Kevin Hartz
Kevin is the CEO of Eventbrite, and was previously Co-Founder and CEO of XoomCorporation, an international money transfer company providing services to over 30 countries worldwide. Xoom is backed by Sequoia Capital, NEA, , Stanford University, and Peter Thiel.
Kevin holds a BA and BS from Stanford University, as well as an MA from Oxford University (University College). He has been an active early stage investor and advisor to startups including PayPal (NASDAQ: EBAY), Flixster, Trulia, Tokbox, Geni, Tripit, iControl, Three Rings, Friendster, and BluBet. Kevin currently serves on the Board of Directors of Xoom, BluBet, and TokBox (observer). You can view his full portfolio here. In his spare time, Kevin advises university students on entrepreneurship through Youniversity Ventures.
Brian Singerman
Brian Singerman is a Principal at Founders Fund. He came to the Founders Fund from Google, where he founded the iGoogle team in 2004, after serving in a variety of development and executive positions. Before joining Google, Brian was an engineer for There, an online, virtual world startup. At Founders Fund, Brian seeks out new investment opportunities such as Clickable, the company whose innovative tools have made online search significantly more efficient for advertisers and agencies. Before joining the Founders Fund team, Brian was an active angel investor in his personal capacity, and backed companies including Imvu, SideReel, Loomia, PBWiki, and heroku. Brian graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Computer Science.
Jeff Clavier
Based in Palo Alto, California, Jeff Clavier is the Founder and Managing Partner of SoftTech VC, one of the most active seed stage investors in Web 2.0 startups. Since 2004, Jeff has invested in more than 50 consumer Internet companies in areas like social media, communities, search, gaming or consumer infrastructure, almost exclusively in Silicon Valley. With over 20 years of operational, entrepreneurial and venture capital experience, Jeff is able to add relevant perspective and value to his companies as they grow from inception to maturity, and hopefully, success.
In 2007, Jeff was recognized as one of the 13 “Web 2.0 King Makers” by (late)Business 2.0, and in 2008, BusinessWeek named him one of "The 25 Most Influential People on the Web". He is often noted for his investments in categories such as “passion-centric communities” or online gaming, or for having sold five of his Web 2.0 startups to the likes of Yahoo, AOL or Hearst Interactive.
Jeff was born, raised and educated in France, earning a MS in Computer Science and a research degree in Distributed Computing. He has been happily living in Silicon Valley since 2000 with his wife Bernadette and their two children. When he is not busy working, Jeff likes to spend time with his family and friends, cook, collect wine and wander around Northrend on his hunter. He also skies, hikes, dives and plays golf so poorly it is not even funny.
Keith Rabois
Keith is Vice President of Strategy & Business Development for Slide. He graduated from Stanford and Harvard Law.
Prior to Slide, Keith served as Vice President of Business & Corporate Development at LinkedIn. Earlier in his career, Keith served as Executive Vice President of Business Development and Policy for PayPal. He has taken part in every VC-financed consumer Internet company founded by former PayPal employees.
He currently serves on the board of directors of Yelp, Xoom, Vendio, and FanIQ. He was an early investor in YouTube and LinkedIn, and is a limited partner at Sequoia Capital. Keith also practiced at the prestigious law firm Sullivan & Cromwell.
Larry Chiang
Hola! I am Larry Chiang and I leverage MENTORSHIP in a method and magnitude that has never been done before. Scandalously, my NY Times chart-topping book is a sequel to an 11-year bestseller I did not write, "What They Don't Teach You At Harvard Business School" by my mentor, Mark McCormack.
For fun, I crash entrepreneur meet-ups, host after parties, write at Business Week and infiltrate pick-up basketball on college campuses. For money, I run Duck9. It mentors college students to get to a higher FICO score.
Dylan Smith
Dylan Smith is Chief Financial Officer and co-founder of Box.net, where he leads finance, legal and operations management. He has been instrumental in Box.net's growth and development since starting the company with co-founder Aaron Levie while in college.
Dylan enjoys learning new things in Microsoft Excel on a daily basis and is always up for a rousing argument with his CEO. He is also a Wiffle Ball enthusiast and an aspiring chef. Dylan received a bachelor's degree in economics from Duke University.
Ellen Pao
Ellen Pao joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2005. Her primary areas of focus are in digital platform and green technologies for energy efficiency. She also works closely with KPCB China as a member of its investment committee.
Ellen holds a BS in Electrical Engineering and a certificate from the Wilson School of Public and International Affairs from Princeton University, a JD from Harvard Law School and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She also serves on the board of the Apollo Alliance and is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.
Ann Miura-Ko
Ann Miura-Ko is a partner at Maples Investments where her investment interests include capitally efficient software and technology enabled services.
In addition to serving at Maples Investments, Ann is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Management Science and Engineering Department at Stanford University, where her research focuses on mathematical modeling of computer security. As a part of the program, she teaches several courses in Stanford's renowned Technology Ventures Program, including Technology Venture Formation, High-tech Entrepreneurship, and the Mayfield Fellows Program. She has helped graduate engineering students develop business plans for new technology products or services they have developed while studying at Stanford, and many of her students have gone on to secure Angel and VC funding for their ideas.
Ann grew up in Palo Alto, California and, as a result, was exposed at an early age to the world of startups, technology and venture capital. She developed an early passion for robotics and went on to major in electrical engineering at Yale University where she received her BS degree. For her senior project, she was part of a five person team that designed four robots to autonomously play soccer. That team placed fourth at the second annual Robocup competition held in Paris, France in 1998.
Carl Nordgren
A visiting Associate Professor of Duke Market and Management Studies, Carl W Nordgren has founded six companies that have sold for over $300 million and was the senior executive employee for another that sold for over $750 million. Two of those companies were marketing services agencies—one made INC’s list of fasting growing firms two years in a row—and he’s developed marketing strategy for dozens of firms. He firmly believes that the greatest service he has provided his companies, clients, and students is helping them to discover and to mold their very best stories.
David Lee
David Lee is a partner at Ron Conway’s investment firm, SV Angel, LLC.
David focuses on investments within the consumer Internet and has a diverse background in business development, engineering and law. He spent four years at Google, where he led new business development efforts in video, media and content/data partnerships. After Google, he led all business development-related efforts for StumbleUpon. Recently he was a partner at Baseline Ventures, a leading seed-stage investment firm. He was also an engineer at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics and a corporate attorney at Morrison and Foerster representing high-tech companies.
Dan Olsen
Dan Olsen is CEO and Founder of YourVersion, a real-time discovery engine startup he founded in 2007. YourVersion launched at the 2009 TechCrunch50 Conference where it won the People's Choice Award. Earlier in his career, Dan worked at Intuit where he led Quicken product management. Dan also led product management at Friendster. Dan has advised many startups including Box.net, YouSendIt, Xing, Epocrates, and TrustedID. Dan has presented on high-tech entrepreneurship at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo, Facebook Fund Rev, Startonomics, and Stanford. Dan holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern, a Master's in Industrial Engineering from Virginia Tech, and an MBA from Stanford.
Jessica Mah
Jessica started her first internet company at the age of 13, finished high school at the age of 15, and studied computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.
As Product Architect and CEO of Indinero.com, Jessica drives the development of Indinero’s product strategy, product development and design efforts. She designed Indinero for the typical small business owner, knowing that its usefulness and simplicity would change the way business owners look at money. Founders Jessica Mah and Andy Su built the core product over the Summer of 2009, and the company has since won grant awards from Lightspeed Venture Partners in the Summer of 2009, and from U.C. Berkeley’s CET Venture Lab in the Fall of 2009.
Skye Lee
Skye is a co-founder of Sofa Labs. She is also the SVP of User Experience at www.thread.com.
Skye was PayPal's first VP of Design, shepherding its user experience through rapid growth, acquisition, and integration with eBay. She was an early designer at Netscape and has advised numerous startups on user experience. Skye is a Carnegie Mellon graduate. Additionally, she is a mega-matchmaker who has introduced 2 married couples, and counting!
Brian Phillips
Brian is the CEO and co-founder of Sofa Labs.
Brian was an early PayPal product manager who went on to become Sr. Director of PayPal Consumer Product Management. Prior to starting Sofa Labs, he was VP of Product and Design at Tokbox. Brian holds a JD/MBA from Santa Clara. He is currently single and plans on finding his future wife on Thread.
Mark Schmulen
Mark "I Am Not A Programmer But Did You Try Restarting Your Computer" Schmulen graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in International Relations and BA in BS. After college, Mark served as an investment banking analyst for JPMorgan Chase in NYC. Mark plays the piano, believes powerpoint is the ultimate graphics design tool, and is not a very good piano player.
Mark is CEO of Nutshell Mail.
Christopher McCann
Chris led the entrepreneurial programs at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, started an incubator, and is the founder of the [Startup Digest].
As the founder of the [Startup Digest], Chris goes to an average of two tech and entrepreneurship events each day and makes sure to stay on top of all the cool things happening in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco areas. He started the [Startup Digest] because when he first moved to Silicon Valley a couple of months ago, there was no easy way to keep track of the best startup events in the area. He solved that problem by creating his own list. If you want to subscribe to the list, check out www.thestartupdigest.com.
Ricky Yean
Ricky is a senior at Stanford University and is Co-President of the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students, commonly known as BASES. BASES is the leading student entrepreneurship organization that hosts two business plan competitions with a total of $100K in prize money, a weekly speaker series (Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar), a national conference, and plans workshops, industry events, networking sessions, job fairs, and a range of entrepreneurial activities at Stanford. BASES also sends out a weekly BASES [Startup Digest].
Ricky has been heavily involved in the entrepreneurship scene at Stanford and is currently working on a startup project of his own. Visit http://bases.stanford.edu/ for more information about BASES.
Enrique Allen
Enrique Allen (Stanford BA '09 MS '10), is a student researcher with the Stanford Persuasive Tech lab focusing on mobile and video applications. His experience spans academic publications, social entrepreneurship, venture capital, early stage startup incubation and teaching. Enrique recently helped design and run the first fbFund REV incubator with over 20 investments. He is currently leading a new iPhone mapping seminar at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford a.k.a. "the d.school."