Keynote Speaker:

Joshua Baer, Capital Factory

Mr. Baer is the Founder and CEO of OtherInbox - the cure for email overload. Joshua is a widely recognized email marketing pioneer with a unique combination of technical, business and legal experience. A serial entrepreneur and angel investor, Joshua serves on the Board of Directors of Greenlig and Lashback and is an advisor to Datran Media and Sympact. Joshua blogs ar Austinpreneur.com and Deliverability.com.

Joshua founded SKYLIST in 1996 in his college dormitory as a one of the first email marketing companies. In 2004, Joshua created UnsubCentral to help email marketing companies comply with regulatory requirements. Both companies became top ranked solutions in their respective categories, winning customers such as Boston Globe, Disney, Microsoft and Nascar before he sold them.

Joshua has helped many other entrepreneurs get their start-ups off the ground such as Bazaarvoice and Rackspace Hosting's Mosso. Other companies in Joshua's portfolio includes B-Side Entertainment, BitArmos, DisplayPoints, Fynanz, ME Television, OneSpot, ShangBy, Small World Labs, The Grove Wine Bar, URaPI, and Zivity.

In 1998, Joshua co-authores RFC 2369 which today is used by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. He has been quoted in the New York Times and many other publications, testified before the Federal Trade Commission and various state governments about email legislation and is a frequent public speaker. Joshua holds a BS in Computer Science and Information Decision Systems from Carnegie Mellon University.

Joshua lives in Austin, TX with his wife Amy, daughter and two dogs.

Panel Discussion: Angels - What it takes to get their wings:

Frank Peters, The Frank Peters Show

Years ago Frank founded Plaid Brothers Software which developed portfolio management systems for Wall Street. After bootsrapping the company for 15 years he sold it in 1998 to Sungard Data System. Since then, he has invested in more than 30 early-stage companies.

Frank serves on the board of The Claire Trevor School of the Arts at UC Irvine and is Chairman Emeritus of the Tech Coast Angels in Los Angeles. Frank in a profilic podcaster; check ou the Fran PetersShow: Startup Stories in Angel Investing and Venture Capital. Due in part to these efforts, Frank was named the Hisg -Impact Person of the Year at the 2008 Orange County, California High-Tech Innovation Awards.

Mic Williams, Boston Harbor Angels

Mic (Michael) Williams has been an investor for over 34 years. Whereas his primary investments and have been in commercial real estate; his previous private investments have included manufacturing, mining, movies, lumber products, ships and a television enterprise. Since he founded the Boston chapter of Keiretsu Forum in 2004 and then Boston Harbor Angels in 2006. He has invested in eleven of the “portfolio” companies.

He has served on many, public, private, and charitable boards including United Way (a past Campaign Chairman, Tucson) Boy Scouts, YMCA and the International Boys Club (NYC).

He spent 18 years with Coldwell Banker Commercial Group as a salesman, CA.; VP Resident Manager, AZ; and SVP Regional Manager, Board member in NY.,NJ.,CT. He left to join Aries Enterprises as President of a large scale land development company in Colorado and Arizona and involved in the planning, development and sales of major planned communities. He was a Managing Director of Landauer (a NY real estate consulting firm) and also provided real estate investment banking services with a small private firm in NYC.

He continues to do real estate investing, consulting, and funds raising for commercial real estate projects. Mr. Williams has been a featured speaker in the US, UK, Asia, and Africa on real estate and more recently featured in different venues as a speaker, moderator and panelist on “angel investing”.

His real estate views have been quoted in such publications as the WSJ, NYTimes, LATimes, Barrons, and Business Week.

 

Christian Meade, Mexico Angels Ventures

Christian is a co-founder of Angel Ventures Mexico.

Prior to AVM, Christian worked as a consultant for Innovest Strategic Value Advisors in Toronto and Paris. He is author of more than 30 publications including a book, and co-developed the Inter-American Development Bank’s first “Bottom of the Pyramid Index” and the SNV Netherlands Development Organization’s Inclusive Business Index. He has also been a law professor at Tec de Monterrey and Universidad Marista.

Christian holds a law degree from ITAM and an MBA from the Schulich School of Business.

 

Corporate Venturing: A mutual beneficial partnership

Blake Modersizky, UV Partners

Blake Modersitzki joined UV Partners in 2002 and has been in the venture capital industry since 1997. Mr. Modersitzki brings seventeen years of entrepreneurial venture, and industry operating experice in infrastructure software, internet, communications, wireless, and e-commerce software. He has backed and/or served on the board of directors of more than thirty emerging technology companies including: Bowstreet (acquired by IBM), Business Layers (acquired by Netegrity), Caldera Systems (IPO), enCommerce (acquired by Entrust), GlobalCast (acquired by Talarian), Indus River Networks (acquired by Enterasys), Netfish Technologies (acquire by IONA), NetObjects (IPO), Oblix (acquire by Oracle), Orbital Software (IPO on LSE), Red Hat Software (IPO), TurboLinux (IPO in Japan), and WR Hambrecht & Co.

Mr. Modersitzki started his venture capital career at Novell, Inc., a leading networking infrastructure cpmpany, as the Vice President of Novell Ventures and Strategic Business Development. In this role, Mr. Modersitzki was responsible for leading all direct and fund-of-funds investment activities and setting strategy for Novell's venture capital, private equity, and business development direction. Mr. Modersitzki also held a number of positions in corporate development, product management, and sales and marketing at Novell. Prior to Novell, he worked for WordPerfect Corporation managing global sales, channel sales, and marketing activities.

Mr. Modersitzki has been a board member of UV III portfolio companies Cogito, Confluent (acquired by Oblix), Riverbed Technology (IPO), Strix Systems. And UV IV portfolio companies Infopia and M-Facor. He is a member of the advisory board of Cougar Capital, the venture capital fund ar Brigham Young University where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Economics.

 

From Bootstrapping to Venture Capital

 

Brian Halligan, HubSpot

Prior to starting HubSpot, Brian worked as a venture partner at Longworth Ventures where he worked with many small businesses helping them build scalable sales and marketing machines.  Brian spent 4 years at Groove Networks where he joined pre-revenue as VP of Sales and grew the business to a $20m annual rate until being acquired by Microsoft.  Prior to Groove Networks, Brian worked at Parametric Technology Corporation where he worked in a variety of sales, marketing, and channels functions for over a decade. Brian's most interesting role at PTC was in starting the Pacific Rim organization while living in Hong Kong in 1993.  Five years later, Brian was SVP of the Pacific Rim for PTC where he built an $80 million business and had 200 employees.