WHEN

March 26,2009

WHAT

An exclusive CoolTechClub/AmBAR event and a rare opportunity to hear one of the most successful "serial" entrepreneurs coming out of Russia -- Sergei Beloussov - delivering a candid discourse on a variety of subjects including current state of software development, virtualization, storage management, venture capital, education, "culture management" and the art of "using brains".

WHEN

January 13,2009

WHAT

Bootstrapping is a term used to cover different methods for avoiding using the financial resources of external investors. While bootstrapping involves a risk for the founders, the absence of any other stakeholder gives the founders more freedom to develop the company.
Wikipedia.

With looming financial crisis and total disarray of local Venture Capital, do startups have any sound alternative but just roll over and die quietly?

How about good old , but somehow forgotten, "bootstrapping" strategy ? Thomas Edison , Alexander Bell and Michael Dell didn't spend to much time waiting for "Sand Hill Road" to get up to speed, aren't they? Is it still possible to build successful companies without VC backing in our times?

CoolTech Club presents a panel of three distinguished Club members who have personal experience of building successful Silicon Valley companies with "no VCs money down". They gracefully agreed to share with us their stories, strategies, advantages and pitfalls of bootstrapping, and so on.

WHEN

December 16,2008

Dr. Boaz Ganor is the Associate Dean of the Lauder School of Government, the founder and Executive Director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), and the head of the Homeland Security Studies Programs at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya, Israel. He is also the founder and Chairman of the International Academic Counter Terrorism Community (ICTAC).

At Present Dr. Ganor is a Koret Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and teaching graduate counter terrorism courses at Stanford University - International Relations program, as well as graduate courses at Goldman public policy school at UC Berkeley.

Dr. Ganor has published numerous articles on terrorism and counter-terrorism. His latest book, The Counter-Terrorism Puzzle – A guide for decision makers (Transaction Publishers, 2005), is being used as a text book in many universities worldwide. He is also editor of Post Modern Terrorism, (Transaction Publishers, 2006) and co-editor of Trends in International Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism (2007), and of Hypermedia Seduction for Terrorist Recruiting (NATO Science for Peace and Security Series: Human and Societal Dynamics, Volume 25, 2007).

WHEN

August 21,2008

WHAT

Peer-to-Peer applications became a major factor in the Internet traffic consumption, making major ISPs worry about sustainability of their business.

In his presentation, Stas Khirman reviews recent statistics and makes speculations about future of P2P, Internet and ISPs businesses. Topics to be covered:

• What is the overall P2P impact on the global infrastructure of the Internet?
• Worldwide, how many people are using P2P applications?
• What are most “popular” P2P applications?
• What types of contents are shared by P2P?
• What can we learn from P2P trends?
• What should ISPs do to survive?

WHEN

May 22,2008

WHAT

Tim Wilson, a General Partner at Partech International, will cover

• what sectors and geographies are attracting venture money?
• What are some of the underlying assumptions/trends behind the numbers?
• Looking forward, can we predict/forecast changes that would lead to new sectors becoming “hot” or “not?”

WHEN

May 1,2008

WHAT

Panel of Top Executives and Venture Capitalists discuss success stories of Israeli high-tech companies.

Participants:

• Boaz Chalamish - SVP & GM, Mercury Interactive/ HP
• Ravi Mhatre - Partner & Founder, Lightspeed Venture Partners
• Eitan Bek - Partner, Pitango Venture Capital
• Ofer Vilenski - Founder & CEO (former), Jungo

WHEN

March 27,2008

WHAT

Celebrating Israel's 60 birthday!

Panel of Israeli/Silicon Valley startups Founders talk about Israeli high-tech, personal experience of founding diverse, distributed companies, challenges of multi-cultural management and so on.

WHEN

March 6,2008

WHAT

You might think it wouldn't be hard to build a voting machine - all it needs to do is count, and computers are good at that! But in fact, billions have been spent in the as yet unsuccessful quest for e-voting systems that work. It's not so straightforward. In fact, the majority of ballots in U.S. elections are cast with electronic voting devices that are in most cases fundamentally flawed. In California, all but one of existing voting device products were de-certified as a result of an ad hoc independent review convening by the Secretary of State, resulting in largest switch to pure paper manual elections in history - all of California except two counties. Yet this change is a temporary setback as county elections officials across the state and across the country scramble to enable further use of electronic systems.

Why are electronic voting devices so desirable? Why is the current generation of devices so flawed? Is there any scope for technologists to make a positive improvement, either voting systems, or in the public confidence that has been eroded by the stream of press about election device problems? I'll answer these questions briefly at the level of public policy, and more specifically at the level of technical requirements for automation of elections. (Hint: it's not the functional requirements that are the problem!) I'll describe the technology approach and project approach that we're taking the Open Source Digital Voting project, and also explain what each audience member can do to help.

WHEN

February 7,2008

WHAT

My talk will be how consumer internet fits into human behavior and needs. Starting from our communication needs as humans. And using our current internet technology to extend those needs. And what mega opportunities will be available over the next 5-10 years that fit into that trend..

WHEN

January 17,2008

WHAT

By 2010, 99% of all Internet traffic by volume will be video. In this presentation I share the business models for delivering video using today's popular distribution methods:

1. commodity transit,
2. CDN services,
3. a hybrid transit/peering, and
4. peer-to-peer.

If you believe my findings that peer-2-peer is by far the most cost effective means, then the efficient market theory suggests that the video internet of 2010 may look fundamentally different than the Internet ecosystem of today. This talk will discuss this potential future.