Venture Capital Panel
Thursday, October 29, 2009: 7:00 p.m.
Paul G. Allen Center, Microsoft Atrium
Greg Gottesman, Madrona Venture Group
Ron Howell, WRF Capital
Bill McAleer, Voyager Capital
Cam Myhrvold, Ignition Partners
Mark Ashida, OVP Venture Partners
Mark Ashida joined OVP Venture Partners in 2007 and focuses on investments in infrastructure, SaaS, Networking and enterprise software. Prior to joining OVP, Mark served as General Manager of Windows Enterprise Networking at Microsoft Corporation where he was responsible for the networking infrastructure and authentication servers, representing over $450M in enterprise sales. Prior to Microsoft, Mark was Chief Operating Officer at InterTrust, a public company (ITRU). InterTrust provided secure, trusted computing for secure distribution of music, video and other digital goods and was the leading company in digital rights management. The underlying technology was seminal as confirmed by Microsoft paying the company over $400M in a license settlement. InterTrust was sold to Sony and Philips for $450M in 2002. Before joining InterTrust, Mark was also a General Manager at Intel Architecture Labs involved in the spinout of PassEdge, a green business in security, networking and digital rights management. Mark was CEO of an early venture-backed WAN networking equipment company sold to 3Com, and involved as a turnaround of one of the earliest web measurement companies. He also was a partner at Braxton Associates, acquired by Deloitte & Touche, and leader of its West Coast Strategy Practice. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for Avenda, DepotPoint, Serus and Symform, and is a Board Observer to Lucid Commerce, CGI, Carbonflow and Collaborative Software Initiative. Mark received his undergraduate degree from Pomona College and his MBA from Harvard Business School.
Greg Gottesman, Madrona Venture Group
Greg joined Madrona in 1997 and currently serves on the boards of AdReady, Bocada, BuddyTV, Intrepid Learning Solutions, Physware, ThinkFire, and WildTangent. He managed the firm's investments in Dantz Development Corporation (prior to its acquisition by EMC), Rendition Networks (prior to its acquisition by Opsware), Singingfish.com (prior to its acquisition by Thomson Consumer Electronics), LiveBid.com (prior to its acquisition by Amazon.com), and AdRelevance (prior to its acquisition by Media Metrix). Before joining Madrona, he worked as an Associate of the Boston Consulting Group.
Greg is a board member of the Evergreen Venture Capital Association and Mercer Island Schools Foundation. He is an advisory board member of the University of Washington Technology Transfer Office, Boeing Technology Alliance, and Seattle Repertory Theatre. He is the author of three books. Greg is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of Washington Business School, where he teaches a class with fellow Managing Director Matt McIlwain on venture finance. When not working, he spends time with his wife and three kids, watches too much reality TV, and regularly injures himself playing non-contact sports.
Greg graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors and distinction from Stanford University, with honors and distinction from the Harvard Business School, and with honors from Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Ron Howell, WRF Capital
As president and chief executive officer of Washington Research Foundation, Mr. Howell has guided WRF from being an organization that identified, protected and licensed technologies to one with sufficient assets and expertise to foster the creation of early-stage technology-based companies.
Mr. Howell joined WRF in 1989 and shaped the most successful licensing program in the organization's history for generating a significant ongoing revenue stream. He continues to provide strategic direction for this effort. He is also a Managing Director of WRF Capital, which manages the WRF's seed-venture investment fund. He is a director or observer to the board in several WRF Capital investment companies. He is a member of the advisory board to UW's iSchool, a member of the governing board for the UW Bioengineering Program in Technology Commercialization, and a co-founding member of the Technology Gap Innovation Fund. He is a trustee of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, a board member of the Technology Alliance and serves on other boards and committees related to WRF's mission. He holds a B.S. in biochemistry from Washington State University.
Bill McAleer, Voyager Capital
Bill brings to Voyager over 30 years of business experience and 20 years of senior executive and equity financing experience in the information technology industry. Bill has participated on the boards of 18 companies, including 13 portfolio companies, focusing on software and services, digital media, and wireless. Eight portfolio companies were sold for exits including Amplitude, Attenex, NetPodium and Tegic Communications. He currently serves on the boards of Melodeo and Yapta and also sits on the board of Avocent (NASDAQ: AVCT), a public technology company with over $600 million in revenues.
Prior to co-founding Voyager in 1997, Bill was President of e.liance Partners, a consulting firm that advised information technology companies on strategy, venture financing and corporate partnering. He served as Vice President of Finance, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary of Aldus from 1988 to 1994, when the company's revenues grew from $39 to $240 million. He was responsible for global finance, legal, operations, and acquisition activities, including completing the merger with Adobe in 1994. He also served as a senior executive with Westin Hotels from 1979 to 1987.
Bill is active in several industry organizations, including serving as a director for the Washington Technology Industry Association and the Washington Technology Alliance as well as on the Advisory Board for DEMO, one of the industry's premier events. He is the chair of the Advisory Board for the University of Washington Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He also serves on the Advisory Board for Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Business and is a member of the Cornell Council. He has been a featured speaker at industry conferences and panels. Bill earned a B.S. and an M.B.A. from Cornell University.
Cam Myhrvold, Ignition Partners
Cameron is a founding partner of Ignition. He invests in software and infrastructure companies. Cameron represents Ignition as director on the boards of Seven, Cloudmark, Teranode, Centeris and Azaleos He also acts as Ignition observer on the board of Klir Technologies. He previously served on the boards of Consera (acquired by Hewlett Packard), Rendition Networks (acquired by Opsware) and RLX Technologies (acquired by Hewlett Packard). Cameron also serves on the board of Wild Tangent.
Prior to Ignition, Cameron spent thirteen years with Microsoft Corporation, most recently as Vice President of the Internet Customer Unit, where he was responsible for building business relationships with network operators and a broad range of telecommunications providers. Cameron was responsible for setting strategy and building relationships with such global telecommunications providers as NTT, AT&T, MCI, Nortel, Cisco, Qualcomm, British Telecom, Deutsche Telecom, GTE, US West and Bell Atlantic.
Cameron created the Developer Relations Group, which evangelized Windows and Microsoft's other operating system technologies to the independent software vendors and third-party developer community. Together with Brad, Richard Tong and Jonathan Roberts, this group initiated the "platform marketing" effort at Microsoft creating an industry ecosystem of third parties, to drive adoption of Microsoft Windows. This effort became a 320-member team with an annual budget of $65 million, and was responsible for revenue of over $400 million and recruited a community of 44,000 independent software vendors to develop Windows software.
Cameron co-founded Dynamical Systems Inc, to develop multitasking operating systems for the PC, which he sold to Microsoft in 1986.
Cameron received his Bachelors degree from the University of California at Berkeley.