SVOD – Silicon Valley Open Doors

Impact Through High-Tech Entrepreneurship

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Speakers

Masa Isono

Masa Isono

Masa Isono

Principal at DEFTA Partners

Masa Isono has been actively involved in venture investment, development and corporate partnering for the U.S., Japanese and Asian companies for more than 20 years.

At DEFTA, he is in charge of not only VC investment management, but also value-creating services for its portfolio companies. Combining skills of international business development, joint ventures management, and knowledge of strategic planning and corporate finance, he provides entrepreneurs and corporations with experience, insight and the guidance needed to build successful and sustainable businesses.

Masa has B.A. from Waseda University, and M.B.A. and M.A. in Economics from Boston University. He is a CFA charterholder, CPA (inactive) and a Chartered Member of The Security Analysts Association of Japan.

Testimonials

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

The quality of entrepreneurs and the international flavor: it’s always fun to see where innovation is happening around the world. It was fun for us to see not only the quality of thought but also pace of execution and the teams here are becoming ready to play.

Byron Deeter

Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners ($4B under management)

The organizers here are doing an amazing job with selecting the people who attend, selecting the speakers, coming up with ideas for panels and discussions. The truly amazing side is that the audience gets bigger, more involved, active and more thoughtful. It’s just a fun place to be!

Daniil Stolyarov

Investment Director, Almaz Capital Partners (102M under management)

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

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)

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

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 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