Greg Hildebrand
MBA 96

Volterra

Andre Marquis
MBA96

Cybergold

John Woolard
MBA 97

BrightSource Energy

Thibaut Scholasch & Sébastien Payen

Fruition Sciences

Peter Fiske
MBA 02


RAPT Industries

Stephen Leeflang
MBA 04


Acumen Medical

Zach Gentry & Josh Mooney
MBA 05

Adura Technologies

Matt Caspari
MBA 06


Aurora Biofuels

Greg Hildebrand, MBA 96, co-founded Volterra Semiconductor (http://www.volterra.com). From a business plan written in an entrepreneurship course, Volterra completed a successful IPO in 2004. The company designs, develops, and markets high-performance analog and mixed-signal power management semiconductors.

André Marquis, MBA 96, is currently Executive Director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Previously he was the CEO of Amplyx Pharmaceuticals, an early stage drug development company that creates improved small molecule drugs. Prior to Amplyx, André Marquis was the COO of Chorus -- a group inside Eli Lilly that has dramatically increased the efficiency of the Pre-Clinical through Phase II drug development. Andre has a track record of starting successful technology-based companies. He was the CTO, Vice President of Marketing and a member of the initial management team at Internet Pictures Corp where he directed the company's product development and business strategy. iPIX was the world's largest manager of Internet visual content with partners including Microsoft and Yahoo!. Mr. Marquis was a founder and Vice President of Marketing at Emptor which became Accept.com, a Kleiner Perkins, Benchmark Capital backed e-commerce company that was acquired by amazon.com. Prior to Emptor, he was at CyberGold where he directed marketing strategy and marketing programs for one of the 20 fastest growing sites on the Internet.

John Woolard, MBA 97, is making an impact in energy. First, he launched Silicon Energy Corp. right after graduating from Haas. That business created software that enabled utilities, energy service providers, governments, and commercial and industrial energy users to optimize the delivery and use of energy to save money. The software filled a market niche and, in March 2003, Woolard and his partners sold Silicon Energy to Itron, the world’s largest wireless meter-reading company, for $71.2 million. His latest venture is BrightSource Energy (http://www.brightsourceenergy.com), which “develops utility-scale solar power projects that utilize its unique proprietary solar technology...to convert sunlight to electricity.” The venture has raised $160M in venture investments, and recently signed a 900-MW contract with PG&E, the largest utility deal of its kind in the history of the solar energy industry. He currently serves on the Lester Center's Advisory Board.

Dr. Peter S. Fiske is Co-founder and VP Business Development at RAPT Industries. Prior to starting RAPT, Dr. Fiske led a research team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in condensed matter physics. His business plan for RAPT Industries won First Place at the 2001 U.C. Berkeley Business Plan Competition. He is the author of 20 technical articles in leading scientific journals including SCIENCE and 2 books. In 1996 Dr. Fiske was awarded a White House Fellowship and served in the Pentagon as Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Special Projects. His other awards include an NSF Graduate Fellowship (1988-91), a STA Fellowship by the government of Japan (1995), the U.S. Department of Defense Outstanding Achievement Award (1997) and an Aspen Scholarship at the Aspen Institute in 2001. Dr. Fiske was CEO of the Company from May, 2001 to April, 2004. He holds an MBA from U.C. Berkeley and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Thibaut Scholasch (pictured) & Sébastien Payen, UCB-MSME 03,are commercializing a remote sensing technology developed in UC Berkeley’s Mechanical Engineering Department to improve vineyard yield and quality, based on advanced research in viticulture and sensing technologies. They were finalists in the 2007 UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition.  Their firm is Fruition Sciences (http://www.fruitionsciences.com).

Steve Leeflang, MBA 04 is driving innovation in the medical device community.  Steve is currently founder and principal of Atrevo, a medical device incubator specializing in minimally invasive treatment of cardiovascular disease.  Steve also directs the IP prosecution and commercialization of ILH, a pioneer in hydrophilic and other biologic carriers for broad medical use, including Cardiac and Neuro Catheter delivery systems.  Steve continues to serve on the Board of Directors at Acumen Medical which he co-founded while at Haas in 2002 and guided through commercialization of its core products relating to the treatment of Congestive Heart Failure.   Steve secured purchase and completed manufacturing transfer in 2009 for two of these products to Medtronic where they have made a dramatic change in the way pace making leads are used.  Steve continues to innovate at a rapid pace with 13 issued patents and over 40 pending.

Zach Gentry (pictured) and Josh Mooney, both MBA 05, are co-founders of Adura Technologies (http://www.aduratech.com/).As co-founders of San Francisco-based Adura Technology, Mooney and Gentry are manufacturing and marketing a wireless lighting control system that they say can save organizations thousands of dollars a year in energy costs. Adura installs a device the size of a small cell phone into existing light fixtures, which allows building operators to control it via a wireless mesh network. Gentry and Mooney learned about the combined technology, which was developed by UC Berkeley research specialist and lecturer Charlie Huizenga, thanks to an article in a school publication. The two approached Huizenga and created a business plan that helped them win the 2005 California Cleantech Open.

Matt Caspari (pictured) and Guido Radaelli, both MBA 06, honed their venture in several Haas classes and later won the Berkeley Business Plan Competition in 2006. Aurora BioFuels (http://www.aurorabiofuels.com) is a renewable energy company exploring new sources of feedstock for the production of biofuels. In particular, Aurora utilizes microalgae to generate bio-oil, which can be converted into biodiesel. It has recently received $20M funding from Gabriel Venture Partners, Noventi and Oak Investment Partners.