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Dan Springer brings over 20 years of executive leadership and strategic sales and marketing consulting experience to Responsys, with proven success in interactive marketing, e-commerce, and finance. As Chief Executive Officer, Dan is responsible for charting Responsys' strategic direction and extending the company's leadership into new realms of digital marketing. Prior to Responsys, Dan was Managing Director in the San Francisco office of Modem Media where he was responsible for general management of the agency's western United States operations. Dan led the development of the agency's Performance Marketing capability by leveraging database marketing, web site analytics and search engine marketing techniques. Prior to Modem Media as the CEO of Telleo, Inc., he refocused the business from online advertising to business partnerships with leading brands like Taco Bell. Previously, Springer was also the Chief Marketing Officer and General Manager for NextCard, where he built the fastest-growing credit card in history by creating one of the Internet's top five advertisers. He started his career as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and DRI/McGraw-Hill. Dan holds an MBA from Harvard University and a BA in Mathematics and Economics from Occidental College. He also sits on the board of directors for ITI, E-LOAN and The Randall Museum.
Anna Patterson is President and Founder of search engine Cuil. Her focus is on scaling architecture, tackling one of the major problems in search-the exponential growth of the Internet. Anna was the architect of Google?s large search index, TeraGoogle, that launched in early 2006. While at Google, Anna was the technical lead of one of the two Web ranking groups at Google, in charge of GoogleBase, and the manager for the core piece of Google's ad-matching technology. She joined Google in 2004 after designing, writing and selling Recall-the largest search engine in existence at the time at 12 billion pages. Anna has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and was a Research Scientist at Stanford University.
How do entrepreneurs change society? Is it through the potential of their ideas? Is it the passion that drives them? Or their ability to see opportunities where others cannot? Is it the impact and innovation of the events that come from their work? Or is it the belief that an idea can change the world?
Ann Winblad is the co-founding Partner of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. She is a well-known and respected software industry entrepreneur and technology leader. Her background and experience have been chronicled in many national business and trade publications. Ann has over 25 years of experience in the software industry. She began her career as a systems programmer at the Federal Reserve Bank. In 1976 Ann co-founded Open Systems, Inc., a top selling accounting software company, with a $500 investment. She operated Open Systems profitably for six years and then sold it for over $15 million. Prior to co-founding Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Ann served as a strategy consultant for prestigious clients such as IBM, Microsoft, Price Waterhouse, and numerous start-ups. In addition, Ann has co-authored the book Object-Oriented Software and has written articles for numerous publications. Ann received a BA in mathematics and in business administration, as well as an MA in education and international economics from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. Ann also has an honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of St. Thomas. Ann has served as a Director of start-up and public companies and currently serves as a director of Intacct, The Knot, Voltage Security, Krillion and Mulesource. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of St. Thomas and is an advisor to numerous entrepreneur groups.
Danish-born David Heinemeier Hansson is the programmer and creator of the popular Ruby on Rails web development framework and the Instiki wiki. He is also a partner at the Web-based software development firm 37signals, based in Chicago. Ruby on Rails provides a "basic development environment" for programmers, according to Wikipedia.org. Based on the programming language Ruby (developed by Japanese programmer Yukihiro Matsumoto in 1995), Ruby on Rails focuses on user interface and "convention over configuration"; meaning, developers can focus on the unique qualities of their Web site or program rather than the building blocks that every application may require. Released in 2004, Ruby on Rails has been incorporated into many applications used by some of the biggest companies, from Twitter to Apple's 2007 release of Mac OS X v.10.5 "Leopard." Aside from his development of Ruby on Rails, Heinemeier Hansson also works as a partner for Web-based software development firm 37signals. Joining the company in 2003, he has helped develop Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack and other Web-based applications. Working in similar ways like Web-based e-mail services like Yahoo! e-mail and Google's Gmail, 37signals hosts a broad range of IT services for companies, including project management to information-sharing. The firm's software has been used by Kellogg's, Sun Microsystems and even Obama '08. Hansson received his bachelor's degree from the Copenhagen Business School in 2005. In that same year, he moved to Chicago and received Hacker of the Year honors for his work on Ruby on Rails from Google and O'Reilly Media. He runs a blog called LoudThinking.com.
Robin Li is the Co-founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Baidu, Inc., and oversees the company's overall strategy and business operations. Since founding Baidu in January 2000, Li has turned the company into the largest Chinese search engine, with over 70% market share, and the third largest independent search engine in the world. In 2005, Baidu completed its successful IPO on NASDAQ, and in 2007 it became the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ-100 Index. Prior to Baidu, Li was already regarded as one of the world's top search engine experts. His hyperlink analysis, patented in 1996, is among the inventions that shaped today's search engine technology. Li worked as a staff engineer for Infoseek, a pioneer Internet search engine company, from July 1997 to December 1999, and as a senior consultant for IDD Information Services from May 1994 to June 1997. Robin Li received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Information Management from Peking University in 1991, and a Master of Science Degree in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1994.
Ken Wilcox is president and CEO of SVB Financial Group. Since January 2000, when he took on the role, Wilcox has successfully pursued a strategy of expansion and diversification, while remaining focused on the company's core niches of technology, life sciences, private equity and premium wineries. Wilcox joined Silicon Valley Bank in 1990 when he co-founded the company's East Coast Technology Division. In this role, Wilcox managed the first regional office of Silicon Valley Bank and was responsible for all lending activity east of the Mississippi River. Upon promotion to chief banking officer in 1997, Wilcox moved from Massachusetts to California and became president and CEO within four years. Prior to joining Silicon Valley Bank, Wilcox spent two years as a member of the Technology Lending Group with the Bank of New England and five years at Shawmut Bank in Boston. Prior to his banking career, Wilcox was a professor of German at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Wilcox received a bachelor's degree in German studies from Oakland University and a Ph.D. in German Studies from The Ohio State University. He also earned a master's of business administration from Harvard Business School. Wilcox is a member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.
Jesse Fink is a founding partner of MissionPoint Capital and President and CEO of Marshall Street Management. In 2004, MSM established MSM Capital Partners to manage its investment activities in the clean technology and environmental finance sectors. Jesse was the COO of Walker Digital Inc. and Priceline.com and previously worked at Georgia-Pacific, Citicorp, and CUC International. Jesse received a B.S. in Resource Management from the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry and an MBA from Syracuse University's School of Management. In February of 2007, Jesse received the Cleantech Venture Network's "Leader of the Year" award.
Mike Maples, Jr. is the managing partner of Maples Investments, and is an entrepreneur in his own right. Before becoming a full-time investor, he worked in a variety of executive and management roles in high-growth companies. His background spans a variety of markets including consumer technology, small business, and the enterprise, and he has served in various executive roles in product development, marketing, and corporate strategy. Mike began his technology career in high school, when he started a software company that developed games and educational products for the original IBM PC. He has been passionate about the technology industry ever since. Most recently, Mike co-founded Motive, Inc., the world's leading broadband software company in 1997 and played key roles in its growth from raw start-up through sales of $100 million. Motive was one of the only successful technology IPOs in 2004, and the most successful infrastructure software IPO for the prior three years. At Motive, Mike was General Manager of Motive's Corporate Business Unit, as well as Chief Marketing and Strategy officer. Prior to Motive, Mike was responsible for worldwide product marketing at Tivoli Systems, where he managed the company's product portfolio from its early-stage development through its 1995 IPO and growth to a $750M line of business within the IBM Software Group. Mike began his professional career at Silicon Graphics, where he served in business development and product marketing roles. In his spare time Mike is an amateur artist, movie-maker, and calligrapher. He holds an Engineering degree from Stanford University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and a guest-lecturer on entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, Stanford University, Princeton University, and the University of Texas.
Mitch Kapor has been at the forefront of the information technology revolution for a generation as an entrepreneur, investor, social activist, and philanthropist. Most recently, Mr. Kapor founded Foxmarks, an upcoming search engine based on bookmarks and related metadata. He received a B.A. from Yale College in 1971 and studied psychology, linguistics, and computer science as part of a major in Cybernetics. He attended the Sloan School of Management at MIT before leaving for a Silicon Valley startup. Mr. Kapor founded Lotus Development Corp. in 1982 and with Jonathan Sachs created Lotus 1-2-3, which made the PC ubiquitous in business in the 1980's. In 1990, he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He founded the Mitchell Kapor Foundation in 1997 and the Open Source Applications Foundation in 2001. He became the founding Chair of the Mozilla Foundation in 2003 and is a trustee of the Level Playing Field Institute. From 1994-1996, he served as Adjunct Professor at the MIT Media Lab. From 1999 to 2001, Mr. Kapor was a partner at Accel. In 2006, he became an Adjunct Professor at the School of Information at Berkeley. Mr. Kapor has contributed pieces on information infrastructure policy, intellectual property, and antitrust in the digital era topublications such as Scientific American, The New York Times, and Forbes.
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