SVASE Main Event: What’s more important to startup success? – Team, Product or Market? March 3, 2011

SVASE Main Event: What’s more important to startup success? – Team, Product or Market?

Start: 03/03/2011 - 6:00 pm
End: 03/03/2011- 8:30 pm

URL:-www.svase.org/events/main-event-what-s-more-important-startup-success-team-product-or-market
What’s more important to startup success? – Team, Product or Market?

If you look at a broad cross-section of startups -- enough to show patterns, and screen out the pure flukes - two things quickly become apparent.

First: there is a wide divergence of success -- some of those startups are hugely successful, some highly successful, many somewhat successful, and most, of course, outright fail.

Second: there is a wide divergence of caliber and quality for the three core elements of each startup -- team, product, and market.

At any given startup, the team will range from outstanding to remarkably flawed; the product will range from a masterpiece of engineering to barely functional; and the market will range from booming to comatose.

And so you start to wonder, what correlates the most to success, team, product, or market? Or, more bluntly, what causes success? And, maybe even more important, what's most dangerous: a bad team, a weak product, or a poor market?

Our experienced and opinioned panel will attempt to answer these questions through lively debate peppered with real life examples, to help you figure out what this means for you and your startup.

The Panel:
· Ken Elefant, General Partner, Elefant Ventures, www.elefantventures.com
. Bill Reichert, Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures, www.garage.com
· Howard Hartenbaum, Partner, August Capital, www.augustcap.com
· Kent Lindstrom, Founder & CEO, PlacePop

Moderator: TBD

When: Thursday, March 3
6:00 – 7:00 pm Networking and hors d’oeuvres
7:00 - 8:15 pm Panel discussion and Q&A
8:15 - 8:30 pm Additional networking

Location: Cooley LLP, 3175 Hanover Street, Palo Alto, CA 94304

Pre-Registered Rates (All Rates Include Hors D’oeuvres):
Members - $20; Affiliates who advertise this event - $29; General Public - $49

Pre-registration closes at 9 PM the night before the event.
Walk-In Rates: Add $10.00 to the listed price

To reserve an Exhibit Table, please contact [email protected], $350 Members, $850 Non-members (Includes exhibit table, 2 tickets to the event and 1-year corporate membership).

Seating is limited, so early registration is recommended to avoid disappointment on the day.

This event is co-sponsored by Cooley LLP, www.cooley.com.

Speaker Bios:

Ken Elefant, General Partner, Elefant Ventures
Ken Elefant is a founding partner of Elefant Ventures and is a general partner for Opus Capital’s 2006 Fund. Ken focuses primarily on internet infrastructure, software and security investments. Ken was involved with several prior investments including Virsa Systems (NYSE: SAP, acquired in May 2006) and Riverbed Technology (Nasdaq: RVBD, IPO in September 2006).

In addition, Ken served on the Board of Directors of the following companies:
* Wirefree Partners (owner and lessor of PCS Spectrum, acquired by Sprint in November 2010)
* Equatrax (Royalty processing platform acquired by Universal Music in February 2008)
* Transpond (HTML5 cross platform social app solution acquired by Webtrends in August 2010)
* Spock Networks (People search startup acquired by Intelius in May 2009)
* Alert Enterprise (Security and compliance)
* TrustedID (Consumer identity theft service)
* Jivox (Cross platform video advertising)
* Pudding Media (Mobile advertising)
* SuperSecret (Online game for tweens)

From 2001 to 2005, Ken was a Senior Associate at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Prior to this, Ken was a Kauffman Fellow at Battery Ventures.

Previously, Ken worked at Radius Inc. as Director of International Sales and Marketing. His role at Radius included serving as a member of the executive staff and opening the company's first sales and marketing office in the Benelux region of Europe.

He has also held various marketing and business development positions at Claris Corporation (the software subsidiary of Apple) and RealNetworks.

Ken holds a BS in Economics from the Wharton undergraduate division at the University of Pennsylvania (where he wrestled for four years) and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Bill Reichert, Managing Partner, Garage Technology Ventures
Bill Reichert has over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur and an operating executive. Since joining Garage in 1998, Bill has focused on early-stage information technology and materials science companies. He sits on the Boards of CaseStack, WhiteHat, ClearFuels, cFares, and ThermoCeramix.

Prior to Garage, Bill was a co-founder or senior executive in several venture-backed technology startups, including Trademark Software, The Learning Company, and Academic Systems. Earlier in his career, he worked at McKinsey & Company, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., and the World Bank.

Bill earned a B.A. at Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Stanford University. He was a founding board member and a Chairman of the Churchill Club, and a Charter Member of the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Howard Hartenbaum, Partner, August Capital
Howard Hartenbaum joined August Capital in 2008. Prior to joining, he served as a General Partner at Draper Richards LP where he was the founding investor in Skype and a former member of the board of directors where his achievement resulted in his joining the Forbes Midas List of top venture capitalists.

Before entering the venture capital field, Howard was at Hughes Electronics, where he was responsible for supporting business development, marketing and sales of satellite, information security and automotive technologies developed by HRL Laboratories. He also worked in engineering positions in ergonomics and user experience at Honda Motor Company and manufacturing at Teledyne Relays.

Howard has worked overseas for a total of ten years in Luxembourg and Japan. He is a graduate of M.I.T.

Current Investments: Livemocha, Memolane, Pixazza and Swoopo.

Previous investments: Skype (acquired by eBay – EBAY), Photobucket (acquired by Fox Interactive Media – NWS), Bebo (acquired by AOL – TWX) and Netkraft (acquired by Adea Solutions)

Kent Lindstrom, Founder & CEO, PlacePop
Kent Lindstrom is the Founder and CEO of PlacePop, which offers a simple location-based social app for consumers, combined with a mobile loyalty card platform for brands and businesses. Previously, Kent was CEO of Friendster for 2 1/2 years, during which time the site rose to #7 in the world, with more than 600MM daily pageviews, and was the #1 social network in Asia. Before that, Kent was CFO at Friendster, co-founder of NetRead, and a Senior Manager at Deloitte & Touche where he ran the West Coast finance practice for the Technology sector. He is a CFA, and received a BA in Economics from Northwestern and an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management