GumGum

Mark Suster
General Partner, GRP Partners

Mark joined GRP Partners in 2007 after having worked with GRP for nearly eight years as a two-time entrepreneur. Most recently, Mark was Vice President, Product Management at Salesforce.com (NASDAQ: CRM) following its acquisition of Koral, where Mark was Founder and CEO. Prior to Koral, Mark was Founder and CEO of BuildOnline, the largest independent global content collaboration company focused on the engineering and construction sectors, which was acquired by SWORD Group (PARIS: SWP). Earlier in his career, Mark spent nearly ten years working for Accenture in Europe, Japan and the U.S.

Mark received a BA in Economics from the University of California, San Diego, and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

He grew up in the U.S. and is also a citizen of the UK. In the current portfolio, Mark sits on the Boards of Ad.ly, Awe.sm, Burstly, GumGum and Ring Revenue. Mark is also a Board Observer of Qualys.

Howard Morgan,
Managing Partner, First Round Capital

Howard Morgan has more than 25 years of experience serving as a mentor, advisor and investor in entrepreneurial ventures.

Howard was Professor of Decision Sciences at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Professor of Computer Science at the Moore School at the University of Pennsylvania from 1972 through 1985. He has been a Visiting Professor at the California Institute of Technology and the Harvard Business School. During his academic career he served as an editor of Communications of the ACM, Management Science, Transactions on Office Information Systems and Transactions on Database Systems. His research on user interface technology, and on optimization of computer networks led to his bringing the ARPAnet to Philadelphia in 1974. As a result of this early participation in the internet, he advised many corporate and government agencies on the uses of electronic and voice mail, implementing it throughout the Wharton School in the mid 1970s.

From 1983 to 1989, he served as President of Renaissance Technologies Corp. in New York, where he supervised venture capital investments in high technology companies. He was a founding board member and technical advisor of Franklin Electronic Publishers, one of the first manufacturers of personal computers. He has been an active consultant and speaker to users and vendors in the information systems area for more than 30 years, and has worked with many of the Fortune 100 companies and numerous government agencies.

Since 1989, he has been President of the Arca Group, Inc., nurturing early stage companies and taking them from seed stage through initial public offerings. He also serves as a Director of Idealab, where he was a founding investor in 1996. Dr. Morgan serves on a number of public company Boards, including Franklin Electronic Publishers and Internet Brands, Inc. He is also Chairman or a member of the board of numerous private companies including Energy Innovations, Evolution Robotics Retail, snap.com, MagicWorks LLC and Math For America. He has also served as CEO of Kentek and Franklin during various turnover or transitional periods. In 1997, he was named Delaware Valley Entrepreneur of the Year. Howard is a respected author and a frequent speaker at major industry conferences.

He received a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Cornell University in 1968, and a B.S. in physics from City College of the City University of New York in 1965.

Michael Jones
CEO MySpace, Angel Investor and Board Member

Michael Jones is the President of MySpace. He is the former CEO of Userplane and former Senior Vice President of AOL. He brought Userplane from a startup services business to an applications provider and an AOL subsidiary.

At AOL, Jones was a Senior Vice President and managed Userplane within the Products division. He coordinated with other AOL subsidiaries and internal brands to enable distribution of Web applications to publishers under the Userplane brand.

After leaving AOL, Jones started Tsavo, a web media company that launched with a rumored $20 million in financial backing. His time as Tsavo’s CEO was short as MySpace’s new CEO made Jones his first hire in 2009, making him COO. In February of 2010, Owen VanNatta stepped down as CEO and Newscorp promoted Jones to co-President.

Jones opened his first Web consulting business during his junior year of college, and eventually migrated his practice into PBJ Digital, a 40-person firm that served an estimated 200 companies, including Sony and UPN. After selling PBJ Digital, Jones and his partners, Nate Thelen, Kevin Prentiss, and Javier Hall, formed Userplane.

Jones has a Bachelor of Arts in International Business and Marketing from the University of Oregon and was named the University Student Entrepreneur of the Year in 1997.

Brian Garrett
Co-Founder and Managing Director, Crosscut Ventures

For his entire career, Brian Garrett has been involved in building and funding early-stage technology and media companies. Brian is very active in the Southern California start-up community and currently works with the Boards of GumGum, Verve Wireless, Pulpo Media, Shoedazzle, AffordIt and Circle Street. He is also an advisory board member for the following digital media companies: Jacked, Zannel and Quepasa.com

Prior to co-founding Crosscut, Brian was a Partner at one of the largest Southern California-based venture funds. He joined there in 2001 and played an active role in managing and investing three funds over six years totaling more than $500 million. He was the sponsor and/or an active board member of nine Palomar portfolio companies, including successes such as DataAllegro (data warehouse appliance company sold to Microsoft in 2008), Entone (video on demand server company sold to Harmonic in 2006), Gamma Enterprise Technologies (sold to Informatica in 2009) and Lombardi Software (stand-alone leader in the business process management software market).

Prior to Palomar, Brian was the Director of Business Development at Niku Corporation. Niku developed Professional Service Automation software for Global 2000 companies. He led business development efforts for iNiku.com, an online workplace for independent professionals. Prior to Niku, Brian was with a boutique strategy consulting firm called R.B. Webber & Company. He worked with many leading early-stage technology companies including CommerceOne, Inktomi, Sagent, Aurum and Broadbase. The firm also began formally investing in many of the early-stage companies with which it worked and this was his first exposure to and involvement in venture capital investing.

Brian received his MBA from Stanford's Graduate School of Business and he graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering.

Krishna 'Kittu' Kolluri
General Partner, New Enterprise Associates

Krishna ‘Kittu’ Kolluri joined New Enterprise Associates in January 2006 as a General Partner, and focuses on information technology and energy technology investments. He serves on the boards of 1BOG, Aerohive, Agni, Compass Labs, GumGum, Huddler, Novatium, OANDA, VuClip, TechForward and WeatherBill. He is also involved with CruiseWise, Embrane, Fisker Automotive, Indo-US Ventures, MashLogic, Subtext and Value First. He was previously on the board of RingCube (CTXS), PortAuthority Technologies (WBSN), SnapTell (AMZN), Teracent (GOOG), and Plusmo (AT&T).

Prior to NEA, Kittu served as the Executive Vice President and General Manager for the Security Products Group at Juniper Networks, as a result of NetScreen’s acquisition by Juniper Networks in April 2004. He was responsible for the secure router, firewall, VPN, secure access and intrusion detection and prevention products.

Prior to that, Kittu served briefly as the GM of NetScreen’s Secure Access Products, as a result of NetScreen’s acquisition of Neoteris, Inc. in November 2003. Prior to that, he served for more than two and a half years as President and CEO of Neoteris, the leader of SSL-based Application Security Gateway market.

Under Kittu’s leadership, Neoteris excelled and grew considerably, passing multiple corporate and product milestones. Despite the general freeze on technology spending at the time, Neoteris attracted customers and partners at an unprecedented rate. Kolluri built a company respected as much for its stellar team, fiscal management, and culture, as for its category creation and leading SSL-based access technology.

Kittu brings over 20 years of experience at the leading edge of the technology industry.

Prior to Neoteris, Kolluri co-founded Healtheon/WebMD, where he managed engineering for the company in its early days, later moving through key operational and general management roles as the company grew. His last role there was Senior Vice President and General Manager of Provider Services.  Prior to Healtheon/WebMD, Kittu worked at Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) where he initially managed developer products, later moving into management of high profile Interactive TV projects.

Kittu’s educational background includes a B.Tech. (M.E.) from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, and an M.S. in Operations Research from SUNY, Buffalo, NY. He was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award by IIT, Madras in 2005, and the Distinguished Alumnus Award by SUNY, Buffalo in 2007. Kittu’s hobbies include golf, road biking, photography, and music.

Follow Kittu Kolluri on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/kittukolluri

David Sacks
CEO, Yammer, Inc.

David is the Founder and CEO of Yammer, Inc. He has been involved in the internet space for ten years as an entrepreneur, executive and investor, starting with PayPal in 1999. David was PayPal's Chief Operating Officer and product leader, taking the company from startup to IPO and eventual sale to eBay for $1.5 billion. Subsequently, he founded Geni.com, which is creating a family tree of the whole world, enabling millions of family members to connect, share, and preserve their lives. He also produced and financed the movie "Thank You For Smoking". He has a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.

Vince Thompson
Managing Partner, Middleshift LLC

Vince Thompson has an eye for transformational opportunities, as well as the ability to create business models and successfully lead the teams that scale them.

At the start of his career, Vince wrote screenplays in Hollywood where he optioned work and wrote for studios including Warner Brothers. Frustrated with the pace of feature film development, he left for a career in television where he quickly rose to lead local sales for the ABC TV station in Santa Barbara. In his sales management role, he also helped launch a Fox affiliate in that market.

Fascinated with the Internet, he began coursework on Internet technology in 1995 at UCSB, worked on some startup teams and then joined ThirdAge Media in San Francisco in 1998. Later that year, he joined AOL, pre-Netscape and Time Warner, to lead ad sales in the West. Vince spent 7 years at AOL where he helped launch AOL's first sales training and leadership organization as AOL's Vice President of Capability. He finished his AOL career as Regional Vice President of AOL Media Networks where he built AOL's Los Angeles office into a marketing powerhouse creating advertising and branded entertainment solutions for Automakers, Entertainment Companies and other National Marketers.

In the fall of 2005, Vince joined Facebook when the company had less that 25 employees to launch their national sales organization. It was there that Middleshift's mission began to gain clarity. In the spring of 2006, Middleshift was born with Napster and Break.com as the company's first clients. The firm has since grown and become a recognized force in the startup market, expanding into consulting and training for major media companies and representing world-class original content.

Vince keynotes regularly and has spoken and moderated for the AAAA's, NAB, AMA and AdAge. He's also written for several publications and wrote the “Selling Interactive Media” chapter in the widely used Iowa Press Text “Media Selling”. Vince holds an undergraduate degree in Communications from The University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications and a Masters in Business Administration from Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business.