Placing Your Bets: Where Will the Smart Money Land?

Wednesday, June 2, 2004
MIT's Kresge Auditorium

...the $68 Billion question is: Where will the money be spent?

 

View the Broadcast

 

According to the American Venture Capital Exchange, there may be as much as $68 Billion in venture capital financing available for investing. Now that the economy may be stabilizing, the $68 Billion question is: "Where will the money be spent?"

The MIT Enterprise Forum presents "Placing Your Bets: Where Will the Smart Money Land," the 23rd in their series of Satellite Broadcast programs. "Placing Your Bets" is a can't-miss program for entrepreneurs looking to attract investors, as well as those interested in the hottest technologies and trends causing a stir among those that hold the purse strings.

Speaker Biographies

Dr. Robert M. ("Bob") Metcalfe '68 is a general partner of Polaris Venture Partners in Waltham , Massachusetts . Since January of 2001, he has been focusing on information-technology start-ups.

Bob had three careers before becoming a venture capitalist. While an engineer-scientist (1965-1979), Metcalfe helped build the early Internet. In 1973, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center , he invented Ethernet, the local-area networking standard on which he shares four patents. More than 100 million new Ethernet connections are shipped every year.

While an entrepreneur-executive (1979-1990), Metcalfe founded 3Com Corporation, the billion-dollar networking company where, at various times, he was Chairman, CEO, division general manager, and vice president of engineering, marketing, and sales.

While a publisher-pundit (1990-2000), Metcalfe was Publisher/CEO of IDG's InfoWorld Publishing Company. For eight years, he wrote an Internet column ( "From the Ether" ) read weekly by more than half a million information technologists, and hosted his own weekly web cast. His books include "Packet Communication," "Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing," and "Internet Collapses and Other InfoWorld Punditry" -- all still available at Amazon.com.

Metcalfe has received numerous awards including the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery; the Alexander Graham Bell Medal and the Medal of Honor from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; and the Marconi International Fellowship prize. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the International Engineering Consortium.

Metcalfe serves on the boards of Avistar Communications, Camden Technology Conference (Pop!Tech), EarthLink, Ember, IDC, IDG, Kelmscott Rare Breeds Foundation, MIT, MIT MediaLabEurope, MIT Technology Review magazine , Nanosys, Narad Networks, and St. Mark's School.

Metcalfe graduated from MIT with two bachelor's degrees, one in electrical engineering and one in industrial management. He received a master's degree in applied mathematics and a doctorate in computer science from Harvard. He has taught at Stanford and the University of Cambridge , as well as being elected a Life Member of the MIT Corporation.

Guy Kawasaki is CEO of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley whose focus is on emerging technology companies. Prior to this position, Kawasaki was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, and a founder of various personal computer companies, along the way becoming one of the individuals responsible for the success of the Macintosh computer.

Kawasaki was bitten by the computer bug in 1983 and became director of marketing for the educational software company EduWare Services. Recruited by a friend from college, Kawasaki led the software evangelism program at Apple in the mid-'80s, eventually leaving to form his own company, ACIUS, the publisher of 4th Dimension. From 1989 to 1995, Kawasaki was a "free agent," writing a column for MacUser (and later Macworld), endorsing products and affiliating himself with companies like Salient, After Hours Software, Bookmaker Software, and Objective Software. He returned to Apple in '95 as an Apple Fellow and chief evangelist.

At a business lunch in 1997, Kawasaki had the idea that would become Garage.com (now Garage Technology Ventures). Garage is a venture capital investment bank for high technology companies seeking $2-15 million in their first or second institutional rounds. Garage delivers private placement and advisory services offering syndication with a broad network, including VCs, corporate and individual investors.

Kawasaki is a noted columnist for Forbes magazine and the author of seven books: "The Macintosh Way," "Database 101," "The Computer Curmudgeon," "How to Drive Your Competition Crazy," "Hindsights: The Wisdom and Breakthroughs of Remarkable People," "Selling the Dream" and "Rules for Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services."

Kawasaki holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Stanford, an MBA in marketing from UCLA, and an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Ann Winblad is the co-founding Partner of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and a well-known and respected software industry entrepreneur and technology leader. Hummer Winblad is a venture capital firm focused on software investing and manages over $1 billion in capital, having launched over 90 new software companies.

Winblad has over 25 years of experience in the software industry as a successful software entrepreneur, strategy advisor, author and venture capitalist. Prior to co-founding Hummer Winblad, she served as a strategy consultant for prestigious clients such as IBM, Microsoft and Price Waterhouse among others. Winblad is co-author of the book "Object-Oriented Software" and has written for numerous publications

Ann has served as a Director of numerous start-up and public companies and currently serves on the Board of six Hummer Winblad Venture Partners portfolio companies. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul Minnesota .

She received her bachelor's in mathematics and in business administration, and a master's in education with a focus in international economics from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.