| Speakers & Expert Judges |
| Rohit Bodas Partner American Express Ventures Rohit joined American Express in 2011 to help launch the company's corporate venture initiative. Prior to American Express, Rohit was a founding member of Hartford Ventures and made investments in DriverSide Inc and Coulomb Technologies. Prior to Hartford Ventures, Rohit held various positions at Motorola in R&D, business development and at Motorola Ventures. Rohit has developed key mobile video and security technologies and holds three US patents. Rohit holds a BS in Electrical Engineering, a MS in Computer Science, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. | |
| Des Cahill CMO Samepage Des oversees Samepage's and Kerio’s global marketing activities including demand gen, product marketing and corporate comm. He brings extensive executive-level experience in marketing, sales and operations from some of the best-known technology companies - Apple, AOL, Netscape - and successful startups Autonomy, BridgeSpan, eFax.com. | |
| John Dougery Managing Director Inventus Capital Partners John co-founded Inventus with Kanwal Rekhi & Samir Kumar in 2005 as they saw the emergence of the lean startup model and the globalization of startups creating new categories of digital services. Inventus practices a founder-first approach, and John’s been a Board Director backing the entrepreneurs at Vivu (ACQ: Polycom), Dhingana (ACQ: rd.io), Spotzot (ACQ: Valassis), Activity Hero, Credit Sesame, Resilinc, Sokrati, & SysCloud. John is particularly interested in new digital marketplaces and services-led technology businesses, but looks forward to working with great technology entrepreneurs regardless of their industry sector. John started his career leading channel marketing for IBM, Microsoft, and Intel product lines. He was recruited into venture in 1997 following marketing and business management roles at Sun and SGI during their innovative and high-growth years. | |
| Sean Ellis CEO Qualaroo Prior to Qualaroo, Sean held marketing leadership roles with several breakout technology companies including Dropbox, LogMeIn, Uproar, Eventbrite and Lookout. At two of these companies, he ran marketing through NASDAQ IPO filings. Sean is thrilled to now be able to develop marketing solutions that contribute to the success of marketers around the world. He holds a degree in International Relations from UC Davis. | |
| Josh Elman Partner Greylock Partners Josh invests in entrepreneurs building social networks and platforms, mobile apps, new media, and connected devices. He joined the team in 2011 and invests in entrepreneurs building new consumer products and services. Josh specializes in designing, building, and scaling consumer products, having been part of multiple companies that have grown to more than 100 million users. Before joining Greylock, Josh spent 15 years in product and engineering roles at leading companies in social, commerce, and media. Josh was the product lead for growth and relevance at Twitter, growing Twitter’s active user base by nearly 10x. Prior to Twitter, Josh worked on the platform at Facebook and led the launch of Facebook Connect. Earlier in his career, Josh was an early employee at LinkedIn and helped establish early models for user growth and launched the first version of LinkedIn Jobs. Josh also held roles leading product management for Zazzle, and leading product and engineering for RealJukebox and RealPlayer at RealNetworks. Josh currently serves on the boards of Meerkat, Medium, and Super. Josh also works closely with our investments in Nextdoor, Whosay, and Path. Josh led Greylock’s investment in SmartThings, which was acquired by Samsung in 2014. Josh holds a BS in Symbolic Systems with a focus on Human Computer Interaction from Stanford University. | |
| Jared Fliesler General Partner Matrix Partners Jared Fliesler is a general partner with Matrix Partners based in San Francisco. Jared came to Matrix from Square where he served as Vice President of User Acquisition and Business Operations. During Jared’s tenure, he helped Square grow its payment processing business from $2 billion annualized to more than $10 billion and the number of activated accounts from 800,000 to more than 3 million. His teams also scaled retail availability from a few hundred locations to nearly 40,000 and optimized risk metrics to the best in the company’s history. Prior to Square, Jared was an early employee at Slide where he worked across business development, product, advertising, and payments to grow the company’s footprint and revenue. Jared also played a crucial role in Slide’s acquisition by Google in 2010, going on to run product and operations for the Slide group within Google. At Matrix, Jared has a particular interest in vertical labor marketplaces, business to business platforms, passive computing, and the automation of consumer "chores." | |
| Jake Flomenberg Partner Accel Partners Jake joined Accel in 2012. He has over a decade of experience building innovative software products. He focuses on early stage investments in next generation infrastructure and data-driven services and is part of the team responsible for Accel's Big Data Fund. Jake is responsible for investments such as Origami Logic, provider of a visual Big Data analytics platform for marketers, Trifacta, creator of radical productivity software for data preparation and analysis, Sumo Logic, a cloud-based log management and machine intelligence solution, and Zoomdata, a provider of next generation Big Data analytics. Prior to Accel, Jake was Director of Product Management at Splunk where he was responsible for Splunk's user interface and Big Data strategy. Previously, he worked at Cloudera where he helped the founding team tackle a broad array of sales, marketing, and product issues. Earlier in his career, Jake was a member of Lockheed Martin's Engineering Leadership Development Program and held several roles ranging from software development to business strategy and M&A. Jake holds a B.S.E. in Computer Science, Electrical Computer Engineering, and Economics from Duke University, an M.S.E in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. | |
| John Gallant Senior Vice President and Chief Content Officer IDG Communications US John Gallant brings more than 30 years of editorial and technology experience to his role as Senior Vice President and Chief Content Officer of IDG Communications US. In this role, Gallant works with the editorial leaders of IDGE’s CIO, CITEworld, CSO, Computerworld, InfoWorld, ITworld, Macworld, Network World, PCWorld and TechHive titles, setting content strategy and ensuring that the brands serve their respective audiences with the best online and print products and services in the industry. Gallant also helps drive IDG's strategic efforts around social media. Gallant, one of Network World’s founders, was formerly CEO and editorial director for the company, where he guided content and business development for print and online, as well as Network World’s seminars and events programs. Gallant is highly visible in the marketplace and frequently speaks at industry conferences. In 2010, Gallant was inducted into min’s Magazine’s Editorial and Design Hall of Fame. He often hosts roundtable discussions on technology and other topics for a wide variety of organizations, including leading vendors, I.T. buyers and industry associations. Gallant also chairs the executive committee of the Boston College Technology Council and is on the board of Dream Big, a non-profit that helps underprivileged girls build confidence through sports. | |
| Jared Kopf Founder AdRoll Jared Kopf co-founded AdRoll and serves as our chairman. Before AdRoll, Jared started the Facebook apps company Slide, worked as an executive at Clarium Capital and worked at PayPal. Jared founded and sold the group buying business HomeRun between 2010-2012. | |
| Jeff Lawson Co-founder Twilio Jeff is a serial inventor with over 15 years of entrepreneurial and product experience. Prior to co-founding Twilio, Jeff was Founder & CTO of NineStar, Founding CTO of Stubhub.com and Founder, CEO & CTO of Versity. He was also one of the original product managers for Amazon Web Services. At every business, Jeff identified the fundamental need for a platform for developers and companies to easily build communications-based business solutions. Jeff grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, started his first company in middle school, and earned his BS in Computer Science & Film/Video from University of Michigan. | |
| Peter Levine General Partner Andreessen Horowitz Peter Levine is a partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He was previously senior vice president and general manager of the Data Center and Cloud Division at Citrix. Peter joined Citrix in 2007 through its $500 million acquisition of XenSource, where he served as CEO. Prior to XenSource, Peter was an early employee of VERITAS Software. During his 11-year tenure with the company, he helped to grow the organization to over 5,000 employees and more than $1.5 billion in revenue. Peter served as executive vice president and was responsible for worldwide marketing, OEM sales, business development and several product divisions. He began his career as a software engineer at Spectrum Software and was later a software engineer at MIT’s Project Athena. Peter holds a B.S. in Engineering from Boston University and attended the Sloan School of Management at MIT. He is currently a management lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a former entrepreneurship lecturer at the Sloan School. Peter serves on the board of many companies, and is also on the board of trustees for Boston University and the National Outdoor Leadership Schoool (NOLS), and the Dean’s Advisory board for MIT Engineering. | |
| Flynn Maloy Sr. Director, Service Provider, SMB and Public Sector, Enterprise Global Marketing Hewlett-Packard Company Flynn Maloy is Senior Director leading HP’s Service Provider, Small Medium Business, and Public Sector marketing teams for Enterprise Group worldwide. In this role, he is responsible for developing and executing global marketing programs orchestrating all product/service/solution messages, touch points, media, and demand generation activities to HP’s fastest growing segments. | |
| Todd McKinnon CEO Okta Todd McKinnon is the CEO of Okta, a cloud-based service that empowers people to be more productive and makes evolving IT environments more secure. He co-founded Okta in 2009 and leads the overall vision for the company to deliver highly engaging, secure experiences to employees, partners, and customers anywhere, anytime, from any device. Under Todd’s leadership, Okta has grown into a leading identity and mobility management solution with hundreds of enterprise customers and millions of users worldwide. Prior to founding Okta, Todd spent 6+ years as the head of engineering at Salesforce.com and nearly a decade in various engineering and leadership roles at PeopleSoft. He has spoken about enterprise software and entrepreneurship at events such as TechCrunch Disrupt and Fortune Brainstorm Tech, and contributed to publications such as Fortune, Forbes, TechCrunch and Fast Company | |
| Jose Morales Vice President, Corporate Development Atlassian Jose Morales is the vice president of corporate development at Atlassian, an award-winning enterprise software company that helps teams collaborate, build software and serve their customers better. More than 43,000 large and small organizations – including some of the biggest names in media, manufacturing and technology such as Citigroup, eBay, Coca-Cola, Gilt Group, Proctor & Gamble, BMW and NASA – use Atlassian’s tracking, collaboration, communication, service management and development products to work smarter and deliver quality results on time. Jose leads the company's mergers and acquisitions practice; manages the Customer Development team which includes Atlassian's partner programs, sales organization, training, and technical account management (TAM); and is responsible for the Enterprise business. Prior to joining Atlassian in 2011, Jose served as vice president of business development at Jaspersoft, the leading open source business intelligence solution, where he was responsible for technology alliances, corporate development, global channels and general strategy. Jose also held leadership positions in business development, sales, marketing, and finance at R4 Gobal Solutions (acquired by Verisign), Mercator (acquired by Ascential and subsequently IBM), Epiphany, Niku, and PeopleSoft. Jose holds an M.B.A. degree from Thunderbird School of Global Management and a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Loyola Marymount University. | |
| Kara Nortman Partner Upfront Ventures Kara joined Upfront as a partner in November 2014. She is currently the Chairman of Seedling which recently merged with Moonfrye where she was co-founder and CEO. Prior to starting Moonfrye, Kara spent close to seven years at IAC where she acted as the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Urbanspoon and Citysearch. Prior to Urbanspoon/Citysearch, Kara co-headed the M&A group at IAC where she lead some of their most successful acquisitions, notably Urbanspoon, Dictionary.com and Aston Hotels. While at IAC, Kara also served as a board member to Hatch Labs, IAC’s mobile technology incubator, where she recruited and advised Tinder. Kara also spent time at Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, and Battery Ventures. | |
| Alex Rosen Managing Director IDG Ventures Alexander (Alex) Rosen is a Managing Director with IDG Ventures. He has been working with early stage technology companies as an active investor and advisor for over 20 years. Today he focuses on investments in cloud infrastructure, SaaS applications, ad tech, and consumer marketplaces. In particular he's passionate about companies at the intersection of consumer and enterprise technologies. He currently serves as board director or observer at Expect Labs (voice-driven intelligent interfaces), Krux Digital (data management platform SaaS), Minted (design-driven e-commerce marketplace), Smartling (translation management SaaS), Tempered Networks (security for industrial IoT), UpLift (payment management and marketing for online merchants), Vouch (reputation-based lending), and We Heart It (mobile social network). He also led IDG Ventures' investments in Appboy, Chubbies, Datanyze, Fastly, Indiegogo, Nuzzel, Prism Skylabs, The League, UXPin, and Watchguard. Previously, he was a General Partner at Sprout Group, where he was head of the Internet and Software group. | |
| Jeffrey Rothschild VP, Infrastructure Software Jeff Rothschild has been Vice President of Infrastructure Engineering at Facebook since 2005. Jeff joined Facebook shortly after its Accel investment to focus on scaling, availability, and performance of the social network. Jeff was the first Vice President Engineering at Facebook, and established a number of functional organizations within the company, including User Operations, Site Integrity, Data Analytics, and Infrastructure Engineering. Jeff was the cofounder of Veritas Software, which became the leading storage management software company with annual sales of over $1.5B. Jeff’s role at Veritas included engineering, product management, sales, and strategy. In 2004, Veritas was acquired by Symantec for $13.5B. Jeff also cofounded the online gaming company Mpath/Hearme, and has contributed to the development of Accel portfolio companies including Walmart.com and Rhapsody Networks. Jeff started his career at Honeywell and Intel, where worked on the development of the Intel 3805 mainframe storage system. After leaving Intel, he developed a consultancy focused on network storage technologies, and worked with Locus Computing on the development of AT&T’s DOS-Merge and Sun’s PC-NFS redirector. Jeff has a BS in Psychology and a MS in Computer Science, both from Vanderbilt University. | |
| Ben Rubin Meerkat Co-Founder & CEO Ben Rubin is the CEO and co-founder of Life on Air Inc., which most recently released the popular Meerkat app. Ben works with his team to pioneer "participatory media" through life-streaming communities. | |
| Aleda Schaffer Strategic Partnerships Manager American Airlines Aleda Schaffer is a Strategic Partnerships Manager at American Airlines. Through the Innovators Initiative at American, Aleda supports high growth startups across the US with travel perks, marketing support, and partnership opportunities. Prior to this, Aleda managed American's Airport of the Future project. Aleda has an MBA from Johnson at Cornell University and lives in the Bay Area. | |
| Erick Schonfeld Executive Producer DEMO Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the executive producer of DEMO. He is also a partner at bMuse, a product incubator in New York City. Schonfeld is the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily for the blog. Prior to TechCrunch, he was Editor-at-Large for Business 2.0 magazine. He also launched an online video series with CNN/Money and hosted regular panels and conferences of industry luminaries. Schonfeld started his career at Fortune magazine in 1993. | |
| Neal Silverman Senior Vice President & General Manager DEMO Neal Silverman brings more than 20 years’ media and sales experience to his role as Senior Vice President and General Manager of IDG Enterprise’s DEMO—world-renowned launchpad for emerging technology. In his current role Silverman oversees sales, marketing and business development, for the DEMO brand and participates in the selection of the companies that present. Neal has led the expansion of the DEMO brand to China, Singapore, Africa, India, Russia and Brazil. Neal also sits on the Executive Committee for IDG Enterprise and the Board of Storage Network World. Prior to joining IDG Enterprise, Silverman held executive management positions at Fast Company Magazine, US News & World Report and The Wall Street Journal. | |
| Lance Smith CEO Primary Data Primary Data CEO Lance Smith is a strategic industry visionary who has architected and executed growth strategies for disruptive technologies throughout his career. Prior to joining Primary Data, Lance served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of SanDisk Corporation IO Memory Solutions, following the SanDisk acquisition of Fusion-io in 2014. He served as Chief Operating Officer of Fusion-io from April 2010 and Fusion-io President from August 2013, where he was responsible for productizing a number of Fusion-io solutions. Before joining Fusion-io, Lance held Vice President and Director positions at RMI Corporation, Raza Foundries, and the Computational Products group of Advanced Micro Devices. He has also held management roles at technology companies NexGen, Inc. and Chips & Technologies, Inc. Lance holds patents in microprocessor bus architectures, and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the Santa Clara University, where he focused on Digital Electronics and Semiconductor Physics. | |
| Owen Thomas Editor in Chief ReadWriteWeb Owen has spent his career devoted to crafting narratives and telling stories in ways that are uniquely suited to the online world, as well as managing some of the Web's best editorial teams. Prior to joining ReadWrite, he was West Coast editor of Business Insider and founding executive editor of the Daily Dot. He has held editorial leadership roles at VentureBeat, NBC Universal and Gawker Media, where he notoriously transformed Valleywag into the Silicon Valley’s authority on tech gossip. He also spent several years at Time Inc.'s Business 2.0. | |
| Ravi Viswanathan General Partner NEA Ravi joined NEA in 2004 and co-heads the firm’s Technology Venture Growth Equity investment practice. Ravi’s investments in the software and technology sectors include Acquia, BloomReach, Boku, Captora, Desire2Learn, Forter, MOVE Guides, and Mulesoft. Ravi’s investments in other sectors include Availink, Goji, Imergy Power, and Suniva. Prior investments include Arcot (acquired by CA), Braintree (acquired by eBay), GlobalLogic (acquired by Apax Partners), IM Logic (acquired by Symantec), PURE Energies (acquired by NRG), Sanera (acquired by McData), Tele Atlas (Euronext: TA, acquired by TomTom), and ViXs (TXS: VXS). Prior to NEA, Ravi worked at Goldman, Sachs & Co. as co-head of the technology practice in their private equity group. Ravi has also worked for McKinsey & Company and Raychem Corporation focusing on R&D in various materials systems. Ravi received an MBA from Wharton and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from UCSB where he focused his research on materials science applications. Ravi also earned a BS in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He currently serves on the Wharton Entrepreneurship Advisory Board. Read more of Ravi’s perspectives at: www.raviviswanathan.com. | |
| Bayard Winthrop Founder & CEO American Giant Bayard Winthrop founded American Giant after spending nearly 20 years running businesses in the consumer products space. He began his career in corporate finance at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. He left finance for a career as a business leader and innovator, holding key leadership positions at Atlas Snow-Shoe, WebChat Broadcasting System, Freebord Manufacturing and Chrome Industries. Bayard recently co-authored I F**king Love That Company, along with Randy Komisar of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. | |
| Michelle Zatlyn Co-founder & Head of User Experience CloudFlare Michelle Zatlyn is the co-founder & head of user experience of CloudFlare, the web performance and security company. Michelle creates products people love. Prior to CloudFlare, she worked at Google and Toshiba and launched two successful startups. CloudFlare was selected by the Wall Street Journal as the Most Innovative Internet Technology company two years running, and named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. Today CloudFlare accelerates and protects more than 2 million web properties. Michelle holds a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and a minor in management, with distinction, from McGill University. She also holds her MBA from Harvard Business School and was awarded the Dubliner Prize for Entrepreneurship. Michelle is an experienced public speaker, frequent panelist and sits on the Open Internet Advisory Committee for the FCC. She was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, one of the Top Women to Watch in Technology by the Huffington Post and one of the Top 15 Women to Watch in Tech by Inc. Magazine. | |
