PlugandPlayExpo Spring 2008
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Web 2.0
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April 17th, 2008, 6:00pm-8:00pm
"Mobile Web"
Plug and Play Web 2.0 Series is a monthly event in which showcases the hottest and newest Web companies. Each month Plug & Play Web 2.0 invites a high caliber keynote speaker to discuss a certain industry in which they have much success in. We also allow the hottest startups to demo their company.
To register and be part of the Plug and Play Web 2.0 please go to http://web.meetup.com/16/. It will automatically invite you to each month´s event and allow you to RSVP for it.
To demo your startup, sponsor the event, or to ask a question about the event please contact the President of Plug and Play Web 2.0, Shobeir Shobeiri, at Shobeir@plugandplaytechcenter.com

Jeroen Veth, entrepreneur and former Merrill Lynch Vice President, founded Zecco on the philosophy that some things in life should be free… like commissions. He has 14 years of experience in the financial industry, focusing on client acquisition, asset management, and sales. He gained recognition for his outstanding performance in the European banking industry. All of this high level experience provided Jeroen with a deep understanding of the financial services industry and the confidence to follow through with his vision of a free trading community and launch Zecco.com.

David is Echovox´s CEO. He´s responsible for the company's global strategy, direction and management. Prior to founding Echovox, David started GTN telecom, Switzerland first alternative telecom operator in 1996. David managed the exponential growth of GTN, raised over USD 17 million from top European Venture Capital firms, and turned the company into one of Switzerland´s top 3 alternative operators. David sold the company to World Access (NASDAQ: WAXS) in July 2000 and left the company to start Echovox in October 2000. David is also the founder and Chairman of VOX telecom, a successful wholesale carrier servicing the world´s largest incumbent operators such as France Telecom, Verizon, Telecom Italia, Deutsche Telekom, KPN, Belgacom, Cable & Wireless and Optus. He is also the Chairman of echo6, a joint venture with leading French media group M6 created to become one of the top mobile multimedia players in France.
Sergio is an venture investor at Norwest Venture Partner where he brings over 12 years of operational experience in marketing, product management, business development, sales and finance from a wide range of business and consumer technology companies. Sergio is focused on investments in the consumer internet, media and software sectors. His current investments and board seats include Adzilla and Fatdoor.
Prior to NVP, Sergio was Vice President of Product Marketing at Photobucket, which was successfully sold to News Corp in May for a reported $300 Million. At Photobucket, Sergio drove product marketing, public awareness and user experience, which helped accelerate Photobucket’s growth to more than 40 million unique visitors per month.
Prior to Photobucket, Sergio was Director of New Ventures at eBay, Inc. where he pioneered and led eBay’s digital goods marketplace and its user generated content efforts worldwide. Prior to that, Sergio was General Manager of the consumer electronics marketplace at eBay, which he grew from $150 million to over $500 million in gross merchandise sales in less than three years. Prior to eBay, Sergio was the co-founder and led sales and marketing at Cymerc from inception to more than $15 million in revenue.
Sergio holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University.
Susan joins CRV with 12 years of operating experience working with early stage technology ventures. Susan is a member and the former CMO of the Apache Software Foundation, one of the world's most influential open source software organizations. Susan's roots in the open source community stems from her long-abiding interest in how technology catalyzes social and economic change. She began her career as the chief architect of an early massively multiplayer online game and has remained active in online gaming. She was the Executive Producer of GXMod, a widely popular, award winning Quake 2 enhancement. Susan also contributed to components of the open source Nebula 3D graphics and game engine. Susan plays an active role in our investments in Areae, Conduit Labs, Handipoints, Social Media, and Twitter.
Susan received her BA from Tufts University and an MBA with distinction from Cornell University, where she was a Park Fellow and a Bristol Myers Squibb Fellow.
Charles Huang is co-founder and VP of Business Development at RedOctane. Previously, Charles was VP of Sales and Marketing for Adux Software. He has many years of business experience in Asia as General Manager of KT Trading, an international trading company. Charles has headed the accessories group at RedOctane for the past 3 years, including product development and outsourcing manufacturing to China.
Dennis is a successful serial entrepreneur and celebrity in the gaming world. Dennis previously co-founded Xfire (http://www.xfire.com), an instant messenger for gamers that grew to over seven million users in three years and was acquired by MTV Networks for $102 million dollars in April 2006. Before Xfire, Dennis co-founded Lithium Technologies (http://www.lithium.com), a leading provider of enterprise-level communities for companies such as Dell, Sony, AT&T, Comcast, Sprint, Nintendo, Symantec, etc. Dennis was also the founder & CEO of Gamers.com, having raised $13 million in financing for the company in 2000 and led it to the position as the #1 independent games portal as rating by Nielsen NetRatings.
Dennis, a.k.a. "Thresh", was deemed the "Michael Jordan of Videogames" by the Wall Street Journal, a "Top 20 entrepreneur under 35" by Red Herring, and once won a Ferrari in a Quake tournament
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Hooman actively drives platform marketing and strategy initiatives at Clearspring. He was recently named one of Tech's Best Entrepreneurs in BusinessWeek and was nominated for Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year. When he is not busy building a better web, you can find him writing his blog Widgify.
Radfar graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in Economics and Computer Science. He holds an M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University where he researched Social Networking Theory.
Ramu founded the social networking web site hi5. hi5 is one of the largest social networking sites in the World, the #1 social networking service for the Spanish speaking market, and a top 10 site in 20 countries across the globe.
During college, Ramu was a partner at SponsorNet New Media. Ramu received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Chi-Hua Chien joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2007. Prior to KPCB, Chi-Hua worked with Accel Partners as a Venture Advisor and Associate focusing on digital media, software as a service, consumer Internet, and online advertising infrastructure companies. Chi-Hua was instrumental in Accel's investments in AdECN (acquired by MSFT) and Facebook, while also working on the firm's investments in BitTorrent, fbFund, Glam, Trulia, and YuMe Networks.
Chi-Hua has an MS in Industrial Engineering, BS in Industrial Engineering, and BA in Economics, all from Stanford University. He also earned an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School.
Dr. Barney Pell is currently Founder and CEO of Powerset, a San-Francisco startup company that is building a search engine based on natural language processing technology. Prior to founding Powerset, Barney was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Mayfield, a Venture Capital Firm based in Silicon Valley. In this role, Dr. Pell generated and helped evaluate potential investments in early to mid-stage companies. Focus areas included information management (advanced search and navigation, information integration, multi-modal interfaces), social software (social networks, blogs, wikis, P2P), and intelligent agents, with applications to internet search, business intelligence, ecommerce, productivity and collaboration. Dr. Pell formulated an investment thesis on the future of search and played a key role facilitating the firm's investment in SNAP. Dr. Pell was also an Advisor to Mayfield's consumer internet portfolio, including Tribe, Pluck, Snap, and BlackArrow. Prior to joining Mayfield, Barney was Technical Area Manager for the 80-person Collaborative and Assistant Systems (CAS) area within the Computational Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center.
Dr. Pell received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cambridge University in 1993, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and his B.S. degree in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University in 1989, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was a National Merit Scholar.
Eyal Hertzog has three passions: technology, psychology, and music. The serial entrepreneur has combined all three to create Metacafe, a place where artists create, consumers interact on a social and emotional level, and technology makes it all possible.
Prior to co-founding Metacafe, where he drives product innovation and content strategy, Mr. Hertzog co-founded Contact Networks in 1998, one of the first interpersonal, professional online networks. At Contact Networks, he was responsible for overall product, and managed strategic relationships with Nokia, GemPlus, Comverse and other large partners.
Mr. Hertzog got his start in the technology industry in the Israeli military, where he served four years as an IT department manager for the Intelligence Core. After leaving the military in 1997, he joined the startup Class Data Systems as an application marketing engineer. The company was later sold to Cisco for $50 million, and Mr. Hertzog invested his windfall from the deal into his first startup, Contact Networks.
Prior to founding Lending Club, Renaud Laplanche was the Founder & CEO of TripleHop Technologies, a VC-backed enterprise software company acquired by Oracle Corporation in June 2005. Prior to founding TripleHop, Renaud was a Senior Associate at New York law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton. Renaud was honored with the HEC "Entrepreneur of the Year" award in 2002 and won the French sailing championship twice, in 1988 and 1990.
Ben T. Smith, IV − Chairman and Co–Founder, MerchantCircle Ben has always been excited about local businesses in his community. Growing up in the Mobile Bay area of Alabama, Ben spent a lot of time around a quite a few small businesses. One of his first jobs was at Daphne Pharmacy, which eventually went out of business as CVS and Walgreens came to town. Smith is the Co-Founder and Chairman of MerchantCircle, and is an Executive in Residence at Rustic Canyon Partners, one of the investors in MerchantCircle. Ben began his career at A.T. Kearney. While a Partner at A.T Kearney, Ben was selected as one of the most influential consultants in the world in 2002. He was one of the youngest partners in the firm's history, and helped spearhead EDS and Kearney's venture development efforts. While on leave from EDS and A.T. Kearney after 9/11, Ben was honored to have the opportunity to serve the Bush Administration as the Senior Advisor for Strategy and Planning, to the Secretary of Transportation.
He is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business and received a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Davis.
Mike is the visionary behind Techdirt, building up the core idea into reality and recruiting the management team. In addition to providing the strategic direction for the company, Mike oversees all editorial aspects of the Techdirt’s public and customer sites. Mike's insight into the realms of business and technology are the basis for his frequent posts to the award winning Techdirt blog. The widely followed, often quoted blog was launched in 1997. Prior to founding Techdirt Inc., Mike worked in business development and marketing at Release Software, an e-commerce startup, and in marketing at Intel. Mike has a bachelor's degree in Industrial and Labor Relations and an MBA − both from Cornell University.
Om is a senior writer for Business 2.0 magazine in San Francisco. This is his personal weblog where he ruminates about broadband and its impact on our lives. Om joined Business 2.0 in April 2003 and have been writing telecom and broadband related stories for the magazine since then. Here is a link to all my articles published in Business 2.0.
Prior to that he was a senior writer for Red Herring focusing on the telecommunications sector. Om’s first book, Broadbandits: Inside the $750 billion telecom heist, was released on May 15, 2003. Before joining Red Herring in July 2000, he was part of the founding team of Forbes.com where he was a senior editor. Om’s writings have also appeared in newspapers and magazines such as The Wall Street Journal, Business 2.0, Brandweek, and Crains, New York Business. In 1999, I left Forbes.com to join Hambrecht & Quist Asia Pacific as an investment manager, thus crossing over into the venture capital business. During his tenure as a venture capitalist, he met and worked side by side with many CEOs, entrepreneurs and investors, and was privy to the inner workings of Silicon Valley.
As Vice President of Business Development for the EMEA region, Ray DeRenzo is charged with driving global growth for MobiTV. DeRenzo works with media companies, TV broadcasters, wireless carriers and enabling third parties such as device manufacturers and system integrators, to drive adoption of MobiTV in the EMEA region.
Prior to MobiTV, DeRenzo was Vice President of Business and Market Development for Telephia, where he focused on European market entry for this leading provider of syndicated competitive performance information and wireless consulting services. Previously, DeRenzo was Chief Marketing Officer at Vodafone, where he was responsible for all aspects of product management, development, sales and support of Vodafone’s Global Service Delivery Platform. Prior to Vodafone, DeRenzo focused on new product development for AirTouch Communications, a developer of new voice and data services.
DeRenzo began his career at Pacific Bell/Pacific Telesis, where he spent nearly 18 years in a variety of roles. He was a founding member of the team at Pacific Bell Mobile Services and also held roles in Product Management, Business Development, Strategy and Planning.
DeRenzo holds a Bachelor’s degree in Regional Planning from California State University (San Francisco) and a Masters in Business Administration from St. Mary’s College.
Jim co-founded Turn in 2005, bringing his extensive experience in online advertising and search to create a next-generation online advertising network. Jim was most recently President of Overture Search, a division of Overture Services, Inc. Jim joined Overture via its acquisition of AltaVista Company, where he was President and CEO. In this role, he led the company's highly successful turnaround and sale to Overture.
Jim was also President of MyFamily.com, the parent company of Ancestry.com, and President and CEO of ThirdAge Media, which was acquired by MyFamily.com. Prior to that, Jim was President and CEO of Infogrammes North America, a leading global publisher of video games and entertainment software. For five years, he was also Chairman, President and CEO of Accolade Inc, Infogrammes' predecessor company.
Jim has served on the boards of several public and private companies and is currently Chairman of SideStep, Inc., the leading travel search engine, on the board of ValueVision Media Inc. (NASDAQ VVTV), on the advisory boards of Trusted ID and Cellfire, and on the management board of Stanford Graduate School of Business. Jim received a bachelor's degree, MBA and J.D. from Stanford University.
As Product Management Director for Google AdSense, Gokul Rajaram develops and implements the product strategy for Google AdSense, an advertising program that enables publishers to monetize their websites while making their site more useful for visitors. In this role, Rajaram's duties include defining new features and enhancements to the AdSense program and working with engineering on implementation.
Earlier in his career, Rajaram was a Technical Lead at Juno Online, an early internet service provider that is now part of United Online, the second largest ISP in the US. At Juno, he was part of the team that developed Juno's online advertising platform. Rajaram has also worked as a Software Engineer at Sun Microsystems, and as a Product Manager at Onetta, a telecom hardware company.
Rajaram earned his M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School of Management, his M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, and his B.Techin Computer Science from the Indian institute of Technology, Kanpur, where he was awarded the President of India's Gold Medal for being class valedictorian.
Mr. Norlin has spent the last 15 years in the emerging technologies and media distribution space. Prior to Pixsy, Mr. Norlin served as Senior Business Development Executive at ValueClick (NASDAQ:VCLK). In this role he focused on publisher distribution and emerging technologies for the ValueClick Media Ad Network and developed distribution opportunities for other divisions including Search and Comparison Shopping.
Prior to ValueClick, Mr. Norlin held the position of Senior Business Development Consultant to InfoSpace (NASDAQ:INSP) charged with publisher distribution and emerging applications for the Search division. Previously, Mr. Norlin created Sony's first online photo sharing venture and founded the web's first video sharing company. Mr. Norlin also launched Boeing's (NYSE:BA) online photo and video licensing division while serving as Strategic Consultant to the company.
Mr. Norlin received his BA from UC Berkeley and MA from The University of Chicago and occasionally offers technology predictions on his blog.
Mr. Norlin is a regular speaker on digital media, online advertising, and search. Recent speaking engagements include the Monaco Media Forum, Dow Jones Consumer Technology Ventures, AlwaysOn, TheDeal, Gnomedex, and Digital Hollywood.
Jay brings a wealth of experience in research, software development, networking and online advertising management. Before joining BlueLithium, he served as vp of engineering for Adteractive, Inc., a leader in online direct marketing, where he was responsible for the design, development and deployment of the company’s software systems. Previously, he was president and CTO for Fathom Online, a leading SEM firm. Prior to Fathom, Jay was CTO for Cybernautics, helping to lead the firm into a strategic acquisition by US Web/CKS, where he subsequently became a managing partner. Jay has also served as CTO for Liquid Thinking, and as a technology consultant for blue chip companies including American Airlines, Bell Atlantic, Sun Microsystems and Netscape.
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