CoolTech Club with Katya Puzyrko : Can the Internet that got us here take us there?

WHEN

December 20,2007

WHAT

  • -The Brief History of Evolution of Internet Infrastructure - how it all started and why it ended up the way it is now-Challenges for providing hard QoS for interactive media services (voice,video, gaming)on today's networks
  • -Why Best Effort Packet Netwoks? What are advantages and limitations? What are other approaches for building Internet and do they work?
  • -What is Flow State Aware Technology, how it works, advantages and disadvanages.
  • -New International standards that emerge to solve current QoS issues
  • -What can happen next? Can we make the Internet Smarter?

CoolTech Club with Igor Plotnikov : Pioneering SSL VPNs - technological lesson from successful startup founder

WHEN

September 5,2007

WHAT

Dr. Plotnikov presents in-depth technical and business review of SSL VPNs - innovative network security technology he pioneered with his uRoam startup.
By leveraging the ubiquity, extensibility, ease of use of the web browser as a client, and the robustness of https protocol as a transport, SSL VPNs (Secure Sockets Layer Virtual Private Networks) deliver a comprehensive set of tools to cover wide range of user scenarios from occasional Intranet access to enterprise-scale remote access solutions with load balancing, failover, and fine-grained access-controls.

In conclusion, Dr. Plotnikov discuss useful lessons to learn from uRoam history of conception, founding and funding, growth and successful acquisition by one of the best network equipment companies.

CoolTech Club with Paul Santinelli : SILIWOOD: Navigating Digital Media.

WHEN

August 2,2007

WHAT

As Silicon Valley continues to take on Hollywood, there are obvious (an not so obvious) limitations to technology's approach on conquering an age-old business. Paul Santinelli of North Bridge Venture Partners will be with us to discuss content creation, intellectual property and the impacts of technology on Hollywood.

CoolTech Club with Gili Raanan : Building companies in the US with an Israeli base

WHEN

June 13, 2007

WHAT

Gili Raanan will talk about his successful experience of building 2 new VC backed ventures (nLayers Inc, and Sanctum Inc), and selling them eventually. The discussion would cover the challenges of operating in the US market while having a major non-US group (in this case Israel based R&D group), considerations before forming similar companies, and a proposed empiric model to decide when to scale up the Sales team, and the rest of the US based operation, avoiding some common mistakes.

CoolTech Club with Dan Avida And Serge Plotkin : Building Fast Growth Companies: Learn from those who did it!

WHEN

March 26, 2007

WHAT

Building great companies take skill, experience and luck. Dan Avida led EFI through years of fast growth and with Serge Plotkin, a professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, co-founded Decru, which was later acquired by Network Appliance.

Dan and Serge will talk about their experiences and discuss the key steps of building successful companies, from inception and funding to a successful exit.

CoolTech Club with Jerry Weissman : Power Presentaion!

WHEN

January 18,2007

WHAT

There are five essential factors necessary for every presentation:

  • Story Development
  • Graphics Design
  • Delivery Skills
  • Tools of the presentation trade
  •   Questions and Answers

In this keynote speech, Jerry Weissman presents selected techniques to help your audience learn about each of the factors. This speech is illustrated with examples from his world-famous client base.

CoolTech Club Experts Panel : Start-up Building Strategies - From an Idea to Launch

WHEN

October 19,2006

WHAT

Ori Cohen: High level tips for entrepreneurs that are in pre-funding and immediate-post-funding stages of a technology start up. Practical ideas for VC fund raising and company setup are listed. (PDF)

Abigail Johnson: Typically, most people think about public relations exclusively as a tactical activity designed to get "ink" for a company for very short term reasons. This presentation makes the the case that public relations and strategic communications is critical to a start up company from the beginning because it should be focused on establishing a unique, leadership position. With such leadership comes a halo-effect that benefits the company across the board and for the long term. (PDF)

Paul A. Santinelli: How do you REALLY attract venture capital !!! (PDF)

CoolTech Club with Allan Leinwand : Open Source Comes to Networking: Fusion or Fission?

WHEN

September 18,2006

WHAT

When the Internet was first created, open-source infrastructure was the norm. Somewhere along the way, closed-source products started to dominate the landscape. Vyatta is working to restore the open environment and culture of the Internet's past by developing a line of enterprise-grade, open-source, network infrastructure products, including routers and firewalls. Allan will discuss the pioneering efforts toward delivering open-source networking products and solutions to the enterprise.

CoolTech Club with Alan Shalloway : The Business Case For Agility - The Lean - Agile Connection

WHEN

July 12,2006

WHAT

Agile methods center on building systems a piece at a time. The reasons for doing this are typically centered around the challenges of running a project through a predictive process. Lean provides another compelling reason to deliver software in stages -- to give the most value to the customer as soon as possible. By delivering value in stages you not only give the customer value quickly, but you can use the process to not build things that aren't needed and to eliminate waste in the requirements/analysis phases of the project.

This seminar discusses these issues by presenting the main principles of Lean Software Development while illustrating why and how to deliver value quickly. It then briefly mentions what development teams must learn in order to do this in a sustained manner.

CoolTech Club with Tobias Mayer : Management by Consensus – A Manager’s Guide to Scrum

WHEN

June 7.2006

WHAT

Scrum is an agile, lightweight process that can be used to manage and control software and product development using iterative, incremental practices. Wrapping existing engineering practices, including Extreme Programming and RUP, Scrum generates the benefits of agile development with the advantages of a simple implementation. Scrum is practiced now at thousands of software companies world wide, and its adoption rate is continuing to grow.

This session provides a high-level introduction to Agile Software Development and Scrum. The first part of the talk will focus on what Agile is and where it came from. The second part looks at the Scrum methodology, which is a concrete implementation of the core Agile principles.

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What They Say About Us

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

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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