VC in DC

DeVenCI Consultant Team Refreshed

The DeVenCI consultant team members serve two year terms so the group was recently refreshed as some of us re-upped for another two year term while some new folks joined the team.   Another change is while we previously worked as two sub-groups, IT and non-IT, we will now work as a single unit.

The current team list follows:

Lee Buchanan -Paladin Capital Partners

Image via CrunchBase

Asheem Chandna - Greylock Partners

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Kevin Fong -GSR Ventures

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Wilber James - Rockport Capital

Morgan Jones -  Battery Ventures

Ravi Mhatre - Lightspeed Venture Partners

Jeb Miller - JAFCO Ventures

Roger Novak  -Novak Biddle Venture Partners

Geoff Oblak - Ascent Venture Partners

Enrico Petrillo- Excel Medical Ventures

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Don Rainey  - Grotech Ventures

Morgan Rodd  -ArrowPath Venture Partners

Ted Schlein  - Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Kip Sheeline -Levensohn Venture Partners

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Robert Simon - Alta Partners.

Here is the DoD press release:Press Release

And the DeVenCI website:  DeVenCI

An Overview of the Defense Venture Catalyst Initiative -

JMU COB 300 Business Plan Competition

Image by Raymond Yee via Flickr

Some 8 years ago now, I joined with some other alumni to launch a business plan competition which is now in its eighth year.   By way of background, the College of Business at JMU requires business majors to complete a single, 12 credit hour course in which students are paired into cross functional teams (management, marketing, finance and accounting) to develop a business plan.  Each year over 140 plans are produced by the student teams across Spring, Summer and Fall sessions.   The competition invites the teams to enter their plans following the completion of the calendar year each January.  Typically, 30 to 40 teams submit entries and in late spring the Final 5 compete on a Saturday morning.  Parents, friends, faculty and alumni gather to watch the competition.  

Tension runs a little high for the students (and moreso for the parents) and the day concludes with trophies and scholarship prizes totaling $26,000.  Alumni present as judges as well other alumni provide the scholarship monies.

It is a challenge for the students to compete in front of a packed house in a pressurized moment for real money in scholarship prizes.    My suspicion is that they leave this competition an inch taller and they should.

Off all the things I do, few give me the satisfaction and pride of this event.  If you have an interest or opportunity to attend next year, please do so. 

Here's a link to an article about the competition:

JMU Business Plan Competition 2009

Here is a 2004 video on the competition.

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Passing the Torch for the NVTC Private Equity Committee

As many of  might know, I've chaired the Northern Virginia Technology Council's Private Equity Committee for the last few years. The committee meets monthly and produces 5 to 6 events each year.  Some of the events are annual, State of the Venture Capital Market and Angel Investing Update, while others are specific within the "Meet the Capital Players" series.  Meet the Capital Players seeks to highlight a new investor in the region or a recent deal.

The recent deal events are some of the best.  The investor and entrepreneur of a deal tell the deal's story which is instructive and entertaining. 

In any case, my time is done, I will step down from the chairmanship in June to be replaced by the worthy, Sever Totia of Edison Ventures.

I wish Sever all the luck in the world with the committee and want to thank all the folks that have contributed to my time on the committee.    We were consistently fortunate to have great speakers and strong sponsor support.

 

2009 Digital Media Conference

I'll be joining a panel at this year's conference and cannot recommend this event highly enough.  It is well executed and attended by a broad, diverse audience.   The team that puts it together does a great job of recruiting speakers you just hear often.   (Though I may be more of an exception to this....)

See below:

2009 Panelists & Moderators
 

Mike Kelly Senior Digital Media Investment Advisor Veronis Suhler Stevenson	Paul Levine President, New Media Current TV	Tim O’Shaughnessy CEO and Co-Founder LivingSocial
Alice Kim SVP Digital Distribution & Partner Relations MTV Networks	Ali Partovi CEO & Co-Founder iLike	Ross McNab Director of Digital Advertising Solutions Eyeblaster
Jason Seiken SVP, Interactive Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)	Bill Crandall Vice President Editor-in-Chief AOL Music	Massimiliano Pellegrini CEO, Dada Entertainment (a Dada & Sony BMG Music Entertainment joint venture)
Trevor Madigan Global Head of Sales, Operators Nokia Music	Colin Gillis Man. Dir. of Internet Equity Research Brigantine Advisors	Dina Kaplan COO & Co-Founder blip.tv
Aydin Caginalp Partner, Entertainment & Media Group Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP	Randy Bennett SVP, Business Development Newspaper Association of America	Mike Vorhaus President Magid Advisors
Adam Kasper SVP, Director of Digital Havas Digital	Peter Yared CEO iWidgets	Gene Barton Principal Fish & Richardson P.C.
Rick Edmonds Business Analyst, Researcher & Writer Poynter Institute	Chris Adams CEO, View2gether Co-Founder, Participant Productions	Mark Fischer Attorney Fish & Richardson P.C.
Neil Budde President & Chief Product Officer DailyMe	Ted Cohen Managing Partner TAG Strategic	Ned Sherman CEO & Publisher Digital Media Wire
Todd Grossman VP, Client Services MultiVu (a PRNewswire company)	Kara Walsh CEO, metromix (a Tribune Interactive/ Gannett joint venture)	Brian Steel CEO VoloMedia
Tim Repsher Managing Dir., Mobile Business & Prod. Dev. Netinformer (a Media General company)	Gary Arlen President Arlen Communications	Paul Sherman Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief Tech Wire Publications
Daniel Ruben Odio-Paez Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer PointAbout.com	Jon Aust Vice President NavigationArts	Paul Levine SVP, Corp. Strategy, Development & Extended Platforms National Geographic's Global Media Group
Jeff Litvack General Manager of Mobile and Emerging Products AP Digital	Lin Dai VP, Interactive Business Development Alloy Media & Marketing	Don Rainey General Partner Grotech Ventures
Phil Bronner General Partner Novak Biddle Venture Partners	Kuk Yi Managing Director Best Buy Capital	David Leibowitz

Nice award for Clarabridge

Sid Banarjee and the team at Clarabridge deserves the recognition for what a strong solution they've created and the customers they are serving with state of the art customer sentiment tools.  Last night, they won the prestigious Red Herring Top 100 award.
Here is the article link.
http://www.pr-inside.com/clarabridge-honored-among-this-year-s-r1253637.htm

DeVenCI Field Trip

During a recent DeVenCI session in San Diego with the US Navy, we took a field trip to a US Marine training facility.   As I have written previously, I am fortunate to volunteer with the DeVenCI program (Defense Venture Capital Initiative) which pairs a dozen VC's to help the DoD fast track innovative technologies into their portfolio.    The program has us meet 3 times a year to review specific unmet, Department of Defense technology needs -- wireless, storage, networking, etc. and then we look within our portfolio as well as everywhere else to surface technologies to meet these needs for the DoD.

Our last meeting included a visit to a Marine Urban Combat training facility.   The facility includes mixed media, live actors, piped in smells (camel dung, diesel and other aromas) and a fair amount of pyrotechnics.   We watched a small unit's training session. Here I am with some of the actors. 

  

You can see us holding our protective face masks which are necessary as the Marines use kind of a super paint ball bullet in this facility.

It is truly impressive to speak with the young Marines as they are remarkable people.  One can't help be proud of them and awed by the commitment and professionalism.