Venture Capital Session Schedule
July
17th
Afternoon
(Tuesday)
Owing
to generous corporate support, this event is now free for conference
and tutorial registrants. So please do plan to attend since it promises
to be informative and lively.
Session 1 : Introduction to Venture Capital
Talk 1.1: Introduction to Venture
Capital
Speaker:
Andrea Capitanio
Senior Associate
AliceVentures
andrea@aliceventures.it
Abstract:
Mobile communications are rapidly becoming the preferred mean of personal
remote interaction in today's society and besides the hype surrounding
the quantum leaps in the cellular networks genealogy - 2G, 2.5G, 3G,
4G, .. - the continuously improving wireless infrastructure is likely
to generate a ground fertile for significant business opportunities
but also clouded with aggressive competitors.
The "Private Equity" capitals market provides capital to enterprises
not quoted on a stock market in exchange for an equity participation.
Venture Capital (VC) is, strictly speaking, a sub-class of Private Equity
and is characterized by investments made for the purpose of developing,
launching, and expanding the commercialization of new products or services.
Venture Capital has long been a necessary lubricant in the success stories
of high-tech business initiatives and a key ally for technologists turned
entrepreneurs. The presentation will provide an introduction to the
world of Venture Capital, and will address issues related to how VC
can positively impact the lifecycle of high-tech startups and support
a business initiative in its early days. Markets statistics will be
used to extrapolate what to expect from a VC and an opinionated speaker
will provide some practical suggestions on how a technologist turned
entrepreneur should prepare, present his/her plan, select the right
VC and pursue his/her goals. Some specific considerations will be made
addressing the peculiarities of the capital market for business initiatives
insisting in the wireless mobile communications world.
Speaker's Biography:
Andrea Capitanio is a Senior Associate with Alice Ventures, Milano.
He focuses on info-tech deals, ranging from mobile applications and
wireless infrastructure technologies to business intelligence and security
solutions. Andrea holds a board position within companies in Alice Ventures
portfolio.
Prior to joining Alice Ventures, Andrea spent several years at the Applied
Research Laboratories of Telcordia Technologies as a research scientist
and a business creator. He managed and leaded projects in the areas
of Software Engineering, Software Modeling, Mobile Applications and
Middleware.
Formerly an IT Professor at the University of Verona and Program Supervisor
of the Master in Software Engineering in Padova, Andrea also spent a
few years as a Research Associate at the University of California, Irvine
(US), and has undertaken many projects as an independent consultant
throughout his career. He earned a MSEE from the University of Padova
and an Italian PhD on Industrial Electronics and Informatics.
Talk 1.2: Fundraising 101
Speaker:
Katia Verresen
Managing Director of European Business Development
Garage.com
katia@garage.com
Speaker's Biography:
Katia has served as Managing Director of Business Development for Garage.com
Europe since November 1999. She coordinates Garage.com activities in
Europe, including deal origination, marketing, and entrepreneur development.
Prior to joining Garage.com, Katia founded UpStart Ventures, a French
company that assists European entrepreneurs with international expansion
strategy and capital needs. Katia also worked as a consultant at Venture
Capital Report in France, where she evaluated startup business proposals,
recruited angel investors, and established "Silicon Valley Express,"
a program designed to help European startup companies set up a corporate
presence in the U.S. Earlier in her career, Katia worked in International
Arbitration and Corporate Finance at Wilson Sonisini Goodrich &C; Rosati,
a Palo Alto-based law firm. Katia holds a B.A. from the University of
California, San Diego and a J.D. from Santa Clara University. You can
reach her by email at katia@garage.com.
Session 2:Traditional Players Initiatives
Talk 2.1: The Marsupium Initiative
Speaker:
Andrea Scianna
CISCO
Abstract:
Cisco's Ecosystem is a system of relationships through which strategic
and important ties with highly characterized Partners are created. The
Ecosystem makes Cisco skills, models and solutions available to assist,
step by step,the growth of companies dedicating part of their energies
to the Internet business. The Marsupium initiative falls within this
framework. Marsupium is a club aiming at accelerating the business processes
that will translate "a project" into a successful Internet Company by
means of the Marsupium Partners network, which offers both financial
support and integrated (technological, financial, marketing) advising.
Speaker's Biography:
Andrea Scianna joined Cisco Systems Italy in 2000 as Strategic Alliance
Manager. In this role, he is responsible for developing relationships
with consultant firms, merchant banks and venture capitals.
He started his carrier in 1987 by developing an integrated CAD system
for the University of Pavia, in cooperation with Italtel. In 1990 he
joined the ENEL Automatic Research Center for which he managed several
projects, and was in charge of the company relationship with the Authority
and International Affairs.
Scianna holds a master degree in Electrical Engineering.
Session 3: The Enterpreneur Corner
Talk 3.1:Lessons Learned How to
Start a High-Tech Company?
Speaker:
Dr. Ian F. Akyildiz
Chief Technology Officer
MiQoS, Inc.
Mobile Internetworking Quality of Service, Inc.
250 14th Street
Suite 4011
Atlanta, GA 30318
USA
Tel: 1-404-815-1950
Fax: 1-404-815-1919
E_mail: ian@miqos.com
http://www.miqos.com
Abstract:
For an academician with 20 years in the research world to start a company
is an interesting experience which will be shared with the audience.
Speaker's Biography:
Dr. Ian F. Akyildiz received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Computer
Engineering from the University of Erlangen-Nuernberg, Germany, in 1978,
1981 and 1984, respectively.
Dr. Akyildiz is a Founder and President of TRUVA Inc which is a consulting
company since 1989. He is the Founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
of the newly formed company, MiQoS (Mobile Internetworking Quality of
Service, in the wireless domain focusing primarily on the next generation
wireless sytems.
Dr. Akyildiz is also a Distinguished Chair Professor with the School
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology,
Atlanta, and Director of the Broadband and Wireless Networking Laboratory.
His current research interests are in wireless networks, satellite networks,
and the Internet.
Session 4 (Panel): Visions and business opportunities
for wireless and mobile communications
Talk 4.1
Speaker:
Barun Dutta, CTO
Alta Berkeley
bd@alta-berkeley.com
Speaker's Biography:
Barun can't exactly remember when as a kid he started experimenting
with technology but his professional career in computers, communications
and software technology goes back 14 years. In his role as Alta Berkeley's
CTO he still spends some of his days collaborating with leading scientists,
writing research papers, and still gives plenary and academic talks
at scientific conferences in his ongoing role as a Senior Scientist
at IMEC, Brussels, the largest independent Infotech Research Center
in Europe.
However, for the majority of his time Barun is advising Alta Berkeley
portfolio companies in the wireless, internet infrastructure, data communications
and software sectors. He is currently most actively involved in Iobox
and Categoric.
Prior to IMEC, for nine years Barun was involved in both operational,
strategic and research activities at various entities of AT&T Bell Labs
and also Bellcore on either side of the Atlantic in networking and telecoms
sectors and with corporate start-up entities. He was an advisor to several
pioneering networking and internet start-up efforts. Intertwined with
his early research career was an education at MIT, Middlebury College
and Rutgers University.
Talk 4.2
Speaker:
Marie Wall
Investment Manager
SpeedVentures
(milano@speedventures.com)
marie.wall@speedventures.com
Abstract:
Most people in the telecom industry are promoting the vision of "any
service, via any device, over any network". The prerequisites to this
vision are clearly not in place today. At Speed Ventures we have defined,
together with our industrial partners, a technology and business framework
designed to find new exciting business opportunities that fit our model
and advance this vision. The Breedlab concept, a joint effort with Sonera,
is a program to attract the most promising ideas that fit our framework.
BreedLab is a coaching program for developing and testing promising
businesses. The objective of BreedLab is to shorten the window from
finding the business idea to starting the actual business.
Speaker's Biography:
Before joining Speed Ventures as Investment Manager, Marie worked four
years for the Swedish start-up Sendit AB, that got bought by Microsoft
in June 1999. At Sendit and Microsoft Marie had the position of Group
Program manager, and was as such responsible for the team that defined
the product strategy and functional roadmap for the mobile operator
services platform developed by Sendit. After the acquisition by Microsoft,
Marie was also involved in the company wide process of shaping the Mobile
Internet strategy for Microsoft. Marie has a masters degree in Computer
Science from the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, in Stockholm. After
graduation and before joining Sendit, she has worked as researcher for
the Swedish Institute of System development, spent one year as Swedish
Technical Attaché in San Francisco.
Talk 4.3
Speaker:
Sanjay Jhawar
Vice President, Wireless
Cirlab!
via Brera 5, 20121 Milano, Italy
GSM +39 348 9115735
office +39 02 806 168 693
fax +39 02 806 168 653
sanjay@cirlab.com
Abstract:
- Introduction to cirlab
-The current outlook for mobile internet
-Business drivers for 2.5G and 3G operators
-Value for money mobile services
what represents value to the subscriber?
what comprise elements of cost of delivery?
-Analysis of the value chains of
location based services
mobile advertising
mobile media distribution
-Technology megatrends
telecom protocols becoming internet
-Programmable advent of distributed internet megaservices mobile mass
storage and processing power
-Key insights leading to sweet spots where value can be extracted by
startups technology gaps needing solutions new approaches to service
delivery
Speaker's Biography:
Sanjay Jhawar is Vice President, Wireless at cirlab!, an early stage-venture
capital firm based in Milan, Italy, that is part of the Italy’s CIR
group, controlled by the de Benedetti family.
Building on six years experience in mobile Internet, Sanjay now leads
new investments in mobile Internet companies and serves on the boards
of Hiugo, a wireless ASP in Milan, and Teltier, a mobile middleware
infrastructure company in New Jersey, USA.
Until October 2000, Sanjay was Director of Program management at the
Mobile Internet Business Unit of Microsoft, based in Stockholm. He was
responsible for strategy, product planning and development program management
for carrier based mobile internet servers.
At Sendit, a Swedish pioneer mobile internet company specializing in
mobile email services platforms for GSM operators, from November 1998,
Sanjay was Vice President of Marketing and Business Development and
was instrumental in Microsoft's acquisition of Sendit
Prior to Sendit, Sanjay spent three and a half years at Motorola concluding
as Business Manager responsible for all GSM smart phones, SIM Toolkit,
WAP phones, GPRS phones and other value-added services terminals.
At Motorola in 1997, Sanjay helped to found WAP Forum and served on
its Board of Directors for its first year.
Before Motorola, Sanjay spent five years at IBM in product planning
and electronic engineering for the Visual Products group.
Sanjay has a Masters degree in Electronic Engineering from Cambridge
University in the UK.
