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Craig Asher Craig Asher has had a successful track record of developing software companies. Over the past ten years he has been a key team member in three successful software startups: Commerce One; Trigo Technologies; and the internal IBM startup for InfoSphere Traceability Server. He has guided major software implementations at over 50 customers in markets including retail, medical products, pharmaceuticals, and general distribution. Craig is currently acting Chief Technology Officer of one of Vital Financial’s portfolio companies, CR Certification Corporation, a company provides the patented CardioReady® certification program for cardiac emergency readiness utilizing automated external defibrillators. He recently successfully deployed a new enterprise system for the firm. Before moving into software startups, Craig was a consultant with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) in the supply chain strategy practice, and helped drive the turnaround of a distressed packaging manufacturer. Craig did his undergraduate work at Stanford University, and completed his MBA and Masters in Industrial Engineering at Northwestern University. |
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Viresh Bhatia After graduating from Northwestern University with a degree in Computer Science, Viresh Bhatia started a software company which became InstallShield Software Corporation, headquartered in Schaumburg, Illinois. Viresh's strong vision and entrepreneurial spirit drove InstallShield to become the leading provider of innovative software solutions for the PC. InstallShield became one of the most recognized software applications running on the PC. In late 2004 Viresh sold the company to Macrovision. Viresh has received multiple industry awards including KPMG's "Illinois High Tech Award," Silicon India Magazine's "Top 100," and Ernst & Young's “Software Entrepreneur of the Year Award”. Viresh is also recognized by Crain's Chicago Business, as a driving force within Chicago's technology arena. He has been included in Crain's prestigious "Forty Under Forty: Executives to Watch" issue as well as the "Who's Who in Chicago Business" list. Viresh is a co-founder of TiE Midwest Chapter and served as its president. TiE Midwest is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and fostering entrepreneurship. In addition Viresh is member of the Advisory Board’s of Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering’s and Farley Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. Viresh is a strong supporter of entrepreneurship and serves on the boards of several technology companies. Viresh holds a design patent on a user interface element used in InstallShield Express. Viresh resides in suburban Chicago, with his wife and four children. |
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Bill Bliss Bill Bliss has extensive experience in developing new products for the web. He's been a part of two start-ups: Gomez, Inc. (now a division of Compuware), where he was VP of Emerging Technologies, and Klir Technologies, where he was CTO. Before Klir, he was an SVP at Expedia, Inc., responsible for Expedia.com and Hotels.com product management. Prior to Expedia, Bliss worked over 16 years at Microsoft in a variety of senior technology and management roles. As general manager of the Natural User Interface group, he worked on advanced search and user interface technology for Windows, building on his experience as general manager of MSN Search. Under his tenure, MSN Search launched in 1998; by 2002 it had grown to over 100 million queries per day, more than $100M in annual revenue, and 34 international markets in 13 languages. Prior to MSN Search, he was a founding member of the team that designed and built the first two versions of Microsoft Outlook, and holds nine U.S. patents related to Microsoft Outlook. He's currently VP of Search and Recommendations at Myspace, Inc., a division of the Fox Entertainment Group. He earned a BS in Computer Science from Northwestern University. |
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Jeffrey Beir "My entire career has been focused on founding, building and growing technology businesses - as an entrepreneur, investor and advisor. I love the early stage process of rallying resources to attack an emerging/future market need. While passionate about the technology, at the core I'm a business person and believe that success comes from strong leadership pulling all functions in a common direction. My current focus is on a new model for early stage investing, sometimes referred to as micro-cap VC, or less appropriately super-angels. There's a gap between the seed/angel financing options and large VCs, where an emerging opportunity exists for capital-efficient companies. These companies need $3-5m to reach break-even, but have measurable milestones along the way to insure capital is carefully deployed. Exit options are preserved in the $50-100m range, but by no means are the exits limited." Jeff has deep experience in early stage capital raising, company building, strategic product development, financial management, marketing, and sales. He's raised over $50m in venture capital and invested almost twice that. I have strong connections in the Boston entrepreneurial and venture community. |
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Rick FinkGochnauerGochnauer Rick Fink co-founded Miramar Venture Partners in 2001. Prior to founding Miramar, Rick was a partner with the national law firm of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison where he spent 20 years working with and advising technology start-up companies on a wide range of operating, strategic, financing and legal matters. He has extensive experience in all types of transactions relevant to start-up companies, such as private and public financings, mergers and acquisitions, licensing, and corporate partnering arrangements. Rick also represented numerous venture capital funds in structuring, negotiating and executing their financings of emerging companies. In addition to his practice, Rick founded and managed Brobeck’s Orange County, CA offices, managed the firm’s 250-attorney Business and Technology practice group nationwide, and chaired the firm’s first-ever Investment Committee, which was responsible for investing and managing the firm's venture funds. Rick received his undergraduate degree from Indiana University in 1977, where he graduated with honors and received awards for outstanding achievement in scholarship and athletics. He received his J.D. from Northwestern University in 1980. In addition to his role in Miramar’s first fund, and separate from Miramar, Rick has formed Veteran Capital Partners, a first of its kind growth equity fund to back military veteran–led companies. Rick serves on the Board of Directors of Coradiant, a Miramar portfolio company. He also served on the Board of Tarari, which was acquired by LSI Corporation in 2007. |
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Grant Gochnauer Grant Gochnauer is a co-founder of a small Chicago based e-marketing consultancy, Vodori Inc., which helps companies shape and execute their online marketing strategy through SEO/SEM, full lifecycle website development, systems integration, and post launch support. We like to call it “Relationship Marketing”. Vodori was founded in December 2005 by 4 colleagues who felt they understood their clients’ needs and were able to execute on those needs more efficiently and effectively than others. Vodori is 100% self-funded, employees 36 people, and works with clients throughout the United States with a focus in the Midwest region. Grant Gochnauer graduated from Northwestern in 2002 with a Computer Information Systems major from WCAS. Some of his favorite classes were those doing real-world practical projects in technology. He believes the most important traits a person can have in this field are being intellectually curious, driven & hard-working, detail oriented, and passionate about what they are doing. Grant’s passion for technology began about the time he could barely walk when he would give guests to his family’s home a tour of all the power outlets and light switches. From there, he taught himself how to read on an old Texas Instruments cassette tape based computer (TI-99/4A). At the age of 11 he started a BBS (Bulletin Board System) which accepted credit cards for access. Between friends, family, and the office he is also known as “Captain Upgrade” because of his constant pursuit of the latest and greatest in technology whether it’s hardware, software, or online solutions. |
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Suneel Gupta Suneel Gupta is an entrepreneurial product guy, currently serving as head of product development for Groupon. Prior to Groupon, Gupta held a variety of roles. As director of product for Mozilla Labs, he developed and launched [Personas] (http://www.getpersonas.com), which received over 15M downloads in its first year. He also led development projects at Tata Consultancy Services in Mumbai, India, as well as Accenture and Sony Pictures Entertainment. In 2009, Suneel partnered with his brother Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, to launch the Kahani Movement, a production company which takes an open-source approach to film. Suneel has a JD from Northwestern University’s School of Law and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. He graduated with distinction from the University of Michigan with a degree in Information Systems. |
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Warren Holtsberg Warren Holtsberg is a member of the Board of Directors of the Fund and is also Co-Head of Portfolio Management. Warren, who joined the firm in 2007, sources and executes new investments and helps manage the Fund’s global portfolio of private equity, venture, and small and mid cap debt and equity investments across a broad range of industries including technology, consumer/retail, energy and finance. He also heads the Chicago Office. Previously, Warren founded Motorola Ventures, the venture capital investment arm for Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT) where he led the worldwide fund for eight years. Before Motorola, Warren spent two decades with the U.S. Government where he held a number of senior executive positions in the Aviation, Defense and Intelligence communities. Warren is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Illinois Venture Capital Association, the Chicagoland Entrepreneurship Center, and Illinois Ventures, the venture investment arm for the University of Illinois. Warren is a graduate of the University of Illinois and the Kellogg Management Institute at Northwestern University J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management. |
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Timothy K. Krauskopf Timothy K. Krauskopf operates his own technology and development consulting firm, Round Lake Designs. Most recently, he worked for Olivia Greets, building high-end kiosks using avatars and Voice-over-IP (VoIP) for live assistance. In transportation, he founded Freight Zone, a software/technology company and Round Lake Freight, a truckload freight company. He has held a variety of management and technical roles dealing with the Internet and high technologies. This includes Vice President in the Internet Software and Content Group at Motorola, Inc., leadership positions at startup companies Parlano, Inc., and PCQuote.com, Inc., and Head of Information Services at The Field Museum in Chicago. Mr. Krauskopf was also a co-founder of Spyglass, Inc., which produced the forerunner to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, Spyglass Mosaic. He serves on the boards of Northwestern University and the Aspen Institute and is a member of the Chicago Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame. Mr. Krauskopf holds a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University in Integrated Science, and a MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. He also holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Illinois. |
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Bret Maxwell Bret Maxwell is a Managing General Partner at MK Capital. He is also the Managing General Partner on three of the Productivity Funds totaling $200 million in committed capital. Bret has been a decision-making partner in six other fully invested funds, representing over $300 million in committed capital. Prior to founding MK Capital, he was the co-Founder of First Analysis' venture capital practice in 1985. Bret's areas of expertise include outsourced business services, telecom and internet infrastructure, and energy and power infrastructure. Bret is a graduate of The McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University and Kellogg's Graduate School of Management. He has served as the Chairman of the Illinois Venture Capital Association, and is a director on the board of Mount Sinai Hospital and on the finance committee of the Jewish United Fund. He is also Certified Financial Analyst. |
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Matthew McCall Matthew McCall is a Partner at New World Ventures and co-founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson Portage Venture Partners. McCall has been responsible for managing investments in Analyte Media, Apptera, BrightTag, Cognitive Concepts (acquired by Houghton Mifflin), EverDream (acquired by Dell), Feedburner (acquired by Google), Imago Scientific (acquired by Ametek), Lefthand Networks (acquired by HP), Performics (acquired by Doubleclick/Google), Playdom (acquired by Disney), Siimpel (acquired by Tessera) and TicketsNow (acquired by Ticketmaster). McCall has been honored by Crain's Chicago Business on its annual ""40 under 40” list of leading Chicagoans under age 40. He has been named to the AlwaysOn Top 100 VC’s in the US list and as one of the most prominent members of Chicago's technology community. He has keynoted or been a panelist at over 50 area conferences and events nationwide. He is a founder & trustee of the McCall Family Foundation, focused on improving early childhood development in Chicago’s disadvantaged communities as well as encouraging entrepreneurship in our youth. He has served on the advisory on numerous regional high technology advisory boards. McCall is an executive board member of the Illinois Venture Capital Association and serves on the Kellogg Alumni Council. He is the author of a popular venture blog, VCConfidential.com. Previous to 1995, McCall worked in the Boston Consulting Group’s Chicago office, where he managed consulting and client teams on projects in the telecommunications, health-care and financial services industries. During and after college, McCall worked for Bankers Trust in Merchant Banking as well as at Merrill Lynch and U.S. Trust. McCall holds a B.A. in Economics and History from Williams College and an MBA with honors from Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management. He also holds a Masters in Manufacturing Management from Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering. McCall holds a B.A. in Economics and History from Williams College and an MBA with honors from Northwestern UniversityÍs J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management. He also holds a Masters in Manufacturing Management from Northwestern UniversityÍs McCormick School of Engineering. |
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Kristin Asleson McDonnell "Kristin Asleson McDonnell has been a leader in the digital media industry for over 20 years, forging innovations in social media, mobile software, digital marketing, and games. During that time, she has been a management team member of six start-ups, which resulted in five exit events (two IPOs and five acquisitions by major media and advertising companies). Most recently, Kristin was the CEO and Co-Founder of LimeLife, the leading cross-platform digital media company for women, which was acquired by Total Beauty Media in August 2010. Prior to starting LimeLife, Kristin held senior management and marketing positions in a number of Silicon Valley companies including HearMe/Mpath (IPO, division sold to GameSpy/NewsCorp), Xfire (sold to MTV), There.com, AT&T's ImagiNation Network (sold to AOL), Electronic Arts, and Lante Corporation (IPO, acquired by Razorfish). Kristin is on the Advisory Boards of Northwestern University’s Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Northwestern’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She also serves as a mentor to MBA students at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Kristin earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering with Tau Beta Pi honors from Northwestern University and an MBA from Harvard Business School." |
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Steve Olechowski Product Manager / Google As COO of Feedburner, Steve Olechowski negotiated its sale to Google, from negotiations to term sheet to close, and led its integration into the Google AdSense product line. He is currently working on Google social and monetization products. He has also worked as an investment principal, technical marketer, lead architect, and consultant in the online space. He earned his BS in Computer Science and Economics from Northwestern University. |
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Bob Plaschke Bob Plaschke currently serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of Sonim Technologies, pioneer of the world’s toughest GSM phone, the Xtreme Performance 1. One of the youngest CEOs in the mobile industry, Plaschke has led Sonim in this role for four years. Prior to this appointment, he served as entrepreneur-in-residence at Sutter Hill Ventures, where he focused on wireless investments. Before joining Sutter Hill, Plaschke was Senior Vice President of worldwide client services at Infospace. He also served as Chief Financial Officer and Vice President for Business Development at Prio, a wireless and wireline promotion infrastructure company that was later acquired by Infospace. There he oversaw the implementation of wireless data solutions across the company’s carriers. In terms of accolades, Plaschke was inducted into the Young Presidents' Organization’s San Francisco Bay Chapter in September 2008. Plaschke is also a board member of the CTIA’s Wireless Internet Caucus. The group includes key industry CEOs that advise the CTIA on how to maintain and develop a vibrant wireless Internet ecosystem. Plaschke received his undergraduate degree in computer engineering from Northwestern University and earned his MBA at the University of Chicago. |
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Vivek Ragavan Vivek Ragavan is a network industry veteran and seasoned entrepreneur with more than 25 years of high-technology leadership experience in the telecommunications industry. Prior to joining Actelis, Mr. Ragavan was CEO of Atrica, a carrier-Ethernet company acquired by Nokia Siemens Networks in 2008. Mr. Ragavan was also CEO at Redback Networks where he and his team were acknowledged by Forbes ASAP as one of the fastest growing companies of 2000. Prior to that Mr Ragavan was CEO of Siara Systems, which he sold to Redback Networks in 1999 for one of the highest valuations ever accorded an early stage private company. Previously, Mr. Ragavan was the President of the Residential Broadband Group of ADC Telecommunications, Inc.where he was responsible for one of ADC's fastest growing broadband telecommunication equipment businesses. Earlier in his career, Mr. Ragavan led development of General Instrument’s leading digital video transport system, which powered the growth of cable TV’s video and data services penetration. He has a BSEE from Northwestern University and an MSEE from Cornell University. |
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Ben Slivka Ben Slivka is an investor, philanthropist, and software engineer with a passion for education. Ben previously served as Co-Founder and Chairman of DreamBox Learning (acquired by Charter Fund), a Director of TeachFirst (teacher training), Vizrea (photo sharing) and GroundSpring.org (online donations), and on the Advisory Board of UIEvolution (acquired by Square Enix). Ben spent 14 years at Microsoft, where he worked on OS/2, MS-DOS 6, Windows 95, the Java VM, and MSN. He started the Internet Explorer team in 1994 and led it through the release of IE version 3.0 in 1996. |
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Steve Subar With a track record of successful innovation and leadership in the technology industry, Steve Subar has earned a reputation as a seasoned executive who builds winning teams, drives accelerated growth, develops strong customer relationships, and creates shareholder value. Following his term as National ICT Australia's 2005 Entrepreneur-in-Residence, partnering venture capital investors chose Subar from a select group of over 60 technology entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley to provide the direction and commercial vision leading to a successful spinout. It was from this exercise that Subar selected and spun-out Open Kernel Labs, which he quickly led to success and early design wins. Prior to co-founding and leading OK Labs, Subar was a Managing Partner at z2m4, a management consulting company focused on delivering portfolio company performance for the managers of, and investors in, growth stage technology companies. Subar is also co-founder of Click-and-Done, a pioneer in e-business infrastructure and consumer client software for electronic billing in addition to Relavis Corporation, a leading publisher of relational database tools used to accelerate application design, development, and implementation. As a senior executive at Mobius Management Systems (NASDAQ: MOBI), Subar was instrumental in growing revenues 275 percent over four years, leading to the company's successful IPO. Additionally, Subar was part of the management team at Computer Associates (NASDAQ: CA) that drove revenues from $30 million to more than $1.2 billion over a five-year period. Subar holds a Bachelor of Science from Miami University's School of Business with a concentration in Computer and Information Technology. |
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Hon Wong Hon Wong has founded three successful systems management companies including NetIQ, Ecosystems (CompuWare), and most recent Symphoniq. |