LPV10 Startup Most Likely to Succeed

David Ascher

David Ascher is CEO of Mozilla Messaging, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation dedicated to promoting choice and innovation in messaging on the internet. Prior to Mozilla, David was CTO/VP Eng. at ActiveState. David has a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science. David spends his free time building web apps with hip new technologies.

Dan Martell

Dan Martell is the co-founder of Flowtown.com, a social marketing platform for small businesses. An award-winning Canadian entrepreneur, at 25, Dan formed his first start-up, Spheric Technologies Inc., and watched it grow by an average of 152% per year before he sold the company 4 years later in mid-2008.

Now living in San Francisco, Martell spends the majority of his time looking at ways to build a bridge between Silicon Valley and his home province of New Brunswick. As an informal angel investor, he is active in advising entrepreneurs using metric-based marketing tactics to gain market adoption.

Martell is passionately involved in facilitating micro-lending to entrepreneurs in developing countries through the non-profit, Kiva.org.

Andre Charland

Andre Charland is the co-founder and CEO at Nitobi Software Inc, creators of PhoneGap. He's been at the forefront of web software development for almost a decade and has spent the last couple years focused on mobile apps, web site and businesses. Andre is an advocate for usability and user experience and speaks regularly about how to keep users engaged and active on web and mobile apps. Andre presented on the Adobe On AIR Tour throughout the US and Europe. He's also been a speaker at the Web 2.0 Expo, Adobe MAX, JavaOne and Deploy. Andre is the co-author of "Enterprise Ajax", published by Prentice Hall and a mentor for 500 Startups. Andre blogs at http://blogs.nitobi.com/andre and is on on Twitter @andrecharland. Other than short walks on the beach Andre enjoys skis, bikes, mountains and beer in no particular order.

Charley Lax

Charley Lax is the co-founder and Managing General Partner of GrandBanks Capital (GBC) of Wellesley, Massachusetts. Mr. Lax focuses on early-stage investment activities (Series A and B) in the areas of Internet infrastructure, software and software services, security and storage applications, media technologies and services, financial technologies and services, and wireless technologies and services. Mr. Lax has raised and managed over $2.2 billion of venture capital investment funds over the last dozen years. Mr. Lax’s personal investment career includes investments in 42 portfolio companies, which have resulted in 32 exits thus far. His track record includes 15 public companies, of which 10 achieved market caps in excess of $1 billion. With over 18 years of venture capital experience, Mr. Lax currently serves on the boards of GBC companies including Coradiant, Ember Corporation, OutStart and SilverRail Technologies. Additionally, Mr. Lax is a founding General Partner of both SOFTBANK Venture Capital (Mobius Venture Capital) and SOFTBANK Capital Partners, and co-created Flatiron Partners of New York City. Prior to his career in venture capital, Charley worked for a series of software companies in marketing, product management and sales roles, including Phoenix Technologies Ltd., the BIOS developer.

A graduate of Boston University with a BS degree, magna cum laude, in 1982, Charley was elected secretary of Boston University's Alumni Council in 2005 and is a member of its Executive Committee. He recently joined Boston University’s Athletic Director’s Council and is an Advisory Board member to Boston University's Office of Technology Development (OTD) Ignition Award Program. In 2001, Charley received the Alumni Award for Distinguished Service and gave the Class of 2001 Graduate School of Management commencement address titled, "Lessons Learned from the Internet Bubble." In 2003, the Boston University Entrepreneurial Management Institute awarded him the Henry Morgan Award for outstanding contribution to the Institute. Mr. Lax also sits on the President’s Council of the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.

Ryan Holmes

HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes’ entrepreneurial endeavors include successes in a variety of industries from founding a pizza restaurant chain to building the top online paintball equipment supplier in Canada before founding Invoke, the agency that created the popular social media dashboard tool.

His interest in tech emerged early after winning an Apple II in an elementary school programming contest. Ryan founded digital agency Invoke Media in 2000 to provide holistic marketing, development and design services. Invoke also developed products including early CMS and e-commerce web apps, the Memelabs contesting platform, and then social media dashboard HootSuite. Rapid growth led to spin-out and funding of HootSuite in December 2009.

Ryan frequently presents at conferences internationally — including 140tc, OMMA, 140conf, IMA, Open Network Labs — speaking about the evolution of the social web. He is widely quoted in media sources including NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Guardian (UK), and Venture Beat. Personally, he is an enthusiast of yoga, rock climbing, paragliding, surfing and playing with his dog Mika.

Twitter: @invoker
LinkedIn: /rholmes

Mike Edwards

Mike is an entrepreneur, currently exploring the theme of democratization of information. He is co-founder of two companies: Sosido, which is creating a communication platform for healthcare professionals, and Initio Investments, which is actively investing in technology startups. Mike is also an active angel investor interested in pushing information on multiple platforms; Summify, Compassengine, Juump, and Movieset.
Previously, Mike had co-founded two other comapnies: AreaConnect, which sold to NasDaq listed company, as well as InternetStudios where experienced the ups and downs of start-ups and learned a ton.

Mike grew up back east, and went to Queen's. He currently lives in Whistler with his family where he actively takes advantage of the natural terrain with sports.

Dan O'Neill

Dan O'Neill is the co-founder, Executive VP and Chief Technology Officer at Trusonic, Inc., the leader in networked music and message delivery to business locations around the world. Trusonic was founded in 2003 and sold to Mood Media Group in 2007. Prior to founding Trusonic, O'Neill was the CTO of VU Net USA, a division of Vivendi Universal responsible for the technical direction of MP3.com, MP4.com, Pressplay (now Roxio/Napster), Rollingstone.com and eMusic. From 1999 to 2003 O'Neill was the VP of Engineering at MP3.com where he assisted in a $370m IPO and lead the engineering team. Santa Clara University, Leavey School of Business, named O'Neill to its IPO Hall of Fame in 2000 and the School of Engineering named O'Neill the 2009 Distinguished Engineering Alumnus. O'Neill holds both a BSME and an MSCS degree from Santa Clara University.