Speakers & Mentors

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Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz

Ben Horowitz is a co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm that helps entrepreneurs become successful CEOs and build important and enduring companies. Andreessen Horowitz provides seed, venture and growth-stage funding to the best new technology companies, and the firm currently has $2.7 billion under management across three funds. Among its 90 investments are Airbnb, Box, [...] speaker-2012
Cory Ondrejka, Facebook

Cory a director of software engineering at Facebook. Before Facebook, he traveled an eclectic path from the US Naval Academy and nuclear submarines to defense contracting and video game development. He cofounded Walletin, a stealth startup, and Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life. He served as Executive Vice President for Global Digital Marketing at EMI Music, and was a [...] speaker-2012
Marlon Nichols, Intel Capital

Marlon Nichols started his career in the software industry where he successfully led the deployment of many global enterprise software and business process improvement initiatives for Fortune 100 enterprises. During his time as a technologist, Marlon played a key role in the European expansion of a Cambridge based software company. Upon returning to the United States, Marlon worked as a [...] mentor-2012
Eva Ho, Factual

As the VP of Marketing, Sales and Operations at Factual, Eva manages all aspects of the brand, revenue generation, HR and finance. In 2008, she co-founded Navigating Cancer, a website and tools that empower cancer patients to navigate their best care. She is also very active in the non-profit sector, founding Whole Child LA in 2008, a community pediatric pain [...] mentor-2012
Richard Kerby, IVP

Richard Kerby joined Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) in September of 2010. He focuses primarily on identifying and evaluating later-stage investments in the information technology and digital media sectors. Richard actively works with IVP portfolio companies Dropbox, Twitter, Buddy Media, Shazam, Hands-On Mobile, LensVector, RGB Networks, Sugar, Vonage (VG), and Yext. Prior to joining IVP, Richard worked in the Investment Banking [...] mentor-2012
Chris Hutchins, Milk Inc

Chris Hutchins runs Business at Milk Inc, an idea lab in San Francisco that recently launched Oink, an app to rate and share the things you love. Prior to that Chris was at SimpleGeo, where he managed Business Development and Content Partnerships. He is also the founder of LaidOffCamp, a movement aimed at helping the unemployed learn new skills during [...] mentor-2012
Ricky Yean, Crowdbooster

As CEO of Crowdbooster, wants everyone to understand how to get more out of social media. He first began experimenting with Twitter in 2008 and quickly became fascinated by the potential for new relationships between us and the people, things and organizations that we love. Crowdbooster is funded by Y Combinator and prominent angel investors, and serves clients like Lil [...] mentor-2012
Thomas Knoll, Launchrock

Co-founder & Hustler at http://launchrock.com who’s done Community Cultivation and Customer Development for Zappos, UserVoice, and Seesmic. I advise companies on strategies and tactics for community cultivation and customer development to help them: discover, welcome, acquire and retain an active community of customers; and transform customer support and social engagement into a source of customer evangelism. mentor-2012
Richard White, UserVoice

Richard White, founder, CEO of UserVoice speaker-2011
Michael Seibel, Socialcam

Michael Seibel is the CEO of Socialcam. Socialcam is the easiest way to create and share videos from your smartphone. The company’s goal is to become the default mobile video application for iOS and Android. Before Socialcam, Michael Seibel was the co-founder and CEO of Justin.tv. During his 5 years he oversaw strategy, investor relations, business development and monetization. During [...] mentor-2012
Hiten Shah, KISSmetrics

Hiten started on the Internet by founding a Internet marketing consultancy, ACS. He then went on to create Crazy Egg, an analytics tool that visualizes the user experience on a website. Now with KISSmetrics he is building a data driven solution to help online businesses make better business decisions. Hiten is passionate about helping other entrepreneurs and startup people. speaker-2012
Sean Percival

Sean Percival is an internet entrepreneur based in Los Angeles, California. He launched his first internet startup in 2006 for a mere $12, then sold it in 2009 at an 835,000% return on investment. His second internet company (the popular media site lalawag), which he founded with his wife Laurie, was created in 2008 and sold in 2010. He’s also [...] speaker-2012
Kevin Marks, Salesforce.com

Kevin Marks is VP of Open Cloud Standards at Salesforce.com, and a host and co-founder of TummelVision.tv Over the last 20 years he’s moved between giant companies and founding startups – BBC, The UK MultiMedia Corporation, Apple QuickTime, Technorati, Google, BT. The common thread has been working out how people, computers and media can complement each other, and solving the [...] speaker-2012
Erik Martin, reddit.com

Erik Martin is the General Manager for social news network reddit.com and has been with reddit since 2008. Prior to joining reddit, he was the head of digital media for independent film & music label. He was also a senior agent and videographer for the public pranksters and internet darlings Improv Everywhere. mentor-2012
James Levine, Mentor

500 Startups Mentor, Slave to Expensive Typewriters…startup geek, formerly CTO at Simply Hired. Travel, film, and music buff. Mountain View, CA mentor-2012
Eric Ries, Lean Startup

Eric Ries is the creator of the Lean Startup methodology and the author of the popular entrepreneurship blog Startup Lessons Learned. He previously co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering [...] speaker-2012
Mitchell Kapor, Kapor Capital

Mitchell Kapor, 60, is a pioneer of the personal computing revolution and has been at the forefront of information technology for 30 years as an entrepreneur, software designer, angel investor, and activist. He is widely known as founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3, the “killer application” which made the personal computer ubiquitous in the business [...] speaker-2011 speaker-2012
Brad Feld, Foundry Group

Brad has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over twenty years. Prior to co-founding Foundry Group, he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures, a company that helped launch and operate software companies and later became a venture affiliate of the predecessor to Mobius Venture Capital. Brad currently serves on the board of directors [...] speaker-2011 speaker-2012
Brian Patterson, Gunderson, Dettmer

Brian is a partner in our Silicon Valley office. Brian’s business law practice is focused on the representation of emerging growth companies throughout their lifecycles and in the representation of venture capital and private equity investment funds. Brian is broadly experienced with business and corporate formation and governance matters, deal structuring, equity and debt financing transactions, public offerings, a variety [...] speaker-2011
Doug Williams, Twitter

Doug Williams, @dougw Business Development at Twitter speaker-2011
Navarrow Wright, Interactive One

Navarrow Wright is the CTO of Interactive One, Interactive One is a digital and print media company focusing on the African-American and urban market. As CTO Wright is responsible for the technical strategy of all the Interactive One online properties which include Hellobeautiful, The UrbanDaily, NewsOne, Elev8 and BlackPlanet. He is also responsible for the technical management of the Radio [...] speaker-2011 speaker-2012
Shellye Archambeau, MetricStream Inc

As the CEO of MetricStream, Shellye Archambeau is responsible for running all facets of the business. Ms. Archambeau has a proven executive management track record and over 20 years of experience driving sales growth in the technology industry. Prior to joining MetricStream, Ms. Archambeau was Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President of Sales for Loudcloud, Inc, responsible for all [...] speaker-2011
Matt Van Horn, Path

Matt Van Horn, VP of Business Development at Path speaker-2011 speaker-2012
Lars Kamp, Founder Labs

Lars currently serves as Accenture’s Global Consumer Technology Segment Lead. In this role he is responsible for coordinating Accenture’s research efforts and sharing the latest trends and industry knowledge with his clients as well as Accenture’s Communications & High Tech Practice. Lars also works with one of Accenture’s top 10 global clients. His work has focused on wireless, mobile, software [...] speaker-2011
Vivek Wadhwa, Duke

Vivek Wadhwa is a senior research associate with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, an executive in residence/adjunct professor at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, and a visiting scholar at the School of Information at University of California at Berkeley. He helps students prepare for the real world, lectures in class and leads groundbreaking [...] speaker-2011
Laurence Toney, Zynga

Laurence Toney is a seasoned consumer internet executive who likes to work in exciting environments with passionate people. He enjoys solving complex problems by building and developing great teams that are motivated to create great products that solve real customer problems. Prior to Zynga, Laurence was the Global General Manager, Experience Management with Nike.com. He was responsible for developing and [...] speaker-2011
Stephen DeBerry, Bronze Investments

Stephen DeBerry makes and manages investments that align strong financial returns with positive social impact. He is a partner at the early stage technology investing firm, Kapor Capital and the founder of Bronze Investments, an asset management firm serving founders, foundation endowments, and families who seek to align their investment practices with their missions and values. Some of Stephen’s previous [...] speaker-2011
Charles Hudson, SoftTech VC

Charles is a Venture Partner at SoftTech VC and the CEO and Co-Founder of Bionic Panda Games, a mobile games company based in San Francisco, CA. Until February 2010, he was the VP of Business Development for Serious Business, a leading producer of social games for the social web. Zynga acquired Serious Business in February of 2010. In addition to working at [...] speaker-2011
Greg Tseng, Tagged

Greg Tseng co-founded Tagged in October 2004 and has served as Chief Executive Officer since its inception. He has been a driving force in creating Tagged.com with his partner, co-founder and long-time friend, Johann Schleier-Smith. Previously, Greg co-founded Avivon Inc., which introduced the textbook comparison-shopping agent flyingchickens.com to the Harvard campus during the Fall semester of 1999, and served as [...] speaker-2011
Johann Schleier-Smith, Tagged

Johann is co-founder and CTO at Tagged. He is responsible for building up and expanding the social network that enables and inspires anyone to meet and socialize with new people. He has developed various products used by millions, created and managed large-scale infrastructures, innovated software development techniques and built recommendation engines and machine learning systems that move the industry forward. [...] speaker-2011
Pablo Fuentes, Proven

Pablo Fuentes CEO & Co-Founder proven.com Pablo is committed to helping workers in the manual trades. Prior to WorkersNow, Pablo worked in marketing, sales, and fundamental analysis in the finance industry at Trust Company of the West, Prudential Equity Group, and Stadium Capital Management. Most recently, he worked at Progress Financial (aka Progreso Financiero), a financial institution lending to under-banked [...] speaker-2011
Hamet Watt, bLife, Inc.

Hamet Watt is a co-founder and Co-CEO of bLife, Inc. and also a co-founder and Chairman of MoviePass, Inc. Previously, Hamet was an entrepreneur-in-residence with True Ventures. As an entrepreneur and company-builder focused on solving large problems. Hamet has brought several successful innovations to market—and frequently advises businesses on their own innovations. A leader in the Los Angeles entrepreneurial community, [...] speaker-2011
Jay Jamison, BlueRun Ventures

Jay Jamison, Venture Partner, joined BlueRun Ventures in November 2010 and is based in Menlo Park. He focuses on early stage mobile, consumer and enterprise opportunities. Jay has 12 years of product management and marketing experience in the software and internet industry. Previous experience includes leading Microsoft Japan’s Windows Business Group as Senior Director, and other senior level roles [...] speaker-2011