Tips on scaling to hyper growth that have nothing to do with bottomless bank accounts. This panel of VCs and entrepreneurs will discuss what got them here and the potholes to avoid.
Hot topics will include:• Perks ≠ culture• Money should be a turbo charger, not a problem solver. Doing more with less• Constant organizational change/iteration• How to make sure you are still having fun
Panel of VCs and entrepreneurs:
Jaclyn Hester // Moderator
Jaclyn is a Fund Investment Associate at Foundry Group and focuses on investments, operations, GP support, data, and legal review for their Foundry Group Next fund. Prior to joining Foundry, Jaclyn practiced law at two national firms where she gained experience in corporate transactions, early stage finance, private equity, and mergers and acquisitions. Jaclyn also served as Executive Director of Startup Colorado and led its Startup Summer program in Boulder and Denver. Jaclyn earned her JD/MBA at the University of Colorado, Boulder and holds a B.B.A from Emory University’s Goizueta School of Business. Between Red Rocks concerts in the summer and skiing the Rockies in the winter, Jaclyn is thrilled to call Colorado home.
Mark Goldberg
Mark Goldberg leads investments in real estate, insurance and financial technology companies in the U.S. for Index Ventures, a global venture capital fund that has invested more than $4 billion over the last 20 years. He was previously at Dropbox, where he held various leadership positions on the business team and helped the company scale from 200 to 1,500 people. Mark started his career at Morgan Stanley in New York.
Lawrence Hester
Lawrence Hester is the Co-Founder and CEO of FareHarbor, the leading online booking platform for tours & activity providers. Under his leadership, FareHarbor has grown from a small, family-run business to the largest software provider in the industry, with nearly 50,000 bookable activities nationwide and internationally, and over 175 employees across 5 offices. Lawrence serves as a mentor for Denver-based Travelport Labs and is active in the Denver startup community.
Kirk Holland
Kirk Holland is a Managing Director at Access Venture Partners, where he brings a long track record of successfully investing in, growing and exiting high growth technology companies. Kirk has led investments in NexGen Storage (acquired by Fusion IO), Craftsy (acquired by NBC Comcast), TapInfluence and TaskEasy while at AVP. He also brings a broad history of operating experience across general management, sales & marketing, business development, operations and engineering with companies such as Procter & Gamble and Jupiter Media.Kirk was previously a General Partner at Vista Ventures where he led many of the firm’s successful investments, including Dante Software (acquired by WebMethods), Rally Software (IPO:Raly), Wazee Digital, Umbria (acquired by McGraw Hill), Stratavia (acquired by HP), StrionAir (acquired by United Technologies) and MXLogic (acquired by Intel).
Prior to Vista, Kirk helped launch Jupiter Media Ventures, where he was a pioneering investor in the digital media sector. At Jupiter, Kirk led several successful investments, including ChannelAdvisor (IPO:ECOM), Direct Response Technologies (acquired by Digital River), BackWire (acquired by Leap Wireless), Techtracker (acquired by CNet) and HowStuffWorks (acquired by Discovery). Previously, he helped start Piper Jaffray’s Technology investment banking practice on the west coast where he worked on over $3 Billion in M&A and equity transactions.
Chris Moody
Chris has been scaling businesses as a C-level executive at public and private companies for over 25 years. Prior to joining Foundry Group, Chris was GM & VP of Twitter’s Data & Enterprise business and CEO of Gnip, a Foundry Group portfolio company. Chris loves working with entrepreneurs to scale their companies globally while helping them maintain the passion that sparked them to start the business in the first place. Chris is considered a pioneer in developing data and platform strategies. He has worked closely with some of Silicon Valley’s fastest growing technology companies to help them formulate and execute their platform strategies. He is also Founder and Chairman of the largest non-profit organization focused on the impact of social platforms and data. Chris’s view on the importance of data as it relates to global matters of health and safety have been shared across the world including at The White House and the United Nations.
Prior to Gnip, Chris was at Aquent where he served in several executives roles including Chief Operating Officer where he was responsible for daily operations of 70 teams in 17 countries. Chris began his career as a management and technology consultant working for EDS, Oracle, and IBM where he led engagements at more than 25 Fortune 500 companies.
Philip Vorobeychik
Philip Vorobeychik joined Insight Venture Partners in 2010 and focuses on infrastructure and application software companies. Philip has been involved in 21 stand-alone investments and 20 add-on acquisitions spanning over 10 countries. He currently serves as a board member at Kaseya, FireMon, Thycotic, LiveAction, LogTrust, Tricentis, QASymphony, Prevalent, Resolve Systems, and N2W, and works closely with the management teams at Veeam, Cylance, and others. These investments include both small and mid-sized companies, with a variety of capital structures and exit strategies.
Philip graduated with honors from Cornell University with a degree in Applied Economics and Management.