SVPMA Monthly Event - The Art of Pitching for Product Managers and Entrepreneurs January 6, 2010

Organization: SVPMA - Silicon Valley Product Management Association
Topic: SVPMA Monthly Event - The Art of Pitching for Product Managers and Entrepreneurs
Moderator: Bill Hunt, CTO, IncentAlign
Date: Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
Time: 6:30pm - 9pm
Location: Network Meeting Center at the TechMart - 5201 Great America Parkway, Santa Clara
Cost: Free for Members. $25 for pre-registered Non-Members. $35 at the door.
More info: http://www.svpma.org/meetings.html

Presentation Summary:
How many times have you seen no action taken on an excellent product idea or a product extension because the executive team did not seem to be convinced of the value in it? Do you seem to come to dead ends because it is difficult to sell your idea to the executive team over the hundred other features that are on the roadmap? As a product manager for a start up, have your hands been tied up because you need to "play along" with the VC?

This event and discussion will explore the essences of successful and effective pitches–wowing executives to VC’s.

Moderator:
Bill Hunt is the CTO of IncentAlign, a Sales Optimization software company. Previous to IncentAlign, Bill has founded and/or been a senior exec at 6 successful software companies, each first and a leader in their space. Five of these were acquired by companies including Oracle, Avaya and Alcatel, the top two for $180 million+ each. Earlier in his career, Bill developed important product lines at Novell and has 12 patents to his credit. Bill is an advisor or board member of several high-quality companies, and is an occasional speaker on technology and entrepreneurial topics.

Panelists:
*** Avery Lyford focuses on investments in the areas of software, green IT, and cloud computing. Current investments include Replicus Software. Prior to joining Signal Lake, Avery was CEO of Digisense (sold Voonami), which he founded while an entrepreneur-in-residence at vSpring Capital. He was also CEO of Linuxcare (sold Computer Associates), backed by Kleiner Perkins and Apax Capital, which he took into virtualization management. He was the first business builder hired into McKinsey&Co's business building practice and was on the founding team for a B2B software company.

Avery worked for IBM in the early days of the PC and developed for the PC-AT. While at IBM he founded the systems performance and design team and filed patents on computer architecture. Later was on the founding team of IBM's x86 server business (xSeries) running product management. During his tenure the business grew from $375M to over $1.4B while dramatically improving profitability.

Avery continues to work to foster entrepreneurship and is on the board of Silicon Valley's Churchill Club.

*** Tom Buiocchi is a seasoned technology executive who believes that the best core foundation for future tech industry leadership is strong understanding and experience in product management. Tom’s first role in Silicon Valley was as a product manager for HP’s first line of industry-standard personal computers in 1984. He eventually ran all of marketing for HP’s PC business, and left in 1994 to pursue various start-up opportunities in the technology and energy sectors for the past 15 years. Tom is currently a consultant and Executive in Residence at Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV), and most recently ran marketing, investor relations and sales operations for storage networking leader Brocade.

*** Will Bunker is co-founder of the online dating service that became Match.com, the world’s largest personals site. In 1996 Will and a partner raised $90,000 from angel investors to start online personals pioneer One-and-Only.com. Will designed the software and developed the hardware infrastructure for the site, which grew to 4.5 million monthly unique visitors and annualized subscription revenues of $14 million, outperforming Yahoo Personals and other competitors. In late 1999 they sold Dallas-based One-and-Only for $45 million to Ticketmaster Online/City Search, where it was rebranded Match.com.

Following his exit from Match.com in 2000, Will acquired Click Patrol, a service that managed key word advertising for Overture and others, which he sold to a competitor in 2002. He then moved back to his native Arkansas and acquired an industrial catfish farming operation, which he expanded into a more efficient and profitable business.

In 2004 he and Dan Owen formed White Space Ventures. In 2007 he relocated to Portola Valley, CA so he could utilize the infrastructure and talent pool in the Bay Area to develop a new student-centric online learning community, YoYoBrain.com.

Will received a BS degree in Industrial Engineering from Mississippi State University in 1992. Prior to his career in technology, Will performed in a variety of management assignments around the world for Nelson Bunker Hunt’s international mining group.

Official Website: http://www.svpma.org