VCTips: An Inside Look at Growth and Fundraising Strategy

Christine Herron has spent her career finding new and innovative information technologies. She is currently a Principal with First Round Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm. Previously, Christine was a director at Omidyar Network, where she developed the Media practice strategy and drove $15 million in early-stage placements.

Prior to joining Omidyar Network in 2005, Christine was the VP of Marketing for Mission Research, which develops small business CRM solutions. While there, she led marketing from initial business plan authoring through paying customer and distribution partner acquisition. Earlier, Christine was the founder and CEO of Mercury2, a software-as-a-service developer of international trade logistics systems, and managed Internet products for both NetObjects and Microsoft.

Christine started as an investor with Geocapital Partners, where she focused on early Internet infrastructure and network management software. Her investments there included Netcom Online Communications, AXON Networks, D-Vision Systems, ViaGrafix, and FocusVision. In each case, Geocapital was the initial professional investor and helped to bring the company to a dominant market position.

Christine was ranked one of the Top 20 Women in Technology in 2000 by AltaVista and holds both an MBA from Stanford University and a BA in English from Columbia University.

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Bryce co-founded O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures in 2005. At OATV he focuses on consumer and enterprise software and services investments.

Prior to OATV, Bryce sourced and lead a number of successful early stage investments at Wasatch Venture Fund, a Draper Fisher Jurvetson affiliate. In 2004, Bryce co-founded the Open Source Business Conference (sold to IDG) in order to spark a conversation around commercializing the highly disruptive technologies and services emerging from the open source community. Prior to Wasatch, Bryce was a member of a small team at vertical search pioneer Whizbang! Labs. While at WhizBang!, he defined and launched the FlipDog.com division (sold to Monster Worldwide). He began his career in technology doing large enterprise software deployments, saving his employer from the dreaded Y2K Bug.

His investments at OATV include GameLayers, OpenX, Parakey (acquired by Facebook), Path Intelligence, Satisfaction and Wesabe. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Brigham Young University.

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Matt Asay has been involved with open source since 1998, and is one of the industry’s leading open source business strategists. Asay currently is Chief Operating Officer at Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux project. There Asay is responsible for ensuring alignment between strategic goals and operational activities across the company, the optimization of day-to-day operations in the company, and leadership of Canonical marketing and back-office functions.

Before joining Canonical, Asay managed business development for Alfresco, the open source leader in Enterprise Content Management, and also ran Alfresco’s operations in the Americas for three years.

Prior to Alfresco, Asay was a founding member of Novell®’s Linux Business Office in 2002. In 2003 Asay founded the Open Source Business Conference, the industry’s premier open source strategy event, and has served as an Entreprenuer-in-Residence for Thomas Weisel Venture Partners, focusing on open source investment opportunities. Before Novell, Asay was General Manager at Lineo®, an embedded Linux software startup, where he ran Lineo’s Residential Gateway business.

Asay earned his Juris Doctorate degree at Stanford Law School, spending two of his three years studying software licensing and innovation, and specifically the GNU General Public License, under Professor Larry Lessig. He also holds Masters and Bachelors degrees from the University of Kent (Canterbury, UK) and Brigham Young University, respectively.

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Before Xobni, Jeff was VP of Social Search at Yahoo!, where he ran Yahoo! Answers and del.icio.us. Jeff also ran Yahoo! Messenger and oversaw its move from #2 to #1 IM client in the US. Before Yahoo!, Jeff was President of SIPphone, where he conceived and designed the Gizmo project, one of the earliest leaders in VoIP. In 1998 Jeff founded and was the CEO of i-drive, the largest online storage tool of the time, with over 10mm monthly unique visitors. Jeff joined Xobni as CEO in February of 2008.

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