Speaker:
Moderator:
Panelist:
Event Description:
Every year, the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (VLAB) has the honor of hosting a special session, called Concept-to-Company, moderated by Ann Winblad, co-founder of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Ann Winblad is a well-known and respected software industry entrepreneur and technology leader who has been chronicled in many national business and trade publications.
This year’s Concept-to-Company event will focus on the business formation of Cittio, a network management software company founded in 2001. No doubt, many people may question the viability for a startup to enter this mature market – where IBM, HP and other large companies own a majority share. Why would any VC decide to fund a start-up in this space?
Jamie Lerner, CEO of Cittio, will discuss how investors and entrepreneurs can find clever ways to disrupt a mature industry. Our panelists from HP and IBM will talk about how they hope to be nimble enough to foil that plan. Join us at our annual VLAB special event and let us know your insights about where the action will be.
Speaker:
Jamie Lerner 
Chairman and CEO
Cittio
Jamie Lerner has over 13 years of experience in both software development and management of high growth companies. Currently, Mr. Lerner is the CEO of JJ Labs Inc., an enterprise software company that delivers WatchTower, a leading system monitoring and management tool. In 2001, Mr. Lerner founded JJ Labs to address the need for cost-effective, easy-to-use, enterprise management software that he found was not available in the industry while managing thousands of servers at XUMA.
In 1997, Mr. Lerner and long time friend Joe Cha founded XUMA, Inc. to serve the rapidly growing need for Internet services. At XUMA, Mr. Lerner served as Chairman of the Board, co-CEO and Chief Technology Officer. He and Mr. Cha raised over $50M of venture funding from top tier VCs Menlo Ventures, Dell Computer, Broadview Capital Partners, Intel, The CIT Group and IDG Ventures. Mr. Lerner and XUMA s management team grew XUMA to 340 employees and over $20M of annual revenues in just two years. XUMA served over 90 domestic and international customers, including Cannon, Logitec, Bristol Meyers Squib, Bayer, Boeing, Riverdeep, Chase H&Q, General Electric, PG&E and Aegis Insurance.
At XUMA, Mr. Lerner focused on building three business units, a product business, a managed services business and a professional services business. By 1999, he was managing over 200 software engineers located in San Francisco, Las Vegas and New York in addition to three data centers, housing over 10,000 computing devices, running 24×7 operations. In early 2001, as the need for Internet hosting services slowed down drastically, XUMA was sold to an adjacent competitor and ceased operations.
Prior to co-founding XUMA, he served for three years as Senior Software Architect and Product Manager at Platinum Technology, where he was responsible for leading a successful programming team that created SQL Station, the industry leading development tool for Oracle, Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server. Under Mr. Lerner’s management, SQL Station won two PC Week Lab Analyst awards and annual revenues grew from $40K to over $12M.
Prior to working at Platinum, he spent three years at Andersen Consulting as a Senior Consultant, where he specialized in building high productivity development environments, and created a developers’ toolkit for Andersen’s consultants to use in the field. While at Andersen Consulting, he worked with such notable customers as Pacific Gas & Electric and United Airlines.
Moderator:
Ann Winblad
Co-founding Partner
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
Ann Winblad is the co-founding Partner of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. She is a well-known and respected software industry entrepreneur and technology leader. Her background and experience have been chronicled in many national business and trade publications.
Ann has over 25 years of experience in the software industry. She began her career as a systems programmer at the Federal Reserve Bank. In 1976 Ann co-founded Open Systems, Inc., a top selling accounting software company, with a $500 investment. She operated Open Systems profitably for six years and then sold it for over $15 million. Prior to co-founding Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Ann served as a strategy consultant for prestigious clients such as IBM, Microsoft, Price Waterhouse, and numerous start-ups. In addition, Ann has co-authored the book Object-Oriented Software and has written articles for numerous publications. Ann received a BA in mathematics and in business administration, as well as an MA in education and international economics from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. Ann also has an honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of St. Thomas.
Ann has served as a Director of start-up and public companies and currently serves as a director of Dean & Deluca, Intacct, Market Wire, The Knot and Voltage Security. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of St. Thomas and is an advisor to numerous entrepreneur groups.
Panelist:
Sandeep Johri
VP Strategy & Business Planning
Hewlett-Packard Company
Sandeep Johri is Vice President of Strategy and Business Planning. Sandeep is responsible for the overall strategy, M&A, acquisition integration and the portfolio investment for the OpenView business unit, a ~$900M business. He is responsible for overall strategy of the software business and has been an instrumental part of the team that developed the “Adaptive Enterprise” strategy which has resulted in the OpenView business growing 2X of market over the last 3 years. During his tenure at HP, he has led the acquisition and successful integration of 8 software companies valued at ~$750M.
Prior to HP, Johri was an Executive-in-Residence at Mayfield Fund, a leading venture fund in Silicon Valley. Prior to that Johri was the CEO and Founder of Oblix, a leading provider of enterprise Identity Management solutions. Oblix was funded by leading Silicon Valley investors and was acquired by Oracle in 2005. In 1999, Johri co-founded eBoodle, an e-commerce comparison shopping service. Johri led the negotiations with various potential acquirers and successfully completed the acquisition of the company by BizRate (acquired by EW Scripps).
Prior to Oblix, Johri was with Silicon Graphics as staff to Ed McCracken, where he assisted McCracken in his responsibilities as co-chair of President Bill Clinton’s Information Infrastructure Advisory Council (NII). Prior to SGI, Johri was a principal with the technology and telecom practice at Gemini Consulting, an international management consulting company. He has an MBA from Stanford University, a Masters in Industrial Engineering from Wayne State University, Detroit, and Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from Pune University, India.
Johri currently serves on the board of BlueLane (a Security startup), Livedeal (online local classifieds website) and Persistent Systems (outsourced software development company based in India) and as an advisor to several other startups.
Deborah Magid
Director, Software Strategy
IBM Venture Capital Group
Deborah Magid is Director of Software Strategy in IBM’s Venture Capital Group. Deborah builds ecosystems for IBM by sharing insights about emerging markets, technologies, and business models with venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. As a member of IBM’s software strategy team, she also brings insight form the venture community into the development of IBM’s growth strategies, identifies new business opportunities with portfolio companies, and shares views on innovation and growth areas of the market. Deborah is a frequent spokesperson on topics of relevance to entrepreneurs and investors, and is on the board of SDForum, the Silicon Valley emerging technology network. Previously, Deborah held various positions in marketing and product design and development at IBM, Taligent, GE and AT&T. Deborah holds degrees in cognitive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Connecticut.
Elisabeth Rainge
Director, Network Management
IDC
Elisabeth Rainge is Director of IDC’s Network Management and related network software programs. Ms.Rainge’s research and analysis of enterprise network as well as service provider infrastructure markets examines the challenges and opportunities of the business and technology upheavals that are facing and network and telecom management users and suppliers. This includes business service management as well as LAN/WAN operations. Her specific areas of coverage include service assurance, service delivery, management architectures and best practices such as ROI analysis.
Prior to joining IDC, Ms. Rainge was involved in product management, marketing and market research at an IDC customer.
