The DFJ Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar is a weekly lecture series on entrepreneurship featuring entrepreneurs, innovators and industry leaders. Stanford students can earn credit for attending the series by registering for MS&E 472. The series is also free and open to the public.
When
Wednesdays from 4:30 to 5:30 pm during the fall, winter and spring quarters.
Where
NVIDIA Auditorium in the Huang Engineering Center at Stanford University.
DFJ ETL is generously sponsored by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and is presented by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and BASES, the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students at Stanford.
Enjoy podcasts and videos of these lectures on Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner.
Spring Quarter 2013 Schedule
APRIL 10
NASSIM TALEB
Author, The Black Swan and Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
Nassim N. Taleb is a former derivatives trader who became a scholar and philosophical essayist in 2006. Although he is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University’s Polytechnic Institute, he self-funds his research and operates in the manner of independent scholars. Taleb is the author of The Black Swan (2007–2010) and Antifragile (2012). His work focuses on decision making under uncertainty, as well as technical and philosophical problems with probability and metaprobability, in other words “what to do in a world we don’t understand.”
APRIL 17
MONICA LAM
Stanford Professor & Co-Founder, MokaFive
Monica Lam is a co-founder of MokaFive and is a professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. She is also a faculty director of the Stanford MobiSocial Computing Laboratory and a principal investigator in the POMI (Programmable Open Mobile Internet) 2020 project. Her current research interests are in building an open and federated social computing infrastructure. She has worked in the areas of compiler optimization, software analysis to improve security, and simplifying computer management with virtualization.
APRIL 24
AKSHAY KOTHARI & ANKIT GUPTA
Co-Founders, Pulse
Pulse was founded in May 2010 by Akshay Kothari and Ankit Gupta, two graduate students at Stanford’s acclaimed d.school. What began as a class assignment quickly turned into a true passion project, as the two worked tirelessly to revolutionize the mobile news reading experience. The result is an app that has garnered praise from Steve Jobs, won the prestigious Apple Design Award, was named one of TIME’s “top 50 apps of 2011.” Now with over 20 million users (and adding more than a million new users every month), Pulse has solidified its place at the forefront of the modern news industry.
MAY 1
KATE MITCHELL
Co-Founder & Partner, Scale Venture Partners
As a co-founder and partner of Scale Venture Partners, Kate Mitchell focuses building the firm’s team and strategic direction. Mitchell has actively worked with portfolio companies such as Hubspan, Jaspersoft, mBlox, Tonic Software and Wayport. Previously, Mitchell was a senior vice president at Bank of America, where she led the launch of the company’s Internet banking services. Mitchell is also a past chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, where she promoted the value of venture capital to the U.S. economy, and advocated for regulatory and economic policies that promote and reward entrepreneurship.
MAY 8
JUSTIN ROSENSTEIN
Co-Founder, Asana
Before co-founding Asana, Justin Rosenstein worked at Facebook as a tech lead and engineering manager on projects from presence solutions for businesses to back-end site-performance to front-end abstractions. Prior to that he was a product manager at Google for three years, leading projects in Google’s communication and collaboration division. While at Stanford, Rosenstein majored in math and got part way through a master’s in computer science.
MAY 15
CHRIS REDLITZ
Managing Director, KickLabs
Co-Founder, The Last Mile
Chris Redlitz has been involved in emerging technologies since the commercialization of the web. Redlitz co-founded the AdAuction, the first online media exchange in 1997 which was the precursor to the current auction based and dynamic pricing platforms in online media. Chris was instrumental in restructuring the businesses for Get Relevant (acquired by Lycos) and Aptimus (acquired by Apollo LLC). Redlitz co-founded the first online independent yellow pages, OnVillage (acquired by Super Pages), the first online automated coupon platform, launched the first RSS ad campaigns, and helped develop the first peer to peer ad delivery system.
and
BEVERLY PARENTI
Director of Operations, KickLabs
Co-Founder, The Last Mile
Beverly Parenti has been an integral part of emerging technology companies in numerous spaces, including online payment solutions, e-commerce, financial services, advertising, lead generation, search and P2P technology. Parenti was as a founding member of First Virtual Holdings, the first secure online payment system that she helped take public in 1996. Prior to that, Parenti worked in a variety of management positions for Adauction.com (acquired by Media Passage), Feedster (RSS Search), ImpulseBuy (e-commerce platform acquired by Inktomi/Yahoo), and Aptimus (acquired by Apollo LLC). Parenti is also an adviser for Astia, where she mentors entrepreneurs, and most recently co-founded a unique technology incubator, The Last Mile.
MAY 22
JOCELYN GOLDFEIN
Director of Engineering, Facebook
Jocelyn Goldfein is the Director of Engineering at Facebook, where she drives new product design and architecture and helps scale the engineering organization. Her teams are responsible for key Facebook product features like news feed, search, and photos. Prior to joining Facebook, Goldfein was vice president and general manager at VMware, where she ran the engineering and product teams for VMware’s desktop products. Goldfein holds a degree in computer science from Stanford.
MAY 29
FERDINANDO BUSCEMA
Magic Experience Designer
Ferdinando Buscema is a corporate specialist designing “magical experiences” for organizational growth. With a background in mechanical engineering, humanistic psychology and hermetic traditions, Buscema has been chosen as a partner by multinational companies to create high-value training events, on the themes of innovation, leadership and communication skills. As a conjurer and sleight-of-hand artist, Ferdinando is a credited performer at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, the most exclusive stage for magical entertainment in the world. Buscema is the Magic Experience Designer at IED Istituto Europeo di Design, serves as Advisor for the philanthropic foundation Fetzer Institute, and is a Magister Ludi at Mister Gamer.
Watch and listen to videos and podcasts of previous lectures on Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner.
