Bio
Ron Conway
Ron Conway is an American angel investor, based in Silicon Valley. As founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds, he was an early stage investor in Google, Ask Jeeves and PayPal. Since 2005 he has been investing independently, achieving sixth place in the Forbes Magazine Midas list of top "dealmakers" in 2006.
Conway previously worked with National Semiconductor Corporation in marketing positions (1973-1979), Altos Computer Systems, as a co-founder, President and CEO, (1979-1990) and Personal Training Systems (PTS) as CEO (1991-1995). PTS was acquired by SmartForce/SkillSoft.
Esther Dyson
Esther Dyson is a long-time catalyst of start-ups in information technology in the U.S. and other markets, including Russia. Since selling her company, EDventure Holdings, to CNET Networks in 2004, she has taken on newer challenges in private aviation and space as well as in health care (as a director of 23andMe, a consumer genetics company).
Dyson's IT investments have included Flickr and del.icio.us (both sold to Yahoo!), and Medstory (sold to Microsoft), as well as Meetup Inc., Eventful.com, Boxbe and Voxiva; she sits on the boards of the latter four companies. Dyson is also an active investor in air and space, with holdings in Space Adventures and Zero-G Corporation, as well as XCOR Aerospace, Constellation Services International, Coastal Technologies Group, Dopplr.com, Airship Ventures and Icon.
Kevin Efrusy
Kevin joined Accel in 2003. His background is primarily as an entrepreneur and operating executive. He served two stints as an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers where he started Corio, an ASP/SaaS pioneer which went public on Nasdaq and was acquired by IBM in 2005. Later he built and served as the first CEO of IronPlanet, an online marketplace for heavy equipment with current annual gross sales over $500M. Prior to KPCB, Kevin worked at Zip2 and Bain & Company.
Steve Jurvetson
Steven T. Jürvetson is a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ). He was a Venture Capitalist (VC) investor in Hotmail, Interwoven, and Kana. He also led the firm's investments in Tradex and Cyras (acquired by Ariba and Ciena, respectively).
Tony Perkins
Tony Perkins is a Venture Partner with DFJ Frontier. He is the creator and former editor-in-chief of Red Herring magazine and the CEO of AlwaysOn, an interactive online network for technology insiders.
Perkins co-authored The Internet Bubble: Inside the Overvalued World of High-Tech Stocks (HarperBusiness, 1999), a book that foretold the dot-com bust. It became an international bestseller; a sequel was published in 2001. As a result of his prolific editorial output, he is consistently ranked as one of the top ten technology business journalists by Adweek's Technology Marketing magazine.
Perkins served on President George W. Bush's Information Technology Advisory Council and he was the founding chairman of the Churchill Club in Palo Alto, California, for which he received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
He has been a member of the World Economic Forum's Media Leaders group since 1996. Perkins was also founder and CEO of Upside Publishing and Vice President of Business Development at Silicon Valley Bank.
Perkins continues to chronicle the technology world in a regular column for the Wall Street Journal and as television commentator for MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, CNN, CNBC, BBC, and Bloomberg Television.
Tony Perkins graduated from UC Davis with a BA in Western European History/Political Science.
David Weiden
At Khosla Ventures, David Weiden has led investments including Aliph aka Jawbone, Bitfone (HPQ), iLike, RingCentral, Slide and WideOrbit. Prior personal investments and advisor relationships include Good Technology (MOT), Ingenio (T), loopt, LogMeIn, Opsware (HPQ), SmartPay and Tellme (MSFT).
Encyclopædia Britannica Article
- technology
Application of knowledge to the practical aims of human life or to changing and manipulating the human environment. Technology includes the use of materials, tools, techniques, and sources of power to make life easier or more pleasant and work more productive. Whereas science is concerned with how and why things happen, technology focuses on making things happen. Technology began to influence human endeavour as soon as people began using tools. It accelerated with the Industrial Revolution and the substitution of machines for animal and human labour. Accelerated technological development has also had costs, in terms of air and water pollution and other undesirable environmental effects.
- technology on britannica.com
© 2010 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
