mr. Danner is a senior moderator for The Aspen Institute, and conducts seminars on leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship around the world. (Haas profile)
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Jerry Engel is Senior Fellow and Executive Director Emeritus of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, a program he founded in 1991. He has over 30 years experience and success in high potential entrepreneurship and venture capital. In addition to his academic position, Jerry is a General Partner at Monitor Venture Partners, a venture capital firm associated with the Monitor Group, a global strategic consulting and private equity management firm. Earlier in his career, Jerry was founder and Managing Partner of the Entrepreneurial Services Group at Ernst & Young. Over a 12- year span, he helped many of the Bay Area’s leading technology companies emerge into vital enterprises. In 1996 Jerry was a founding General Partner in Kline Hawkes & Co., a Southern California-based venture fund. In 1998 he co-founded AllBusiness.com and served as its Chief Financial Officer, managing its successful sale to NBC in March 2000. Jerry currently is on the Board of Directors and an active advisor to emerging and mature ventures. He is a CPA and received his undergraduate degree at Penn State and his Masters at the Wharton School. (Haas profile)
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Sean Foote is a Venture Partner at Labrador Ventures, investing in materials companies like Solaicx (sold to MEMC), software companies like GreenBorder (sold to Google), and internet companies. Before venture investing, Mr. Foote was a manager with the Boston Consulting Group and worked as a systems engineer for AT&T Bell Laboratories, developing artificial intelligence systems for testing the most complicated telecommunications circuits. He is on the boards of directors of Freedom From Hunger and Silicon Valley Microfinance Network, and is the co-founder of Toniic, an angel investor group for impact investors, and West Coast Village Capital, a combination of YPO style entrepreneur support and business plan competition style equity investment. (Haas profile)
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Jack Fuchs is a CFO for high-growth companies. From 2007 through 2012, Jack was CFO of ForteBio, Inc., a private life science equipment company, which was successfully sold in March 2012. Previously, he held Finance, Business Development, Sales, Marketing, and Product Management positions at a number of private companies, including IPWireless, a 120-person broadband wireless company. He also sold Lumitrend, a leading SAS applications provider, to Asurion, a device insurance company. Jack has also held several senior positions with Becton Dickinson and Company including VP of e-Business, North American Business Leader, VP Worldwide Marketing, and Director of Corporate Planning. Jack was also an Engagement Manager with McKinsey and Company, where his client focus was health care and wireless communications. In addition to teaching at Haas, Jack teaches graduate entrepreneurship at Stanford University’s School of Engineering, mentors entrepreneurs, serves on Boards of private companies, and acts as an angel investor. He holds an AB in Engineering Sciences with Honors from Dartmouth College (magna cum laude and phi beta kappa), and received his MBA from Stanford University as an Arjay Miller Scholar. (Haas profile)
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Randy Haykin is a serial entrepreneur, angel and venture investor. He currently oversees Haykin Capital, a hands-on “mentor capital” and is Managing Director of Outlook Ventures, an early-stage venture firm with $200+ million under management, which he co-founded in 1996. Randy has been a mentor, strategic advisor, and/or investor to over 75 startup companies. During the past two years, Randy founded a social venture fund, The Gratitude Network and has become Chairman of mobile travel company, TravelKnowledge. In 2011, Randy created The Intersection, celebrating innovation's impact on social change. In his earlier career, Randy served as founding VP of Marketing and Sales at Yahoo and played early senior roles at Overture, NetChannel, Electric Minds, and AOL’s Greenhouse program, a successful venture incubator. He has also held management roles at Apple computer and Paramount/Viacom. Randy holds a BA in Organizational Studies from Brown University, magna cum laude, and an MBA from Harvard. In addition to teaching at UC Berkeley, Randy teaches at Cambridge University (UK) and UIBE (China). (Haas profile)
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Jim Hornthal’s professional time is evenly divided between venture capital and entrepreneurship. His active angel investing activities are complemented by his role as a Venture Partner with CMEA Capital, an established venture capital firm with over $1 billion under management that invests primarily in early stage technology, energy and life science companies. As an entrepreneur, Jim is best known as the Founder of Preview Travel, one of the first online travel agencies. Jim took Preview Travel public in 1997, and later initiated its merger in 2000 with a division of Sabre Holdings to create Travelocity.com, where Jim served as Vice Chairman of the combined organization. Travelocity.com was ultimately re-acquired by Sabre Holdings in 2002. Jim is currently the founder and Chairman of Triporati, whose “Destination Genome Project” is changing the way travelers discover their perfect travel destination. Jim is also on the board of several private companies including KIND Snacks, PolitEar, and Via (Bangalore, India) and has been a Lester Center Fellow for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley since 2002 (Haas profile)
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Andrew Isaacs is the former Executive Director of UC Berkeley's Management of Technology Program. Isaacs is also President of California Technology International, Inc., a consulting firm he founded in 1990. CTI’s offices in Silicon Valley and Tokyo specialize in strategy and marketing for US and Japanese high tech companies. Prior to founding CTI, Isaacs was a marketing executive for public and private high tech companies in Silicon Valley, and was Senior Scientist at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. (Haas profile)
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Bhavik Joshi is CEO and co-founder of LaunchPad Central, Inc., which measures, manages and scales aggregate knowledge and pattern recognition within early stage venture portfolios. Bhavik brings 14 years of operational and business development experience in Enterprise Software and Clean Tech, andwas an early member of the Better Place team, providing clean transportation. Bhavik holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business,UC Berkeley where he is a Senior Fellow at the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, a mentor for the campus-wide startup accelerator and a lecturer in customer development and business model validation. Bhavik has been Steve Blank’s serial teaching assistant for the Lean LaunchPad course at UC Berkeley and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovation Corps program at Stanford University. In 2007 Bhavik co-founded the Berkeley-Stanford Cleantech Conference, a platform for students to make a career transition into clean tech. In 2011 he co-founded The Big Hack, a series of Cal vs. Stanford hackathons aimed at disruptive product innovation at the intersection of Energy and Information Technology. |
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Tony Levitan is a serial entrepreneur focusing on the effective application of emerging technologies in communications and consumer markets. He currently is Co-founder, CEO of venture-backed Optality, Inc., an early-stage company that’s unpacking the potential of Actionable Personal Intelligence™, working to bring privacy, control and leverage over one’s digital identity back to consumers, where it belongs. He previously co-founded Egreetings Network (egreetings.com), the digital greetings innovator (IPO, 12/99); Lexy, developer of a platform for creating, distributing and consuming short-form audio media; and Clip-on Pro, which served the pernicious affliction of mid-to-high handicap golfers. Tony earned his MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Earlier, Tony launched direct marketing operations for ad agency, Leo Burnett, first in Taipei, Taiwan and then in Tokyo, Japan. Notable campaigns from his Leo Burnett stint are profiled in best-selling marketing books like Maxi-marketing: The New Direction in Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Strategy. |
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Peter Molloy was President and Principal Owner of the Farmhouse Foods Company based in Union City, California, from 1991 until it sold to General Mills in 1999. His career spans over 30 years in general management and marketing. He started his 21-year career with Nestle in London, England and was transferred to Toronto, Canada and then to New York. Throughout his career, he specialized in launching new products, turning around businesses and building brands. In 1991, Peter and his business partner bought the MJB Rice Company from Nestle and changed the brand name to Farmhouse. Since 1999, Peter has been teaching Entrepreneurship and Ecommerce Marketing at the Haas School of Business. He was a member of Vistage (an international organization for CEO’s) for 10 years and has consulted to a number of food and agri-business companies. He is also on the Advisory Board of the Young Entrepreneurs at Haas (YEAH). Peter has a Business Degree (HND Business Studies) from Thames Valley University (formerly Slough College of Technology) in England and the Institute of Marketing Diploma. (Haas profile)
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Bob Neher has a wealth of executive management experience that includes corporate leadership, growth-oriented business development and successful exit strategies. Bob has founded several consumer product companies and his background includes startups, exit strategies, branding, national and international customer acquisition, partnerships and alliances, mergers/acquisitions and initial public offerings. As a founding partner, President and CEO of St. Ives Laboratories, Bob led company growth from initial startup to over $100 million in annual sales in just seven years, resulting in a successful IPO in 1987. As a principal and CEO of Botalia Pharmaceuticals, Bob pioneered a brand of medicinal herbal products marketed to U.S. drug stores, based on standardized extracts exclusively imported from Europe. He also wrote the first accredited curriculum training for over 2,500 licensed U.S. pharmacists on the safe and efficacious use of standardized herbal extracts. As President and CEO of Add-Vision Technologies, Bob conducted and implemented a strategic repositioning of the company and its products for future growth and competitiveness. Over his 30 year career he also has worked as a consultant for other businesses and startups.
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Carl Nichols has spent 30 years in the technology industry and is currently Managing Director of Outlook Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm. Over the past 15 years Carl has has made investments across the information technology, internet and mobile sectors and has served on numerous Boards. Previously Carl led corporate strategy for AT&T/Pacific Bell where he was responsible for identifying new growth opportunities and business lines, developing strategic partnerships and optimizing the company's investments. He earlier held a number of roles in Fortune 500 firms and management consulting addressing new concept development, market expansion and operations improvements. Carl is currently active in a number of youth and education-oriented nonprofits. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Brown University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. |
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Terry Opdendyk has specialized in working with technology based startups for more than 30 years. He founded ONSET Ventures, a premier Silicon Valley venture capital firm, in 1984, where he is Managing Director and General Partner. Prior to that, Terry was president of VisiCorp, guiding the software publishing company from inception into an industry leader. Earlier, he worked as a technical manager for Hewlett-Packard as a part of the original group of individuals that started HP’s computer business. He later headed Intel Corporation’s microcomputer systems business, microprocessor architecture activities, several international ventures and human resources. At ONSET Ventures, Terry maintains a broad spectrum of investment interests including software, new media, security, and medical technologies. (Haas profile)
Course: Venture Capital and Private Equity (MBA) |
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Safwan Shah is the CEO and Founder of PayActiv, Inc., a venture partner at Melbourne based Adventure Capital Pty Ltd., board member at Techlogix, a leading software and services company, and an advisor and investor for several silicon valley startups. Safwan founded Infonox, a market leader in cloud based payment, underwriting and transaction services for banks, casinos, retail and money transfer businesses. Under Safwan’s leadership, Infonox annually served over 100M consumers and settled over $20 Billion. In 2009, Infonox was acquired by NYSE:TSYS. Prior to that, Safwan held research positions at BioServe Space Technologies (a NASA center for commercial development of space), where a number of his experiments were part of US space shuttle missions. Safwan has an MS/PhD from University of Colorado at Boulder and is a graduate of the Stanford Executive Program (SEP) from Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. Safwan is a patron of the Charter Hill Society and is included in the UC Berkeley honor roll of major donors. Safwan has been a mentor in the Entrepreneurship class at Haas since 2011. |
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Ron Star is a director at the law firm of Arnold and Porter LLC in San Francisco and Menlo Park. He focuses on securities law, venture capital and other capital raising activities, intellectual property, strategic partnerships, and mergers and acquisitions. He works closely with startup and private companies on issues related to entity formation, equity and financings, licensing matters, the structuring of executive compensation (including stock arrangements), strategic ventures, acquisitions and management buy-outs. He has been recognized by Law & Politics as a Northern California Super Lawyer. Mr. Star’s engagements run the gamut from representing startup companies in formation to representing major multinational companies in strategic investments. He specializes in computer software and hardware, semiconductors, information services businesses, internet and multimedia companies, medical technology, food related companies, retail operations and financial services companies. (Haas profile)
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Toby E. Stuart is the Helzel Chair in Entrepreneurship, Strategy, and Innovation, and the Faculty Director at the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship. Previously he was the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and the Arthur J. Samberg Professor of Organizations and Strategy and Academic Director of the Eugene M. Lang Entrepreneurship Center at Columbia Business School. He was also course head for Strategy Formulation. From 1995 to 2003, he was on the faculty at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, where he was the Fred G. Steingraber-A.T. Kearney Professor of Organizations & Strategy. He received his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He holds an A.B., summa cum laude, in economics from Carleton College. Prior to earning his Ph.D., Dr. Stuart was a Research Associate at the Harvard Business School. Professor Stuart is the recipient of the 2007 Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship, which is granted every other year to recognize one individual’s contributions to entrepreneurship research. He has also received the Administrative Science Quarterly’s Scholarly Contribution (best paper) award, as well as the Columbia Business School’s Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence. (Haas profile)
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Naeem Zafar is a serial entrepreneur and after working at six start-ups he founded Concordia Ventures to educate and help entrepreneurs with all aspects of starting and running a company. Naeem has extensive experience in starting companies, raising money, and mentoring and coaching entrepreneurs. He is a frequent lecturer on the topic of entrepreneurship and innovation. He was invited to attend the presidential summit on entrepreneurship in Washington, DC and is frequently invited by the U.S. State Department to travel and lecture internationally. He has taught in Japan, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Singapore, Netherlands, China and the U.K. Naeem served as the president and CEO of Pyxis Technology Inc., a company specializing in advanced chip design software for nanometer technology. He has been president and CEO of two other high-tech start-ups. Naeem has served as a board member or as an advisor to 25 companies. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Brown University (magna cum laude) and a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. Naeem has published five eBooks on entrepreneurship and his book “7-Steps to a Successful Start-up” is available as an iPhone app and on Amazon.com. Naeem is a charter member of TIE, the president of OPEN Silicon Valley, an advisor to the board of Efactor.com and a senior mentor with MentorSquare.com. (Haas profile)
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