Yuri Ammosov
Senior Policy Officer, Russian Government

Yuri Ammosov is a senior policy officer of the Russian Government in charge of the venture capital and high tech development programs. He is the project leader for Russian Venture Company, a $500 million fund-of-funds, and worked on multiple other hi-tech incentive projects, such as technology parks, free economic zones, nanotechnology program, public IP commercialization regulation, R&D tax breaks etc. Prior to joining the government Yuri co-founded a number of tech startups in Internet, software and telecommunications, worked as a technology observer at Expert, Russia's leading business magazine, and previously worked at a number of Western and Russian investment banks, rising from an associate to a director. He has an B.A. in History from Moscow State University and an M.P.A from Princeton University.

With 16 years experience building successful companies and guiding them through to profitable outcomes, Dan Avida brings a strong operating background to Opus Capital.

Most recently, Dan was President and CEO of Decru Inc., a pioneering storage security company that Dan co-founded in 2001. Decru was acquired for $272.5M by Network Appliance (NASDAQ: NTAP) in 2005.

In 1989, Dan was a founding member of Electronics for Imaging (NASDAQ: EFII), which received its only round of venture funding from Weiss, Peck & Greer Venture Partners, in 1992. Initially, Dan led the Fiery project—the cornerstone of EFI's success. He went on to be promoted several times, ultimately to Chairman and CEO. Under Dan's leadership, EFI experienced five years of dramatic, consecutive growth, placing the company on Business Week, Fortune and Forbes lists of fastest growing companies, and on the Nasdaq 100 index.

Dan served as an officer in the Israel Defense Force during the years 1984-1989. He holds a B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, where he graduated summa cum laude.

Richard M. Brenner
President & C.E.O., The Brenner Group, Inc

Rich is President and C.E.O. of  The Brenner Group, Inc.®, an interim executive management and financial advisory services firm which he founded in 1987.  The Brenner Group is one of the oldest and largest firms of its type in Silicon Valley having assisted over 1,000 companies since its formation. 

He has also been an active angel investor in and around Silicon Valley for many years.  One of these investments is Bridge Capital Holdings (NASDAQ  “BBNK”), the parent company of Bridge Bank, where he is a founder, member of the Board of Directors, and Chairman of the Audit Committee.  The bank is a business bank, focusing on providing high levels of service to its clients, and has been one of the fastest growing banks in the United States for over six years. 

Rich has more than 35 years of experience as a board member and member of management.  He has worked in general and financial management, and has assisted many emerging companies in the roles of President, General Manager, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.  Rich has held executive level positions at Formaster Corporation (now TRACE Affex), Corvus Systems Inc., US Leasing International Inc., ITEL Corporation, National BankAmericard (now VISA) and Autographic Business Forms Inc.  He also served as venture capital consultant to Hillman Ventures.

Rich serves as a board member for Bridge Capital Holdings (NASDAQ  “BBNK”), Cardiovention, Inc., Chadmoore Wireless Group (OTC “MOORZ.PK”) and QuickHealth. 

Rich also serves as a member of the board of directors of several non profits, including the Santa Clara County Council of the Boy Scouts of America (Chairman of the Board) and The Churchill Club (Chairman of the Board)

He holds a BS in accounting with a minor in management information systems from Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Peter Buhl
Partner, Blue Run Ventures

Peter Buhl, Partner, co-founded the firm and is based in the Menlo Park office. Pete's investments span from components for consumer electronics/mobile devices to data networking and wireless software.

Pete currently serves on the Board of Directors of 3i Systems, Atrua Technologies, FreedomPay, Nevis Networks, WaveMarket, and Zmanda. Previous board experience includes PayPal (EBAY), Netli (AKAM), and Pogo (ERTS).

Prior to starting the firm, Pete spent 12 years in venture backed companies, including executive positions with Ipsilon Networks and Software Alliance Corp. Pete started his career at Price Waterhouse and holds a B.S. from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

Rudy Burger
Managing Partner, Woodside Capital Partners

Rudy is a leading expert in digital technologies and international business development. Over the past twenty-five years, he has founded companies in the US, run a European public company, and served as a senior executive for two global 500 companies - EVP and CTO for NEC Packard Bell and VP Software for Xerox. He is an effective, dynamic leader with a proven track record in strategic planning, change management, and business development.

Prior to Woodside Capital Partners, Rudy led the restructuring of Scipher plc which involved the sale of all of the company's operating businesses. Prior to Scipher, Rudy was the founding CEO of Media Lab Europe, a $40M joint venture between MIT and the Irish government.

Rudy has founded five companies, all in the digital media technologies sector. One of these companies, Visioneer, went public in 1995 on NASDAQ.

In addition to being a partner of Woodside Capital Partners, Dr. Burger serves on the boards of several US and overseas companies including Quester Capital Management and Motorola's Research Board. Rudy has a BSc and MSc from Yale University and a PhD from Cambridge University.

Peter Burris
Founding Member, Wikibon Project 

Peter Burris is a founding member of the Wikibon Project, a worldwide community of practitioners, consultants, and research dedicated to improving the adoption of technology and business systems through an open source sharing of free advisory knowledge. Mr Burris has been a leading IT industry analyst for nearly two decades. He is a leading thinker in multiple IT domains, including IT  infrastructure design and implementation, application development and sourcing,
and the relationship between business value and information technology.  He has held analyst and executive positions at both IDC and META Group (acquired by Gartner, Inc.). As a consultant, he has specialized in applying web 2.0 principles and technologies to the challenges of improving global resource orchestration in the energy, technology, and defense industries. He is a graduate of Yale University.

Sondra Card
Founder & Managing Director, Retained Search & Recruiting Strategy Consulting

Sondra Card founded her own boutique retained search firm that focuses on early-staged, privately held consumer Internet and enterprise software companies and conducts executive searches in Engineering/IT Operations, Product Management/ Product Marketing and Business Development.

Sondra brings over 20 years of recruiting, staffing management and operations experience growing numerous venture backed companies across all functions, levels and a variety of sectors.  Over the years her work has resulted in over 1000 candidates joining top-flight start-ups, which gives her a deep, intrinsic sense of the leadership skills, talent and motivational “DNA” required to succeed and thrive in an entrepreneurial environment. Before launching her retained search practice, Sondra held the role of Recruiting Director at the Mayfield Fund, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm, from late 2000 to mid-2005 where she worked closely with founders, board members and companies to build their executive leadership and core teams. From 1998-2000, she was the Director of Staffing at Allegis Corporation, an enterprise software company funded by Benchmark Capital and acquired by Click Commerce (CKCM), where she grew the company from 15 – 165 employees.  From 1992-1995, Sondra was the Senior Staffing Manager at General Magic, an early pioneer in consumer hand-held devices where she grew the company from 50 – 250 employees and through an IPO. 

Sondra attended the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Baris Cetinok is director of product management and marketing for Microsoft Office Live Small Business – which is a complete set of easy to use and affordable internet software and services that help small businesses attract new customers, keep in touch with existing customers and easily manage their business.

Cetinok is a 10-year veteran at Microsoft and has held numerous product management and marketing positions at the company.  His most recent role was as group product manager of the Enterprise Product Management for Microsoft Office system where he was responsible for overseeing the strategic go-to-market strategy for the Information Worker Business Group and driving the deployment and adoption initiative of Microsoft Office across market segments.

Early in his career at Microsoft, Cetinok worked as a product manager for Microsoft Office Product Marketing and Management in Istanbul, Turkey where he oversaw subsidiary-wide launch efforts for Office 95, Office 97 and Office 2000 with a concentration on enterprise and small business customer outreach and channel/partner engagement activities.

Cetinok has a bachelor of arts in political science and economics from Bosporus University in Istanbul, Turkey.

Albert Cha
Managing Partner, Vivo Ventures 

Dr. Cha is an accomplished scientist with expertise in neuroscience and medical devices. He received his B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University and worked at Oracle Corporation in pharmaceutical consulting. He subsequently received an M.D. with honors (AOA) and Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California at Los Angeles, where he won multiple awards including the Outstanding Graduate Student Award. Dr. Cha has published several
research articles in the field of molecular biophysics in journals such as Nature and Neuron. He currently serves on the boards of several private biotechnology and medical device companies. He joined Vivo Ventures in 2000 and became Partner in 2003.

Stan Chudnovsky
Co-Founder of Ooga Labs
Former Co-Founder of Tickle, SVP of Monster (after Tickle was aquired)

Stan Chudnovsky is Co-Founder of Ooga Labs, a technology greenhouse in San Francisco, developing multiple Internet businesses simultaneously. Prior to Ooga, Stan spent 6- plus years building Tickle Inc., which was sold to Monster for over $100 million.

Starting as VP of Engineering, Stan gained responsibilities over Product and Operations and then was named CEO in December 2005. Prior to Tickle, Stan was VP of Engineering at SayItInc. Before that, he managed and developed a number of pioneering applications for Fortune 500 companies. Stan moved to San Francisco from Moscow in 1994 and obtained his Bachelor and Masters Degrees in Applied Mathematics.

Kelly DePonte
Partner, Probitas Partners

Kelly is responsible for research and due diligence for Probitas Partners' alternative fund placement activities. Prior to joining Probitas Partners, Kelly was Chief Operating Officer and Managing Director at Pacific Corporate Group (PCG), a leading provider of alternative investment advisory, management and consulting services to institutional and high net worth clients worldwide. Kelly oversaw the partnership investment program, which comprised more than $20 billion in capital dedicated globally to private equity. As a member of the firm's Investment Committee and Chair of the Investment Team, Kelly reviewed and approved private equity investment recommendations for discretionary and non-discretionary accounts. Before joining PCG, Kelly held various senior positions at First Interstate Bancorp, including management of a $170 million venture capital portfolio. Kelly earned an MBA from The Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA, and a BA in Communications from Stanford University .

Salil Deshpande
Partner, BayPartners

Salil is a Partner at BayPartners, and focuses on areas in which he has operating experience and thus some intuition. Salil was founder & CEO of Customware, a CORBA services company (acquired by Visigenic, now part of Borland), co-founder and CEO of The Middleware Company (acquired by Precise, now part of Symantec), and of TheServerSide.com network of social media sites (acquired by TechTarget).

In addition to traditional venture investments, Salil is leading:
Bay's seed program, a fast-track process for investing $250K-$750K in bold out-of-the-box capital-efficient ideas

Bay's appfactory program (along with Angela Strange), which invests $25K-$250K in applications atop the Facebook platform

Salil has held technical leadership positions at several technology companies including Sun Microsystems, taught summer courses at Stanford University, and has been an advisor to several internet community businesses.

Dr. Rafiq Dossani
Senior Research Scholar, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Reseach Center, Stanford University  

Dr. Dossani is responsible for directing the South Asia Initiative of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.  A specialist on sectoral policy reform, he has advised the Indian government on telecommunications, venture capital, energy, and rural access to information technology. 

Dr. Dossani’s research interests include South Asian security, and financial, technology, and energy-sector reform in India. He is currently undertaking projects on political reform, business process outsourcing, innovation and entrepreneurship in information technology in India, and security in the Indian subcontinent. His most recent books are India Arriving, published in 2007 by AMACOM Books/American Management Association, Prospects for Peace in South Asia (co-edited with Henry Rowen), published in 2005 by Stanford University Press, and Telecommunications Reform in India, published in 2002 by Greenwood Press.

Prior to joining Stanford University, Dossani worked for the Robert Fleming investment banking group, first as CEO of its Indian operations and later as head of its San Francisco operations. He has also been the chairman and CEO of a stockbroking firm on the OTCEI exchange in India, the deputy editor of Business India, India’s largest circulating businesss magazine, and a professor of finance at Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. Dossani holds a BA in economics from St. Stephen's College, New Delhi, India; an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India; and a PhD in finance from Northwestern University.

Alan I. Fraser
President and Chief Executive Officer, Astoria Software

Joining Astoria as President and CEO in January 2006, Alan Fraser is a seasoned senior executive and serial entrepreneur. Fraser has nearly 30 years of experience in executive roles in both public and private high-technology companies. His background includes functional expertise covering general management, product development, marketing, distribution, sales, operations and finance; Alan's industry experience ranges from telecommunications to semiconductors to software applications & solutions. Alan's mission at Astoria is to scale rapidly for success. Most recently he was President & CEO of Vertical Networks, prior to that he served in President & CEO roles at DigitalLink and MicroUnity. Alan held several key executive positions at Nortel where he began his high-technology executive career. Alan is a member of the Certified General Accountant's Association of Canada 1979 (CPA equivalent in U.S. ). With Alan coming aboard, the prior President and CEO, Ken Schroeder, transitions to Chairman of the Board.

Tom Fountain
Principal, Mayfield Fund 

Tom Fountain is a Principal at Mayfield Fund focused on infrastructure software, networking, storage, and security.  Tom’s investments include Akimbi (acquired by EMC/VMware) and Webroot.  He also works with Cemaphore, Mendocino Software, Mimosa Systems, and WiChorus.  He previously served on the board of directors for Scalix (acquired by Xandros) and worked with Determina (acquired by EMC/VMware).  Prior to joining Mayfield in 2003, Tom was co-founder of Ingrian Networks, a leader in network and database security.  Tom previously served on the faculty at Stanford University in both the electrical engineering and computer science departments.  Before joining the Stanford faculty, Tom was founder and CEO of a software development and retail sales firm with operations in four states.  He is the co-inventor of ten U.S. and four international patent-pending technologies in networking, security, and operating systems.  Tom was a PhD student in electrical engineering at Stanford University , where he earned an MBA with distinction as an Arjay Miller Scholar, an MS in Electrical Engineering, an MS in Computer Science, and a BS in Computer Systems Engineering.

Alexander “Sasha” Galitsky
Managing Partner, Almaz Capital Partners

Dr. Galitsky is an internationally renowned entrepreneur and investor with a proven track record and executive operational experience in the US, Russia and Western Europe.

During the past decade he founded and led as a CEO five successful companies including ELVEES, a leader in the field of multicore chip development, DSP processors and intelligent video surveillance systems and ELVIS+,a leading Russian technology company, which renames nowadays a leading Russian system integrator in the field of information security. He pioneered with ELVIS+ and Sun Microsystems in patented WiFi 4 Mps PCMCIA card technology back in 1992-1993, which was acquired later by US government in 1994; in PC based VPN and Firewall security SunScreen E+ product line in 1994 – 1996, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1996. ELVIS+ became a leading Internet Service Provider in Russia since 1991and pioneered in Russian by creating own Web site back in 1993 and first industry media portal InfoArt back in 1995. In 1996, Alexander made a spin-off of ELVIS+ Internet Division into new company ELVIS Telekom and investment was brought from the leading Russian cell-phone provider Vimpelcom (Beeline) and in 2000, the company was sold to Telenor/Nextra. In 1998, n the base of his success with ELVIS+, Galitsky founded a new security company, which was focused on the Network Security Management. Company was named a Technology Pioneer by World Economic Forum in 2000 and was acquired by the Hamsard Group in 2002 (AIM:HMSD).;   He also founded and invested in Dutch based EzWIM, a leading mobile services cost management company, which is successfully growing on the European market.

Dr. Galitsky has a successful fundraising record of accomplishment. In 1993, he negotiated the first overseas investment Sun Microsystems ever made in a Russian company. From 1996-2005, he was able to raise over $37 million from western venture capital and corporate funds for ELVIS Telekom, TrustWorks, EzWIM and SWSoft (not included).

Prior to beginning his entrepreneurial career, Dr. Galitsky served as President and General Manager of the Soviet Space Agency. During his tenure there (1979-1992) he was one of the top technical executives responsible for the design and implementation of satellite and spacecraft software, as well as computer and data communication systems for the Soviet defense industry. His personal science and engineering contribution to national leading computer architecture, on-board software and image recognition systems was recognized by government awards and national patents. He was the youngest national program leader for projects such as on-board computer systems which was used by 85% of Soviets satellites and low-orbit 64kbps -2Mps data communication systems for the Soviet “Star Wars” response on which internet based communication was tested back to 1999-1990. From demonstration this unique capability to Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy in October 1990 – Alexander deep friendship with Sun was started and opened for him a door to western high-tech market

In 2003, Dr. Galitsky left the Hamsard Group and became an active participant in the venture capital community in Russia, Europe and the US. Through his Netherlands-based AV Galitsky Holdings company, he has made several investments, including Start-Telecom (http://www.starttelecom.ru/), a leading Russian WiMAX operator (now Syntera, http://www.syntera.ru/) , NavMaps (now TeleAtlas) – navigation maps company; S-Terra (http://www.s-terra.com/) – leading network security vendor; SWSoft (http://www.swsoft.com/), Parallels a leading automation and virtualization company.

In 2004, working together with the European Venture Capitalist Association, he served as the President of the first Russian TechTour (http://www.techtour.com/).

In 2005, Dr. Galitsky joined Russian Technologies as a venture partner and led the investments into SJ Labs and EverNote. In 2006, he was made a partner of the fund and led the Information & Communications Technology investment practice. In March 2007, as a board member of SJLabs, he orchestrated a successful exit from SJLabs though company acquisition by US telco company Ymax (http://www.ymax.com/). In April 2007, he left Russian Technologies with an idea to create a new venture fund.
 In addition, he serves as advisory board member for companies like PGP Inc. (http://www.pgp.com/), Acronis (http://www.acronis.com/) and SWSoft. He was an advisory board member to company Magnifire (now F5, http://www.f5.com/).

Dr. Galitsky has authored over one-hundred international publications and over thirty patents, including in WiFi area. He has been a featured speaker at numerous international conferences, including Interop, the World Economic Forum, Catalyst, High-Tech Forum, RSA, Infosec , ETRE, SVOD and he has been interviewed and profiled in numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Financial Times , San Jose Mercury News, Business Week, Times and the New York Times. He has been named by independent agencies as the most influential person in the Russian IT and Internet industry during 1994-98 and again in 2000-2001. He was named “Technology Pioneer” by the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2000, where the technology achievements of his company TrustWorks were also recognized and received the award for ‘Technology of New Millennium’.
Alexander is an Advisory Board member of Stockholm Challenge and Board Member of Independent Software Development Forum (http://www.isdef.org/).

Naren Gupta
Founding Managing Director, Nexus India Capital

Naren launched Nexus India Capital in 2006 to make venture investments in India.  The fund is based in Mumbai, India with an office in Menlo Park

Prior to launching Nexus, Naren Co-founded Integrated Systems Inc (ISI), a leading embedded software company in 1980 and took it public in 1990. He served as ISI President/CEO till 1994 and as its Chairman till ISI merger with Wind River in 2000. He subsequently served as a CEO and Vice-Chairman of Wind River Systems.

Naren has been an active investor for the last ten years. Among his investments, several companies had successful public exits, including Digital Link, E-Tek Dynamics, Numerical Technology and RightNow. Exits through acquisitions include Speedera Networks.

Naren holds a B. Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi an MS from the California Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. from Stanford University, all in engineering. Naren has received distinguished alumni awards from Caltech and IIT among others and was elected a Fellow of the IEEE.

In addition to Wind River, Naren serves on the boards Tibco Software, Red Hat Inc., Silicon Valley Community Foundation and several privately-held companies. He is an active advisor to Indian entrepreneurs worldwide.

Quentin Hardy
Silicon Valley Bureau Chief, Forbes

Quentin Hardy is Silicon Valley Bureau Chief for Forbes magazine. He had been a senior Editor for Forbes from March 1999 to April 2002, covering the technology industry from the Silicon Valley bureau. Prior to joining Forbes, Hardy spent eight years at The Wall Street Journal. While based in the Journal's Tokyo bureau from 1991 through 1994, he reported on the Japanese banking crisis and market collapse.

From 1994 until 1999, he covered the wireless industry and Silicon Valley culture from the paper's San Francisco office. He also worked at AP/Dow Jones newswire in Tokyo from 1988 to 1991, covering Asian energy markets and natural resources. Hardy is a regular on "Forbes on Fox," a weekly business news show on Fox News Channel and "Kudlow & Company" on CNBC, and he hosts numerous panels on technology and business at events around the US.

Hardy is a graduate of Kenyon College and has a Masters degree from the University of London. In 1995 he was awarded a Knight-Bagehot Fellowship from the Columbia University School of Journalism.

Vladimir joined NEA in 2005. He focuses on investments in information technology, including software, communications and technology-enabled services. Currently he is on the Board of Directors of Compiere and Pentaho and serves as an advisor to Sugar CRM. Since starting his venture career with Robertson Stephens Venture Capital in 1996, Vladimir was involved in investments in over 20 companies, including CenterRun (acquired by Sun), Equinix (NASDAQ EQIX), Metapath (acquired by Marconi), OnDisplay (acquired by Vignette), Saba Software (NASDAQ SABA). Previous board memberships include, among others, AmberPoint, Cendura, IMLogic, NewScale. Before joining NEA, Vladimir was a Managing Director at Crosslink Capital, a fund established after a management buyout from Robertson Stephens. Previously, he was a Management Consultant with McKinsey and Company in San Francisco and Milan, Italy. Prior to that, Vladimir worked at Intel and Ingres. Vladimir received his MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Science from the University of San Francisco.

Franklin "PITCH" Johnson
Founding Partner, Asset Management Company

Pitch Johnson leads the Asset Management team. Known throughout the venture capital industry for his vision, insight and principles, he has been at the center of a number of Silicon Valley's biggest and longest-running success stories. He stands out as one of the inventors of the venture capital business.

A Palo Alto High School graduate, Pitch got into venture capital after graduating from Stanford University and Harvard Business School, doing a hitch in the Air Force and working the furnaces at a steel mill. In 1962, he and Bill Draper decided to put together an early investment fund.

Three years later, Pitch founded Asset Management Company. Over the ensuing decades, Pitch launched and managed a number of funds. Many Silicon Valley firms owe their success to the leadership that came from Asset Management.

Among Pitch's many accomplishments, he helped found Amgen and served on the board of directors for 27 years. Pitch also served on the board of directors of Applied Micro Circuits and, until its merger into BMC Software, served for 30 years as chairman of the board of Boole and Babbage. Pitch remains an active board member of a number of private companies.

In addition, Pitch devotes time to developing venture capital operations in other countries, particularly in Eastern Europe. He also created and for 12 years taught the course in venture capital at Stanford Business School.

Pitch and his family are intensely involved in philanthropic and community activities, primarily in the Bay Area. He also has been active in alumni affairs at both Stanford and Harvard Business School, and served for over a decade as a trustee of the Foothill-DeAnza Community College District. Pitch is a long-time trustee of the San Francisco Opera and is its current board chairman.

Kip Knight
Vice-President of Marketing, eBay

Kip Knight is currently vice-president of marketing for eBay, North America. eBay is the world’s largest online shopping site with over 200 million users and sites in 33 countries. Kip has worked at eBay since 2002 in various marketing and general management roles on both the U.S. and international businesses, including regional vice-president and the head of international marketing and category management. Kip started his career in marketing research at Burke Marketing Research in Cincinnati, Ohio and over the past 25 years has worked in over 80 countries around the world. He spent 10 years in Brand Management at Procter and Gamble in charge of various brands such as Ivory Soap and well as working on the development and launch of various new food and beverage brands such as Olestra.

He’s also worked in PepsiCo’s international restaurant division where he served in a variety of marketing and general management roles, including General Manager of North Latin America as well as head of marketing for KFC International. Kip was also Chief Marketing Officer for Taco Bell based in Southern California. Kip currently serves on the Board of Advisors for Reactrix, a cutting edge interactive media company as well as on the Board of Directors for eBay’s e-commerce site in South Korea. He was recently selected as a judge for the Grand Effies, which are awarded to the world’s leading marketing campaigns and has been a featured speaker at numerous marketing conferences, such as Business Week’s Global Brand Conference, the Association of National Advertisers and HP’s Global Marketing Congress.

He earned his B.S. degree from LSU in marketing and his MBA from the University of Cincinnati. He is married to Peggy Day and has two sons, Tom and Chris.

Natasha Krol
Managing Partner, Alexander & Krol Executive Search

Natasha Krol is a Managing Partner at Alexander & Krol, an Executive Search firm specializing in the US and Eastern European Technology Markets. Prior to founding her own company, she was a Senior Client Partner with Korn/Ferry International’s Global Technology Market based in the Silicon Valley .  He clients included companies like Google, HP, Audatex, TransUnion and others.  Ms. Krol has more than twenty years of experience in the development and application of information technology.  Most recently, Ms. Krol led overall marketing efforts for several start-up and medium-size Silicon Valley software companies, including Evoke Software (now Informatica) and eMotion (now Corbis).

Previously, Ms. Krol was a Founding Member, Vice President and Service Director of Advanced Information Management Strategies for the META Group (now Gartner), the leading provider of information technology research, advisory services and strategic consulting in Stamford , CT.   Her clients included senior executives in Global 2000 companies, as well as the venture capital community. She was also instrumental in establishing company subsidiaries throughout Europe, South Africa and Asia Pacific. Prior to Gartner, Ms. Krol managed advanced technologies for John Hancock Financial Services in Boston , MA , where she developed strategic technology plans and overall information architecture. 

She began her career as a Marketing Officer in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in St. Petersburg , Russia . Ms. Krol holds an M.S. degree in Linguistics from St. Petersburg University .  Ms. Krol has served on the technical advisory board for American Express, and has been a featured keynote speaker at more than 50 international conferences.

Alexis Langagne
Program Office Director, World Wide Technology Solutions Group, Hewlett Packard

Alexis Langagne, World Wide TSG (Technology Solutions Group) Sales Global Program Office Director at HP, leads the development and implementation of sales processes, tools and methodologies that support HP's objective of building the Best Sales Force in the IT Industry. These programs include market segmentation, sales coverage and global account management among others.

Alexis has 18 years of sales, marketing and business management experience in the Information Technology industry working for global companies such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Compaq and HP, always focused on Enterprise computing . Alexis holds a bachelor's degree in Engineering Physics from the Univerisdad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico, an MBA from Alliant International University in California and, marketing, finance and management graduate degrees from Columbia, Harvard and Babson.

Alexis has visited Russia during and after the comunist regime and based on his personal experience consider Russia a "warm" country.

Gene Linetsky
Founder and CEO, CBMS Networks, Inc.; Founder and CEO, PaintPoker, Inc.

Gene Linetsky has founded several software startups and served in various executive and technology leadership positions in Silicon Valley, California. He has extensive experience that spans staffing and management of distributed engineering teams, game design and development, secure real-time communication protocols, large-scale Web applications, cross-platform development environments, compilers, and sales automation systems.
 
In his most recent corporate position as Vice President, Endpoint Products for Check Point Software Technologies, Gene was managing a large geographically dispersed development organization, creating and shipping award-winning endpoint security products for consumer, small business, and enterprise markets. Two of his earlier startups, IMsecure Corp. and Ultris, Inc., were acquired by Zone Labs and Saba Software, respectively. Earlier, in his native Russia, Gene pioneered computer science curriculum for high schools, developed educational software for children, and co-authored a computer science textbook with over 3 million copies in print.

Peter Loukianoff
Partner, Alloy Ventures

Peter N. Loukianoff joined Alloy Ventures in January 2001. Prior to Alloy, he was on the founding management teams of two venture capital-backed startups: Autonomy, Inc. (NASDAQ: AUTN) and Ubiquinet, Inc. (now C-Cor, NASDAQ: CCBL). Peter also started and ran the cable division of Alliance Systems (acquired by Mobile Data Solutions, NASDAQ: MDSI). He began his career as a design engineer with Zurich-based ABB, Ltd. From the beginnings of Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika program in 1989 through 1994, Peter pioneered technology joint ventures between prominent scientific institutions in Russia and leading U.S. and European companies. He is a member of the board-of-directors of Attune Systems, Apptera, Ravenflow and Sapias. His prior investments include AudioBasket (acquired by eMotion, Inc.), K2 Optronics (acquired by Emcore, NASDAQ: EMKR), Versata (NASDAQ: VATA) and ZipRealty (NASDAQ: ZIPR). Peter is a co-inventor on four voice technology patents. He earned an MBA and BS Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

Avery Lyford
President and Chief Executive Officer, Digisense Inc

Prior to Digisense, Avery was Entrepreneur-in-Residence with vSpring Capital, focusing on the opportunities created by the changing small/medium business IT market. Prior to vSpring, he was CEO of Levanta (Linux systems management of virtual systems). He was the first Business Builder hired into McKinsey & Co.'s business building practice where he focused on software spin-offs and startups. Avery started his career with IBM during the early days of the personal computer and was eventually responsible for product marketing across the Intel server product line, with P&L responsibility for server appliances. During his tenure with IBM PC servers the business grew to over $1B in revenue.

Avery is proud of his involvement with the recently published book "Blueprint to a Billion," which grew from the work on business building begun at McKinsey. He is on the board of Silicon Valley's Churchill Club and the advisory board of Signal Lake Ventures (Venture Capital). He sums up the Digisense approach as " Enterprise experience without the enterprise baggage."

Matt Marshall
Co-founder, VentureBeat

Matt Marshall covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News until he left in Sept. 2006 to launch VentureBeat as an independent company. VentureBeat will focus initially on Silicon Valley, and gradually expand to cover innovation hubs around the
globe. Its mission in each region will be the same: to provide insider news and data about the entrepreneurial and venture community that is useful to decision makers. Matt covered the venture capital beat for the Mercury News from 2001-2006. He significantly expanded the newspaper’s coverage of venture capital during that time, in daily articles and a weekly column called the VC Insider, and then online with his blog SiliconBeat from 2004.

Matt was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 through 1998. In 1999 he wrote a book while in Germany, “The Bank—the Birth of Europe’s Central Bank and the Rebirth of European Power” (Random House, 1999). He has also written for the Washington Post and several other publications. Matt has a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. He was awarded Journalist of the Year by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists in 2002, and the James Madison Freedom of Information award in 2003.

Andy Mattes
Senior Vice President and Chief Sales Officer, Technology Solutions Group, Hewlett-Packard Company

Andy W. Mattes leads the company’s worldwide enterprise sales organization across the 160 countries where HP does business. In this role, he is responsible for HP’s corporate accounts, public sector sales, and the industry markets of Communications, Media & Entertainment; Financial Services; and Manufacturing and Distribution. He also manages worldwide alliance sales, sales compensation, global pre-sales and sales support, sales operations, and go-to-market effectiveness.

Previously, Mattes spent 20 years at Siemens AG, where he held various sales and management positions. Since May 2004, he served as president and chief executive officer of Siemens Communications, Inc., the U.S. arm of Siemens Communications, which delivers a broad portfolio of communication products and services for wireless, fixed and enterprise networks. While in this role, Mattes also served as a member of the Group Board of Siemens Communication Group, the global governing board of the communications group.

From September 2003 to September 2004, he served as president of the European Industry Association for Information Systems, Communication Technologies and Consumer Electronics (EICTA).

Mattes is the author of 21st Century Communications (2003).

Born in Nuremburg, Germany, Mattes received a degree in business management from Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, and holds a university teaching position at the Technical University of Munich. He is based in Palo Alto, California.

Ron Moritz
Managing Director, Moritz Technology Corporation

Ron Moritz is a well-regarded executive with over twenty years of broad operational and strategy experience from premier technology companies such as Symantec and CA where he was a member of each company's distinguished leadership teams.  Having advised C-level executives, boards of directors, venture capitalists and private equity firms on value-creation activities including new markets, acquisition and divestiture strategy, global sourcing of labor, major technology decisions, and eco-system development, Moritz brings a unique point of view at the intersection of technology, strategy, global markets and finance.
 
Moritz is currently managing director with MTC, a venture consulting firm launched in 2001.  As senior vice president and chief security strategist at CA, Inc., Ron was responsible for business planning and strategy, eco-system development, acquisitions and divestitures for the security business unit.  Earlier, he served as senior vice president and CTO of Symantec Corporation and as CTO of Finjan Software, an active start-up launched in 1996.  As an internationally recognized cyber security expert, Moritz is a spokesperson on security issues, solutions, and strategies.  He has contributed to six books, including The Black Book of Corporate Security, Inside the Minds: Chief Technology Officers, and Internet Management, published numerous articles, and presented at many international conferences.  He is frequently quoted or featured in publications, media outlets, and television programs including CNBC and CNN.

Will Price
Managing Director, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners

Since joining Hummer Winblad in 2005, Will played a key role in the firm’s investments in Move Networks, Replay Solutions, Mulesource, Star Analytics, Hubpages, Widgetbox, Kwiry, and Infopia.

Prior to joining Hummer Winblad, Will was a Senior Vice President with Pequot Ventures, where he focused on investments in information technology.
Previously, Will served as CEO and COO of several software start-ups. He has also worked with the Boston Consulting Group, Infinity Financial Technology and Morgan Stanley.

Will graduated from Harvard College and earned his M.B.A. from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University where he graduated at the top of his class.

Will writes an active blog on software start-ups and venture capital, which can be found at http://willprice.blogspot.com.

Peter Redford
CEO, Chairman, TV Interactive Corp

Mr. Redford has been a pioneer in the Silicon Valley technology industry for the last 30 years, starting as a researcher with the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Since 1981, he has served continuously as CEO of investor funded Silicon Valley technology companies.

Mr. Redford is an expert company builder, negotiator, and marketing strategist and has broad experience in product development, OEM and mass-market consumer sales, international business development (Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand and Ireland), and intellectual property licensing and protection. 

Mr. Redford was involved in the development and commercialization of the graphical user interface (GUI), the computer mouse, the computer sound card, the LeapPad and the AutoPlay feature of Microsoft Windows.  In 2005 Redford settled a major patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft for AutoPlay.

Redford holds over 40 patents including one of the original software patents for the graphical user interface (patent # 4,692,858).

Mr. Redford is Chairman and CEO of TV Interactive Corporation (TVI, funded by Intel Capital, NTT, Sega and Hasbro),  President of the Silicon Valley Association for Corporate Growth (ACG), member of the Band of Angels (where he chairs the software deal selection committee), and member of the board of several Silicon Valley technology companies.

Redford holds an M.S. in Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Yan Ryazantsev
Investment Director, Russian Venture Company

Yan Ryazantsev has been the Founder and President of the New Systems Co., one of the rare Russian innovation firms. During the period of 1990 till 1992 the company has funded and participated in development stage of the several projects in the fields of an alternative energy.

Before New Systems was founded in 1990, Mr. Ryazantsev had been one of the few pioneers who had established in 1986 a commercially independent scientific organization “Foundation for technical creators”.

In 1992 Mr. Ryazantsev being a representative of the Russian Ministry of the nuclear power has participated in the Global Forum in Rio-de-Janeiro held under the patronage of UN Conference for Ecology and Sustainable Development.

During 2002-2007 Mr. Ryazantsev served for the state-owned Central Research and Technology Institute of Russia as Director of the Investment Projects and Advanced Technologies Department.

Since 2007 Yan Ryazantsev is the Investment Director of the Russian Venture Company – the new vehicle of the Russian Federation aiming to boost national venture capital market.

Yan is a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.

SVB Financial Group (SVB) is a leading provider of diversified financial products and services (commercial, investment, and merchant banking) to technology, life science, and private equity firms globally. Mike Selfridge has been with SVB for 13 years and has held a variety of leadership positions in sales, credit, international, operations, and financing for technology and venture capital firms.

Mr. Selfridge is currently the Head of SVB’s Global Products Division and a member of the commercial bank’s senior management team. In his current role, Selfridge leads several groups of the commercial bank, including SVB Asset Management, Global Investments (SVB’s broker-dealer), International Credit Products, foreign currency trading, International Trade Services, and Global Cash Management. Combined, this group represents over $18 billion in assets under management, trades over $12 billion in annual foreign currency volume, and delivers and executes on SVB products and services that generate 25% of the commercial bank’s gross profit. Selfridge is a member of the senior team responsible for developing the commercial bank’s strategy, as well as identifying the product and sales opportunities to further revenue and asset growth as well as global expansion. His division is responsible for the continued development and implementation of the bank’s internet banking platform, SVBeConnect, which is SVB’s proprietary electronic banking portal that support clients’ global online banking and investments.

From 2003 to 2005, Selfridge was based in Boston, MA and served as SVB’s Northeast Division Manager. In this role, he was responsible for the management, sales origination, and leadership of SVB’s largest regional division, which represented approximately 25% of the commercial bank’s total gross profit. At the time, the Northeast Division served over 2,000 technology, life science, and private equity clients throughout nine Northeastern states.

From 1994 to 2003, Selfridge served in various leadership roles in sales and credit with SVB Financial, including SVP & Manager of the Northern Virginia (DC Metro) Technology Group, Southeast Division Senior Credit Officer, and SVP & Manager of Structured Trade Finance. Before joining Silicon Valley Bank in 1994, Selfridge held corporate and international banking positions with HSBC Group and Wells Fargo. While at HSBC, Selfridge managed corporate banking relationships for several well-known technology companies, including Cisco Systems in its earlier stages.

Selfridge holds a B.S. degree from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and an MBA from the University of San Francisco. He is a member of several of SVB’s executive committees, including the Commercial Bank Steering Committee, SVB’s Asset Management Investment Committee, the IT Steering Committee, and the Credit Policy Committee. Selfridge currently serves on the board of directors for the Housing Trust of Santa Clara and he is a member the Advisory Board at the Santa Clara University School of Business. He is also an advisory board member of the IBOS Association, a London based banking alliance between 14 major financial institutions focused on providing corporate banking solutions in Europe.

Aydin Senkut
Founder and President, Felicis Ventures

Aydin Senkut is the Founder and President of Felicis Ventures. He's an active angel investor in early-stage, consumer internet start-ups. His current portfolio encompasses over 25 companies including Brightroll, Freewebs, Meraki Networks, Mint, Powerset, Saynow, and Voicestar (acquired by Marchex).

Prior to starting Felicis Ventures, he was a Senior Manager at Google, responsible for strategic partner development and account management in Japan and Asia Pacific. Aydin joined Google in 1999 as a Product Manager to launch Google's first 10 international sites and then became the first International Sales Manager at Google, closing numerous strategic syndication partners on 4 continents. Before joining Google, Aydin was the Product Manager for Data Visualization and Data Mining software MineSet, and led the business development efforts for the financial services industry at SGI.

Aydin received a BS in Business Administration with Honors from Boston University . He also earned an MBA in Marketing from the Wharton School and an MA in International Studies from the School of Arts at the University of Pennsylvania with a scholarship from Long Term Credit Bank of Japan . He serves on the board of Lead 21 and is a member of The Director's Circle of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Steve Stephansen
President, Sand Hill Angels, Inc

Steve Stephansen is a founding member and serves as President of Sand Hill Angels, Inc. Steve has over twenty-five years of experience in a variety of product markets, including mobile software, enterprise software and semiconductors.

Steve is currently the CEO of Agoura Technologies, Inc. a venture-backed company that has developed new light management films that improve the energy efficiency, brightness, contrast, and viewing angle of LCDs.

Steve holds a BSEE from Lehigh University, an MSEE from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and an MS in Management from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he attended the Sloan Program.

Bill Tai
Partner, Charles River Ventures 

Bill joined CRV in 2002 to lead it’s West coast practice.  He has 16 years of experience as a venture capitalist, and has had over 20 portfolio companies become publicly listed (16) and or be acquired (7). His portfolio of early stage projects spans web services, communications systems, and enabling technologies. In 2005 he was named by Forbes to their list of "Top 100 dealmakers in Technology".

Bill represents CRV on the board of MAXTHON, a ‘web 2.0’ browser company with over 180 Million downloads to date and is an angel investor in VideoEgg.  His CRV portfolio also includes Avvenu, Nantero, Rosum and WangYou Media among other companies. He is also on the board of public companies Microtune (Nasdaq: TUNE) and Transmeta (Nasdaq: TMTA) and serves as an outside director of TRADEBEAM, a company he founded.

Specific to the panel topic, prior to his VC career, he positioned public offerings while at Alex. Brown and Sons for Adaptec, Atmel, Cirrus Logic, Dallas Semiconductor, Exar, and Zilog.

He holds a B.S.E.E, with Honors, in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois as well as an M.B.A. from Harvard Graduate School of Business.  He is an acknowledged kiteboarding addict and maintains a blog about the sport at Kiteboarding at http://www.kitevc.blogspot.com/.

Eldad Tamir
President and Joint CEO, Tamir Fishman Group

Founder and Joint CEO of the Tamir Fishman Group since its foundation in 1996.

Eldad is considered one of the pillars of the Israeli investing world, with over 20 years of experience in investment banking, investment management and venture capital. Eldad has managed dozens of public offerings and M&A transactions on stock markets in the USA, Europe, and Israel. Eldad is one of the founders of the venture capital funds Eucalyptus and Tamir Fishman Venture Capital II, and serves as a managing partner in the Group's venture capital funds. He is also the active chairman of Tamir Fishman Investment Management, which handles the management of portfolios, mutual and provident funds, and employee benefit programs.

Eldad previously served as Executive Vice President of the Evergreen Group and CEO of Evergreen Capital Markets, he founded Evergreen Investment Management and Evergreen Mutual Funds. Within this framework, he was responsible for the relationship between Evergreen and Robertson Stephens, and managed all of the company's business activity. Eldad also served as VP of Finance and Investments at the financial arm of the Clal Ltd., one of the leading companies in the Israeli economy, and as a strategic planning consultant at SBD, where he led strategic consulting for companies at the forefront of the economy.

Eldad has also taught investment banking and investment management in the MBA program at Tel Aviv University. His other activities include volunteer service as a member of the advisory committee of Tmura, a non-profit venture capital fund, and as a member of the investment committee for Tel Aviv University funds.

Eldad holds an undergraduate degree in Economics and an MBA from Tel Aviv University.

Eldad is married, and is the father of five children.

Mark Tsimelzon
Founder, President and CTO, Coral8

Mark Tsimelzon is the Founder, President & CTO of Coral8, the leading provider of Complex Event Processing software. Coral8's CEP engine is used by a number of large investment banks, hedge funds, web sites, hospitals, and other enterprises that need to analyze large volumes of real-time events to monitor operations, discover opportunities, and address threats.  The Coral8 Engine has been benchmarked to analyze up to one millions events / second with sub-millisecond latency.  Mark founded Coral8 in 2003 and currently runs engineering, QA, product management, customer care, and pre-sale and post-sale organizations.

Prior to Coral8, Mark spent several years at Akamai Technologies, where he led the design and architecture of Akamai's Edge Computing strategy and platform.  The Edge Computing platform has been acclaimed by customers to deliver unparalleled scalability, reliability, performance, and cost advantages to their applications. Mark was also responsible for major partnerships with IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Vignette, ATG, and other technology vendors. Akamai's Edge Computing is the largest distributed
computing platform of its kind, comprised of 20,000 hosts across 65 countries.

Mark joined Akamai via the acquisition of his first startup, CallTheShots. Founded in 1998, CallTheShots was an early example of a Web 2.0 company, introducing the notions of user-driven personalization, syndication, and mash-ups.  CallTheShots was selected by Red Herring in 2000 as one of top 20 emerging technology companies. He successfully negotiated the acquisition of his company to Akamai Technologies in 2000.

Mark also has a diverse development and management background amounting to key product releases at CETR, Eclipse International, Teknekron Software Systems (now TIBCO), and Mystic River Software. He has B.S. in Mathematics & Computer Science from MIT and has done research in distributed systems at Stanford University.

James M. Vickery
Partner, DLA Piper

James is a Partner with DLA Piper, a law firm with 3,400 lawyers in 25 countries and 64 offices throughout the United States, Europe, CIS, Russia, the Middle East, and Asia. Jim has been the partner in charge of the Intellectual Property and Technology Transactions Group in the Austin Office of DLA Piper since 1999, prior to which he practiced in the field of Intellectual Property transactions and litigation in the Bay Area. Jim concentrates his
practice in technology licensing, strategic alliances, business contracts, and intellectual property strategic planning and counseling, representing clients from emerging technology companies in venture funding stages to public companies in merger and acquisitions transactions. Jim frequently negotiates complex technology development, licensing and transfer agreements, negotiates international manufacturing and distribution agreements, and counsels clients regarding various intellectual property issues including copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets.

Jim is a frequent speaker on intellectual property licensing, technology transfer and joint venture issues for business and professional groups. He is an active member of the Intellectual Property Section of the American Bar Association and the American Intellectual Property Law Associations. Jim received his Doctor of Jurisprudence with honors from the University of Texas, and is licensed to practice in both California and Texas.

Tony Wasserman
Director of the Software Management MS Program, Carnegie Mellon West
Executive Director, Center for Open Source Investigation (COSI)

Tony Wasserman is Director of the Software Management MS program at Carnegie Mellon West, and the Executive Director of its Center for Open Source Investigation (COSI), which focuses on the evaluation and adoption of open source software, as well as its use in mobile devices. 

In 2000, Tony became VP of Bluestone Software (acquired by HP in 2001), responsible for its West Coast Labs, where he led the creation of the award-winning open source Total-e-Mobile toolkit, which allowed mobile devices to connect to web applications. During the dot-com boom, he was VP of Engineering for a startup in San Francisco.

Tony is best known as the Founder and CEO of Interactive Development Environments (IDE), which built the innovative Software through Pictures multiuser modeling environment, which ran on numerous Unix workstations. Before starting IDE, Tony was a Professor of Medical Information Science at the University of California, San Francisco, and a Lecturer in the Computer Science Division at the University of California, Berkeley. He and his team developed and released the User Software Engineering development environment under a BSD open source license in 1981.

Tony is a frequent speaker at both research-oriented and commercial conferences.  Dr. Wasserman has a Ph.D. in computer sciences from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and a B.A. in mathematics and physics from UC Berkeley,
and has been selected as a Fellow of both the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

Randy Williams
Founder and CEO, Keiretsu Forum

Randy Williams founded the Keiretsu Forum in September 2000, to provide a disciplined and structured approach to private equity investing. Randy's passion for investing and bringing together like-minded community leaders has created powerful and giving environment for entrepreneurs.

Randy has 25 years of experience in finance, real estate, and marketing. He currently holds board and advisory positions in eight companies. Randy is co-founder and Director of Diablo Valley Bank, which was acquired by Heritage Bank in 2007. Randy was President of Pacific Union Commercial Brokerage, founder of the LaMorinda Bank, and Managing Director of Kennedy-Wilson International, an international real estate investment company.

Randy is also the founder of the Keiretsu Forum Charitable Foundation. Since its inception in 2001, 91 deserving charities have been granted sizable donations. The goal of the Keiretsu Forum Charitable Foundation is to grant $250,000 annually, to worthy local charities throughout the Keiretsu Forum regional chapters.

Randy is a frequent guest speaker at investment conferences, leading universities, and business schools.

Randy holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California Berkeley and Masters degree from St. Mary's College of California. He is an avid Masters swimmer, holding past Master's World Records. He was also an All-American Water Polo player at Cal. He lives in Orinda with his wife Maile and their two children, Ford and Summer.

Don Wood
Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Don leads the global expansion of DFJ’s Network Affiliate Funds into new geographic and sector markets. Most recently, Mr. Wood was a General Partner at Vanguard Ventures where he invested in information technology, Internet services, and energy technologies. Mr. Wood serves as board member of Casabi, Cooking.com, Sylantro Systems, Vocera Communications and ZipRealty (ZIPR). Mr. Wood also serves as Chairman of the Board
of the Entrepreneurs Foundation, a non-profit community organization.

Prior to Vanguard Ventures, Mr. Wood was President of Metricom and a member of its Board of Directors, where he led the creation of the wireless Internet service known as Ricochet. Prior to Metricom, Mr. Wood was with Octel Communications, Inc., worldwide leader in voicemail systems, where he was responsible for marketing, product management and sales engineering. In 1987, he co-founded Wood-Howard Products and licensed his patent for a folding, laminated publishing format to Simon and Schuster, Rand McNally, FastMark and others. Today more than 100 million products have been sold under these licenses. Earlier, he was Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing with International Power Technology, supplier of micro-turbine, co-generation power systems, and was a management consultant with McKinsey and Company. Mr. Wood also worked in the policy-planning department of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C. Mr. Wood earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Stanford University, and a Master in Business Administration degree from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Jeffrey Yu
Managing Director, The Angels' Forum

Jeffrey Yu recently joined The Angels’ Forum as Managing Director.  He has spent the last 10 years working with and investing in early stage companies.  Prior to joining The Angels’ Forum, Jeff was a Principal at Crescendo Ventures from 2000 to 2007 where he focused on investments in enabling technologies such as semiconductors, optical systems and networking solutions.

From 1990 – 2000, he held various responsibilities at Nortel Networks including R&D, new product introduction, network planning, product management and business development. Before his work at Nortel Networks, Jeff developed ultrasonic techniques for testing materials at the Industrial Materials Institute of Canada; and prior to that worked as a software engineer for CAE Electronics. Jeff holds both a Master's and Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from McGill University. 

George Zachary
Partner, Charles River Ventures 

George Zachary joined Charles River Ventures in 2004. He brings more than 17 years of operating and investing experience in computing and consumer technology. George’s focus is on building great services and software technology companies. George led CRV’s investments in cRight and GoTV, and is on the board of directors at both companies.

Previously, he was a general partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV). His directorships included: Accrue Software (Nasdaq:ACRU), Andale, Critical Path (Nasdaq: CPTH), Ovation Entertainment, Sandcastle (acquired by Adobe, Nasdaq:ADBE), Securify (acquired by Kroll-O’Gara, Nasdaq: KROG), Shutterfly, Supertracks (acquired by Centerspan) and Telebot (acquired by Z-Tel, Nasdaq: ZTEL).

Prior to MDV, George led the Nintendo 64 development business at Silicon Graphics, managed sales and marketing for virtual reality pioneer VPL Research, and served as a product marketeer at CATS Software. He is a board advisor at the MIT Sloan School of Business and Stanford BASES. He is also an advisor to X PRIZE. George earned a joint BS from MIT and MIT Sloan School of Business.