It is not often that the UK gets to play host to founders of Silicon Valley companies including TESLA Motors, Zynga, LinkedIn, August Capital, the VP of Engineering at Facebook, Joi Ito and others. For this gathering to happen in Cambridge makes it all the more special as much of the focus on technology today is understandably in London.
Silicon Valley comes to the UK (SVC2UK) has now become an annual programme and this year welcomes, once again, an extraordinary line up of 20 pioneers in disruptive consumer internet and green technologies. You don’t have to be a Cambridge company to get involved but you have to come to one of the UK’s most distinctive technology clusters to get involved.
Valley-based entrepreneurs will meet their UK and European counterparts to look at collaborating on business ventures. They will lead classes at Cambridge University examining cutting-edge technologies and business models, and they will meet with policymakers to look at how to expand the UK’s innovation capacity. The programme is supported by a number of businesses and has grown into an eagerly anticipated event, with thousands of students and entrepreneurs benefiting from the collective expertise of the group.
2010 Participants in Silicon Valley comes to Cambridge
Nick Beim, Matrix
- Since joining Matrix in 2001, Nick has invested primarily in Internet and software companies. Nick joined Matrix in 2001 after working in the high tech investment banking group at Goldman Sachs & Co. and the technology and media group at McKinsey & Co.
Jose Ferreira, CEO of Knewton LinkedIn
- Jose Ferreira founded Knewton in 2008. Previously, Jose served as an executive at Kaplan, where he led a company-wide re-engineering effort called “Project Footprint” that created the modern Kaplan course.
Kerry Haley, Vice President of Power and Process at Strategic Project Solutions LinkedIn
- In her role as Vice President, Power and Process at Strategic Project Solutions, Ms. Haley is responsible for all strategicrelationships and program development in the Power and Process sectors, assisting owners in the effective delivery of complex and critical construction projects.
Julie Hanna, Farris, Kiva LinkedIn
- Julie Hanna is Chair of the Board at Kiva, the world’s first peer-peer micro-lending website, Board Member at Socialtext, a leading Enterprise 2.0 social networking platform, Advisory Board Chair at Actuate Corporation (Nasdaq: ACTU) and former advisor to Web 2.0 start-up Plum
David Helliwell, Co-Founder at Pulse Energy
- Pulse Energy is led by its co-founder, David Helliwell, whose career has spanned 3 continents and has been focused on the energy sector since 1994.
Reid Hoffman, Executive Chairman and a co-founder of LinkedIn LinkedIn
- Reid Hoffman is Executive Chairman and a co-founder of LinkedIn. Prior to LinkedIn, Reid was Executive Vice President of PayPal. In addition to LinkedIn, Reid serves on the Board of Directors for SixApart, Kiva.org, and Mozilla Corporation.
David Hornik, General Partner, August Capital LinkedIn
- For more than a decade, David Hornik has worked with technology startups throughout the software sector. In 2000, David joined August Capital to invest broadly in information technology companies, with a focus on enterprise application and infrastructure software, as well as consumer facing software and services.
Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons LinkedIn
- Joichi Ito is the CEO of Creative Commons. He is a co-founder and board member of Digital Garage JSD:4819. Ito was named by BusinessWeek as one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web in 2008.
John Lilly, Venture Partner, Greylock Partners
- John is a Venture Partner at Greylock Partners, where he invests in early stage technology companies. He is also the chief executive officer of Mozilla, where he is responsible for guiding the product and organizational development efforts for the global organization behind the Firefox web browser.
Nancy Lublin, CEO & Chief Old Person, DoSomething.org LinkedIn
- Nancy Lublin is the CEO and Chief Old Person of DoSomething.org’s, that supports and awards grant money to young people who want to make a difference.
Mark Pincus, Founder, Zynga
- Mark Pincus is a social gaming pioneer and leading Internet entrepreneur, having founded and established four successful companies including Zynga, the world’s largest social games provider with over 230 million monthly active users.
Mike Schroepfer, Vice President of Engineering, Facebook LinkedIn
- Mike Schroepfer is the Vice President of Engineering at Facebook. Mike is responsible for harnessing the engineering organization’s culture of speed, creativity and exploration to build products, services and infrastructure that support the company’s users, developers and partners around the world.
Jigar Shah, CEO of Carbon War Room LinkedIn
- Jigar Shah is CEO of Carbon War Room, an organization that specializes in low-carbon solutions for businesses. He is an expert in renewable energy with a wide knowledge of both solar and wind power, and alternative fuels.
Ted Shelton, CEO of Open-First LinkedIn
- Ted Shelton, CEO, Open-First. Open-First is a consulting firm based in Palo Alto and London working with clients ranging such as Alcatel-Lucent, General Motors, and ThomsonReuters on innovation and market ecosystem projects.
Megan Smith, Vice President, New Business Development, and General Manager, Google.org
- Megan oversees teams that manage early-stage partnerships, explorations and technology licensing. She also leads the Google.org team, guiding strategy and developing new partnerships and internal projects with Google’s engineering and product teams.
Marc Tarpenning, Co-founder of Tesla Motors, Inc and NuvoMedia, Inc LinkedIn
- Marc Tarpenning is the co-founder of Tesla Motors. He is currently advising several startup companies and looking at other opportunities in the areas of sustainable transportation, energy storage, alternative power generation and related information systems.
Daniel Yates, CEO and Founder of OPOWER LinkedIn
- Daniel Yates is the CEO and Founder of OPOWER, an 85-person Smart Grid and Energy Efficiency software company. As the CEO, Dan is responsible for the vision, strategy, and leadership of OPOWER. In 2009, Dan was named a “Tech Titan” by Washingtonian magazine and was a finalist for the Ernst and Young 2009 Entrepreneur of the Year award.
Laurie Yoler, Managing Director at GrowthPoint Technology Partners
- As Managing Director at GrowthPoint Technology Partners, Ms. Yoler helps entrepreneurs to build strategic alliances, complete M&A transactions and raise capital.
We are pleased to be supporting the event for the second year. For a look at the programme, go to the main Silicon Valley comes to Cambridge website: www.SVc2C.com