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fnMentoring functions accelerate your startup and expand your high-tech network through mentoring sessions with founders and featured guest experts. Functions are free to members but require your RSVP. If you are not a member you can apply here. Next week’s featured guest will be:
Name: Dr. Ronald Weissman
Dr. Ronald Weissman of Band of Angels
Background: Dr. Ronald Weissman has more than twenty-five years of experience in
technology investment and management. In 2000 he became a partner at Apax
Partners, a leader in global venture capital and private equity. At Apax, he
focused on early-stage software investing, participated in numerous
cross-border deals, particularly for European companies moving to Silicon
Valley. After Apax’s transition out of venture capital, he continued to
consult for the firm by managing its legacy venture technology portfolio.
Through Apax and his own angel activity Ron has invested in or advised more
than 60 companies and has served on more than 25 early and mid-stage company
Boards. His current investment focus is on software, analytics, SaaS, text
technologies and healthcare IT. His most recent angel investments include
Care In Sync (healthcare patient management), Practice Fusion (electronic
medical records), Trustnode (insurance enrollment), Jbara (customer
installed base optimization), Sonim (ruggedized cell phones) and Taulia
(dynamic invoicing and payment management).
He is currently a Director of Attensity (text analytics), CenterBeam
(managed desktop services), Chiliad (high performance search), Composite
Software (data virtualization), Metavana (Chairman, sentiment analysis),
Host Analytics (Chairman, corporate performance management), Pictage (online
wedding photography), Planview (enterprise planning), Transera (call center
optimization) and Trustnode.
Prior to Apax, he was Vice President of Strategy and Marketing for Verity, a
leader in corporate information retrieval. During his tenure, Verity’s
executive team earned the Large Company Turnaround of the Year award (1999)
from the Turnaround Management Association; Verity gained dominant market
share and saw its market capitalization grow from $50 million to more than
$1.5 billion. Before joining Verity, Ron spent more than five years working
for Steve Jobs at NeXT Computer, where he managed European and corporate
marketing. Prior to his work in Silicon Valley, he ran academic computing at
Brown University and at the University of Maryland, where he was Associate
Professor of History. He is the author of numerous works on the history of
Florence during the Renaissance.
Company: The Band of Angels is Silicon Valley’s oldest seed funding organization. We are a formal group of more than 150 former and current high tech executives who are interested in investing their time and money into new, cutting edge, startup companies. We’ve seeded over 225 companies in our history with 50 profitable M&A exits and 10 Nasdaq IPOs. Band members have founded companies such as Symantec, Logitech, and National Semiconductor and been senior executives at the likes of Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard, and Intuit.
The Band meets monthly to formally consider three startups selected from among the more than 50 that are screened each month by the Band Deal Selection Process. Entrepreneurs can expect a thorough examination and, occasionally, an investment from some of Silicon Valley’s most accomplished entrepreneurs.
fnMentoring is on Wednesday February 5th beginning at 10:30 am PST. RSVP here to participate in this event.
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