Category: Mentors (Page 12 of 23)

Diana Stepner is a mentor at Founders Space and the VP of Innovation Partnerships & Developer Relations at Pearson.

Diana helps business units accelerate digital innovation, drives global partnerships with startups, builds relationships with developer communities, including incubators and accelerators, and runs the Pearson Catalyst for Education accelerator program.

Previously Diana worked in Emerging Media at Razorfish and UX at Salesforce.com. In addition, she led Product Management in Western Europe for Monster Worldwide. She has a MIMS from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Boston University.

Steven Webster is equal parts entrepreneur and intrapreneur, a hardware developer and software engineer, a leader of technology and design teams.

Steven founded a design and engineering consultancy in the UK, iteration::two,which he sold to Macromedia/Adobe in 2005. He then helped build a startup organization – Adobe Consulting – inside of Adobe, growing from a small team of under 20 people to a design-led technology organization of over 400 consultants.

In 2011, Steven started a stealth organization, “Studio 415” inside of Microsoft. He joined with no team, and built a design and engineering organization co-creating innovative custom solutions to Microsoft’s most strategic accounts. During his time at Adobe and Microsoft, Steven pitched and sold innovative new ideas and solutions in the office of the CxO. His teams have won awards and delivered digital firsts for clients as diverse as Morgan Stanley, HSBC, FedEx, T-Mobile, The Whitehouse, the NFL and Nike. Read More...

CherylAnn Falconer is a Founders Space Mentor, BSc in Computer Science and Grad. Dip Organizational HR.

CherylAnn is a master at helping you achieve your goals, especially the stretch goals. She’s succeeded in the military, the male dominated corporate world, corporate sales, technology consulting and 3 start-ups. Most importantly, she’s retained her sense of humor, her ethics and her passion for helping others.

In just the last few years she has mentored 851 engineers in the art and science of getting things done, being decisive, managing risk and creating high performing teams. She also taught them how to have fun too. Read More...

Ali Wasti is a Mentor at Founders Space and a venture capitalist at Azure Capital Partners.

He specializes in cloud infrastructure, SaaS/b2b, commerce and IoT technologies. He serves as a Board Observer for Convercent, SwitchFly, Unitas Global, Le Tote and Chairish.

Ali is a successful technology executive and investor. He has over 10 years of operating experience in various leadership positions in the technology sector. Prior to joining Azure, Ali led global business development for IBM’s Information Management and Analytics software businesses. Read More...

Adam Boyden is a Mentor at Founders Space and Managing Director at RPM Ventures.

Adam Boyden is a five-time entrepreneur who has provided leadership for venture capital backed companies that have disrupted multi-billion dollar industries and generated more than $2 billion in exit value. He was the co-founder and CEO of RPM portfolio company Openlane, an online wholesale automotive marketplace, which was acquired by KAR Auction Services (NYSE: KAR).

He went on to serve as VP of Business Development and Marketing at Xfire, an early social networking company focused on gamers, which was acquired by MTV Networks (NASDAQ: VIA). Boyden was President of Conduit, a cloud-based user engagement platform, early in its lifecycle and built it into the most successful Internet company in Israeli history. During this period Boyden was a Venture Advisor for RPM, led RPM’s investment in Social Finance (SoFi), and ultimately joined SoFi’s team as Chief Operating Officer as the company began to scale. Read More...

Greg Viloria is a Founders Space Mentor and the cofounder of Nerd Stalker.

He is currently Adolfo’s sidekick and podcast co-host at Nerd Stalker Media where he has written and produced over 200 articles, podcasts and interviews. He is also active as the so-called Media Ninja for SF New Tech – the longest running SF meetup where he manages presenter and media partnerships.

Greg is a former Product Marketing Manager and Regional Business Manager for Japan at Applied Materials. He also holds a position at the Japantown Task Force(JTF) where he consults with Japantown clients on behalf of the JTF in Marketing and Promotion. Read More...

Ken Thom is the Managing Director at SOMAcentral and the Co-working Partner of Founders Space.

Ken was the VP of Operations at SocialMedia.com from August 2007 – March 2010. Before that he was the Chief Products Guy at Unboggle.

Prior to this Ken was the Sr. Director of Products at oDesk, where he managed multiple point releases, including writing PRDs, driving cross-functional teams, determining key tradeoffs, and running beta programs. Read More...

Sabrine Zou is the Cofounder and Managing Partner of Valley Interlink and a Venture Advisor at Founders Space.

Valley Interlink works closely with Founders Space in China and Silicon Valley. Valley Interlink is a San Francisco-based consulting firm that bridges domestic and international investors by allowing them access to high quality investment opportunities in California. This includes venture capital funds, mergers & acquisitions, real estate development opportunities and REITS investment.

In addition, Valley Interlink specializes in providing American startups and companies with consulting services focused on strategic business relationships, market penetration and B2B client relationships in overseas, Asian markets.

David Lane has, for the past 26 years, created, built and financed information and health care technology companies. During the past 20 years, he has directly managed venture capital funds totaling in excess of $2 Billion.

David was also a Managing Director of Onset Ventures and cofounder of Diamondhead Ventures, where he led the firm’s investments in Danger Inc. (acquired by Microsoft), Entercept Security Technologies (acquired by McAfee), Truviso (acquired by Cisco) and UPEK (acquired by AuthenTec).

Prior to Diamondhead Ventures, David was one of the senior venture capital investment officers at the Harvard Management Company, where he focused on making direct investments in seed to later stage opportunities in the information technology and health care sectors. During his investment career, David has sponsored more than 20 investments in the information technology software, semiconductor and services areas. Some of his prior venture capital investments include: Harmonic, Inc. (IPO), TriQuint Semiconductor (IPO), NexGen (IPO), Viewlogic Systems (IPO) and Harbridge Merchant Services (acquired by First Data Corporation). Read More...

An entrepreneur who loves to build great products and build successful businesses. As an entrepreneur, I have an insatiable desire to do more. I stay hungry.

Always build with a global vision where I setup and managed global teams on many occasions. It has been hard work but very rewarding. I have had multiple opportunities to build out business in Asian continent, North America and Europe. I am a technocrat who builds businesses backed up with great products.

I am eager to see Mobile Payments grow globally, huge market and great opportunities lie ahead and I intend to be a part of the mobile growth. It makes me even more excited to see the proliferation of the payment models within the industry. Big Data has evolved as a huge market driver and has driven an amazing room to drive great businesses into play. Love the momentum of large data analytics with real time needs that the market is starting to expect from the technology offerings. Read More...