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TEF III's Managing Director, Jeff Webber, will lead the Fund's Enterprise 2.0 and Next Generation software investments. Mr. Webber will be supported by nine active, savvy and committed Venture Partners. The profiles of Mr. Webber and TEF III's Venture Partners are included in this section.
Jeffrey T. Webber
Jeffrey T. Webber has more than 20 years of experience as a successful early stage investor and has served as a close advisor to scores of emerging growth technology companies. He is currently a managing director of BW Management, LLC, BW Management II, LLC and Wildcat Management III, LLC, general partners operating four venture capital funds: The Entrepreneurs' Fund I, L.P., The Entrepreneurs' Fund II, L.P., The Entrepreneurs' Growth Fund, L.P. and The Entrepreneurs' Fund III L.P. The Entrepreneurs' Fund III, LP is currently making investments in Enterprise 2.0 and Next Generation software solutions, such as Web 2.0 and SaaS business models.
The TEF funds' entrepreneur-centric model is an extension of the philosophy that Mr. Webber employed from 1990-2003 as the founding partner of R .B. Webber & Company, Inc., which provided strategic planning consulting services to high technology companies. Prior to R. B. Webber, Mr. Webber founded New Venture Consultants, Inc., a firm specializing in advisory services to start up ventures, and served as its president from 1980 to 1987. Mr. Webber began his professional career in 1977 as a member of the strategic planning team at McKinsey & Company in Los Angeles.
Mr. Webber's extensive knowledge and experience makes him a valuable addition to early stage enterprises. He currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors at Accept Software Corp., Efficient Finance Inc., Enquisite, Inc., JackNyfe, Inc. (JS-Kit), NexTalk, Inc., Offbeat Guides, Inc., PTRx, Inc., Renaissance 2.0 Media, Inc., and SOASTA, Inc. Previously, he served on six public company boards— Aurum Software, Inc., AvantGo, Inc., Commerce One, Inc., Persistence Software, Inc., Sagent Technology, Inc. and Sybase, Inc.—as well as numerous private company boards. Mr. Webber holds a BA from Yale University. When he is not engaging with start up ventures, Mr. Webber enjoys skiing and fly-fishing.
TEF III is fortunate to have nine Venture Partners who provide technical, strategic and operational support to the Fund. The background of each of the Venture Partners is summarized below.
Tom Chavez
Tom Chavez most recently served as General Manager for the Online Publisher Business Group in Microsoft's Advertiser and Publisher Solutions (APS) group. In this capacity he led the integration of publisher technologies from Microsoft's aQuantive/Atlas and Rapt acquisitions, drove Microsoft's publisher business development partner operations, as well as product planning efforts across display and contextual advertising. He was also responsible for all of Microsoft's global media procurement for the Microsoft Media Network (MSDR and DRIVEpm).
Before Microsoft Tom was the CEO of Rapt, Inc., from its founding in 1999 to its acquisition by Microsoft in April 2008. He wrote the company's original business plan which focused on enterprise software for procurement and pricing optimization in the high-tech sector and led the company's successful transformation into the leading provider of software and services for premium display monetization. Mr. Webber and Mr. Chavez began their working relationship when TEF II joined Rapt's seed investment syndicate.
Before Rapt, Tom worked as a systems architect at Sun Microsystems and as a researcher at the Rockwell Palo Alto Science Lab in probabilistic reasoning, decision-making under uncertainty, and optimization. He holds a BA in Computer Science and Philosophy from Harvard and a Ph.D. in Engineering-Economic Systems and Operations Research form Stanford.
Dan K. Deaver
Dan Deaver serves as the Fund's part-time CFO and tax advisor. Mr. Deaver and Mr. Webber have a longstanding relationship, as Mr. Deaver has served as the tax and financial advisor for TEFPP, TEF I, TEF II and TEGF. Mr. Deaver is also a Limited Partner in TEF II, TEGF and TEF III.
Mr. Deaver is currently a partner in the firm of Comyns, Smith, McCleary & Deaver LLP, certified public accountants. He has 20 years of experience in public accounting, specializing in taxation. He began his public accounting career with Deloitte and Touche LLP. Mr. Deaver's experience while at Deloitte and Touch LLP included mergers and acquisitions, business and tax due diligence, hedge funds, technology, retail, real estate and tax controversy representation. Mr. Deaver holds a BS in Finance and Accounting from the University of California at Berkeley. He also received a MS in Taxation from Golden Gate University.
Kenneth Gardner
Kenneth Gardner is a software industry veteran with more than 30 years in the enterprise software industry. He is currently the Founder and Executive Chairman of SOASTA, Inc. SOASTA has harnessed the power of cloud computing to become the leading provider of cloud testing, which businesses use to test the real-world performance of their web applications. From 2002 until June 2005, he was the Founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Istante Software (originally Iteration Software) which was sold to Oracle Corporation in December 2004.
Prior to founding Istante, Mr. Gardner co-founded Sagent, a business intelligence software company, in June 1995, and served as the company's President and CEO through the company's 1999 IPO on NASDAQ. Prior to Sagent, Mr. Gardner was Vice President of Products at Borland International from March 1994 to March 1995. Previously, he was President, CEO and a Founder of ReportSmith, Inc., from February 1992 until the company was purchased by Borland in 1994. From 1988 to 1991, Mr. Gardner was President, CEO and Founder of Viewpoint Systems. From 1985 to 1988 he was the Vice President of Technology at Tesseract. From 1978 to 1985 he held various research and development positions at Tymshare.
Mr. Gardner has been a board member at each of his own startups and has served as a board member at Commerce One, Kabira, DataSage, and The Application Group. He is currently on the Board of Directors of Accept Software. He has been a limited partner of TEF I, TEF II, TEGF and TEF III. Mr. Webber has been a seed investor and board member in four of Mr. Gardner's companies.
Mr. Gardner is a 1972 graduate of the University of Louisville and holds a BS degree in Finance. In 2000, he was named an Alumni Fellow of the University of Louisville College of Business. Mr. Gardner holds patents for inventions in business intelligence and real-time analytics.
Umair Khan
Umair Khan is a serial entrepreneur, who most recently co-founded SecretBuilders, a virtual world for 5 to 14 year olds. As of March 2010, Mr. Khan reports the company has grown from zero to 600,000 users in the first 12 months of operation, was averaging 350,000 unique visitors each month, and is re-directing most of its resources on monetizing its user community.
Prior to founding SecretBuilders, Mr. Khan co-founded Clickmarks Inc., a Silicon Valley-based enterprise software company. As CEO of Clickmarks, Mr. Khan grew the company through $27 million in venture funding from investors such as TEF I and TEF II, Vodafone, DFJ, and Mitsubishi, and successfully took the company to profitability. In July 2005, Clickmarks was acquired by Semotus Inc., a publicly traded U.S. company and a leader in mobile enterprise software. Mr. Khan served as President of Clickmarks, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Semotus, and as Chief Operating Officer of Semotus through April 2005.
Mr. Khan is also founder and chairman of Verisium, a Silicon Valley-based software testing tools company founded in 2004. Mr. Khan is also founder and director of Folio3, a Pakistan-based services company that focuses on providing offshore operations incubation to venture-backed startups. Prior to this, Mr. Khan was founder and chairman of Wordwalla Inc., a venture-backed company providing multilingual software solutions. Wordwalla was acquired in 2001 by Morisawa Corporation, a public company in Japan. Mr. Khan is also co-founder of Chowk, a niche portal focusing on South Asia. Mr. Khan started his career as part of the Itanium microprocessor group at Intel Corporation.
Mr. Khan has over 20 industry patents applied for or pending in computer design and architecture, including four from his work at Intel and one from his graduate research at MIT. As a widely renowned leader in advanced Internet technology and a successful entrepreneur, he has lectured at the country's top business schools, including MIT and Harvard, and has been profiled in publications such as USA Today, New York Times, and The Entrepreneur. Mr. Webber has been a seed investor and board member in all of Mr. Khan's companies.
Mr. Khan received a BS in Mathematics (1992) and an MS in Computer Engineering (1995) from MIT, where, in 1991, he was elected Institutional Nominee by the Department of Mathematics, as one of six distinguished scholars in Mathematics.
Ian Locke
Mr. Ian Locke has more than 15 years of experience in the high technology industry, including operating experience as a Senior Executive in international sales and marketing. Mr. Locke delivered major entrepreneurial successes as a senior management team member at Netscape, and as President and COO of docSpace. After the sale of docSpace for $568 million, Mr. Locke became a Managing Director of Jefferson Partners, a leading venture firm based in Toronto. While at Jefferson, Mr. Locke led investments in Accept Software, Avotus Corporation, BorderWare Technologies and Attensity Corporation. Mr. Locke holds a BA in Business Management from Ryerson University and an MBA from the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
Stephen Plume
Stephen Plume currently serves as Accept Software's SVP of Alliances. He was an early member of the management team having joined as its SVP of Business Operations in 2005. Since joining the company, he has been instrumental in its success having served, at various points in time, as its VP of Marketing, CFO, and VP of Professional Services.
Prior to joining Accept, Mr. Plume was a co-founder and Partner at R. B. Webber & Company, a Silicon Valley high-tech consulting and investment firm, where his early stage clients included such future IPO companies as Aurum, Sybase, SeeBeyond, Commerce One, Persistence and Sagent. Mr. Webber and Mr. Plume worked together, as business partners, for over 15 years at R. B. Webber & Company.
Mr. Plume holds a Bachelor's Degree magna cum laude from Yale University.
Jack Porter
Jack Porter is a seasoned executive with extensive experience in creating successful start-up technology companies. Mr. Porter is currently CEO of Executive Mindshare, a social network and content ranking system for executives in vertical industries. Previously, he was CEO of DecisionView Software, a software development company with an analytic platform for optimizing the performance of a clinical study. As President of DecisionView, he was the executive responsible for marquee customers and general operations and was highly involved with the design of the product and establishing the value proposition.
Mr. Porter has also served as CEO and CTO of Enfish Corporation, KnowledgeTrack Corporation, FrontOffice Technology and Paragon Software. He has a degree in Business Management and Computer Science from Washburn University. Mr. Webber and Mr. Porter have worked together on the design and funding of several early stage ventures together.
Dave Sifry
Dave Sifry has been building and running software and internet companies for over 20 years. He has started and built 5 companies, varying from enterprise software, Linux services, wireless and blog search. His most recent endeavor, Offbeat Guides, creates highly personalized, web-generated travel guides for over 30,000 destinations around the world. Mr. Sifry is also founder and Chairman of Technorati, a conversation search engine. He served as the company's CEO from 2002 until 2007.
Prior to Technorati, he was co-founder and CTO of Sputnik, where he directed the engineering of all Sputnik products including its new WiFi security and management products, the AP120 and Sputnik Central Control. As co-founder, CTO, and VP of Engineering at Linuxcare, Mr. Sifry built the company's services infrastructure, including its managed services business, a Linux-based, managed-server technology and service for xSPs.
Mr. Sifry is a recognized expert on leadership development, blogs and the massive changes in the digital media environment, Open Source development, and the Linux operating system. He served on the board of Linux International, the advisory board of the National White Collar Crime Center, and the technical advisory board of the National Cybercrime Training Partnership for law enforcement. He has a BS in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Webber and Mr. Sifry have worked together, as investor and CEO, on the start up phases of Offbeat Guides.
Todd D. Wakefield
Todd Wakefield is the founder of NexTalk, Inc., which provides a software-only, high definition audio/video telecommunication solution that links, in a seamless fashion, foreign or deaf language interpreters to enterprise customers (e.g. health care providers) as well as local, state and federal governments. These enterprise customers all share a need for a fast and reliable video-enabled solution that bridges the communication between two parties.
Prior to founding NexTalk, Mr. Wakefield co-founded Attensity Corporation in 2000. As President and CEO, he led the company from inception through three rounds of funding, and delivered the longest sustained period of revenue growth in the company's history, before ultimately transitioning to the role of Chief Strategy Officer. Mr. Wakefield also was instrumental in the development of the company's products and technology, for which he now holds five U.S. patents related to the extraction, integration and utilization of information from structured and unstructured data sources. Mr. Webber and Mr. Wakefield have worked together on three start up companies.
In addition to serving on the Board of NexTalk, Inc., Mr. Wakefield has served on the Boards of Directors of Attensity Corporation, SpectrumDNA, and BrokerGuard. Mr. Wakefield received both his Juris Doctorate and his Bachelor of Science degree in Philosophy, with honors, from the University of Utah, and was a practicing attorney prior to initiating his career in business.
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