MIT Venture Lab Thursday February 7th

"Ten Steps to Launching an Early Stage Company"

 

Join Venture Lab speakers Jonathan Roberts, Partner and Founder at Ignition Partners, and Stan Shull as they identify and explain ten steps to successfully launching an early stage company.

 

If you are planning or in the process of launching an early stage company this step-by-step information will be extremely useful.

 

Speakers:

Jonathan Roberts – Partner - Ignition Partners

Jonathan is a Founder and a Partner of Ignition. He invests in business application and services companies and represents Ignition as director on the boards of Airwave Wireless, Docusign, Entellium, Intelligent Results, Clearsight Systems, and Spoken Communications.

 

Prior to Ignition Roberts spent 13 years at Microsoft, most recently as General Manager of the Windows CE Intelligent Appliance Division, where he was responsible for developing new WinCE products, product marketing, business development and long-term planning for the Windows CE platform as well as the retargeting of the Microsoft's PocketPC effort.

 

Roberts led the marketing and business efforts for Windows 3.1, 3.11, Windows NT 3.51, NT 4.0, BackOffice 1.0, Windows 98 and NT 4.0 on the Desktop, and finally all of Windows CE including embedded, Pocket PC, Auto, Phones, Set-top, Games, etc.

 

Roberts received his B.A. in history from the University of Washington where he was also Student Body President. In addition to his Ignition boards, Jonathan serves on the board of Epiphany School and the University of Washington Foundation Board.

 

Stan Shull
Stan Shull has nearly 20 years of experience in business development and marketing in software and high-technology.  Stan was most recently the senior vice president of business development at Intelligent Results, a provider of analytical software and services.  In this role, he was responsible for developing the company's partner ecosystem and creating strategic alliances which were critical to product development, publicity, revenue growth, and ultimately the successful acquisition of the company by First Data Corporation in 2007.
 
Previously, Stan led strategic alliances for IBM's Rational software division, a provider of application development tools. There he negotiated critical contracts worth millions of dollars and supervised relationships with some of the industry's leading players including Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and Intel.  Before joining Rational Software, Stan was vice president of marketing and business development at NCompass Labs, Inc., a Web content management software company. At NCompass, Stan developed key alliances and marketing programs that helped drive the company's rapid growth and its successful acquisition by Microsoft in the spring of 2001. Prior to IBM, Stan was director of business development at Boeing Enterprises, the investment arm of The Boeing Company. There he led a multi-billion dollar initiative to create a data services and application hosting company for the aviation vertical market through joint ventures and acquisitions.
 
Stan has been a frequent speaker at industry events and executive forums on new competitive strategies enabled by technology developments, including such topics as customer relationship management and analytics, e-commerce, and web services.  Stan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Master of Business Administration from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration.