SVOD2008 Speakers

Ester Dyson
Director, 23andMe

Esther Dyson is a long-time catalyst of start-ups in information technology in the US and other markets, including Russia. Since selling her company, EDventure Holdings, to CNET Networks in 2004, she has taken on newer challenges in private aviation and space as well as in health care (as a director of 23andMe, a consumer genetics company). Her IT investments have included Flickr and del.icio.us (both sold to Yahoo!), and Medstory (sold to Microsoft), as well as Meetup Inc., Eventful.com, Boxbe and Voxiva; She sits on the boards of the latter four companies. She is also an active investor in air and space, with holdings in Space Adventures and Zero-G Corporation, as well as XCOR Aerospace, Constellation Services International, Coastal Technologies Group, Dopplr.com, Airship Ventures and Icon Aircraft. She operates her business under the (reclaimed) name of EDventure Holdings.

Guy Kawasaki
Director, Garage Technology Ventures

Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of eight books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Daniel Rosensweig
Operating Principal, Quadrangle Group LLC

Daniel Rosensweig joined Quadrangle Group LLC in 2007 and is an Operating Principal focused on the firm’s media and communications private equity business. Prior to joining Quadrangle, Mr. Rosensweig was Chief Operating Officer of Yahoo! responsible for product development, marketing, international operations, and North American operations. Before Yahoo!, Mr. Rosensweig was President of CNET Networks, responsible for many of the operations globally, and played a critical role in overseeing the successful integration of CNET and ZDNet. During his tenure at CNET, Mr. Rosensweig was a key participant in company-wide efforts to develop and introduce innovative new Internet advertising formats, such as interactive messaging units. Before joining CNET, Mr. Rosensweig was an 18-year veteran of Ziff-Davis, where he served in many capacities, including President and Chief Executive Officer of ZDNet, Inc. from 1997 to 2000. He built ZDNet as a standalone company from Ziff-Davis, successfully took the company public, grew the business to become both profitable and among the top 20 most visited networks on the Internet, and finally merged with CNET. Mr. Rosensweig was President of Ziff-Davis Internet Publishing Group from 1996 to 1997, where he oversaw magazine titles such as Inter@ctive Week and Yahoo! Internet Life. He was Vice President and Publisher of PC Magazine from 1994 to 1996, and Associate Publisher from 1992 to 1994. Under his leadership, PC Magazine became the leading computer magazine in both audience reach and revenue.

Mr. Rosensweig received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Hobart College, Geneva, New York. He, is a board member of SkyRider, is on the national advisory board of the non-profit organization DonorsChoose.org and formerly served as Co-Chairman of ONE.org.

John Balbach
Managing Partner, Cleantech Group

John Balbach is Managing Partner of the Cleantech Group, and heads the Cleantech Group's San Francisco office. Prior to joining the Cleantech Group, John served as a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, advisor to world leaders, founder of international non-profits and senior policy maker in Washington, D.C. John's responsibilities have included managing US national security allocations exceeding $12 billion, launching 18 early-stage companies and raising or advising on the placement of $350 million in capital for private and public companies.

In Silicon Valley, John served on the founding team of Blueprint Ventures, a venture capital firm with $200 million under management, and was a pioneer of the global build-out of broadband wireless networks which now serve millions of customers globally.

In the public arena, John served as a Senior Aide to US Senator Gordon Humphrey, with responsibilities spanning international environment, trade, military policy and conflicts including Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua and Sudan. He was co-founder of the State of the World Forum, a multi-year summit providing common ground during the post-Cold War era. The State of the World Forums brought together leaders from 80 countries, including Presidents George Bush, Vicente Fox, Oscar Arias, Thabo Mbeki and Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher, Benazir Bhutto and Hau Pei-tsun.

John has lived in North America, Europe and Asia and his work has taken him to over 65 countries. He currently serves on the board of the Global Footprint Network and is a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. He holds a BA in International Affairs from George Washington University.

Dmitry Balin
CEO, DB Best Technologies LLC and Pikaba.com

As an entrepreneur and database technologist, Dmitry founded a software startup (DB Best) in Silicon Valley at 2002, developed database migration technology, and sold it to Microsoft at 2005. He built a software team in Ukraine from zero to 75+ employees – the only company in Eastern Europe developing a full software product for Microsoft. After the acquisition Dmitry was Director in the SQL Server group at Microsoft, where he led their “Migrate to SQL Server” program generating over $100M annual revenue for Microsoft database business. He’s a frequent speaker on database topics at TechEd, PASS, TechReady, and other conferences.

After leaving Microsoft earlier this year, Dmitry has been developing new database products and is focusing now on his new startup in Web 2.0 space – social shopping marketplace http://www.Pikaba.com, where consumers post their requests for products/services they wish to buy, merchants/service providers place bids on these requests, and social network members provide recommendations and advice (e.g. “where to buy” or “which model to select”). With just launched Russian version of the website (http://Pikaba.ru) he’s planning to capture the rapidly expanding market in Russia and Ukraine.

Arkady Borkovsky
CTO, Yandex Labs

In his early career Arkady worked at the Computer Center of Academy of Sciences of the USSR on early artificial intelligence and non-linear physics projects. The lab he worked for happened to be the first place in the Soviet Union to use an IBM PC. This led Arkady to switch his academic career to developing the first software that was commercially sold in the Soviet Union. Arkady was a Co-founder of Arcadia Intelligent Systems which after several transformations became Yandex, the most successful search portal in Russia. From early 1990s Arkady worked on intelligent text processing at different search companies. He recently left Yahoo! to put together Yandex Labs – the Yandex development center in California.

Arkady is a graduate of the Computer Science Department of the Moscow State University.

Peter Burris
Principal Analyst, Research Director, Forrester Research

Peter serves Technology Product Management & Marketing professionals and helps them transform B2B marketing capabilities to provide direct value to customers, thereby improving engagement efficiencies, sales effectiveness, channel partner orchestration, and customer input to product strategy and planning activities. He is a leading expert on evolving Web 2.0 infrastructure, with a focus on how requirements to utilize Web 2.0 technologies to improve organizational effectiveness and efficiencies translate into different combinations of modern server, storage, database, and middleware architecture, technology, and products.

Prior to joining Forrester, Peter was a highly regarded IT industry consultant and analyst, including executive research and business positions at META Group (now Gartner) and IDC. He was the lead author of META Group's influential adaptive infrastructure strategies program. He has been extensively quoted in leading media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, NPR, and the Palo Alto Daily News. He also has written columns for CNET, ZDNet, and the IT Manager's Journal.

Peter graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in economics and political science.

Jeff Clavier
Founder & Managing Partner, SoftTech VC

Based in Palo Alto, California, Jean-Francois “Jeff” Clavier is the Founder and Managing Partner of SoftTech VC, one of the most active seed stage investors in Web 2.0 startups. Since 2004, Jeff has invested in more than 20 consumer Internet companies developing new concepts (such as social media) or revisiting “old” ideas with a new set of economics and technologies. In 2007, Jeff was recognized as one of the 13 “Web 2.0 King Makers” by Business 2.0, and is often noted for his investments in categories such as “passion-centric communities,” or for having already sold five of his companies in the past two years through successful M&As. Jeff’s 19 years of operational, entrepreneurial and venture capital experience enable him to add relevant perspective and value to the companies in which he invests. Jeff’s initial investments were in the search, social media, online communities and application infrastructure sectors. Most recently, he added gaming and monetization to his investment focus, and he has been dabbling in Enterprise 2.0, system infrastructure and a few other emerging categories. Jeff invests primarily, but not exclusively, in Silicon Valley-based startups.

Jeff was born, raised and educated in France, earning a MS in Computer Science and a research degree in Distributed Computing. He has been happily living in Silicon Valley since 2000 with his wife Bernadette and their two children. When he is not busy working, Jeff likes to spend time with his family and friends, cook, collect wine and wander around Outland on his hunter. He also skies, hikes, dives and plays golf so poorly it is not even funny.

Matt Cohler
General Partner, Benchmark Capital; formerly VP of Product Management, Facebook; VP & GM, LinkedIn

Matt Cohler has extensive experience working with great entrepreneurs to build lasting consumer Internet companies, having served in senior management roles at Facebook and LinkedIn. Most recently, he served as vice president of product management at Facebook, overseeing the company’s product development organizations. Matt joined Facebook in early 2005 as one of the first five employees hired by the company’s founders and its first external executive hire, and he’s been credited with helping drive Facebook’s strategy, organizational growth and product direction.

Previously, Matt served as vice president and general manager at LinkedIn, where he was a member of the company’s founding team.

Before LinkedIn, he was a consultant in McKinsey & Company’s Silicon Valley office and worked in Beijing for AsiaInfo, the telecom solutions provider that built China’s Internet infrastructure, prior to the company’s initial public offering.

Education: B.A. with honors and distinction from Yale University

Barry Cowan
Manager International Brand Strategies, Cisco

Barry Cowan has been with Cisco for eight years in a variety of marketing roles. In his current position as Manager, International Brand Strategy he works with regional marketing leaders to build, strengthen, and protect the Cisco brand globally and ensure that the Cisco corporate brand strategy is developed with attention to global considerations. Prior to joining Cisco Barry worked at Master- McNeil, a naming consultancy. He also worked as brand director at CoreBrand in New York after completing his doctorate in Linguistics at the University of Hawaii. Barry has travelled extensively and has lived in Japan and India. During his eight years at Cisco, Barry has conducted brand strategy workshops in 13 countries. Unfortunately, he has not yet visited Russia but hopes to sometime in the next year.

Dmitri Dubograev
Founder and Managing Partner, femida.us

Dmitri I. Dubograev is a founder and managing partner of FEMIDA.US in Washington, D.C. He focuses on representation of US and international clients in the information technology, finance, energy, telecommunication, software and biotechnology industries in cross-border transactions, technology transfers and corporate structuring and financing.

Mr. Dubograev received his degree in law with excellence from Belarussian State University in 1991 and his J.D. from Washington and Lee University in 1994. He is admitted to the District of Columbia and Virginia Bars.

Anna Dvornikova
President, AmBAR ; Founder & CEO, Entana Corp.

Anna is a Founder and CEO of Entana Corp., an entrepreneurship and venture advisory firm that focuses on providing business strategy, planning, fundraising, and positioning services to the early-stage technology start-ups, as well as angel financing. Anna serves on the Advisory Boards and the Board of Directors of several technology startup companies. She is the author of many articles on entrepreneurship, angel and venture financing.

Anna is the President of AmBAR, a non-profit business association of Russian-speaking professionals in the Silicon Valley with over 2,000 members. She is also a founder and the Chair of the SVOD Technology Investment Conference, a premier industry gathering which facilitates networking between Russian-speaking technology entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, angel investors and other technology experts.

Previously, Anna was a Co-Founder and the VP of Business Development at BKP Security, a government IT security company. Prior to that, she was a Foreign Advisor at the international law firm of Coudert Brothers. Anna has her J.D. from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) and her Master of Laws degree from Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley.

Richard Guha
President, MENG, Partner, MaxBrandEquity

Over thirty years success in leading Fortune 500 companies as a C-level executive in General Management, Marketing, and Board member.

Started his career in marketing at Procter & Gamble, later becoming a Division Head at Mars, Inc, CMO at US West and BMC Software as well as President of Reliant Energy. Also a partner in two respected consulting firms, where he advised top management of Global 2000 companies. Has been on the Board of three highly successful companies, including two start-ups, on the Board of several major non-profits, and currently Board Chairman of one.

Graduated from Cambridge University with a Bachelors degree in Chemistry, Physics, and Math. He went on to become one of the youngest people to earn a Masters from Cambridge in Chemical Engineering.

Pitch Johnson
Founding Partner, Asset Management Company, early investor in Amgen

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.

Stas Khirman is serial entrepreneur, telecommunication expert and technological leader.

Stas Khirman has more than 20 years of experience in the software industry as an architect, manager, visionary and inventor. Prior to "Khirman&Son" , Stas co-found Skyrider - revolutionary company developing technologies to organize and monetize peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Prior to founding Skyrider, Stas co-founded Narus, a global leader in software and technology for the telecom industry and government agencies, where he designed the world’s most scalable network transaction analysis system. Khirman had previously served as the networking group leader at VDOnet, a pioneer in internet video. Khirman was behind the development of a number of standards organizations and participated in the early definition of the VoIP H.323 protocol.

Khirman holds a Master’s degree in Mathematics from the University of Kiev.

Natasha Krol
Managing Partner, Alexander and Krol Executive Search

Natasha Krol is a Managing Partner at Alexander and Krol, an Executive Search firm specializing in the US and Eastern European Technology Markets.

Prior to that, she was a Senior Client Partner with Korn/Ferry International’s Global Technology Market, based in the firm’s Silicon Valley office. 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.

Dmitriy Lisenkov
Managing Director, RUSNANO

Dmitriy has joined the Corporation in August 2008. He heads an investment team and is responsible for venture investments in innovative nanotechnology-based businesses. His team is organized as an internal venture capital fund, which manages deals from origination and due diligence to deal closing, business development and exit.

From 2003 and until joining RUSNANO Dmitriy worked as an investment officer for the management company of the Russian Technology Fund (“RTF”). RTF was established in 1995 and was the first venture capital fund, which invested in Russian technology companies. At RTF Dmitriy was responsible for investees’ business development and exits.

In 2007 Dmitriy co-founded the Bioprocess Capital Partners, the management company of the Bioprocess Capital Ventures (“BCV”). BCV is 3 billion rubles (~$110 million) venture capital fund, currently investing in Russian technology start-ups.

Dmitriy has an MS in Economics with honors from the St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance and an MBA in Finance and Investments with honors from the Zicklin School of Business, City University of New York.

Peter Loukianoff
Managing Partner, Almaz Capital Partners

Prior to co-founding Almaz Capital, Peter was a partner at Alloy Ventures from 2001-2008. Before his career in venture capital, Peter co-founded an enterprise software company and was an operating executive with two other successful Internet and mobility start-ups in Silicon Valley. From 1989 through 1994, he worked in Russia with prominent scientific institutions, including the Kurchatov Institute, Troitsk Triniti Research Center, and the Russian Academy of Sciences, to facilitate licensing arrangements with US companies, including Apple, Sun Microsystems, and General Atomics, among others. In 1991, Peter was the first to organize a Perestroika-era Russian-American symposium on technology transfer and commercialization. He is on the board of directors of Attune Systems, Apptera and Ravenflow, and is a co-inventor on five patent-pending voice advertising and mobile messaging technologies.

Peter earned an MBA and BS Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

Kirill Makharinsky
Co-Founder, YouNoodle

Kirill is the co-founder of YouNoodle.com, the startup innovation company which launched this year with funding from Peter Thiel, The Founders Fund, Max Levchin and several other investors. At YouNoodle Kirill designed and led the development of its first data product, Startup predictor - the first technology that analyzes data on thousands of early-stage startups and generates a scientific prediction of a company's future outcome at the time it is started. Startup Predictor was exposed to over 30 million people through media when it launched in August. Prior to YouNoodle, Kirill was an early employee and managed analytics and metrics at Slide, one of the top-ten most popular web properties in the world.

Previously he had been established as the #1 Graduate in the UK based on his work while at Oxford University. Kirill was also in the founding team and a President of Oxford Entrepreneurs (the largest student enterprise club in Europe) and graduated from Oxford University with a double first in Applied Mathematics.

Mickey Mantle
SVP of Development, Gracenote Inc. (a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America)

As Sr. Vice President of Development, M. W. Mantle (“Mickey”) oversees all engineering/development, quality assurance, operations, support, and professional services associated with Gracenote music recognition services and media management products. The Gracenote services and software are an integral part of the digital audio revolution, and provide music fans 24x7 access to a vast database of CD information (artists, albums, song titles) for media players enabled with Gracenote’s MusicID/CDDB products. Media Players such as Apple’s iTunes, WinAmp, Sony’s Sonic Stage, and thousands of other CD and media playing applications. Gracenote technology and data are also now being included in numerous consumer electronics products from companies such as Sony, Pioneer, Yamaha, Kenwood, Sanyo, Samsung, Philips, Thomson and dozens of other leading companies.

Prior to joining Gracenote, Mickey was Vice President of R&D/CTO at IMSI and Vice President of Engineering/CTO at Broderbund Software where he contributed to the development of many successful and award-winning products including “PrintShop Deluxe”, “Living Books,” “Myst,” “Riven,” and many more. Before that he was a contributor to many early 3D computer graphics products from Evans & Sutherland.

More recently, Mickey was General Manager of the 3D Graphics Division and a member of the Executive Management Committee at Pixar, where he was instrumental in developing Pixar's RenderMan™ software. The RenderMan™ software has been used extensively to create stunning special effects for dozens of movies such as “Lord of the Rings” and “Star Wars Episode I and II”, as well as feature length animated movies like “Toy Story” and “Finding Nemo,” among many others.

With a career spanning nearly 40 years developing hardware and software products, Mickey takes an active role in working with leading consumer products companies around the world to help develop and cutting edge products that incorporate Gracenote technology.

Gracenote was acquired by Sony Corporation of America in June, 2008 and continues to operate as an independently operating Sony subsidiary providing products and services to Sony as well as it numerous other customers.

Bill Mirbach
VP, Innovation and Marketing Processes, Intuit Inc

Bill Mirbach joined Intuit in November 2001 as vice president of direct marketing and direct sales. In this role, Mr. Mirbach will develop and implement new ways to more efficiently sell Intuit's products and services directly to small businesses and individuals, with less dependency on retail efforts. Before joining Intuit, Mr. Mirbach was president and CEO of NetLedger, Inc., where he raised capital from venture firms and strategic partners ADP and Paine Webber. He also grew the company from five to 85 employees and oversaw four product upgrades. Prior to NetLedger, he founded and was chairman of Mirbach and Co., a marketing services firm with diverse clients, including Lotus, Borland, Symantec and Contact International. Earlier, Mr. Mirbach held increasingly responsible positions in Procter & Gamble's advertising department, where he served as marketing manager for the patient care products division.

Mr. Mirbach earned a bachelor's degree with honors in sociology from Oberlin College and a master's in business administration from Harvard Business School.

Nikolay Mitushin
Investment Director, ABRT Venture Fund

From 2003-2007 Dr. Mitushin was Technology Entrepreneurship program manager at Intel Corporation helping Russian entrepreneurs to turn technological ideas into successful businesses. Prior to that in 2000-2003 Dr. Mitushin founded software company Arptek and served as it's CEO. For his achievements in Arptek Dr. Mitushin received recognition award from World Technology Network and was elected as Individual WTN Member in 2002.

Mitushin received his master's degree from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 2001 and a PhD degree in Investment Strategy Optimization from the same college in 2004. In 2005 he successfully completed Entrepreneurship Colloquium at Harvard Business School.

Christine Peterson
President, Foresight Institute

Christine Peterson writes, lectures, and briefs the media on coming powerful technologies, especially nanotechnology. She is Founder and President of Foresight Nanotech Institute,, the leading nanotech public interest group. Foresight educates the public, technical community, and policymakers on nanotechnology and its long-term effects.

She serves on the Advisory Board of the International Council on Nanotechnology, the Editorial Advisory Board of NASA's Nanotech Briefs, and on California's Blue Ribbon Task Force on Nanotechnology.

In 2004 she chaired the 1st Conference on Advanced Nanotechnology: Research, Applications, and Policy. For many years she directed the Foresight Conferences on Molecular Nanotechnology, organized the Foresight Institute Feynman Prizes, and chaired the Foresight Vision Weekends.

She lectures on nanotechnology to a wide variety of audiences, focusing on making this complex field understandable, and on clarifying the difference between near-term commercial advances and the "Next Industrial Revolution" arriving in the next few decades.

Her work is motivated by a desire to help Earth's environment and traditional human communities avoid harm and instead benefit from expected dramatic advances in technology. This goal of spreading benefits led to an interest in new varieties of intellectual property including open source software, a term she is credited with originating.

Wearing her for-profit hat, she serves on the Advisory Board of Alameda Capital.

In 1991 she coauthored Unbounding the Future: the Nanotechnology Revolution (Morrow, full text online ), which sketches nanotechnology's potential environmental and medical benefits as well as possible abuses. An interest in group process led to coauthoring Leaping the Abyss: Putting Group Genius to Work (knOwhere Press, 1997, full text online) with Gayle Pergamit.

Christine holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry from MIT.

Pavel Pogodin
Partner, Sughrue Mion PLLC

Pavel Pogodin, Ph.D., is a partner in Sughrue’s Silicon Valley office, where he counsels clients on all aspects of intellectual property law, including patent procurement, due diligence, product clearance, licensing and litigation. Dr. Pogodin has developed advanced tools and methodologies for efficiently and effectively building and managing intellectual property strategies and portfolios for various types of enterprises ranging from startups to FORTUNE 500 companies. He has successfully handled and managed cases in a broad range of technologies and has a vast litigation experience before the patent office as well as state and federal courts. Dr. Pogodin has authored numerous publications on scientific and legal topics and he is a frequent invited speaker at legal and corporate events and conferences both in the US and abroad.

Dr. Pogodin came to Sughrue from Oracle Corporation, the world’s largest supplier of database management systems and other business software. While at Oracle, Dr. Pogodin was responsible for all aspects of managing intellectual property internationally, including developing and implementing intellectual property strategies for various business units, supervising patent prosecution work, evaluating intellectual property of acquisition targets, negotiating complex intellectual property agreements, performing product clearances, and handling patent litigations. In addition, Dr. Pogodin has extensive experience in obtaining patent protection for software inventions, as well as inventions in telecommunications and hardware, image analysis, electronic circuit design and manufacture, physics, optics and semiconductor chip design, manufacture and testing.

Amy Rubin
Head of Brand Strategy, SanDisk Corporation

Amy is a seasoned marketer with a background spanning both consumer goods brand management and technology. Amy’s approach to marketing integrates packaged goods best practices with the tech sector’s “need for speed”. Experienced in translating complex technical ideas and “geek speak” into plain English, Amy has enjoyed a 16+ year track record of success in marketing in product categories as diverse as food, vitamins, cleaning products, semi-conductors, and MP3 players.

Currently the Director of Global Brand Management at SanDisk Corp., she spent 10 years at Intel where she enjoyed a variety of assignments including 5 years in the Asia Pacific regional headquarters. Her expertise spans new product introductions, category management, global brand strategy, integrated marketing communications, advertising, and internet marketing including social media. Prior to Intel she was a brand manager at Dole Food Co. and Procter & Gamble. She has also worked at several advertising and PR agencies in the US and Asia. Amy has an MBA and MA in Asian Studies from the University of Michigan and a B.S. from Northwestern University.

Amy is also a competitive runner and triathlete. A member of the Silicon Valley Triathlon Club (www.svtriclub.org), she enjoys mentoring “newbies” and volunteering at races. She lives in San Jose with her husband and two retired racing greyhounds.

Ilya Shirokov
Co-Founder, MoiKrug

Ilya co-founded and built Moikrug, the largest social network for Russian speaking professionals. In 2007 MoiKrug was acquired by Yandex, Russian leading search engine and portal.

Ilya hold masters degree in mathematics from Moscow State University and economics degree from New Economic School. Currently, Ilya is a second year MBA student at Stanford.

Dmitri Simonenko
President and CEO of Innalabs Inc; Founder, Plesk

Mr. Simonenko is the founder, president and CEO of Innalabs Inc. – the technology incubator for inertial systems and devices with offices in USA, Russia and Ukraine. All of the developing technologies where invented within the company or acquired in CIS countries.

Previously, Mr. Simonenko served as CEO and co-founder of Plesk, the leader in server automation software. Following his success at Plesk, and subsequent sale of his company to SW Soft (now Parallels), he run worldwide company operations as Executive Vice President.

Mr. Simonenko holds more than 10 patents in different fields.

Mr. Simonenko earned his degree in electrical engineer from George Mason University and was involved in the RF industry for over eight years, including work with network design and optimization of PCS technologies.

Evgeny Zaytsev, M.D., Ph.D.
Partner, Asset Management Company

Dr. Evgeny Zaytsev joined Asset Management Company in 2001 bringing diverse professional experience in operations and biomedical research.
He has been Chief Scientific Officer of Medico-Ecological Institute in Barnaul, Russia, which was responsible for studying the health and environmental effects of the former Soviet Union's nuclear testing program. The Institute developed into an internationally recognized research center during his seven-year tenure in that position. Evgeny is an author of 39 scientific and business publications, including 8 books. He received his M.D. cum laude and a Ph.D. from Altai Medical University, Russia in 1991, and his M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2002.

At Asset Management Company, Evgeny focuses on early stage investments in biotechnology and medical device companies. He is a Board Member of a number of private life sciences companies. Evgeny is an active business community leader. He is a founder of the US-Russia Technology Symposium at Stanford University, and the annual Silicon Valley Open Doors technology investment conference. Evgeny is a Board member and past president of the American Business Association of Russian Professionals (AmBAR).