I was reading a thread on Hacker News this morning and came across this gem of a comment:

One of the consequences of a public transaction chain is the great potential for witch hunts. Here’s one of the first examples, but it surely won’t be the last.

The backstory here is a couple researchers posted a paper suggesting that Satoshi (the inventor of bitcoin that nobody knows) had done a large transaction with the founder of Silk Road. That was picked up by the New York Times last weekend. Well it turns out that was not what happened. What happened in fact was this.

When things are public, like the bitcoin block chain where all the transactions clear, then people can and will look at the public data and speculate on what it means. We saw this happen as well with all the public smartphone photos that were taken and published during the Boston Marathon bombing earlier this year.

I realize that the collateral damage from this activity is the potential for reputations to be smeared and real damage to be done to entirely innocent people. But I think radical transparency is, over the long term, a force for good and not evil. And I believe we will see more of it not less.

In our weekly meeting on monday, my partner Brad suggested we start looking for accounting systems that allow businesses that operate entirely on the web and mobile to start publishing their financial data publicly in real time. His assertion was that by making your business totally and completely transparent to users, customers, employees, and suppliers, you will increase trust and that will lead to a more sustainable relationship with all those parties over time. So we are looking for that now. If you have something like that or have seen it, please leave a comment here.

But more than just accounting and payment systems, I think we will see all the systems we use in our lives become more transparent over time and the data that becomes public as a result will provide countless opportunities to be analyzed, optimized, and yes, sensationalized. No good comes without some bad. That’s the way forward progress works.

Check out Fred’s articles here at AlwaysOn and at A VC.

“Invisible Man” photo by ollyy from Shutterstock.

One of the unavoidable realities of building a startup is having to fire people.

In a normal business you can often sweep bad performers under the rug and not deal with them. When you have millions or billions of dollars of revenue you can suffer a few bad performers or bad apples. You can miss a quarter’s target and not cull the inefficiencies. I’m not saying you should, but you could.

But in startups this equals death.

Death because just 3 extra non-performing employees in a company of 15 can either accelerate cash out date or can dramatically lower your productivity.

I’ve spoken about this before and my mantra, “Hire Fast, Fire Fast.”

When I first started my career I came across a term for this that has always stuck in my head and serves as a useful reminder of this mantra.

We called it “PURE.”

Previously. Undetected. Recruiting. Error.

My premise with “hire fast, fire fast” is that some companies over-analyze potential recruits and therefore chew up valuable months with functions unfilled. Most (whether they hire quickly or slowly) are very slow to deal with problems once they have them.

I have sat through scores of board meetings in the past year and in at least 25% of them the topic of a senior employee we hired that hasn’t worked out comes up. Almost always the CEO is defending why he or she has to hold on to that employee for an extra 6 months until they can fix a,b and c before letting them go.

I have never (literally not once) heard a leader later tell me, “I’m glad we waited.” Universally after the shock of letting somebody go and the reverberation in the company is felt a sense of relief and well-being ensues. Teams are organisms and they detect bad cells even more quickly than leadership does. Failing to act undermines confidence.

Yes, PURE employees have allies so it’s never simple. But when you make a mistake you need to own it and fix it ASAP.

This came up in the reverse last week when I spoke with a friend who has an asinine recruiting policy. He told me that everybody who joins must first have a “temporary contractor period” almost like one is on probation before she joins.

I say asinine because that has the likelihood of turning off some potentially great prospective employees and there’s zero reason for the probationary period. In the US you have the right to terminate almost any employee at will (subject to your not giving them a contract to the contrary and of course you should always consult a lawyer before implementing a firing or layoff) .

Thus everybody is implicitly on probation anyways so making it public does you no good and potentially limits some people who may join. I have come across several companies who have this probationary period over my years and I always try to talk them out of it.

Anyway, to the point of this article if you make a mistake in recruiting – if somebody is PURE – deal with it quickly and surgically. The longer he persists in your organization the more the badness metastasizes and the larger the treatment later.

Check out Mark’s articles here at AlwaysOn and at Both Sides of the Table.

“Recruiting” photo by BlueSkyImage from Shutterstock.

Let’s face it, over the years I’ve been pretty hard on the public cloud dream and the vision of running production apps exclusively in the cloud. I’ve been critical of Amazon “over marketing” the public cloud and promoting the idea of the enterprise w/o data centers.

Events in the last few months have started bringing me around much closer to Amazon’s vision, albeit I still think that hybrid cloud will win over the next 5-10 years. I think the cloud battle could come down to Amazon, Google and Microsoft with VMware and perhaps a dozen service providers competing based on specialized services and geographic/regulatory footprints. Then there is the rise of OpenStack as a more agile upgrade to virtualized private clouds, not to mention CloudStack for service providers.

What has changed my mind, after years of data center-centric thinking? A company called QL2 Software has shown me the light when it comes to public cloud for the enterprise.  Disclosure: Yes, I came across QL2 because they are a CloudVelocity customer.

QL2 was running 5+ racks of server in colocation, which they had calculated was costing them about 20% more than AWS, because the apps and databases running in the environment were spikey.  QL2 wasn’t looking to AWS for cost savings, even though they were notable. They were looking to enhance agility and shift their IT team from being rack maintenance/upkeep-centric to focusing on new product and service development.

Earlier this week I spoke to QL2’s Operations Director Samir Bhakta and he mentioned how his team was now more strategic and developing new products versus simply keeping IT running. Reducing costs was simply the gravy.  I’ll let him tell the story soon in an upcoming webinar we’re planning. Stay tuned. It is a pretty impressive testimonial about the transformative power of the cloud. AWS… you’ve come a long way.  I’m still a hybrid cloud believer but what QL2 has demonstrated in a matter of weeks thanks to your cloud is mind-blowing. You can read more here at the CloudVelocity blog.

Check out Greg’s articles here and at Archimedius.

“Cloud Computing” photo by Hyena Reality from Shutterstock.

I like being a contrarian.  As a kid, if a certain TV show was popular amongst my buddies, I’d purposefully ignore that show and search for other shows that were less well known (e.g., Hogan’s Heroes was a personal favorite that never hit mainstream).  When someone declares something is conventional wisdom, I look to poke holes and challenge the underlying assumptions.

Recently, the conventional wisdom in Startup Land has been that young, technical founders are the prototype for creating valuable companies.  The formula, this theory goes, is to find a hacker in a hoodie and bring out the wheelbarrow of cash to back them.  Think Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook, Drew Houston/Dropbox, David Karp/Tumblr and – the most recent poster boy darlings of Startup Land – the SnapChat founders.

I have always thought that stereotype was skewed. Don’t get me wrong – I love young founders.  At Flybridge, we have invested in many of them (e.g., Eliot Buchanan and Dan Choi at Plastiq) and we plan to continue investing in many others.  But in my twenty years living in Startup Land, I have found that there is no single model or archetype for success.  Success comes in many flavors and combinations.  And, in my last five years on the HBS faculty, I have become more convinced of the value of the MBA entrepreneur.

Thus, I was thrilled to read Aileen Lee’s terrific analysis of unicorns (companies that have been created in the last 10 years worth more than $1 billion) and have it shatter this piece of conventional wisdom.  Aileen systematically analyzed the common characteristics behind this cohort of 39 companies and found that “inexperienced, twentysomething founders were an outlier. Companies with well-educated, thirtysomething co-founders who have history together have built the most successes.”

Aileen’s analysis didn’t provide any data on the role of MBAs in the unicorns.  So, in partnership with HBS second year Juan Leung Li, we did some of our own digging.  Here’s what we learned:

• 33% of the Unicorns had at least one founding member who had an MBA. Examples include Kayak (Steve Hafner/Kellogg), Workday (Aneel Bhusri/Stanford and Dave Duffield/Cornell), Yelp (Jeremy Stoppelman/HBS) and Zynga (Mark Pincus/HBS).
• 82% of Aileen’s Unicorns had at least one founding member or current executive team member with an MBA. Examples of unicorns where MBAs were hired to help build the company include Evernote (COO Ken Gullicksen/Stanford), Facebook (COO Sheryl Sandberg/HBS), Twitter (COO Ali Rowghani/Stanford).
• Of those that had MBAs, the leading schools represented were: HBS (21%), Stanford’s GSB (17%) and Wharton (10%).

This week, John Byrne of Poets & Quants published a complimentary analysis, ranking the top 100 MBA Start-Ups.  In this analysis, he found some terrific companies that have been MBA founded in the last 5 years, such as Okta, Rent the Runway, Warby Parker and Wildfire.  Among this MBA founder list, HBS (34%), Stanford (32%) and MIT (11%) came out on top.

Why all the momentum with MBAs and start ups? Simply put, the major schools have radically changed their curriculum. These schools and others have become super-focused on training their MBAs to be effective executives across a range of company sizes, from start-ups to large enterprises.  For example, HBS now teaches two courses to help train students to be effective start-up executives:  Launching Technology Ventures (which I teach) and Product Management 101.  MIT is considering offering their own version of these classes in the spring or next year and Stanford has a plethora of strong course offerings for future start-up executives.

So the next time someone tells you that you need a hoodie to be a great start up entrepreneur, don’t be afraid to flash your MBA diploma with pride.

To see the detailed spreadsheet that Juan Leung Li did, click here.

Check out Jeff’s articles here at AlwaysOn and at Seeing Both Sides.

“Unicorn” photo by Sari ONeal from Shutterstock.

LPs, the investors in VC funds, have a difficult job to do, largely because they have to work with poor quality data and only a small fraction of VCs deliver the returns that make them worth investing in. The problem is made worse by the fact that LP demand to invest in the handful of serially successful VCs well outstrips supply and most LPs have to invest most or all of their venture allocation in other VC funds.

The CB Insights Investor Mosaic sets this out very well. They also describe the factors that they think LPs should use to make those tough decisions:

• Past performance – unlike most other asset classes in venture capital past performance is a good predictor of future performance. CBInsights calls this ‘Performance Persistence’.
• Network centrality – “how connected a VC firm is with other VC firms in the industry, as networks have been proven to be a critical driver of VC performance”
• Brand – “brand is important in venture capital as firms with great brands and reputations see higher quality dealflow, gain entry into emerging industries and can also achieve better economics because they are a preferred source of capital for company founders.”
• Investment discipline – “VC returns have been shown repeatedly to be tied to discipline. Discipline spans fund size as well as sector, geographic and stage preferences. Disciplined stage and sector investing fosters learning opportunities and the development of stage and sector specific knowledge and skills. Discipline also helps to keeps a venture fund’s loss ratio low which is important as they are ultimately stewards of LP investment funding.”
• Selection aptitude – “a measure of dealflow quality and selection prowess for each investor. It highlights each investor’s ability to source and ultimately select high quality investments and then shepherd them to favorable outcomes. While the platitude that 1 of 10 VC investments is a homerun is often thrown around, the reality is that some venture capital firms are significantly better at hitting homeruns then the rate of 1 in 10. Conversely, several VCs are much worse.”
• Illiquid portfolio strength – “this score measures the quality of current, non-exited companies in an investor’s portfolio and also looks at the investor’s entry point into the company.”

This is a really good list and at Forward Partners we aspire to be great on all these dimensions, but for me selection aptitude stands out above all the others as a driver of success. It is the least measurable (aside from looking at past performance) and as a result LPs often focus more on the other drivers. To my mind that’s a mistake. The analogue with VC investing is being comfortable assessing entrepreneurs without a track record of success, and getting that right is one of the best ways to get big wins.

Check out Nic’s articles here at AlwaysOn and at The Equity Kicker.

“Evaluate” photo by Dusit from Shutterstock.

OnHollywood 2013 represents the second time this year that AlwaysOn’s Tony Perkins and I decided to eschew the traditional conference format of many people seated in rows for cabaret-like intimate seating. Sitting in the main room of the beautiful Bel Air Bay Club in subdued lighting with the view of the ocean and a plethora of picture windows made me feel like I was hanging out at the Hotel California (or at least, hanging out in Joe Walsh’s living room, getting ready to hoist a gigantic cocktail or three).

Instead, I was a witness to the ongoing marriage between the Valley and what is euphemistically referred to as Silicon Beach. As a quick aside, given that most of the innovations being realized today are software related, and the nearest geographic example of an inert silicon component ends in an E and is a key part of the Hollywood hardware, can’t we come up with a more original name? How about Media Beach or the Southern Mediasphere… but I digress.

One of the great things about such a setting is that you feel like you can actually meet everyone and share thoughts or ideas&emdash;or at the least exchange cards and interact another day. In fact, I am pretty sure I got to meet darn near everyone who came. This not only included a lot of old friends and the usual allotment of kool companies, but I also got the opportunity to meet some fascinating local people, including the fabulous owner of the Bel Air Bay Club itself.

There were many highlights to share, between the panels and those companies who presented. The variety of media content, engines in which to disperse it, platforms in which to share it, and methods with which to make sense of where it went, is staggering&emdash;both in terms of offerings and also in terms of the great people who are here from all over the world to plant their flag.

That being said, after a week of reflection, the idea that has stayed with me the longest was presented in the last panel. Among the many subjects covered, the idea of there being another bubble coming was discussed&emdash;at worst, one like the Armageddon Internet Bubble of 2005, or at best, one like the small random series of little bubble pops and bursts that have happened ever since. Like most of the folks at the event, I do not buy into that scenario.

Instead, we have built strong, geographically interconnected relationships between companies, such as those Silicon Valley, that are purveying innovative ways to collect and act upon data, and the ad companies centered in New York City and other parts of the country. The panel was composed of CEOs of companies from Northern California and Southern California as well as other parts of the country who are generating revenues and increasing market shares by collaborating and joining forces on all forms of content in all formats to find as many social networking ways in which to share them.

Relationships notwithstanding, I do see a bubble, but not a bubble as we know it&emdash;an intellectual bubble. This bubble is characterized by the dumbing down of content, as producers attempt to address the attention deficit disorder epidemic besetting humanity, while attempting to assuage our human need to be the center of attention. I believe that the end of this cliff is exemplified by Twitter, which allows no more that 140 characters in making a statement and has enjoyed one of most monumental IPOs in history.

It’s frankly hard to believe that you can go with a significantly lower range than 140 characters to get your idea across, and it makes no sense to assume that those points should have a pre-ordained shelf life. But the basis for the Intellectual Bubble is now here. Going over the cliff and hitting the floor is exemplified by Snapchat, a company that provides a platform for sharing content sharing for a maximum of 12 seconds before disappearing. Snapchat recently turned down $3 billion from Facebook, which is trying to remain relevant, and $4 billion by a Chinese consortium that is surely run by the ruling body who wants to make sure that even 12 seconds of thought exchange are controlled by the state.

I have the same perception and respect for the inventors of Snapchat that I do for Justin Bieber&emdash;damned if I can understand the attraction, but totally respect the guts it took to put it out there and congratulations on succeeding. But, when I see the huge number of eyeballs that Snapchat can justifiably point to as engaged, I also understand the implication if the downward spiral in intellectual discourse continues to run unchecked&emdash;a blip that disappears in one second, but is seen by 3 billion eyeballs? Is it truly possible to break down anything, no matter how mundane, into such short bursts without resulting in collateral intellectual damage and ultimately even more indifference to the world and all that is going on that demands actual time, care, and thought to make relevant?

The challenge I lay at the feet of the attendees of OnHollywood 2013 is to provide an intellectual offset. If nature abhors a vacuum, then create content that stimulates a discussion or awareness of an issue, event, or art form and share that content with an underappreciated and underserved market: People who would not only appreciate such content but would in all likelihood be a huge set of eyeballs who control far more money than is currently perceived and who may even be compelled to subscribe to such a quality product. Become a Comcast, with more than a couple of good programs vs. 150 bad ones.

Happily, I have seen such companies at this event and look forward to working with them all. If we cannot stop the downward intellectual slide on one hand, we can surely provide an offset that provides an oasis in a growing intellectual Sahara.

“Thinker” photo by ollyy from Shutterstock.

The OnMedia 100 represents the top emerging companies that are creating new business opportunities in the world of media, advertising, marketing, branding, and public relations. The winning companies are staring down the entrenched, legacy institutions that have long dominated Madison Avenue and creating new ways of reaching their sophisticated and increasingly mobile audience.

Today’s digital media, advertising, and marketing startups are shifting to take advantage of the trend toward both socialization and personalization. Consumers are demanding a new type of advertising—one that brings the products and services they want to them. Legacy remnant advertising solutions and other broadly focused delivery mechanisms are giving way to extremely sophisticated solutions based on aggregating consumers’ desires and turning them into meaningful, actionable messages.

Each year, the AlwaysOn editorial team, along with investment and industry experts across the globe scour the entrepreneurial community to identify the top 100 private digital media companies that are creating high-growth businesses that offer huge upside potential for investors. The OnMedia 100 companies are leaders amongst their peers and developing radical new approaches and technologies that are likely to push outside the bounds of existing markets. Companies are selected based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.

The Eighth Annual OnMedia 100 Competition Has Begun!
To help identify this year’s hottest digital media startups, we’d like your help. We’re looking for the top emerging private companies that are creating new business opportunities in world of media, advertising, marketing, branding, and public relations. To nominate a company to the OnMedia 100, please fill in the qualification form. After successful submission, companies will be notified if they meet our criteria for the next step in the process, the CEO interview.

We look forward to sifting through the nominees to find the most disruptive entrepreneurs who are shaking up online media world and creating opportunity and revenue. Let the competition begin!

The companies that have been nominated to the 2014 AlwaysOn OnMedia 100 so far are listed below by category.

B2B: Advertising Analytics

Baynote
www.baynote.com
San Jose, CA

Collective[i]
www.collective.com
New York, NY

Compass Labs
www.compasslabs.com
San Jose

Conductor
www.conductor.com
New York, NY

Covario
www.covario.com
San Diego, CA

The Echo System
www.theechosystem.com
New York, NY

Flurry
www.flurry.com
San Francisco, CA

InfiniGraph
www.infinigraph.com
Menlo Park, CA

Marin Software
www.marinsoftware.com
San Francisco, CA

Monetate
monetate.com
Philadelphia, PA

Quantcast
www.quantcast.com
San Francisco, CA

STELLAService
stellaservice.com
New York, NY

Visible Measures
www.visiblemeasures.com
Boston, MA

Webtrends
www.webtrends.com
Portland, OR

WideOrbit
www.wideorbit.com
San Francisco, CA

B2B: Advertising Networks

33Across
33across.com
New York, NY

Adap.tv
www.adap.tv
San Mateo, CA

Adconion Media Group
adconion.com
Santa Monica, CA

Adknowledge
www.adknowledge.com
Kansas City, MO

AppNexus
www.appnexus.com
New York, NY

BlackArrow
www.blackarrow.tv
San Jose, CA

BlueKai
www.bluekai.com
Cupertino, CA

BrightRoll
www.brightroll.com
San Francisco, CA

Collective
www.collective.com
New York, NY

CPX Interactive
www.cpxinteractive.com
New York, NY

Criteo
www.criteo.com
Paris, France

DataXu
www.dataxu.com
Boston, MA

DOmedia
www.domedia.com
Columbus, OH

Dynamic Signal
www.dynamicsignal.com
San Bruno, CA

eXelate
exelate.com
New York, NY

Extreme Reach
www.extremereach.com
Needham Heights, MA

HubSpot
www.hubspot.com
Cambridge, MA

inPowered
www.inpwrd.com
San Francisco, CA

Integral Ad Science
integralads.com
New York, NY

JiWire
www.jiwire.com
San Francisco, CA

Media6Degrees
www.media6degrees.com
New York, NY

Medialets
www.medialets.com
New York, NY

MediaMath
www.mediamath.com
New York, NY

Moat
www.moat.com
New York, NY

OpenX
www.openx.org
Pasadena, CA

Rocket Fuel
www.rocketfuelinc.com
Redwood City, CA

Smaato
www.smaato.com
Redwood Shores, CA

SponsorPay
www.sponsorpay.com
New York, NY

Spruce Media
www.sprucemedia.com
San Francisco, CA

Tapad
www.tapad.com
New York, NY

Tremor Video
www.tremorvideo.com
New York, NY

Turn
www.turn.com
Redwood City, CA

Undertone
www.undertone.com
New York, NY

YuMe
www.yume.com
Redwood City, CA

B2B: Technology Enablers

AddThis
www.addthis.com
McLean, VA

Aereo
aereo.com
Long Island City, NY

Datalogix
www.datalogix.com
Westminster, CO

Evidon
www.evidon.com
New York, NY

FanBridge
www.fanbridge.com
New York, NY

FreeWheel
www.freewheel.tv
San Mateo, CA

Get Satisfaction
getsatisfaction.com
San Francisco, CA

Kaltura
corp.kaltura.com
New York, NY

Kargo
www.kargo.com
New York, NY

Marketo
www.marketo.com
San Mateo, CA

Merchantry
merchantry.com
New York, NY

Sailthru
sailthru.com
New York, NY

ShareThis
sharethis.com
Mountain View, CA

Silverpop
www.silverpop.com
Atlanta, GA

Simulmedia
www.simulmedia.com
New York, NY

Spiceworks
www.spiceworks.com
Austin, TX

Square
squareup.com
San Francisco, CA

Touchstorm
touchstorm.com
New York, NY

Consumer Services: Community Platforms

AdKeeper
www.adkeeper.com
New York, NY

DailyWorth
dailyworth.com
New York, NY

Foursquare
foursquare.com
New York, NY

MyCityWay
www.mycityway.com
New York, NY

MyLife.com
www.mylife.com
Los Angeles, CA

Pinterest
pinterest.com
Palo Alto, CA

Quirky
www.quirky.com
Headquarters: New York, NY

Quora
www.quora.com
Palo Alto, CA

Shazam
www.shazam.com
London, U.K.

Consumer Services: Online Content Publishers

BlogHer
blogher.com
Belmont, CA

BuzzFeed
www.buzzfeed.com
New York, NY

Complex Media
www.complexmediainc.com
New York, NY

Everyday Health
www.everydayhealth.com
New York, NY

Knewton
www.knewton.com
New York, NY

Martini Media
www.martinimediainc.com
San Francisco, CA

NewsCred
www.newscred.com
New York, NY

Consumer Services: Social Commerce

500friends
www.500friends.com
San Francisco, CA

Beyond the Rack
www.beyondtherack.com
Montreal, Que., Canada

Birchbox
www.birchbox.com
New York, NY

Cartera Commerce
www.cartera.com
Lexington, MA

chloe + isabel
www.chloeandisabel.com
New York, NY

Etsy
www.etsy.com
Brooklyn, NY

Fab.com
fab.com
New York, NY

Kiip
kiip.me
San Francisco, CA

Moda Operandi
modaoperandi.com
New York, NY

One Kings Lane
www.onekingslane.com
San Francisco, CA

Poshmark
poshmark.com
San Francisco, CA

Rent The Runway
www.renttherunway.com
New York, NY

RichRelevence
richrelevance.com
San Francisco, CA

Shopify
www.shopify.com
Ottowa, Ont., Canada

Uber
www.uber.com
San Francisco, CA

The AlwaysOn Power Players in Digital Media list honors the most influential people in the banking, venture capital, legal, and accounting world who support technology entrepreneurs that are bringing massive technology breakthroughs to the digital media world. These individuals and their firms are the infrastructure workhorses behind the ideas that make the Global Silicon Valley an incubator for success, creating strong companies that are building forward-thinking, indispensable products.

The Third Annual Power Players in Digital Media Competition Has Begun!
Behind every successful digital media startup is a handful of power players guiding the founders. This year’s Power Players in Digital Media list promises to span a wide range of talents, from seed investors to accountants to technology executives to advertising moguls to commerce experts to venture capitalists to legal counsel. The list will highlight an impressive range of talents available for digital media startup entrepreneurs with the right ideas and mindsets to break away from the pack.

The AlwaysOn edtorial team is looking for your nominations to identify this year’s list of people who are behind the startup founders that are creating high-growth businesses and ensuring they will offer huge upside potential for their investors. To nominate someone you believe in to the AlwaysOn Power Players in Digital Media list, fill in a nomination form and tell us why he or she belongs on the list.

We look forward to sifting through the nominees to find the most disruptive entrepreneurs who are shaking up the world of digital media and creating opportunity and revenue. Let the competition begin!

This year’s nominees to the 2013 Power Players in Digital Entertainment are listed below by category.

The Accountants

Mark Davis
Principal
Deloitte Consulting

Stephanie Hollander
Partner
Ernst & Young

Brian Hughes
Co-Head, U.S. Venture Practice and Partner
KPMG

Michael Portegello
Partner
Ernst & Young

Kimberly Reinert
Partner
Ernst & Young

Darrin Stollow
Partner
Deloitte

The Attorneys

Victor Boyajian
National Chair, Venture Capital Practice
SNR Denton

Ward Breeze
Partner
Gunderson Dettmer

Janet Cullum
Partner
Cooley

Robert Darwell
Partner
Sheppard Mullin

Jeffrey Klein
Partner
Goodwin Procter

Ken McVay
Partner
Gunderson Dettmer

Babak (Bo) Yaghmaie
Partner
Cooley

Ed Zimmerman
Chair, Tech Group / Co-Founder /Managing Director
Lowenstein Sandler / GrapeArbor Angels / First Growth Venture Network

The Big Media Company Players

Rafat Ali
Co-Founder and CEO
Skift

Amy Banse
Managing Director and Head of Funds
Comcast Ventures

Paul Bascobert
Chief Operating Officer
Bloomberg Media

Tom Bedecarre
Chairman
AKQA

Pete Blackshaw
Global Head of Social and Digital
Nestle

Greg Blatt
CEO
IAC Management

Ken Bronfin
President
Hearst Interactive Media

Kevin Brown
Founding Partner
Reed Elsevier Ventures

Dan Coughlin
Director of Sales, East Region
Twitter

Marc DeBevoise
Senior Vice President and General Manager, Entertainment
CBS Interactive

Scott English
Senior Vice President, Strategic Investments
Hearst Interactive Media

Jorge Espinel
Executive Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development, News Digital Media
News Corporation

Allison Goldberg
Managing Director
Time Warner Investments

Jared Hecht
Co-Founder
Skype / GroupMe

David Horowitz
Managing Director
Comcast Ventures

Steve Huffman
Co-Founder
Reddit / Hipmunk

Abbey Klaassen
Editor-in-Chief
AdAge

George Kliavkoff
Executive Vice President and Deputy Group Head
Hearst Entertainment and Syndication

Rachel Lam
Senior Vice President and Group Managing Director
Time Warner Investments

Jim Lazone
CEO
CBS Interactive

Scott Levine
Managing Director
Time Warner Investments

Alexis Ohanian
Founder
Reddit

Mike Perlis
President and CEO
Forbes Media

Gokul Rajaram
Product Director, Ads
Facebook

Doug Selin
Senior Vice President, Strategy, M&A
Viacom

Andrew Siegel
Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development
Advance Publications

Paul Sinclair
Senior Vice President, Digital Media and Business Development
Atlantic Records

Louis Toth
Managing Director
Comcast Ventures

The Big Tech Company Players

Don Dodge
Developer Advocate
Google

Ethan McCarty
Director, Enterprise Social Programs
IBM

Stephanie Schnabel
Managing Director , Corporate Development
Accenture

Arlen Shenkman
Senior Vice President, Head of Corporate Development
SAP AG

Bill Wheaton
Senior Vice President and General Manager, Media Division
Akamai

The Commercial Bankers

Brad Ellis
Senior Vice President, Managing Director
Square 1 Bank

Chris Lloyd
Senior Vice President
Comerica Bank

Mike Moretti
Senior Vice President
Silicon Valley Bank

Al Spurgin
Executive Vice President
Square 1 Bank

The Investment Bankers

Herb Allen III
President
Allen & Company

Bill Brady
Managing Director, Co-Chairman of the Global Technology Group
Credit Suisse

Sanjay Chadda
Partner, Managing Director
Petsky Prunier

Alec Ellison
Vice Chairman and Chairman of Technology Investment Banking
Jefferies & Company

Tolman Geffs
Co-President
The Jordan Edmiston Group

Linda Gridley
President and CEO
Gridley & Co.

Mihir Jobalia
Managing Director and Group Head, Technology
KPMG

Terence Kawaja
CEO
Luma Partners

Imran Khan
Managing Director
Credit Suisse

Ed Liu
Managing Director
Morgan Stanley

Jay MacDonald
CEO and Managing Partner
Digital Capital Advisors

Andrew Malik
Chairman
Needham & Company

Conor Moore
Partner
KPMG

Adele Morrissette
Managing Director
BMO Capital Markets

Mark Patricof
Managing Partner
MESA

Nancy Peretsman
Managing Director
Allen & Company

Brad Raymond
Co-Head of Investment Banking
Stifel Nicolaus Weisel

Matt Schultz
Managing Director
Jefferies & Company

Kurt Simon
Co-Head, Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Unit
J.P. Morgan

Brian Stengel
Managing Director, Head of the Digital Media Group
Waller Capital Partners

Tim Walsh
Partner
KPMG

The Madison Avenue Insiders

Craig Atkinson
Chief Operating and Digital Officer
PHD

Eric Bader
President and Chief Strategy Officer
Initiative

Tim Castree
Chief Operating Officer
MediaVest USA

Alan Cohen
CEO
OMD USA

Scott Donaton
President and CEO
Ensemble

Carl Fremont
Executive Vice President, Media Director
DIGITAS

Chris Geraci
President of National Broadcast
OMD

Scott Hagedorn
CEO
Annalect Group (OMG)

Carla Hendra
Global Chairman, OgilvyRED
Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide

Josh Jacobs
President
Accuen

Lance Maerov
Senior Vice President, Corporate Development
WPP Group

Jean-Philippe Maheu
CEO
Publicis Modem

Greg March
Director of Media Strategy and Digital Activation
Wieden + Kennedy

Victor Monahan
Managing Director, Intelligence Practice
Magna Global

Rob Norman
Chief Digital Officer
GroupM North America

John Osborn
President and CEO
BBDO New York

Katrin Ribant
Co-Founder and CEO
Datorama

Amanda Richman
President, Digital
MediaVest

Doug Scott
President
OgilvyEntertainment

Robin Steinberg
Executive Vice President, Director of Publishing Investment and Activation
MediaVest

Steve Stoute
Founder and CEO
Translation

Hagen Wenzek
Chief Technical Officer
IPG Mediabrands

Dawn Winchester
Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Services Officer
R/GA

The Non-Profit Organizations

Lisa Baird
Chief Marketing Officer
US Olympic Committee

Randy Rothenberg
President and CEO
IAB

The Private Equity Partners

Lee Fixel
Managing Director
Tiger Global

Matt Freeman
Operating Partner
Bain Capital Ventures

Scott Friend
Managing Director
Bain Capital Ventures

Bradford Woloson
General Partner
JMI Equity

The Secondary Market Players

Dan Burstein
Managing Partner
Millennium Technology Value Partners

Adam Oliveri
Managing Director, Private Company Market
SecondMarket

Sam Schwerin
Managing Partner
Millennium Technology Value Partners

Barry Silbert
CEO
SecondMarket

The Super Angels and Incubators

John Borthwick
CEO
Betaworks

Peter Chernin
Managing Director
The Chernin Group

Jeff Clavier
Founder and Managing Partner
SoftTech VC

David Cohen
Founder and CEO
TechStars

Peter Currie
Managing Director
Currie Capital

Owen Davis
Managing Director
NY Seed

Chris Dixon
General Partner
Andreessen Horowitz

Mike Duda
Managing Partner
Consigliere Brand Capital

Esther Dyson
Founder
EDventure Holdings

Caterina Fake
Founding Partner
Founder Collective

Bernard Gershon
Founder and President
Gershon Media

Michael Lazerow
CEO and Co-Founder
Buddy Media

Ted Leonsis
Venture Advisor
Revolution Ventures

Nihal Mehta
Founding General Partner
ENIAC Ventures / India Internet Group

Heidi Messer
Co-Founder and Chairman / CEO
Collective[i] / World Evolved

Bob Pittman
CEO
Clear Channel Communications

David Rose
Founder and CEO
Gust (fomerly Angelsoft)

Fred Seibert
Founder and Executive Producer
Frederator Studios

Martin Varsavsky
CEO
Fon

Ed Zimmerman
Chair, Tech Group / Co-Founder /Managing Director
Lowenstein Sandler / GrapeArbor Angels / First Growth Venture Network

The University Players

Sree Sreenivasan
Chief Digital Officer
Columbia University

The Venture Capitalists

Brian Ascher
Partner
Venrock

Jim Barnett
Partner
Shasta Ventures

Larry Bohn
Managing Director
General Catalyst Partners

Roelof Botha
Partner
Sequoia Capital

Liza Boyd
Partner
Highbridge

Jim Breyer
Managing Director
Accel

Brad Burnham
Managing Partner
Union Square Ventures

Jeff Bussgang
General Partner / Founder
Flybridge Capital Partners / First Growth Venture Network

Jon Callaghan
Partner
True Ventures

Marissa Campise
Vice President
Venrock

Shawn Carolan
Managing Director
Menlo Ventures

Steve Case
Managing Director
Revolution Ventures

Navin Chaddha
Managing Director
Mayfield Fund

Tim Chang
Managing Director
Mayfield Fund

Matt Cohler
General Partner
Benchmark Capital

Kevin Commoli
General Partner
Accel Partners Europe

Ronald Conway
Angel Investor
SV Angel

David Cremin
Founder and Managing Director
DFJ Frontier

Jeffrey Crowe
General Partner
Norwest Venture Partners

Byron Deeter
Partner
Bessemer Venture Partners

Thanasis Delistathis
Co-Founder and Managing Partner
New Atlantic Ventures

Elisabeth DeMarse
Chairman, CEO, and President
The Street

Harry Demott
Managing Director
Raptor Group

Keval Desai
Partner
InterWest Partners

Roger Ehrenberg
Founder and Managing Partner
IA Ventures

Stuart Ellman
General Partner
RRE Ventures

Bill Ericson
General Partner
Mohr Davidow Ventures

Deborah Farrington
Founder and General Partner
StarVest Partners

Peter Fenton
General Partner
Benchmark Capital

Peter Flint
General Partner
Polaris Venture Partners

Norm Fogelsong
General Partner
Institutional Venture Partners

David Golden
Managing Director
Revolution

Josh Goldman
General Partner
Norwest Venture Partners

Ross Goldstein
Co-Founder and Managing Director
DFJ Gotham Ventures

Bob Goodman
Partner
Bessemer Venture Partners

Bing Gordon
General Partner
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Mike Gordon
Managing Director
Meritech Capital Partners

Bill Gurley
General Partner
Benchmark Capital

Rick Heitzmann
Managing Director
FirstMark Capital / NYC Entrepreneurial Fund

Eric Hippeau
Partner
Lerer Ventures

David Hirsch
Partner
Metamorphic Ventures

Sonja Hoel Perkins
Managing Director
Menlo Ventures

Jeff Horing
Managing Director
Insight Venture Partners

Ben Horowitz
Co-Founder and General Partner
Andreessen Horowitz

Eric Jackson
Managing Member
Ironfire Capital

Brian Jacobs
Founder and General Partner
Emergence Capital

Amish Jani
Managing Director
FirstMark Capital

John Jarve
Managing Director
Menlo Ventures

Jeff Jordan
General Partner
Andreessen Horowitz

Habib Kairouz
Managing Partner
Rho Ventures

Josh Kopelman
Partner
First Round Capital

Josh Kushner
Founder
Thrive Capital

Aileen Lee
Partner
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Warren Lee
Partner
Canaan Partners

Ken Lerer
Managing DIrector
Lerer Ventures

Rich Levandov
Partner
Avalon Ventures

Jeremy Levine
Partner
Bessemer Venture Partners

Jordan Levy
NY Partner
SoftBank Capital

Ping Li
General Partner
Accel Partners

Mark Mackenzie
Senior Thematic Analyst, Venture Capital – Telecom, Media, and Technology
AllianceBernstein

Vineet Madan
Senior Vice President
McGraw-Hill Education

Om Malik
Founder
GigaOm

Stephen Marcus
Partner
New Atlantic Ventures

Paul Matteucci
General Partner
USVP

Chris McKay
Managing Director
Granite Ventures

Chip Meakem
Managing Partner
Tribeca Venture Partners

Mary Meeker
Partner
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Chris Moore
Partner
Redpoint Ventures

John Moragne
Co-Founder and Managing Director
Trident Capital

Allen Morgan
Venture Partner
Mayfield Fund

Howard Morgan
Partner
First Round Capital

Alan Murray
Partner
Coriolis Ventures

Jack Myers
Chairman
Media Advisory Group

Dan Nova
Partner
Highland Capital

David Pakman
Partner
Venrock

Eric Paley
Managing Partner
Founder Collective

Satya Patel
Former Principal
Battery Ventures

Alan Patricof
Managing Director
Greycroft Partners

Bo Peabody
Managing General Partner
Village Ventures

Shervin Pishevar
Managing Director
Menlo Ventures

Scott Raney
Partner
Redpoint Ventures

Jeff Richards
Partner
GGV Capital

Nathan Richardson
CEO
#waywire

Bryce Roberts
co-founder and Managing Director
Reilly AlphaTech Ventures

Jim Robinson IV
General Partner
RRE Ventures

Dan Rosensweig
CEO
Chegg

Bijan Sabet
General Partner
Spark Capital

Ann Sarnoff
Chief Operating Officer
BBC Worldwide America

Tige Savage
Managing Director
Revolution Ventures

Daniel Schultz
Co-Founder and Managing Director
DFJ Gotham Ventures

Mark Siegel
Managing Director
Menlo Ventures

Ian Sigalow
Partner
Greycroft Partners

Evangelos Simoudis
Senior Managing Director
Trident

David Skok
General Partner
Matrix Partners

James Slavet
Partner
Greylock

David Sze
Partner
Greylock

Robert Theis
Managing Director
Scale Venture Partners

Samit Varma
Partner
Anthem Venture Partners

Robin Vasan
Managing Director
Mayfield Fund

Pravin Vazirani
Managing Director
Menlo Ventures

Dominique Vidal
Partner
Index Ventures

Albert Wenger
Managing Partner
Union Square Ventures

Sharon Wienbar
Managing Director
Scale Venture Partners

Fred Wilson
Managing Partner
Union Square Ventures

Geoffrey Yang
Founding Partner
Redpoint Ventures

Marc Yi
Managing Director
Intel Capital

David Zilberman
Partner
Comcast Ventures

The OnDemand 100 represents the top emerging companies that are creating new business opportunities in the world of on-demand, cloud computing, and SaaS. The winning companies are creating a complex world of interconnected business intelligence, merging valuable legacy data and systems with vital new streams of information. New application developers, especially those serving the expanding mobile market, now rely on cloud infrastructure to create, deploy, and manage their apps.

Only a few short years ago, the cloud was being warily considered as just another clever marketing buzzword being used to describe something that sounded too good to be true. It’s clear that the buzzword has become reality—and lived up to its promise. Cloud infrastructure is expanding into and enhancing every sector of the technology world. In turn, SaaS and on-demand apps are becoming the norm, letting consumers and business users use technology in even more creative, efficient ways.

Each year, the AlwaysOn editorial team, along with investment and industry experts across the globe scour the entrepreneurial community to identify the top 100 private on-demand, cloud, and SaaS companies that are creating high-growth businesses that offer huge upside potential for investors. The OnDemand 100 companies are leaders amongst their peers and developing radical new approaches and technologies that are likely to push outside the bounds of existing markets. Companies are selected based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.

The Fifth Annual Demand 100 Competition Has Begun!
To help identify this year’s hottest on-demand, cloud, and SaaS startups, we’d like your help. We’re looking for the top emerging private companies that are creating new business opportunities in world of cloud infrastructure, software-as-a-service, and on-demand computing. To nominate a company to the OnDemand 100, please fill in the qualification form. After successful submission, companies will be notified if they meet our criteria for the next step in the process, the CEO interview.

We look forward to sifting through the nominees to find the most disruptive entrepreneurs who are shaking up the on-demand world and creating opportunity and revenue. Let the competition begin!

The companies that have been nominated to the 2014 AlwaysOn OnDemand 100 so far are listed below by category.

Cloud—Application Platforms

AirWatch
www.air-watch.com
Atlanta, GA

Appcelerator
www.appcelerator.com
Mountain View, CA

Big Switch Networks
www.bigswitch.com
Mountain View, CA

Engine Yard
www.engineyard.com
San Francisco, CA

Hortonworks
hortonworks.com
Sunnyvale, CA

July Systems
www.julysystems.com
New York, NY

Kaltura
corp.kaltura.com
New York, NY

MuleSoft
www.mulesoft.com
San Francisco, CA

SoonR
www.soonr.com
Campbell, CA

ThingWorx
www.thingworx.com
Downingtown, PA

Zend Technologies
www.zend.com
Cupertino, CA

Cloud—Infrastructure

Aerohive Networks
www.aerohive.com
Sunnyvale, CA

AlienVault
www.alienvault.com
Campbell, CA

Box
www.box.net
Palo Alto, CA

Coraid
www.coraid.com
Redwood City, CA

Cyan
www.cyaninc.com
Petaluma, CA

Dropbox
www.dropbox.com
San Francisco, CA

GoGrid
www.gogrid.com
San Francisco, CA

Joyent
joyent.com
San Francisco, CA

LiveOps
www.liveops.com
Santa Clara, CA

Midokura
www.midokura.com
San Francisco, CA

Nimble Storage
www.nimblestorage.com
San Jose, CA

Panzura
panzura.com
San Jose, CA

Pertino
pertino.com
Los Gatos, CA

PLUMgrid
www.plumgrid.com
Sunnyvale, CA

Pure Storage
www.purestorage.com
Mountain View, CA

RingCentral
www.ringcentral.com
San Mateo, CA

Skytap
www.skytap.com
Seattle, WA

SnapLogic
www.retailsolutions.com
San Mateo, CA

Spiceworks
www.spiceworks.com
Austin, TX

Violin Memory
www.violin-memory.com
Mountain View, CA

Virtela
www.virtela.net
Greenwood Village, CO

WhiteHat Security
www.whitehatsec.com
Santa Clara, CA

Zetta.net
www.zetta.net
Sunnyvale, CA

Cloud—Management and Tools

AppDynamics
www.appdynamics.com
San Francisco, CA

Cloudera
www.cloudera.com
Burlingame, CA

CloudFlare
www.cloudflare.com
San Francisco, CA

Embrane
www.embrane.com
Santa Clara, CA

ExtraHop
www.extrahop.com
Seattle, WA

FireEye
www.fireeye.com
Milpitas, CA

Good Technology
www.good.com
Sunnyvale, CA

MapR
www.mapr.com
San Jose, CA

MobileIron
www.mobileiron.com
Mountain View, CA

Mocana
www.mocana.com
San Francisco, CA

New Relic
www.newrelic.com
San Francisco, CA

Okta
www.okta.com
San Francisco, CA

OneLogin
www.onelogin.com
San Francisco, CA

Ping Identity
www.pingidentity.com
Denver, CO

SOASTA
www.soasta.com
Mountain View, CA

Symplified
www.symplified.com
Boulder, CO

vArmour Networks
www.varmour.com
Santa Clara, CA

On-Demand Software—Business Mangement Applications

Adaptive Planning
www.adaptiveplanning.com
Mountain View, CA

Anaplan
www.anaplan.com
San Francisco, CA

Appirio
www.appirio.com
San Mateo, CA

Apptio
www.apptio.com
Bellvue, WA

Aria Systems
www.ariasystems.com
San Mateo, CA

Asana
asana.com
San Francisco, CA

Atlassian
www.atlassian.com
Sydney, Australia

Badgeville
badgeville.com
Menlo Park, CA

Coupa Software
www.coupa.com
Headquarters: San Mateo, CA

Domo
www.domo.com
American Fork, UT

FinancialForce.com
www.financialforce.com
San Francisco, CA

Gigya
www.gigya.com
Mountain View, CA

InsideSales.com
www.insidesales.com
Provo, UT

Intacct
www.intacct.com
San Jose, CA

Kenandy
www.kenandy.com
Redwood City, CA

Lattice Engines
www.lattice-engines.com
San Mateo, CA

Moxie Software
www.moxiesoft.com
Mountain View, CA

PivotLink
www.pivotlink.com
San Francisco, CA

Retail Solutions
www.retailsolutions.com
Mountain View, CA

ServiceMax
www.servicemax.com
Pleasanton, CA

Xactly
www.xactlycorp.com
San Jose, CA

YouSendIt
www.yousendit.com
Campbell, CA

Zuora
www.zuora.com
Redwood City, CA

On-Demand Software—Customer Relationship Management

Five9
www.five9.com
San Ramon, CA

HubSpot
www.hubspot.com
Cambridge, MA

Lithium Technologies
www.lithium.com
Emeryville, CA

Marketo
www.marketo.com
San Mateo, CA

Nimble
www.nimble.com
Santa Monica, CA

SugarCRM
www.sugarcrm.com
Cupertino, CA

Veeva Systems
www.veevasystems.com
Pleasanton, CA

On-Demand Software—Tools

Acquia
www.acquia.com
Woburn, MA

BrightEdge
www.brightedge.com
San Mateo, CA

Conviva
www.conviva.com
San Mateo, CA

Mediaocean
www.mediaocean.com
New York, NY

oDesk
www.odesk.com
Menlo Park, CA

Tableau Software
www.tableausoftware.com
Seattle, WA

Zendesk
www.zendesk.com
San Francisco, CA

On-Demand Software—Vertical Applications

Achievers
www.achievers.com
San Francisco, CA

Birst
www.birst.com
San Francisco, CA

Cvent
www.cvent.com
McLean, VA

DocuSign
www.docusign.com
Seattle, WA

Evernote
www.evernote.com
Mountain View, CA

Hearsay Social
hearsaysocial.com
San Francisco, CA

hybris
www.hybris.com
Munich, Germany

Opower
opower.com
San Francisco, CA

Palantir Technologies
www.palantirtech.com
Palo Alto, CA

RetailNext
www.retailnext.net
San Jose, CA

SilkRoad
www.silkroad.com
Chicago, IL

SurveyMonkey
www.surveymonkey.com
Palo Alto, CA

The AlwaysOn Power Players in the Cloud list honors the most influential people in the banking, venture capital, legal, and accounting world who support on-demand entrepreneurs that are bringing massive technology breakthroughs to the cloud, on-demand, and SaaS world. These individuals and their firms are the infrastructure workhorses behind the ideas that make the Global Siliconn Valley an incubator for success, creating strong digital media companies that are building forward-thinking, indispensable products.

The Third Annual Power Players in the Cloud Competition Has Begun!
Behind every successful Internet and mobile startup is a handful of power players guiding the founders. This year’s Power Players in the Cloud list promises to span a wide range of talents, from seed investors to accountants to venture capitalists to legal counsel. The list will highlight an impressive range of talents available for on-demand, SaaS, and cloud-computing startup entrepreneurs with the right ideas and mindsets to break away from the pack.

The AlwaysOn edtorial team is looking for your nominations to identify this year’s list of people who are behind the startup founders that are creating high-growth businesses and ensuring they will offer huge upside potential for their investors. To nominate someone you believe in to the AlwaysOn Power Players in the Cloud list, fill in a nomination form and tell us why he or she belongs on the list.

We look forward to sifting through the nominees to find the most disruptive entrepreneurs who are shaking up online media world and creating opportunity and revenue. Let the competition begin!

This year’s nominees to the 2014 AlwaysOn Power Players in the Cloud are listed below by category.

The Academics

David Cheriton
Professor / Investor and Founder
Stanford / Aster Data Systems, Zunavision, OptumSoft, Google

Michael Franklin
Professor / Chief Technolog Officer
UC Berkeley / Truviso

Hector Garcia-Molina
Professor / Venture Advisor and Board Member
Stanford University / Onset Ventures

Pat Hanrahan
Professor / Co-founder and Chief Scientist
Stanford / Tableau Software

The Accelerators

John McIntyre
Managing Director, Citrix Startup Accelerator
Citrix

The Accountants

Tom Lamoureux
Principal
KPMG

Conor Moore
Partner-in-Charge, Northern California Venture Capital Practice
KPMG

Rusty Thomas
Global and U.S. Tax Sector Leader, Technology Industry
KPMG

The Big Company Players

Rob Adams
Senior Director of Corporate Development
Cisco Systems

Amy Banse
Managing Director and Head of Funds
Comcast

Peter Barry
Managing Partner
Tane Mobile

James Beer
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
Symantec

Ken Berryman
Senior Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development
BMC Software

Jeff Blackburn
Senior Vice President, Business Development
Amazon

Marc Brown
Managing Director, Corporate Development
Microsoft

Frank Calderoni
Chief Financial Officer and Vice President
Cisco Systems

Mark Carges
Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President Global Products, Marketplaces
eBay

Michael Cristinziano
Corporate Vice President, Strategic Development
Citrix

Sachin Deshpande
Director of Product Management
Qualcomm

Ryan Downs
Senior Vice President of Global Operations
eBay

David Drummond
Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer
Google

Martin Duursma
Vice President Citrix Labs and Chief Technology Officer Office Chair
Citrix

Dana Evan
Former Chief Financial Officer and Vice President
VeriSign

Claudia Fan Munce
Managing Director, IBM Venture Capital Group
IBM

Mohan Gyani
Former CEO
AT&T Wireless

Christine Heiss
Managing Director, Corporate Development
SingTel

Clarence Hinton
Vice President, Corporate Development
BMC Software

Deborah Hopkins
Chairman of Venture Capital Initiatvies and Chief Innovation Officer
CITI

Jason Hurst
Senior Director, Strategy and Corporate Development
VMware

Nagraj Kashyap
Vice President, Ventures
Qualcomm Ventures

Douglas Kehring
Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Strategic Planning
Oracle

Joe Kraus
Partner
Google Ventures

Vinay Kundaje
Executive Director Corporate Business Development
AT&T

Lisa Lambert
Managing Director
Intel Capital

Matt Langdon
Vice President, Corporate Development
TIBCO

David Lawee
Vice President, Corporate Development
Google

John Leckrone
Director of Venture Development
Adobe Systems

Dan’l Lewin
Corporate Vice President
Microsoft

Nino Marakovic
CEO and Managing Director
SAP Ventures

Bill Maris
Partner
Google Ventures

Rich Napolitano
President, Unified Storage Division
EMC

Kristina Omari
Vice President, Mergers and Acquisitions
Adobe Systems

Adrian Perica
Senior Vice President, Corporate Development
Apple

Sanjay Poonen
President and Corporate Officer, Global Solutions
SAP

Anne-Marie Roussel
Executive-in-Residence
Illuminate Ventures

John Somorjai
Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Strategy
Salesforce.com

Rakesh Sood
Venture Advisor
DoCoMo Capital

Rob Trice
Partner
Swisscom Ventures

Angela Tucci
Senior Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer
Symantec

David Wallerstein
Senior Executive Vice President, International
Tencent

Padmasree Warrior
Chief Technology and Strategy Officer
Cisco Systems

Amin Zoufonoun
Director, Corporate Development
Facebook

The Investment Bankers

David Chen
Managing Director
Morgan Stanley

Paul Kwan
Managing Director
Morgan Stanley

The Private Equity Partners

David Johnson
Senior Managing Director
Blackstone Group

The Super Angels

Jack Acosta
Former Chief Financial Officer
Portal Software, Sybase

Larry Augustin
CEO
SugarCRM

Howard Bain III
Former Chief Fanancial Officer
Symantec

Andy Bechtolsheim
Founder, Chairman, Chief Development Officer
Astra Networks

Marc Benioff
Founder and CEO
Salesforce.com

Jeff Bezos
Founder and CEO
Amazon

Bill Campbell
Chairman of the Board
Apple / Intuit

Ron Conway
Founder and Partner
Silicon Valley Angel

Esther Dyson
Founder
EDventure Holdings

Kenneth Goldman
CFO
Yahoo

Paul Graham
Partner
Y Combinator

Bill Joy
Partner
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Max Levchin
Founder and CEO
Slide

Mike Maples
Founding Partner
Floodgate

Dave McClure
Venture Capitalist and Angel Investor
500 Startups

John Thompson
Chairman and former CEO
Symantec

Maynard Webb
Former Chief Operating Officer
eBay

The Venture Capitalists

Mike Abbott
Partner
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Bob Ackerman
Founder and Managing Director
Allegis Capital

Puneet Agarwal
Partner
True Ventures

Neeraj Agrawal
General Partner
Battery Ventures

John Albright
Co-Founder and Managing Partner
Relay Ventures

Jeremy Allaire
Technologist in Residence
General Catalyst Partners/Brightcove

Marc Andreessen
General Partner
Andreessen Horowitz

Mickey Arabelovic
Partner
Sequoia Capital

Frank Artale
Partner
Ignition Partners

Brian Ascher
Partner
Venrock

David Barrett
General Partner
Polaris Venture Partners

Tim Barrows
General Partner
Matrix Partners

Forest Baskett
General Partner
New Enterprise Associates

Rajeev Batra
Partner
Mayfield Fund

William Baumel
Managing Director
RWI Ventures

Charles Beeler
General Partner
Icon Venture Partners

George Bischof
General Partner
Meritech Capital Partners

James Boettcher
General Partner
Focus Ventures

Tom Bogan
Venture Partner / Chairman
Greylock Partners / Citrix

Larry Bohn
Managing Director
General Catalyst Partners

Roelof Botha
Partner
Sequoia Capital

Kirk Bowman
Partner
Accel Partners

Jim Breyer
Managing Partner
Accel Partners

Bandel Carano
Managing Partner
Oak Investment Partners

Douglas Carlisle
Managing Partner
Menlo Ventures

Navin Chaddha
Managing Director
Mayfield Fund

Todd Chaffee
General Partner
Institutional Venture Partners

Asheem Chandna
Partner
Greylock Partners

David Chao
Co-Founder and General Partner
DCM

Rob Chaplinsky
Managing Director
Bridgescale Partners

Bruce Cleveland
General Partner
InterWest Partners

Matt Cohler
General Partner
Benchmark Capital

Mary Coleman
Managing Director
Walden International

David Cowan
General and Managing Partner
Bessemer Venture Partners

Sean Dalton
Managing General Partner
Highland Capital Partners

Robert Davoli
Managing Director
Sigma Partners

Byron Deeter
Partner
Bessemer Venture Partners

Sunil Dhaliwal
Founder and Managing Partner
Amplify Partners

Jonathan Ebinger
General Partner
BlueRun Ventures

Kevin Efrusy
General Partner
Accel Partners

Barry Eggers
General Partner
Lightspeed Venture Partners

Deborah Farrington
Founder and General Partner
StarVest Partners

Peter Fenton
Partner
Benchmark Capital

Paul Ferris
Founding General Partner
Azure Capital Partners

Norm Fogelsong
General Partner
Institutional Venture Partners

Winston Fu
General Partner
US Venture Partners

Sameer Gandhi
Partner
Accel Partners

Venky Ganesan
Managing Director
Menlo Ventures

Ashu Garg
General Partner
Foundation Capital

Gaurav Garg
Partner
Sequoia Capital

Jim Gauer
Managing Director
Palomar Ventures

Jim Goetz
Partner
Sequoia Capital

Michael Goguen
General Partner
Sequoia Capital

Andy Goldfarb
Co-Founder and Executive Managing Director
Globespan Capital Partners

Jamie Goldstein
Partner
North Bridge Venture Partners

Mike Gordon
Co-Founder and Managing Director
Meritech Capital Partners

Mark Gorenberg
Managing Director
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners

Gregory Gretsch
Managing Director
Sigma Partners

Tim Haley
Founding Partner
Redpoint Ventures

Promod Haque
Managing Partner
NorWest Venture Partners

Stephen Harrick
Managing Director and General Partner
Institutional Venture Partners

Kevin Harvey
General Partner
Benchmark Capital

Aaref Hilaly
Partner
Sequoia Capital

Reid Hoffman
Partner
Greylock Partners

Paul Holland
General Partner
Foundation Capital

Ben Horowitz
General Partner
Andreessen Horowitz

Matthew Howard
Managing Partner
Norwest Venture Partners

Bob Hower
General Partner
Advanced Technology Ventures

Gary Hromadko
Venture Partner
Crosslink Capital

Scott Irwin
General Partner
Rembrandt Venture Partners

Brian Jacobs
Founder and General Partner
Emergence Capital

Deepak Kamra
Partner
Canaan Partners

Vinod Khosla
Partner
Khosla Ventures

Kittu Kolluri
Partner
New Enterprise Associates

Steve Krausz
General Partner
US Venture Partners

Ray Lane
Managing Partner
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Lars Leckie
Managing Director
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners

Douglas Leone
General Partner
Sequoia Capital

Cameron Lester
Partner
Azure Capital Partners

Rick Lewis
General Partner
US Venture Partners

Ping Li
Partner
Accel Partners

Gary Little
Partner
Morgenthaler Ventures

Audrey MacLean
Advisor
Foundation Capital

John Mandile
Managing Director
Sigma Partners

Frank Marshall
General Partner
Big Basin Partners

Tom Mawhinney
General Partner
Jafco Ventures America

Matt McIlwain
Managing Director
Madrona Venture Group

Chris McKay
Managing Director
Granite Ventures

Kevin McQuillan
General Partner
Focus Ventures

Mary Meeker
Partner
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Peter Meekin
Managing Director
Trident Capital

Ravi Mhatre
Managing Director
Lightspeed Venture Partners

Cameron Mhyrvold
Founding Partner
Ignition Partners

Sandy Miller
General Partner
Institutional Venture Partners

Ravi Mohan
General Partner
Shasta Ventures

Hany Nada
Partner
GGV Capital

Tae-Hea Nahm
General Partner
Storm Ventures

Rory O’Driscoll
Managing Director
Scale Venture Partners

Brian O’Malley
Partner
Battery Ventures

David Orfao
Managing Director
General Catalyst Partners

Cindy Padnos
Managing Partner
Illuminate Ventures

Doug Pepper
General Partner
InterWest Partners

Jason Pressman
Managing Director
Shasta Ventures

William Quigley
Managing Director
Clearstone Venture Partners

Theresia Ranzetta
Partner
Accel Partners

Lisa Reeves
General Partner
Vista Ventures

Ren Riley
General Partner
Oak Investment Partners

Danny Rimer
Partner
Index Ventures

Gordon Ritter
General Partner
Emergence Capital Partners

Jon Sakoda
Partner
New Enterprise Associates

Scott Sandell
General Partner
New Enterprise Associates

Paul Santinelli
Partner
North Bridge Venture Partners

Chris Schaepe
Managing Partner
Lightspeed Venture Partners

Dan Scholnick
General Partner
Trinity Ventures

Bryan Schreier
Partner
Sequoia Capital

Brooke Seawell
Partner
New Enterprise Associates

Andy Sheehan
Managing Director
Sutter Hill Ventures

Carl Showalter
Partner
Opus Capital

David Skok
General Partner
Matrix Partners

Michael Skok
General Partner
Northbridge Venture Partners

Glenn Solomon
Partner
GGV Capital

Peter Sonsini
General Partner
New Enterprise Associates

Kevin Spain
Principal and Kauffman Fellow
Emergence Capital

Dana Stalder
General Partner
Matrix Partners

Josh Stein
Managing Director
Draper Fisher Jurvetson

David Stern
Partner
Clearstone Venture Partners

George Still,
Managing Partner
NorWest Venture Partners

Bryan Stolle
General Partner
Mohr Davidow

Rob Theis
Managing Director
Scale Venture Partners

Robin Vasan
Managing Director
Mayfield Fund

Mike Volpi
Partner
Index Ventures

Peter Wagner
General Partner
Alpha Venturi

John Walecka
Founding Partner
Redpoint Ventures

David Walrod
Partner
Bridgescale Partners

Rob Ward
Managing Director
Meritech Capital Partners

David Weiden
General Partner
Khosla Ventures

Warren Weiss
General Partner
Foundation Capital

Harry Weller
General Partner
New Enterprise Associates

Jim White
Managing Director
Sutter Hill Ventures

Ann Winblad
General Partner
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners

Bill Woodward
Managing Director
Anthem Venture Partners

Geoff Yang
Partner
Redpoint Ventures

Devdutt Yellurkar
Partner
Charles River Ventures

Alberto Yépez
Managing Director
Trident Capital

Ben Yu
Managing Director
Sierra Ventures

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