Keynote Speakers
David Sacks, Founder & CEO at Yammer
David has been involved in the Internet space for 10 years as an entrepreneur, executive and investor, starting with PayPal in 1999. He was PayPal’s chief operating officer and product leader, taking the company from startup to IPO and eventual sale to eBay for $1.5 billion. Subsequently, he founded Geni.com, a genealogy website that enables millions of family members to collaboratively build an online family tree. He also produced and financed the movie “Thank You For Smoking.” David recently sold Yammer to Microsoft for $1.2 billion.
Justin Moore, Founder & CEO at Axcient
Justin Moore is a multi-time entrepreneur and recognized authority on cloud computing, SMB market strategy and entrepreneurship. As the CEO and Founder of Axcient, Justin leads the transformation of the data backup and business continuity industry to end data loss and IT downtime for businesses. Under Justin’s leadership, Axcient has been growing at a three-year rate of 2,462% – enough to earn the company Inc Magazine’s recognition as Silicon Valley’s #7 fastest-growing company.
Judges
David Hornik, General Partner at August Capital
David is a General Partner with August Capital and the creator and Executive Producer of The Lobby Conference. He invests broadly in information technology companies, with a focus on consumer facing software and services, enterprise applications and infrastructure software. He is also the author of the first Venture Capital blog, VentureBlog, and teaches business and law at Harvard Law School, Stanford GSB and Stanford Law.
Katherine Barr, General Partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures
Katherine is a Partner with Mohr Davidow Ventures where she focuses on digital media, consumer internet, and mobile sectors. She has also worked as a Negotiation at Vantage Partner for IBM, Cisco, HP, and more. Katherine also teaches a yearly Professional Education Negotiation seminar for the School of Engineering at Stanford University.
Noah Doyle, Managing Director at Javelin Venture Partners
Noah is a Managing Director at Javelin Venture Partners and over the past 20 years has fouded, launched, and grown dozens of high tech products and companies. He most recently directed the enterprise product line for Google’s geospatial products, Google Earth and Google Maps. Prior to Google, Noah managed the Marketing Strategy and Corporate Development functions at Keyhole, Inc.
James Cham, Principal, Trinity Ventures
James joined Trinity in 2010, with over 5 years of investing experience in consumer services, enterprise software and digital media companies as a VP at Bessemer Venture Partners. While at Bessemer, James was a board member at CrowdFlower and Open Candy, and observer at LifeLock, ReputationDefender, and BillShrink.
Jon Soberg, Managing Director, Blumberg Capital
Jon is a Managing Director at Blumberg Capital and has over 17 years of experience as an early-stage investor, entrepreneur, and operational executive specializing in transactional business. Prior to joining Blumberg, Jon held CEO, COO, and CFO positions at a number of startups. Jon
has also consulted for top companies including Toyota, HSBC, and Accenture.
Interviewing Journalists
Leena Rao, Senior Editor at TechCrunch
Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and Graduated from Columbia University in 2003. She has also contributed technology content for Oprah.com.
Kym McNicholas, Executive Producer and Reporter at PandoDaily
Kym is an Emmy Award Winning Anchor/ Reporter/ Producer, who is building her fifth video department from scratch at PandoDaily. Previously she spent four years at Forbes, where she built the West Coast video team, contributed to the magazine, and appeared weekly on Fox News. She’s also a regular contributor on NBC 11’s PressHere and TechNow, as well as KRON 4’s weekend broadcast.
Founder Showcase Champion
Spikes creates security software for large corporations that virtualizes the browser in the cloud – making getting hacked by browsing the web impossible.
Runner-Up
Sortbox is developing an intuitive, cloud based software platform to help small businesses collect, screen and organize job applicants.
The other finalists who competed on stage at the event included SeatAssignmate, HugeFan, Writer.ly, iGenApps, HackerHires, and OnContracting, and winning the Demo Table Competition and CrowdPitch Competitions were;
- jobFig – jobFig is developing the eharmony for jobs to help candidates and companies find the best matches with each other using behavioral analytics developed on top of 30 years of peer-reviewed research.
- Explorence – Explorence creates outdoor video games through an innovative game platform that utilizes smartphone sensors, location, and more.
- Citybot – Citybot is your own personal travel guide, designed to ease the lives of travellers everywhere. It generates custom, personalized itineraries for you, based on your preferences and desires.
- ZenCash – ZenCash is an elegant SaaS solution that helps SMB’s manage receivables. The service automates your entire receivables management process. from the moment the invoice is sent, to the day you get paid.