SVASE StartUp-U San Francisco: What Investors Really Think of Your Pitch with Saad Kahn (CMEA) and Lars Leckie (Hummer Winblad) March 11, 2010

SVASE StartUp-U San Francisco: What Investors Really Think of Your Pitch with Saad Kahn (CMEA) and Lars Leckie (Hummer Winblad)
Start: 03/11/2010 - 11:45am
End: 03/11/2010 - 1:30pm

Contact Info: Anne Donker
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 415.378.3966

Location: DLA Piper
555 Mission Street, Suite 2400
San Francisco, CA 94105

URL: www.svase.org/?q=node/3698

PANEL SPEAKERS:

Saad Khan has spent his career innovating. From R&D to entrepreneurship, from Hollywood to Silicon Valley, Saad has always sought the bleeding edge of technology and creativity. “I’m happiest when I am surrounded by whiteboards and thought provoking people.”

His pursuit of innovation often takes him to unexpected places. Saad grew up between Pakistan and the Bay Area, and attended an American high school in Karachi where his soccer tournaments and theater performances were often played out in locations including Kathmandu, Delhi, and Islamabad.

After moving back to the Bay Area, Saad launched his first Internet Startup while still a student at Stanford. Those early lessons were subsequently put to use at the Walt Disney Company, where Saad helped launch their Internet Strategy across their media properties, and then at IBM alphaWorks, one of the first corporate crowd-sourcing initiatives for IBM research.

Saad then spent years building companies, advising entrepreneurs, and investing in Silicon Valley startups at Garage Technology Ventures where he worked closely with early stage entrepreneurs across the Garage portfolio including Pandora, cFares, and TripleHop (ORCL). Saad led Garage’s software and media investments, and spun-out (and subsequently sold) the Garage advisory business.

“Whenever I’m considering an investment, I ask ‘Would I want to work on that team?’ If the answer is yes, then I know I’m on the right path.”

In addition to his activities at CMEA, Saad also co-founded the Film Angels, an angel network for indie film where recent presenters have included Carlos Santana, Steve Wozniak, and many Academy award winning actors, directors and producers. Saad is an advisor to peer-to-peer internet lending platform Lending Club and is a Charter member of TIE.

Lars Leckie is a Principal at Hummer Winblad and has played a key role in the firm’s investments in Aria Systems (SaaS billing and customer management), vKernel (Virtualization Infrastructure) and EvoStor (storage virtualization).

Prior to joining Hummer Winblad Venture Partners in 2006, Lars was involved in founding and operational roles at start-up companies. He was a co-founder of AutoFarm (now Novariant), a company focused on GPS and robotics. Lars was in charge of strategy, product marketing, business development and building the sales team across three continents. While Lars spends less time programming now, he started his technical career coding and hacking computer games. He is the holder of several US patents.

Lars is an avid sailor and a former member of the Canadian Sailing Team. He represented Canada sailing Snipes in the Pan American Games as well as other international events.

Lars has a Masters of Science (Engineering) from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of business. He also holds an Engineering Physics degree from Queen’s University (with Honors).

AGENDA:
11:45-12:00 Registration, Networking and Food
12:00-12:15 SVASE/Startup-U Overview, Introductions, Speaker Intro
12:15-1:15 Speaker Presentation & Interactive Q&A
1:15-1:30 Networking with the presenters!

Pre-registration closes at 9 AM the day of the event.

With your help, we will start on time so the speaker can provide you with as much interactive information as possible.

Please note topics are subject to change without notice.

Official Website: http://www.svase.org/?q=node/3698