Mentors and Advisors
We've picked the best entrepreneurial, technical, and business minds from the Pacific Northwest and beyond to mentor and coach the 9Mile startups in the program. These mentors aren't just brilliant, they're also driven to help propel our startups to the next level.
Oudi Antebi
Sr. Vice President, Product Management and Design at Jive Software
Oudi is currently SVP of Product Management at Jive Software. Oudi co-founded OffiSync which was eventually acquired by Jive. Oudi has extensive experience in management and development of innovative technology solutions and teams, strategic deals, partnerships, and fund raising.
Karl Armani
Senior Director at Expedia
Karl is a global infrastructure services leader at Expedia, and managed multiple functions over the past 5 years. He led architecture, engineering, and operations for large eCommerce and corporate environments during new datacenter build-outs and consolidations, and scaled up the internet infrastructure for multiple Expedia brands through rapid growth periods. Before that, he was VP of Technology for Moody’s Investors Service, where he managed all infrastructure and applications management functions for the company’s website and financial ratings products. Karl also led the technology engineering and operations functions for Priceline.com for 5 years of explosive growth from the startup phase to becoming a leading online travel company.
Frank Artale
Managing Director at Ignition Partners
Frank focuses on investing in virtualization, storage, database, and cloud computing. Frank has served as director and advisor to many startups. He has held operational roles, was GM at Microsoft, VP at Citrix, CEO at Consera, and VP at Xensource.
Neal Bernstein
Senior Director at Microsoft
Neal currently leads Microsoft’s local & mobile advertising products business strategy, business operations, and strategic partnerships. Prior to this, he did the same for Microsoft’s mobile search, local search, maps, and MSN businesses. Before Microsoft, Neal founded two start-up companies and led them through fund-raising, execution, and exits. And prior to these start-ups, Neal held a variety of sales, marketing, finance and product roles at IBM, where among other roles, he launched IBM’s voice recognition offerings.
Adam Bogobowicz
Sr. Director of Product Marketing at Parallels
Adam leads Automation, Panel and Infrastructure product marketing at Parallels, a cloud enablement software company supporting needs of SMBs through the service provider channel. Prior to Parallels, Adam
spent 11 years at Microsoft, responsible for product marketing in Server and Cloud Group with primary focus on virtualization technologies.
spent 11 years at Microsoft, responsible for product marketing in Server and Cloud Group with primary focus on virtualization technologies.
Eric Brodersen
Senior Vice President at EMC²
With EMC², and during prior roles with Isilon Systems, Quantum and ADIC, Eric has led global sales and marketing organizations, spearheaded product development initiatives, built alliance, OEM & technical partnerships, driven corporate & divisional M&A strategy, and honed a focus on achieving rapid scale in enterprise systems and software markets
Bill Bryant
Founder & Chairman at Airworks
Bill Bryant has had early and instrumental involvement in over 25 leading software, Internet, digital media and mobile companies, as a founder, senior executive, investor and Board Member. Companies include
Visio, Netbot, Qpass, Medio, Isilon, Swype, Winshuttle, Ping Identity, Jabber, Opscode and Z2Live. He is a Partner with Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
Visio, Netbot, Qpass, Medio, Isilon, Swype, Winshuttle, Ping Identity, Jabber, Opscode and Z2Live. He is a Partner with Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
Jason Bunge
Senior Director at Microsoft
Jason is Senior Director of Internet Services Marketing and e-Commerce at Microsoft where he’s responsible for Office 365 consumer and small business offerings. Jason has over 14 years of marketing and leadership experience across B2B and B2C companies including Microsoft, Compaq and J&J.
Chandan Chauhan
Co-Founder & SVP at Intelius
Chandan Chauhan is a co-founder and Senior Vice President of Product Management at Intelius.com. Previously Mr. Chauhan held several senior management positions at Microsoft Corporation in the Windows Operating System and MSN divisions. He was the founding development manager of Microsoft’s first internet application, CarPoint. He holds a patent for digital representation of still images for data transfer.
Digvijay Chauhan
Co-founder and CEO at SeeYourImpact
Digvijay co-founded SeeYourImpact.org, a funding platform to create & celebrate impact through storytelling. Previously, Digvijay was co-founder and CTO of AskMe Corporation, a web based expertise sharing company started in 1999. Prior to AskMe, Digvijay was the Development Head of Internet Explorer / Unix team and served as Group Manager for the DCOM/Unix product.
"JG" Chirapurath
Senior Director at Microsoft
JG is currently responsible for product planning, strategy, and roadmap for Microsoft’s data platform. Prior to Microsoft, JG was co-founder, board member, and VP of marketing for a web services infrastructure company Sarvega, which was acquired by Intel. JG holds a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Maryland and an MBA from the University of Chicago.
Zachary Cohn
Partner at LIFFFT
Zac loves making things happen, organizing people and communities, and solving problems that matter. He is currently a partner at LIFFFT where he helps build products and consults with large companies to help them move faster and think more like startups. Before LIFFFT, he was part of the core Startup Weekend team at their headquarters in Seattle, and he’s a seasoned veteran of early-stage business creation and customer development. When he’s not changing the world through entrepreneurship, he’s training parkour and doing backflips, making viral videos, and running the Hacker News Seattle Meetup.
John DeVadoss
General Manager, Enterprise Strategy at Microsoft
John has spent over 13 years at Microsoft in different roles. He has been a program manager in the distributed applications platform division, an architect working with some of Microsoft’s key partners, director of architecture strategy leading technical strategy for the all-up application platform, and most recently an engineering manager for patterns & practices.
Deepak Dhawan
Wireless and Technology Executive
Deepak is a seasoned executive with deep strategic, operating, and general management roles in wireless telecom and adjacent technology space. Deepak’s past roles have included SVP, Solutions and Services at Motricity and VP of Marketing at Real Networks.
Tolis Dimopoulos
Outsourced General Counsel to Startups
Tolis is the Founder and Managing Attorney at Sophos Law, a startup and technology legal services company. He has expertise in entity selection and formation; founder, employee, and investor equity, securities compliance and financings; and business development arrangements. Tolis has a JD from University of Richmond as well as engineering and business degrees.
Denise Draper
Freelance Consultant
Denise is currently a freelance consultant, specializing in working with startups on product strategy and dealing with growth. Denise was responsible for the startup/turnaround of three small product teams during her eight years at Microsoft (one of those small products is the world’s most-used ETL product). Prior to that, Denise was CTO of the Seattle-area startup Nimble Technology. Denise’s interests include new economic models and designing ecosystems (and any other sort of networked behavior), but always with the value prop for the customer as a firm foundation.
Michel Feaster
Vice President, Products at Apptio
Michel led product management, product marketing, field enablement, and strategy at Apptio. Prior to Apptio, Michel led product management and marketing for HP Software’s data center automation products.
Wain Fishburn, Jr.
Partner at Cooley LLP
Wainwright Fishburn, Jr. is a partner of Cooley LLP, a prominent venture capital attorney, and chair of the firm’s Digital Health group. He represents a broad cross-section of digital health companies including, among others, AliveCor, AwarePoint and Misfit Wearables. He is on the Board of the Critical Path Institute, a public-private partnership created in part by the FDA and is a co- founder of seven companies, two of which are public.
Brent Frei
Founder and Executive of Smartsheet
Before co-founding Smartsheet, Brent was EVP at Intellectual Ventures. Prior to that, Brent was the CEO and co-founder of Onyx Software Corporation, a Bellevue-based customer relationship management (CRM) software company.
Jeff Gerber
Enterprise Platform Architect at Apptio
Before the hottest B2B startup coming out of Seattle, Jeff served as CTO of HP’s Business Service Automation division. Prior to that, he was the founder and chief architect at iConclude, which was acquired by Opsware in 2007. He also served as architect at Mercury Interactive and director at Performant, which was acquired by Mercury Interactive in 2003.
Jamie Gier
VP of Corporate Marketing at Edifecs
Jamie is VP of Corporate Marketing at Edifecs, a healthcare IT company. She has held various positions in brand strategy, marketing communications and public relations at several private high-growth technology companies as well as Microsoft and GE Healthcare. She also has M&A experience, leading marketing integration for two major acquisitions: GE Healthcare/IDX and Microsoft/Sentillion.
Anoop Gupta
Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Research
Anoop’s most recent research focuses on communication, collaboration, and natural user interfaces. Anoop was Bill Gates’ technology assistant for 3 years after which he took on various executive roles for seven years. Prior to Microsoft, Anoop spent 11 years as a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford University.
Anupam Gupta
President and CEO of Mixpo
Anupam currently leads the overall vision and strategy as CEO at Mixpo, a self-service online video ad platform for media companies, brand advertisers, and agencies. Anupam also worked at MSN for eight years, where he led customer acquisition, product management, and marketing.
Manoj Gupta
Director, Business Development at Microsoft
Manoj is a strategic business development executive with over 16 years of global experience spanning a wide variety of complex deals including strategic sales, strategic alliance, in-bound IP licenses, joint ventures, mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures.
Sunny Gupta
Founder and CEO of Apptio
Sunny is a proven serial entrepreneur and is currently leading Apptio, one of the most innovative enterprise software startups in the country. Prior to Apptio, Sunny founded iConclude which was acquired by Opsware and later by Hewlett Packard. He also co-founded Performant, which was acquired by Mercury Interactive.
Ted Hasse
Attorney for IP matters at Morrison & Foerster
Ted Hasse is an attorney at Morrison & Foerster’s San Francisco office who also has experience co-founding successful start-ups. Mr. Hasse’s practice involves a wide range of intellectual property matters for tech companies of all sizes. He was recently honored with a 2013 California Lawyer Attorney of the Year Award.
Dan Hay
CEO at isoutsource.com
CEO of isoutsource.com, a provider of IT services to SMB companies, Dan has over twenty five years of experience in the high-tech industry. Dan worked at Microsoft in product management in the developer tools and office divisions. He also founded a firm focusing on ERP consulting and custom application development.
Matt Heinz
President at Heinz Marketing Inc
Matt is the President of Heinz Marketing, an agency focused on sales acceleration. He has helped such companies as HouseValues and Payscale achieve remarkable sales growth. Prior to Heinz Marketing, Matt held a variety of roles at Microsoft, Weber Shandwick, Boeing, Seattle Mariners, Market Leader, and Verdiem.
George Huang
Associate at Madrona Venture Group
At Madrona, George works on identifying and investigating new investment opportunities and is closely involved with Madrona’s portfolio companies. Prior to joining Madrona, George was an analyst in technology investment banking at Morgan Stanley. George holds a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Eyal Inbar
General Manager of Unify Square, Inc.
Eyal is GM of World-Wide Marketing at Unify Square. Prior to this, he ran the applications portfolio at NEC. Among other roles at Microsoft, Eyal led marketing campaigns and initiatives for Unified Communications. Eyal is also the founder of Performance Point, a financial-technology startup, focusing on online investment management.
Bobby Jadhav
CEO of Spotzot
Bobby is co-founder and CEO of SpotZot which is a mobile shopping and advertising platform that enables campaign creation for retailers using data from 1000+ retail chains and 30M mobile shoppers across 200 markets. Prior to SpotZot, Bobby was a CTO and Architect at a several startups.
Peter Johnson
Chairman of Annai Systems
Prior to Annai Systems, Peter was co-founder, President and CEO of Agouron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Propelled by its successful anti-HIV drug Viracept and a deep R&D pipeline, Agouron was acquired by Warner-Lambert in 1999 for $2.1 billion and later became a subsidiary of Pfizer in 2000.
Jeff Jones
Director at Microsoft
Named in 2011 as one of 25 Most Powerful Voices in Security, Jeff Jones is a 25-year security professional helping drive security progress at Microsoft. Previously, Jeff was the vice president of product management at Network Associates where his responsibilities included the McAfee, PGP, Gauntlet and Cybercop product lines.
Robert Kapela
Founder and President at Telrex
Robert is a serial entrepreneur and active Angel investor. He is also a mentor for TechStars Seattle, the Microsoft Kinect Accelerator and for a number of local startups. Previously, Robert was the founder of Telrex which was acquired in 2010 by Enghouse (ESL). Prior to founding Telrex, he was a vice president at Marketwave Software. Marketwave was acquired in 1999 by Accrue Corporation. Robert has over 20 years of start-up experience.
Dan Karr
Controller at Onvia
Dan has a broad background in investment management and technology industries, responsible for financial strategy, operations management, internal control and executing on key strategic business objectives. Previously, Dan was Controller at Ignition Partners where he managed treasury, valuation, investor reporting, audit and tax functions. Dan is a CPA in Washington State and has an MBA from the University of Washington.
Bob Kelly
Vice President at Microsoft
Bob oversees Microsoft’s business and marketing strategy for Windows Azure. Prior to this role, Bob has been instrumental in growing the Windows Server business from a relatively new product to a market leader–helping to shape Microsoft’s $15 billion server and tools business.
Ted Kummert
Venture Partner at Madrona Venture Group
Ted joined Madrona in 2013 and brings years of technical and operational leadership in enterprise technology at Microsoft to Madrona and the portfolio companies. Widely known as the “data chief” of Microsoft, he led the data platform business through a period of significant growth and drove the cloud and big data strategy for the platform.
Conrad Lee
Mayor of the City of Bellevue, WA
Mayor Lee was elected Mayor of Bellevue in 2011. Mayor Lee is a huge believer in the Bellevue’s strength and potential as a technology hub that is competitive–not just in the Northwest, but for all of the United States.
Ying Li
Chief Scientist and Co-Founder at Concurix
Dr. Li is a leading practitioner in big data and large-scale knowledge discovery, data mining and analytics, recognized with the ACM SIGKDD Service Award in 2012. Dr. Li is a pioneer in Internet scale data mining, applying her extensive academic and industry research expertise at the Computer Research Institute of Montreal and in the first big data analytics effort at Microsoft in 1998. She has continued to advance the field in subsequent years, building state of the art technologies in data mining, machine learning, information retrieval, computational advertising, internet monetization, business intelligence, online privacy, and personal data. She has over 70 patents filed and granted, has collaborated with over 100 researchers and data scientists, and has built and led world class data mining organizations of over 300 people. Dr. Li received B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Mathematics from Peking University, Beijing, China, and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. She is currently the Chief Scientist and Co-Founder of Concurix Corporation, a new startup building high performance operating systems for big data and big compute.
Michael “Luni” Libes
Founder and Managing Director at Fledge.co
Michael is a 20+ year, career serial entrepreneur, who has built six startups, five of which he founded. His companies include Fledge (the “conscious company” incubator), Ground Truth (market research and “big-data” analysis), Medio Systems (mobile search, advertising, and analytics), Mforma (mobile gaming and applications), 2WAY (enterprise collaboration systems), and Nimble (pen computing, PDAs, and early smartphones).
Chek Lim
SVP of Engineering at Globys
Chek is the SVP of Engineering at Globys, where he is responsible for the development of Globys’ Contextual Marketing product. He brings 15+ years of experience in building B2C and B2B software products, with focuses in SaaS, mobile client/web, and high-volume transactional platforms.
Court Lorenzini
Co-founder and CEO at Primus BioVision
Court is a serial entrepreneur with ventures in semiconductor equipment, electronic commerce, and entrepreneurship who believes in following his strengths and passions. Prior to Primus BioVision, Court was founder and CEO of DocuSign. Before DocuSign, Court was President and CEO of Flatrock, Inc., CEO of Point.com and CEO of Nth Dimension.
Rebecca Lovell
Interim CEO at Vittana
Rebecca is serving an interim post as the CEO of Vittana; she loves doing good work with great people who are making a difference in the world. She brings 20 years of operating, development and executive experience to the role, and was delighted to return to her native Seattle a decade ago. Here, she has served as the Director of the Alliance of Angels program, Executive Director of the Northwest Entrepreneur Network (NWEN), and most recently Chief Business Officer of GeekWire. She teaches a class on Venture Capital in the UW MBA program, and in addition to mentoring at 9 Mile Labs, serves as a mentor for TechStars and the Founder Institute. She is on the employer advisory board for the UW Foster School of Business and the board of directors of NWEN. She also sits on the advisory boards for LikeBright and Fresh Consulting, is a phi beta kappa graduate of Carleton College and a Dean’s Scholar, UW Foster MBA program. She is endlessly devoted to education, entrepreneurship, and karaoke.
Vidur Luthra
Founder and CEO of Resultrix
Vidur is founder and CEO of Resultrix, a pay-for-performance global digital marketing agency. Vidur is also Managing Partner at Vega, a marketing consulting firm. Previously, Vidur spent 10 years at Microsoft in various global marketing roles.
Sanjay Manchanda
Product Marketing Management at Microsoft
Sanjay leads marketing for Microsoft’s Office 365 business group. Prior to this Sanjay led the Microsoft Office Division in India. Prior to Microsoft, Sanjay was co-founder and CEO of a venture-backed enterprise software startup called B-Bop.
Chanbir Mann
Founder and CEO of Green InfoSystems
At Green InfoSystems, Chanbir is bringing a new paradigm to outsourcing which involves revitalizing the local community with lucrative IT jobs. Prior to Green, Chanbir was COO at Edifecs where he led sales and solutions consulting, client services and alliances.
James March
Production Engineering at Facebook
James is an expert at building and operating massively scalable distributed systems. At Facebook, James created software that manages the storage and retrieval of billions of user images. He previously held software engineering roles at ImageShack.us and Playboy.com.
Wedge Martin
Co-Founder of GeoPapyrus
Former CTO and Co-Founder of Badgeville, currently Co-Founder of GeoPapyrus, an augmented reality platform which aims to bring social networking back into the real world by fusing social media with physical surfaces viewable by mobile devices. In previous lives, developed web applications and constructed high availability platforms for Shopping.com ( now Ebay ), Reuters NASDAQ, the DoE, IBM, and Cisco. Designed the energy communications network for the power deregulation effort in California, and extended the network to cover the western half of the US. Loves working with web app platforms, databases, and wide area networking. Was a pioneer in the VoIP industry helping to build the first SaaS based iPBX system, now sold as 8×8.
Dave McClinton
Accountant at McClinton & Associates
David specializes in business strategy, start-ups, and management.
Leslie McGuire
Director of Product Marketing at Parallels
Leslie leads Parallels value-added cloud services strategy, developing innovative solutions and marketing programs that enable cloud service providers to meet the needs of their SMB customers. Before joining Parallels, Leslie held several leadership positions at Microsoft, most recently as Director, Windows Server and Management Marketing. During her 17-year Microsoft tenure, Leslie launched many incubation businesses, fostered strategic OEM partnerships, developed ISV ecosystems and drove end-to-end SMB channel partner strategies.
Matt Mcllwain
Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group
Matt focuses on a broad range of software-driven companies. He currently serves on the boards of 2nd Watch, Animoto, Apptio, ExtraHop, Skytap, Mixpo, Optify, PayScale, Qumulo, Smartsheet, Placed, and Tier 3. Before joining Madrona in 2000, Matt was vice president of business process for the Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC), a Fortune 250 company. He also was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company, concentrating on strategy and marketing.
Sunil Mehta
CFO of Soma Networks
Sunil is currently CFO for Ensuant Technologies. He has held finance roles such as CFO, VP and Treasurer in many startups such as SOMA Networks, Leadis Technology, VLSI Technology and Maxtor.
Greg Meyer
Manager of Customer WOW at Salesforce
Greg Meyer delights start-ups, small businesses, and enterprise organizations that implement customer support ideas to take their business to the next level. He works as part of the Customer Wow team at Desk.com
Thom Milkovic
Creative Director & Evangelist
Thom clarifies the vision of digital products, services and ideas through rapid sketching, prototyping and hi-fidelity UI/UX design. For two decades, Thom has worked with organizations such as SAP, TRX, CNN, Citrix, Holiday Inn and Geocaching, as well as many start-ups – some his own. See examples of Thom’s portfolio at http://ThomMilkovic.com/examples
Tom Murphy
Managing Director at vcfo Seattle
A former Arthur Andersen Partner and Hitachi Vice President, Tom specializes in building high value companies. He is a Zino Society coach, and is active in several Puget Sound Angel Investors groups. He has been an interim CEO, COO and CFO and is currently an Entrepreneur in Residence at WSU.
Tom Nault
Member of Board of Directors Conenza, Echo-Sense
Tom founded three different successful startups all with successful exits. He managed four turnarounds resulting in profitable exits. Most notably, he acquired controlling interest in Open interface North America (OINA) and sold it to Qualcomm in 2007. Tom has over 10 years of experience as an independent federal court appointed corporate trustee.
Preetish Nijhawan
Managing Partner at Cervin Ventures
Preetish has 18 years’ experience leading product management and online marketing efforts for high technology companies. He has successfully built two companies from scratch into global organizations with multi-million dollar revenues.
Abe Pachikara
Business Manager at Microsoft
Marketing Generalist with 14 years agency experience at Leo Burnett and Digitas, responsible for positioning & messaging, online programs, and advertising campaigns for United Airlines, FedEx, BofA, Kraft and IBM. At Microsoft, earned Circle of Excellence field award twice: as U.S. cloud computing developer evangelism lead; & for establishing marketing governance capability.
Gurdeep Singh Pall
Corporate Vice President at Microsoft
Gurdeep is Vice President of Microsoft’s Information Platform and Experience team. He is responsible for vision, product strategy and R&D for the Bing services and platform that includes mobile, mapping, and speech. Previously he was Vice President for the Lync family of products and orchestrated the Skype acquisition. He holds several patents in networking, compression and real-time collaboration.
Carl Paschke
General Manager of IT at Microsoft
At Microsoft, Carl is responsible for delivering enterprise solutions across various Microsoft business groups at scale. He led design, engineering & operations activities for a multitude of internal and external facing properties including MSCOM & CRM. He was actively involved the XBOX launch for software and hardware, and is currently leading efforts in next generation customer experiences for consumer & commercial support.
Liz Pearce
CEO at LiquidPlanner
Since 2007, Liz has helped more than 1500 project teams overcome scheduling and collaboration challenges through the use of best practices and better tools. She has more than 15 years of experience in marketing, branding, sales, operations, support, management and business development. Before joining LiquidPlanner, Liz ran her own successful marketing consultancy where she worked with a diverse set of clients. She also held product and project management positions at Amazon.com, Google, and Sony Computer Entertainment America.
Tim Porter
Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group
At Madrona, Tim focuses on the software, infrastructure, and wireless sectors. He is particularly interested in SaaS, cloud computing, next-generation enterprise data centers, and opportunities created by new mobile platforms. Tim serves on the boards of Appature, buuteeq, Context Relevant, and AppFog, and is a board observer for Apptio, ExtraHop Networks, Impinj, Skytap, Smartsheet, Tier3, and Z2Live.
Jesse Proudman
Founder and CEO at Blue Box Group
Over 15 years of experience building and leading IT businesses, Jesse Proudman has successfully demonstrated his technical and business leadership aptitude as a hands-on, do-it-yourself entrepreneur. A University of Puget Sound Business Leadership Program graduate, he founded Blue Box in 2003 and has led the company to record growth levels through both prosperous and troubled economic times.
Ranjith Ramakrishnan
Founder & CTO at Opstera
Ranjith is a three-time entrepreneur who successfully founded, served as the CTO and exited two Cloud/SaaS startups in the last 5 years. Previously, he held engineering leadership positions at companies like Microsoft and IBM. Ranjith has extensive experience in SaaS business operations & management.
John Rizzo
Chief Marketing Officer at Jive Software
John brings more than 25 years of experience helping to guide some of the world’s most successful technology companies through start-up phases, major product launches, branding and marketing campaigns, rapid growth, acquisitions and IPOs. He has raised over $150M in private and public markets and was a key early-stage contributor to companies that are today delivering well over $100B in combined annual sales. He began his career with Intel and then joined Apple (Macintosh Marketing). He ran marketing and sales for Weitek, the world’s first fabless chip company, which completed an IPO and pioneered 3D graphics for video gaming. John was Vice President of Global Market Planning and Programs at Oracle. and CEO of Cahoots/Informative (a social networking and customer intelligence SaaS company). Most recently, John was President and CEO of Zeebo, Inc., which launched a wireless interactive entertainment, internet, social networking and education platform for consumers in Brazil, Mexico, China, India and other emerging markets. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University.
John Sechrest
Founder, Seattle Angel Conference
John Sechrest is the co-organizer for the Lean Startup Seattle group and the founder of the Seattle Angel Conference as well as the Willamette Angel Conference. John wrote code at HP for the first networked calculator. As an entrepreneur, John founded an Internet Service Provider in Oregon. John is currently active in the Seattle Open Coffee and Eastside Open Coffee.
Raj Sehgal
Software Business Veteran
Raj Sehgal is a software business professional with extensive product management/marketing experience at Microsoft, Sun/Oracle, Sybase, and several startups including two SaaS companies that he co-founded – CareAssured (health insurance) and IronPillar (IT service management).
Soumitra Sengupta
Principal Development Manager at Microsoft
Soumitra was one of the key technologists driving the development of Windows Phone 7 software and hardware. He was also a key contributor to the development of the SQL Azure platform. Soumitra was the co-founder and CTO of a venture-backed enterprise software company called B-Bop.
Gowri Shankar
Venture Partner at Naya Ventures
Prior to Naya Ventures, Gowri was CEO of SinglePoint Technologies. As a founding member of the Sprint PCS launch team, Gowri led the creation of the first nation-wide telesales and e-commerce distribution channels in the wireless industry.
Ajay Sikka
Managing Consultant at Ci2i Services, Inc.
Ajay has 20+ years’ experience working with Enterprise Software & Services companies. He has been part of 2 successful startups (Vermeer-FrontPage & IndiaHQ). Ajay has built new businesses, driven M&A transactions, and led large teams. He provides strategic guidance, helps in building Global alliances, and architecting Product roadmaps. He is very active in supporting startups in the Seattle area and in India.
Dharmesh Singh
Sr. Director at Salesforce.com
Focused on driving solutions for supporting the full customer lifecycle from pre-sales to renewals. Dharmesh brings a multi-disciplinary lens to help jumpstart startups having global experience across sales, operations, product and program management. Over 15 years at Microsoft where he worked across Asia–Pacific, US Field and Corporate headquarters. Actively involved in mentoring early stage and venture funded startups focused on the enterprise space.
Madhu K Singh
Principal at MK Singh Law Office
Madhu works closely with growth companies, start-ups and entrepreneurs to develop successful legal and intellectual property strategies in the areas of technology, mobile, and social. She also assists U.S. companies expand into India. Madhu is the faculty lead of the Community Development and Entrepreneurship Clinic at Seattle University School
of Business.
of Business.
Kanwar (KD) Singh
VP & Global Head at Wipro
A proven business leader for technology solutions with over 20 years of experience in the global Enterprise market. His edge lies in morphing complex solutions into value based offerings that customers like to buy. Currently at Wipro Technologies, as VP & Global Head of Computing Vertical, KD has a proven track record in building and growing large businesses through his 15 years with the firm. He has also co-founded eTRAN Business Solutions, and worked with KPIT Infosystems, Keane, and IBM in his career
Sherril Small
ChangeMarketer & Managing Partner at CJSA LLC
Sherril is a marketing and communications specialist who understands how to open new markets. Her firm, ChangeMarketer, works with high-tech companies to establish, expand or reposition businesses and their products in the marketplace. Her clients include technology leaders, inventors and innovators.
Matt Sousley
Cloud Integrations Architect at Skytap
Matt has seen the entire spectrum of Systems Management in his career, from a data center operator to a software developer building products for IT. He has worn many technical hats, including developer, architect, and manager while working at iConclude, Opsware, HP, and FullArmor.
Ray Taft
Sr. Director of IT at Gap, Inc.
Ray is responsible for designing, building and operating the Global Data Center and IT footprint for Gap, Inc. Before Gap, Ray was VP of IT Infrastructure at Expedia.com where he led multiple operational and engineering teams. Ray founded and was CEO for Jupiter Hosting, which was acquired by Navisite.
Christine Thompson
President & Owner at Informing Arts
Christine was instrumental in creating new software categories and developing markets for Apple and Adobe, a pioneer in digital media and publishing. She led Apple’s digital publishing business during a period of explosive growth: $1 billion in <5 years. She has served on the coaching committee for an angel’s network, helping founders hone their pitch for investors. Through her work with Informing Arts, Christine advises B2B and B2C clients on strategies to build brands, find their sweet spot and drive growth through an aligned revenue engine. These days she is keen to innovate new models to link best practice frameworks from customer discovery + lean startups + B2B buyer journeys + content marketing as a faster way to grow markets and acquire the right B2B customers.
Alex Tibbets
General Manager at Nordstrom Direct
Motivated by the satisfaction of activating unconventional approaches to ambiguous opportunities and problems that seem intractable. Expertise in planning, negotiating, launching, and marketing “firsts” – in product, process and partnerships.
Rick Turoczy
Co-Founder at PIE (Portland Incubator Experiment)
Rick is a leader of the Portland, OR startup community. He founded and manages PIE, a Portland-based technology accelerator run in collaboration with global advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy. He’s also the editor of Silicon Florist, a blog covering the Portland startup and open source scenes. Rick serves as a board member at the Technology Association of Oregon and an advisor to the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network.
Vijay Vashee
Board Member at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Vijay is an active angel investor, venture capitalist, philanthropist, founder of TiE Seattle, and mentor to many entrepreneurs. Vijay also has served as Chairman of Bellevue College and on various other boards. During his tenure at Microsoft, Vijay launched several key software products.
Haresh Ved
Chair at TiE Angels Group Seattle (TAGS)
Haresh launched and is the Chair of the TiE Angels Group Seattle (TAGS.) He is also the Founder and Managing General Partner at Cronus Ventures LLC, an early stage investment company. Prior to founding Cronus, Haresh spent 10+ years holding key development and leadership roles at Microsoft Corporation, steering them in their initial product design and development efforts to shape up the future of handheld devices, Tablets, and mobile computing. He also played a key role early on in developing and implementing tools, technologies, and strategies to take Microsoft products to international markets. Haresh’s key focus areas are Mobility, Education, eLearning and eHealth.
Deven Waghani
Vice President of Corporate Strategy at HP
At HP, Deven is one of the key strategists architecting the turnaround efforts at HP. Prior to HP, Deven was the head of marketing and advertising for the Server & Tools Division at Microsoft. Deven also spent many years in management consulting at McKinsey & Co.
Joe Wallin
Legal Counsel to Start-Ups and Emerging Companies at Davis Wright Tremaine
Joe Wallin focuses on emerging, high growth, and startup companies. Joe frequently represents companies in angel and venture financings, mergers and acquisitions, and other significant business transactions. Joe also represents investment funds with respect to their fund formation work, and represents investors in and acquirers of businesses, and provides general counsel services for companies from startup to post-public. Joe is also the founder of the firm’s Startup Law Blog – you can learn more about him at StartupLawBlog.com.
Joe Whitford
Legal Counsel to Start-Ups and Emerging Companies at Davis Wright Tremaine
Joe Whitford focuses his corporate finance practice in startups and the emerging-company sector, where he has served for more than 30 years as General Counsel and advisor to high- growth software, Internet, health care, medical device, biotech, wireless, and specialty retail business ventures.
Brad Wright
Sr. Director, IT at Boeing
Brad leads Collaboration and Communication in Boeing Central IT. He brings strong business knowledge and perspective to all innovation initiatives currently underway at Boeing with leading industry partners.
Bruce Young
Global Program Manager at Dell
Bruce is currently the Global Program Manager for Dell’s Data Center Transformation consulting practice. He provides consulting services in mission-critical data center strategy, planning, and implementation for a variety of companies across multiple industries. He draws from years of experience at Expedia and Washington Mutual Bank managing major data center consolidation and migration programs.