As an entrepreneur, inventor, and investor, Gary has over twenty five years of experience with emerging growth companies and developing breakthrough technology.
He is founder of several Silicon Valley companies. In 1993, he founded Match.Com the world’s largest dating company where he came up with he idea of online dating, wrote the original business plan, invested the original capital, lead the design of the product and hired the first 20 employees. Kremen also founded Clean Power Finance (backed by Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures and Claremont Creek Ventures), the leading residential solar power financing platform company which over one third of all solar installers in the U.S. run their business upon. He co-founded, with Ben Dubin, Full Source Software and Los Altos Technologies, early Internet firms. Gary incubated, was the first outside board member and wrote the first check in Dolores Labs (now Crowdflower), the leading crowdsourcing company.
He is an investor in over 50 companies including such clean technology companies as HydroNovation, Watersmart Software (where he is the Chairman), Sunlink, Carbon Flow, Recurve, Greenbox (acquired by Silver Springs Network), Enmetric, Ready Solar (acquired by Sun Edision), Solar Universe, Lifefactory, People Power Co., Niman Ranch, and Marone Bio Innovations.
Gary is the primary inventor of the seminal U.S. patent for dynamically created web pages, patent #5,706,434 as well as patents #7,698,210 and #7,890,436. He holds an MBA from Stanford University as well as degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Northwestern University.
Steve Bennet is founder and managing director of Bodega Partners and is an active participant in the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial ecosystem as start-up CFO, Angel Investor, and Professor. Over the past 20 years, he has been CFO, investor, and/or board member of over 50 technology start-ups, primarily in the software, Internet, and mobile sectors. Since 1995 he has taught entrepreneurial finance and is currently adjunct faculty at San Jose State University. He is also on the Steering Committee for the Silicon Valley Center for Entrepreneurship and UCLA Venture Capital Fund. Prior to and concurrent with Bodega, Steve was a Venture Partner at Outlook Ventures, Board Member of Sand Hill Angels, Partner at Menlo Incubator and held various financial and management positions at Bay Logics, Digital Microwave, and Arthur Andersen. Steve earned an undergraduate degree in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA. He blogs at www.professorvc.com and tweets @ProfessorVC.
Adam is an entrepreneur who has co-founded category-defining technology startups including Clean Power Finance and Coactive Networks. As a technologist, he has developed software and led engineering teams in areas ranging from web and mobile applications to large data analysis platforms to embedded systems. Adam is a graduate of MIT and UC Berkeley in theoretical physics and mathematics.
Ryan is a entrepreneur, investor, and professor in Silicon Valley. He has been involved in launching several fin-tech start-ups including Zanbato and Addepar and he has deep expertise in fin-tech regulatory issues and strategy. He participates in several Angel investment clubs including the Farmer’s Investment Club at Stanford University and the XGBTC Bitcoin Syndicate. He has personal relationships with executives at many of the world’s development banks which can be leveraged for remittance start-ups. At Stanford University he teaches Global Project Finance and Infrastructure Investment to graduate students. Dr. Orr holds a PhD in Engineering from Stanford University and was advised by Ray Levitt, W. Richard Scott, and Douglass North (nobel laureate).