34 Mentors

Silicon Valley Spring 2013

The Founder Institute carefully recruits approximately 25 Mentors per Semester, who are normally the CEO or founder of a successful startup. The Mentors are selected based on their ability to convey lessons learned on a topic in the curriculum and help participating Founders by sharing their relevant experiences. Mentors are accessible to Founders in the program during the sessions and through email. The shared equity upside of each Semester encourages supportive and collaborative relationships with the Mentors.

The Institute recruits some of the Mentors after a Semester has launched to match the needs of Founders with the skills of Mentors.

Adeo Ressi

CEO, TheFunded.com

Adeo Ressi is Founding Member of TheFunded.com, an online community of 17,000 CEOs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide. Adeo also runs the Founder Institute, a mentoring program that helps entrepreneurs launch hundreds of world-class companies each year. The Institute is the eighth start-up that Adeo has founded or built, four of which were acquired and three of which are still operating.

Alejandro Rivas Micoud

CEO, Userlytics Corporation

Alejandro Rivas-Micoud, CEO and Founder of Userlytics Corporation. Previously founded, ran and sold Clearwire Spain, a national wireless (4G) operator in Spain, to Clearwire Corporation; also founded, managed and sold Alo Comunicaciones, a fixed line telecommunications operator to Euphony Plc. Have written, directed and produced 4 short films, have published one novel, have written 2 feature length screenplays, am a member of YPO (Young President's Association) and have an MBA from INSEAD.

• Mentor Progress Review on 06/04/2013

Alexander Garcia Tobar

Principal, AGT Group, Inc

Alexander is a global entrepreneur/exec who's experienced 3 IPOs & 1 Exit, speaks 6 languages, and has led early and mid-stage startups ranging from $0-$100M+ in revenue. His main areas of focus have been Security, Video, and Mobile. Alexander currently is a mentor at the Berkeley Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology (CET).

• Marketing and Sales on 06/18/2013

Avery Lyford

Managing Director, Propell Solutions

Avery focuses on driving growth for companies at all stages. The Propell Solutions team has interviewed and analyzed the 440 companies that grew to $1B in revenue after IPOing in the last 30 years - published as “Blueprint to a Billion” and “Mastering The 7 Essentials of High Growth Businesses”. Avery has served as CRO of LEAP Commerce (Social/Mobile Commerce), Chairman Cometera (Web software deployment) ,VP of Business Development for Makara (cloud computing - sold Red Hat), Chairman Angstro (social networking - sold Google), advisor to Nor1 (Hospitality upsell), advisor to Hara (Energy & Environment management), and as consultant on Cisco’s cloud computing strategy.

Bhavin Shah

CEO, Refresh, Inc.

Bhavin is currently the CEO and Co-Founder of Refresh, Inc. and early stage consumer Internet company focusing on intelligent memory augmentation. Through his work as Co-Founder, Board Member, and COO at Gazillion Entertainment and Director of Business Development at LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc., he’s taken a company from inception to scale and from private to public in education, toys, consumer internet, video games, media and entertainment industries. Bhavin has a BS in Computer Science from University of California, San Diego and an MA from Stanford University and is passionate about photography and marathon running.

• Cofounders, Hiring and Firing on 05/14/2013

Bob Rosin

VP & GM, Business Development, Skype

Bob is VP & GM of business development for Skype, the communications division of Microsoft. Skype currently has over 300 million monthly active users, and with over 2 billion minutes per day of voice and video calling, Skype is the global leader in communications. Skype's international call volume represents over 1/3 of the world's international telecommunications market, and Skype is the largest video communications provider with over 50% of all Skype minutes including video. Bob's role encompasses consumer, enterprise, service provider and other partnerships across mobile, desktop, and embedded devices. Bob was head of business development for Skype during the acquisition by Microsoft for $8.5B in October 2011. Bob was previously EVP of Corporate Development, Business Development, and Sales for Qik, Inc., which was acquired by Skype for $150M in January 2011. At Qik, Bob led deals with AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Docomo, Softbank, Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, Sony, and other key partners as well as leading a successful fund raising process. Bob took Qik from an $11M post money valuation prior to his joining to a 14x exit in less than one year. Before Qik, Bob was SVP of sales and marketing for OQO, the creator of the world's first pocketable computer. Bob led fund raising of over $85M in venture capital from leading venture firms and took the company from zero to $25M in annual revenue. With over 107 patents on mobile computing, Qik was an early leader in the move to mobile computing and was acquired by Google. Prior to Qik, Bob founded Bang Networks, the first company to develop technologies enabling real-time experiences in browsers at large scale, a business plan which he wrote while earning his MBA at Harvard Business School. Powering the world's largest websites for their dynamic content including Excite.com and CBS Sportsline, as well as mission critical financial institutions such as Fidelity, S&P, and Dow Jones, Bang Networks predated the current live web experiences that we all enjoy today. Bob raised over $32M for Bang Networks from Sequoia Capital, Marc Andreessen, Nicholas Negroponte, and other leading investors. Previously, Bob worked at Sony Corp. in Tokyo and Silicon Valley, where he incubated Navio Inc. (NASDAQ: LBRT) and led Sony's involvement with WebTV Networks, Inc. (acquired by Microsoft). Bob received his MBA from Harvard Business School where he won the Dubilier Prize for Entrepreneurship, and received his BA from Cornell University Magna Cum Laude with three majors. Bob received Red Herring Top 100 for two companies, is first author on 9 granted US patents related to Internet technologies, has a Black Belt in Aikido, is fluent in Japanese, and is an avid underwater photographer.

• Outsourcing, Partners and Suppliers on 06/11/2013

Bram Cohen

Founder/Chief Scientist, BitTorrent

I'm Bram Cohen, mostly known for inventing BitTorrent and I now work as Chief Scientist at BitTorrent Inc. Previously I worked as a very early employee at a bunch of startups you've never heard of. I was in the Time 100 for 2005, have been profiled in feature articles in Wired and The New York Times, have numerous other awards, and am a published mechanical puzzle inventor.

• Startup Legal and IP on 05/07/2013

Chris Hogg

Founder & CEO, 100Plus

Chris is the Founder of 100Plus, a consumer health startups that leverages large health datasets to build models of a user's future health. The company has raised money from Founders Fund, Greylock, and Felicis Ventures. Prior to 100Plus, Chris was the Director of Commercial Strategy at Gilead Sciences, where he was responsible for understanding the evolving therapeutic landscape for cardiovascular diseases. Chris holds a Degree in Molecular and Cell Biology from Brown University and an MBA from The University of Chicago.

• Customer Development & Startup Research on 04/09/2013

Dan Arkind

Founder & CEO, JobScore

Dan is the co-founder and CEO of JobScore, a freemium online hiring solution used by 600+ employers. Dan is a 15+ year veteran of the tech startup talent wars and has filled every role from hire 0 to150 at technology startups - including connecting co-founders. Dan spent the first part of his career recruiting for the firm that built and spun off Hotjobs.com and co-founded an entrepreneur networking group called STIRR. He hails from Sao Paulo, Brazil and when he's not starting stuff, he enjoys designing & building wood furniture.

• Product Development on 05/21/2013

David Weekly

CEO, Oha.na

David is a Developer Advocate at Facebook, ensuring the Facebook platform is an incredible gift to developers worldwide. David has been programming since he was five and has coded for MIT, Harvard, Stanford, There.com, atWeb, and Legato. David wrote the first layman's description of MP3 in early 1997 and graduated in 2000 with a BS in Computer Science from Stanford, where he was a President Scholar and a finalist in the ACM International Programming Competition. David started PBwiki (now PBworks) in 2003 which is still running independently serving millions every month, and a small family sharing startup called Oha.na (Hawai'ian for "family") that was acqui-hired by Facebook in March 2013. He likes to throw hacker parties (he co-founded SuperHappyDevHouse in 2005 and Hacker Dojo in 2009), connect people, fly helicopters, and build useful things. David won Best Mentor in the SF Summer 2010 Session and Most Supportive Mentor across the whole global FI program in 2011. I SUPPORT YOU! :)

• Startup Ideation Bootcamp on 02/12/2013

Eddie Hartman

co-Founder, LegalZoom

My name is Eddie Hartman, I am the co-founder of LegalZoom.com, where I run product and business innovation as the corporate Chief of Strategy and President, Attorney Services Division. Prior to LegalZoom, I was the CTO of TROON (acquired by Xceed in 1998), and before that I was a freelance "show producer" with MSN, the director of a website called Candidate 96, and a consultant for FileNet (now part of IBM Global), as well as co-host of the popular LA show "Legally Bound". I am a member of the California Bar, although I did not attend law school, and I graduated Wharton as a Palmer Scholar. I love using big data to solve problems, and I love consumer-focused testing. I wish I could speak Chinese, but after three years of trying, I still can't.

• Mentor Progress Review on 06/04/2013
• Presentation and Publicity on 06/25/2013

Gagan Biyani

CoFounder

Gagan is a Co-Founder of Udemy, an online learning platform. He is also a contributing writer to TechCrunch's MobileCrunch, where he covers technology startups in the mobile space. He helped bootstrap Udemy to its first 10,000 users and then raised $1,000,000 of funding from 11 angel investors whose portfolios include YouTube, LinkedIn, Zynga, Mint.com, SlideShare and Yelp. Prior to joining the startup world, Gagan was a strategy consultant at Accenture, where he worked with clients such as the Department of Homeland Security, Advance Auto Parts, and Cisco He graduated from UC Berkeley in 3 years with a degree in Economics.

• Customer Development & Startup Research on 04/09/2013
• Mentor Idea Review on 04/30/2013
• Marketing and Sales on 06/18/2013

Holly Liu

CoFounder, Chief of Staff, Kabam

Co-founder and Chief of Staff Holly Liu is co-founder and Chief of Staff of Kabam, the leader in the western world for free-to-play core games. Holly also oversees Kabam’s corporate culture as head of People Operations (“People Ops”), which is responsible for driving Kabam’s vision, mission, and values for its 600 employees across six offices in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Canada. Holly has helped build a world-class human resources team that is responsible for recruiting and retaining top talent and has grown Kabam’s personnel base by 500% in three years. Prior to her role as Chief of Staff, Holly was VP of People Ops and Director of User Experience. She led the product design for Kabam’s award-winning Kingdom’s of Camelot, which has grown into a $200 million franchise in three years. Holly was also an initial designer for the mobile extension Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North, which was the top grossing app on iOS in 2012. Before co-founding Kabam, Holly was Senior User Interface Designer for AOL, where she led design of community web products. She has also worked as a consultant for Arthur Andersen and Accenture. Holly received her Masters in Information Management & Systems from UC Berkeley and her B.A. in Mass Communications from UCLA. She was named to Forbes’ “Top 10 Women Entrepreneurs to Watch” in 2013.

• Vision and Values on 04/02/2013

Jared Goralnick

Founder & CEO, AwayFind

Jared Goralnick is the Founder & CEO of AwayFind, a web application that helps people to escape from email by notifying them of urgent messages. In addition to leading business development and managing the team at AwayFind, he also hosts Ignite DC, co-organizes Inbox Love, mentors at 500 Startups, and speaks about productivity, information overload, entrepreneurship, and the future of communications around the globe. He started his first full time business at 20, SET Consulting, and sold it in July 2010.

• Mentor Idea Review on 04/30/2013
• Outsourcing, Partners and Suppliers on 06/11/2013

Jeff Bonforte

CEO, Xobni

Jeff is the CEO of Xobni, a company focused on helping you manage and use your relationships, with a focus on mobile. Prior to Xobni, he was VP of realtime communications and social search at Yahoo! and has founded multiple startups such as Gizmo5 (acquired by Google) and i-drive.com. Jeff graduated from UCLA with a BA in Classical Civilizations. Is a happy father, dog owner, traveler and occasional extreme athlete (400+ skydives).

• Customer Development & Startup Research on 04/09/2013

Jill Stelfox

VP & GM, Location Solutions, Zebra Technologies

Jill has founded and run several companies, including founding two venture capital backed technology companies. She is a successful serial entrepreneur, having bought & sold dozens of companies, raised over fifty million in venture capital & returned over 1000X to investors. Jill has been the CFO and EVP of Corporate Development at Binary, the CEO, Co-Founder and Chairman of Defywire, a wireless technology company, providing real-time safety solutions to public and private schools. Before launching Defywire, Jill was an owner, CFO and Director of Mobile & Wireless at Noblestar Systems, a professional services firm. Jill spearheaded Noblestar’s substantial growth including an expanded international presence both organically and through several acquisitions, including raising VC money and launching Riverbed Technologies. Jill also served as the Chief Financial Officer for Netafim Irrigation of North America, where she developed and implemented the company's strategic plan, along with business re-engineering initiatives.

Jim Kaskade

CEO & Serial Entrepreneur, PARC, Xerox Company

Jim Kaskade has 10+ years as a CEO/senior executive building high-tech products, teams, and businesses in the areas of cloud computing software, Software as a Service (SaaS), online and mobile digital media, online and mobile advertising, and semiconductors. He has an additional 10+ years in leadership roles developing data warehousing, Big Data, data mining, and business intelligence solutions. Jim has also founded four start-ups, and brings more than twenty-five years of experience building enterprise-class applications for Fortune 1000 companies. He is most recently incubating a new startup at PARC, a Xerox company, as an EIR.

Jose De Dios

CEO, Aplaz

Jose De Dios is a Silicon Valley veteran with extensive experience in Business Negotiations, Executive Training, New Client Acquisition, and Sales Training. He was the Founder of The Outsource Group, a regional Human Resources Outsourcing company that became "the fastest growing privately held company in the US" according to Inc 500. Jose is an influential networker in the Valley, leading large Meetup groups including Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs.

• Mentor Idea Review on 04/30/2013
• Mentor Progress Review on 06/04/2013

Justin Wilcox

CTO, Nimbus Health

Justin Wilcox started his first company at the age of 10, and hasn’t been able to stop. Graduating from Cal Poly’s Computer Science program, Justin worked at Microsoft for five years before leaving to start Nimbus Health – an electronic medical record company. In addition to running Nimbus, he’s launched a couple mobile apps in his spare time, including a top seller in the Travel Category and Bounce on Android. When Justin’s not entrepreneuring, he’s blogging at CustomerDevLabs.com about entrepreneuring or maybe doin’ a little dancing.

• Startup Slhacker: 3 Lean Hacks to Talk to Customers on 02/07/2013
• Vision and Values on 04/02/2013
• Naming and Branding on 04/16/2013
• Cofounders, Hiring and Firing on 05/14/2013

Karl Shaikh

Founder , Interpreters-On-Call

Karl is a founder of Interpreters-On-Call and Virtual Directors, both of which are London based companies. He also advised the founding team of R1-GB, and many other startups. He currently resides in San Francisco, and is helping NPOs (eg Parents Education Network, Taproot Foundation, Community Youth Center etc) develop their strategies and achieve growth, and by helping other entrepreneurs. In addition to his start up experience, Karl holds two Master's degrees, including Masters in Finance - with a focus on finance for the entrepreneurial businesses. He also has experience with large Multi National Corporations (Gemini Consulting, Marconi Communications etc), Banking (Morgan Stanley), and is currently an adjunct professors for a Business School on Strategy and Entrepreneurship. He is also a big fan of the Lean Start Up way, and defining or scoping your MVP, and identifying Pivots.

• Mentor Progress Review on 06/04/2013

Kate Rutter

Co-Founder, LUXr

Kate Rutter is the co-founder and Principal at LUXr, which provides products and services for early-stage entrepreneurs who want to make products that customers want, need and love to buy. Before LUXr, Kate was an experience designer at Adaptive Path, where she learned deeply about the Customer Development process. Kate earned a BA in Studio Art & Painting from Wellesley College.

• Mentor Idea Review on 04/30/2013
• Mentor Progress Review on 06/04/2013

Madeline Duva

Advisor, Eye-Fi

Madeline Duva is president of 3rd Eye Consulting and sits on the advisory boards of a number of companies, including Eye-Fi (www.eye.fi), Parrot (www.Parrot.com), Phone Halo (www.phonehalo.com), and Splashtop (www.splashtop.com). After several years at Fidelity Investments, she moved to Silicon Valley where she has held executive managerial posts at Communication Intelligence Corp, PenOp, Dejima, and Revere Data. Before starting her own consulting firm advising start-ups, Ms. Duva was CEO of China MobileSoft which developed a complete Linux platform for mobile phones. In 2005, CMS was successfully acquired by PalmSource, where she held the position of VP Silicon and ODM partners. PalmSource was then acquired by ACCESS. Ms. Duva received her BA and MA with honors in LAS/Economics from Vanderbilt University.

• Mentor Idea Review on 04/30/2013
• Mentor Progress Review on 06/04/2013
• Fundraising on 07/02/2013

Michael Seibel

CEO, Socialcam

Michael Seibel is the CEO of Socialcam. He was formerly the co-founder and CEO of Justin.tv and the Finance Director for Kweisi Mfume’s 2006 U.S. Senate campaign. Michael earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from Yale University, where he majored in polical science with an American government concentration.

• Startup Legal and IP on 05/07/2013

Misha Chellam

Cofounder & COO, Scanadu

Misha is the Cofounder & COO of Scanadu, a portable health device company. He previously launched and ran the Founder Institute in Brussels, Belgium, was the business guy at a payment technology startup, and started and sold a commercial real estate company. Long ago, he founded Speechwriters LLC, a moderately successful indie folk rock band. He attended Pomona College and loves teamwork and thinking about the future.

Rajesh Setty

Entrepreneur, Author & Speaker, RajeshSetty.com

Rajesh Setty is a serial entrepreneur and a business alchemist based in Silicon Valley. Raj is the president of Foresight Plus, a consulting firm that brings new ideas to life and/or new life to current ideas. He is currently involved in multiple technology and publishing startups in US and India. Rajesh is an author with eleven published books to his credit and maintains a blog with more than 1800 articles. You can read more about his work at www.foresightplus.com and about his life at www.rajeshsetty.com/blog

• Naming and Branding on 04/16/2013
• Marketing and Sales on 06/18/2013
• Presentation and Publicity on 06/25/2013
• Startup Ideation Bootcamp on 02/12/2013

Russell Klusas

FI Mentor

• Mentor Idea Review on 04/30/2013

Sam Chaudhary

Co-founder & CEO, ClassDojo

Sam studied quantitative economics at Cambridge University, and went on to work as a teacher for several years following. Sam subsequently worked in the Education arm of the consultancy firm McKinsey & Co in London, and then left to start ClassDojo with his co-founder Liam Don. Class Dojo raised seed capital from the Palo Alto-based education technology incubator ImagineK12.

Sami Inkinen

Co-Founder, Board Member, Trulia

Sami is a serial tech entrepreneur, most recently Co-Founder and President of the leading online real estate marketplace Trulia, which grew to 400+ employees and more than 20 Million monthly users and went public (NYSE: TRLA) in September 2012. He continues to help the company forward as a board member. Previously Sami co-founded a wireless software company Matchem and worked in various software development and business roles at Nokia, Microsoft, McKinsey&Company and one of Europe's first online stock brokers eQ Online. Sami holds an MBA from Stanford University and Masters in Science from the Physics department of Helsinki University of Technology. Sami, a five time Hawaii Ironman finisher, was also triathlon world champion in his age group in 2011.

• Cofounders, Hiring and Firing on 05/14/2013

Seth Sternberg

co-founder & ceo, Meebo

Seth is a cofounder of Meebo. Previously he worked at IBM in the M&A group. Seth majored in Political Science at Yale before he went to Stanford's Business School. Seth flies airplanes (less than he'd like to, but it's expensive!), rides motorcycles, and rollerblades.

• Vision and Values on 04/02/2013

Tim Hyer

Founder & CEO, Getable

Tim is the Founder & CEO of Getable, which connects people with their favorite products on-demand from trusted rental establishments. He is a graduate of the inaugural class of the Founder Institute in 2009, and earned a BA in Visual Arts from Duke University. Tim is interested in how the intersection of business and design can lead to innovation and meaningful experiences for the consumer.

• Naming and Branding on 04/16/2013

Wayne Willis

Managing Partner, Nodal Partners

Wayne is Managing Partner of Nodal Partners, a network of investors, senior advisors and executives who collaborate with early stage companies. Wayne was co-founder of Hyatt Legal Services, and Chairman or CEO of several other companies, as well as serving on various Boards. He has invested in scores of companies, advised scores of others, served on 26 boards and coached several CEOs. Wayne is a graduate of Yale Law School, the Yale Graduate School (Management) and Yale College.

• Mentor Progress Review on 06/04/2013

Will Bunker

Entrepreneur, Co-Founder of One-and-Only (became Match.com)

Will Bunker is the co-founder of the online dating service that became Match.com, the world’s largest personals site. In 1996 Will and a partner raised $90,000 from angel investors to start online personals pioneer One-and-Only.com. In late 1999 they sold Dallas-based One-and-Only for $45 million to Ticketmaster Online/City Search, where it was rebranded Match.com. Following his exit, Will acquired Click Patrol, a service that managed key word advertising for Overture and others, which he sold to a competitor in 2002. He then moved back to his native Arkansas and acquired an industrial catfish farming operation, which he expanded into a more efficient and profitable business. In 2004 he and Dan Owen formed White Space Ventures. In 2007 he relocated to Portola Valley, CA so he could utilize the infrastructure and talent pool in the Bay Area to develop a new student-centric online learning community, YoYoBrain.com.

• Naming and Branding on 04/16/2013
• Mentor Idea Review on 04/30/2013
• Product Development on 05/21/2013
• Revenues, Costs and Profits on 04/23/2013

Xavier Damman

Co-Founder & CEO, Storify

Xavier is the cofounder & CEO of Storify. He moved from Belgium in the summer of 2009 with the vision that there are voices on social media that deserve to be published on main stream media. Xavier earned a master’s degree with distinction in computer science from Belgium’s Leuven University.

Ziv Gillat

Co-Founder & VP of Business Development, Eye-Fi

Ziv Gillat is Cofounder of Eye-Fi. Previously, Ziv worked at Silverback Systems, iReady, Zaffire, Photo Access, and Apple. Ziv is a professional photographer with a passion for helping consumers backup and share their photos and videos. He received his B.S. in computer science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

• Revenues, Costs and Profits on 04/23/2013