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    Speakers

    Below is a partial list of former speakers and mentors. For innoTrek 2019, preliminary program and list of confirmed speakers will be available to prospective sponsors and participating institutions in March 2019. Contact us for updates.

    Bill Reichert Bill Reichert, Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures

    Bill Reichert has over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur and an operating executive. Since joining Garage in 1998, Bill has focused on early-stage information technology and materials science companies. He sits on the Boards of CaseStack, WhiteHat, ClearFuels, cFares, and ThermoCeramix. Prior to Garage, Bill was a co-founder or senior executive in several venture-backed technology startups, including Trademark Software, The Learning Company, and Academic Systems. Earlier in his career, he worked at McKinsey & Company, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., and the World Bank.

    Bill earned a B.A. at Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Stanford University. He was a founding board member and a Chairman of the Churchill Club, and a Charter Member of the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs. Currently he is the Chairman of the Small Fund Roundtable of the VC Taskforce and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

    Dave McClure Dave McClure, Startup Advisor, Angel Investor, Master of 500 Hats

    Dave McClure has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for almost twenty years as a software developer, entrepreneur, startup advisor, angel investor, blogger, & internet marketing nerd. He is an advisor or investor for Mint, SlideShare, TradeVibes, TipMobile, Oortle/PhotoPhlow, 750 Industries, KissMetrics, Spock, TeachStreet, Eventvue, RichRelevance, Mashery, Simply Hired, HealthUnity, & Canopy Financial. His current passion is helping startups with internet marketing, product strategy, and startup metrics.

    Before coming to Silicon Valley, Dave barely graduated from the Johns Hopkins University with a BS in Mathematical Sciences Engineering and a minor in frisbee, billiards, & foosball. His interests include microfinance and economic innovation, entrepreneurship and venture capital, ultimate frisbee, cartoons and animation, and an ever-growing collection of funny-looking hats.

    Eric Ries Eric Ries, Venture Advisor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

    Eric Ries, a serial entrepreneur, most recently was co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of IMVU, his third startup. He’s the author of the blog Lessons Learned, co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996), and a Venture Advisor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech.

    Mike Cassity, CEO of travel exploration site Ruba Mike Cassidy, CEO of travel exploration, Ruba; now Dir, Product Management at Google

    Mike Cassidy has been the Co-Founder and CEO of four start-ups: Ruba, Xfire, Direct Hit, and Stylus Innovation. Ruba helps travelers all over the world share their favorite places and experiences. Xfire helps gamers play online with their friends much more easily. Xfire is also an instant messenger and peer-to-peer file download system designed just for gamers. Xfire has over 10 million registered gamers in over 100 countries. Viacom/MTV acquired Xfire for $110 million. Direct Hit was a revolutionary Internet search engine whose customers included MSN, Lycos, AOL, and dozens of others. Ask Jeeves acquired Direct Hit for $500 million. Stylus Innovation’s flagship product was the award winning computer telephony software Visual Voice. Mike is on the Board of Advisors of Jazz at Lincoln Center and is on the Visiting Committee Board of the MIT Media Lab.

    Mike studied jazz piano at the Berklee College of Music. Mike has a BS and MS in Aerospace Engineering from MIT. He graduated from Harvard Business School.

    Dave McClure Christine Comaford, Business Accelerator, Mighty Ventures

    Bill Gates calls her “super high bandwidth.” Bill Clinton has thanked her for “fostering American entrepreneurship.” Newsweek says “by reputation, Christine is the person you want to partner with.”

    New York Times bestselling author Christine Comaford is CEO of Mighty Ventures, an innovation accelerator which helps businesses to massively increase sales, product offerings, and company value. She has built and sold 5 of her own businesses with an average 700% return on investment, served as a board director or in-the-trenches advisor to 36 startups, and has invested in over 200 startups (including Google) as a venture capitalist or angel investor. Christine has consulted to the White House (Clinton and Bush), 700 of the Fortune 1000, and over 300 small businesses. She has repeatedly identified and championed key trends and technologies years before market acceptance.

    Christine has led many lives: Buddhist monk, Microsoft engineer, geisha trainee, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. Her triumphs and disasters are revealed in her New York Times (and USA Today, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and Amazon.com ) bestselling business book: Rules for Renegades: How to Make More Money, Rock Your Career, and Revel in Your Individuality. The book is available at all major retailers or via www.RulesForRenegades.com.

    Christine has appeared on CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, FOX Business Network, PBS, CNET and is frequently quoted in the business, technology and general press at large. Stanford Graduate School of Business has done two case studies on her and PBS has featured her in three specials (Triumph of the Nerds, Nerds 2.0.1, and Nerd TV ). CNET has broadcast two specials covering her unconventional rise to success as a woman with neither a high school diploma nor college degree. Christine believes we can do well and do good, using business as a path for personal development, wealth creation, and philanthropy.

    Mike Trigg Michael Trigg, VP Marketing, Hi5

    Mike heads up hi5’s global marketing organization, including corporate marketing, product marketing, international marketing and communications.

    Prior to hi5, Mike was co-founder and vice president of marketing at Truviso, a real-time data processing company specializing in web analytics. Previously, he was vice president of marketing and interim CEO of Spoke, a professional social networking site. Mike was also vice president of corporate and product marketing at Epiphany, a leading provider of marketing analytics and web personalization (now Infor). As an early employee of Octane Software, he led product management prior to the company’s $3.2 billion acquisition by Epiphany in 2000. Mike has also held marketing and products positions at 3Com and MCI.

    Mike has his B.A. from Northwestern University and M.B.A from the University of California at Berkeley.

    David Ellis David Ellis, Software Engineer (Internationalization), Facebook

    David has drawn on his background in computational linguistics (research in academia and industry) to help build a community-driven translation tool. This technology allows Facebook to continue grow at an incredible pace worldwide, and is available to developers on Platform, including external sites via Connect. David had earlier worked on the News Feed team, and continues to dabble in natural language processing, engineering recruiting puzzles and a variety of other efforts.

    He holds a BA with honors in linguistics from Brown University, and has published often (in journals, conferences, book-chapters, along with a pending patent).

    Max Angel Max Engel, Product Lead, MySpaceID

    Max Engel helps create an open platform that gives developers access to the MySpace social layer. The initiative embraces standards such as OpenSocial, OAuth, and OpenID to provide a robust identity platform to the community. Previous to MySpace, Max was at Yahoo!, initially with the Games team working on community tools for developers and players, and then later became a member of the Yahoo! Open Strategy initiative where he worked on their application platform and OpenSocial implementation.

    He holds a BA in Psychology from Yale University.

    John Faith John Faith, GM and VP, MySpace Mobile

    John is responsible for all aspects pertaining to the growth and success of the business unit. Prior to his current role, John contributed to multiple initiatives for the company as Vice President of Engineering including the expansion of MySpace into 29 local versions, the development of MySpace’s mobile product line, the maturation of its post sales production processes, and the delivery of a custom content management system. He was recently named one of the 25 most powerful people in wireless by FierceWireless. Prior to MySpace, John was a software engineer and technical manager at Experian Consumer Direct and GoldPocket Interactive where he developed credit monitoring and interactive television software respectively.

    Murali Thirumale Murali Thirumale, CEO, Ocarina Networks (acquired by Dell)

    Prior to co-founding Ocarina, Thirumale was Group Vice President and GM of the Citrix Advanced Solutions Group, where he led the SSL-VPN division (acquired via Net6) to the number #1 unit market share and #2 revenue share position in eighteen months.

    As the CEO and co-founder of Net6, Thirumale led the company from its inception through acquisition. He provided the vision and strategy for leveraging the company’s unique network focus and approach to SSL-VPN security, IP telephony/VOIP applications and data mobility. Under his leadership, Net6 attracted $17 million in venture capital funding, secured OEM relationships with Cisco, Avaya and Nortel, and was acquired by Citrix Systems.

    Prior to Net6, Thirumale was executive vice president and general manager of Symmetricom where he founded a new broadband division for the company and established Symmetricom as the undisputed leader in telecom network timing. Thirumale also spent fifteen years at Hewlett-Packard where he served as general manager of Timing Solutions for Communications Operation.

    Thirumale holds a BS in Electrical Engineering with distinction from the Institute of Technology-BHU in India and an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management where he was an Austin Distinguished Scholar.

    Lonnie Johnson Lonnie Johnson, President and Founder, Johnson ElectroMechanical Systems, Inc.

    innoTrek is pleased to present Lonnie Johnson as distinguished speaker!

    Lonnie, the Super Soaker water gun inventor, is a serial entrepreneur with over 100 issued and 20 pending patents. Now, he is working on a solar energy conversion technology that could deliver greater than 40% efficiency and potentially make renewable energy truly viable!

    Lonnie’s advice for entrepreneurs is simple – take risks, hit the trenches, and refuse to quit. In his 7-year trek of selling the Super Soaker gun, he faced many rejections, including one from Hasbro that eventually bought Larami Inc., the company that first licensed Lonnie’s invention, and did so at a high premium. Lonnie will also share his wisdom on minority and entrepreneurship as well as the latest development on his solar energy research.

    Come to hear and discuss more about what makes a successful entrepreneur and how you can create impact!

    Jason Oberfest Jason Oberfest, SVP Business Development, MySpace

    Jason is responsible for structuring and negotiating deals to drive revenue and support the launch of innovative new products. He also serves as General Manager of the MySpace Open Platform.

    Prior to MySpace Jason served as Managing Director of Business Development and Product Management for Los Angeles Times Interactive where he structured deals with leading startups including Netvibes, Aggregate Knowledge, Eventful and Mixx.com.

    From 1999-2005 Jason served as Vice President of Strategic Planning at Blast Radius, an interactive agency. In this role Jason founded the strategic planning division of the company and led the design and development of media and commerce websites for Sony, Nintendo, Viacom, Warner Music Group, A&E Television Networks and others. Jason worked with AOL from 2002-2005 developing AOL Shopping, AOL Search, AOL.com, and other products. Blast Radius was acquired by the WPP Group in 2007.

    Yumio Saneyoshi Yumio Saneyoshi, VP of Product, FixYa

    At FixYa, the world’s largest crowd-sourced product/tech support site with over 15 million monthly visitors, Yumio oversees the product design and service offering, as well as coordinate with the global engineering team based in Israel.

    Prior to FixYa, Yumio was one of two founding members of Yahoo! Answers, which is the world’s largest Q&A forum serving 13 countries in 6 languages, with over 100 million visitors per month. Yumio’s first job after graduate school was being parachuted into Tokyo and opening up a sales office for an enterprise software company with absolutely no prior sales or overseas business experience.

    Yumio has a Ph.D. in Business Economics, which is a joint degree from Harvard Business School and Harvard University. His doctoral dissertation focused on incentive theory and organizational economics, which is a surprisingly useful lens to analyze the structures of startups.

    Dr. Tina Seelig, Executive Director, Stanford Technology Ventures Program Dr. Tina Seelig, Executive Director, Stanford Technology Ventures Program

    Tina Seelig is the Executive Director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), the entrepreneurship center at Stanford University’s School of Engineering.

    Tina teaches courses on creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the department of Management Science and Engineering, and within the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. Tina was recently awarded the 2009 Gordon Prize from the National Academy of Engineering, recognizing her as a national leader in engineering educational. She also received the 2008 National Olympus Innovation Award, and the 2005 Stanford Tau Beta Pi Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. In 2004, STVP was named the NASDAQ Entrepreneurship Center of the Year..

    Tina earned her Ph.D. from Stanford University Medical School in 1985 where she studied Neuroscience. She has worked as a management consultant for Booz, Allen, and Hamilton, as a multimedia producer at Compaq Computer Corporation, and was the founder a multimedia company called BookBrowser.

    Tina has also written 15 popular science books and educational games. Her books include The Epicurean Laboratory and Incredible Edible Science, published by Scientific American; and a series of twelve games called Games for Your Brain, published by Chronicle Books. Her newest book, to be released by HarperCollins in Spring 2009, is titled What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World.

    Simon Tisminezky, CEO/ Founder, SpeedDate Simon Tisminezky, CEO/ Founder, SpeedDate

    Prior to founding the company, Simon worked at Elfamed, Inc., a biotech startup, as VP of Commercial Operations. He developed the company strategy and operational plan and secured the first research collaborations with big pharma. He also assisted in raising VC funding for Pharmaron, a chemistry outsourcing company based in China. Prior to the business school, Simon worked at Kalypsys, Inc. as Business Development Manger where he focused on seeking, negotiating, and managing the company’s strategic partnerships.

    He has an MBA from Stanford, and a BS and MS in Chemical Engineering and BS in Economics from MIT.

    Dan_Verser, VP R&D & Founder, ZeaChem Dan Verser, EVP, R&D, Founder, ZeaChem

    Dan is an experienced venture manager with deep industry experience in product development in the chemicals and biotechnology sectors. He is co-inventor of the ZeaChem technology. Prior to ZeaChem, he identified and evaluated venture investments for Koch Industries. Prior to that, he was President of Chronopol, Inc., a unit of Coors Brewing Company, where he started up and ran a new polymer materials business based on polylactic acid, a renewable-derived, biodegradable polymer. Before Coors, he was a project manager with Bechtel, where he was responsible for international technology transfer and process design for a major project-financed agribusiness & biotechnology project. Before Bechtel, he was President & CEO of Engenics, a startup bioprocess development company, and held a succession of executive leadership positions at Gould, Inc.

    Dan has numerous patents, a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Princeton, and an MBA with High Distinction from Harvard Business School.

    Steen Andersson Steen Andersson, Co-Founder & VP, 5th Finger

    Steen is a serial entrepreneur who started his first company during undergrad engineering class. Since then, Steen has co-founded four companies, Realnet Access, Faxscape, Multiplay and 5th Finger, the most recent of which was acquired by Microsoft. Steen’s absolute passion and love for the startup process saw him driving both the fund raising and exit negotiations for each of these companies.

    Steen recently moved to the Bay Area to launch 5th Finger International, the global authority on mobile marketing, where he is responsible for building industry profile and attracting and retaining pillar clients such as Coca-Cola and Microsoft.

    All of Steen’s companies have opened up new and unique opportunities in digital marketing, with 5th Finger being the natural evolution into mobile.

    Steen has an Electrical Engineering degree from UNSW (Australia).

    Rashmi Sinha Rashmi Sinha, Co-Founder & CEO, Slideshare

    Rashmi Sinha is cofounder and CEO for SlideShare, the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. SlideShare is growing rapidly (more than 9 million monthly uniques) letting everyone from teachers to marketers to conference speakers share presentations and connect with others.

    Rashmi has a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Brown University and did research on search engines and recommender systems at UC Berkeley. She is a frequent speaker at conferences such as Webvisions and Future of Web Apps. She writes a blog at rashmisinha.com about social software and running a startup.

    Phil Libin Phil Libin, CEO, Evernote

    Phil heads the team responsible for Evernote, that won the Crunchie for the Best mobile startup of 2008.

    Prior to joining EverNote, Libin founded and served as president of CoreStreet, currently one of the top companies providing smart credential and identity management technologies to governments and large corporations throughout the world. Before CoreStreet, Libin was founder and CEO of Engine 5, a leading Boston-based Internet software development company acquired by Vignette Corporation in early 2000, where he went on to serve as principal architect and chief technologist for applications. In addition to his operational expertise, Libin is a successful engineer in his own right and started his career helping develop software for ATG, Exchange Applications and EF.

    Laura Peter Laura Peter, Principal, Global General Counsel

    Seasoned counselor with in-house, litigation and intellectual property expertise. Laura A. Peter is highly qualified to single-handedly fulfill the legal needs of a small or mid-size company – and has the track record to prove it. She has a long history counseling startups and mid-sized companies in the Silicon Valley and around the world, where she has counseled private and publicly-traded companies on worldwide legal matters, including commercial transactions, intellectual property, licenses, litigation, and regulatory compliance. Laura A. Peter hold a bachelor of science degree from Cornell University and a master’s degree from the University of Chicago. She is also a graduate of Santa Clara University School of Law and received an LL.M. from the University of London, Kings’ College. Currently she is the Principal of Global General Counsel.

    Eric Jensen Eric Jensen, Business Partner, Cooley Godward Kronish

    Eric C. Jensen is a business partner in the Cooley Godward Kronish Palo Alto office. Mr. Jensen is head of the Firm’s Business department and a member of the Management Committee. Mr. Jensen has been with the Firm since 1988 and a partner since 1994.

    Mr. Jensen practices securities and general corporate law, with an emphasis on the representation of emerging and public software, semiconductor, clean-tech, internet, and other technology companies. He also has extensive experience representing venture capital funds and underwriters. He has counseled clients in the areas of corporate formations, venture financings, public offerings of equity and debt, mergers and acquisitions, joint venture, licensing and related strategic transactions, employee incentive matters and SEC reporting and compliance. Mr. Jensen has been included as one of The Best Lawyers in America in 2006 – 2009 and named as one of Northern California’s “Super Lawyers” in 2007 – 2009.

    Mr. Jensen received a J.D. in 1988 from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and was an editor for the UCLA Law Review. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Political Science from Stanford University in 1984, where he graduated with distinction and honors in economics.

    Tessa Petrich Tessa Petrich, VP Marketing, Zimride

    Tessa has always believed that the best car rides are full ones and she is thrilled to join the Zimride team. After graduating from Harvard, Tessa managed the on-campus pub, then headed back to her native Los Angeles, working in Business Development for Atomic Online. Tessa’s favorite Zimride is from Palo Alto to SF or any trip that involves Disney sing alongs.

    Jen Weedn Jen Weedn, Director of BD, MySpace

    Jen has extensive business development and strategy experience at a wide range of companies including MTV: MUSIC TELEVISION, AOL, and SIDESTEP.

    She received her Bachelor of Science in Economics, magna cum laude, with Marketing and Finance concentrations from U Penn, and an MBA from HBS.

    John Zimmer John Zimmer, Founder & COO, Zimride

    The 25-year old co-founder of Zimride moved from New York City to Palo Alto last summer by carpooling across the country.

    John (luckily) left Lehman Brothers in early 2008, where he spent two years after graduating first in his class from Cornell University’s Hotel School. His favorite Zimride is New York to Ithaca.


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