Category: Investors, Advisors & Speakers (Page 2 of 8)

Sarah Cone of Illuminate Ventures brings a broad interdisciplinary background, prior investment analyst experience and hands-on startup operating skills in the tech sector to her role as a venture associate with Illuminate.

Sarah developed her passion for high tech and belief in the value of entrepreneurship early in her career – as one of the early employees at Amazon, as a public policy advocate for entrepreneurship with Public Knowledge, as a research analyst at Omidyar Network and as a policy strategist at Google.   Read more...

Jeff Tannenbaum joins BlueRun Ventures with over 15 years leadership experience building consumer web companies in the entertainment, mobile and technology industries. He has structured partnerships with companies including the New York Times Company, Perseus, as well as numerous online/offline publishers.

Jeff founded and oversaw all business activities at PhotoCrank. In less than three years, he grew the company from a Silicon Valley start-up to the leading social photo entertainment platform. Before PhotoCrank, Jeff was Co-Founder at DreamFront where he transformed the company’s vision of interactive books into the widely popular series, the Digital Detectives Mysteries.

Philip Engelhardt is the Managing Partner of PhilQuo Ventures as well as a Senior Advisor and Angel Investor at Plug and Play Tech Center. He is also an Investment Partner at Tech-Rx. His team at PhilQuo Ventures seeks opportunities in seed rounds of early stage companies, with a focus on consumer-facing, web-based startups , digital media, and independent film production.   Read more...

Isaac Babbs is Founder and CEO of Handmade. Handmade is a mobile-only seed fund that creates new start-ups in a co-founding partnership with great entrepreneurs.

Handmade helps teams by adding expertise, relationships, and capital from inception through series A funding and ultimately a liquidity event. Handmade specializes in companies with mobile platforms, systems, and services among the following areas: marketplaces, advertising, monetization, sensors, productivity, entertainment, and cloud.   Read more...

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.   Read more...

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 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.   Read more...

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.   Read more...

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.

Sharon 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.   Read more...

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.   Read more...