Blogs

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The Entrepreneurs Club (TEC) : Steven Blank New Book Presentation

Steve Blank is one of the rule-breakers of Silicon Valley, a co-founder of 8 startups, a lecturer at Stanford and UC Berkeley, named one of the 10 influencers of Silicon Valley, author of two books -- Four Steps to Epiphany and The Start-up Owner's Manual, and the originator of the "customer development" methodology for getting a technology startup off the ground.

For full presentation video check http://www.tecglobal.org/tec_20120503_video

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TEC World Leaders Series : Marten Mickos, MySQL/Eucalyptus/Nokia

Marten Mickos currently is the CEO of Eucalyptus Systems, the leader in open source cloud computing. Also, he has recently been nominated for the board of Directors of Nokia Corporation.

As the CEO of MySQL AB for seven years, Marten grew that company from a garage start-up to the second largest open source company in the world. After the acquisition by Sun Microsystems of MySQL AB for $1bn, he served as Senior Vice President of Sun's Database Group.

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Israel Innovation Showcase at TEC-Palo Alto

Dear Friends,

Please join us April 23 at 6pm in Palo Alto JCC to celebrate Israel's 64th birthday!

 

Come celebrate Israel's 64th birthday by attending "Israel Innovation Showcase" at the Palo Alto JCC. This special event will include demos by exciting Israeli-founded companies, VC keynotes and extensive networking with the best and brightest of Silicon Valley.

This is a unique opportunity to learn more about the exciting innovations of Israeli-founders' tech companies and to make valuable connections with key players in the industry.

Hosted and organized by TEC Club , IEFF and JHTC  with grateful thanks to sponsor Bank Leumi and the Palo Alto JCC.

Free registration : idd2012-tec.eventbrite.com

Presentations by founders/CEO of :   

 

Oren Zeev will provide opening remarks on the current state of technology investing, the JOBS bill, Israeli entrepreneurs, and provide input from his experience on how to pick winning startups.
 
Oren Zeev is a Founding Partner of Orens Capital and is focused on the internet and mobile internet spaces. Oren typically leads the rounds he invests in and plays a very active role in the companies he invests in. Oren currently serves on the boards of Chegg, Infolinks (Chairman), Duda Mobile (Chairman), Houzz, Crossrider, Tipalti, Younow and until recently Wibiya (acquired by Conduit). Oren is also a significant investor in Celltick and GT Nexus, and an early investor in Gogobot, Capriza, Spreecast and Bonobos. Oren was the lead investor in Audible (Nasdaq:ADBL, acquired by AMZN) and a significant investor in Cramster (acquired by Chegg).
Between 1995 and 2007 Oren was with Apax Partners, where he headed the US tech practice and was a member of the firm's investment committee.


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TEC Panel on Entrepreneurship (Dec 6,2011)

Participants:
Mike Cassidy, built and sold 4 companies -- Stylus Innovations, Direct Hit (built in 500 days and sold for $532M), Xfire, and Ruba (sold to Google)
Stan Chudnovsky, sold 2 companies, one for over $100M
Alex Miroshnichenko, serial entrepreneur, CTO, Virsto, the "hottest" startup in the Valley

Moderator: Ilya Strebulaev, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University

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Heidi Roizen Venture Partner DFJ at Stanford University

Heidi Roizen, one of the leading VCs in Silicon Valley, first looks for size of opportunity in startups and at the people who are developing it.

Interview by Angelika Blendstrup

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Steve Westly, CEO, The Westly Group, Selling your startup idea to Silicon Valley's VCs

Steve Westly former Controller of California and Ebay executive, now CEO of The Westly Group, gives tips on pitching to investors to international entrepreneurs in an interview with Angelika Blendstrup in 2011.

Interview by Angelika Blendstrup

 

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Eric Benhamou, CEO, Benhamou Global Ventures, Key Elements of a VC Presentation in Silicon Valley

Eric Benhamoum CEO, Benhamou Global Ventures in Interview 2011 gives tips to international entrepreneurs for their startup pitches to investors in Silicon Valley.

Interview by Angelika Blendstrup

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Pitching OpenSignalMaps at the TEC Conference

By Sina Khanifar, co-founder at OpenSignalMaps

Pitching is one of the best ways to get exposure and feedback for a startup, and if you're a founder in Silicon Valley there's no shortage of pitching opportunities at the hundreds of events that occur here each month. It's the sheer volume of events and tech-hectic buzz that make the valley an entrepreneurial mecca, but pitching too often and attending too many events can become a dangerous distraction, sucking away time from the more important job of building an awesome product.

This means that founders have to be selective, choosing the opportunities will get them the best exposure to investors and honest, constructive feedback. With VC luminaries like Pitch Johnson, Tim Draper, Saeed Amidi, and Daniel Zimmerman as speakers and judges, the TEC conference is undoubtedly one of the best events out there. The emphasis on international startups, who are often pitching in the valley for the first time, draws a crowd that's eager and interested, and the quality of both the pitching companies and the feedback from the panel is of the highest order.

The incredible roster of VCs and founders who attend the TEC Conference is testament to how deeply connected Stas and Anna are in the valley. But what's even more impressive is the lengths that Stas and Anna will go to help the startups who attend TEC. I've pitched at numerous events, but this was the first time that one of the organizers took the time to review the presentation before the event and offer feedback. And since Stas now knew and understood exactly what OpenSignalMaps does, he was able to make some great introductions at the event itself.

Eminent speakers, judges, and attendees are rare enough as it is, but organizers that actually care about the companies that pitch are what make TEC that rarest of all things: a pitching opportunity that more than justifies taking a break from improving your startup's product. 

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TEC Weekend Reading 2011-10-01

Business

15 Startups With $100 Million+ Valuations That Hardly Existed Last Year
http://read.bi/qDioRF

What Steve Jobs Taught Me About Growth - Nilofer Merchant - Harvard Business Review
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/09/what_steve_jobs_taught_me_abou.html

The New Social Network: Who’s Nearby, Not Who You Know
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/16/the-new-social-network-whos-nearby-not-who-you-know/

CHART OF THE DAY: 18-24 Year Olds Send 55 Texts Per Day On Average
http://www.businessinsider.com/18-24-texting-2011-9


Technology
Can Drumbi change the telephone?
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/09/12/drumbi-reinventing-phone-calls-by-giving-them-a-subject-line/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHZkJvwpp2E

Virtual monkeys write Shakespeare
The best ever demonstration of the Cloud Computing business opportunities: virtual monkey simulate Shakespeare for $20 a day....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15060310

Investigation: Is Your SSD More Reliable Than A Hard Drive? - SSD Reliability: Is Your Data Really Safe?
http://m.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923.html


General

Israel’s top 45inventions
http://israel21c.org/technology/israels-top-45-greatest-inventions-of-all-time

Pages

What They Say About Us

"The wonderful thing about entrepreneurs is that their passion for starting new companies transcends languages and geographic boundaries."

Ron Conway, Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds, early stage investor in Google and PayPal

"Networking is very important for start-ups. The challenge for them is often not money: it is mentoring and finding people who can give good advice from experience."

Esther Dyson, Founder, EDventure Holdings

"This conference is clearly a labor of love for a group of dedicated professionals who care deeply about the Eastern European entrepreneurs. From the value-packed educational panels, to the star-studded key note speakers' line up, to an amazing quantity of venture capitalists – this is a not to be missed event for any high tech entrepreneur,"

Richard Guha, President of the Marketing Executives Network and Managing Partner at MaxBrandEquity

"As Stanford MBA students, we were exposed to a lot of VC firms both from the Valley and abroad. It is at Stanford that we met Anna Dvornikova, an absolutely amazing business leader and (by our big luck) our friend, who was the center of the Russian Silicon Valley professional community, and was doing a huge work to connect Russia and the Valley. Anna helped us a lot with kick-starting Wikimart, put us to our first-ever conference, introduced us to most of Russian VCs. And all that happened in a very short time span! It was the beginning of a six-month journey that despite the particularly tough times resulted in an extraordinarily group of investors backing our start-up."

Maxim Faldin and Kamil Kurmakayev,
co-CEOs, Wikimart