Matt Marshall - Founder Matt Marshall covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News until he left in September 2006 to launch VentureBeat as an independent company. In 2007, he teamed up with Eric Eldon, who became the site's second writer. In early 2008, VentureBeat hired Anthony Ha and veteran reporter Dean Takahashi.
More recently, VentureBeat hired Camille Ricketts and Kim-Mai Cutler. In 2008, the New York Times called VentureBeat one of the "best blogs on the Web," and now the NYT runs VentureBeat's articles on its Web site. In March 2009, VentureBeat signed a partnership agreement with IDG to produce DEMO, the leading conference for launching emerging technology products.
Matt Marshall, who serves as Editor-in-Chief, covered the venture capital beat for the Mercury News from 2001-2006. He significantly expanded the newspaper's coverage of venture capital during that time, in daily articles and a weekly column called the VC Insider, and then online with his blog SiliconBeat from 2004.
Matt Marshall was awarded Journalist of the Year by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists in 2002, and the James Madison Freedom of Information award in 2003. These awards were for a series of articles he wrote in conjunction with two successful Mercury News lawsuits, in part instigated by Matt Marshall, against California's public pension fund (CalPERS) and the University of California. The lawsuits sought disclosure of the financial performance of venture capital and other private equity funds that CalPERS and UC had invested in, arguing that state taxpayers and retirees had a right to know these results. As a result of these laws suits, public employees now have full access to information on the performance of their retirement investments.
Matt Marshall was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 through 1998. He has also written for the Washington Post and several other publications. Matt Marshall has a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University.
Eric Wesoff - Eric Wesoff is a Senior Analyst at Greentech Media and Author of the Greentech Innovations Report. Prior to joining Greentech Media, Eric Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. Eric Wesoff has become a well-known, respected authority and speaker in these fields. He also was the publisher of the Venture Power newsletter, a subscription-only newsletter covering venture-capital investment in renewable energy.
Eric Wesoff’s expertise covers solar power, fuel cells, biofuels and advanced batteries. His strengths are in market research and analysis, business development and due diligence for investors. He frequently consults for energy startups and Silicon Valley’s premier venture capitalists. From 1988 to 1996, Eric Wesoff served as product marketing manager for Siemens Optoelectronics, where he oversaw complex product lines and managed relationships with global customers. He then became the U.S. marketing and sales manger for Akzo Nobel Photonics, which was acquired by JDS Uniphase. Eric Wesoff later served as the sales director for Dicon Fiber Optics, where he was responsible for selling millions of dollars of fiber-optic telecom-equipment. He has consulted for Merck, JDSU, Coherent, IBM and scores of other firms, governments and organizations.
Eric Wesoff, a senior analyst for Greentech Media, presents data on where the money is going within the grid development space, and why some companies are more attractive to investors than others.
Energy used to be a one-way street. Today, it's becoming a bi-directional superhighway with utility customers finally taking charge of their power use and how much they pay for it. Instead of drilling into short-term IT issues and arcane arm-chair politicking involved in this shift, GreenBeat 2009 maps out the hottest business and technology opportunities the Smart Grid has to offer.
