Speakers:

David Cheriton, Professor of EE/CS, Stanford University, serial entrepreneur, Google early investor. 

Ken Xie, Founder and CEO of Fortinet, Serial entrepreneur.

Moderator:

Stewart Alsop, Partner, Alsop Louie Partners

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$50 at the door if seats are still available

As a scholar, he founded and led the Distributed Systems Group at Stanford University Computer Science department, which developed the V operating system; In 2003, he was presented with the SIGCOMM Lifetime Achievement award by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for his contributions in data networking and systems, and for his keen talent for questioning the assumptions behind all our work. As a serial entrepreneur, he co-founded Granite Systems with Andy Bechtolsheim in 1995, which was acquired by Cisco System in 1996. He was also a co-founder, in 2001, of Bechtolsheim's next start up company, Kealia, acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2004; As an investor, He and Andy Bechtolsheim wrote the very first two checks to Stanford students Sergey Brin and Larry Page to fund their company Google, at the front porch of his own home in 1998. His name is David Cheriton. On November 18. 2005, the university of Waterloo announced that Cheriton had donated $25 million to support graduate studies and research in its School of Computer Science. In recognition of his contribution, the school was renamed as "David R Cheriton School of Computer Science”.

A seasoned and successful entrepreneur, Ken Xie started his first network security company SIS in 1993, designing software firewalls while studying at Stanford University. In 1996, he realized the performance limitations of software firewalls running on PCs/servers, and then started NetScreen. As founder, president and CEO, he lead the company to develop the industry's first ASIC and dedicated hardware systems for high performance firewalls and VPNs. NetScreen (NASDAQ: NSCN) later was acquired by Juniper (NASDAQ: JNPR) for $4 billion. In 2000, after recognizing that firewalls and VPNs alone could not stop content and application network attacks such as viruses, intrusions, spam and malicious Web content, Ken founded Fortinet. Fortinet pioneered Unified Threat Management (UTM) - a market which Fortinet leads and has quickly grown to be among the largest segments in the network security space. Fortinet completed its IPO (NASDAQ: FTNT), which was lauded by Renaissance Capital as "2009 IPO of the Year."

Business success and technology innovation has garnered Ken numerous patents and accolades. In 2006, Ken was named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum and Time Magazine, and Northern California Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young. He was also recognized as a Top 5 Entrepreneur by Entrepreneur Magazine in 2005, top 25 Chinese-Americans in Business by Forbes in 2010, and "Father of UTM" in an InfoSecurity cover story in 2011.

Ken earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University and an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He is also a state registered Professional Engineer in Electrical, and hold certificates of Advanced Project Management, Strategic Decision and Risk Management from Stanford University. Ken is active in the industry and community, serving as a board member of HuaYuan Science and Technologies Association, and a member of Committee of 100 and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, Bay Area Council.

Stewart Alsop is a Partner. He was a general partner with New Enterprise Associates and led that firm’s investments in companies such as TiVo, Portola Communications (sold to Netscape), Netcentives, Glu Mobile, and Xfire. During that time, he also wrote a column for Fortune. Before he became an investor, Stewart was a business editor and pundit. He was Editor in Chief of InfoWorld, a weekly newspaper for information-technology professionals. He also published PC Letter, a fortnightly newsletter for computer industry insiders, and produced the Agenda and Demo conferences for executives of companies in the computer industry. Way back when he was young(er), he learned to be an editor at Inc. magazine, where he was executive editor.