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Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh discusses his reasoning behind selling his company, LinkExchange, to Microsoft. Hsieh explains how working at a startup remained fun, based on hiring passionate friends. However, after reaching the 20-employee mark, startup growing pains made selling a good idea.
Jen-Hsun Huang co-founded NVIDIA Corporation in April 1993 and has served as President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the Board of Directors since its inception. Under his leadership, NVIDIA has become one of the largest fabless semiconductor companies in the world. NVIDIA has received numerous business and technology awards during Mr. Huang's tenure, including Fortune's Fastest Growing Companies, Wired Magazine's Top 40, and Stanford Business School's Entrepreneurial Company of the Year. Mr. Huang has served as on the Board of Trustees of the RAND Corporation since 1999 and is often invited to speak on technology and business trends at industry events. Prior to founding NVIDIA, Mr. Huang was Director of Coreware at LSI Logic and a microprocessor designer at Advanced Micro Devices. Mr. Huang holds a B.S.E.E. degree from Oregon State University and an M.S.E.E. degree from Stanford University.
Mir Imran founded InCube Laboratories in 1995 to focus on his passion: creating medical device solutions that change the standard of care in critical healthcare markets. Mir began his career as a med-tech entrepreneur in the late 1970's. Over the decades, he has become one of the world's most successful inventors, entrepreneurs and investors in healthcare. Mir now holds more than 200 issued patents - and is perhaps most well known for his pioneering contributions to the first FDA-approved Automatic Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator. Mir's current crop of inventions includes advanced treatments for neural aneurysms, epilepsy, ulcerative colitis, obesity and chronic pain, among others. Most of these will enter clinical trials in the 2008 to 2010 timeframe. As an entrepreneur, Mir has founded over 20 medical device companies, including: Vidamed (acquired by Medtronic), Physiometrix, Cardiac Pathways, Advanced Cytomextrix (acquired by Oncotech 1997), Percusurge (acquired by Medtronic 2001), Reflow, Inc. (acquired 1999), Safeview (acquired by L3 2006) Intrapace (founded 2001), Spinal Modulation (founded 2005) and Zonare (founded 1999). As an investor, Mir serves as the Life Science Venture Partner for DFJ ePlanet, where he has led 9 investments in a range of promising ventures around the globe. Mir is also an active angel investor, with a portfolio based around both medical and pharmaceutical ventures. Mir currently holds board seats with Bodymedia, Cardiovasc, Intrapace, Egeen International, Spinal Modulation, ZARS and Zonare. Mir holds an MS in Bio-Engineering and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers, where he spent three years as a Research Specialist.
For more than 20 years, filmmaker, music producer, and creative visionary QD3 has been producing hits and influencing culture. QD3 was born in London and raised in Stockholm, Sweden where he got his start in Hip Hop by touring as a break-dancer. With many gold, platinum and multi-platinum albums and singles to his name, QD3's success spreads to Rap, R&B and Pop. In addition to his many hits with artists such as Tupac, Ice Cube, and L.L. Cool J, he has composed award-winning musical scores for film and TV projects such as Menace II Society, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and Training Day. In 1999, QD3 started a documentary production company, QD3 Entertainment, focused on chronicling the many dimensions of urban culture, garnering both commercial success and critical acclaim for titles such as the multi-platinum selling Tupac Shakur biopic, Thug Angel; the BEEF series; and most recently, the Lil' Wayne (Sundance) biopic, The Carter. In June 2006, QD3 went on to form QD3 Digital to take advantage of the technology explosion of broadband video, user generated content, video on demand, and mobile platforms. In 2009, QD3 Digital will be launching two web-based entertainment properties, qd3.com and ehustle.com. Early 2010 will follow with the launch of its first XBox and PS3 video game, Scratch: The Ultimate DJ, in partnership with Genius Products, Numark, and Akai.
Nominated by Time magazine in 1995 as "one of the 100 young leaders for the new millennium", and leader of the first successful South American expedition to Mt Everest and K2, Dr Rodrigo Jordan has applied the leadership and team-building skills needed to climb the world's most challenging mountains to business and education. A civil and industrial engineer, Jordan earned a Ph.D. in Organizational Administration from Oxford University and is today a lecturer in Leadership and Innovation at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, as well as a lecturer in the School of Engineering at University Alfonso Ibañez. His mountaineering successes gave him the idea of launching his own company called Vertical. This organization, along with the charitable foundation, Fundación Vertical, delivers outdoor education and training services to corporations and individuals, particularly children from inner-city areas. By involving children in nature conservation, Jordan hopes to rear future generations of environmentally conscious people. Jordan also directed TELEDUC, a centre for distance learning of the Catholic University of Chile and in 1998 was appointed executive director of the Corporación de Televisión, the most important television network in Chile, where he served for two years. In 2004, he was awarded the "Order of Gabriela Mistral" for his significant contribution to Chilean education. The following year, he was elected chairman of the Chilean National Foundation for the Alleviation of Poverty. He is currently serving his second term as Chairman.
Mark Jung has spent the last 17 years as a successful internet CEO and entrepreneur. Most recently, Mark was the Chief Operating Officer of Fox Interactive Media and was responsible for the day-to-day operations of all of its properties including MySpace, IGN Entertainment, FoxSports.com, Scout Media, and AmericanIdol.com. Prior to Fox Interactive Media, Mark was the co-founder and CEO of IGN Entertainment, a leading Internet media and services company for videogaming and other forms of digital entertainment. Mark led IGN's sale to NewsCorp, the parent company of Fox Interactive Media, for $650 million in October 2005. Prior to joining IGN, Mark was the co-founder and CEO of Worldtalk Corporation, an Internet security company that he took public in 1996 and that has since merged with Tumbleweed Communications. Mark holds an MBA from Stanford Business School ('87) and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University. He is an active member of the Golden Gate Chapter of YPO.
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
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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