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Innovate!Europe 2008
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Guidewire Group Newsletter "From the Desk of Chris Shipley"
A monthly helping of unbiased insight and market context around companies and trends in the innovation ecosystem.
Our Speaker Roster Includes...
Hans-Peter Brøndmo, CEO & Co-Founder, Plum
Hans-Peter has spent his career at the intersection of technology innovation and empowering consumers. He is a successful serial entrepreneur who is at it again. Plum, his latest company, wants to make all information social by making it one-click-easy for people to collect and share the things that matter tothem on the Internet. Hans Peter’s last venture was Post Communications, a pioneering email marketing company he founded in 1996, acquired by Netcentives in 2000.
Before Post, he co-founded DiVA, an award winning developer of consumer video editing software, acquired by Avid Technology in 1993. In the mid 80's Brøndmo was a co-founder of an expert systems firm funded by Apple Computer. He has also worked at Apple Japan, McKinsey and Company and at CERN (the Center for European Nuclear Research).
Hans-Peter is on the board of TRUSTe, a non-profit online privacy certification and seal organization; was a founding board member of Loyalty Matrix, an open source customer intelligence company acquired by Responsys; sits on the board of Attendio, a Web2.0 consumer event sharing company; and is on the board of advisors of Goodmail, a company putting trust back in email. He is the author of “The Engaged Customer,” a New York Times bestseller.
He has addressed more than 50 conferences in the past several years on topics ranging from the new models of sharing and social collaboration on the Internet, to privacy, to entrepreneurship, to the broader impact and influence of technology on individuals. Hans-Peter is often featured in national media, and has testified at U.S. Senate and FCC hearings on Internet privacy and spam.
Brøndmo performed his undergraduate and graduate studies in Computer Science, the Technology and Policy Program and the Media Lab, at MIT.
Agustin Nunez Castain, Director of Innovation, Telefonica
Mr. Núñez Castaín has held several senior positions within Telefonica since he began working with the company in 1990. His first role was as COO of Telefónica Sistemas.
Scott Cooper, VP Software Solutions, Nokia
As Vice President of Mobility Solutions, Scott Cooper is responsible for managing the creation and execution of Nokia and alliance-based solutions for enterprise customers, including oversight of new and existing relationships with partners and the Nokia developer community—a key driver in maximizing product sales. In addition, Scott oversees the critical and ongoing development of Nokia’s email strategy and program milestones.
As a member of the Enterprise Solutions management board, he also works closely with the existing management team to identify new business opportunities that drive comprehensive solutions and additional revenue streams for Enterprise Solutions.
Before joining Nokia, Scott was the vice president of Worldwide Channel and Small-Medium Business Marketing in IBM's Software Group, where he was responsible for the development and execution of partner recruitment, channel marketing programs and joint go-to-market activities for this US$13 billion arm of IBM.
Scott came to IBM via the company's acquisition of Lotus Development Corporation in 1995. At Lotus, where he had worked since 1993, Scott held a variety of different managerial positions ranging from director of Imaging Products, to general manager of Notes Companion Products, and senior vice President of Lotus Solutions. Prior to that, Scott was a development engineer at Eastman Kodak. He holds a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics.
Scott joined Nokia in January 2005 and reports to Executive Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Solutions Mary McDowell. He and his family reside in the Boston area.
Thomas Crampton, Correspondent, International Herald Tribune
Thomas Crampton, who covers technology and media at the IHT, has written for the newspaper from five continents on topics ranging from business to politics, culture, war and disease. While based out of Asia for a decade, he wrote articles on Japan's advanced cell phones, the Indian Institutes of Technology and early efforts to make phone calls over the Internet.
Based in Paris since April 2005, he has been covering the emergence of European technology companies such as Netvibes and Lunarstorm, as well as the way cellphone use varies by culture. He has closely followed the battle to control digital culture as it has played out in France with the so-called iPod law and as it is spreading across Europe.
Christina Domecq, CEO,
For nearly a decade, Christina Domecq has founded and run businesses in technology-based and management services. She co-founded SpinVox in 2003 to deliver voice messages as text to any screen, any place, any time, anywhere. SpinVox has since grown to 180 employees and has nine offices around the world.
Christina established NHWC, her first business, at the age of 20. Within a year, the company was designing courses and providing computer training requirements for some of the largest US brands – Kraft, Nabisco, Pepsi, Pfizer and Kodak. NHWC employed over 140 people and turned over $14,000,000 when she sold the business in 2002.
In 2006, Christina won the prestigious Ernst & Young UK Entrepreneur of the Year award; she also serves on the boards of several businesses.
Martin Duval, Director Business Development & Partnerships with Start-Ups &
Venture
Capital Funds, Orange
Martin Duval is the Director of Business Development & Partnerships with Start-Ups & Venture Capital funds, Worldwide, Orange/France Telecom.
Martin was appointed to this role in August 2006 to expand business development and partnerships with start-ups and VCs worldwide focusing on the area of Web 2.0 and convergence (web and mobile).
From 2001 to 2006, he held various management positions at Orange—in the areas of innovation and business development. During this period, he managed the fast-growing Mobile Music activities, including the launch of the Mobile Music Portal and the Mobile Full Track Download services.
In the beginning of 2000 Martin was the COO of a French early-stage fund and later was a Managing Director at the Swedish fund Speed Ventures.
Martin started his carrier in 1990 in the aerospace industry with Eurocopter (EADS Group) before starting his own business in aircraft financing services.
Marc Goldberg, Managing Partner, Occam Capital
Based in Paris (France), Marc is a managing Partner of Occam Capital, a 50M$ Private Equity fund focus on expansion capital for European IT companies. Building on over 20 years of experience in the IT industry in the US and in Europe, Marc started Occam Capital with Laurent Cadieu and Francois Lepicard in 2004 to build a private equity group that would support the European IT innovation community, and deliver superior return to its investors. After more than 15 years away from France, he is now back in Paris where he live with my wife and three children.
Most recently Marc was a General Partner and CTO of RVC, the manager of the Reuters Greenhouse Fund, the Corporate VC arm of Reuters. At RVC we were instrumental in some of the most profitable European transactions with ID2 (Sold to Sonera), MetaMerge (Sold to IBM), Orchestream (LSE IPO), Fantastic corporation (Neue Merk IPO), Tradeum (Sold to VerticalNet), Moreover (Sold to Verisign), WhereOnEarth (Sold to Yahoo) as the Greenhouse fund was invested in 82 companies and generated 16 IPOs and more than 30 trade sales. Before that he was involved both as an entrepreneur and senior executive in Technology and Product Management in large and small technology companies: Renaissance Software (Sold to SunGard), Rational Software (sold to IBM for $2.1B), Thales-Syseca (Paris), KMPG-Nolan Norton (Palo Alto) and Reuters (London).
Anil Hansjee, Head of Corporate Development EMEA, Google, Inc.
Anil joined Google in September 2006 as Head of Corporate Development for Europe, Middle East and Africa, based in London. Prior to joining, Anil was a Principal with the venture capital firm IDG Ventures, where he was board director of one of their portfolio companies, the mobile music company, Shazam Entertainment.
Between mid 2000 and end of 2001, Anil was a Vice President for corporate finance with Bear Stearns International in London. Between mid 1997 and mid 2000, Anil was a member of Chase Manhattan Bank's corporate finance group both in New York and London.
Anil joined Chase's corporate finance team after spending the first 7 years of his professional career as a software engineer first with UBS then Chase. Anil has a BSc.(Hons.) in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science from Edinburgh University and has an MSc. in Finance at London Business School.
Hermann Hauser, Co-founder, Amadeus Capital Partners
In 1978, Hermann Hauser co-founded Acorn Computers, leading the development team towards the production of the BBC Micro Computer. He has wide experience in developing and financing companies in the information technology sector having founded and invested in over 25 technology companies in the UK and US including ARM, E*Trade UK, Cambridge Display Technology, Virata, etc. In 1997, he co-founded Amadeus Capital Partners Ltd which invests in early stage European technology companies.
Dr Hauser obtained an MA in Physics from Vienna University. He also holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Cambridge.
Nils-Holger Henning Director of Marketing & Sales, Bigpoint GmbH
Nils Henning joined Bigpoint GmbH (formerly e-sport GmbH) in February 2006 as Director of Marketing and Sales. Bigpoint is the leading developer and publisher of browser-based online multiplayer games. The company, headquartered in Hamburg, was founded in 2003; today, it has more than 100 employees.
Since joining Bigpoint, Henning has established several business partnerships with major portals and media companies in Germany, including T-Online, Yahoo, Bild, and Lycos, as well as TV stations such as Pro7, Sat1, Giga, RTL, MTV, and Viva. Bigpoint offers its media partners "turn-key" game solutions in white label format, based on a revenue share model and web 2.0 access.
Hening was formerly with Hays AG (Hays, plc) in Mannheim, Germany, where he established a human resource search and consulting business for the German
Paul Heydon, Managing Director, Unity Capital
Based in the UK, Paul Heydon founded Unity Capital in Dec. 2004. He also advises Digital Media companies in London. Previously, Paul was the Head of Interactive Entertainment at Commerzbank Securities where he had global responsibility for the interactive entertainment sector.
Prior to Commerzbank, Paul was on the media team at ING Barings for two years. Paul has helped companies globally; transactions total over $1 billion. Paul has worked with Infogrames, Ubi Soft, Giant Interactive Entertainment, IO Interactive, Canon Europe, Netgem, Criterion Software, Digital Bros, Endemol, Overloaded, Teliasonera International Carrier, ITE and Lionhead.
Paul earned a MBA in 1999 and a HBA in 1990, both from the Ivey School of Business at UWO, which is located in London, Canada.
Lars Hinrichs, Co-founder and Managing Director, Xing / Open BC
Lars Hinrichs is the CEO and founder of OPEN Business Club AG (XING www.xing.com). Lars began his career as an entrepreneur in 1998 at the age of 22, after working as a consultant for several new media firms.
In 1998, Lars co-founded politik-digital.de, an award-winning platform in the area of politics and new media. Two years later, Lars and a partner started Boettcher Hinrichs AG, a consulting company and development house for enterprise communication.
After 2001, Lars shifted his focus towards investment and funding consulting, and successfully negotiated several rounds of financing for various enterprises. Lars has also advised portfolio companies with business development and business building strategies. His broad spectrum of activities and high-level memberships in professional organizations such as the Entrepreneurs Organization have helped Lars establish an outstanding network of contacts worldwide. It was precisely the idea of enabling networking between these contacts that inspired Lars to found openBC.
In 2006, following a comprehensive relaunch of the site, including a complete makeover of the user interface and a new name —XING— Lars led the company to IPO. In December, XING became one of the first Web 2.0 companies to go public, floating as a Prime Standard company on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
Neville Hobson, Vice President New Marketing, Crayon LLC
Neville Hobson, ABC, is a communicator, blogger, podcaster and Second Life explorer, one of the leading European early adopters and influencers in social media communication for business. He blogs at NevilleHobson.com with commentary and opinion on business, communication and technology, and co-presents “For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report” (www.forimmediaterelease.biz), a twice-weekly business podcast at the intersection of online communication, business and technology, which he began in January 2005.
After being based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, since 1999, Neville returned to the UK in October 2006, now based in Wokingham, Berkshire.
In October 2006, Neville announced his involvement with new marketing company crayon where he serves as Vice President New Marketing.
Neville is a frequent speaker at conferences, seminars and other public professional development events on the subject of social media communication and its effective use in organizational communication (see list of speaking engagements).
Klaus Hommels, Venture Partner, Benchmark Capital
Klaus is a seasoned entrepreneur and well respected
business angel. Prior to joining Benchmark, Klaus spent
several years as a private investor. He has a successful
investment track record in European technology and
media companies including Skype, Midas Player (king.com),
StarDoll and OpenBC. In addition to investing in Europe,
Klaus has spent considerable time in China, and has
an extensive network in the Chinese Internet/Media
sector, including working closely with TomGroup.
Earlier in his career, Klaus joined AOL in 1995 and spent several years on the Management Board where he was responsible for business development, content and advertising sales. He was also involved in the establishment of Freenet.de AG and served on its Supervisory Board for a number of years. After AOL, Klaus was at Apax Partners in Munich and Zurich. Klaus started his career at Deutsche Bank and currently serves on the board of Zubka.
Klaus holds a master and PHD in Finance from Fribourg University (Switzerland).
Oliver Jung
Oliver Jung has been a serial entrepreneur and private Venture Capital investor since 1996. He studied computer science in Karlsruhe but left university to take advantage of the IT boom in 1997 - 2000. He founded his first company in 1996, an IT consulting company, which later became entory AG. Mr. Jung sold entory in November 2001 to Group Deutsche Boerse. After the trade sale, he became a board member of Deutsche Boerse Systems, the IT subsidiary of Deutsche Boerse. Mr. Jung has built a large portfolio of investments into Internet related companies including Open Business Club, StudiVZ and Euroclick.
Saul Klein, Venture Partner, Index Ventures
Saul Klein joined the London office of Index Ventures as a venture partner in 2007. He works closely with existing portfolio companies and his areas of investment focus include internet, online advertising and the ecommerce space. Before joining Index, he served as the global vice president of marketing and e-commerce for Skype (recently purchased by eBay), where he is currently still advising the company on strategic projects.
Prior to Skype, Saul co-founded and served as CEO for Video Island, an Index-funded venture that recently merged with LoveFilm to become Europe’s leading online DVD rental and movie download service. He was also a founding partner of The Accelerator Group, where he was an active seed investor in both US and European start-ups including Moo.com, SpotRunner, Edgeio, Daylife, Stardoll and Last.fm. Saul held management positions at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond within the Web Platform Services Group; served as the senior vice president for Firefly Network (acquired by Microsoft), and was director of digital communication at WPP’s Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. He currently serves on the board of directors of bridges.org, an international non-profit which works to promote the effective use of information and communications technology in developing countries and he was a founding member of privacy seal, TRUSTe.
Saul is a founding patron of Imperial Entrepreneurs, which is helping potential student entrepreneurs at Imperial College reach out to London's established start-up and venture community to kick start opportunities. He was recently named as the winner of the marketing and communications category of the 2006 World Technology Awards in San Francisco. Saul holds an MA from Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Tariq Krim, Founder & CEO,
Netvibes
Tariq
Krim is Founder and CEO of Netvibes, the leading pioneer
in super-personalized startpages. In
the early eighties, he created one of the first online
messaging systems while attending elementary school. Since
then, Tariq’s contributions to the Internet have
continued on a grander scale, including founding GenerationMP3,
France’s most popular blog network, and he is
consistently recognized as one of the most influential
innovators in the European web space. During the dotcom
bubble, he was the exclusive overseas correspondent
in Silicon Valley for the French newspaper La Tribune.
Tariq holds a degree in Physics from University of Paris VII and a Master’s in Telecommunications from ENST (Telecom Paris).
Loïc LeMeur, Angel Investor and Entrepreneur
Loïc is a well-known French entrepreneur, now fulltime blogger and vlogger. Loïc's blog is #1 in France. Working on his next venture, Loïc is also honorary Chairman at Six Apart, the leading weblog software company and investor and advisor in tens of startups such as LinkedIn or Technorati. He also organizes every year one of Europe's largest web event, LeWeb3, that gathered 1300 participants from 37 Countries in 2006.
Loïc served as Executive VP of Six Apart EMEA from 2003 to 2007 and founded and served as CEO for several companies in France, including U-blog, a european blog service in 2003; RapidSite France, the first shared Web hosting company launched in 1997. Rapid Site France was sold to France Telecom and B2L, one of the first Web agencies launched in France in 1996, with clients including Chanel, 20th Century Fox, and Mars, which was sold to BBDO, a leading advertising group. Loïc is also a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. He launched the WEF blog in 2004 and has been advising and blogging for the Forum since then.
Simon Levene, Accel Partners
Simon joined Accel having spent over a dozen years in the Internet, media and communications industries. His areas of expertise include consumer, Internet (media and infrastructure), software and services. Immediately prior to Accel, Simon served for four years as Managing Director of Corporate Development at Yahoo!, where he was a key thought leader in the company's international strategy.
Ealier, whilst living in Silicon Valley, he co-founded @Home's international operations, and as Director of Corporate Development at Excite@Home, was jointly responsible for strategy and business development outside North America.
Simon graduated from Cambridge University, was a Choate Fellow at Harvard’s GSAS and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Maria Marced, Former Senior Executive
Philips / NXPIn her role as executive advisor of DS2 Corporation, Maria leverages several decades experience with an array of companies from Philips Semiconductor and Intel to AT&T Microelectronica, and Telefonica, providing independent consulting and strategy.
Maria joined Philips Semiconductor in September 2003 as Senior Vice-president and General Manager of the Connected Multimedia Solutions Business Unit overseeing Philips' semiconductor solutions for Connected Consumer applications. In April 2005, Maria was promoted to the Executive Management Team as senior vice president and general manager for the sales and marketing operations. In this role, she was part of the executive management team (EMT), reporting to the CEO.
Maria joined Philips from Intel where she developed her professional career over 19 years, ultimately becoming Vice President and General Manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Maria has a Degree of Telecommunication Engineering from the “Universidad Politecnica de Madrid”.
Harald Neidhardt, Co-Founder and CMO, Smaato
Harald has over 20 years of experience in marketing and business development, having led interactive agencies and marketing consulting firms in both the US and Europe. He was the CEO of Pixelpark (US), a former Bertelsmann company based in New York and headquartered in Berlin. As VP International he set up offices and new business initiatives in New York, Paris and London in preparation for Pixelpark's IPO in 1999.
More recently, Harald managed a successful viral marketing company, Cardmine in New York. Cardmine serves clients in the luxury beauty market including Estee Lauder and Procter & Gamble. In his career, Harald has served clients such as France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, EMI, Lufthansa, Bertelsmann, BMG, Unilever and MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Harald has a BA in Marketing Communications from Communications Academy, Hamburg.
Avi Schecter, Founder & CEO, Fring
CEO Avi Schecter joined fring from venture capitalist firm Veritas in 2006. He is responsible for launching the service and overall strategic direction. At Veritas, Avi was responsible for identifying investment opportunities for the fund and generation of deal-flow.
Prior to Veritas, Avi was a vice-president at AOL where he co-managed instant messaging pioneer ICQ and oversaw its growth from 12m to 150m customers and supervised the company’s international growth.
Avi holds a MSc in Finance and Accounting from the University of Tel Aviv.
Chris Shipley, Co-founder and Global Research Director, Guidewire Group
Chris Shipley is a leading technology and product analyst. Best known as the executive producer of the DEMO Conferences for IDG Executive Forums, Chris has helped technology companies bring over 1,000 new products to market since 1996. As a founding partner and Global Research Director of Guidewire Group, she analyzes emerging technology companies around the world to identify market opportunities and accelerate products to market.
Fortune Small Business Magazine placed Chris on its "Top 10 Minds in Small Business," and the San Jose Business Journal named her a "Woman of Distinction." She has often been cited as a leading influencer by Marketing Computers magazine. Chris has covered personal technology since 1984 and has worked as a writer and editor for a variety of technology and consumer media.
She is currently working on a book on the social impact of technology-driven change.
Chris holds Bachelor of Arts degrees in Literature and Communication Arts and pursues knowledge and understanding relentlessly.
Mark Tluzsz, Managing Partner, Mangrove
Capital Partners
Mr. Tluszcz is the co-Founder and Managing Partner of Mangrove Capital Partners.
On behalf of Mangrove, he is involved with Dialcom Networks, Nimbuzz and Properazzi. He has also had the privileged experience to be involved with Skype, which was sold to eBay in 2005.
Mr. Tluszcz is always on the lookout for cool ideas which disrupt the norm and is an enthusiast and believer in entrepreneurship in Europe.
Hans Van Grieken, VP Business & Innovation,
Cap Gemini
Hans van Grieken (1957) is a Vice President at Capgemini and part of the company’s international innovation network which mission is to be a source of new knowledge and insights for Management in the future. In his present position, Van Grieken has a “hands on” view on current business and IT developments from a global perspective.
Van Grieken is a regular keynote speaker at national and international conferences. Subjects he covers are amongst others -the hype sensitivity of IT, corporate portals including E-HRM, digital nomads and mobile workers GPRS/UMTS and intranet), in-car telematics, Network Centric Warfare,
Extended Retail Solutions, RFID, biotechnology and nanotechnology.
Drs. Hans van Grieken holds a university degree in Linguistics and Communications from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. He started his career working as a free lance PR-consultant for a number of companies such as Dutch Educational Television (Teleac) and the Dutch Railroad Company. Afterwards he worked as a fundraiser for one of the major Dutch charities. His next position was that of press officer for the Board of directors of the Dutch Electronics company Philips International followed by a job as an International Account Director for technology clients for Publicis/FCB, a leading European advertising and marketing agency. From 1990-2000 he was in charge of Marketing, Communications, Public Relations and Investor Relations for Cap Gemini Ernst and Young in the Netherlands. In 1992 he was the initiator of the Systems Integration
Centre, the first IT-demo centre in the Netherlands. In September 1994 he initiated the Reverse Communication project within Cap Gemini which lead to the first full flash operational intranet in the Dutch market.
Martin Varsavsky, Founder and CEO, FON
Martin Varsavsky is an Argentine/Spanish entrepreneur who has founded seven companies in the past 20 years. Martin's best-known ventures were founded during the last decade. In 1998 Martin started Jazztel Telecomunicaciones (Jazztel), Spain's second largest publicly traded telecom operator. In 1999 he founded Ya.com, Spain's third largest Internet web site/DSL provider that includes the second largest Spanish language web agency, www.viajar.com.
Martin's current venture is FON, founded in November 2005, a community-empowered company dedicated to building the world's largest global WiFi network from the bottom up, spreading the power of WiFi around the world, with one million hot spots by 2010. Fon attracted Skype, eBay and Google as partners and quickly became the largest WiFi community in the world. Martin also engages in not-for-profit activities and he is an active blogger and frequent speaker at conferences around the world.
Martin received his BA from New York University, and holds an MA in International Affairs and an MA in Business Administration from Columbia University.
Sebastien
Vidal, COO (Europe), NcSoft
Sebastien Vidal began his career in the games industry as a journalist in the mid 1990s before joining France Telecom's game division to work on their gaming and matchmaking Web platform. In 2002, Sebastien worked to launch Dark Age of Camelot, Europe's first truly successful and fully localised MMORPG, and later became head of France Telecom's online gaming operations.
In 2004, along with CEO Geoff Heath, Sebastien helped to set up the European division of NCsoft, the world's leading MMO games publisher, where he works today as Chief Operating Officer.
With over 10 years of games industry experience, Sebastien was the perfect choice for the University of Abertay in Dundee, who invited him to become an external examiner for their video game courses.
We will be updating this page regularly, please check back for the latest information!
