Category: Mentors (Page 4 of 23)

Bharat Desai joined Founders Space as a mentor. He is a hi-tech operations executive turned business coach and advisor. He is CEO and Founder of Shalshiv Associates, a management coaching and consulting firm. Bharat is passionate about helping organizations solve their performance problems by showing them how to focus their organizational efforts and create a culture of accountability, discipline, and systems. His expertise is in helping organizations achieve exceptional organizational performance.

Bharat serves on the board of ACT for Mental Health, a nonprofit organization, and is a former board member of the Engineering Alumni Board at Santa Clara University. He holds MBA and MSEE degrees from Santa Clara University. He lives with his wife in the San Francisco Bay Area.

David Hughson joined Founders Space as a mentor. As National Director of Business Development at Globalization Partners, he is responsible for developing a network of strategic partners around the world. For more than 10 years, David has demonstrated a passion for helping businesses to grow globally, and his focus has been on enabling international expansion for US companies. His enthusiasm for connecting people and businesses to drive successful outcomes is integral to his success.

Prior to joining Globalization Partners, David was Director of Channels and Business Development at Radius where he built strategic partnerships with some of the most respected brands in banking, insurance, human resources, technology and more. Under Hughson’s leadership, the Radius Global Partner Program generated millions of dollars in revenue and grew to include technology integrations, reseller partnerships, a program of events in key markets across the U.S. and educational webinars. Prior to joining Radius, Hughson served as manager of global channels at High Street Partners, an internal business software and service provider, which was acquired by Radius in 2014. David also helped lead the UK Government’s foreign direct investment activities for high growth technology businesses in the U.S. with UK Trade & Investment, and he worked with hundreds of US technology companies to advise on international expansion strategy.

David graduated from the University of Connecticut and lives in the Boston area with his wife and two kids. A competitive runner, he has completed four marathons, finishing the NYC marathon in under 3 hours!

Todd Murtha is a mentor at Founders Space. Todd is an attorney at DJL Corporate Law and founder of Careerwave, a technology and AI-driven leadership development and coaching company.

Todd advises technology companies as outside general counsel and business advisor on a full range of legal and business issues, including formation, financing, M&A, commercial arrangements, strategy and operations. Careerwave provides scalable, broad-based management, leadership, and diversity and inclusion coaching programs to mid-size and large companies.

Todd believes that legal and business issues are inseparable and with his background as a CEO, startup founder and technology attorney focuses on practical advice that considers all of a company’s goals. Read More...

Jeff Faust joined Founders Space as a mentor. Jeff is a Certified Valuation Analyst and the Director of Valuation Services at ASL and is a part of the Emerging Business Group and Technology Group.

He has 20 years of experience in the valuation of privately held companies for various purposes: stock options grants (IRC § 409A), Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), estate/gift, fundraising, mergers/acquisitions, and more.

He has provided valuation expertise to owners/shareholders, trustees, management teams, investors and start-ups of all sizes and stages of development and in a wide variety of industries including high-tech (Software, Hardware, SaaS, Mobile, Telecom, Social Media, Cloud, Data, etc.), bio-tech, agricultural bio-tech, pharmaceuticals, manu-facturing and many more. Clients range from long-established companies to highly entrepreneurial ventures to families and individuals. Read More...

Jean-Philippe Emelie Marcos joined Founders Space as a mentor. JP is the Co-Founder and CEO of SignifAI (https://signifai.io/), a VC-backed company that leverages machine intelligence to increase system availability and performance.

Prior to founding SignifAI, he was one of the initial angel investors in and served for 5+ years as the Chief Operating Officer at Tango, a leading global mobile consumer application that went from 0 to 400M registered users during his tenure. JP was also a Silicon Valley early stage investor for 7 years. JP’s career spans 20+ years leading teams in technology start-ups and large companies as founder / entrepreneur / CEO / VC and general manager.

His blog is https://blog.signifai.io/. He lives in Palo Alto, CA with his wife and two children.

Pramod Dabir joined Founders Space as a mentor. After graduating with an EE degree from the University of Illinois, Pramod joined the Goldman Sachs Investment Banking Group in San Francisco. Chasing his interests in investing, Pramod later transitioned to venture capital at TA Associates where he focused on internet and software investing.

After Pramod caught the startup bug, he launched the fashion/tech application Boutine- which went on to raise a successful seed round and exited by selling off their technologies. Using the team he initially assembled to build Boutine, Pramod started West Agile Labs in 2012, which has now grown to over 120+ employees across 4 countries.

Jake is an SF-based entrepreneur, advisor, and growth/partnerships specialist who serves in dual roles as the Director of Partnerships for both Dispatch Labs (enterprise-focused blockchain protocol) & The Bureau (blockchain advisory, accelerator, and fund). Formerly, Jake spearheaded the growth efforts of WeTrust, MegaBots, West Agile Labs, and two 500 Startups Accelerator companies (Tie Society and Console.FM).

Will Wang
Corporate Innovation

Founders Space Innovation Program Partner & CEO of Golden Sailing International Business Investment Management Co., Ltd.

• One-stop innovation platform for businesses, which empowers business leaders to innovate with freedom, creativity and agility as Silicon Valley startups Read More...

Carley Jacobson joined Founders Space as a mentor. She is a Strategy Designer at Business Models Inc. Through Business Models Inc she supports organizations with strategy, business model generation and validation, and value proposition design.

For 6 years prior, Carley helped grow Autodesk’s maker community Instructables. With over 115 do-it-yourself tutorials, Carley has gained over 13 million page-views and recognition from major publications such as The Huffington Post, GQ Magazine, Popular Mechanics, and more. She uses her experience in online community building, hackathons, content creation, and customer development to build new innovative strategies.

Carley holds a degree in Computer Science and Visual Art from Union College and an MBA in Design Strategy from California College of the Arts.

Lisa Ma joined Founders Space as a mentor. She is Senior Director of Global Programs at LivePerson, and drives customer acquisition, product usage and revenue growth through implementation of programs and messaging products to enable brands to engage with consumers via live chat, SMS or mobile messaging.

With years of experience at Deloitte Consulting, Citigroup, Yahoo! and LivePerson, Lisa is focused on helping companies to deliver global software products, plan product go-to-market, and build customer experience programs to drive usage and adoption. She can help startups on strategy & execution, product/pitch messaging, business & roadmap planning, product go-to-market, and voice of the customer insights.

Lisa studied Information Systems & Management at New York University. She enjoys problem-solving, optimization and connecting-the-dots to find creative solutions. She wants to make a positive impact in all that she does.