early-stage startup program, including topics like "Startup Legal and IP” towards the beginning, to “Fundraising” near the end. What makes the curriculum special is the Mentors that teach it, whose passion, feedback and support helps our companies avoid rookie mistakes and set the foundation for a meaningful and enduring company.
The Founder Institute carefully recruits approximately 25 Mentors per Semester, who are normally the CEO or founder of a successful startup. Rather than specialists or consultants, we prefer Founders and CEOs to give our companies "the entrepreneur's perspective." The mentors share their experiences, best practices, and mistakes, while also providing specific guidance and feedback on the Founder companies.
In addition, the Founder Institute's unique Graduate Liquidity Pool allows our mentors to share in the equity of companies formed in each program - and, their share is based solely on the anonymous ratings they receive from the Founders both during, and after the program. In this way, the Founder Institute incentivizes mentors to take a special interest in our startups, and provide as much assistance as possible after the program.
We have a great lineup of Mentors confirmed for the Winter 2013 San Francisco Founder Institute, including many from out of town. See the full list below.
Adeo Ressi
Founder/CEO, Founder Institute
Adeo Ressi is the founder and CEO of the Founder Institute, the worlds largest startup-technology company accelerator. The Institute is the eighth startup that Mr. Ressi has founded or built, four of which were acquired and three of which are still operating. Mr. Ressi was also a Founding Member of TheFunded.com, an online community of 17,000 CEOs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide.
Alexander Garcia Tobar
Principal, AGT Group, Inc
Alexander is a global entrepreneur/exec whos 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).
Andrew Goldner
GM, Global Audience Platform, BrightTALK
Andrew is the GM of the Global Audience Platform at BrightTALK, a start-up that delivers multimedia thought leadership to engaged communities of interested professionals and amplifies content marketing results. Previously, he co-founded an early new media start-up in the music industry in NYC and Orlando, helped launch and run Thomson Financial News (leading to the merger with Reuters), and served in a number of senior roles at Thomson Reuters in America, Hong Kong and Singapore, including as Publisher of Reuters News. Andrew began his career as a technology lawyer in the late 90s. He mentors start-ups on a range of subjects, including customer-centricity, investor pitch decks, strategic partnerships, press communications, and agile and effective legal and operational architecture.
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. Skypes international call volume represents over 1/3 of the worlds international telecommunications market, and Skype is the largest video communications provider with over 50% of all Skype minutes including video.
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 users 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.
Dan Arkind
Founder & CEO, JobScore
Dan is the co-founder and CEO of JobScore, a freemium online hiring solution used by 1000+ 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 hes not starting stuff, he enjoys designing & building wood furniture.
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 cant.
Gagan Biyani
CoFounder, Fresh
Gagan Biyani is CEO and co-founder of Fresh, which is like Uber for food. Previously, he was co-founder and President of Udemy, where he led supply acquisition (6,000+ instructors teach on Udemy) and demand acquisition ($6M+ courses sold). Udemy has raised $16M in three rounds and has been covered by hundreds of publications - including Bill Gates, the New York Times, and TechCrunch. After Udemy, he spent 6 months as an advisor to Lyft, where he led supply and demand acquisition for their launch in Los Angeles, which grew faster than San Francisco. He is also co-founder of the Growth Hackers Conference and an advisor to various early-stage startups.
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 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.
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.
Jared Hansen
Founder & CEO, Breezy
Jared Hansen is the founder and CEO of Breezy, an industry-leading solution for secure mobile printing. Prior to starting Breezy, Mr. Hansen was an attorney at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, representing private equity clients in M&A transactions. His frustration with the lack of a printing function on his firm-issued BlackBerry led to hundreds of fruitless searches for a quality BlackBerry printing app, and eventually to his departure from the legal world in order to pursue development of an enterprise-grade mobile print solution. An active participant in the Silicon Valley ecosystem, Mr. Hansen has spoken on topics including enterprise mobility, startup launch publicity, fundraising and investor relations.
Jason Johnson
Managing Partner
Jason is co-founder of Founders Den, Rethink Books and TEDxSF. With more than 17 years of experience marketing technology products and services he was previously an Entrepreneur in Residence at Dolby Laboratories and the Vice President of business development for Global IP Solutions (acquired by Google). Prior to GIPS, he was the co-founder and CEO of InterQuest Communications (acquired by Darwin Networks).
Jay Jamison
Founder & President, Moonshoot
Jay Jamison is the Co-Founder and President of Moonshoot, an early-stage online gaming company with the mission to spark English language learning in children everywhere. Prior to starting Moonshoot, Jay held leadership roles in product management and marketing for Microsoft in Redmond and Tokyo for over 9 years.
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).
Jonathan Greechan
Partner, Founder Institute
Jonathan Greechan has been heavily involved in startups and online marketing since 2004. As the Director of Content and Marketing at Game Trust, Jonathan was integral to the gaming companys growth, venture financing, and eventual sale to Real Networks in 2007, where he then briefly ran product for their online gaming community offering. Since then, he has helped launch TheFunded.com, the web’s leading online community of technology entrepreneurs, and The Founder Institute, the worlds largest startup accelerator. He is also the Executive Producer of the Founder Showcase, a quarterly startup pitch and networking event in Silicon Valley. Throughout his career Jonathan has advised hundreds of startups on marketing and PR. Follow him on Twitter at @jonnystartup.
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.
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.
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 Masters 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.
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.
Leslie Chicoine
Product, Groupon
Product manager and user experience designer at 42Floors, Lovely, Adaptive Path, and Get Satisfaction. Focused on leading teams to design useful and engaging consumer internet software, market places, and products that change the way people interact with information and each other.
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.
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.
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.
Phil Libin
CEO, Evernote
Phil Libin is the CEO of Evernote, a web service designed to allow users to easily capture and store information, memories, and content in any environment. Prior to Evernote, Phil was a founder of two other successful tech startups: CoreStreet and Engine 5. He has been written about in publications as diverse as BusinessWeek, The New York Times, The Economist and, surprisingly, Locksmith Ledger. Phil is also an investor and advisor in several startups and the inventor of several issued and pending technology patents.
Rajesh Setty
Serial Entrepreneur and Author. co-founder and President, WittyParrot
Rajesh "Raj" Setty is co-founder and president of WittyParrot (www.wittyparrot.com). He is a business alchemist and serial entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley. Raj serves on the boards of multiple startup companies both in US and in India. Raj currently chairs a calendar sharing software company called Jifflenow (www.jifflenow.com) and serves on the board of an Indian Software Services firm, Compassites Software (www.compassitesinc.com). Raj is an award-winning teacher at the Founders Institute and has been a member of the premier Angel Network in the bay area called Band of Angels since 2007. Raj is also a published author with 14 books to his credit so far with his first book published when he was thirteen. He is an avid blogger with 1875+ blog posts on his blog. Raj also writes columns for both Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rajesh-setty) and Medium (http://www.medium.com/@rajsetty). In his spare time, Raj creates ands sells limited edition prints at Sparktastic (http://www.meylah.com/sparktastic). Raj has an Electronics Engineering degree from University of Mysore.
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 Europes 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.
Stephen Russell
Founder and CEO , Prism Skylabs
Steve is the CEO of Prism Skylabs. Prior to Prism Skylabs, he served as the CEO and Chairman of 3VR, the world’s leading video intelligence company, which he founded in 2002.Before 3VR, Steve was VP and GM of the Content Networking group at Internet search giant Inktomi. In 2000, Inktomi Acquired eScene Networks, a consumer video management platform company he founded. Steve is an early investor and advisor to a number of companies across the video intelligence, social media and analytics spaces, including StumbleUpon, LongTail Video, MesmoTV, Qumu, OpenDNS and UberCab, among others. He also sits on the Board of the Center for Secure Information Technologies and is an active speaker and writer, posting frequently on his blog, InHardFocus.com, which explores the many intersections of technology and society. Steve holds 11 patents and was named #8 in the American Venture’s ‘Top 40 under 40’ list. He Studied Economics and Computer Science at Stanford University, where he graduated with honors and distinction and was the recipient of the university’s Anna Laura Meyers prize for outstanding research.
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.
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.
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.
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.
