Dave McClure, Founding Partner, 500 Startups

Dave McClure likes to hang out with entrepreneurs, and occasionally help or invest in their startups if they let him. Dave has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over twenty years, and has worked with companies such as PayPal, Mint, Founders Fund, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare, Twilio, Simply Hired, O'Reilly Media, Intel, & Microsoft.

Many years ago he used to do real work like coding or marketing or running conferences, but these days he mostly does useless stuff like sending lots of email, blogging, and hanging out on Facebook and Twitter.

Kate Mitchell, Managing Director, Scale Venture Partners

Kate MItchell is a co-founder of Scale Venture Partners, a venture capital fund with over $900 million under management located in Silicon Valley, California. She leads investments in software bringing more than 25 years' experience in technology, finance and management to her portfolio. Kate has actively worked with portfolio companies such as Jaspersoft, mBlox, Wayport, & Tonic Software as they grow to become successful enterprises. She was the 2010-2011 Chairman of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and remains active in policy matters that impact start-ups & innovation. Kate chaired the IPO Task Force, whose recommendations to reform the IPO market were included in the recently enacted JOBS Act. In addition, Kate is a member of the Silicon Valley Bank Board of Directors (NASDAQ: SIVB). Kate holds a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from the Executive Program at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. She also attended the Harvard Executive Program.

Roger Royse, Founder, Royse Law Firm

Roger Royse is the founder of Royse Law Firm, PC, a business and tax law firm with offices in Northern and Southern California (www.rroyselaw.com).  Roger practices in the areas of corporate and securities law, domestic and international tax, mergers and acquisitions, and fund formation.  His clients include emerging and middle-market companies and high net worth individuals.  Roger has represented companies in a variety of industries, including clean tech, internet, life sciences, entertainment and new media, sports, real estate, retail and mobile devices and applications.  Practicing since 1984, Roger’s background includes work with prominent San Francisco Bay area law firms as well as Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy in New York City.  Roger has also served as an adjunct professor at the Golden Gate University Masters of Tax program.  He is a frequent speaker, writer and blogger for bar associations, CPA organizations, and business groups.

Michael Stocker, Partner, Labaton Sucharow LLP

Michael Stocker represents institutional investors in commercial litigation, shareholder advocacy, and corporate governance matters. His work has won repeated accolades in The National Law Journal's Plaintiffs' Hot List.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Stocker worked as a senior staff attorney with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and completed a legal externship with United States Magistrate Judge (now District Judge) Phyllis J. Hamilton of the Northern District of California. Mr. Stocker is also the Chief Contributor to Eyes On Wall Street, Labaton Sucharow's blog on economics, corporate governance, and other issues of interest to investors.

Speakers 

Ann Miura-Ko, Co-founding Partner, Floodgate

Ann Miura-Ko is a co-founding partner at FLOODGATE where her investment interests include the innovations in e-commerce, security, and big data. She currently sits on the boards of Modcloth, Refinery29, Chloe and Isabel, Wanelo, Zimride, Ayasdi, Inscopix, and CSS. She was previously a board member of TaskRabbit.

In addition to serving at FLOODGATE, Ann is a lecturer in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, where she got her PhD focused on mathematical modeling of computer security. She teaches High Tech Entrepreneurship with Steve Blank and is a frequent lecturer in courses such as Technology Venture Formation, High-tech Entrepreneurship, and the Mayfield Fellows Program.

Alexander Mouldovan, VP, Product Management, Marketo

As VP of product management, Alexander is responsible for product planning, requirements, roadmaps, and product release management for Marketo. Prior to joining Marketo, Alexander co-founded Crowd Factory, where he drove the strategic direction behind Social Campaign and Social Offer for key customers such as HBO, McAfee, PR Newswire and Sony.

Before co-founding Crowd Factory, Alexander created the branded community product for tribe.net. Before that, at InterTrust, he designed and delivered the PowerChord and TrustMail product lines, featured in the company’s IPO and secondary roadshows, raising $330M. InterTrust was later sold for $453M to Sony and Phillips. Alexander holds a bachelor’s degree in cognitive science, Russian and biology from Dartmouth.

Bambi Francisco Roizen, Founder and CEO, Vator

Bambi Francisco Roizen is founder and CEO of Vator, one of the largest business networks dedicated to high-tech entrepreneurs, and VatorNews, which provides news and information on innovation and entrepreneurship. Prior to Vator, Bambi was an award-winning journalist at Dow Jones MarketWatch where she was the lead columnist/correspondent focusing on Internet trends and investments, appearing online and on TV.

She was a morning business anchor for KPIX, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco and made frequent appearances as an expert on technology on CNBC, Fox Business News, and CBS.

Chris Hulls, CEO & Co-Founder,  Life360

Chris is the cofounder and CEO of Life360, the largest family focused mobile application on the market.  Over 15 million people use Life360 to keep their families safe and in sync by using it to see where loved ones are located, get help in an emergency, and group chat with their family members.  Prior to a Life360, Chris worked at Goldman Sachs and served in the US Air Force.  Chris received a BS in Business Administration from UC Berkeley, and was about to start class at Harvard Business School but had a last minute change of heart and started Life360 instead.

Corey Reese, CEO & Co-Founder, Ness Computing

Corey Reese is CEO and Co-founder of Ness Computing. The company's mission is to help people discover more of what they love by delivering search results that are uniquely tailored to each person. Its first app for iOS called Ness Dining Guide helps people discover restaurants based on their personal preferences. Beyond Ness Dining Guide, Ness will extend personal search to a full spectrum of lifestyle categories.
 
Mr. Reese is a Silicon Valley native and graduated from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Prior to Ness Computing, he led investments in Gowalla, Justin.tv, TopSchool, and Redux for Alsop Louie Partners. Mr. Reese's favorite Ness restaurants are Blue Bottle Cafe, French Laundry, and Sushi Toni.

Craig Sherman, Managing Director, Meritech Capital

Craig Sherman joined Meritech as a Managing Director in 2011 and focuses primarily on Internet and digital media, SaaS and consumer services businesses.  Craig has led the firm's investments in Zulily and Aria Diagnostics.

Prior to Meritech, Craig was Chief Executive Officer of Gaia Interactive, a 25 million+ monthly unique pioneer and leader in social games and online communities including Gaiaonline.com, Gonline.com, and Monster Galaxy. Craig has personally invested in over a dozen startups including Ancestry, SurveyMonkey, Zillow and Zipcar. In addition, Craig held independent board and advisory roles with Homestead (prior to its sale to Intuit), Kongregate (sold to GameStop), Logoworks (sold to Hewlett Packard), Netquote (sold to BankRate), and Photobucket (sold to Fox).

Craig graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University.

 Dave Samuel, Founder, Freestyle

Since landing my first job as a newspaper delivery boy at nine years old, I’ve had business on the brain. I launched my first startup, Thriller Designs, a year later and knew I was destined to be an entrepreneur.

After graduating from MIT, I started my career at Oracle. From there, I founded several businesses, including Spinner (acquired by AOL Time Warner for $320 million), Brondell, Grouper (acquired by Sony for $65 million), 4 kids, and now, Freestyle.

 Dave Whorton, Founder, Tugboat

Dave Whorton is the founder and managing partner of Tugboat Ventures, a seed and early stage venture fund focused on serving committed, passionate entrepreneurs with big ideas in consumer internet, mobile, cloud computing, security and SAAS. Tugboat’s team and network strive to make a significant difference from as early as inception through successful IPO or sale.

Whorton has been called a "serial entrepreneur." He was founding CEO of Good Technology, co-founder of Drugstore.com and general manager and president of Optical Engineering, Inc. Dave also worked at Netscape, Hewlett Packard and Bain.

Duncan Davidson, Managing Director, Bullpen Capital

 Duncan Davidson is a serial entrepreneur who spent the past six years as a managing director at a major venture fund, VantagePoint Venture Partners, before forming Bullpen. At VantagePoint, Duncan focused on digital media and mobile. His deals include Widevine, the leading provider of digital rights management and adaptive streaming for online video, and Livescribe, the maker of an innovative digital smartpen that has received many awards for innovation.

 He began his career as a lawyer, and in 1983 joined a small venture fund, Cambridge Venture Partners, first as a deal attorney and later as a deal partner.  In 1986 he went to Strategic Planning Associates to help with LBO advisory work. He received an Sc.B. in physics/math from Brown University, with Honors, and a J.D. magna cum laude from Michigan Law School, were he was Order of the Coif and a member of the Law Review.

Ethan Kurzweil, Vice President, Bessemer Venture Partners

Ethan Kurzweil, a vice president in the Menlo Park, Calif. office, joined Bessemer in 2008. He focuses on investments in consumer web, mobile and developer platforms.

Ethan has led investments for Bessemer in the consumer/social web (Playdom, Zoosk, Reputation.com, Piazza), developer platforms (Twilio, SendGrid, Crowdflower), advertising technology (adap.tv), and Skybox Imaging. He is also actively involved in Bessemer’s investments in Lifelock, Smule, Truaxis, Delivery Agent, and MashLogic. He currently serves on the board of directors of Piazza, Crowdflower and Sweet Labs.  Ethan earned a BA from Stanford University – where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa – and an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School.

Ezra Roizen, Digital Media Investment Banker, Ackrell Capital 

Ezra Roizen is a digital media investment banker with Ackrell Capital, a boutique investment bank. He is also an advisor and commenter on emerging ventures.

He focuses on digital media, e-commerce and mobile companies. Prior to banking, Ezra co-founded and was CEO of Montclare Technologies Inc. He also co-founded and was director of business development for Convoy, which is now part of Sybase. Ezra is the Chair of the UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business Alumni Council.

Jeff Clavier, Founder and Managing Partner, SoftTech VC

Jeff Clavier is the Founder and Managing Partner of SoftTech VC, one of the most active seed stage investors in Web 2.0 startups. Since 2004, Jeff has invested in close to 100 consumer internet startups (Fund I, Fund II, Fund III)  in areas like social media, monetization, search, gaming or B2B/B2C web services. These investments are typically located in Silicon Valley, New-York and Boulder.

With over 20 years of operational, entrepreneurial and venture capital experience, Jeff is able to  add relevant perspective and value to his companies as they grow from inception to maturity, and hopefully, success.

Jessica Alter, Founder & Chief Connector, Founder Dating

Jessica Alter is the Founder & Chief Connector of FounderDating.  She is passionate about helping entrepreneurs.  She is also CEO of Formative Labs and 500 Startups mentor. Previously, Jessica led Business Development and was GM of Platforms at Bebo (Acquired by AOL). 

Prior, Jessica worked in business development at Hands-On Mobile.  She holds a BBA from University of Michigan and an MBA from Harvard.

John Tayman, Founder & CEO, Byliner

John Tayman is Founder and CEO of Byliner, the leading publisher in the fastest-growing segment of ebooks. Byliner produces original fiction and nonfiction known as eSingles--stories written to be read in a single sitting. The companion website, Byliner.com, allows readers to easily find and buy stories directly from bestselling writers. Byliner's authors include Amy Tan, Jon Krakauer, Nick Hornby, Lawrence Lessig, Margaret Atwood, and many others.  

Prior to Byliner, Tayman founded, edited, or contributed to many award-winning publications, including Outside, Business 2.0, Men's Health, The New York Times Magazine, Rocky Mountain Magazine, GQ, and Life, among others. His bestselling nonfiction book "The Colony" was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Lawrence Coburn, CEO / Co—Founder, DoubleDutch

Lawrence Coburn is an internet entrepreneur with expertise in mobile, user generated content, online community, location based services, widgets, and social media distribution. Pioneer in the social media space, and founder of one of the first commercial entities made up of 100% user generated content. Mentor at i/o ventures. Editor at The Next Web.

Marcus Ogawa, Managing Partner,  Quest VP

Marcus Ogawa is a Managing Partner and founder of Quest Venture Partners since its inception in late 2007. Marcus is responsible for finding new investment opportunities, evaluating and closing seed / A rounds and working closely with the management teams of Quest Venture Partners portfolio companies. Marcus’ expertise are in new digital media, Mobile, and Video.

He currently serves on the board of directors for Qik Inc, Retailigence Inc, Fididel Inc, and serves as board adviser and observer for ViVu.TV, Highlightcam Inc, 1BOG Inc and Genwi Inc.
Marcus holds a BS in Computer Information Systems from Bentley University. 

Matt Ocko, Co-Managing Partner, Data Collective

Matt Ocko, Managing Director of Archimedes Capital and Managing Partner of Data Collective, has nearly three decades of experience as a technology entrepreneur, operating executive and venture capitalist, both in the US and in China, where he has advised multiple government entities over the last two decades. 

Matt has been a Partner of VantagePoint Venture Partners and was a founding General Partner of Softbank Technology Ventures.  His investments include Zynga (ZNGA), Facebook (FB), Tango.me, Cotendo (AKAM), XenSource (CTRX), Flashsoft (SNDK), SupportSoft (SPRT), Verisign (VRSN), Alantro (TXN), UltraDNS (NSR), Fortinet (FTNT), Akimbi (VMW), MetaWeb (GOOG), Kenshoo,  BranchOut, and Impermium.  Matt founded and was VP of R&D for Da Vinci Systems, a pioneering e-mail software vendor with over 1 million users world-wide prior to its acquisition.   He is an inventor on more than 30 granted or in process patents, and still reads code.

Michael Neril, Director, WIN

Michael has been working with technology startups for nearly 15 years. Michael began his career as an investment banker advising venture-backed startups and publicly held tech companies, then as an entrepreneur/co-founder of three Internet startups (SpongeFish, Ooreka - acquired by LiveOps and LiveWork), operator of a startup within a late-stage tech company (LiveOps), and as an investor and advisor to early-stage technology companies.

Most recently, Michael helped Maynard Webb launch Webb Investment Network (WIN). At WIN, Michael focuses primarily on the following areas for investment: marketplaces, crowdsourcing, cloud technology/applications, mobile, consumer Internet, and enterprise software. When not meeting companies, Michael enjoys running, long hikes, skiing, golf, and world affairs.

Noah J. Doyle, Managing Director, Javelin Venture Partners

Noah Doyle has founded, launched and grown dozens of high technology products and companies in 20 years of entrepreneurship and management of innovation. Noah most recently directed the enterprise product line for Google's geospatial products, Google Earth and Google Maps. Prior to Google, Noah managed the Marketing Strategy and Corporate Development functions at Keyhole, Inc., the venture capital backed company that created the first Web-hosted digital earth model and was acquired by Google in 2004.

As an angel investor prior to forming Javelin Venture Partners, Noah has supported over a dozen start-ups. Noah's board memberships include Nexenta, Queplix, Sociable Labs, Rixty and Nuvon.

Patrick Chung, Partner, NEA

Patrick is co-head of NEA’s Seed-stage investing practice and founding partner of NEA and Harvard’s Experiment Fund (www.xfund.com). He is a director of 23andMe, Euclid, GoodGuide, Lytro, Mapply, and Pulse, and is actively involved with Carezone, Curalate, Fantasy Shopper, Fanhattan, IFTTT, Rock Health, Subtext, and Tivli. In 2011, Patrick was named one of AlwaysOn’s “VC Power Players.” Prior to joining NEA, Patrick helped to grow ZEFER, an Internet services firm (acquired by NEC) to more than $100 million in annual revenues and more than 700 people across six global offices. Prior to ZEFER, Patrick was with McKinsey & Company, where he specialized in hardware, software, and services companies. Patrick received a joint JD-MBA degree from Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School, where he served as an Editor of the Harvard Law Review. Patrick was a Commonwealth Scholar at Oxford University, where he earned a Master of Science degree. Patrick earned his A.B. degree at Harvard University in Environmental Science. He is a member of the New York and Massachusetts bars, and a member of the Committee to Visit Harvard College.

Paul Martino, Managing Partner, Bullpen Capital

Paul Martino is the founder of four companies and active early stage investor. He was most recently the CEO and founder of Aggregate Knowledge. In 1990, Paul started his first venture which was an online gaming company. In these pre-internet, bulletin board days, he was one of the original innovators to bring to life the multi-player user experience.

Paul’s early games from almost 20 years ago are the inspiration for several of the modern social gaming offerings. In 1997, Paul founded Ahpah Software, a computer security firm that was the result of his work as a Ph.D. student at Princeton University.  Paul holds a BS in Mathematics from Lehigh University and Masters in Computer Science from Princeton University.

 Renata Streit Quintini, Partner, Felicis

Renata, native Brazilian, is primarily focused on e-commerce and education opportunities. During her time at Felicis she led investments in Baby.com.br, Bonobos, Dollar Shave Club and Artspace, among others.
She brings over a decade of experience in investments and corporate transactions, which allows her to offer a diverse and strategic perspective to portfolio companies.

Before joining Felicis, she was an investor at the Stanford Management Company, where she helped manage the endowment’s venture capital portfolio and build out its small funds VC exposure. Renata holds a Law degree from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, an LL.M from Stanford Law School and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Rich Levandov, Investor, Avalon Ventures

Rich Levandov has over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur, operator, angel investor and venture capitalist involving a variety of cutting-edge, high growth, early-stage technology companies. It was after he co-founded Phoenix Technologies (PTEC), a company that helped launch the PC revolution, and served as an early Vice President at America Online, Inc. that he started his venture capital career.

Rich leads Avalon’s investments in Ad Summos, Backupify, Cloudant, Inc., Cloudkick (acquired by Rackspace), Kaltura, NABBR, Pictela (acquired by AOL), ReThinkDB, Simulmedia, Standing Cloud, Twinstrata, chumby industries and Zynga.
  

Richard Melmon, Managing Partner, Bullpen Capital

Richard Melmon is a physicist who somehow ended up starting companies. Before starting his own, he helped a few along the way, including Intel, Apple, VisiCorp ( the first spreadsheet), Adobe, Stratacom, Frame, Sun Microsystems, and others.  Richard joined with Duncan Davidson and Regis McKenna at the McKenna Group in 1995, specializing in advising high tech Japanese firms about the coming of the Internet.

Richard has a BA in Physics from UC Berkeley, and an MBA from Stanford University. His early career in physics focused on xerographic technologies, where he holds two patents.

Rick Marini, Founder, CEO & Chief Connector, BranchOut

Rick is a serial entrepreneur and pioneer in social media with more than a decade of experience in the consumer Internet space. As the Founder & CEO of BranchOut, he is responsible for setting the right course, hiring incredible people and letting them run as fast as possible to build a service that can change the world.

 Rick received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration at the University of New Hampshire, magna cum laude, and a MBA from Harvard University. Rick currently serves as an advisor/investor of DreamWorks, Wavii, Lumos Labs, Radius Intelligence, Stipple, BlackJet, UrbanTag, SmartRecruiters, Founder's Den. He is a National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama.

Thomas Korte is an angel investor and advisor to early-stage internet startups. In 2010 he founded AngelPad a startup incubator in San Francisco.

Prior, Thomas worked at Google for 7 years. His roles there included International Product Marketing Manager, European Search Agency Business Lead and most recently Google Evangelist. He is the co-author of several patents related to improving efficiencies in search advertising and local search results.

Trevor Kienzle, Managing Director, Correlation Ventures

Trevor began his venture capital career in 1997. Prior to co-founding Correlation Ventures, Trevor was a Managing Director of Newbury Ventures, a technology-focused venture capital fund headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. There, he led investments in the technology sector, including in such companies as MetaLINCS (acquired by Seagate) and Onaro (acquired by NetApp). Previously, Trevor was Vice President at GE Equity, the $2 billion venture capital arm of GE Capital, most recently as co-head of the Software Group. He had responsibility for a team of investment professionals managing 26 portfolio companies.

Trevor received an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and a B.A. with distinction from the University of Virginia.