Recurrent Energy: Distributed Solar Power
Recurrent Energy is Distributed Solar Power
Recurrent Energy harnesses proven solar technology to generate power at the distribution end of the electricity grid, close to the point where electricity is consumed. Distributed solar reduces the need for expensive “peaker” plants and new transmission lines. As a result, its projects deliver higher value to ratepayers and utilities. The other benefit of the Recurrent Energy approach is that distributed-scale projects enjoy important permitting and interconnection advantages. This shortens development timeframes and reduces environmental risk. The result is that the company can deliver the environmental and economic benefits of renewable power sooner than central-scale projects.
- Has been award 330+ MW of projects and a development pipeline of 2 GW.
- Sharp Corporation and Recurrent Energy announced that they have reached a definitive agreement for Sharp to acquire Recurrent Energy.
Sabrix: Measurable Business Benefits
Sabrix: A New Model for Transaction Tax
Sabrix, Inc. provides transaction tax management for companies of all sizes, enabling finance, tax, and IT professionals to achieve accurate, timely, and cost-effective compliance for sales tax, use tax, Value Added Tax (VAT), excise tax and industry-specific taxes and fees. The Sabrix Application Suite™ serves global enterprises such as Amazon.com, BASF, Cisco, DTE Energy, IBM and York International. The Sabrix Managed Tax Service (MTS) combines an on-demand version of the same trusted tax platform that powers more than $1.7 trillion in transaction taxes for companies of all sizes, including many Global 2000 leaders.
- Acquired by Thomson Reuters Corp in December 2009.
- Led by enterprise software and SaaS executive Steve L. Adams, who is now CEO of the Mohr Davidow portfolio company VirtuOz.
- Winner of the THINKStrategies Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program.
Shutterfly: Social Expression. Personal Publishing.
Shutterfly: Social Expression. Personal Publishing.
As long as there have been people, there have been stories. People have always wanted to pass on their memories and share their experiences with those around them. The evolution of digital cameras has made it easier than ever before for people across the world to capture and share their memories in fun and creative new way. That’s where Shutterfly comes in. It is the leading Internet-based social expression and personal publishing service, leveraging its innovative platform and manufacturing process to enable people to easily express themselves in extraordinary ways by turning their everyday pictures into innovative and stylish keepsakes.
- Shutterfly offers free online storage, and has never deleted a photo.
- Millions of customers have billions of pictures on Shutterfly.
- Founded in 1999. Initial Public Offering, September 2006.
Pacific Biosciences: Single Molecule, Real-Time Observation of Biological Events
Pacific Biosciences: Innovative Tools for Biological Research
Pacific Biosciences has introduced a platform for single molecule, real-time (SMRT) observation of biological events. The company's mission is to transform the way humankind acquires, processes, and interprets data from living systems through the design, development and commercialization of innovative tools for biological research.
- Named a 2010 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum.
ParAllele BioScience: Genetic Variation Discovery
ParAllele BioScience: Discovering, Analyzing Genetic Variations
ParAllele BioScience accelerated healthcare breakthroughs by providing comprehensive genetic discovery solutions to the life science research, pharmaceutical and diagnostic sectors. The company's products and services utilized a unique approach that leveraged novel biochemical processes rather than complex instrumentation to discover and analyze minute variations in the human genome. The understanding of how subtle genetic variations contribute to disease risk, prognosis and drug response helps lead to new and more effective drugs, predictive diagnosis, and the ability to better tailor therapies to individual patients.
- Founded in 2001 by a team of leading researchers from the Stanford Genome Technology Center and Uppsala University.
- Acquired by Affymetrix in October 2005.
Rambus: Electronic Systems Architecture Invention
Rambus: Electronic Systems Architecture Invention
Rambus is one of the world's premier technology licensing companies. The company specializes in the invention and design of architectures focused on enhancing the end-user experience of electronic systems. Rambus’ patented innovations and breakthrough technologies help industry-leading companies bring superior products to market. Rambus licenses both its world-class patent portfolio, as well as its family of leadership and industry-standard solutions.
- Mohr Davidow seed funded the Rambus founders and incubated the company in 1989.
- Rambus made its initial public offering in May 1997.
FormFactor: Innovation Put to the Test™
FormFactor: Innovation Put to the Test™
FormFactor is transforming semiconductor testing. Founded in 1993, FormFactor is the leader in advanced wafer probe cards, which are used by semiconductor manufacturers to electrically test integrated circuits, or ICs. The company's wafer sort, burn-in and device performance testing products move IC testing upstream from post-packaging to the wafer level, enabling semiconductor manufacturers to lower their overall production costs, improve yields, and bring next-generation devices to market.
- Completed its initial public offering of stock on June 11, 2003.
- FormFactor’s MicroSpring contact technology was inducted into the Smithsonian Institution’s Year 2000 permanent collection.
IronKey: The Key to Portable Security
IronKey: The Key to Portable Security
IronKey is the global leader in providing secure and managed portable storage, authentication, and trusted virtual computing solutions for mobile workers. IronKey multifunction portable security devices, management software and associated services are designed to meet the security, performance, and privacy standards of the most demanding enterprise and government customers.
- Works with industry leaders in virtualization, storage and security, including Lockheed Martin, McAfee, MokaFive, RSA, RingCube and VeriSign.
- Products are FIPS 140-2, Level 3 validated.
ONI Systems: Breaking Network Bottlenecks
Breaking Regional, Metropolitan Network Bottlenecks
ONI Systems provided optical transport and network management systems for low cost, high bandwidth, data-optimized optical networks. As bandwidth requirements and the need for offering data optimized services grew in the 1990s, the increasing gap between the available bandwidth between the enterprise and the long haul networks created a bottleneck in metro areas. ONI products broke that bottleneck and enabled communication service providers to increase bandwidth and offer new services.
- Led by Hugh Martin, who is now CEO of Pacfic Biosciences.
- Founded in 1997. Initial Public Offering, June 2000.
- Acquired by Ciena Corp. in June 2002.
AudienceScience: Driving Digital Marketing Success
A Gateway Enabling Universal Access to Audiences
Reaching the right people with the right message at the right time. AudienceScience technology provides a gateway enabling universal access to audiences. Their integrated audience platform, The Audience Gateway, drives digital marketing success. Accessing 200 billion data insights into 386 million people worldwide, AudienceScience empowers marketers with the intelligence and control to execute effective global campaigns.
- Has delivered more than 50,000 targeted campaigns for clients including American Airlines, Financial Times, Gannett, New York Times Digital, Nikkei.com, SKECHERS, and Wall Street Journal Digital since 2003.
Brocade: Simplifying Network Infrastructures
Simplifying Network Infrastructures, Increasing Agility, Maximizing ROI
Brocade leads the industry in providing comprehensive network solutions that help the world’s leading organizations transition smoothly to a virtualized world where applications and information reside anywhere. Brocade solutions are used in over 90 percent of Global 1000 data centers as well as in enterprise LANs and the largest service provider networks.
- Founded in 1995. Initial Public Offering, May 1999.
- The company has approximately 4000 employees worldwide and serves a wide range of industries and customers in more than 160 countries.
Epigram: High-Speed Residential Networking
Epigram: High-Speed Residential Networking
Epigram developed high-speed residential networking technologies and products for rapidly expanding markets including a wide variety of communication, computer and consumer electronics manufacturers.
- Founded in 1996.
- Acquired by Broadcom, June 1999.
Agile: Turning Time into a Competitive Advantage
Agile: Turning Time into a Competitive Advantage
Agile led the creation of a new category now called product lifecycle management (PLM). The company developed and sold PLM to solutions help engineers, manufacturing and supply chain professionals and business executives drive the product innovation and introduction process, share product specifications and configurations and collaborate effectively across the supply chain in a variety of industries, including high-tech, life sciences, industrial manufacturing and consumer packaged goods.
- Founded by Bryan Stolle, now a Mohr Davidow General Partner.
- Initial Public Offering in April 1999. Acquired by Oracle in May 2007.
Venture Forward
Venture Forward
Entrepreneurs look beyond the status quo and innovate. They want like-minded partners to provide venture capital funding, connections and startup experience. That's where Mohr Davidow comes in. Together, we create venture returns by moving innovation forward and bringing new, technology-based ideas, products and services to market.
Nanoscale Materials, Breakthrough Performance
Nanoscale Materials, Breakthrough Performance
Nothing less than a sea change is happening in our ability to assemble and manufacture materials. Whether powered by new biological technologies or the proliferation of semiconductor technologies, products are demonstrating unheard of capabilities.
Smartphones, The New Platform
Smartphones, The New Platform
Rapidly evolving mobile technology and smartphone advancements are opening up new ways for people and businesses to connect and distribute novel applications and richer forms of data.
Social Software
Social Software
Everything about software today is social — from application development to distribution to consumption. We live in an era of not only mass personalization, but ready access to communities of interest.
Data Deluge
Data Deluge
The development of new systems and tools — sensors, computers, smartphones and more — has led to an explosion in the creation, capture, processing and sharing of information. The amount of data in existence today already exceeds the available storage space. Challenge lies in determining what is meaningful data and in protecting data security and privacy as information moves around the planet.
From Systems of Record to Systems of Engagement
From Systems of Record to Systems of Engagement
Advances in the consumer IT marketplace will inevitably disrupt traditional enterprise IT systems and shift emphasis to technologies that can lead to improved communication and collaboration.
Molecular Medicine and You
Molecular Medicine and You
One-size fits all medicine will soon be a thing of the past. New technologies are making it possible to screen an individual's molecular markers and, along with assessing other specific genetic information, determine the most effective therapeutic regimen.
Bad Bugs, Good Bugs
Bad Bugs, Good Bugs
The metabolic activities of microbes can be agents of disease that need to be identified and eliminated, or beneficial to opening new pathways to renewable fuels and sustainable feedstocks. Engineered organisms will deliver these benefits more cost-effectively than current industrial processes relying upon petroleum.
Healthcare Meets the Cloud
Healthcare Meets the Cloud
A new standard of care is evolving tied to cloud computing. Drivers include the proliferation of new devices and services that allow real-time monitoring of patients, and a push for lower costs and greater efficiency in the healthcare system.
Moore’s Law Applied to DNA
Moore’s Law Applied to DNA
Significant improvements in compute power and capability have led to a substantial reduction in the cost and time associated with the processing and analysis of genetic data. The impact is being felt at major research institutions and universities around the world.
Energy: The Insatiable Century
Energy: The Insatiable Century
Global primary energy demand is expected to increase 53% by 2030, during which time demand for electricity will more than double. We must develop technologies and products that will permit us to generate, transmit and use electricity more productively and efficiently than ever.
Reducing Our Footprint
Reducing the Carbon Footprint
Around the world, governments, businesses and consumers are taking action to move to cleaner and more efficient energy systems.
Future products and industrial processes will be expected to take less energy to produce, be more efficient, and be less harmful to the planet.
Personalizing expert medical knowledge for better health decisions
Personalizing expert medical knowledge for better health decisions
Ron Gutman is HealthTap's Founder and CEO. He's responsible for the company's innovation, vision, and product. Prior to founding HealthTap, Ron was the founder and CEO of Wellsphere, a leading online consumer health 2.0 company that developed the world's largest community of independent health writers and became one of the largest health sites on the Internet, serving more than 100 million users to date (acquired in early 2009). Prior to creating Wellsphere, as a graduate student at Stanford University, Ron organized and led a multidisciplinary group of faculty and graduate students from the schools of Engineering, Medicine, Business, Psychology and Law to conduct research in personalized health and to design ways to help people live healthier, happier lives. Ron is also an angel investor and advisor to health and technology companies, Rock Health (The first Interactive Health Incubator), and Harvard Medical School's SMArt Initiative ("Substitutable Medical Apps, reusable technologies"). He's a frequent speaker in health and technology conferences (such as TED and Health 2.0), writes about technology, health and Smiling in leading publications (such as Forbes and the Huffington Post), and serves as the Curator of TEDxSilicon Valley
Making People Healthy
Making People Healthy
Called an international interface guru by publications like Wired and Fast Company, Aza is the co-founder of Massive Health, and was until recently Creative Lead for Firefox. Previously, he was a founding member of Mozilla Labs and is known for his seminal work in natural language interfaces. Aza gave his first talk on user interface at age 10. At 17, he was talking and consulting internationally. Aza has founded and sold two companies, including Songza.com, a popular minimalist music search engine. He also creates modular cardboard furniture called Bloxes. In another life, Aza is a published physicist, having done Dark Matter research at both Tokyo University and the University of Chicago, from where he graduated in math and physics.
Connecting Bands and Fans
Connecting Bands and Fans
J Sider is the founder and CEO of RootMusic, the company that created BandPage, the number one music and entertainment app on Facebook. Before he started RootMusic, J was a musician himself. He spent years managing bands and booking shows, starting small and eventually booking shows for the Sundance Film Festival and working with musicians around the country. After working in the music industry, he realized that there weren't enough well designed, easy to use and effective online tools for musicians. So, in 2009, J moved to San Francisco and founded RootMusic.
Accelerating Application Performance By 10x
Accelerating Application Performance By 10x
Well known in Silicon Valley as the founder of four venture-funded companies in the networking infrastructure industry, Som Sikdar holds over 20 patents and brings a wealth of network expertise and industry experience to his latest company, GridIron Systems.
GridIron Systems’ mission is to revolutionize application performance with novel technology. Unlike many Silicon Valley companies, technology isn’t the only important thing. To build a great company, Som believes you need much more — you need a culture of teamwork and a focus on the long term and what is important in getting there.
Before GridIron, Som was the founder of Shomiti Systems (Finisar), where he pioneered network analysis. He was also the founder of Force10 Networks, the leader in 10 GE networks. Early in his career, Som was a key technology leader at Synoptics, Vitalink, and David Systems.
Som earned an MSEE from Washington State University in Computer Architecture (VLSI) and Compiler Design and a BS in Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, India.
Microfluidics Powered Medical Discoveries
Microfluidics Powered Medical Discoveries
Roopom Banerjee, CEO of RainDance Technologies, leads a team working to deliver solutions that will improve human health. The company provides medical researchers one of the most advanced technologies for finding clinically important regions in the human genome. RainDance will enable discoveries critical to advancing the vision of a more personalized approach to the treatment and care of human disease.
While a student at Harvard Banerjee was instrumental in expanding access to education and care for HIV/AIDS patients in Africa and India, and oversaw the founding of what has become one of the world’s largest HIV/AIDS education non-profits in the world (Vision’s International). He has also contributed over 500 hours of volunteer service at Mass General Hospital and Winchester Hospital in Boston.
Banerjee joined RainDance from Leerink Swann where he was a Director of Healthcare Investment Banking and led the Life Science Tools and Diagnostics sector. He also held positions at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs advising Fortune 500 healthcare companies globally on corporate and growth strategy, product development and launch strategy, international expansion, and mergers and acquisitions. He has successfully completed over 50 transactions, including private placements, IPOs, Followons, PIPE/RDs, and fixed income as well as mergers and acquisitions.
He also worked at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, the Whitehead Institute/M.I.T. Human Genome Project, and at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. He holds an M.P.P. from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and dual B.S. degrees in Biology and Economics from M.I.T., where he was elected a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Scholar.
Rocket Science. Marketing Optimization.
Rocket Science. Marketing Optimization.
George H. John is CEO of Rocket Fuel Inc., a digital advertising company with a uniquely powerful technology engine that drives great results for advertisers and lets media buyers focus on strategy, not spreadsheets. Campaigns run better on Rocket Fuel because the technology combines behavioral, contextual, demographic, and many other targeting techniques into one comprehensive solution that is automatically optimized towards advertiser goals, every 15 minutes. Around this core platform, a suite of Booster products deliver innovative campaigns for clients tired of repeating last year's tactics. Rocket Fuel is a trusted media partner to over 300 brands, including 8 of the top 10 AdAge100 and 8 of the top 10 Interbrands global brands. Rocket Fuel was founded in 2008 by industry veterans from Yahoo! and DoubleClick, and currently has offices in 8 cities across the US and UK.
Prior to Rocket Fuel, George led groups at IBM, E.piphany, salesforce.com, and most recently Yahoo!, where he managed behavioral targeting, recommendations, SEM, and click fraud. As a kid, George was overly influenced by "Star Trek," which led to a short-lived interest in model rocketry (eyebrows grew back) and a lifelong interest in Artificial Intelligence. George earned BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Computer Science from Stanford, specializing in AI and statistics. During his graduate studies, he won a National Science Foundation fellowship and worked at NASA, earning his "rocket scientist" credentials. George's previous two startups, E.piphany and salesforce.com, both went public and hit peak valuations over $10 Billion.
Social Gaming Sea Change
Social Gaming Sea Change
Alex St. John created one of the world’s largest online gaming sites and was instrumental in creating Microsoft’s DirectX technology, which became the foundation for all Windows multimedia applications, 3D graphics, media players and casual multiplayer and Xbox games.
He believes the next wave of innovation and differentiation in gaming is happening in social gaming and that hi5, where he is President and Chief Technology Officer, is at the forefront of this sea change.
As founder of WildTangent, St. John grew the company into the world’s largest privately held gaming site and 5th-largest gaming property worldwide with over 35 million monthly unique visitors. During his tenure, WildTangent developed a unique and highly successful micro-currency based economy that blended ecommerce and advertiser sponsored play of premium content. St John also pioneered technology for online game publishing, resulting in an extensive portfolio of rich media delivery and micro-currency based monetization patents.
hi5 today is among the top 20 largest web sites in the world and the leading destination site focused on social entertainment and gaming. Combining a robust social platform with premium content and game mechanics, hi5 delivers a fun, expressive, and interactive entertainment experience to millions of users around the world. Available in over 50 languages, the site features localized games, virtual goods and other content that is monetized through hi5 Coins, a global virtual currency supporting over 60 payment methods and 30 currencies worldwide.
A Laser Focus
A Laser Focus
Scott Keeney not only has deep expertise in lasers, but he has also demonstrated strong business acumen by leading his company from early uncertainty to growth and profitability.
When he founded nLight in Seattle in 2000, the company was initially focused on telecommunications applications for high-power semiconductor lasers. When that industry went through a severe downturn in 2001, nLight had to quickly adjust and find new applications. With new products based on its core technology, nLIGHT expanded into aerospace, defense, medical, and industrial material processing markets. Today, nLight’s laser are deployed to guide the Mars Rover, defend aircraft flying in Afghanistan, power new surgical tools, and enable next generation semiconductor devices. To support rapid growth, nLIGHT has expanded its operations and now has facilities in Vancouver, Washington, Hillsboro; Oregon; Shanghai, China; and Lohja, Finland.
In 2009, nLIGHT was named one of the fastest growing companies in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 program for the fourth year in a row, recognizing the fastest-growing technology, media, telecom and life sciences companies in North America based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth over five years. In 2008 nLIGHT was awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award from The Oregon Entrepreneurs' Network. In 2006, Keeney received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Technology in the Pacific Northwest.
Scott is also deeply committed to improving local schools and started an education non-profit called nConnect to focus on helping improve local high schools in science and math. After starting with a pilot program in 2005 with 22 physics students supported by mentors from nLight, today nConnect serves over 400 students with a broad support from other companies.
Previously, he was CEO of Aculight Corporation and consultant with McKinsey & Company. Scott holds a M.B.A. from Harvard and a BA from the University of Washington.
Beyond DNA Sequencing
Beyond DNA Sequencing
Dr. Stephen Turner founded Pacific Biosciences (formerly Nanofluidics) in 2004. Dr. Turner was awarded a PhD in physics by Cornell University, where he worked with Prof. Harold Craighead to study the behavior of biomolecules in nano-fabricated structures. His work contributed to the establishment of the Nanobiotechnology Center at Cornell. He was a member of the project team at Cornell which developed the technology now employed by Pacific Biosciences, and was coauthor of the cover story in Science magazine (January 31, 2003) that introduced the technology to the scientific community.
He is the author of over 30 scientific papers in various fields, and is listed as the inventor on nine U.S. patents and more than 20 published patent applications. Dr. Turner was recipient of the MIT Technology Review "TR100" Award in 2003, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Distinguished Young Alumnus Award in 2008, and named the 2010 Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Outstanding Postdoctoral Entrepreneur. He is a sitting member of the National Institutes of Health grant review study section on new technologies. He oversees the scientific and technical direction of Pacific Biosciences and is a member of its Board of Directors.
Pacific Biosciences’ mission is to transform the way humankind acquires, processes, and interprets data from living systems. It was named by The Wall Street Journal (March 9, 2010) the top venture-funded company in the United States.
Preempting Disease. Changing Lives.
Preempting Disease. Changing lives.
Dr. Mickey Urdea has devoted his 30-year career to human diagnostics in a variety of capacities. He has been involved in the discovery of new biomarkers, the development of new technologies for biomarker discovery, validation and commercialization, diagnostic test development, manufacturing and marketing, and the management of companies involved in these activities.
He founded and is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Tethys Bioscience, a cardiometabolic diagnostics company that creates and commercializes breakthrough biomarker-based blood tests that predict imminent disease risk and enable targeted intervention to preempt the onset of chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes. Tethys introduced its first product PreDx™ Diabetes Risk Score in 2008, and initiated sales in 2009.
Dr. Urdea also serves as a consultant and is on the scientific advisory boards and boards of directors of several firms. Prior to his current business activities, Dr. Urdea founded the Nucleic Acid Diagnostics group at Chiron, and with colleagues, invented branched DNA molecules for amplification of signal in nucleic acid complexes. Application of this technology resulted in the first commercial products for quantification of human hepatitis B and C viruses and human immunodeficiency virus. He then became business head of the Molecular Diagnostics group and Chief Scientific Officer at Bayer Diagnostics. In addition, Dr. Urdea has served as advisor and expert to a number of biotechnology, diagnostics, venture capital and philanthropic organizations. He is an author on nearly 200 peer-reviewed scientific publications, nearly 300 abstracts and international scientific presentations, and more than 100 issued and pending patents. Dr. Urdea received his BS in Biology and Chemistry from Northern Arizona State University in Flagstaff, AZ and his PhD in Biochemistry from Washington State University in Pullman, WA.
Reinventing Advertising
Reinventing Advertising
Brian Shin founded Visible Measures in 2005 in response to the soaring growth of the Internet video market. The company now helps Internet video publishers, advertisers, and agencies measure how online audiences consume their video content in a number of new and meaningful ways. Using the gross rating point system familiar to television advertisers as inspiration, Shin and his team developed a series of new metrics designed to measure the social and interactive behavior generated by the data-rich world of online video.
The first of these metrics is True Reach, which measures the complete performance of an online video campaign, including paid, owned, and earned media. Audience engagement, a second metric, shows how viewers interact with a video – when they stop, rewind, or watch a video again. Brian and his team also developed a set of advocacy metrics that measure the number of times a video has been shared, linked to, and posted on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
This innovative approach has made Brian and Visible Measures an important resource for advertisers like Gillette and AXE, publishers like YouTube, ESPN, and MySpace, movie studios like Sony, and advertising agencies like VivaKi, Digitas, and Hill Holliday. Ever since Shin raised his first round of angel funding – still attending MIT Sloan – the company has grown as quickly as the world of online video itself.
Brian is not new to the startup world. Prior to Visible Measures, he co-founded several successful Internet software companies, including web-based collaboration technology vendor Creative Aspects, acquired by Medsite Inc. (now WebMD), and The Cambridge Intelligence Agency, a Web-based e-mail response management solution provider that was acquired by marketing services company MSGi. Brian also co-founded technology strategy consulting firm Infraweb, Inc., where he served as President, and was an early member of the team at Allaire Corp., which went public in 1999 and was subsequently acquired by Macromedia. He holds an undergraduate degree in Biology from Tufts University and earned an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management as part of the dual-degree Harvard-MIT Biomedical Enterprise Program.
CRM on Steroids
CRM on Steroids
Clate Mask has the hands-on experience and formal training to turn any entrepreneurial venture into a successful, value-building company. In the early stages of his career, he wrote the business plan for a start-up called North Sky and was instrumental in helping to sell the company to About.com. He continued to acquire various Internet properties, convert them from ‘free’ to ‘fee,’ and help them create additional revenue streams.
Mask eventually joined Scott and Eric Martineau as a cofounder of Infusionsoft, now the leading provider of Email Marketing 2.0 software for small businesses. As CEO Mask has helped Infusionsoft become a leader in marketing and sales software for entrepreneurs. Over the last three years, the company has grown by more than 1200%, received numerous accolades, and has appeared on the Inc. 500 list for three consecutive years.
The company’s web-based software combines email marketing with a full-featured customer database (CRM), powerful marketing automation and e-commerce all in one system. It helps small businesses convert more leads, increase sales, save time and money through targeted marketing that automatically adapts to prospect and customer behavior.
Mask’s economics, MBA and law degrees from Brigham Young University give him the formal training to turn that entrepreneurial fire into a successful, revolutionary company that creates value for everyone associated with it. He's co-author of Conquer The Chaos: How to Grow a Successful Small Business Without Going Crazy.
Rethinking the Automobile
Rethinking the Automobile
Gordon Murray is an icon in automotive design and racing circles and is responsible for numerous innovations and original thinking. A legendary Formula 1 designer, he shifted over to road cars where he led the team that designed the McLaren F1, MB McLaren SRL, as well as worked on studies and design efforts for a City Car, in addition to other designs.
In 2007 he formed Gordon Murray Design and began work on the company’s first City Car program, the T.25. It represents a major breakthrough in City Car design in the areas of weight, footprint, safety, usability and efficiency. Furthermore, the company’s iStream® manufacturing process, is a complete re-think on the way cars are built. The process offers a significant reduction in CO2emissions over the lifecycle of the vehicles produced using it, compared with conventional ones. The simplified assembly process means that an assembly plant can be designed to be 20% of the size of a conventional factory. This could reduce capital investment in the assembly plant by approximately 80%.
Murray studied mechanical engineering at Natal Technical College (now Durban University of Technology), which made Murray an Honorary Professor in 2002). In 2008 Gordon Murray won the ‘Idea of the Year’ accolade at Autocar magazine’s annual awards ceremony.
Advancing the Art and Science of Messaging
Advancing the Art and Science of Messaging
Coding is second nature to Eric Hahn. He had his first successful software company at age 11 selling software for the Altair/IMSAI 8080. After getting his BS CS, Hahn was one of the six Arpanet "IMP programmers" at Bolt Beranek and Newman. (For the under-40 crowd: the Arpanet was the precursor to the modern Internet). He went on to Convergent Technologies, ultimately running the division that built the world's first 386-based Unix SMP machines. Hahn then joined the LAN-based e-mail company, cc:Mail as VP of Engineering, becoming its divisional CEO after being acquired by Lotus in 1991.
From there Hahn started Collabra Software, an e-mail-based groupware company in 1992. Mohr Davidow was an early stage investor. Collabra Share™ along only with Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows, were finalists for the 1994 PC Magazine Technical Excellence Awards.
Netscape bought Collabra in 1995 and Hahn ran Netscape's Server Products Division. In 1997, Hahn became the CTO for Netscape and along with Jamie Zawinski and Frank Hecker was responsible for Netscape's decision to open-source the browser.
Not long after Hahn started Inventures Group, he formed a team and founded Proofpoint with early seed funding from Mohr Davidow in 2002. Since that time, Proofpoint has gained accolades from industry analysts and technology experts. Its customer base has grown rapidly to thousands of enterprise, government and university accounts including a broad range of worldwide market leaders. Proofpoint’s software and appliance solutions now process hundreds of millions email messages per day, protecting millions of email inboxes from both inbound and outbound message-borne threats.
Storage System Rock Star
Storage System Rock Star
Dr. Garth Gibson has long had a strong interest in shepherding technological advances from blackboard through standards and to commercial reality. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1991. While at Berkeley he did the groundwork research and co-wrote the seminal paper on RAID, then Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks, and now a checklist feature throughout storage industry products.
After joining the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 1991, Dr. Gibson founded the Parallel Data Laboratory, one of the premier academic storage system research lab; founded the Network-Attached Storage Device (NASD) working group of the National Storage Industry Consortium (NSIC); and led storage systems research in the Data Storage Systems Center (DSSC), one of the largest academic magnetic storage technology research labs. ANSI T10's emerging standard for Object-based Storage Devices (OSD), and its sister SNIA OSD technical working group, were seeded by Dr. Gibson's CMU and NSIC/NASD research.
In 1999 Dr. Gibson co-founded Panasas, a scalable storage system cluster vendor pioneering the commercial realization of object storage and targeted at Linux cluster computing. He is now the Chief Technology Officer at Panasas, and a professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at CMU. Panasas has grown to become the leader in high-performance scale-out NAS storage solutions, which enables enterprise customers to rapidly solve complex computing problems, speed innovation and bring new products to market faster.
Dr. Gibson's contributions to computer storage have been recognized by the prestigious 1999 IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Award for outstanding contributions in the field of information storage. He participates in a variety of academic and industrial professional organizations including ongoing roles in the technical council of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and the steering committee of USENIX's File and Storage Technology (FAST) conference.
Transforming the Chemistry Industry
Transforming the Chemistry Industry
Christophe Schilling, Ph.D., was 26 when he won a small-business grant from the National Science Foundation. His early worked was focused on reengineering the genomes of microorganisms such as bacteria and yeast, which are used as living chemical factories, to produce new or better products. He went on to establish Genomatica. The company’s mission is to help make a better world by moving the chemical industry from crude oil and natural gas to renewable feedstocks. Its products act as direct replacements in a trillion-dollar global market that is currently based on fossil fuels.
Christophe and his team are delivering substantial and unique technology that transforms the chemical industry’s economics. In turn, the company and its partners can build commercial manufacturing plants at substantially lower capex, and produce chemicals for less than petro-based competition, while being significantly more environmentally sustainable.
Today, the company is in pilot production for its first commercial product, a ‘green’ Bio-BDO. BDO, with a $3 billion market worldwide, is used to make spandex, automotive plastics, running shoes and more. Genomatica’s unique computational modeling and bio-process platform technology is readily applied to create many high-volume intermediate and basic chemicals.
Genomatica’s technology could substantially reduce the 8% of the world’s fossil fuels used for chemical production, reduce carbon emissions by hundreds of millions of tons, and create thousands of cleantech jobs.
