2011 Speaker will be announced soon.
Our 2010 Speaker Series
Startup Roots is about full immersion into the world of Startups and we fully believe that involves a strong network and cohort of peers and mentors.
That's why a major part of a Startup Roots Fellows' experience is the Speaker Series, where each week we bring together all the Startup Roots Fellows
to meet, network and learn from fellow entrepreneurs and venture professionals. We will be inviting many prominent company founders and CEOs who
will share their experiences and learnings, hoping to inspire the fellows down a similar track.
Our Speakers
Steve Blank
Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur and has been a founder or participant in eight Silicon Valley startups since 1978. After he retired, he wrote a book about building early stage companies: Four Steps to the Epiphany. He's moved from being an entrepreneur to teaching entrepreneurship to both undergraduate and graduate students at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford University and the Columbia University/Berkeley Joint Executive MBA program. The “Customer Development” model that he developed in his book is one of the core themes for these classes. In 2009 he was awarded the Stanford University Undergraduate Teaching Award in the department of Management Science and Engineering.
More info: Crunchbase Profile
Larry Chiang
Hi there, I am Larry Chiang--I had friends who didn't know what I knew about credit card credit scores and decided to do something about it. I started a business out of my dorm room by collecting Deep Underground Credit Knowledge (DUCK) into a controversial site: www.Duck9.com and preaching it to sorority houses. I am very good in front of a room full of women.
Duck9 breaks-down the mysterious FICO credit score and graduates people with a score in the 90th percentile. Fair Isaac hates me but the holes in the credit system are meant for smart, young, savvy college students to benefit from.
I also scandalously wrote a sequel to a book I did not write... that became a NY Times bestseller: "What They Don't Teach You At Stanford Business School". It's a book about sales, entrepreneurship and character compassing people. My mentor, Mark McCormack wrote, "What They Don't Teach You At Harvard Business School" that was a bestseller for over 10 years in 1983. His book was awesome and helped me a TON.
My writing centers around mentorship: whether you’re building a business or improving your credit score, it is easier to do with a mentor.
One of my proudest achievements was to testify in Congress on behalf of the financial services industry. Congressman Tom Campbell also wrote the foreword for my last book, "Internet Marketing Secrets". For fun, I crash campus gyms to play basketball, write, coach entrepreneurs, and sneak into dorm cafeterias. Invite me to your house for dinner and I’ll entertain with stories of credit… my email is chiang9@duck9.com
Jeff Clavier
Based in Palo Alto, California, Jean-Francois “Jeff” Clavier is the Founder and Managing Partner of SoftTech VC, one of the most active seed stage investors
in Web 2.0 startups. Since 2004, Jeff has invested in more than 70 consumer Internet companies in areas like social media, communities, search, gaming or consumer
infrastructure, almost exclusively in Silicon Valley. With over 20 years of operational, entrepreneurial and venture capital experience, Jeff is able to
add relevant perspective and value to his companies as they grow from inception to maturity, and hopefully, success.
In 2007, Jeff was recognized as one of the 13 “Web 2.0 King Makers” by (late) Business 2.0, and in 2008, BusinessWeek named him one of "The 25 Most Influential People on the Web". He is often noted for his investments in categories such as “passion-centric communities” or online gaming, or for having sold a number of his Web 2.0 startups to the likes of Yahoo, AOL, Intuit or more recently Twitter.
More info: Crunchbase Profile
Ann Miura-Ko
Ann Miura-Ko is a partner at Maples Investments where her investment interests include capitally efficient software and technology enabled services.
In addition to serving at Maples Investments, Ann is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Management Science and Engineering Department at Stanford University, where her research focuses on mathematical modeling of computer security. As a part of the program, she teaches several courses in Stanford's renowned Technology Ventures Program, including Technology Venture Formation, High-tech Entrepreneurship, and the Mayfield Fellows Program. She has helped graduate engineering students develop business plans for new technology products or services they have developed while studying at Stanford, and many of her students have gone on to secure Angel and VC funding for their ideas.
More info: Profile
Robert Scoble
Robert
Scoble is a well-known technology blogger/ evangelist and author. Scoble is best known for his blog, Scobleizer,
which came to prominence during his tenure as a technical evangelist at Microsoft. He currently works for Rackspace and is building a
community for people fanatical about the Internet called Building
43. He previously worked for Fast Company as a video blogger. He is also the co-author of Naked
Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers with Shel Israel.
More info: Tumblr Profile
Hiten Shah
Hiten Shah is a co-founder of KISSMetrics, a metrics solution designed for developers, marketers and product managers. KISSMetrics boasts a list of investors that is any
startup's dream, including including Polaris Ventures, True Ventures, SoftTech VC, Felicis Ventures, Dave McClure, Shervin Pishevar and Bobby Yazdani. Hiten graduated from UC Berkeley in 2003. Since then he has been engulfed in the Internet
marketing world. He first started off with offering SEO and SEM services by co-founding Advantage Consulting Services and helping to write ACS’s company blog, Pronet Advertising. Soon after he saw the need for better Internet marketing tools
and started creating web applications including Crazy Egg, Siteblimp, and Serph. More recently along with his partners at ACS, he has been focusing on providing Social Media Marketing solutions for companies of all sizes. More info: Crunchbase Profile
Vivek Wadhwa
Senior Research Associate, Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School; Executive in Residence/Adjunct Professor, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University.
Vivek Wadhwa is an Executive in Residence/Adjunct Professor for the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University and a Wertheim Fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. A technology entrepreneur and a columnist for BusinessWeek.com, he leads groundbreaking research into globalization and the state of U.S. competitiveness. Wadhwa was named a "Leader of Tomorrow" by Forbes.com, and his company, Relativity Technologies, was named as one of the 25 "coolest" companies in the world by Fortune magazine. Wadhwa received a bachelor's degree in computing studies from the University of Canberra (Australia) and an M.B.A. from New York University.
More info: Crunchbase Profile