Guests

Jim Anderson

Jim Anderson has over two decades in venture capital, including founding partnership positions in Merrill Pickard Anderson & Eyre; and in Foundation Capital, with collectively well over $1 billion in capital commitments. Jim has watched, coached, and participated in the nurture of hundreds of early-stage companies, helping develop them into industry leaders. He came to venture capital with a comprehensive engineering and marketing background, ranging from semiconductors to computer systems built at Beckman Instruments and Hewlett-Packard, and was one of the early few to leverage true operational experience. This background provided Jim with a venture platform for some unique value- added industry management approaches to the venture industry including early seed investing, development of the entrepreneur-in-residence concept, and the continuing need and value of a deep seated focus on industry markets.

After stepping back from the venture capital industry for a period, he created Legacy Partners, a $100 million+ philanthropic venture vehicle designed to encourage high-impact philanthropy through venture style collaboration and entrepreneurship.

Jim has continued activities in the valley as an early stage investor with a particular focus in the environmental arena especially regarding global warming.

Jim holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business as well as a BSEE and an MSEE from Purdue University.

David Bakker

David Bakker has a winning track record with over 20 years executive experience in high tech, nanotechnology, and semiconductor industries; Mr Bakker is currently CEO and Director of AceNote, a web-based music education start up company, and was the CEO and Executive Chairman of Inovys Corporation who made testers for leading semiconductor chips, acquired by Verigy in Dec 2007. Previously, he was Vice President and General Manager at KLA-Tencor, the leading semiconductor metrology company with revenues over $2B. Mr Bakker is also on the board of Ribbecke Guitar Corp, and on the advisory boards of Infinitesima Ltd, Presto Engineering Inc, DermoGenesis Inc, and is an Affiliate Partner of Storm Ventures.

Mike Byrd

Mike has over 20 years of experience advising and working in start-up entrepreneurial environments. Most recently Mike was the President and Chief Operating Officer of Brocade Communications. While at Brocade he was very involved in managing the Company's rapid growth and in the Company's Initial Public Offering resulting in record returns to its venture investors. Prior to Brocade, Mike spent five years as the Vice President of Finance and Operations for Maxim Integrated Products. During Mike's time at Maxim, revenues increased six fold and it was recognized as one of the top ten performing stocks of the 90's. Early in his career, Mike advised and served startups as a CPA and a Partner for Ernst & Young (EY). Mike is currently the President of the Board of Directors for Child Advocates of Silicon Valley and is a Board Member at Zero Waste Energy, a start-up alternate energy company.

Steve Eglash

Steve Eglash is Executive Director of Strategic Research Initiatives in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. Steve develops and manages research programs in data science and artificial intelligence, bridging research and industry, including the Stanford Data Science Initiative, Artificial Intelligence Lab, Secure Internet of Things Project, DAWN Machine Learning, AI Safety, and Robotics Center. These programs provide opportunities for deep engagement between industry and Stanford’s researchers in big data, AI, IoT, security, autonomous vehicles, robotics, machine learning, and renewable energy. Steve created several new research programs at Stanford, with the three largest centers generating $95 million in new external funding. Steve is currently responsible for $22 million per year of sponsored research and unrestricted funding and he is developing new programs with the Schools of Medicine, Humanities and Sciences, and Education.

Prior to joining Stanford, Steve was president and CEO of the solar energy company Cyrium Technologies, consultant for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the US Department of Energy, venture capitalist at Worldview Technology Partners, vice president at SDL (JDSU), and a member of the technical staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. As Vice President at semiconductor laser company SDL Inc. Steve was part of the management team that grew the company to $1 billion in annual revenue and engineered one of the largest high-tech acquisitions in history. He has published more than forty papers in peer-reviewed journals and has four patents. In December 2017 Steve testified at a US Congressional Hearing on federal funding for energy research.

Steve received both PhD and MS degrees from Stanford University, and a BS from the University of California at Berkeley, all in Electrical Engineering. He is a Fellow of SPIE, a former Board member of the MRS, and a member of ACM, IEEE, MRS, and OSA. Steve is a member and former chair of the Santa Clara University College of Arts & Sciences Leadership Board. He is a former Utilities Commissioner for the City of Palo Alto. Steve has been involved in humanitarian projects such as the Tech Museum Awards for Technology Benefiting Humanity.

Steve Gerbsman

Steven R. Gerbsman serves as a Managing Principal of Gerbsman Partners. He served as President of four operating divisions of ITEL Corporation, with responsibility in the leasing, business and technology sectors. He began his business career at IBM Corporation in 1967. Mr. Gerbsman has over 35 years of senior management, marketing, sales and finance experience and has been involved in various business and investment ventures as an Officer, Director, Consultant and Investor, both in the US and internationally. He is a nationally recognized crisis/turnaround professional and has been involved in maximizing enterprise, stakeholder and shareholder value in a broad variety of industries.

Since 1980, Mr. Gerbsman has been in the business of maximizing enterprise value for 84 highly leveraged, under-valued, under-performing and under-capitalized companies with Intellectual Property in mobile, medical device, solar, and fuel cell technology. In 2000, he began focusing on Israeli and European technology and life science companies, with the objective of providing access to the US capital markets and developing strategic alliances, M&A and licensing opportunities for them.

Steve is also an Angel Investor in Urban Daddy, Aviary, Cupcake Digital and FlashStock. All are digital marketing and social commerce companies.

Steve presently is a Mentor at Stanford and a guest lecturer at Berkeley, Georgetown and USF MBA programs.

Steve received a BS degree in Accounting from Hunter College, New York and attended the Baruch Graduate School of Business.

Jon Gillespie-Brown

Jon has extensive leadership experience in the information technology, communications and social web with 30 years in the IT business. The last 15 years he has been a Start-up founder and CEO. Jon works in and with Start-ups as an adviser and investor.

He is a "product" guy - passionate about making fantastic products - both Software and Hardware - with all that goes into finding, motivating and managing teams of amazing engineers and creative people to bring to market incredible user experiences and things that enrich customer’s daily lives.

Working across many sectors (B2C, B2B & Enterprise for Software, Services and Hardware) he has a deep understanding of every Ecosystem, having built both Consumer, Enterprise and SaaS Software businesses.

Expert in product and go-to-market strategy, competitive scenario planning, deep technology innovation, market opportunity, business model analysis, and detailed financial modeling to maximize the potential of ventures and product line growth. Plus designing, prototyping and manufacturing Hardware for B2C and B2B audiences.

Jon has experience in building and running a business fulfilling the roles of CEO, CMO, VP Sales, CFO, COO and Chief Product Guy.

Specialties:

• P&L management and business strategy
• Leading business/product from cradle to grave
• Recruiting, retaining and developing talent
• Fundraising and M&A

Author of "So you want to be an Entrepreneur" (Wiley) and lecturer on the associated Entrepreneurship courses at Stanford and UC Berkeley. 18 years as Mentor and Start-up Coach: Stanford/UC Berkeley/London Business School (EIR).

Aurangzeb was co-founder, President & CEO of Altia Systems through March 2019, and is now SVP, Intelligent Vision Systems at GN Jabra, following the merger1 of Altia Systems with GN Jabra. He helped grow Altia Systems’ unique PanaCast multi-camera array real-time, immersive intelligent vision system products to serve more than 1,600 companies, including 200+ universities, around the world. PanaCast is a platform which enables people and systems (machines) to see and make sense of their environment in real time. PanaCast enables modern video collaboration, edge AI data and information, education, machine learning, AR/VR content creation, professional broadcasting, and autonomous vehicle capabilities.

Earlier, Aurangzeb was President & CEO at Everspin Technologies (NASD: MRAM; $137M IPO). He was co-founder, President & CEO at Altius Solutions and, immediately following the merger Simplex Solutions, contributed to the IPO in May 2001 (NASD: SPLX; $305M IPO).

Aurangzeb held senior engineering and general management positions at Cadence (NASD: CDNS), Cirrus Logic (NASD: CRUS), Tandem Computers (NYSE: TDM, now part of HP) and Fairchild.He helped deliver several industry-first systems and SoCs to market, including the Sony Computer Entertainment GS®I-32 and PlayStation®-2 Graphics Synthesizers, the Cirrus Logic 3CiTM SoC and the Tandem Computers NonStopTM, HimalayaTM and CycloneTM series of massively-parallel servers. These products received industry leadership recognition and delivered $200M - $1B in annual revenues.

Aurangzeb received an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and an M.S. in Engineering Management from Stanford University, executive education at the Stanford GSB, a double-major B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and Nuclear Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, and a B.Sc. in Physics and Mathematics from Government College, Lahore, Pakistan, where he stood first in class and received the Academic Roll of Honour.

Bill Levin

Bill Levin has over four decades of experience building businesses, from startups to large corporations. Most recently, Bill has been working with startup Biotech and SaaS companies. Two of the companies have been acquired, one of these, a revolutionary DNA sequencing company was just purchased for $125 MM cash + $225MM in contingent payments . Previously he was a Vice President for Maxim Integrated Products (NASDAQ: MXIM), a worldwide leader in the design, development, and manufacture of analog, mixed signal, digital, and high-frequency circuits. During his 9 years at Maxim, Bill initially had responsibility for Engineering ,then U.S. Sales, Marketing and Product Line Management as he helped grow the company from $50MM in annual revenue to $600MM in annual revenue. Before Maxim, Bill was a Vice President at Shugart Corporation-where he led a turnaround that took one of the companies businesses from an unprofitable $24MM in annual revenue to over $70MM in highly profitable annual revenue.

Bill has a B.S. in Engineering, an M.S. in Engineering, and an M.S.in Business, all from UCLA.

Jim Long

Currently, CEO of Didja, a stealth mode digital media mobile application/service. He is a partner at Gabriel Venture Partners. Jim has over 25 years experience as a founder, CEO, and investor building successful businesses in the technology industry, as well as developing new technologies and patents for the Internet and PC environments and advising many startups and venture capital firms. Most recently, Jim was CEO of RioPort, a leading music application service provider that powered MTV.com, Best-Buy.com, Yahoo, HP, Nike.com, and Microsoft, and was the first Internet company to license digital songs for resale from all five major record labels and enabled the first music cell-phones via a partnership with Nokia. Considered the "father of streaming video," Jim was also CEO and founder of Starlight Networks, which pioneered video streaming and video multicasting with award-winning Intranet video infrastructure software. Starlight Networks was the leader in the corporate video streaming market when it was acquired by PictureTel in July 1998. Previously, Jim was the VP-Marketing and co-founder of Tolerant Software, which became Veritas (VRTS) a leader in the storage management software market. Veritas was acquired by Symantec for over $12 Billion long after Jim left to invent video streaming.

After doing software and product marketing at Hewlett Packard and getting his MBA, Jim joined Fred Adler Ventures in 1982. In his four years at the firm Jim was acting CEO at several turnarounds and worked with veteran VCs Jim Swartz and Arthur Patterson prior to their founding Accel Partners. Over the years, Jim has also done projects with venture firms Accel Partners, Crosspoint Venture Partners, IT-Farm (Japan), and Sequoia Capital. Jim's venture experience also includes interim CEO jobs and "turn-arounds" at companies such as Linkware (acquired by Ungermann-Bass). As an angel advisor/investor, Jim has been involved with several leading startups, including TiMetra (acquired by Alcatel), Manageware (acquired by Computer Associates), Ruckus Wireless (WiFi video leader), Ready Systems (acquired by Mentor), and Jibe Networks (acquired by Citrix).

Jim received an MBA (with distinction) from Harvard University and a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley

Shyam Nagrani

Shyam is a serial entrepreneur working at his sixth startup - Motiv Power Systems which builds intelligent powertrains for all-electric trucks and buses where he is VP Marketing. Motiv was started by a Stanford EE grad and came out of MS&E 273. Previously Shyam worked at five successful semiconductor startups - mSilica, Jaldi Semiconductor, Genesis Microchip, Oak Technology and Chips & Technologies. While Shyam initially started his career in engineering, for the past 20 years he has excelled in marketing and sales roles. One of his key strengths is bringing new products and technologies to the market, which is reflected in the successful exits of his previous startups. The first two startups he was a part of were acquired, while the latter three went public. In 2010 and 2011, Shyam handled sales in India and Turkey for Fresco Microchip, a Toronto-based semiconductor startup.

Shyam attended IIT Bombay for 3 years but graduated with a BSEE from Georgia Tech. He has an MSEE from USC (University of Southern California). Between 2008 and 2012, Shyam was a Mentor at the Haas School of Business at The University of California, Berkeley in their Entrepreneurship program. Recently he was a Mentor in the Energy and Environmental Department at Stanford and at the Industrial Engineering School at Berkeley. Shyam has been with Motiv since 2011. Shyam enjoys running, hiking and skiing.

Jeff Depew

Jeff’s career has been focused on innovation, change, growth, learning and delivering results.

First and foundational as an intrapreneur in General Electric, where he was trained in product, marketing and general management and subsequently at General Motors where he redefined and launched OnStar.

Second as a serial entrepreneur & founder in Silicon Valley where he has founded and advised start-ups in divergent fields; inertial MEMS sensors for navigation and gestural control (Motion Sense), high power/high energy Li Ion batteries (Lion Cells/Imara Corp), knowledge management, collaboration and security software, LED lighting, energy chips/sensors, medical devices and sustainable food products are representative.

Third as a mentor for new Stanford tied concepts/ businesses (StartX, MSE 273 Technology Venture Formation, CEE 246), angel investor (Sand Hill Angels Board member and president) and board member.

Jeff is an environmentalist (Vice Chair of Friends of the River) focused on enabling smarter and sustainable water solutions in the face of climate change as well as an adventure/adrenalin sports enthusiast and Finnish Lapphund admirer.

Alumni of Univ. of Colorado (BA Economics & Pre-Med) and Univ. of Michigan Ross School of Business (MBA Strategy & Marketing)

Spencer C. Tall

• Managing Director, Allegis Capital
• General Partner & Co-Founder, APV Technology Partners
• Co-Founder Asia Pacific Ventures
• 10 Years Venture Capital Experience
• Former Operating Executive (Asia and US)

Spencer C. Tall joined the Allegis team in 2004. Prior to Allegis Capital, Mr. Tall was a co-founder and General Partner with APV Technology Partners for three funds over 10 years. In addition, Mr. Tall was a co-founder of Asia Pacific Ventures LLC, a consulting and advisory service firm where, over a 13-year period, he assisted more than 50 technology companies in their Asia expansion plans. Mr. Tall currently serves on the boards of Allegiance, IMVU, Symplified and AvaLAN Wireless. Prior investments include E.piphany (EPNY), Web TV (acquired by MSFT), One Touch Systems (acquired by Hughes Satellite), Locality (acquired by e2Grow), and North Systems.

Mr. Tall has a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science and Japanese from BYU.

Peter Kent

Peter Kent is Founder and President of Insight Business Systems, a boutique Silicon Valley consultancy helping early stage technology companies since 1994. Insight gets companies started, assists with fundraising, provides business operator expertise, and moves companies through various stages of growth. Insight also helps to create business partnerships with an eye towards collaboration, innovation, and merger and acquisition opportunities. Steeped in financial modeling, Insight helps companies analyze strategic alternatives and anticipate future needs.

Mr. Kent has been instrumental in teaching executive management teams the importance of dynamic planning, addressing all operational aspects of the business and sound financial management. He has been an active participant or advisor to the Boards of dozens of Silicon Valley companies. He has a strong CFO background, helped raise over $250 million in venture investment through multiple transactions, and co-teaches entrepreneurship classes for Stanford University’s graduate engineering programs. Mr. Kent has held senior executive positions at public and private companies.

Mr. Kent holds an MBA from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Michigan. He is passionate about mentoring, helping others, and life in general.

In Memory of Richard Bush

1945-2019

Thank you to Richard for his many years of service to this course. His willingness to share his wealth of early-stage business experience has made an incredible impact on the young entrepreneurs he has mentored. He will be missed by all in the Stanford community.