Board of Advisors

Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Truemors and a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures. He is also a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of eight books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Hal R. Varian is Chief Economist at Google. He is also Class of 1944 Professor at the School of Information (iSchool), the Haas School of Business, and the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1995-2002, he served as the founding dean of SIMS.

Professor Varian is a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the Econometric Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as Co-Editor of the American Economic Review and is on the editorial boards of several journals. Professor Varian has published numerous papers in economic theory, industrial organization, financial economics, econometrics and information economics. He is the author of two major economics textbooks which have been translated into 22 languages. His current research has been concerned with the economics of information technology and the information economy. He is the co-author of a bestselling book on business strategy, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy and writes a monthly column for the The New York Times.

Ross Mayfield is CEO & Co-founder of Socialtext, the first wiki company and leading provider of Enterprise 2.0 solutions. A noted blogger and industry expert, he is a serial and social entrepreneur. Mayfield has grown Socialtext to over 2,000 customers with Software-as-a-Service, Appliance and Open Source solutions. Mayfield partnered with Dan Bricklin, the creator of the first spreadsheet visiCalc, to co-develop and distribute SocialCalc. Socialtext is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, SAP Ventures and Omidyar Network.

Previously, Mayfield served as VP of Marketing for a Fujitsu spinout and CEO of an enterprise risk management software company. Mayfield co-founded and served as president of RateXchange (AMEX:RTX). He also served as the marketing director of the largest privately held telecommunications group in Eastern Europe. He also founded an ISP, a web-design company, and has served on a number of Advisory Boards of high tech startups.

Mayfield is a former advisor to the Office of the President of Estonia and began his career in the non-profit sector. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California at Los Angeles and completed the Management Development for Entrepreneurs (MDE) program of the Anderson School of Business. He resides in his hometown of Palo Alto with his wife and two children.

Dave McClure has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over fifteen years as a software developer, entrepreneur, startup advisor, angel investor, blogger, and internet marketing nerd. He is currently an advisor or investor for Mint Software, Spock Networks, Mashery, Simply Hired, TeachStreet, Oortle, CrazyEgg, Eventvue, AppFuel, HealthUnity, and Canopy Financial.

Dave is the conference chair for Graphing Social Patterns, and a co-chair for O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo. He is also a guest lecturer at Stanford University for a new course on building Facebook Apps. Dave is a board member for microfinance accelerator Unitus, advisor to microfinance lender Kiva.org, and a co-founder of the Silicon Valley Microfinance Network.

From 2005 to 2006, Dave launched & ran marketing for job search engine SimplyHired.com, and its evil twin SimplyFired.com. From 2001 to 2004, Dave worked at PayPal (acquired by eBay in 2002) as Director of Marketing, where he founded & ran the PayPal Developer Network program. Prior to PayPal, Dave was a database consultant & programmer for several companies, including Microsoft and Intel. In 1994 he founded Aslan Computing, an internet & e-commerce firm that was later acquired by Servinet/Panurgy in 1998.

Before coming to Silicon Valley, Dave barely graduated from the Johns Hopkins University with a BS in Mathematical Sciences Engineering and a minor in frisbee, billiards & foosball. His interests include micro finance and economic innovation, entrepreneurship and venture capital, ultimate frisbee, cartoons and animation, and an ever-growing collection of funny-looking hats.