There will be tickets available at the door!

The Execution Matrix is a series of interactive leadership sessions designed to build a foundation for achieving the next round of funding. We are currently focusing on understanding the mind of the VCs in today's market.

Who should attend: CEOs, founders, management team members of high-tech startup companies looking to raise early stage capital from SV VCs.

NOTE: Webinar participants will receive a link to the event in email the evening before the event.

About the event:
The VCs look for specific things: 1) team, 2) market, 3) IP and 4) business model. What are the must haves and must not have in these buckets?

Here are some questions that will be answered at the event: 

• What kind of a team do you have to have?
• What kind of a market size do you have to have for your deal to be deemed VC-fundable? 
• How important is IP defensibility? What does that mean in software and Internet services?
• What does your business/revenue model have to look like for your deal to be deemed scalable and sustainable to achieve the 10X exit that Series A VCs want to achieve? 

Keynote Speaker: Salil Deshpande, GP at Bay Partners
Salil is General Partner at Bay, and focuses on areas in which he has operating experience and thus some intuition. Since 2006, he has invested approximately US$60M into 20 companies across two themes: (1) open source and enterprise software infrastructure, and (2) infrastructure and platforms around social graph APIs.

Salil has led Bay's investments in DynaTrace (application performance management; acquired by Compuware), Buddy Media (platform for brands to engage with customers on social media), SpringSource (open source; acquired by VMware), Engine Yard (open source, cloud, Ruby on Rails), Sonatype (open source, software artifact management), Mulesoft (open source, ESBs), G2One (open source; acquired by SpringSource), Lending Club (peer to peer lending), Jambool (virtual currencies for social graphs; acquired by Google), Finestrella (MVNO in Mexico), Cake Financial (social network and analytics for stock market investors; acquired by E*Trade), Marketocracy (wisdom of crowds applied to money management), Financial Content (syndicated financial content to thousands of local newspapers), Triggit (real-time bidding across ad exchanges), FantasyBook (completely on-Facebook fantasy sports apps; acquired by Citizen Sports, now part of Yahoo), and Vaxart (flu vaccines).

Salil also serves as board member or board observer at Tealeaf (customer experience management), Plastic Jungle (marketplace for exchanging gift cards), Eventful (world's largest database of events), PurePlay (real-money online subscription poker), and Apigee (API management platform).

Prior to Bay, Salil was founder and CEO of Customware, a CORBA middleware company (acquired by Visigenic, now part of Micro Focus), co-founder and CEO of The Middleware Company, a Java middleware company (acquired by Precise, now part of Symantec), and of TheServerSide.com network of developer media sites (acquired by TechTarget). Salil held technical leadership positions at several technology companies including Sun Microsystems, taught summer courses at Stanford University, and is an advisor to several startups.

During his years as an irreverent entrepreneur, he often wondered what went on "in those little VC brains." Therefore as a venture investor, he tries to be honest and transparent about what he is trying to accomplish, respects entrepreneurs' time by working hard, doing his homework, and openly discussing the merits of ideas or strategies, not only as a means of active learning, but as a foundation for long term relationships. 

Panel Speakers: Steven Goldberg, GP at Venrock; Ken Elefant, Investment Director, Intel Capital; others TBA

Moderator: Rebekah Wu, Founder at Right-Hand Partners. She will ask the tough questions you've been wanting to ask at this event during the panel Q&A session.

Agenda: 10/27/2011
8:30am to 9:00am – Registration
9:00am to 10:00am – Keynote on the topic of “The Must & Must Not Haves to Get Funded” – Salil Deshpande, GP at Bay Partners
10:00am to 10:15am – break
10:15am to 11:15am – Q&A and Panel (3 VCs) discussion
11:15am to 11:30am – networking

Location:
Fenwick & West
801 California Street
Mountain View, CA 94041

This event is sponsored by Fenwick & West, our partner-level events sponsor since 2005. This event is co-sponsored by the SBDC. If you are interested in sponsoring this event, please emailus@rhpartners.com.

NOTE: Webinar participants will receive a link to the event in email the evening before the event.