Thursday, March 25 2010, 6:00pm - 8:30pm
| Our
Piece of the Pie: What women entrepreneurs can do to successfully
fund their businesses |
REGISTER HERE>>
Last year, SDForum Tech Women hosted a panel of women entrepreneurs
and then a panel of women VCs. During these sessions, we heard about
some of the challenges women face in getting investors to back their
companies. In this session, the panel will focus on what steps women
entrepreneurs can take to increase the attractiveness of their ventures
to investors and to find alternative sources of funding.
Drawing on the research she's done for her recently released whitepaper,
High
Performance Entrepreneurs, VC (and former
high tech CEO) Cindy Padnos will moderate a panel of
investors and women entrepreneurs who will address such questions as:
• How can women entrepreneurs increase the likelihood of finding
funding for their ventures?
• What can we do to make investors aware of opportunities they miss
if by not looking at women entrepreneurs?
• What can SDForum do to help ??
Panel:
Michelle Bonat, RumbaFish,
CEO and Founder
A second time CEO, Michelle has 20 years of experience in marketing,
enterprise applications, analytics and social media. She has a
successful track-record of launching and scaling B2B technology products
and solutions in high-growth markets. As a social media and online
marketing expert, Michelle's prior experience includes leading Oracle's
$50 million self-service web applications Financials/CRM suite, driving
the first on-demand mid-market applications and monetization of the
supplier network at Ariba, and directing marketing and product groups
for several high-tech startups. Most recently she led a social media
marketing consulting firm, and created the successful award winning
online social game stompBox Tunes which became a top Facebook
application.
An analytics geek and prior money-center banker, Michelle has an
undergraduate degree in English literature and an MBA in Marketing from
the Kellogg School of Management, both at Northwestern University.
Kim Weiss Lopez, Remedy
Interactive, CEO
Ms. Lopez has over 15 years of experience leading the development and
implementation of business strategy. Since 2000, she has held the
position of CEO at Remedy Interactive, a company that develops injury
prevention software. She started with Remedy Interactive after working
with a healthcare strategy consulting firm, where she worked with
leading health systems and managed care organizations to develop
strategic plans, new product development strategies, cost reduction
plans and product pricing models. Previously as the CEO and Executive
Director of the National Association for Women's Health (NAWH), she
spent five years developing alliances with partners across the country,
including large Federal agencies such as the NIH and the CDC. Ms. Lopez
regularly guest lectures at Stanford Business School and the University
of California Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and was a board member
for the Greater Bay Area Make-a-Wish Foundation from 2005-2008. She is a
graduate of the Kellogg Graduate School of Business, Northwestern
University and received her bachelor from the University of California,
Berkeley.
Steve Goldberg, Venrock ,
Partner
(Venrock
recieved 2 awards for funding Women !)
Prior to joining Venrock, Steve was CEO of four early stage startups in
the wireless and signal processing industries; DataRunway, Vidient,
CoWave Networks, and Verticom. He was also Vice President of R&D at
Nokia Internet Communications where he had overall responsibility for
designing and building networking and security infrastructure products.
Before that, he was VP & GM of the Wireless Communications Division
at Cylink Corporation which was part of the successful Cylink IPO in
February 1996. In addition to the above, he has also held senior
management and engineering positions at Applied Signal Technology,
Hewlett Packard, and Trimble Navigation.
Steve’s investment interests at Venrock include the energy efficiency
and novel energy generation technologies within the Cleantech sector,
networking, computing, and storage, location/GPS-based businesses, and
generally, high-technology products with some physical/hardware
component.
Steve holds a Ph.D. E.E. from the University of California at Santa
Barbara and M.S.E.E. and B.S.E.E degrees from Washington University in
St Louis, Mo. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a past president of
the IEEE Communications Society, Santa Clara Section. He is a licensed
ham radio operator (WQ6L), a Level 8 USSF soccer referee, and was the
1996 US Figure Skating Assn. Adult Pairs Champion in 1996.
Moderator:
Cindy Padnos, Illuminate
Ventures, Founding Managing Director
Illuminate focuses on Internet, SaaS/cloud computing, digital media,
technology-enabled services and mobile communications investments. Cindy
currently serves as a director of privately held companies BrightEdge,
CalmSea, Wild Pockets and Xactly Corporation.
Prior to founding Illuminate, Cindy was a Director of Outlook Ventures
where she was one of three investment professionals responsible for
committing the firm’s $140M fund. During her tenure with the firm she
participated in numerous new and follow-on financings, including
sourcing more than half of the firm’s new investments. Cindy took an
active role within the firm and the portfolio – codifying the firm’s
investment sector thesis, establishing a CMO knowledge exchange between
portfolio companies and facilitating Outlook’s annual investor meeting.
Immediately before joining Outlook, Cindy’s long-standing relationships
within the VC ecosystem allowed her to “apprentice” in the industry as a
venture consultant, working with several top-tier venture capital firms
and their portfolios. Her work ranged from interim CEO assignments to
new investment due diligence.
Before entering the venture capital community Cindy gained almost 20
years of operational experience culminating in her role as founder and
CEO of Vivant, an innovative SaaS company, where she successfully led
this venture-backed company to its acquisition (EVLV). Prior positions
include roles as President and CEO of Acumen (M&A), founding vice
president of marketing at Scopus Technology (IPO) and management
positions at IDE, Ingres and AT&T. Earlier in her career Cindy also
served as a management consultant with Arthur D. Little and Booz, Allen
& Hamilton where she worked closely with executive teams in both
large and small companies across the tech sector focusing on sales
acceleration, new business spin-outs and go-to-market strategies.
Cindy earned her undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, at the
University of Michigan and her MBA/MSIA with honors from Carnegie Mellon
University’s Tepper School of Business. She serves on the Board of
Advisors for the Tepper School and for Astia. Cindy is a member of
SpringBoard Enterprises, FWE&E, Women 2.0 and is active in a number
of other organizations that support entrepreneurship.
Join us for this lively and informative discussion hosted by
Pillsbury Law
Location:
Pillsbury
Silicon Valley Office
2475 Hanover Street
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1114
Agenda:
6:00 - 6:45 p.m Registration, Networking and Appetizers
6:45 - 8:30 p.m. Program / Q & A
Cost:
$10 for SDForum Members
$25 for Non-Members
$0 for Platinum Pass
REGISTER
HERE>>
To receive a 40% discount for Astia Members - include the code TWPmarchVIP when you register
Location
Pillsbury Silicon Valley Office, 2475 Hanover Street. Palo Alto, CA 94304
