SVOD – Silicon Valley Open Doors

Impact Through High-Tech Entrepreneurship

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Speakers

Chris Rust

Chris Rust

Chris Rust

Managing Partner, Clear Venture Partners; early investor, GoPro (IPO, market cap $3B)

Chris Rust is a Silicon Valley VC with a proven track record of helping IT startups achieve market leadership and significant shareholder value creation. He has 14 years of institutional VC experience at Sequoia Capital and USVP, and 2 years of angel investing experience.

His historical VC portfolio has produced a 9x ROI and over $30B in market cap from 19 exits, including seed/early stage lead investments in GoPro (GPRO), Dune Networks (BRCM), Mellanox (MLNX), SwitchOn (PMCS), VxTel (INTC), and Avanex (AVNX).

His active investments include GoEuro, PlumGrid, Reflektion, Robin Systems, Veradocs, and Zerto. Chris brings 15 years of operating experience to his early stage IT investing activities to help founders win.

His operating experience includes co-founder of broadband access pioneer Roadrunner (Time Warner Cable Internet, CY14 revenue of $4B from 13m subs), CEO of Mahi Networks (Meriton), startup PLM at Carrier Access Corp (CACS) and ComCore (NSM), and technical staff at USWest Advanced Technologies and MITRE.

Chris holds a BS/MS EE from the University of Lowell, an MS in Telecommunications Engineering and an MS in Engineering Management from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Testimonials

A lot of energy, lot of very dedicated entrepreneurs here, very passionate, very committed to what they’re doing.

Mitchell (Mitch) Kapor

Partner, Kapor Capital

The founders of the conference are very authentic and these are people that want to change the world and make things better for entrepreneurs and help people and I think that’s a great thing.

George Zachary

Partner, Charles River Ventures, (Midas List, 1st investor in twitter & Yammer, $1.4B under management)

I love coming to the Silicon Valley Open Doors! I discover entrepreneurs here every single year, and I think I’ve been to all of them.

Carol Sands

Founder, The Angels’ Forum

The wonderful thing about entrepreneurs is that their passion for starting new companies transcends languages and geographic boundaries. I felt very comfortable at SVOD and recognized its participants as having the same type of DNA that made Silicon Valley what it is today.

Ron Conway

SV Angel

The SVOD conference was a wonderful event. Networking is very important for start-ups. The challenge for them is often not money: it is mentoring and finding people who can give good advice from experience.

Esther Dyson

Founder, EDventure Holdings

This conference is clearly a labor of love for a group of dedicated professionals who care deeply about the European entrepreneurs. From the value-packed educational panels, to the star-studded keynote speakers’ line up, to an amazing quantity of venture capitalists – this is a not to be missed event for any high tech entrepreneur.

Richard Guha

President of the Marketing Executives Network and Managing Partner at MaxBrandEquity

Thank you for the opportunity to present Driveway at SVOD. It gave us much needed exposure to the wide investor community. Combining the pitch preparation classes with the presentation content guidance, we came out strong and confident from the podium. During the conference we had a chance to speak to many investors and industry leaders resulting in a very valuable feedback.

Jake Diner

Driveway Software

Excellent! Great conference! Lots of People! Lot of energy! Enthusiastic! Everything is just going so good.

Vish Mishra

Venture Director, Clearstone Venture Partners ($600M under management)

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