SVOD – Silicon Valley Open Doors

Impact Through High-Tech Entrepreneurship

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Speakers

Cindy Padnos

Cindy Padnos

Cindy Padnos

Partner, Illuminate Ventures

Cindy Padnos is the founder and Managing Partner of Illuminate Ventures, a micro VC firm investing in the fast-growing Enterprise cloud and mobile computing sectors. She has deployed over $100 million to help dozens of start-ups succeed. Current Illuminate investments include Allocadia, BrightEdge Technologies, CafeX Communications, ChannelEyes, Coupang, Hoopla, Yozio and Xactly. Recent realized investments include SimOps Studios (ADSK), Red Aril (Hearst Corp) and Digital Fuel (VMW).

Previously, as an operating executive, Cindy was founder and CEO of Vivant (ORCL), CEO of Acumen and VP of marketing at Scopus Technology (IPO). Cindy has been named one of the Most Influential Women in Tech (Fast Company), Most Influential Women in Silicon Valley (The New York Times) and was dubbed” Queen B2B” (VentureBeat) . She is an advisor to entrepreneurship-focused accelerators Alchemist, Astia and Springboard and to both Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business and its Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Testimonials

It was great to present at SVOD and meet world-class entrepreneurs and investors. Our venture was off to a fast start in the funding round after the conference, we had an early closing to the round, and I look forward to being part of SVOD in the future!

Alexei Dunayev

CEO &CoFounder, TranscribeMe & Stanford MBA

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

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

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

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

Cleary one of the very best conferences we attended and sponsored in Silicon Valley this year. To us the conference truly captured what we see in our daily practice, the substantial opportunities and also the challenges with cross-border business arrangements. We made many new meaningful connections.

Lars Johansson

Partner, K&L Gates

I am delighted to participate in and sponsor SVOD. It is particularly gratifying at this stage of my professional career to be able to support this unique organization and give back to the high-tech community. Looking back, I regret not having the benefits of SVOD network early on, when I really needed it! It is wonderful to see the new startups taking advantage of this very special forum.

Mike Sandler

CEO of Epiphan

It’s a great conference and it brings together great content from really terrific speakers like we just had and then a network of really interesting entrepreneurs.

Andy Tsao

Managing Director, Silicon Valley Bank

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