Guest BiosFred Farina, Director of Technology Transfer at Caltech
E-mail Fred Farina Guest Lecture (Lecture 4)
Fred's responsibilities include evaluating inventions at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, making patent filing decisions, supervising patent prosecution, managing the patent portfolio, negotiating licensing deals and assisting inventors with the creation of startup companies. Prior to joining the office, Fred worked for eight year as a Research Engineer in the GPS field. He subsequently joined a law firm where he prosecuted patent applications on various electrical technologies before the US and European Patent Offices. Fred holds a "Diplôme d'Ingénieur" in Electrical Engineering from the National Institute of Applied Sciences, Lyon, France, and is a graduate of Caltech from which he received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering. He is registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Kristin Buxton, Caltech Libraries
E-mail Kristin Buxton Guest Lecture (Lecture 2)
Kristin has a wealth of experience with library research and she can guide you to all of Caltech's resources for business and market research. She will be attending E102 lectures on Thursdays - she will stay afterward to help groups find information as needed. She can also set up meetings for groups at other times if needed. Make sure to touch base with her and ask for her guidance as you endeavor to learn about the competitive landscape for your company!
Bill Collins
E-mail Bill Collins Guest Lecture (Lecture 8)
Bill Collins is a Managing Director of Starboard Venture Partners, a venture capital fund in formation in Southern California, and is Past President of the Tech Coast Angels LA, the dominant source of angel funding and guidance in Southern California. Bill started his career at Intel Corporation. He quickly became a lead sales person on the IBM account, helping establish the Intel-IBM relationship and carrying the #2 quota in the company. He was a key executive for International Rectifier (IR), ramping the company from $60M to over $700M. He then became an angel investor with the Tech Coast Angels, becoming a prolific deal lead with a successful portfolio. He is a certified corporate director, serving on multiple boards and in advisory roles. He is a frequent industry panelist and guest lecturer at Caltech and USC. Bill holds a BSEE degree from Clarkson University.
Starboard Venture Partners is a fund in formation created to fill the gap in seed to early stage investing in southern California. The principals come from Clearstone Ventures, one of the largest early stage venture capital firms in the region and the Tech Coast Angels, the dominant source of angel funding and guidance. Starboard is focused on IT and communications technology companies in southern California, particularly in enterprise software, Internet, wireless, new media, and new materials. Starboard will typically make lead investments of $250K-$1M as the first institutional money into a company. Fund principals and advisors provide mentorship, governance and contacts to accelerate growth. Starboard will syndicate follow-on capital needs with seasoned venture firms, reserving $6-8M per company for continued direct participation.
Bernie Daina, Management and Organizational Psychology
E-mail Bernie Daina Guest Lecture (Lecture 9)
Bernie Daina is a licensed consulting psychologist who works exclusively with organizations. He consults to a wide range of businesses and organizations nationally. He specializes in entrepreneurial companies and technology firms in all stages of maturity. He has also worked with large public companies, media, service firms, professional and intercollegiate sports teams, universities, nonprofits, and elected officials. His services include executive assessment, coaching and consultation, and interventions concerning organizational structure, processes, mergers, change management, and team effectiveness. Previously, Bernie was a vice president in a publicly-traded biotechnology company, director of a private hospital, researcher at the US Department of Commerce, and a US Army and US Air Force officer. He earned his A.B. in English at Rutgers College, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Clinical land Consulting Psychology at Howard University. He was a clinical psychology intern at McLean Hospital and a clinical fellow at Harvard Medical School. His nonprofit board of trustees participation includes Outward Bound and both the Blue Sky Bridge and the Kempe National Center for the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect. He also serves on several high-tech company advisory boards. He is a founding executive of the new web 2.0 company for collectors: www.worthpoint.com. Bernie is a member of the American Psychological Association and a frequent speaker at professional conferences, and at meetings in the industries he serves.
Jim Brown, Principal of J.L. Brown & Co.
E-mail Jim Brown Guest Lecture (Lecture 10)
Recently, Mr. Brown has focused on the development of new ventures based on technology from national, corporate and university research laboratories. His research, strategic counsel, industry relationships and hands-on leadership provides clarity, focus and impetus toward profitability and sustainable operations. Recent clients include ventures in natural handwriting recognition software for tablet computers (Caltech), catalysts for advanced carbon materials (Caltech), risk analysis software (RAND Corporation), natural language database query software (UCLA), wireless sensor networks (NASA/JPL), monopropellants for satellite thrusters (NASA/JPL), nanotechnology materials for separations and energy storage, voice-to-voice language translation systems and communications protocol software.
In related work, Mr. Brown evaluates SBIR Phase II commercialization proposals for the NASA Dryden Research Center and for the State of California CalTIP program for SBIR technology commercialization. He serves on the Board of MIT Enterprise Forum, Inc. (Cambridge) and the Executive Committee of the Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forum (Pasadena) and and is a associate member of the Pasadena Angels, an angel investment group. Mr. Brown speaks frequently on high-tech venture strategy and technology venture investing at Caltech, UCLA and local professional and investor conferences.
Mr. Brown was the Director of Strategy and a member of the Executive Committee at Teradata Corporation (El Segundo) which developed massively-parallel computers for the management of large online databases. The company grew from $10 million to over $300 million in annual revenue during his three-year and was named Inc.’s Fastest-Growing Small Public Company The company now reports annual revenues over $2 billion. Mr. Brown was also Director of Analyst Relations at Pyramid Technology Corporation (San Jose), a highperformance computer manufacturer and division of Siemens Corporation with annual revenues of $400 million.
Earlier, Mr. Brown held marketing, sales and corporate MIS positions with Xerox Corporation, TRW and smaller software firms. He earned the Bronze Star as a First Lieutenant, US Army Signal Corps, in Southeast Asia and was subsequently a tactical combat and communications policy analyst for Lulejian & Associates, a defense research firm in Los Angeles.
Mr. Brown holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a SM in Management (Management Science) from the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Richard Morganstern, Tech Coast Angels
Mentor for MicroCell
Mr. Morganstern has over thirty-five years of legal, business and finance experience. He was the former Managing Partner of a Beverly Hills based intellectual property and business litigation and counseling law firm. He was the former Chairman of a NASD licensed investment banking firm which focused on arranging funding, principally from foreign sources, for domestic early stage technology companies. He was the co-founder of Language Weaver, Inc. the worlds leading supplier of statistically based natural language translation systems. Mr. Morganstern currently serves on the Board of Governors of the Tech Coast Angels and as the President of the Tech Coast Angels (LA Network), whose members are the leading source of angel funding and guidance for early stage, high growth companies in Southern California. He serves as a member of the Advisory Board of USC’s Center for Technology Commercialization, a guest lecturer for the California Institute of Technology Entrepreneurial Fellowship Program and a Distinguished Speaker at USC’s Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.
Mr. Morganstern received a BSEE degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a JD degree from Cornell University. He is a member of the Bars of California, New York, United States Patent Office, U.S. Supreme Court and various federal Circuit Courts of Appeals.
Saul Leonard, Tech Coast Angels
Mentor for SmartMRI
Saul F Leonard has been a member of Tech Coast Angels since 2000 and is semi retired. He is president of Saul F. Leonard Company Inc., a consulting practice specializing in the gaming and hospitality industries. For over 50 years Mr. Leonard has provided innovative business counseling and financial services to a broad range of clients including most of the major gaming and hospitality companies and investment bankers. Services include financial and business planning, auditing, mergers and acquisitions, financial structuring and restructuring, market studies for proposed new locations or concepts, economic analysis, valuation estimates, expert witness testimony, develop and implement operating procedures, operational analysis, court appointed receiver and asset management. Over the years Mr. Leonard has also offered counsel and guidance and testified before various governmental agencies and been a frequent speaker at gaming and hospitality conferences. He authored an annual study of the U.S. gaming industry and wrote a monthly article for International Gaming & Wagering Business for over 15 years.
Al Schneider, Pasadena Angels and Tech Coast Angels
Mentor for HPLC and CHH Micropump
Al Schneider is an active angel investor, start-up board member and mentor to early stage companies. He is a co-founder and Vice Chairman of Pasadena Angels, Vice President of Tech Coast Angels-Los Angeles, and Chairman of Entretech, a non-profit focused on empowering entrepreneurs to build their businesses through capital, education, people and strategic partners.
During the past two years, Al has served on the boards of Pictage, a complete digital proofing, marketing and production solution for professional photographers; H2Scan, a leader in hydrogen sensing products for area monitoring and process control; and Unified Dispatch, a software company serving the ground transportation industry.
Most of Mr. Schneider's career was spent in the real estate and healthcare property investment, finance and development industries. He was Vice President of the B.F. Saul Company, a diversified real estate organization which then advised the public REIT now known as Saul Centers (NYSE-BFS). Later, he was the COO of The Canterbury Group, a private real estate company which developed rental apartments, condominiums, and other residential and healthcare properties. His earliest private equity investments outside the real estate field, in the mid 1990's, included Clifton Mining (NASDAQ-CFTN). Al has a B.A. and M.B.A. from Harvard.