Advisors & Partners
This initial team of industry experts has advised Innovation Works on the AlphaLab program and is a resource of information and guidance for AlphaLab companies. Others have joined this core group and new advisors will continue to be added.
Our key partners are helping promote AlphaLab to entrepreneurs whose companies or concepts might be a fit. These groups are working to build a vibrant entrepreneurial community in Pittsburgh comprised of software developers, game designers, Internet application developers and alpha/beta test users.
Advisors
- Sean Ammirati – Co-founder and VP of Business Development & Product Management, mSpoke
- Lenore Blum – Director, Project Olympus; Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science
- Dan Cohen – CEO, Pageflakes (acquired by LiveUniverse)
- Ed Engler – General Partner, Pittsburgh Equity Partners
- Matt Fleckenstein - Group Product Manager, Customer Relationship Marketing, Microsoft Office Live
- Craig Gomulka – Director, Draper Triangle Ventures
- Matt Humphrey – Co-founder, Kickball Labs
- Donald Marinelli – Executive Producer, Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center – Global
- Dave Mawhinney – Co-founder & CEO, mSpoke
- Dave Nelsen – CEO, Talkshoe
- Raul Valdes-Perez -- Founder and CEO, Vivisimo
- Hooman Radfar – Founder and CEO, Clearspring Technologies
- Jesse Schell – CEO, Schell Games
- Chris Shipley – Executive Producer, DEMO; Co-founder and Chairman, Guidewire Group
- Alan Veeck – Principal, Meakem Becker Venture Capital
Partners
Advisors
Sean Ammirati – Co-founder and VP of Business Development & Product Management, mSpoke
Sean is the VP of Business Development & Product Management at mSpoke, a leading provider of personalization solutions for web content, online advertising, and product recommendations.
Sean also regularly contributes to the influential Read/WriteWeb blog and hosts the weekly podcast Read/WriteTalk.
Once an aspiring programmer, Sean has found his niche as a new technology evangelist. Currently, this manifests itself in his passion for helping publishers revitalize their online content with mSpoke’s adaptive personalization solutions. Prior to co-founding mSpoke, Sean was a research fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Industry Center and served on the Editorial Advisory Board and as a columnist for Information Week.
To learn more about Sean, visit http://www.mspoke.com/team.html
Top
Lenore Blum – Director, Project Olympus; Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science
Lenore Blum is Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon where she co-directs the ALADDIN Center for Algorithm ADaptation, Dissemination and INtegration, is faculty advisor to the student organization, Women@SCS, and PI for the Google funded CS4HS program. In 2005, she received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) for her over 35 years of creating programs to increase the participation of women in scientific and technical fields including the Expanding Your Horizons conferences for middle school girls. Lenore taught at UC Berkeley, founded the Mills College Department of Mathematics and Computer Science (the first CS department at a women’s college), was senior researcher at the International Computer Science Institute, and Deputy Director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute.
Lenore’s research, from her early work in model theory and differential fields (logic and algebra) to her more recent work in developing a theory of computation and complexity over the real numbers (mathematics and computer science), has focused on merging seemingly unrelated areas. She has served the professional community in numerous capacities including as President of the Association for Women in Mathematics, vice-President of the American Mathematical Society. Her most recent creation and passion is Project Olympus, a high tech innovation center at Carnegie Mellon.
To learn more about Lenore, visit: http://www.awm-math.org/noetherbrochure/Blum02.html
Top
Dan Cohen – CEO, Pageflakes (acquired by Live Universe)
Dan Cohen oversees all aspects of Pageflakes' rapidly growing worldwide business and has an integral role in driving the company's product vision. Dan is a seasoned entrepreneur and startup CEO, and is an expert in personalized homepages.
Prior to Pageflakes he was the head of My Yahoo!, Yahoo's personalized homepage, and before that led product management for personalized products at Google, including the Google Personalized Homepage.
Previously, Dan was the founder and CEO of two technology companies, Personity and USConnect, and led their acquisitions by Openwave and IKON, respectively.
He also held key senior management positions at IKON Technology Services, including Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Director of Applications Development.
To learn more about Dan, visit: http://www.pageflakes.com/Pages/company/mgmt.aspx
Top
Ed Engler – General Partner, Pittsburgh Equity Partners
Ed Engler is General Partner at Pittsburgh Equity Partners and focuses on early stage investments in information technology and life sciences companies in the Western Pennsylvania region. Ed has been an investor and entrepreneur in Western Pennsylvania for 15 years, having founded his own successful technology company, and has provided funding and guidance to early-stage companies through his venture capital funds.
Ed founded Summa Technologies in 1996, creating and providing commercial-grade, customized IT applications for organizations of all sizes, from small entrepreneurial firms to Fortune 100 companies.
In 2001, the Pittsburgh Business Times named Summa Technologies the fastest growing private company in Pittsburgh and Summa was among the region’s fastest growing private companies for several years. In 2000, Ed founded Summa VentureWorks to fund seed-stage, start-up companies in the enterprise software market. Summa VentureWorks is now one of the top 25 venture capital firms in Western Pennsylvania.
To learn more about Ed, visit his LinkedIn profile:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/80/35a
Top
Matt Fleckenstein - Group Product Manager, Customer Relationship Marketing, Microsoft Office Live
Matt is currently a Group Product Manager at Microsoft Office Live, responsible for the Customer Relationship Marketing across the various Office Live properties at Microsoft. In this capacity, he leads a team responsible for relationship marketing, customer communities, and Voice of the Customer initiatives.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Matt was VP of Marketing at mSpoke, a leading provider of personalization solutions for web content, online advertising, and product recommendations. Earlier in his career, Matt was Director of Entrepreneurial Services at Innovation Works, helping to nurture and advise more than a dozen startup technology companies. Matt’s focus/passion for “personalization, consumer empowerment, and relevance” has been noted in various industry publications including: Behavioral Insider, Direct Marketing Magazine, and iMedia.
To learn more about Matt, visit his LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/matflec
Top
Craig Gomulka – Director, Draper Triangle Ventures
Prior to joining Draper Triangle, Craig worked as a summer associate for Intel Corporation where he developed supplier cost models and price negotiation tools.
Before embarking upon graduate school, Craig was employed by RRZ Investment Management, an institutional money management firm where he was responsible for the portfolio management and trading of $100 million of fixed income investments, as well as the design and programming of fixed and equity trading tools. Craig serves on the boards of Entermedia and BitArmor Systems, serves as a board observer for the publicly-traded Nova Measuring Instruments, Inc. (NASDAQ: NVMI), and oversees the Draper Triangle investment in Imago Scientific Instruments.
To learn more about Craig, visit: http://www.drapertriangle.com/team/craig_gomulka.php
Top
Matt Humphrey – Co-founder, Kickball Labs
Matt Humphrey is currently working in San Francisco as a co-founder of Kickball Labs, a consumer Internet company still in stealth mode. Matt is a serial entrepreneur – he has worked at four startups in the past three years – and a talented technologist.
Matt was the CEO at SlapVid, a YCombinator company. SlapVid provided a unique and innovative online video experience by allowing users to preview content faster, better, and with less effort than ever. Previous to working with SlapVid, Matt was the Chief Strategy Officer for Eivod, an in-browser peer-to-peer content delivery platform for high quality video. Matt also worked as the COO for Envivial and as a Software Design Engineer intern at Microsoft.
To learn more about Matt, visit his LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/matthumphrey
Top
Donald Marinelli – Executive Producer, Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center – Global
Donald Marinelli is a tenured Professor of Drama and Arts Management at Carnegie Mellon University and is also the Executive Producer of the Entertainment Technology Center.
Professor Marinelli has been at Carnegie Mellon for 26 years where he served as the Assistant Head of the Drama Dept. (1980-86) and later the Associate Department Head (1986-95). Dr. Marinelli was integral in the creation of the Master of Arts Management (MAM) program, the Master of Fine Arts in Acting degree program with the Moscow Art Theatre School in Russia, and, with colleague Randy Pausch, he co-founded the Master of Entertainment Technology (MET) degree program and the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC).
To learn more about Donald, visit http://www.etc.cmu.edu/people/faculty/index.php
Top
Dave Mawhinney – Co-founder & CEO, mSpoke
Dave is the co-founder & CEO of mSpoke, a leading provider of personalization solutions for web content, online advertising, and product recommendations.
Dave has made a career of turning great ideas into successful Internet companies since the 1990s. He was most recently a General Partner of PNC Technology Investors. He co-founded three successful startup ventures before that, including Premier Health Exchange (acquired by Medibuy), Hawk Medical (acquired by McKesson), and Industry.Net (merged with AT&T Business Network to form Nets, Inc.).
To learn more about Dave, visit: http://www.mspoke.com/team.html
Top
Dave Nelsen – CEO, Talkshoe
Dave Nelson is CEO and founder of TalkShoe (www.talkshoe.com), a web-based service that allows anyone to create and run their own social network Community Calls – interactive text and voice discussions with potentially hundreds of friends and group members. Dave has more than 25 years of experience in the telecommunications industry. His goal with TalkShoe is to allow online groups to actually talk, building deeper group relationships.
Prior to founding TalkShoe, Dave co-founded CoManage with Andy Fraley in 1998 to build software solutions that enable service providers to maximize service profitability. Under Dave’s leadership, the company received over $60M in funding from top venture capitalists, won numerous industry awards, and was purchased by telecom software leader Syndesis.
Dave has been recognized as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (2000) and CEO of the Year (2004) by the Pittsburgh Technology Council.
To learn more about Dave, visit: http://www.talkshoe.com/se/about/TSMeetOurTeam.html
Top
Hooman Radfar – Founder and CEO, Clearspring Technologies
Hooman is the founder and CEO of Clearspring Technologies, the leading provider of widget syndication services connecting online publishers and advertisers to the social web. At Clearspring, he actively shapes product and marketing initiatives. He was recently named one of Tech's Best Entrepreneurs in BusinessWeek and was nominated for Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year.
Hooman is a frequently requested speaker in the areas of social networks, content syndication, and social media at industry-leading conferences like AdTech, AjaxWorld, Web 2.0 Expo, and CES. When he is not busy building a better web, you can find him writing his blog Widgify - ranked one of the top blogs of 2007 according to Software Development Times. He currently serves on the advisory boards of RateItAll.com, the leading rating service online, and the Social Gaming Network, the largest gaming network on Facebook.
To learn more about Hooman, visit http://www.clearspring.com/about
Top
Jesse Schell – CEO, Schell Games
Prior to starting Schell Games, Jesse was the Creative Director of the Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio, where he worked and played for seven years as designer, programmer and manager on several projects for Disney theme parks and DisneyQuest, as well as on Toontown Online , the first massively multiplayer game for kids.
Jesse is also on the faculty of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University where he teaches classes in Game Design and serves as an advisor on several innovative projects. In 2004, he was named one of the world's Top 100 Young Innovators by Technology Review, MIT's magazine of innovation.
To learn more about Jesse, visit: http://www.schellgames.com/people/
Top
Chris Shipley – Executive Producer, DEMO; Co-founder and Chairman, Guidewire Group
Chris Shipley is a leading technology and product analyst. Best known as the executive producer of the DEMO Conferences for IDG Executive Forums, Chris has helped technology companies bring over 1,000 new products to market since 1996. As a founding partner and Global Research Director of Guidewire Group, she analyzes emerging technology companies around the world to identify market opportunities and accelerate products to market.
Fortune Small Business Magazine placed Chris on its "Top 10 Minds in Small Business," and the San Jose Business Journal named her a "Woman of Distinction." She has often been cited as a leading influencer by Marketing Computers magazine. Chris has covered personal technology since 1984 and has worked as a writer and editor for a variety of technology and consumer media. She is currently working on a book on the social impact of technology-driven change.
To learn more about Chris, visit: http://www.guidewiregroup.com/site/about/management.html
Top
Raul Valdes-Perez– Founder and CEO, Vivisimo
Raul has led Vivisimo since co-founding it in June, 2000. During his tenure, he has been recognized as a 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (North Central Region), top ten reader favorite for Entrepreneur of the Year by Inc. magazine, twice a CEO of the year finalist by the Pittsburgh Technology Council, CEO Communicator of the Year by the Public Relations Society of America (Pittsburgh chapter), and an Outstanding Alumni Career Achievement by the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Before Vivisimo, Raul was on the Carnegie Mellon University computer science department faculty, where his research on new methods and applications of knowledge discovery led to publishing nearly 50 journal articles in natural, social and computer science.
To learn more about Raul, visit: http://vivisimo.com/about/management
Top
Alan Veeck – Principal, Meakem Becker Venture Capital
Alan Veeck joined Meakem Becker as a Principal in 2006 and brings academic depth and over ten years of industry and executive experience to our team. In his role, Alan focuses on identifying, performing diligence on, and investing in new companies. He also spends a significant amount of time coaching, mentoring, and sitting on the boards of portfolio companies.
Prior to joining Meakem Becker, Alan was a Director with the Global Account Management team at Ariba (NASDAQ:ARBA) and was formerly with FreeMarkets before it was acquired by Ariba in 2004. Alan joined FreeMarkets in 1999 as a Manager in the company’s online markets group. During his years with the company, Alan worked on the strategy and business development team for Glen Meakem and David Becker, where he helped to identify and manage multiple acquisitions for the company. His final responsibilities at Ariba included managing a group of key customer accounts worth over $20 million per year in software and service revenues and overseeing a large team with the responsibility for delivery of this business.
To learn more about Alan, visit: http://mbvc.com/alan-c-veeck/
Top
Partners
Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC): Leadership in education and research that combines technology and fine arts to create new processes, tools, and vision for education, experience, storytelling, and entertainment.
Refresh Pittsburgh: Refresh Pittsburgh is a community of designers and developers working to refresh the creative, technical, and professional culture of Internet developers in the Pittsburgh area.
Project Olympus: Project Olympus aims to create a culture, climate and community that will enable talent and ideas to grow in the region. Interfacing between Carnegie Mellon and the regional innovation investment community, Olympus serves as an incubator for student entrepreneurial activities and aims to connect Next Generation Computing research with business creation and technology transfer opportunities.
DevHouse Pittsburgh: DevHouse Pittsburgh aims to become the premier Pittsburgh-area hackathon event. We combine serious and not-so-serious productivity with a fun and exciting party atmosphere. Come to the DevHouse to have fun and get things done! We're about rapid development, ad-hoc collaboration, and cross pollination. Whether you're a l33t hax0r, hardcore coder, or passionate designer, if you enjoy software and technology development, DevHouse Pittsburgh is for you.
Top