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Timothy C. Draper is the Founder and a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He was instrumental in bringing viral marketing to web-based e-mail to geometrically spread the successes of Hotmail and YahooMail, and the practice has been adopted as a standard marketing technique by countless businesses and organizations. Draper launched the DFJ Global Network, an international network of early-stage venture capital funds with offices in over 30 cities around the globe. He also serves on the boards of Skype, SocialText, Project Y, MailFrontier and Chroma Graphics. He was an original investor in Parametric Technology (PMTC), Tumbleweed Communications (TMWD), Overture.com (OVER), Digidesign (AVID), Preview Travel (TVLY), Four11 (YHOO), Combinet (CSCO), and Redgate (AOL). He also founded or co-founded Wasatch Ventures (Salt Lake City), Zone Ventures (LA), Draper Atlantic (Reston), Draper Triangle (Pittsburg), Timberline Ventures (Portland), Polaris Fund (Anchorage), Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham (NYC) and DFJ Frontier (Sacramento and Santa Barbara). Draper has been recognized as a leader in entrepreneurship and venture capital through numerous awards and honors, and he has frequent TV, radio, and headline appearances. He was number seven on Forbes? Midas List and number 52 on the list of the most influential Harvard Alumni. He was also named AlwaysOn Magazine?s number one top venture capital dealmaker for 2008. Tim is the course creator and Chairman of BizWorld, a 501c3 organization built around simulated teaching of entrepreneurship and business to children. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Brook Byers has been a venture capital investor since 1972. He has been closely involved with more than forty new technology based ventures, over half of which have already become public companies. He formed the first Life Sciences practice group in the venture capital profession in 1984 and led KPCB to become a premier venture capital firm in the medical, healthcare, and biotechnology sectors. KPCB has invested in and helped build over 90 Life Sciences companies which are developing hundreds of products to treat major underserved medical needs representing huge markets in the nearly two trillion dollar healthcare sector. Brook was the founding President and then Chairman of four biotechnology companies which were incubated in KPCB's offices and went on to become public companies with an aggregate market value over $8 Billion. He is currently on the Board of Directors of eight companies, most recently joining CardioDX, Genomic Health Incorporated, Five Prime Therapeutics, Nanofluidics and XDx, Inc.. He was formerly a Director of Idec Pharmaceuticals (Chairman), Athena Neurosciences (Chairman), Signal Pharmaceuticals, Arris Pharmaceuticals, Pharmacopeia, Ligand Pharmaceuticals (Chairman), Hybritech (Chairman), Genprobe, Nanogen, and others. These companies have pioneered the medical uses of molecular biology, monoclonal antibodies, molecular diagnostics and genomics. Brook was President and a Director of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists and is a contributing author to the book "Guide to Venture Capital". He is currently a Board member of the University of California at San Francisco Medical Foundation, the California Healthcare Institute, the New Schools Foundation, Stanford's Bio-X Advisory Council, the Stanford Eye Council and TechNet. He is Co-Chair of the current five year, $1.4 billion, UCSF Capital Campaign. He was formerly a Director of the Entrepreneurs Foundation, t
Founder, Chairman & CEO, JBoss Born in Paris in 1968, Marc got his Ph.D in physics from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. He started in Sales at Sun Microsystems France and then moved to the US where he worked on early java enablement of SAP at SAPLabs. Marc started the JBoss project in 1999. An ex-Lieutenant in the paratroopers, Marc holds a degree in Mathematics from the Ecole Polytechnique, a master in Theoretical Physics from the Ecole Normale ULM and was a visiting scientist at MIT during his thesis. Marc's research interest focuses on aspect oriented middleware.
John Doerr joined Intel in 1974 just as they invented the famous "8080" 8 bit microprocessor. At Intel, he held various engineering, marketing and management assignments, and was one of their top-ranked sales executives. In 1980, he joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and sponsored a series of investments including Compaq, Cypress, Intuit, Macromedia, Netscape, Lotus, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, S3, Sun Microsystems, Amazon.com, and Symantec. John was the founding CEO of Silicon Compilers and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Google, Intuit, Amazon.com, Homestore.com, and Sun Microsystems. His privately held company board seats include Good Technology, and Segway. He holds patents for computer memory devices he invented as a design engineer at Monsanto. Recent interests include education, the Internet and biotechnology genomics. John was born one of five children and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. He holds a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from Rice University and an MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration.
Steve Jurvetson is a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He was the founding VC investor in Hotmail, Interwoven, and Kana. He also led the firm's investments in Tradex and Cyras (acquired by Ariba and Ciena for $8 billion), and most recently, in pioneering companies in nanotechnology and molecular electronics. Previously, Jurvetson was an R&D Engineer at Hewlett-Packard, where seven of his communications chip designs were fabricated. His prior technical experience also includes programming, materials science research (TEM atomic imaging of GaAs), and computer design at HP's PC Division, the Center for Materials Research, and Mostek. He has also worked in product marketing at Apple and NeXT Software. As a consultant with Bain & Company, Jurvetson developed executive marketing, sales, engineering and business strategies for a wide range of companies in the software, networking, and semiconductor industries. At Stanford University, he finished his BSEE in 2.5 years and graduated #1 in his class as the Henry Ford Scholar. Jurvetson also holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford. He received his MBA from the Stanford Business School, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar. Jurvetson also serves on the Merrill Lynch and STVP Advisory Boards and is Co-Chair of the NanoBusiness Alliance. He was honored as "The Valley's Sharpest VC" on the cover of Business 2.0 and chosen by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Examiner as one of, "The ten people expected to have the greatest impact on the Bay Area in the early part of the 21st Century." He was profiled in the New York Times Magazine and also featured on the cover of Worth and Fortune magazines. Jurvetson was chosen by Forbes as one of "Tech's Best Venture Investors"; by the VC Journal as one of the "Ten Most Influential VCs"; and by Fortune as part of their "Brain Tr
Kim Smith is co-founder and CEO of NewSchools Venture Fund, which she established in 1998 to transform public education by supporting education entrepreneurs. In NewSchools, Kim created a new "hybrid" approach to investing in social entrepreneurs. NewSchools uses grants, loans and equity investments to support a portfolio that includes nonprofit and for-profit entrepreneurs who are building sustainable, scalable education ventures. Kim began her career as a consultant specializing in business-education partnerships. In 1989, she became a founding team member of Teach For America (TFA). She then put her TFA experience to work in the post of founding director of BAYAC AmeriCorps, a consortium of nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay Area working to develop young leaders in education. Kim's background includes marketing experience with Silicon Graphics' Education Industry Group, where she focused on the online learning industry, and her role as the founding director of a trade show venture. Kim holds a bachelor's degree in political science and psychology from Columbia College and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In 2001, Kim was featured in Newsweek's report on the "Women of the 21st Century" as "the kind of woman who will shape America's new century." She is a member of the 2002 Class of Henry Crown Fellows of the Aspen Institute. Kim has also served on many education venture and advisory boards; these currently include EdVoice, the National Council on Teacher Quality, and the Stanford University School of Education.
Vic Verma joined Savi Technology in 1990. He previously held the positions of vice president of engineering and chief operating officer at Savi, before becoming president and chief executive officer in 1997. As VP of Engineering, Vic helped design and develop Savi's product offerings, and as COO, he helped negotiate the acquisition of Savi by Texas Instruments in 1995. In 1997, the unit was sold to Raytheon. Vic led the management buyout of Savi from Raytheon in May 1999. He earned a B.S. degree from the Florida Institute of Technology, an M.S.E. degree from the University of Michigan, and an Advanced Engineers degree from Stanford University, all in electrical engineering. He also completed all the coursework and passed the qualifying exam for his Ph.D. candidacy in electrical engineering from Stanford University before leaving to join Savi. In addition, he attended the executive management program for CEOs at Harvard Business School, the AEA Executive Institute at Stanford University, and the Financial Management Program at the University of California-Berkeley. Vic has been granted eight patents and has several other patents pending. In 1994, his DF/Tag product was recognized as the "Most Innovative Technology Developed by a Small Business" by the White House Office of Science and Technology. In 1999, he was the recipient of Florida Institute of Technology's Distinguished Achievement Award.
Randy Adams conceived the idea for AuctionDrop in 2002. He took his idea to Silicon Valley veterans Bill Rollinson and Andy Jeffrey, founding the business together later that year. Best described as a 'serial entrepreneur', Randy Adams has more than 25 years of experience in consumer technology. He has successfully founded and sold numerous companies including Emerald City Software, acquired by Adobe Systems; the Internet Shopping Network, acquired by the Home Shopping Network; Navitel Communications, acquired by Spyglass, Inc.; and Newsnet Technologies, Inc., currently under contract with Microsoft to develop specialized renditions of popular magazines for the Tablet PC. Through the years he has assisted many other entrepreneurs in their efforts to secure funding and build their companies. Most notably, he facilitated the initial funding of Yahoo by Sequoia Capital and served on the Board of Directors of Yahoo during its first year of operation. Randy received his undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Electrical Engineering.
As Senior Vice President of Hardware, Matt Hershenson brings a wealth of experience to Danger. He is responsible for Danger's hardware engineering, development and design efforts. Before co-founding Danger, Matt managed the hardware group at Mainbrace Corporation, a Windows CE systems integrator. Prior to Mainbrace Corporation, Matt served in various roles at Philips Electronics. During his tenure with the Philips Mobile Computing Group, he was responsible for the hardware of the Velo-1 handheld PC, one of the first Windows CE devices. While at Philips Semiconductors, Matt served as a systems architect, where he played an integral role in the design of numerous consumer handheld devices, including the Sharp Mobilon, Philips Nino, and the Compaq C-series. Before Philips, Matt was a hardware engineer with Catapult Entertainment, since acquired by Hearme. He was part of the team that turned the vision of multi-player gaming over the Internet into a reality. He handled all aspects of product development and design for the XBAND Video Game Modem. Matt also played a key role in the product development and design of the Apple Powerbook 150, then Apple's most affordable PowerBook computer. Matt also co-founded MOTO Development Group, a product design consultancy firm specializing in product development. MOTO aided in the design of many technical products, such as remote controls for Apple Interactive TV.
Guy Kawasaki is a founder and Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures. Prior to this position, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. and sits on the board of BitPass Inc. A noted speaker and the founder of various personal computer companies, Guy was one of the individuals responsible for the success of the Macintosh computer. He is also the author of eight books including Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. Guy holds a B.A. from Stanford University and a M.B.A. from UCLA, as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.
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