As part of our efforts to help partner companies develop a more integrated innovation and business strategy, the Link holds a small number of CEO Master Classes each year.
Each session features one primary speaker – a successful California-based technology entrepreneur or venture capitalist. Classes focus on addressing a singular topic, although sessions are interactive and related topics may be introduced and discussed as the session progresses.
Master Classes are invitation-only and are restricted to founders, CEOs and senior directors of innovative technology companies. There are no restrictions on age or size of company but it must be innovative. Places are strictly limited 20 seats.
| Cyril Scott |
Marketing director |
DA Group (quoted) |
| Andy Crofts |
CEO |
Verbalis |
| Rob Milne |
MD |
Sematech |
| Sam Doherty |
CEO |
Legal Soft UK |
| Jeff Wright |
Founder & CTO |
MicroEmissive Displays (quoted) |
| John Brand |
CEO |
Indentrica |
| Gordon Cooper |
MD |
Visionware plc |
| Joel Fearnley |
MD |
Lab901 |
| Claire Scrivier |
Director |
Logical Progression |
| Roy Middleton |
CEO |
Plenoptics |
| Paul Watson |
CEO |
WF Software (prev. VIS iTV) |
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| Future Masterclasses |
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Speakers to date: |
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| Bill Urschell (November 2007) |
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Bill Urschel founded AdECN in October, 2003. Before that, he was CEO of
publicly-traded ExperTelligence (EXGP.PK) and its subsidiary, 3DStockCharts,
from July 2002 until the end of 2003, when he engineered the wind-up and
liquidation of that company. Previously, William started and ran three successful
private companies, all located in Santa Barbara. William has served on several
corporate and non-profit boards, including Digital Map Products, Laguna Blanca
School, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. He graduated from
Princeton University in 1978 with a degree in history.
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| Mark Fletcher (November 2007) |
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Mark Fletcher is a successful serial entrepreneur, software developer and investor, with
over 20 years experience in software development and high tech. Mark's career in high
tech begin in the early 1980s. Since then, he has worked in several areas of computer
science, including graphics, visualization and medical systems.
In 2003, Mark started Bloglines, a free web-based news aggregation service,which was
acquired by Ask Jeeves in February 2005.
In 2007, Mark started Startupping, a one-of-a-kind community resource created for
Internet entrepreneurs by Internet entrepreneurs.
In addition to running Startupping, Mark is also an early stage angel investor. His
investments include One True Media, Wesabe and Techdirt.
More can be found at: http://www.Wingedpig.com/
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| Bart Balocki (October 2007) |
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Bart Balocki is an alumnus of Stanford university and during his PhD programme,
Bart conducted over three years of research on the venture capitalist community
in Silicon Valley. Bart has experience in the electronics industry as an engineer
and a researcher. He worked for Honeywell/Bull as a member of the
Manufacturing Management Program and was a part of an industry benchmarking
team with McKinsey Consulting and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
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| Trevor Loy (March 2007) |
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Trevor Loy founded Flywheel Ventures in Silicon Valley in 1999 and established the firm‘s current headquarters in Santa Fe in 2000. During his career, Trevor has founded, managed, advised, invested in, or otherwise participated in the growth of more than 20 technology ventures.
Trevor has also dedicated substantial time and resources to several entrepreneurial efforts in the non-profit and educational domains. Trevor has judged business plans at Harvard Business School and the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and is involved in the growth of entrepreneurship programs at New Mexico State University and the University of New Mexico.
Previously, he was instrumental in working with Professor Tom Byers to build the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP). Trevor holds an MS in Management Science and Engineering, an MS in Electrical Engineering, and a BS in Electrical Engineering, each from Stanford University.
More can be found at: http://www.flywheelventures.com/index.php/website/flywheel_team/
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| Randy Haykin (March 2007) |
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Randy Haykin has been a Managing Director at Outlook Ventures for the past nine years, after co-founding the firm in 1996. Prior to Outlook, he held various senior sales and marketing positions in the high technology arena over the past 19 years with high-profile companies such as Yahoo!, Viacom, Paramount, BBN, IBM, and Apple Computer.
Randy served as the founding Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Yahoo!. In his five years at Apple Computer, Randy was responsible for creating and launching the Apple Multimedia Program for developers as well as a line of retail multimedia and CD-ROM products.
Randy holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Organizational Studies from Brown University, magna cum laude, and an MBA from Harvard's Graduate School of Business.
More can be found on Randy at:
http://www.outlookventures.com/team.html
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| Jim Buckmaster (February 2007) |
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Perhaps the only CEO ever accused of being anti-establishment, a communist, and a socialistic anarchist, since 2000 Jim has led Craigslist to be the most used classifieds in any medium, and one of world's most popular websites, whilst maintaining its renowned public service mission, non-corporate vibe, and staff of less than 20. He formerly served as Craigslist's lead programmer and CTO, contributing the site's multi-city architecture, search engine, discussion forums, flagging system, self-posting process, homepage design, personals categories, and best-of-craigslist.
Before joining Craigslist, he directed web development for Creditland (defunct) and Quantum. In 1994-95, he built a terabyte-scale database-driven public website for ICPSR at U-Mich.
Jim graduated summa cum laude from Virginia Tech with a bachelors in biochemistry, and studied medicine and classics at the University of Michigan.
More can be found on Jim at:
http://www.craigslist.org/about/management.html
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| David Law (February 2007) |
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David founded Speck Design in 1996, and was involved as a designer and manager on multiple projects ranging from notebook computers for Apple computer to medical projects for Medtronic.
Born and raised in Scotland, he pursued a degree in Naval Architecture & Ocean Engineering at the University of London. He turned to Glasgow University to gain a first class honours degree in Product Design Engineering, a program which combines Industrial Design and Mechanical Engineering.
David has lectured in the Engineering Program over at Stanford and has taught creativity course and design courses for students at Stanford since 1996. Recently David founded and is a major shareholder in the following companies. Speck Product Design (www.speckdesign.com).
More can be found on David at:
http://www.speckdesign.com/about/founders/7 |
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| Kevin Hartz (November 2006) |
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Kevin began his career in product management at Silicon Graphics before
co-founding ConnectGroup providing Internet access to hotels (acquired
by Nasdaq-listed Lodgenet). He then joined leading Valley venture
capital firm Outlook Ventures, whose investments included Overture and
DotBank (both acquired by Yahoo!) before co-founding Xoom.com, an
international money transfer company, and most recently EventBrite.com,
where is currently CEO.
Kevin's personal investment portfolio includes PayPal, Friendster,
Trulia and Feedster, and he is also a limited partner in four venture
capital funds - Outlook Ventures, Clarium Capital, The Founders Fund,
and Sequoia Capital. Kevin holds a BA and BS from Stanford University,
and an MA from Oxford University.
More can be found on Kevin at:
http://www.kevinhartz.com/
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| Jessica Hardwick (March 2006) |
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Jessica Hardwick is founder and CEO of Swapthing.com, where she aims to
greatly increase the incidence of barter by making it faster, easier and
more inexpensive.
Prior to founding SwapThing, Jessica was founder and president of
geek2chic.com, a content/e-commerce web site. She directed the company's
growth to nearly 30 employees and five million monthly hits. Ms.
Hardwick began her career in sales support and customer support before
moving to Silicon Graphics, where she held positions including Developer
Programs Manager and Internet Alliance Manager. She later was Director
of Partner Programs at RightPoint and Senior Partner Marketing Manager
at PrimeResponse.
A native of Scotland, Jessica holds a bachelor's degree in economics
from Santa Clara University, and is currently working towards an MBA,
also at Santa Clara University.
More on Jessica can be found here:
http://www.swapthing.com/corporate/news.jsp
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| Kenneth Hess (March 2006) |
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Kenneth is an experienced engineer, a seasoned entrepreneur, and a budding
educator. He holds one of the first software patents ever granted, and
he has been responsible for designing and/or developing dozens of
commercial software, content, and Web products, including Family Tree
Maker, one of the all-time best-selling home software programs. He is
author of the book, Bootstrap: Lessons Learned Building a Successful
Company from Scratch. He holds a BS in Engineering from Stanford and an
MBA from Harvard.
More on Kenneth can be found here:
http://www.klhess.com/
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| Sean Foote (March 2006) |
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Sean has been a venture capitalist investing in early stage
companies for the past eight years. He is active on the board of directors of Altierre
Corporation, Eoplex Technologies, Everyone.net, ezboard, Green Border
Technologies, and Integrated Materials Inc. Sean is a lecturer in
Entrepreneurship at the University of California's Haas School of
Business and also has taught at the University of Michigan's Business
School, University of Virginia's Darden School of Business and
University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.
More on Sean can be found here:
http://www.labrador.com/team_sean.html
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| Bill Joos (November 2005) |
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More information here 
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| David Cremin (October 2005) |
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David is a founder and Managing Director of DFJ Frontier, a Draper Fisher Jurvetson affiliate and venture capital fund focused on seed and early stage technology companies in California. He was previously a founding partner of Zone Ventures in Los Angeles, and before Zone, he served as Founder and CEO of Vis-à-Vis Entertainment, a music publishing and digital media company. Mr. Cremin is currently a board director of OnTech, ProLacta Bioscience, Digital Campaigns, vMusicSystems and The BizWorld Foundation. He holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University.
More on David can be found here:
http://www.dfjfrontier.com/team.html
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| Mike Lyons (March 2005) |
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Mike currently serves as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Vanguard Ventures and as a Sr. Advisory Director of Investcorp, a large NY-based late stage venture capital firm. He is concurrently Managing Partner and co-founder of Zilkha Venture Partners. He was a founding investor, CEO, and director of Informed Diagnostics (now Picaro) which has raised over $70M in venture financing. He recently founded SafeView, a spinout of Battelle/PNNL, which is now closing a $15M B round. Concurrently, Mike is a Consulting Associate Professor at the Stanford University Department of Management Science and Engineering. He also serves on the boards of Selectica (SLTC), Real-Time Innovations, PetroShear, and Jazzmasters Workshops, a non-profit.
More on Mike can be found at:
http://www.vanguardventures.com/team/ml.html
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| Bill Joos (November 2004) |
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Before founding Go-to-market Consulting, Bill served as Vice President of Entrepreneur Development at Garage Technology Ventures in Palo Alto, California, which he helped co-found in October 1997. Garage originally started as an investment bank structuring financing deals for young Silicon Valley technology companies, with offices around the globe, before restructuring as an early stage venture capital company. Bill has previously held sales and marketing positions with a variety of companies, including IBM and Apple Computer. He is perhaps best know as a "Pitch Doctor" and has assisted hundreds of entrepreneurs with refining and focusing their positioning and presentations.
More on Bill can be found at:
http://www.garage.com/about/team |
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| Stephanie Keller-Bottom (October 2004) |
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As Managing Director of Innovent, Stephanie Keller-Bottom draws
upon over 17 years of executive leadership roles in creating new
marketplaces for Fortune 500 companies. Ms. Keller-Bottom joined
Nokia's venturing organization in 1998, the entity charged with
corporate renewal and innovation, and in 2000 established
Innovent, the entrepreneurial innovation unit within Nokia that
explores emerging markets and the opportunities they create. Prior
to this Ms. Keller-Bottom served as Director of Marketplace
Creation for Hewlett Packard, where she worked closely with the
CEO to utilize innovative approaches in partnership and
collaboration, and build market entry strategies for emergent
businesses. Prior to this she was Director of Consumer Credit
Operations for Citibank/Citicorp, and while Vice President, E-
Commerce Marketing and Product Development for Visa U.S.A. she collaborated with top U.S. financial institutions to build strategic plans that addressed the emergence of the electronic banking marketplace.
More on Stephanie can be found here:
http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,,55649,00.html
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© 2005 Edinburgh-Stanford Link. |
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Link Masterclasses
!["The masterclass with Bill Joos was very relevant and thought provoking. We were looking to raise further funding so the advice given was oppotune. Thank you vor the invitation." Joel Feamley, MD. [Lab901]](images/quote_Joel.gif)
