un Mountain Capital is an investment partnership formed by senior private equity professionals based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Firm’s professionals have a depth of experience in private equity that dates back to 1981 and have an extensive track record of creating value through fund advisory activities and direct investments in promising companies. Prior experience for the principals include employment at Credit Suisse First Boston, Morgan Stanley, Brentwood Associates, Fort Washington Investment Advisors, GE Capital, Kline Hawkes, and The Boston Consulting Group, among other top tier firms. As a private equity advisor to pension plans and other program sponsors, Sun Mountain develops customized private equity programs. They analyze key success factors across numerous private equity programs and then use the information to develop solutions tailored to meet the specific investment goals of the program.
Companies: Sun Mountain Capital
Kickstart Seed Fund’s mission is to kickstart companies in the Mountain West by aligning technology creators, industry, entrepreneurs, and capital sources behind the funding and mentoring of seed investments. Since 2008, KSF has been among the most active seed investors in the Mountain West.
Companies: Kickstart Seed Fund
Jon is a technology industry veteran who founded or led multiple successful consulting, SaaS and managed services companies. Prior to Cloud Sherpas, Hallett was Executive Chairman at Northridge Systems, a leading provider of collaboration solutions to large and midmarket enterprises. Hallett also was a company director and turnaround executive at IT solutions firm mindSHIFT Technologies, where he helped quadruple revenue while taking the company to positive cash flow. Earlier he held executive management positions at AppNet (acquired by CommerceOne) and was CEO at NMP, a consulting, SaaS and managed services company, at which he returned over 20x invested capital to his institutional investors. Jon has worked with numerous other start-ups as an executive consultant to the leadership team. He remains Chairman of Northridge and also serves as independent director of Vocalocity.
Companies: Cloud Sherpas
co-founder of social networking site Bebo.
Companies: Bebo
Dan Huard co-founded Revision3. Dan also works at Digg, previously developed and produced for TechTV and G4TV. Dan graduated from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Communications.
Businesses Founded on VCU:
Adam is a cofounder of StudioNow. Adam was previously the founder of FloraBuy.com, an e-commerce portal for wholesale imported cut flowers. Adam graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1997 with a B.S. in Computer Science.
Businesses Founded on VCU:
Andrew Erlichson
Andrew cofounded Phanfare and was previously CEO & co-founder of Flashbase, which was acquired by DoubleClick in 2000. At DoubleClick, he was Vice President of Technology for the Research and Development Group. Andrew Erlichson received his AB from Dartmouth College and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
Businesses Founded on VCU:
Companies: Savings.com
Tom has more than 26 years experience and has worked in numerous executive leadership roles in software start-ups to large technology companies.
During his act as the CEO of BlueStar Solutions, Tom saw the company through the process of being successfully acquired by Affiliated Computer Services, a $4.5B IT and business process services company. He has also worked with companies such as Blaze Software, before BlueStar, which was acquired by Brokat Information Systems AG. Tom also worked with Cirrus Logic, as the president and chief operating officer, a $1 billion diversified semiconductor company from 1996-1998.
Tom has a Bachelor’s degree in economics from Santa Clara University.
Founders Bios: http://www.mvista.com/company/management/index.html
]]>Richard graduated from Boston College in 1973.
Daniel T. Dreymann, Co-Founder & SVP Product, Engineering & Operations
With over 20 years of experience in international marketing, sales, and development of technology products, Daniel has co-founded Goodmail along with Richard. Daniel also has a strong engineering background along with extensive expertise in data compression, scalable processing and cryptography, which has helped him launch many innovative products successfully. Daniel served in the Israeli Air Force in his younger days and managed a very large-scale computer-networking project, successfully. Daniel is a senior member of IEEE, holds a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. degree, both from Tel Aviv University, and is a Lt. Colonel (Res.) with the Israeli Defense Forces.
Founders Bios: http://www.goodmailsystems.com/company/execteam.php
]]>Bill Gannon is a co-founder of SpongeFish. He is the Director of Online Production and Programming at Lucasfilm Ltd. where he is responsible for all online activities at Lucasfilm Ltd. The newly redesigned starwars website, under Bill’s direction, was just named to Time Magazine’s Best Websites of 2007. He was formerly Senior Editorial Director and Managing Editor of Yahoo! Inc. Gannon created a number of new products and services at Yahoo! including the Yahoo! Buzz Log, The Yahoo! Netrospective, and the Yahoo! Time Capsule. Prior to joining Yahoo!, Gannon was Editorial Director & Managing Editor of Financial Engines Inc, and was a national correspondent for The Star-Ledger of NJ, and Newhouse Newspapers Inc., where he covered national politics, terrorism, investigative reporting, and conflict beat reporting including wars in Africa and the Middle East. He is a former John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University, and has received a number of national journalism awards. He currently teaches online journalism with Dan Gillmor at the University of California-Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Businesses Founded on VCU: