Josh Breinlinger of Sigma West Venture Capital
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Josh Breinlinger joined Sigma West Venture Captial in 2010, bringing six years of startup experience. He has expertise in online marketing, marketplaces, and crowdsourcing. Josh was the 4th employee at oDesk, running Sales, Marketing, Product, and Business Development over five years and contributing to the company’s growth from almost nothing to $100M in annual services.
Josh was also the head of product and marketing at AdRoll, helping to design and build the #1 retargeting platform. Prior to oDesk and AdRoll, Josh was a consultant at Arthur D. Little. Josh has a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Blair Silverberg of Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Blair Silverberg is an Investment Professional at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Prior to joining DFJ, Blair worked as a product manager at Intuit where he ran the successful launch of Mint.com’s first paid offering.
Prior to Intuit, Blair co-founded an online tutoring marketplace, called TutorCloud, as part of education incubator Imagine K12’s first class of ed-tech startups. Blair graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Product Design, where he built a variety of products including an aluminum scooter and snowshoes that telescopically collapse into skis. He also served as the head of marketing for IDEAS, a non-profit promoting on-campus sustainability initiatives at universities in Europe and Asia.
Brian Ascher, Partner at Venrock
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Brian Ascher joined Venrock in 1998 as a Kauffman Fellow and is currently a partner based in Venrock’s Palo Alto office.
Brian focuses on a broad range of Internet (both consumer and B2B) and Healthcare IT investments and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Vocera (NYSE: VCRA), as well as several private companies, including Awarepoint, Retail Solutions, Inrix, and Billfloat.
Steve Goldberg, Partner at Venrock
Steve Goldberg
Steve joined Venrock in 2009 after having been CEO of several early stage companies including DataRunway, Vidient, Arcwave and CoWave Networks. Prior to that, he was Vice President of Research and Development at Nokia Internet Communications and Vice President and General Manager of the Wireless Communications Division at Cylink Corporation.
Steve also held senior management and engineering positions at Trimble Navigation and Hewlett Packard. At Venrock, Steve focuses on investments in the wireless, mobile and energy sectors. He currently sits on the Board of Directors of Asoka, FutureDial, Neoconix, Newport Media, Kineto Wireless and Quantenna Communications. Previous board seats include Canesta (Acq by Microsoft) and Teranetics (Acq by PLX Technology).
Sharon Wienbar of ScaleVP
Sharon Wienbar
Sharon Wienbar invests in Mobile and Internet companies at ScaleVP. She sits on the boards of Actiance, BeachMint, Everyday Health, PlayPhone, Reply.com and uTest. Prior to ScaleVP in 2001, Sharon was Vice President, Marketing for Critical Path and Amplitude Software. She spent most of the 1990’s at Adobe Systems, starting as Product Manager for Asian Products and later led marketing for many of Adobe’s applications, and spearheaded numerous cross-product initiatives. Before her technology line experience, Sharon practiced strategy consulting at Bain & Company for nearly five years. Sharon holds an A.M. and an A.B. in Engineering from Harvard University, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Cynthia Ringo, Managing Partner of DBL Investors
Cynthia Ringo
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Cynthia Ringo is a Managing Partner of DBL Investors, which she joined in April of 2008. Ms. Ringo currently sits on the board of directors of Solexant and View and works with LiveScribe, Kateeva and Ecologic.
Ms. Ringo was formerly a Managing Director of VantagePoint Venture Partners from 2002 to 2008 where she was Group Leader of the Communications, Systems, Internet and Media practice. Ms. Ringo served as a Board Member of the following VantagePoint portfolio companies: Entrisphere, Klipsh, Tymphany, Widevine, Livescribe, Provina and Meriton.
Ron Spector of Circini Partners
Ron Spector
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Ron Spector of Circini Partners has had a successful career of over 20 years as an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, investment banker, advisor and CEO in digital media, e-commerce, mobile and cloud services s. Ron’s career has seen an evolution from business lawyer, investment banker and venture capitalist to a C-Level executive and advisor, bringing a wealth of experience to both early stage and mature digital media and internet technology companies.
Jay Eum, Managing Director of TransLink Capital
Jay Eum
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Jay Eum is a Co-founder and Managing Director of TransLink Capital. Jay is responsible for TransLink’s investments in Carbonite (NASDAQ: CARB), Chartboost, Enterprise DB, Livescribe, SoundHound, Quixey and YuMe. He is also responsible for supporting TransLink’s portfolio companies with their customers and partners primarily in Korea. Most recently, Jay was the head of Samsung Ventures America. He was responsible for starting up the U.S. operations for Samsung Venture Investment Corp., the venture investment arm of Samsung, and leading their U.S.-based investments and portfolio management. Under Jay’s leadership, Samsung Ventures America grew to a team of five investment professionals and invested over US$80M in 27 U.S.-based start-up companies.
Inessa Obenhuber, Angel Investors & Business Expert
Inessa Obenhuber is an active Angel Investor and International investment capital professional. She is a Partner of Seraph Group, a growing global investment angel boutique fund. She also co-founded Kiventures, a company that assists U.S. and Russian companies with establishing operations and outsourcing of technology development of products in emerging markets.
Inessa Obenhuber has personally shepherded several promising ventures into the next phases of development, including PC Magazine in Russian language, AlwaysOnVacation, CFT and other startup companies, she invested in more than 23 of them. Noted for her technology inventions as well, Ms. Obenhuber has contributed to four U.S. patents over the course of her career.
Adam Levin, Crosslink Capital
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Adam Levin joined Crosslink in 2012 and evaluates investment opportunities in Consumer Internet and E-Commerce. Prior to joining Crosslink, Adam was part of Meebo Inc.’s business development team primarily growing product adoption among premium media companies as well as large game and video sites. Adam began his career at Goldman, Sachs & Co. as an Analyst in Investment Banking focused on Industrials and Business Services. He received his BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA, Management, from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Vish Mishra of Clearstone Ventures
Vish Mishra
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Vish Mishra joined Clearstone in March 2002 with over 30 years of leadership and management experience in the high tech industry including software, Internet, networking and telecommunications. He is a founder and served as a board member of Telera, a cutting edge voice web infrastructure company which was sold to Alcatel for $140 million in 2002.
Chris Gottschalk of Blumberg Capital
Founders Space Advisor & Speaker
Chris Gottschalk has over 8 years of experience as an investor, entrepreneur, operational executive and investment banker within the technology space. Prior to Blumberg, Chris worked at Menlo Ventures where he pursued investment opportunities in mobile, internet, gaming, software, and e-commerce.
Before joining Menlo Ventures, Chris served as the Director of Corporate Development & Analytics at PlayPhone. In this role he was responsible for M&A sourcing and execution, strategic partnerships, and improving operational metrics. Chris also worked as an investment banking analyst in the TMT group at Cowen and Company where he completed a number of M&A and equity transactions in the digital media and communications equipment sectors.
Deepak Jeevankumar of General Catalyst Partners
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Deepak Javeenkumar focuses on disruptive investments in cloud computing, databases, data center infrastructure and clean energy. He is based in our Palo Alto office. Prior to joining GC, Deepak worked at Sun Microsystems and was an intern at the Yale Investments Office. At Sun, he was deeply involved in designing some of the top 10 supercomputers in the industry and led the high performance computing practice in the Asia-Pacific region.
Leif Langensand of Angels Forum
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Leif Langensand is the Administrative Partner for The Halo Fund III Management Company and CFO for The Angels Forum Management Company. He has over twenty years experience in financial services and process improvement consulting. Prior to joining The Angels’ Forum Management Company, Leif held numerous finance positions at Charles Schwab, including CFO for Charles Schwabs International division. Leif has also worked at Price Waterhouse (PriceWaterhouseCoopers) where he was a consultant specializing in profitability measurement and improvement for Financial Services firms.
Tom Furlong of Granite Ventures
Tom Furlong
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Tom Furlong joined Granite Ventures in July 2000, after a successful career in Silicon Valley that most recently saw him as Vice President and General Counsel at Zhone Technologies, a communications equipment provider.
Prior to Zhone, Tom was a partner with the leading emerging growth company law firm of Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich, where he spent 13 years counseling technology companies, venture capitalists and investment banks. His clients included Adobe, Applied Signal, Ascend Communications, Datapath, Network General, Silicon Spice, SynOptics, Vantive, and Visigenic. While at Gray Cary, Tom was also a manager of their investment partnerships and sponsored several profitable investments.
Carl Showalter of Opus Capital
Carl Showalter
Carl Showalter brings more than 12 years of executive experience to Opus from innovative and market-making technology companies such as Juniper Networks and UUNET. Carl’s current areas of interest include the Internet of Things, network virtualization, next generation wireless, and data center/cloud infrastructure software.
Before joining Opus Carl was a General Partner with Lightspeed Venture Partners. Prior to this Carl served as Vice President of Marketing at Juniper Networks, where he built and led a global marketing and product management organization. Before Juniper, Carl was Vice President of Dial and Broadband Services for UUNET, overseeing the 300-person, $1B revenue division. He also held various sales and management positions at ANS, an AOL company, where he helped build AOL’s modem access network and then helped launch hardware-based firewalls and IP VPNs in the mid 1990’s.
Peter Gardner of Wavepoint Ventures
Peter Gardner
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Peter Gardner brings 17 years of professional venture investing to Wavepoint Ventures and has extensive experience raising capital, managing investment portfolios, structuring financings, and building management teams. He has served on the boards of more than a dozen early-stage, venture-backed technology companies.
Prior to Wavepoint Peter was a general partner at Allegis Capital, a $515 million venture capital firm located in Palo Alto, CA. During Peter’s tenure at Allegis the firm increased its capital under management seven-fold. Prior to Allegis, Peter was a vice president at Technology Funding, Inc., a $315 million venture capital firm. Before entering the venture capital industry Peter was a project leader at Weston Solutions, a national engineering and consulting company. He began his career in lab positions at Genetics Institute and Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Susan Preston of CalCEF Clean Energy Angel Fund
Susan Preston
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Susan Preston, General Partner at CalCEF Clean Energy Angel Fund, has spent most of her career in senior management positions in public and private companies, from general counsel to CEO. She has also been a partner in two national law firms and is a patent attorney.
Bruce Schechter of Band of Angels
Bruce Schechter
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Bruce Schechter is a member of the Band of Angels, and is an advisor to several technology startups. In particular, he enjoys mentoring early-stage founders on business strategy, go-to-market strategy, and fund raising.
Bruce began his career at Intel Corporation in 1980, and served a 17 year stint at the company in a variety of roles including Fab Process Development Engineering, Microprocessor Product Management, Technical Assistant to the Sr. VP of Corporate Strategy, and Director of Online Marketing. In 1997, Bruce was among the founding team of Pandesic LLC, a pioneer application service provider, where he served as Director of Operations Management and then Director of Strategic Alliances. In 2007, Bruce received his MS in Computer Science from Stanford, at twice the age of most of his classmates.
John Giddings, co-founder of The Silicon Valley Angels
John Giddings
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
John Giddings is the co-founder of The Silicon Valley Angels (now Tech Angel Group), which focuses on high tech seed stage opportunities and Clean Tech issues. He also is Principal of Clean Tech Integration, a consulting practice specializing in technology, business plan and funding services for clean tech start-ups, due diligence projects for venture capitalists, and analysis on the clean tech industry for Wall Street. John recently joined the adjunct Faculty of Santa Clara University’s Graduate School of Engineering as a professor of entrepreneurship.
Pete Sinclair of Leapfrog Ventures
Pete Sinclair
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Pete Sinclair’s background includes over 20 years of senior operating experience in high tech companies and more than 10 years in venture capital. He has been a serial CEO, successfully selling companies to Microsoft, Novell, and Adobe Systems, and has participated in two IPOs. He started his career with Hewlett-Packard and joined Apple Computer when it was still a small private company.
Todd Kimmel of Mayfield Fund
Todd Kimmel
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Todd Kimmel is an experienced entrepreneur and investor in the cleantech sector. Todd joined Mayfield Fund from Advanced Technology Ventures, a bi-coastal venture capital firm, where he led cleantech investing in its West Coast office.
Todd was also the co-founder and president of Coskata, a leading next-generation bio-fuels company, where he helped drive key product development, technology and financing milestones. Prior to venture capital, Todd was a co-founder and senior vice president at Innovance, a Canadian-based developer of optical networking solutions for telecommunications service providers and worked in investment banking with Wasserstein Perella & Co., Inc. in New York. Todd holds a BA from Amherst College and was a history major.
Carol Sands of The Angels’ Forum
Carol Sands
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Carol Sands is the Founder and the Managing Member of The Angels’ Forum and The Halo Funds. Carol’s career started as a bank officer with First Bank Systems. She has also held marketing or sales positions with Motorola and Xerox Computer Services and executive positions at Arthur Young (now Ernst & Young) and Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers).
Ryan Spoon of Polaris Venture Partners
Ryan Spoon
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Ryan Spoon is a principal in San Francisco at Polaris’ Dog Patch Lab. He focuses on investments in internet, technology, and digital media. Ryan blogs at www.ryanspoon.com. Prior to joining Polairs, Ryan worked at Widgetbox as VP of Marketing & Business Development. Ryan spent 2003-2007 at eBay Inc.
As part of the internet marketing team, Ryan focused on user acquisition, search engine optimization and social content properties like eBay MyWorld and Reviews & Guides. Most recently, Ryan launched and managed the Kijiji.com business. In 2000, as a collegiate swimmer for Duke university, Ryan founded beRecruited, a sports recruiting platform for high school athletes and college coaches. beRecruited was acquired by RVS Ventures in 2007 and Ryan currently serves on the board of directors.
Sam Kingsland, Granite Ventures
Sam Kingsland
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Sam Kingsland of Granite Ventures brings extensive experience working with emerging growth companies to the team. Over Sam’s eighteen-year career in the venture industry, he has worked with more than 70 venture-backed companies and on more than 115 financings.
During his career, he has worked with early-stage companies in the wireless, semiconductor, software, internet and consumer markets. Sam lead Granite’s investments in DigitalThink (acquired by Convergys), NetBoost (acquired by Intel), Nexabit Networks (acquired by Lucent), Sierra Wireless (NASDAQ: SWIR) and SnapTrack (acquired by Qualcomm). He currently serves on the Boards of Directors for Agilence, Fulcrum Microsystems, Grid2Home and Venturi Wireless. Sam holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College.
Neal Hansch, Rustic Canyon Partners
Neal Hansch
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Neal Hansch of Rustic Canyon Partners brings over fifteen years of venture capital, technology operations and financial advisory experience to Rustic Canyon and its portfolio companies. Before joining Rustic Canyon in 2005, Neal worked in the Corporate Development group at Macromedia (Nasdaq: MACR), where he was responsible for global M&A transactions and strategic equity investments. Prior to Macromedia, Neal was an investor at Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) and also spent time in Product Marketing at webMethods (Nasdaq: WEBM). Neal is also a co-founder of WebAssist.com, a mature start-up that provides popular extensions for Web development tools. Neal began his career as an investment banking analyst in the Software Group at Robertson Stephens & Co., where he worked with clients such as BEA, BroadVision, HNC, Hyperion, Informatica and Intuit.
Feisal Mosleh, Chairman of Juldee
Feisal Mosleh
Advisor & Mentor
Feisal Mosleh is a high tech innovation champion who has been a successful executive and founder at venture funded companies. He has driven over $250M of IP transactions. He is Chairman of Juldee which makes IP based capital investments in new ventures. He runs the IP Brokerage for Kanzatec, an IT IP investment and research firm. He was worldwide head of acquisitions for Intellectual Ventures and was an executive at Hewlett-Packard directing patent sales across its huge global portfolio. He also founded and ran HP’s first venture fund.
Don Ross of Sand Hill Angels
Don Ross
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Don Ross is co-founder of HealthTech Capital, Board Director of Sand Hill Angels, and a Member of Life Science Angels. Don also is Board Director of Figure 8 Surgical and OncoHealth Corporation. Don is active in syndications among Angel groups and early stage venture firms. Within Angel groups, he chairs screening and didactic committees. Don provides strategic guidance, operational experience, and investments to a variety of startups, which include companies in diagnostics, medical devices, eHealth, mobile, and Internet. He has a particular interest in health tech—the intersection of healthcare and information technology. Don began working in life sciences in the early 1980s, when he developed software applications for psychological testing, health behavior change, and health monitoring. Don co-founded, built, and operated a life sciences publishing company, which was sold successfully in 2000. Don is an honors graduate from UC Berkeley (architecture).
Steve Bernardez of ONSET Ventures
Stephen Bernardez
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Steve Bernardez joined ONSET Ventures in 2006, bringing more than a decade of experience in the IT industry. He has had director-level management responsibility in business development and market strategy at both large technology companies and startups. Steve came to ONSET from Microsoft, where he sourced and developed go-to-market alliances with venture-backed software startups. Prior to Microsoft, Steve led the business development function at an early stage ecommerce search startup. He also was a strategy management consultant at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) where he advised large software and hardware vendors on corporate strategies including new market entry, acquisition, and licensing strategies. At ONSET Ventures, Steve specializes in evaluating and nurturing IT investments. Steve holds B.S. and MBA degrees, both from Stanford University.
Richard Koffler of Koffler Ventures
Richard Koffler
Founders Space Speaker & Advisor
Richard Koffler has been a C-level executive for over 25 years, successfully launching and nurturing technology ventures. He is a founding member of the Tech CEO Network, and is on the executive committee of the Los Angeles network of Tech Cost Angels. He was president of both the Los Angeles Venture Association (LAVA) and the Technology Council of Southern California, and currently serves on the advisory boards of the California Emerging Technology Fund and the Wells Fargo Center for Small Business and Entrepreneurship at Cal State University, Northridge. He is also a board member of El Centro Latino for Literacy. He holds computer science degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley.
