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The Rise of Crowdsourcing: Creative Wisdom of the Crowd
6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Hors D’oeuvres
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A
Location
Stanford Business School
Moderator
Jeff Howe, Contributing Editor, Wired Magazine
Panelists
Michael Sikorsky, CEO & Founder, Cambrian House
Mike Agnich, Co-Founder & CTO, Predictify
Bill Reichert, Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures
Mitchell B. Fox, President & CEO, 8020publishing
Saar Gur, Venture Capitalist, Charles River Ventures
Event Description:
Peer production is about more than sitting down and having a nice conversation… It’s about “harnessing a new mode of production to take innovation and wealth creation to new levels.” — Eric Schmidt, CEO Google.
Wikipedia does it. So does Yelp, Amazon and Digg. Millions of customers have eagerly helped to build up reviews, ratings and other content for the most popular sites on the web. CEOs, founders and VCs talk up the growing number of opportunities in crowdsourcing and answer questions such as: How can you get your customers to work for you? What rewards do they need? How do you deal with the issue of accuracy and reliability of the information? What are the trials and tribulations of crowdsourcing? Who’s making money and what are the business models?
Come join us to find out about the next wave of customer driven companies and see how entrepreneurs are letting customers take charge in order to help change the world.
Predictify has created a custom market for our Crowdsourcing event. Share your predictions on what you think the future holds for hot topics in technology, business and politics and find out results at the May 20th event. Start predicting now for free and experience the wisdom of the crowd!
Bios:
Jeff Howe, Contributing Editor, Wired Magazine
Jeff Howe is a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, where he covers the media and entertainment industry, among other subjects. In June of 2006 he published “The Rise of Crowdsourcing” in Wired. He has continued to cover the phenomenon in his blog, crowdsourcing.com, and is currently writing a book on the subject for Crown Books to be published in July 2008. Before coming to Wired he was a senior editor at Inside.com and a writer at the Village Voice. In his fifteen years as a journalist he has traveled around the world working on stories ranging from the impending water crisis in Central Asia to the implications of gene patenting. He has written for U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, Mother Jones and numerous other publications. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Alysia Abbott, their daughter Annabel Rose and son Phineas and a miniature black lab named Clementine.
Michael Sikorsky, CEO & Founder, Cambrian House
Michael loves startups, software and people. Since the age of 14, he has been involved in community-based software development and entrepreneurship.
His fifth and most recent startup, Cambrian House, launched in 2006. Since then, it has become an internationally-recognized leader in crowdsourcing (leveraging the wisdom and participation of online crowds for commerce). As CEO, Michael has been invited to speak about Web 2.0, entrepreneurship and crowdsourcing at Cyberport Hong Kong, Harvard Business School, MIT, Community 2.0 Las Vegas, VidFest, and WebGuild’s Web 2.0 Expo.
In 2007 he was named “Canada’s Internet Revolutionary” by Profit magazine and a “CEO to Watch” by CNNmoney.com. Michael sold his last software company, Servidium, to ThoughtWorks, received a Computer Engineering degree from the University of Alberta, and holds a software patent related to innovative rendering techniques.
Mike Agnich, Co-Founder & CTO, Predictify
Mike Agnich is Co-Founder and CTO of Predictify.com. Predictify is an internet platform which allows users to predict and “go on record” with everything from pop culture to current events. Monetizing through a combination of market research and brand engagement, Predictify allows users to generate expert (or not so expert) reputations over time and to compete against friends. In early 2008, Predictify closed its series A financing lead by Sierra Ventures.
Mike has a 4 month old daughter and has been happily married for four years. He has a BS in computer science from Stanford University and is an MBA candidate ’08 at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to business school, Michael was one of the first employees at Zazzle.com where he spent over five years leaving as Vice President of Product Technology.
Bill Reichert, Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures
Bill Reichert has over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur and an operating executive. Since joining Garage in 1998, Bill has focused on early-stage information technology and materials science companies. He sits on the Boards of CaseStack, WhiteHat, ClearFuels, cFares, and ThermoCeramix. Prior to Garage, Bill was a co-founder or senior executive in several venture-backed technology startups, including Trademark Software, The Learning Company, and Academic Systems. Earlier in his career, he worked at McKinsey & Company, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., and the World Bank. Bill earned a B.A. at Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Stanford University. He was a founding board member and a Chairman of the Churchill Club, and a Charter Member of the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs. Currently he is the Chairman of the Small Fund Roundtable of the VC Taskforce and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Mitchell B. Fox, President & CEO, 8020publishing
Mitch is CEO of 8020 Publishing. 8020 Publishing, backed by CNET founder Halsey Minor and publishers of award winning JPG Magazine and Everywhere Magazine, empowers its communities to participate in all aspects of its magazine’s content creation, thereby dramatically increasing reach, lowering costs, and engaging a knowledgeable, global community.
Mitch’s career spans 30 years and almost as many publications. He joins 8020 following nearly 20 years at Conde Nast, where he served as the Group President and Publishing Director of Conde Nast Publications, and managed many publications and websites including W, WWD, Golf Digest, Bon Appétit, and the entire Bridal Group including Brides.com. He has also been President and CEO of the Golf Digest Company, Vice President and Publisher of Vanity Fair (where he oversaw five straight years of record growth and the magazine’s best year ever in 1999), and publisher of Details. A native of New York, Mitch enjoys golf, film, and has more frequent flier miles than the rest of 8020 combined.
Saar Gur, Venture Capitalist, Charles River Ventures
Saar is a Partner at venture capital firm Charles River Ventures. Saar joined CRV in 2007 with more than 10 years of experience working with entrepreneurs as a founder, investor and advisor. Prior to joining CRV, Saar was a co-founder of Brightroll, a popular Internet video advertising network. Saar also acted as an angel investor and advisor to numerous companies including RockYou, Admob, Flixster, Xobni, Lotus Vodka, and Voicestar.
Prior to Brightroll, Saar was part of the senior management team of Adteractive. Adteractive is an online performance-based marketing company and one of the largest buyers of online media. Saar helped build Adteractive to over 175 employees and $120mm in revenues, with no outside capital. He was vice president of online customer acquisition and was responsible for the company P&L.
Saar started his career in investment banking and venture capital at Lehman Brothers. He graduated phi beta kappa with a biochemistry degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MBA from Stanford University. He was also the co-founder of carebadges.com (acquired by Facebook Causes), an online community that enables individuals to generate market awareness for the organizations and causes that they care about. |
