Startups

Jesse Fink is a founding partner of MissionPoint Capital and President and CEO of Marshall Street Management. In 2004, MSM established MSM Capital Partners to manage its investment activities in the clean technology and environmental finance sectors. Jesse was the COO of Walker Digital Inc. and Priceline.com and previously worked at Georgia-Pacific, Citicorp, and CUC International. Jesse received a B.S. in Resource Management from the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry and an MBA from Syracuse University's School of Management. In February of 2007, Jesse received the Cleantech Venture Network's "Leader of the Year" award.

Mike Maples Jr. has been on the Forbes "Midas List" since 2010 and was also named one of "8 Rising Stars" by Fortune Magazine. Before becoming a full-time investor, Maples was involved as a founder and operating executive at back-to-back startup IPOs, including Tivoli Systems (IPO TIVS, acquired by IBM) and Motive (IPO MOTV, acquired by Alcatel-Lucent). Some of Maple's investments include Twitter, Twitch.tv, ngmoco, Weebly, Chegg, Bazaarvoice, Spiceworks, Okta and Demandforce. And he is known for coining the term "thunder lizards," which is a metaphor derived from Godzilla that describes the tiny number of truly exceptional companies that are wildly disruptive capitalist mutations. He holds an engineering degree from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. His interests include calligraphy, cinematography and sporting clays.

Ron Conway was the founder and managing partner of Angel Investors LP (1998-2005) and continues today as an angel investor. He invested in over 240 startups during the late 1990s, including Google, Paypal, and over 100 startups in recent years, including Digg, Twitter, PBWiki, and Wikia. Ron has served on many boards/advisory boards, including Facebook, Photobucket, RockYou, StumbleUpon, SendMail, Ask Jeeves, Napster, Plaxo, and SNOCAP. He has held leadership positions at companies including Personal Training Systems, Altos Computer Systems and National Semiconductor Corporation. Ron is involved in numerous philanthropic causes and was #6 in Forbes Magazine's Midas list of top "dealmakers" in 2006.

Mitch Kapor has been at the forefront of the information technology revolution for a generation as an entrepreneur, investor, social activist, and philanthropist. Most recently, Mr. Kapor founded Foxmarks, an upcoming search engine based on bookmarks and related metadata. He received a B.A. from Yale College in 1971 and studied psychology, linguistics, and computer science as part of a major in Cybernetics. He attended the Sloan School of Management at MIT before leaving for a Silicon Valley startup. Mr. Kapor founded Lotus Development Corp. in 1982 and with Jonathan Sachs created Lotus 1-2-3, which made the PC ubiquitous in business in the 1980's. In 1990, he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He founded the Mitchell Kapor Foundation in 1997 and the Open Source Applications Foundation in 2001. He became the founding Chair of the Mozilla Foundation in 2003 and is a trustee of the Level Playing Field Institute. From 1994-1996, he served as Adjunct Professor at the MIT Media Lab. From 1999 to 2001, Mr. Kapor was a partner at Accel. In 2006, he became an Adjunct Professor at the School of Information at Berkeley. Mr. Kapor has contributed pieces on information infrastructure policy, intellectual property, and antitrust in the digital era topublications such as Scientific American, The New York Times, and Forbes.

Dr. Khanna has been a member of the faculty of the Harvard Business School since 1993, where he studies, and works with, multinational and indigenous companies and investors in emerging markets worldwide. He has served as course head of the required Strategy course in the Harvard MBA program, and chaired the executive education program on Strategy, Leadership & Governance. Currently, he teaches in Harvard's comprehensive general management executive education programs. He earned a Bachelors of Science in Engineering degree from Princeton University in 1988, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University in 1993. His current research focuses on understanding the drivers of entrepreneurship worldwide. As part of the Emerging Giants project, he seeks to understand how to build world-class companies from emerging markets worldwide. A related project, The Dragon and the Elephant, zeros in on China and India, and identifies best practices for local entrepreneurs and multinationals operating in each of these two countries. His scholarly work is published in a range of journals over the past fifteen years. During this time, he has continued to serve as a co-editor of several prestigious economics and management journals. A forthcoming book, Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping their Futures and Yours, will be published by Harvard Business School Press (Penguin in South Asia) in 2007. Numerous articles in the Harvard Business Review (e.g. Emerging Giants: Building World Class Companies in Emerging Markets, 2006) and Foreign Policy (e.g. Can India Overtake China?, 2003) distil the implications of this research for practicing managers. Professor Khanna's work has been profiled in news-magazines around the world, including The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the Far Eastern Economic Review, and newspapers in China, India, and elsewhere in Asia and Latin America. He serves on the advisory boards of several multinational and emerging market companies in the financial services, automotive, life sciences and agribusiness sectors. He is also actively involved in mentoring startups in Asia, and with volunteering time with non-profits in India, e.g. the Parliamentary Research Services in New Delhi, which seeks to provide non-partisan research input to India's Members of Parliament in advance of legislative sessions with a view to enhancing the quality of democratic discourse. In 2007, he was nominated to be a Young Global Leader (under 40) by the World Economic Forum. He makes his home in Newton, MA, with his wife, daughter and son.

Tom Friel was elected non-executive Chairman of the Board of Heidrick & Struggles in September 2006. Heidrick & Struggles is a publicly traded company listed as HSII on NASDAQ. Previously he served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the company since June 2003. In this role, he had overall responsibility for the firm's activities worldwide, delivered through a global network of more than 50 offices located in over 32 countries. Since joining Heidrick & Struggles in 1979, Tom has played an important role in developing the firm's leadership position in key markets. He established the firm's Silicon Valley presence in 1984, serving as Managing Partner of the Menlo Park office for its first five years. He was co-founder and then later assumed the responsibility of managing the firm's International Technology Practice, which serves clients in the computer, software, telecommunications, instrumentation, electronics, and related high technology industries. He led the practice from 1987 to 1995, during which time the practice became the recognized world leader in the senior-level search in the high technology marketplace. From 1992 to 1999, Tom undertook the additional role of Managing Partner, Asia Pacific. Under his direction, 10 offices were opened and staffed, as Heidrick & Struggles grew from start-up to its current market position as one of the leading firms in the region. From 1999 through 2001, Tom served as President of Heidrick & Struggles Ventures, the firm's division responsible for all future initiatives, new business strategies, investments and alliances. In his search career he has specialized in recruiting Chief Executive Officers, Chief Technology Officers and Board of Director members. In her book, The Global 200 Executive Recruiters, Nancy Garrison-Jenn listed Tom as among the Top 200 Executive Recruiters in the world. The partners of Heidrick & Struggles honored Tom in 1998 by naming him the recipient of the John E. Struggles Partnership Award, the firm's most significant honor. In March of 2007 the Association of Executive Search Consultants, (AESC) recognized Tom with the "Gardner Heidrick Award" the industry's most prestigious honor for outstanding contributions to the profession. Tom is an honors graduate of Purdue University, where he majored in Industrial Engineering. He also holds an M.B.A. degree from Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He currently serves on the Business School Advisory Council. In addition to Heidrick & Struggles, his Board experience includes several private and not-for-profit companies.

David Frankel is the co-founder of Altirah Capital, a South African private equity & hedge fund group. He is also a director of Rand Merchant Bank. David was the CEO and co-founder of Internet Solutions, the largest ISP and private data carrier in Africa. He was an executive director of Dimension Data plc from 2000-2004 (post selling IS to Didata). Mr. Frankel was the founder and Chairman of HealthBridge & is currently the Chairman of Cura Risk. He is a General Partner of Ovation Capital Partners, an early stage VC group based in New York. In 1998, David was voted Computer Society of South Africa's "Information Technology Person of the Year". In 2000, he was voted the South African Technology Achiever of the Century, by the Financial Mail. The World Economic Forum later selected him for the GLT program in Davos, Switzerland. David holds an honors degree in Electrical Engineering (Wits) and, post selection for the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Program, earned an MBA with distinction, from the Harvard Business School. Mr. Frankel is the Founder of ISPA (the South African Internet Service Providers Association) and he currently serves on the boards of several non-profit organizations including Foundation 2000, the Kind David Schools Foundation and Endeavor South Africa. He lives with his wife Tracey & daughters, Danielle & Raquel in JHB, SA.

Jason Green is a Founding General Partner of Emergence Capital Partners, a leading investor in technology-enabled services. Prior to founding Emergence, Mr. Green was a General Partner with U.S. Venture Partners which he joined in 1997. Prior to USVP, he was a Charter member of the Kauffman Fellowship with Venrock Associates, the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family. He also worked with the investment firm of Welsh, Carson, Anderson and Stowe. Mr. Green has led investments in such companies as Salesforce.com (CRM), Visual Networks (VNWK), DoubleClick (DCLK), aQuantive (AQNT ) and Ask Jeeves (IAC) . Earlier in his career, he served as VP of Muzertechnika, the largest computer and telecommunications Company in Eastern Europe and as a consultant with Bain & Company. Mr. Green graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Economics from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A. from Harvard where he graduated with Distinction and was awarded the Charles Williams Fellowship in Entrepreneurial Finance. He is Founding Chairman of the prestigious Kauffman Fellows Program, an educational fellowship in venture capital and is a Founding Board member of Endeavor.

J. Michael Cline is the founding Partner of Accretive LLC. Michael and other Accretive principals founded Exult, Xchanging, Fandango and Accretive Health. Before founding Accretive Michael spent 10 years as General Partner at General Atlantic Partners helping build General Atlantic into the world's largest private investment firm focused on software and related investments. Prior to General Atlantic, Michael was an associate at McKinsey & Company. Michael received his MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a Baker Scholar and he received a BS from Cornell University. He serves on the boards of Accretive Commerce, Fandango, Accretive Health and Willow. He is a Trustee of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) where he chairs the Tigers Forever initiative - the world's largest effort in global tiger conservation and is a Trustee of the Brunswick School. He also serves on the board of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Endeavor Global and the Harvard Business School Rock Center for Entrepreneurship.

Wences Casares is founder and co-CEO of Bling Nation, as well as a founding partner of private investment firm, MECK, Ltd. Bling Nation's mobile technology platform works to connect users' online and offline customer experiences. Businesses can build loyalty programs, while consumers gain seamless integration of smooth checkout experiences integrated with their social media presences. Casares previously founded Lemon Bank, a Brazilian retail bank for the poor, in 2002. He is also the founder of Wanako Games, a US-based developer of console videogames that leverages the creativity of Latin American talent. Wanako Games was sold to Vivendi Universal. In 1997 Casares founded Patagon, an Argentinean online brokerage. Patagon was sold to Spanish bank Santander. In 1994 Casares launched Internet Argentina S.A., the first Internet service provider in the country. He then sold that company, in order to establish Patagon. At age 17 he spent a year in Washington, PA as a member of the Rotary International Exchange program. He then attended the University of San Andres, Argentina's top business school. Casares was selected as an Endeavor Entrepreneur, and has been an elected member of the World Economic Forum's Global Leaders for Tomorrow since 2001. As part of his philanthropic and not-for-profit activities, Casres servers on the board of the Viva Trust, and has established the Fundacion Sintesis, with the goal of inspiring the next generation of social and political leaders in Latin America.

Ping joined Accel in 2004 and focuses primarily on information technology infrastructure and digital media solutions. He currently serves on the Board of Directors at BitTorrent, Mendocino Software, Mochi Media, Mu Security, and YuMe. Prior to Accel, Ping was a Senior Product Line Manager and Director of Corporate Development at Juniper Networks. He managed a product portfolio with revenues of over $50 mm/quarter. He also worked as a strategy consultant for McKinsey & Company. Ping has extensive international experience as well. He has worked at Singapore Telecom and at Goldman Sachs Asia. Ping continues to work in Asia with IDG-Accel China Fund. Ping holds an A.B. from Harvard University, with honors, and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.

Dominic Orr was named President and CEO of Aruba Networks in April 2006. Prior to that, Mr. Orr served as the company's Chairman of the Board. Previously, Dominic Orr was the president of Nortel Networks, Intelligent Internet Web Systems. He previously served as the president and chief executive of Alteon WebSystems which was merged with Nortel Networks in Oct. 2000. Mr. Orr has more than 20 years of experience in the computer systems and communication networking industry and has held senior positions at Bay Networks, Hewlett-Packard and Hughes Aircraft. Mr. Orr. is a member of the Sciences Board of Visitors at UCLA. He holds a BS in physics from City University of New York and a MS and PhD from California Institute of Technology.

William Sahlman is the Dimitri V. d'Arbeloff - Class of 1955 Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. The d'Arbeloff Chair was established in 1986 to support teaching and research on the entrepreneurial process. The Chair honors the late Dimitri d'Arbeloff (HBS '55), whose entrepreneurial skills helped make Millipore Corporation a world leader in its industry. Mr. Sahlman received an A.B. degree in Economics from Princeton University, an M.B.A. from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Business Economics, also from Harvard. His research focuses on the investment and financing decisions made in entrepreneurial ventures at all stages in their development. Mr. Sahlman was co-chair of the Entrepreneurship and Service Management Unit from 1999 to 2002. From 1991 to 1999, he was Senior Associate Dean, Director of Publishing Activities, and chairman of the board for Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. From 1990 to 1991, he was chairman of the Harvard University Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility. He is a member of the board of directors of several private companies.

Tony Perkins is a Venture Partner with DFJ Frontier. He is the creator and former editor-in-chief of Red Herring magazine and the CEO of AlwaysOn, an interactive online network for technology insiders. Perkins co-authored The Internet Bubble: Inside the Overvalued World of High-Tech Stocks (HarperBusiness, 1999), a book that foretold the dot-com bust. The Internet Bubble became an international bestseller; a sequel was published in 2001. As a result of his prolific editorial output, he is consistently ranked as one of the top ten technology business journalists by Adweek's Technology Marketing magazine. Perkins served on President George W. Bush's Information Technology Advisory Council and he was the founding chairman of the Churchill Club in Palo Alto, California, for which he received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. He has been a member of the World Economic Forum's Media Leaders group since 1996. Perkins was also founder and CEO of Upside Publishing and Vice President of Business Development at Silicon Valley Bank. Perkins continues to chronicle the technology world in a regular column for the Wall Street Journal and as television commentator for MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, CNN, CNBC, BBC, and Bloomberg Television. Tony Perkins graduated from UC Davis with a BA in Western European History/Political Science.

Thomas J. Fogarty is a specialist whose creative talents have impacted many diverse professional and entrepreneurial arenas. In addition to his teaching responsibilities as Professor of Surgery at Stanford University, Dr. Fogarty performs numerous cardiac and peripheral vascular surgeries, manages several medical device companies founded upon his product designs, is founder and active Senior Partner in the venture capital firm of Three Arch Partners, and also finds time to pursue his interest in oenology at the family owned and operated Thomas Fogarty Winery and Vineyards. During the past 40 years he has acquired over 70 surgical patents, including the "industry standard" Fogarty balloon embolectomy catheter. Patented in 1969, this first balloon catheter for the vascular system was a sophisticated version of the original crude instrument that young Tom Fogarty, then an OR scrub technician, designed in the late 1950's using a surgical glove finger tied to a ureteral catheter. Other commercially successful medical products designed by the Fogarty engineering group include a minimally invasive device for breast cancer diagnosis and therapy, and also a self-expanding stent-graft used to treat critical aortic aneurysms via a minimally invasive technique. Dr. Fogarty is a past recipient of the Inventor of the Year award given by the San Francisco Patent and Trademark Association, a four-time recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Presentation award presented by the American College of Surgeons, and was the first recipient to receive the award for "Achievement in Medicine" bestowed by the Santa Clara County Medical Association. Selected recent awards include the 2000 Lemelson-MIT $500,000 Prize for Invention and Innovation as well as the Association for Advancement of Medical Instrumentation Foundation's Annual Laufman-Greatbatch Prize for inventing breakthrough medical devices. Later in 2000 he was honored with the Scientific Leadership Award by the National Breast Cancer Coalition in recognition of contributions made to the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. Dr. Fogarty completed his residency at the University of Oregon and later served as Medical Staff President at Stanford Medical Center from 1970-1979. After thirteen years directing the Cardiovascular Surgery Program at Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City, CA, he returned to academic life at Stanford University School of Medicine in July, 1993 where he holds the position of Professor of Surgery.

David Cassak is a Managing Partner of Windhover Information and has been involved with the health care industry for more than 20 years. Mr. Cassak earned a BA from Drew University and did graduate work at Columbia and Princeton, earning an MA, with honors from the former, before joining, Cassak Publications Inc., a family-run business that published trade journals for the hospital and alternate site distribution industries. For much of the 1980s, he wrote and spoke frequently about the medical/surgical and hospital supply industries, before joining The Wilkerson Group, a health care consulting company, in 1988, as an editor of IN VIVO: The Business & Medicine Report. In 1989, Mr. Cassak, along with his partner Roger Longman, led a buyout of the publications business of TheWilkerson Group, forming Windhover Information Inc. In addition to IN VIVO, Windhover publishes other monthly reports, including START-UP: Windhover's Review of Emerging Medical Ventures and IN VIVO Europe Rx: Inside Europe's Biopharma Companies. Windhover also has an extensive database of health care transactions which has been turned into a Web-based electronic system, Strategic Intelligence Systems (SIS). SIS allows users to search for transactions by a variety of criteria, including deal structure, value, and therapeutic and scientific categories. Windhover also has a conference business and is well-known for, among others, its Pharmaceutical Strategic Alliances (New York), Euro-Biotech (Paris), Marketing Pharmaceutical Alliances (Philadelphia), and Bio-Windhover (Washington) meetings. Mr. Cassak writes extensively about the medical device and hospital supply industries for IN VIVO and START-UP and is a frequent speaker before various companies and industry trade groups.

Shai Agassi was a member of the Executive Board of SAP AG until March 31, 2007. He is responsible for the global development efforts for all SAP products and SAP's portfolio of industry-specific solutions. Before his appointment to the SAP Executive Board, Agassi was CEO of SAP Portals and later of the combined company SAP Markets and SAP Portals, which previously operated as a fully owned subsidiary of SAP AG. The subsidiaries were integrated into SAP in April 2002, at which point Agassi was appointed to the Board. A software entrepreneur, Agassi founded TopTier Software (originally called Quicksoft Development) in Israel in 1992 and later moved the company's headquarters to California. He served the company in various capacities, including as chairman, chief technology officer, and then CEO. He managed the strategic plan, technical direction, and relationships with companies such as Baan, SAP, and Microsoft. TopTier was a leading enterprise portal vendor when SAP acquired the company in April 2001. In addition to TopTier Software, Agassi co-founded several other companies with his father, Reuven Agassi, including Quicksoft Ltd., a leading multimedia software localization and distribution company in the Israeli market; TopManage, a developer of small business software that was also acquired by SAP in April 2002 (which became SAP Business One, the small business offering by SAP); and Quicksoft Media, a multimedia production company that ceased operations in 1995. Agassi graduated with honors from Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, where he received a bachelor's degree in computer science. He is based at SAP Labs United States in Palo Alto, California.

Warren Packard is the CEO of Thuuz, a consumer platform for real-time sports discovery, tune-in and sharing. Packard is also a venture partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He currently serves on the Boards of EoPlex, Microfabrica and SeaMicro and leads DFJ's investments in BinOptica, Hola!, Primet Precision Materials, and YeePay. Prior to joining DFJ, Warren co-founded Angara Database Systems, a main memory relational database company, which was acquired by Personify.  Prior to co-founding Angara, he was an Associate at Institutional Venture Partners, investing in early-stage technology companies. Before IVP, Warren was a Senior Principal Engineer in the Advanced Product Development Group at Baxter International.  Warren is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University and holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering: Smart Product Design.  He received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Carleton S. (Carly) Fiorina was president and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Company from 1999 to 2005. She served as chairman of the board from 2000 to 2005. Prior to joining HP, Fiorina spent nearly 20 years at AT&T and Lucent Technologies, where she held a number of senior leadership positions and directed Lucent's initial public offering and subsequent spin-off from AT&T. Fiorina was named an honorary fellow of the London Business School in July 2001. In 2002, she was honored with the Appeal of Conscience Award, and in 2003 she received the Concern Worldwide "Seeds of Hope" Award in recognition of her worldwide efforts to make global citizenship a priority for business. The Private Sector Council honored Fiorina with its 2004 Leadership Award for her contributions to improving the business of government. Also in 2004, the White House appointed her to the U.S. Space Commission. Fiorina has a bachelor's degree in medieval history and philosophy from Stanford University. She holds a master's degree in business administration from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland at College Park, Md., and a master of science degree from MIT's Sloan School.

William Perry is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) at Stanford University, in the School of Engineering's Department of Management Science & Engineering. From February 1994 to January 1997, Perry served as the 19th Secretary of Defense for the United States. He previously served as Deputy Secretary of Defense (1993-1994) and as Under Secretary of Defense for research and engineering (1977-1981). At Stanford, Perry is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and the Hoover Institution, and serves as director of the Preventive Defense Project. He is an expert in U.S. foreign policy, national security and arms control, and served as co-director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation from 1988 to 1993. Perry has served in the Army and been honored many times over by the United States, its armed forces and governments throughout Europe and the Middle East. He received a B.S. and M.S. from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University, all in mathematics.

Stan Christensen is a partner at Arbor Advisors, an investment banking firm where he negotiates on behalf of mid-market technology companies. He has nearly twenty years of experience in both transactional and operations roles and has worked on hundreds of transactions. Before starting Arbor, he was the General Manager of Eazel, a Linux-based software startup. He started his career in corporate finance on Wall Street, and then worked for ten years with CMG, a negotiation advisory firm affiliated with The Harvard Negotiation Project. In this capacity he worked with corporations and governments-advising, negotiating, and mediating transactions and conflicts. In 1996 he was selected as a Kellogg Fellow for his work in the non-profit and public sectors. He is a member of The Council On Foreign Relations and currently teaches a course on Negotiation at Stanford University in The School of Engineering. He holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A. from Brigham Young University.

Donna is the former CEO of Big Tent Design, www.bigtent.com, a fast-growing Internet company that provides a free web software platform for groups. Under Donna?s leadership, BigTent grew to over a million members. BigTent?s revenue is primarily derived from engagement marketing programs that connect brands with women. The company was sold to Federated Media in October 2010. Donna joined Big Tent from Mohr, Davidow Ventures (MDV) where she was a Partner for almost nine years, serving as VP Marketing in sixteen MDV-funded start-ups in enterprise and consumer software. Prior to MDV, Donna was VP Marketing at Clarify Inc., a CRM pioneer that she helped establish, grow and take public, starting from scratch and reaching $100M revenue and 500 employees. Her career began at Sun Microsystems in product management where she launched nineteen communication products and several versions of the operating system. Donna holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering with Distinction from Stanford University and a Harvard MBA, and also teaches Global Entrepreneurial Marketing in the Stanford School of Engineering. She enjoys spending time with her husband and two children, and serving on the board of the Woodside School Foundation. In addition to teaching, Donna is currently exploring new entrepreneurial pursuits.

A veteran media industry executive, Ron Bloom is the visionary CEO and business leader behind the founding of PodShow. Ron is ultimately responsible for PodShow's business units, team building, operations, financing and hyper-growth. Bloom was the chief strategist in securing PodShow's elite private investors, including venture firms Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital and Sherpalo Ventures. Bloom is often referenced as the author of the media industry's "5/50" rule and Fart's Law of consumer technology adoption. Ron Bloom is a former Chairman and Chief Executive Office of THINK New Ideas, a company he founded with PodShow co founder Adam Curry. He helped to build the Company to over 500 employees working out of 8 offices in the US and abroad, driving revenues from a start-up to approaching $100 million in less than three years. He led the company through venture rounds, an IPO, multiple acquisitions, a private placement of public equity, and, eventually the sale of the company for an estimated 350 million dollars. Prior to joining THINK New Ideas, Bloom again partnered with Adam Curry, acting as President and Chief Operating Officer of On Ramp helping it to become one of FORTUNE Magazine's "Top 25 Emerging Technology Companies of 1995. In recent years, he has worked with a range of companies, helping to develop technologies for the cable industry as well as helping to launch a company that provides technology solutions for Homeland Security. In his first career, Ron Bloom was a celebrated song writer and recording artist, having collaborated on several Top 10 hits, including Into the Night, which was a hit single twice. His musical talents and artistic perspective have helped to shape PodShow's products, marketing, services and talent relationships.

Ray Lane is General Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, focused on helping entrepreneurs with technological and market insight, organizational development, team building, selling, and managing growth. Since joining KPCB, Ray has sponsored several investments for the firm aimed at improving enterprise productivity. He sits on the boards of Elance, Metamatrix, Visible Path, Xsigo Systems, SpikeSource and PodShow. He also serves on one public board, Quest Software. Before joining KPCB, Ray was President and Chief Operating Officer of Oracle Corporation, the second-largest software company in the world and the leading enterprise software and services company. During his eight-year tenure, Oracle exhibited phenomenal sales growth, from approximately $1 billion in 1992 to its current annual revenue of $10 billion. Ray led Oracle's business expansion beyond its core database technology into enterprise applications and professional services. Before joining Oracle, Ray was a senior partner with Booz-Allen & Hamilton, where he pioneered and led the Information Systems Group, a worldwide consulting practice targeted at helping senior management achieve better results from information technology. He also served on Booz-Allen's board of directors and executive management committee. Prior to Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Ray served as division vice president with Electronic Data Systems Corp (EDS). In addition, he spent ten years with IBM in various product-management, sales and marketing positions. Ray received a Bachelor's degree in mathematics and an honorary Ph.D. in Science from West Virginia University (WVU). He was elected to the Academy of Distinguished Graduates of WVU and serves as a director of the Foundation Board for the University. Recently, WVU honored Ray by naming the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Ray also serves on the board of trustees of Carnegie Mellon University. He has been an active campaigner and planner for Carnegie Mellon's establishment of a Silicon Valley campus, and the co-creator of a High Dependability Computing Consortium with Carnegie Mellon and NASA. Ray also serves as Vice Chairman of Special Olympics International and has served on the International Board of Special Olympics for several years. He also holds an honorary Ph.D. from Golden Gate University.