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Trip Hawkins is Chairman and CEO of Digital Chocolate, a creator of innovative mobile phone applications for life, work, and play. Trip is responsible for the strategic focus, overall direction, and performance of the company. Trip has been a new media pioneer for 30 years. Early in his career, Trip played a key role in defining the personal computer at Apple. He went on to found Electronic Arts and built the company into the industry leader. Trip also founded 3DO, a pioneer in digital video, network gaming, and social communities. The author of three patents, Trip introduced the use of celebrities and athletes in video games, and his design credits include award-winning best-sellers such as John Madden Football, Army Men, M.U.L.E., Doctor J and Larry Bird Go One on One, and High Heat Baseball . Trip received an MBA from Stanford University and developed his own major at Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Strategy and Applied Game Theory. He was also the first business executive to be inducted into the Hall of Fame by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences.
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.
J. Michael Cline is the founding Partner of Accretive LLC. Michael and other Accretive principals founded Exult, Xchanging, Fandango and Accretive Health. Before founding Accretive Michael spent 10 years as General Partner at General Atlantic Partners helping build General Atlantic into the world's largest private investment firm focused on software and related investments. Prior to General Atlantic, Michael was an associate at McKinsey & Company. Michael received his MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a Baker Scholar and he received a BS from Cornell University. He serves on the boards of Accretive Commerce, Fandango, Accretive Health and Willow. He is a Trustee of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) where he chairs the Tigers Forever initiative - the world's largest effort in global tiger conservation and is a Trustee of the Brunswick School. He also serves on the board of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Endeavor Global and the Harvard Business School Rock Center for Entrepreneurship.
As a general partner at MDV, Michael Goldberg leverages valuable entrepreneur and investor experience from his more than 25 years of work in the life sciences industry including biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, health services and healthcare information technology. In addition to pursuing life sciences investments for MDV he works to extend the firm's reach into major universities and research centers. Prior to joining MDV Michael was Managing Director of Jasper Capital and Co-chair of the California Research and Cures Coalition ($3 billion Prop 71 stem cell campaign). He has also held senior management and operations roles including serving as Chairman of OnCare, an oncology practice management company he founded in 1995. Until 1999 he also served as OnCare's Chief Executive Officer, where he guided revenue growth to $100 million in three years. Previously, Michael was Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Axion Inc., a cancer-focused healthcare service company he started in 1987 and sold to Bristol-Myers Squibb in 1996. Axion ranked number four on Inc. Magazine's list of the 500 fastest growing private companies in America for the five years ended 1994. Michael was also a recipient of Inc. Magazine's 1995 Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Prior to his tenure with Axion, Michael was a partner in the venture capital firm Sevin Rosen Funds, where he was responsible for the firm's investments in the biomedical industry. Michael received a B.A. from Brandeis University and an M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Kauffman Conversation with Dan Gilbert Chairman and Founder, Quicken Loans Majority Owner, Cleveland Cavaliers and Founder of BizdomU, a program that assists entrepreneurs in launching businesses.
Mr. Gifford leads The Foundry in all of its activities, including the identification and early development of new technologies, the formation, staffing and growth of new companies, and serving as a board member of the new ventures. Most recently, Mr. Gifford was Vice President of Research and Development at Heartport, Inc.. From 1993-1998, he built and led a 62-person team developing a wide variety of novel devices and procedures for Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery that were instrumental in the company's enormously successful public offering in 1996. Heartport's market capitalization at its peak in 1996 reached over $1 billion. In 1992, Mr. Gifford and Professor Dr. Berthold Hoefling co-founded Bavaria Medizin Technologie (BMT), GmbH, to develop innovative drug delivery catheters and to establish a German source for innovation and production of catheters for Interventional Cardiology. During the two-year period following the founding of this business, he served in the role of Managing Director of BMT until such time as he transitioned management of the company to a German national. In 1990, Mr. Gifford and John B. Simpson, MD, Ph.D., founded Cardiovascular Therapeutic Technologies, Inc., a business devoted to the development of innovative local drug delivery catheters for thrombolytic and antiproliferative agents. Eli Lilly and Company acquired this business for its technology in 1991, and it became the original basis for Guidant's Compass organization. From 1985-1990, Mr. Gifford worked at Devices for Vascular Intervention (DVI), where he was the driving force behind the design of the company's first generation Peripheral and Coronary atherectomy systems. In addition, during this period he served in various Clinical Research and Marketing capacities. Before joining DVI, Hanson worked in an engineering role at Oximetrix, Inc., working in the field of intravascular blood gas monitoring
C.S. Ghosh is the founder and CEO of Bandhan, a Kolkata-based microfinance institution which provides services in microfinance, micro-entrepreneurship, health, education, and disaster management to India's working poor. The organization focuses primarily on providing financial services to women, a critical step in breaking the cycle of poverty. Bandan ranked second in the Forbes' list of the world's Top 50 Micro Finance Institutions. The first of its kind, Bandhan ranked #3 for its efficiency and impact. With Ghosh's leadership and focus on highly standardized systems, the organization has expanded with increasing efficiency.
We caught up with Michael Gerber recently to talk about his new book: Awakening The Entrepreneur Within - How Ordinary People Can Create Extraordinary Companies in which he describes vision as the key to creating opportunity.
Andy Freire is Axialent's co-founder and CEO. Entrepreneur in the business and social domains, after working at Procter & Gamble, he founded and led Officenet, a company that revolutionized the industry of distribution (retail) of office supplies in Latin America growing from one to almost a thousand employees in a 4 year span. When he was 18, he created the Fundacion Iniciativa, for the promotion of leadership among the Latin American youth. He collaborates weekly with CNN in Spanish as "Expert Entrepreneur." He was distinguished by the World Economic Forum as "Global Leader for Tomorrow", by the Endeavor Foundation as "Latin American Entrepreneur of the Year" and he was one of two finalists who received awards as "World Young Business Achiever" in the Philippines in 2002. Andy has a Licensure in Economics magna cum laude from the University of San Andres in Buenos Aires, Argentina and an OPM from the Harvard Business School. His several projects got funded by world recognized financial institutions such as GE Capital, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, George Soros, KKR, Santander Bank, Bank of America, Warburg Pincus, Louis Vuitton, GP Investimentos and Tommy Lee Putnam.
Janice Fraser is the CEO and a founding partner of Adaptive Path. She has worked in high-tech media for more than 15 years as an entrepreneur, interaction designer, and editor. She joined the internet back when the blink tag was big, and began to pioneer consumer Web applications for Netscape in 1996. Her current work focuses on leadership for user experience managers and the role of user experience in the changing landscape of product innovation. Janice has been a featured speaker at nearly every Web-centered design conference, from the Nielsen/Norman world tour to South by Southwest Interactive. She is the founder of four startup companies and was previously managing editor for IDG Communications. For many years Janice taught interaction design at San Francisco State University's Multimedia Studies Program. Although Time magazine once called her a "grizzled and cynical veteran" of the dot-com era, she remains an unapologetic champion of user-centered design as a value-producing investment.
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