Author: Alon

We are super-excited and extremely lucky to be joined by this rockstar lineup of Venture Capitalists for our Demo Night.  Read about them below and RSVP NOW!

Each panel of judges will also be joined by a rep from Stradling and Montectito Bank & Trust, our top sponsors!

Matt McCall – Pritzker Group

Matthew McCall is a Partner at Pritzker Group Venture Capital and was formerly a Partner with DFJ Portage. McCall has been involved with investments in Analyte Health, AwesomenessTV (acquired by DreamWorks), Beachmint, BrightTag, Cognitive Concepts (acquired by Houghton Mifflin), Eved, EverDream (acquired by Dell), Feedburner (acquired by Google), FindTheBest, Imago Scientific (acquired by Ametek), Lefthand Networks (acquired by HP), Performics (acquired by Doubleclick/Google), Playdom (acquired by Disney), SMS-Assist, Siimpel (acquired by Tessera), SimpleTV and TicketsNow (acquired by Ticketmaster).

McCall has been honored on Crain’s annual “40 under 40” list of leading people under age 40 and their top Tech 25 list. He has been named as one of the Top 100 VCs in the U.S., a Media 100 and a Hollywood 100 Power Player. He has keynoted or been a panelist at over 100 conferences and events nationwide. He is the Founder & Trustee of the McCall Family Foundation, focused on encouraging social entrepreneurship and global human/girls’ rights. He has served on numerous regional high technology advisory boards. He is the author of a popular venture blog, www.VCConfidential.com.

Previous to 1995, McCall worked in the Boston Consulting Group’s Chicago office, where he managed consulting and client teams on projects in the telecommunications, health-care and financial services industries. During and after college, McCall worked for Bankers Trust in Merchant Banking as well as at Merrill Lynch and U.S. Trust.

McCall holds a B.A. in economics and history from Williams College and an M.B.A. with Honors from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He also holds a Master in Manufacturing Management from Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering.

Mark Mullen – Double M Partners

Mark is the Founder and the largest investor in Double M Partners, LP I and II, both early stage venture capital funds with 60 total investors.  He is also Founder and the largest investor in Mull Capital, an evergreen fund that invests directly in startups and in other investment funds www.mullcapital.com.  All of the funds focus on investing in Internet, Media and Communications Infrastructure with primary focus on business to business solutions, software and technology.

Double M Fund I was formed in 2012 and holds 20 Investments in the US and Canada with notable exits to date, including Lettuce which sold to Intuit and Gradient X to SingTel.  Double M Fund II was formed in 2014 and holds 19 Investments in the US.  Mull Capital has made 20 investments since 1998 and has exited eight companies returning more than 8x invested capital to date, including MessageLabs which was sold to Symantec for $700 million, Clearwire (IPO) and Edgecast to Verizon for $400 million.  In his capacity at the Funds, Mark has held board seats at Kaleo Software, MomentFeed and MindClick and is a Board Advisor to ChowNow, Prevoty, Mover, Connectivity, DropPoint, Yoi Corp, Akanda and OpenDrives.

In 1993, Bill Daniels (Known as the Father of Cable TV in the US) hired Mark to build his international M&A and investment group.   He rose to partner at Daniels and was instrumental in its 2007 sale to RBC Capital Markets as one of Daniels’ senior bankers.  Between 1993 and 2010, he and his  team closed more than 100 M&A and private equity transactions ranging from more than $10 billion to less than $10 million advising clients such as Carlyle, Altice, Liberty Global, Providence Equity and Cinven to name a few.  This included deals in 17 countries in North America, Europe and Asia in a wide range of industries including Broadband and Cable TV, Mobile, Internet, Data and Telephony services, Digital Media and Satellite TV.

Upon retiring from RBC in 2010 as head of RBC Daniels’ European Media and Telecom investment banking group, Mark was appointed COO of the City of Los Angeles’ Economic Office and Senior Advisor to former Mayor Villaraigosa in efforts to streamline the government and utilize, manage and grow LA’s economic opportunities.  Mark oversaw several of the City’s assets including Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and the LA Convention Center.  Additionally he oversaw the Planning and Building & Safety Departments, the Office of Small Business Services and was also responsible for corporate business development for the City as a key liaison with the private sector.

Prior to joining Daniels, Mark worked from 1986-1990 in portfolio management and commercial banking with Janus Capital, Colorado National Bank and Sierra Capital, where he worked on debt financings and private and public equity placements.

Mark attended the University of Michigan (1982-84) and earned his degree in Business Administration cum laude from the University of Denver in 1986.  In 1992 he received an MBA in international business from the Thunderbird School of Global Management.

Mark has lived and worked in San Francisco, Paris, London, Denver and New York City and currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

Richard Wolpert – Amplify, HelloTech and Accel Partners

A pioneer in the fields of technology, consumer digital media and entertainment for more than 25 years. Extensive experience as an executive, entrepreneur and as an investor.

Responsible for many “firsts” throughout his career including: conceiving of and teaching the first Macintosh Programming Class at Stanford University (CS 193C), the first multi-user address book for the Macintosh (TouchBase), the first kids internet subscription service (Disney’s Daily Blast), the first Tivo-like product for the Internet Radio (BitBop Tuner), the first legitimate music subscription service for the Internet (MusicNet), and the first legitimate online movie subscription service (Starz! On Demand). Successfully negotiated ground breaking deals with several of the major media companies whose content became the basis for many of these products

As an investor, managed personal investment fund, Chance Technologies (1995 to Present), served as an advisor to Accel Partners (2006 to Present), served as a partner at the Yucaipa Companies (1998 to 2000), and served as the Managing Director or the Mail Room Fund (2008 to 2010). Invested in more than 30 companies, a large percentage of which have had successful exits or continue on as successful companies, including: AdECN, AMG, AndroMedia, AudioMill, Data Sage, GameFly, GameSpy, Kongregate, Mob.ly, People Support, Smilebox, Sometrics, Three Rings, Scopely, PlayDek, and Universal Audio.

Peter Williams – ACE Portal

Peter Williams is Founder and CEO of ACE Portal (ACE), a leading transaction management platform for private placements of equity, debt and other securities.

Peter was named to the 2013 Investment News Power 20 – the 20 individuals around the globe expected to have the greatest impact on the financial advisor community in the coming year.

Previously, Peter was an investment banker at DLJ/Credit Suisse and CIBC, where he was involved in transactions with an aggregate value in excess of $15 billion for a diverse group of companies. He sits on the board of Legumex Walker Inc (TSX Ticker: LWP) an agriculture processing company he helped create as a principal.

Williams earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Queen’s University and an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business.

Buck Jordan – Canyon Creek Capital

Buck founded Canyon Creek Capital in 2010 and has over 10 years of experience in finance, media, consulting and M&A. The firm initially provided early stage advisory services to companies looking to expand market share, re-evaluate company strategy and raise capital but quickly moved on to deploying its first fund in 2011. Buck has become known for producing top of market due diligence and providing a tremendous amount of value for his portfolio companies. He is an advisor to several start-ups in the community, received his MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and is a former Army Captain and Blackhawk Pilot.

David Cremin – FrontierVC

David Cremin is a founder and Managing Director of Frontier, a Draper Network partner fund and early stage venture capital firm focused on west coast media and information services investments. Based in Los Angeles, he leads fund management, fundraising and portfolio management for Frontier. Prior to Frontier, he was a founding partner of Zone Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm. Mr. Cremin has raised over $200 million in venture capital partnerships and helped lead investments in over sixty companies, including Divx Networks (NASDAQ:DIVX), and Clear Access, sold to Cisco in 2012. He previously served as Founder and CEO of Vis-à-Vis Entertainment, a music publishing and digital media company. He spent several years touring as a professional musician and recording artist for RCA Records, Atlantic Records, Elektra Records and EastWest Records. Mr. Cremin has taught business feasibility as an adjunct professor at UC Santa Barbara and California Polytechnic San Luis Obispo. He holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University.

The following article is an article that I wrote that was just published in the winter edition of the Conejo View.  Check it out and please share!

We live in a time, where geographic location means less and less to a business owner, especially in tech.  You can easily run an online, international business out of your house.  But even so, the perception is that if you aren’t launching your tech startup out of one of the worlds top tech hubs, it’s going to be an uphill battle, and you’re not going to be as successful.  Hiring engineers, designers, salespeople and other talent that have a core understanding of the industry will be tough.  Investors will be harder to come by, and getting the attention of a non-local investor will be difficult.

That might be the common perception, but it is very far from the truth.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both sides of this premise, and I could easily argue both of them, but there’s no need to, because we win no matter what.  Why?  Because we live in the 805.  We get the best of both worlds.

For the second year in a row, the tech community in Los Angeles, or Silicon Beach as they like to call it, has been ranked the third best startup ecosystem in the world.  The rankings are based on various criteria like access to capital, talent and of course, performance.  LA was only beat out by Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv.

One of my biggest pet peeves used to be when a great company from our area got lumped in as an LA based company.  It happens all the time.  For example, when Lynda.com recently sold to LinkedIn for $1.5 Billion Dollars, many reported it as “Los Angeles based Lynda.com sells…”  Not really that huge of a deal, but I find myself constantly defending this area to folks who feel they don’t have a choice but to relocate.  Most don’t even realize that many great startups call this area home, and many great success stories they have heard about were from this area.  Did you realize Lynda.com came out of Ojai and Carpinteria?  Did you realize that Estify based in Agoura Hills, Clutter whose founder is based in Westlake Village and Trackr from Santa Barbara are just 3 of many local up-and-coming companies that have raised millions of dollars from some of LA, Silicon Valley and New York’s most prominent Venture Capitalists?  They’re here, they’re kicking butt, and you can too.

We recently held an event with some of the area’s most well connected, well respected and most successful investors.  They collectively represented funds or groups worth hundreds of millions of dollars.  We talked about our local tech community and realized that our biggest problems are the same problems facing any startup community.  Then we discussed how to address them.  Talent was top of everyone’s list.  If we can’t hire engineers, we can’t scale or grow our tech companies.  We talked about (the lack of) engineering schools in the area, we talked about how we’re just not cool enough to attract the younger crowd and we also discussed the size of the talent pool.  But the truth is, the places that have the most engineers, also have the most demand for engineers and also have the most employee churn or turnover.  It’s why you see billboards in San Francisco advertising open positions at big companies.  We may not have as large a pool, but we also don’t need as many engineers, they cost less to hire (from a recruitment standpoint) and they stick with your company longer.  We also learned at the event that around half of the 250 folks in attendance were engineers that don’t commute, work at large organizations and that they were older on average than most expected.

What I learned from that event is not that we are lacking the talent or that engineering schools are a problem (although they could be an asset and I would love to see one at CLU and/or CSUCI), it’s that we need to build a culture around startups and build an awareness around the local startup community.  The engineers were already at the event, so they understand the potential for exponential growth that comes with startup success, but what they need to know is that if they quit their cushy job at a local large organization to join a startup, if it fails, there will be another one waiting for them around the bend.

Does it matter that we’re not in LA?  Not to outsiders who think we are in LA.  Does it matter to us?  Yes!  We get a better quality of life, more bang for our buck when it comes to real estate (for the most part) and a usable school system for our children.

The truth is, this conversation effects every one of our businesses.  The lines are blurred and some of the biggest “tech” startups are not what you would traditionally label tech.  They’re not all Pinterest or Facebook or Instagram.  They’re subscription razor blades, car services and fashion startups.  But to scale and grow your company in this day and age, you need to do it online.  805 Startups is the place to meet the folks who are doing it, and could help you do it too.

If you own a company, want to start a company, are a techie, have a child who’s a techie, want to meet a techie or are interested in the nerdy stuff we talk about at our events, come join us at 805STARTUPS.COM.