Panels

Getting Funded

Tuesday, September 18, 12:00 - 12:45pm

Jason Calacanis moderates discussion with Jay Adelson (Digg), David Sacks (Geni), Roelof Botha (Sequoia), Sumant Mandel (Clearstone), George Zachery (CRV), Hank Barry (Howard Rice), and Jeff Clavier (SoftTechVC).

Jay Adelson is CEO of Digg, guiding all aspects of the company's development, growth and management. Under his leadership, Digg has grown from just a few thousand users to well over a million and is now considered one of the top socially focused Web sites. Prior to Digg, Adelson founded Equinix, Inc (Nasdaq: EQIX), was a co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation's highly regarded Palo Alto Internet Exchange (PAIX) and a founding employee of Netcom On-Line Communications, Inc., one of the nation's first Internet Service Providers.
David Sacks is the founder and CEO of Geni and the founder and CEO of Room 9 Entertainment LLC. Geni's mission is to create a family tree of the whole world with family networking layers, Room 9 is an independent film production/ financing company in Los Angeles that recently produced Thank You For Smoking. Previously, David was COO at PayPal and a management consultant at McKinsey.
Roelof Botha is a partner at Sequoia Capital focused on services and software investments. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 2003, Roelof served as the Chief Financial Officer of PayPal (EBAY) and worked as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company. Roelof is a certified actuary (Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries), and has a BS in Actuarial Science, Economics, and Statistics from the University of Cape Town and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Sumant Mandal is a managing director at Clearstone Venture Partners, and his primary passion lies in helping visionary entrepreneurs build companies around large markets from the ground up. He represents Clearstone on the boards of DiVitas, Mimosa Systems, Kazeon Systems, Billdesk (India), DiGibee Miicrosystems (India) and ThisNext. Sumant initiated and is responsible for Clearstone's investment activities in India. Prior to Clearstone, Sumant spent more than eight years as an entrepreneur involved in starting companies both in India and the U.S.
George Zachery is a partner at Charles River Ventures who brings more than 17 years of operating and investing experience in computing technology, consumer entertainment and consumer services. He has led investments at Areae, Geni.com, GoTV, Skyrider, Twitter and is on each company's board of directors. Previously, he was a general partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures.
Hank Barry is a director in Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin's Business Department and member of the Intellectual Property Counseling & Transactions Group. Hank represents high growth technology companies at all stages of development, with a particular focus on intellectual property, commercial strategy and venture capital. Prior to joining Howard Rice, he was a partner at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and, on their behalf, served as CEO and a board member for Napster, Inc. from 2000 to 2002.
Jeff Clavier is the founder and managing partner of SoftTech VC, an active seed stage investor in Web 2.0 startups. Since 2004, Jeff has invested in more than 20 consumer Internet companies. Prior to founding SoftTech VC, Jeff spent more than 16 years in the enterprise software world as an entrepreneur, senior executive and venture capitalist. Throughout his career, he has been exposed to global markets, designed products for international distribution and invested in software infrastructure startups across the U.S. and Europe.

Exit Strategies

Tuesday, September 18, 5:15 - 6:00pm

Heather Harde moderates discussion with Michael Montgomery (Montgomery & Co.), Craig Walker (GrandCentral/Google), Raj Kapoor (Mayfield), Ted Wang (Fenwick), Michael Marquez (CBS) and Evan Williams (Obvious and Twitter). Watch the video here.

Michael Montgomery serves as President of Montgomery & CO. and heads the firm's media and entertainment practice. Michael has extensive background in the entertainment industry and has worked at some of the world's largest media companies, including Walt Disney Company and DreamWorks SKG. He advises client companies on mergers & acquisition opportunities and financings. Prior to joining Montgomery & Co., Michael was the chief executive officer of Sega Game Works and a senior executive for DreamWorks SKG and EuroDisney.
Craig Walker is a senior product manager at Google. He was the founder and CEO of GrandCentral Communications, recently sold to Google. GrandCentral is a personal communications service that gives consumers one phone number for all their phones and unifies voicemail into one inbox. Previously, Craig was a senior director of VoIP at Yahoo! Inc. and the president and CEO at Dialpad Communications, Inc.
Raj Kapoor is a managing director of the Mayfield Fund with expertise in online applications, e-commerce, digital imaging and telecommunications. Raj sits on the boards of Tagged, TimeBridge, and Wize. Raj was co-founder and CEO of Snapfish, a leading global online photo service, and he orchestrated the sale of Snapfish to Hewlett-Packard in March 2005. Prior to Snapfish, Raj was an executive at Excite@Home.
Ted Wang is a partner at Fenwick & West and his practice focuses on representation of emerging companies, mature public companies, venture capitalists and investment banks involved in the information technology, Internet and clean technology industries. For startups, he counsels clients on both corporate and intellectual property matters.
Evan Williams is the founder of Obvious, a web product development lab in San Francisco, and co-founder and chairman of Twitter, Inc. He has been focused on consumer Internet technology for the last 13 years, in the role of developer, manager, investor, and entrepreneur. In 1999, Evan co-created Blogger.com, one of the first and biggest commercial blogging services, which was acquired by Google in 2003.
Michael Marquez is senior vice president of strategy and corporate development at CBS. He was recently responsible for CBS' acquisition of Last.fm. Previously, Michael was a director of corporate development at Yahoo!.