Momentum

Meet the Founders’ Panel of the Michigan Lean Startup Conference!

The Michigan Lean Startup Conference is just 2 weeks away and we have already sold out! We are not too surprised, we have an awesome speaker line up (be sure to get on the waiting list if you have not already signed up)! Today we are going to introduce you to our prestigious Investor Panel.

The panel will be moderated by Matt Bower of Safford & Baker PLLC, a Southeast Michigan law firm specializing in representing startup and early-stage software and technology companies and their respective owners. Matt is a business attorney with Safford & Baker PLLC, a Southeast Michigan law firm specializing in representing startup and early-stage software and technology companies and their respective owners. Matt provides his clients with a wide variety of business legal services from “cradle to liquidity”, including entity planning and formation, private equity financing, and intellectual property protection and licensing. In addition to general corporate representation, Matt focuses his practice in the areas of copyright, publishing, software, Internet, mobile, and other areas of technology and intellectual property law.

Matt will discuss the VC perspective on Lean Startups: Do VCs looks for Lean Startup Principles in prospective portfolio companies? How are Lean Startups changing private equity financing? What advice do VCs have for the Lean Startup? When should companies make the transition from Lean Startup to Big Company? The panel will consist of both Michigan and out of state investors to give us a broad perspective. The panelists are:

Jeff Bocan – Jeff is a Managing Director of Beringea, Michigan’s most active venture and expansion-stage capital investor. Headquartered in Farmington Hills, Mich., the Firm also has an office in London. Jeff has worked in both the U.S. and U.K. on numerous Beringea funds over the past decade.
Jeff co-manages Beringea’s $185 million InvestMichigan! Growth Capital Fund, which provides venture and expansion-stage capital to businesses located in Michigan. Jeff is a board director of nine Beringea investments including Michigan companies, Sakti3, ReCellular, mophie, Relume Technologies, Livio Radio and gloStream.

Joel Yarmon- Joel is an Associate at Draper Associates and focuses on seed stage consumer and internet investments. Prior to joining Draper Associates Joel served as a Director for the United States Senate Commerce Committee, advising Senators on technology legislation and policy. Joel co-founded an IT consulting startup, Iceware Technologies, where he specialized in wireless application infrastructure. Joel holds an MBA from Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business, and a BA from the University of Puget Sound where he was an NCAA skier.
Companies: isocket, vivu, rentjuice, socialtext, meez, Justin.tv, retailigence, everyone counts, inSpa, ranker, twitvid.

Marc Weiser -Marc Weiser is a Founder and Marc is the Managing Director of RPM Ventures, a seed and early stage IT and Physical Sciences venture fund. RPM focuses on investing in spinouts from Midwest Universities and companies supplying services and solutions to the Midwest industrial base. For RPM, he is currently involved with the boards of BountyJobs, Glyde, Mojo Motors, OpenLane, RiverGlass ShareThis,, TetraVitae, and Xtime.

Kapil Chaudhary -Kapil is a cofounder and Managing Partner of the i2A Fund. Kapil’s investment focus is in technology enabled products and services, new media and education products and services, and clean tech. Kapil currently represents I2A on the boards of Ifbyphone, One Llama, Sittercity, SoCore, YCharts, BrightTag, Red Foundry, FeeFighters, TapMe and FutureSimple. He also co-founded Excelerate – a newly launched accelerator based in Chicago for innovative start-up companies globally. Prior to I2A, Kapil was a venture development director with the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center where he managed their early stage equity academy program (an initiative focused on helping high-growth entrepreneurs raise growth financing) and globalization initiatives.

Michael Godwin and Jason Townsend- Michael and Jason are the founders and managing directors of Ann Arbor, MI based Resonant Venture Partners. Godwin worked with several venture-backed startups in Silicon Valley including notables WebCrawler, Excite and the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA). IODA was named one of Fortune magazine’s 25 Breakout Companies for 2005, a “Rising Star” in Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 for Silicon Valley and was acquired by Sony in June 2009. With Excite, he was part of the $6.7B Excite merger with AT&T/@Home- the largest transaction involving an internet company at the time.

Townsend was a founding member of Intel’s Corporate Business Development Management team where he sold $30M worth of Intel silicon into a variety of technology sectors. He also served as CEO for three startups: Ikanos Power, Townsend Investments and Life Magnetics. Townsend was recently named to the Crain’s Detroit Business 2010 40 Under 40 List. Michael and Jason each received an MBA from the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business where they served as the managing directors of the Wolverine Venture Fund. They have now set their sights on transforming Michigan into an entrepreneurial center that rivals the likes of Boulder, Boston and Silicon Valley.

We look forward to learning more about investing in lean startups! Hope to see you there!