How do you go from the spark of an idea to an innovative company that can upend old ways of doing business or an entire industry? There are big lessons to be learned from the journeys of Seattle entrepreneurs and investors doing everything from crowd-sourcing product development of beauty products to building tools for a new generation of data-centric applications to digging for business intelligence deep within the servers and switches that run our world.
Join us for a special evening of conversation and networking, as the founders and investors of three prominent and very different Seattle technology companies share their candid stories and insights on innovation, investment, and company building.
Julep Story
Jane Park is co-founder and CEO of Julep, the only ecommerce beauty brand that takes a full-stack approach to product development, testing, and distribution. Under Jane’s direction, Julep has quadrupled revenues annually over the past few years. Prior to starting Julep, Jane was an executive at Starbucks, most recently serving as director of new ventures, and also worked at preeminent global strategy consulting firm The Boston Consulting Group.
Jason Stoffer joined Maveron in 2007 and is now a partner focused on investing in education, e-commerce and web-enabled consumer businesses. He is involved with the firm’s investments in zulily, General Assembly, Julep, Everlane, CourseHero, Dolls Kill, and Lively. Prior to joining Maveron, Jason served as senior director of strategic operations for Career Education Corp., where he co-founded and led admissions and marketing for IADT Online, a for-profit design school. He has also served as an associate at Spinnaker Ventures, an expansion-stage venture capital fund.
GraphLab Story
Carlos Guestrin is the CEO and co-founder of GraphLab, as well as the Amazon Professor of Machine Learning in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. A world-recognized leader in the field of Machine Learning, Carlos was named one of the 2008 “Brilliant 10″ by Popular Science Magazine, received the 2009 IJCAI Computers and Thought Award for his contributions to Artificial Intelligence, and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
Matthew McIlwain is a managing director at Madrona Venture Group, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Seattle. He invests primarily in software-driven companies and currently serves on several boards including 2nd Watch, Animoto, Apptio, ExtraHop, GraphLab, Igneous Systems, Mixpo, Placed, Qumulo, Smartsheet, and Skytap. Previously, Matt was Vice President of Business Process for the Genuine Parts Company, a Fortune 250 company.
ExtraHop Story
Sujal Patel founded Isilon Systems in 2001 and, as CEO, guided their acquisition by EMC in December 2010 for $2.5 billion. Patel served as the President of EMC’s Isilon Storage Division from the acquisition until November 2012. Prior to EMC and Isilon, Patel served in various engineering roles at RealNetworks, Inc., in part as chief architect behind the company’s second-generation core media delivery system. Sujal holds a number of patents and pending patents, including those for the Isilon OneFS distributed file system.
Jesse Rothstein is the CEO and co-founder of ExtraHop Networks, responsible for the technical architecture of the ExtraHop platform as well as the vision for growing the business. He co-founded ExtraHop after a six-year tenure at F5 Networks where he was a Senior Software Architect and co-inventor of the TMOS platform. Jesse was the architect and project lead for the BIG-IP v9 development effort and the technical lead for frameworks, clustering, and performance. Prior to F5, he worked in product development at Motive Communications and the Trilogy Development Group.
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Schedule
Registration and Networking: 5:00 – 6:00 pm
Program: 6:00 – 7:30 pm
Networking Reception: 7:30 – 8:30 pm
Registration Information
Regular Registration: $95
Startup Special: $50
Student Registration: $25
Walk-in Registration: $125
