Additional Investors

Reid Hoffman

Reid Hoffman

Reid Hoffman is an entrepreneur and serial investor, most recently serving as the CEO of LinkedIn. He stepped down from the CEO position a second time in June 2009.

Prior to LinkedIn, Reid was Executive Vice President of PayPal. During his tenure at PayPal, Hoffman was instrumental to the acquisition by eBay and was responsible for partnerships with Intuit, Visa, MasterCard and Wells Fargo. Reid also has held management roles in large technology companies, including Fujitsu Software Corporation and Apple. Currently, in addition to LinkedIn, Reid serves on the Board of Directors for SixApart and Mozilla Corporation.

Jeff Clavier

Jeff Clavier

Based in Palo Alto, California, Jeff Clavier is the Founder and Managing Partner of SoftTech VC, one of the most active seed stage investors in Web 2.0 startups. Since 2004, Jeff has invested in close to 100 consumer internet startups (Fund I, Fund II, Fund III) in areas like social media, monetization, search, gaming or B2B/B2C web services. These investments are typically located in Silicon Valley, New-York and Boulder. With over 20 years of operational, entrepreneurial and venture capital experience, Jeff is able to add relevant perspective and value to his companies as they grow from inception to maturity, and hopefully, success.

Deep Nishar

Deep Nishar

Deep Nishar is responsible for setting and executing the global product strategy at LinkedIn. He went to LinkedIn from Google, where he helped shape the company's strategy in Asia-Pacific. Deep was also responsible for building Google's global mobile business. Deep holds an MBA from Harvard Business School where he graduated with highest honors as a Baker Scholar, a MSEE from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and a B. Tech with Honors from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. Deep holds 3 patents and was awarded the Google Founders Award, an accolade given to employees who have made extraordinary contributions to the company for his work on the Google Ads System Automation.

Hadi Partovi

Hadi Partovi

A graduate of Harvard University, Hadi established himself as an Internet leader during the browser wars: he was Group Program Manager for Internet Explorer. After the release of IE 5.0, Hadi co-founded Tellme Networks and spearheaded the company's shift from consumer services to enterprise call-center automation and delivering directory and customer-care services for AT&T, FedEx, E*TRADE, and more. Tellme Networks was later acquired by Microsoft. Hadi was subsequently General Manager of MSN.com, where he delivered 30% annual growth and incubated Start.com (now Live.com).

After MSN, Hadi joined his twin brother Ali Partovi to co-found iLike, which was acquired by MySpace. Hadi is currently SVP of Technology at MySpace.

Hadi has been an investor or strategic advisor to numerous startups including Facebook, Dropbox, BlueKai, Edusoft (acquired by Houghton Mifflin), and 2Web Technologies (now Google Spreadsheets).

Ali Partovi

Ali Partovi

Prior to iLike, Ali established himself as an entrepreneur by co-founding LinkExchange, which was acquired by Microsoft for $265 million in 1998. Ali also co-founded "DrinkExchange," a monthly social event that spread from San Francisco to Washington, London, Tokyo, and Sydney. After leaving Microsoft, Ali co-wrote a feature film and started a band, both of which failed.

In 2002 Ali led the effort to save GarageBand.com from being shut down and has been with the company since. In 2006 Ali recruited his twin brother Hadi to help start iLike, and today they run iLike (which owns GarageBand) together. Ali is an avid music lover and wannabe guitarist.

Carlos Cashman

Carlos Cashman

Carlos has worked with numerous successful start-ups as an executive, founder, investor, and advisor in the US and abroad for the last 16 years. He is currently an active angel investor and involved with several charities related to promotion of global peace and education. Carlos serves on the Board of Directors of SecretBuilders.com, an immersive online educational world for children, as well as Asset Performance Technologies, an advanced data and analytics provider for heavy industrial equipment he co-founded in 2003. In 2005 he co-founded CourseAdvisor, a leading search engine marketing firm in the post-secondary education industry which was sold two years later to the Washington Post. CourseAdvisor was designated one of the fastest growing companies in New England and voted one of Boston's best places to work in 2007. The first company Carlos founded, Opus360, went public on the NASDAQ in 2000 and was sold in 2001 to Artemis International. Carlos attended MIT on full scholarship.

Micah Adler

Micah Adler

An academic turned serial technology entrepreneur, Micah Adler combines leading industry insight with complex technical knowledge as the CEO and founder of Fluent Mobile.

Prior to this role, Micah was CEO, president, and co-founder of Adverplex, a search engine marketing (SEM) optimization company. His research in algorithms, probabilistic analysis and combinatorial optimization helped the company develop innovative technology to drive profitability for multi-million dollar SEM campaigns. Micah was also the co-founder, president and board member of CourseAdvisor, which was acquired by the Washington Post Corporation in 2007. He has served on the boards of directors for more than 10 Boston-area startup companies.

An internationally recognized expert in numerous areas crucial to the search, aggregation, and delivery of online and mobile content, Micah was also a tenured professor of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has authored more than 50 widely-cited publications; holds multiple patents; and has served on numerous academic review committees, program committees and editorial boards. He began his career at Oracle Corporation. He received his B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in theoretical computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.