Mentors
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Currently Founder’s Club has following mentors:
Bobby Chao
Managing Director, DFJ Dragon Fund China
Mr. Chao was born in China and spent his professional career in the U.S. and Asia. Mr. Chao is a Founding Managing Director of DFJ DragonFund. He began his career as one of the original founders of Cadence Design Systems and, was Cadence's Vice President and GM of Asia, responsible for sales, marketing and operations in Asia and Japan. After Cadence, he founded and served as chairman and CEO of OCRON, a pioneer in the optical character recognition and document management space, until an acquisition by Umax Group in 1993. During his tenure with Umax, Mr. Chao was responsible for corporate investment and marketing. He later incubated and served as Chairman and CEO of VA Linux (LNUX). Subsequently, he was an early investor in AboveNet (ABVT), Oplink (OPLK), Omnivision (OVTI) and NetScreen (JNPR). Mr. Chao is currently serving as the chairman and board director of several China and U.S.-based companies. Mr. Chao holds an MS in Physics and Aeronautical Engineering from Georgia State University and Stanford University, respectively.
Datong Chen
Founding Partner, West Summit Capital Management
Co-Founder, OmniVision (NASDAQ:OVTI)
Co-Founder, SpreadTrum Communication (NASDAQ:SPRD)
Dr. Datong Chen received his BS, MS and Ph.D. degrees from Tsinghua University in Beijing, and then served as post-doctoral researcher in University of Illinois and Stanford University in USA. He also worked in National Semiconductor as a senior staff engineer.
In 1995, Dr. Datong Chen co-founded Omnivision Technology in Silicon Valley. As VP of Technology, he led the development of the world's first single chip color CMOS image sensor, which started a revolution in solid state imaging industry. OmniVision was successfully listed in Nasdaq in 2000.
In 2001, Dr. Datong Chen co-founded Spreadtrum Communications in China and Silicon Valley as CTO. He led the development of Asia's first GSM/GPRS (2G/2.5G) core processor IC in 2003, and the global first TD-SCDMA (3G) DSP chip in 2004 for mobile handset, which won the first prize of 2006 China national science and technology achievement awards. Spreadtrum was successfully listed in NASDAQ in June, 2007.
Since 2005, Dr. Chen has been Venture Partner in Northern Light Venture Capital, and lead the investments of several high-tech start ups in China. In Jan., 2010, He co-founded the WestSummit Capital, which invest global high-tech start ups.
Up to the date, Dr. Chen holds 34 global patents. Dr. Datong Chen has won the China Special Award for Inventor and Entrepreneur and entitled as Chinese Inventor in 2006. He also served as UNESCO specialist, counsel member of China Semiconductor Association and the chairman of Tsinghua Entrepreneur and Executive Club (TEEC).
Richard Chuang
Founder & CEO, Couldpic Global
Richard is one of the pioneers of the CG and digital effects industry. In 1981, he co-founded Pacific Data Images (PDI) which started the convergence of art and high technology in the entertainment industry. Animation and digital effects are now ubiquitous in films, on TV and in games throughout the world. PDI became PDI/Dreamworks after PDI's award-winning production system was used to produce blockbusters feature length animations like Shrek and Madagascar.
As a Dreamworks studio executive, Richard worked to expand PDI/Dreamworks production capacity to satisfy a growing global demand for high quality, high production value entertainment. He traveled the world and found a flood of new creative talent. Realizing that the production systems of the past could not scale out, Cloudpic was formed to enable distant artists to work together. Along with his friends who built the pipelines for Shrek and for other blockbuster live action films like Matrix Reloaded, and megahit games like Spore, Richard is looking to reshape the industry again.
Jack Jia
Founder, Chairman & CEO, Baynote, Inc.
Partner, GSR Ventures
Mr. Jia is a founder, Chairman and founding CEO of Baynote, Inc., a leading recommendation software company since 2004. He is also a partner of GSR Ventures and an angel investor. Jack was the founding CTO at Interwoven Inc. (NASDAQ: IWOV, now Autonomy), a leading software company that pioneered CMS category, with a market capitalization of US$7 billion. Prior to Interwoven, he was a founder and CEO of V-max America. Jack also led engineering and development at NASA, SGI, Stratus, and Sun Microsystems.
Jack received an MBA from Santa Clara University, an MSEE from NYU-Poly, and a BSEE/ MSCE from Beijing Jiaotong University. He is recognized as one of the 40 most accomplished oversea Chinese entrepreneurs and scholars by the Chinese central government as PRC celebrating its 60 founding anniversary in Oct 2009. He was voted as an Outstanding Alumnus by the five Jiaotong universities in 2010. Jack holds more than twenty technology patents. He is also a board member and former president of Hua Yuan Science and Technology Association (HYSTA).
Mark Platshon
Partner, Icebreaker Ventures
Mark Platshon is the founder of a new cleantech venture group, Icebreaker Ventures.
Mark earned a BSE in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at the University of Michigan, studied Nuclear Engineering at the Westinghouse Naval Reactor School and obtained his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. As a Naval Officer, Mark had a joint Navy and Department of Energy appointment to Admiral Hyman G. Rickover’s nuclear submarine engineering staff. As an engineer in Combustion Engineering’s Vetco Offshore group, he developed subsea oil well equipment. He also led Raychem programs in energy cogeneration, shape memory nickel-titanium alloys, and touchscreen commercialization.
For the past several years, Mark has been a partner in the Cleantech group at VantagePoint Venture Partners where he focused on energy storage, transportation, solar, wind and building efficiency. Previously, Mark was a Venture Partner at Trident Capital and at X/Seed Capital. Before joining the venture capital world, Mark was a serial Silicon Valley CEO for over 20 years, including positions as CEO of Idetek, an environmental and food diagnostics company acquired by Idexx Laboratories; Executive Chairman of Ancore, an explosives detection company acquired by OSI Rapiscan; CEO of Capnia, a specialty pharmaceutical company and CEO of Raychem’s ELO subsidiary, the pioneer in touchscreens (now a Tyco company). Mark was also founding CEO of Zing, an online photography company acquired by Sony and co-founder of Amprius, an advanced Lithium-ion battery materials company spun out of Stanford. He has served on the Boards numerous companies, including Synxis, acquired by Sabre, Everdream, acquired by Dell, Amprius, GLO and Serious Materials.
Harry Van Wickle
President/COO, Diginome
Harry Van Wickle is an accomplished senior-level executive with leadership success in privately and publicly held high tech companies in extremely competitive industries, including semiconductors, mass storage and enterprise software. He is very effective as a transformational leader in start-up, turn-around, merger, acquisition and other change management execution. He has been a CEO/President/Founder of 2 technology company start-ups, Board Chairman of a public company. He has vast international management experience, having been residing and working in 5 Asia Pacific countries18 years.
Hing Wong
Managing Director, Walden International
Hing focuses on semiconductors and clean technology, especially in China.
Hing joined Walden International in 2005. Prior to joining WI, he spent fifteen years in the semiconductor industry in technical, management and business roles. He worked at IBM, Chromatic Research, and co-founded Silicon Access Networks, a network IC company where he served as VP VLSI Design and later in VP Business Development.
Hing holds a Ph.D. degree in EECS from UC Berkeley, and studied in SiChuan University and Chinese University of Hong Kong for his undergraduate degrees.
Marianne Wu
Partner, MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures
Marianne Wu is a Partner at MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures where she focuses on Cleantech investments. She believes in the ability of advanced materials to drive fundamental change and has a strong interest in energy storage, smart power, and clean energy. She is active on the boards of Genomatica,Laurus Energy, nLight, Xeralux, Xicato, and Zeachem.
Marianne has been named one of Top 10 Women in Cleantech and one of Silicon Valley’s Women of Influence. She is on the Advisory Committees of the Western Governors’ Association, Asian American Multitechnology Association (AAMA), and the Cleantech Open.
Prior to joining MDV, Marianne was VP Marketing at ONI Systems where she was responsible for product strategy and market development. Earlier in her career, Marianne was a consultant at McKinsey and Company where she advised major technology clients on strategic and operational issues.
Marianne started her career as a design engineer at Nortel Networks where she developed high-speed networking technologies.
Marianne earned both her doctoral and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and her Bachelor’s degree in Engineering Physics from the University of British Columbia.
Ken Xie
Founder, President and CEO, Fortinet Inc
Ken Xie has more than 20 years of technical and management experience in the networking and security industries. A seasoned and successful entrepreneur, Ken was Founder, President and CEO of NetScreen (NASDAQ: NSCN), which was acquired by Juniper (NASDAQ: JNPR). Additionally, he was Managing Partner of Jedi Venture, Founder, President and CEO of Stanford Infosystems, and Security Architect for Healtheon (NASDAQ: HLTH) and Philips. 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 a Northern California Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young. He was also recognized as a Top 5 Entrepreneur by Entrepreneur Magazine in 2005 and a Top 15 Technology Innovator by Computer Reseller News magazine in 2004. Ken earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University in China, and also attended Stanford University where he pursued a graduate degree in electrical engineering for four years before taking a leave of absence to found his own company.
Weijie Yun
Executive Chairman of the Board, Co-Founder, Telegent Systems
Weijie Yun co-founded Telegent in 2004 and has a proven track record of bringing products from conceptual stage to market. Prior to Telegent, Yun led marketing and product management at Berkana Wireless, Inc., which was acquired by Qualcomm. He also served as the founding president & CEO of AIP Networks and was a founder and director of SiTek, Inc., a spin-off resulting from his work developed at BEI Technologies' Microengineering Technology Center. Yun was awarded 2008 Northern California Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young. Yun holds MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.
Hui Zhang
Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of Conviva
Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University
As a researcher, Zhang is one of the world’s leading authorities on Internet Quality of Service (QoS), video streaming, network control, and Internet architecture. He is credited with teaching and mentoring many computer network researchers who are now in industry (Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft) and academia (University of California, Berkeley, Rice, Purdue). In particular, he supervised Ion Stoica’s 2001 award-winning Ph.D. dissertation on Internet QoS. In addition, his End System Multicast (ESM) research group at CMU pioneered the overlay multicast architecture and developed the world’s first peer-to-peer live streaming system.
As an entrepreneur, Zhang co-founded Conviva. Conviva optimizes video quality for premium content properties such as HBO, ESPN3, ABC, and Fox. Conviva's technology has powered some of the world's largest on-line events including Olympics, FIFA World Cup, NCAA College Basketball March Madness, Major League Baseball, and Academy Awards. From 2000 to 2003, Zhang served as the Chief Technology Officer of Turin Networks (merged with Force10 Networks in 2009).
Zhang is an ACM Fellow. He was awarded the Alfred Sloan Fellowship in 2000, the National Science Foundation Career Award in 1996, and the Finmeccanica Chair in Computer Science at CMU from 1998 to 2001.
Zhang received a bachelor's degree from Beijing University, a master's degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley
Zili Zhang
Senior Vice President, American Century Investments
Dr. Zhang is a fund manager, and a Director of Research at American Century Investments, a US based money manager with assets under management of about $82Billion. With more than 14 years of direct money managing experience, his portfolio team manages several flagship American Century funds totaling $7 Billion. Dr. Zhang hold a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the University of Texas at Austin with Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine. Dr. Zhang has publications in financial economics and co-authored a book on finance and investing. He serves as the co-Chair of the Chinese Finance Association (TCFA CA), and a Board Director of Noosphere Communications Inc.
More mentors will be added in the future.