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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
At age 25, Laura Sanko was a founding member of a startup that raised $3.5 Million from some world-famous investors and the Founder’s Fund. The business model was simple: a website that rented high-end jewelry for special occasions for a fraction of the retail value of each piece. Three years later, the investment money was all gone and while the site continued to operate, it had failed to meet the investors’ expectations.
Jerry Kaplan is widely known in the computer industry as a serial entrepreneur, executive, technical innovator, and author. Most recently, he was co-chairman of Egghead.com, Inc. Previously, Mr. Kaplan served as chairman of the board and chief executive officer of online auction company Onsale, Inc., which he co-founded in 1994. Prior to Onsale, he was co-founder and chairman of GO Corporation, which developed PenPoint, a pen-based operating system. Mr. Kaplan wrote a best-selling book about his experiences at GO Corporation entitled "Startup--A Silicon Valley Adventure", published in May 1995 by Houghton-Mifflin. Before founding GO, Mr. Kaplan was the principal technologist at Lotus Development Corporation, where he co-authored Lotus Agenda, the first personal information management software. In 1981, he co-founded Teknowledge, a public company specializing in artificial intelligence. Mr. Kaplan received a Bachelor's degree in history and philosophy of science from the University of Chicago (1972), a Doctorate degree in computer and information science from the University of Pennsylvania (1979), and was a research associate in Computer Science at Stanford from 1979 to 1981.
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.
Prior to joining B Lab, Kassoy spent 16 years in the private equity business, most recently as a partner at MSD Real Estate Capital, an affiliate of MSD Capital, the $12 billion investment vehicle for Michael Dell. Kassoy is dedicated to growing innovative for-profit and non-profit models for social change. He is a board member of Working Today and the Freelancers Union, which provide affordable health insurance and other financial services to independent workers in thirty-two states. He also sits on the boards of Echoing Green, Wall St. Without Walls, and acts as an advisor to Civic Builders. Andrew was raised in Boulder, Colorado and graduated with distinction from Stanford University, where he was a Truman Scholar and President's Award winner. In 2001, he was named a Henry Crown Fellow by the Aspen Institute. Kassoy has also been active in Colorado politics, and he has served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Kamy Wicoff, a writer, and he has two young sons.
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.
As leader of the Innovent team, Stephanie Keller-Bottom draws upon over 17 years of of executive leadership roles in creating new marketplaces for Fortune 500 companies like Hewlett Packard, Citibank/Citicorp and Visa. Ms. Keller-Bottom joined Nokia's venturing organization in 1998, the entity charged with corporate renewal and innovation. In 2000, she established Innovent, the entrepreneurial innovation unit within Nokia that explores emerging markets and the opportunities they create. Prior to joining Nokia, Ms. Keller-Bottom served as Director of Marketplace Creation for Hewlett Packard, where she worked closely with the CEO to utilize innovative approaches in partnership and collaboration and build market entry strategies for emergent businesses. During her tenure as Director of Consumer Credit Operations for Citibank/Citicorp, she managed consumer credit operations for the California franchise, and then moved into strategic acquisitions and corporate strategy. While Vice President, E-Commerce Marketing and Product Development for Visa U.S.A., Ms. Keller-Bottom collaborated with top U.S. financial institutions to build strategic plans that addressed the emergence of the electronic banking marketplace, and digital banking challenges such as risk management and identification, pricing models, digital authentication and identity. Ms. Keller-Bottom's solid understanding of e-commerce, consumer behavior, digital/electronic marketplaces, and financial services provides a unique and invaluable perspective into the potential diffusion of new technologies and applications in the marketplace, and the role of innovation and renewal in major corporations. Innovent's portfolio of entrepreneurs leverage her expertise in strategic planning, risk management and market research, to develop the strategies and tactics necessary to build profitable, customer-focused sales and service organizations Ms. K
Tom Kelley is currently General Manager at IDEO, a firm that helps its clients create innovative products, services and environments. Tom is a frequent speaker on managing innovation for U.S., Asian and European audiences, and has appeared on international news programs for BBC Television and Nikkei Satellite News. As the co-author of three books, including The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm, Tom illuminates the strategies for fostering a culture and process of continuous innovation. Prior to joining IDEO, Tom was a management consultant for Towers Perrin, advising senior executives on organizational and operational issues in North America, Asia and Australia. Tom holds an MBA in Marketing from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, where he received the Delbert J. Duncan citation as the year's top marketing scholar.
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