Keynote Speakers 2010
Steve Blank
Put to a vote, I might have been chosen “least likely to succeed” in my New York City high school class. After 21 years in 8 high technology companies, I retired in 1999. I co-founded my last company, E.piphany, in my living room in 1996. My other startups include two semiconductor companies, Zilog and MIPS Computers, a workstation company Convergent Technologies, a consulting stint for a graphics hardware/software spinout Pixar, a supercomputer firm, Ardent, a computer peripheral supplier, SuperMac, a military intelligence systems supplier, ESL and a video game company, Rocket Science Games. Total score: two large craters (Rocket Science and Ardent), one dot.com bubble home run (E.piphany) and several base hits.
David Pogue
Technology Columnist, New York Times
David Pogue’s technology column has appeared each Thursday in The Times since 2000. Each week, he also writes the Times e-mail column “From the Desk of David Pogue,” creates a short, funny Web video for NYTimes.com, and posts entries to his Times blog. In his other life, David is an Emmy-winning correspondent for CBS News, a frequent contributor to NPR’s “Morning Edition,” creator of the Missing Manual series of computer books, and father of three.
FailCon 2010 Speakers
Tony Adam
SEO, Online Management, MySpace
Tony Adam has been involved in technology since 2000 and received a B.S. in Computer Science from Mt. Sierra College in 2004. Specifically, as it relates to Search Engine Marketing, Tony has been working in the industry since 2003 and has worked with many organizations from early stage startups, SMBs, and Fortune 500 companies like PayPal and Yahoo!. He has also had a great deal of experience with product development, social media, sales/business development and technology. At Yahoo!, Tony was an SEO Program Manager where he worked on SEO and led the charge for content promotion via Social Media for many of the 40+ Yahoo! Media properties, such as: Yahoo! Games and Sports. While at BillShrink as Director of Search Marketing, he headed up Traffic Acquisition by leading SEO, social media and content production and distribution. Tony Adam is currently a Sr. Manager of Online Marketing at MySpace where he heads up all aspects of SEO and Viral Marketing. He is also the Founder and Principal of Visible Factors, an Online Marketing agency and Advisor for Ranker.com. He most recently spoke at SXSW Interactive, writes an InHouse SEO column for Search Engine Land and maintains his own blog.
Nathan Beckord
Principal, Venture Archetypes
Nathan Beckord is Principal of VentureArchetypes LLC, a startup consulting firm. Nathan has provided strategy, finance, and business development consulting to more than 100 companies across a broad range of industries—from software, SaaS, and social media, to mobile/wireless, entertainment, and consumer products. His startup clients have collectively raised more than $88 million in seed, Series A, and Series B financing. He has also served in interim CFO and Corporate / Business Development roles, and helped several firms structure key strategic partnerships with F500 companies. Nathan has an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). His blog can be found at SeedStageCapital.com.
Gleb Budman
CEO, Backblaze
Gleb Budman is co-founder & CEO of Backblaze, an online backup company that provides the only “backup all data” service with unlimited storage for just $5 per month. Previously, Gleb led product strategy, management, and marketing for venture-funded companies Kendara and MailFrontier from inception through acquisition by Excite@Home and SonicWALL. He held leadership roles at both acquiring companies & previously at GE.
Leah Buley
Experience Designer, Adaptive Path
Leah Buley is an experience designer for Adaptive Path. She is interested in the potential of user experience design to help businesses make better decisions. She has worked with organizations in a variety of industries, including financial, legal, telecom, and non-profit.
Heather Champ
Co-Founder, Fertile Medium
Heather built her first homepage in 1994 and has worked online ever since. Enamored with photography, she created The MIrror Project (1999-2005), a website that celebrated self-portraiture, and cofounded JPG Magazine, the photography magazine made by its community. She recently left her position as Director of Community at Flickr after 5 years to join her husband Derek Powazek in creating Fertile Medium, an online community consultancy. She never leaves home without a camera or three.
Cindy Cohn
Legal Director, EFF
Cindy Cohn is the Legal Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as its General Counsel. She is responsible for overseeing the EFF’s overall legal strategy and supervising EFF’s 11 staff attorneys and fellows. Ms. Cohn first became involved with the EFF in 1995, when the EFF asked her to serve as the lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. Outside the Courts, Ms. Cohn has testified before Congress, been featured in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere for her work on cyberspace issue. The National Law Journal named Ms. Cohn one of 100 most influential lawyers in America in 2006 for “rushing to the barricades wherever freedom and civil liberties are at stake online.” In 2007 the Journal named her one of the 50 most influential women lawyers in America.
Dmitry Dragilev
Marketing Lead, ZURB
Dmitry Dragilev is an engineer and marketer all in one. His passion lies in that fine intersection of psychology and computers. He still codes at night while marketing during the day. Dmitry loves to develop products while figuring out what gets people hooked on using those products. Dmitry is the Lead Marketer at ZURB an interaction design firm which helps companies design better products & services through consulting, products such as Notable & Verify, education, training and events. Since 1998 ZURB has helped over 100 clients including: Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, NYSE, Zazzle, Playlist, Britney Spears among others. Before ZURB Dmitry worked as marketer at Crossloop helping the startup grow to 5+ million users and acquire two series of VC funding. For 8+ years prior his marketing career Dmitry developed software for companies such as SolidWorks and BAE Systems. Dmitry has a B.S. in Computer Science from University of New Hampshire and a MBA from Monterey Institute of International Studies a Graduate School of Middlebury College.
Esther Dyson
Principal, EDventures
Esther Dyson is one of the best known and most respected names in high-tech. Since the early 1980s, she’s been intimately involved in every major development in computing technology and her insights have been the best guide to the future of technology innovations and their impact on business, society and individuals. Esther’s primary activity is investing in startups and guiding them as a board member. She specializes in online services and, more recently, IT and healthcare/genetics, and space travel.
Vanessa Fox
Principal, Nine By Blue
Vanessa Fox, called a “cyberspace visionary” by Seattle Business Monthly, is an expert in understanding customer acquisition from organic search. She shares her perspective on how this impacts marketing and user experience at ninebyblue.com and provides authoritative search-friendly design patterns for developers at janeandrobot.com. She’s also an entrepreneur-in-residence with Ignition Partners, Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land, and host of the weekly podcast Office Hours. She previously created Google’s Webmaster Central, which provides both tools and community to help website owners improve their sites to gain more customers from search and was instrumental in the sitemaps.org alliance of Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Live Search. She was named one of Seattle’s 2008 top 25 innovators and entrepreneurs. Her book, Marketing in the Age of Google, provides a blueprint for incorporating search strategy into organizations of all levels.
Adriana Gardella
Business Journalist & Blogger, She Owns It
Adriana Gardella blogs on women and entrepreneurship for NYT.com. She has been an editor for Fortune Small Business, a contributing editor for Success magazine, and a columnist covering management and career issues for CBS Interactive. She began her career as a lawyer.
Elad Gil; Director of Geo, Twitter
Elad recently became the Director for Geo at Twitter via Twitter’s acquisition of Mixer Labs, a company he was the co-founder/CEO of. Prior to Mixer Labs, Elad started Google’s Mobile team and worked on AdSense. Elad is a veteran of multiple startups and currently advises a number of early stage companies.
Steve Hoffman
Founder, Founders Space
Steve Hoffman (a.k.a. Captain Hoff) is a high tech serial entrepreneur. He’s the CEO & Cofounder of LavaMind, which publishes Founders Space, as well as numerous websites, games and mobile applications. Hoffman is also a founding member of the Academy of Television’s Interactive Media Group and was the Chairman & Founder of the San Francisco Chapter of the Producers Guild. He graduated from the University of California with a BS in Electrical Computer Engineering and went on to earn a Masters in Film & Television from USC. He is also the co-author of the first-edition of “Game Design Workshop” published by CMP.
Philip Kaplan
Co-Founder, Blippy
Philip Kaplan (@pud) is the co-founder and president of Blippy. Prior to Blippy, Philip was entrepreneur-in-residence at Charles River Ventures. Philip founded AdBrite, one of the largest Internet ad networks, where he was CEO and remains chairman. Philip founded several other businesses including F-ckedcompany.com and PK Interactive, a software company that developed web-based applications for Fortune 500 clients. Philip is the bestselling author of F’d Companies: Spectacular Dot-com Flameouts (Simon & Schuster). He advises numerous companies and has been on the Board of Advisors of Syracuse University since 2006.
Manu Kumar
Founder / Chief FirestarterK9 Ventures
Manu is the founder and Chief Firestarter at K9 Ventures. Manu previously founded, grew and sold two successful ventures. He was the Founder, President and CEO of SneakerLabs, Inc. – a company which developed software and services for web-based customer interaction. After the successful acquisition of SneakerLabs (March 2000), Manu served as the Vice-President of Interactive Technologies for E.piphany. He then served as the Chairman and CEO of iMeet, Inc. – a provider of web-conferencing services. After the merger of iMeet with Boston based Netspoke (August 2002), Manu served on the Board of Directors of Netspoke until its acquisition by Premiere Global Services (August 2005). Manu completed his Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering with University Honors from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was inducted in to the Electrical Engineering Honor Society – Eta Kappa Nu, the National Engineering Honor Society – Tau Beta Pi and the honor society of Phi Kappa Phi. He holds a Masters degree in Software Engineering with a concentration in Business from Carnegie Mellon. Manu also holds a Masters and a Ph.D. in Computer Science (Human Computer Interaction) with a Distinction in Teaching from Stanford University. Manu serves as an investor and/or advisor for several technology startups including Refocus Imaging, Dolores Labs (CrowdFlower), Twilio, DNAnexus, HighlightCam, CardMunch and others. His interests include discovery, creation and commercialization of new and innovative technologies.
Cindy Padnos
Managing DirectorIlluminate Ventures
Cindy Padnos is the founding managing director of Illuminate Ventures, a high-tech focused venture capital firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Cindy’s experience and focus encompasses Internet/Web 2.0, SaaS, digital media, technology-enabled services, mobile communications and other software sectors. Prior to founding Illuminate, she was a Director of Outlook Ventures’ early stage focused tech fund. Previously, as an operating executive, Ms. Padnos delivered successful outcomes as founder and CEO of venture-backed software company Vivant (acquired by EVLV), CEO of Acumen (private M&A) and VP of marketing at Scopus Technology (IPO). Cindy is a member of the Board of Advisors of Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business and advisory chair to Project Olympus. She is a board member for privately held BrightEdge, CalmSea, Wild Pockets and Xactly Corporation. Ms. Padnos is the author of the widely cited whitepaper “High Performance Entrepreneurs: Women in High-tech”, is a frequent speaker at industry events and was named to Fast Company’s 2010 list of Most Influential Women in Technology.
Jay Parkinson
Pediatrician & Founder, The Future Well
I’m a pediatrician and preventive medicine specialist with a masters in public health. Fast Company calls me The Doctor of the Future and one of The Top 10 Most Creative People in Health Care. I have a design and consulting firm called The Future Well. We design products and services that have a positive impact on health and happiness.
Lara Pearson
CSO & Parter, Rimon Law Group
Lara Pearson is the Chief Sustainability Officer and a Partner at Rimon Law Group, a triple bottom line, virtual law with attorneys nationwide and in Israel. Lara heads Rimon’s intellectual property practice, focusing exclusively on trademark and copyright issues including: IP identification; clearance; registration; transfers; dispute resolution; and litigation. Lara primarily serve others in the LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) community and the live music community. Her mission is to provide the best service by combining creativity, knowledge and passion to evolve effective solutions to intellectual property issues, while educating and inspiring others through her concern for them & the natural environment.
John Rooks
Owner, The SOAP Group
John Rooks is the President and Founder of The SOAP Group, a consulting firm creating and activating brands, promotions and marketing plans using new strategies that advance sustainability and social justice. SOAP works with governments, NGOs and businesses and all the crevices in between. John is the author of the book More Than Promote – A monkeywrencher’s guide to authentic marketing. He nerds out on Language, Cultural Theory and Zombie Movies.
Brian Solis
Author, Engage!
Brian Solis is globally recognized as one of the original and most prominent thought leaders in social media. A digital analyst and visionary, Solis has influenced the effects of new media on the convergence of marketing, communications, and traditional media. He is Principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning New Media agency in Silicon Valley, and has led interactive and social programs for Fortune 500 companies, notable celebrities, and Web 2.0 startups. Brian’s blog is ranked among the world’s business and marketing elite. For more information, visit briansolis.com. You can purchase his book, Engage!, from Amazon at http://bit.ly/engageme
Chrysanthe Tenentes
Community Manager, Foursquare
Chrysanthe oversees community and customer support as Head of Community at foursquare, a mobile/social application that makes cities more interesting and fun to explore. She has worked in the location-based online startup world since 2006. She is active in the New York tech community and is a co-founder of the North Brooklyn Breakfast Club, a meetup group for entrepreneur, startup, and techy types. She is a graduate of Haverford College and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Jay Weintraub
Founder, LeadsCon
Jay Weintraub is the founder of the LeadsCon conference series servicing the online lead generation industry. He is recognized as a thought leader on customer acquisition marketing and is also the co-founder of LeadsCouncil, an independent association that helps lead buyers connect with trusted sellers and improving the consumer experience. Prior to founding LeadsCon and LeadsCouncil, Jay at spent two and a half years at Advertising.com and five years at Oversee.net in roles ranging from corporate strategy to new product development. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
FailCon – October 25, 2010
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