Speaker:
Moderator:
Panelist:
Event Description:
The internet has evolved into a realm where people are not only consuming media content, but also participating in creating content. The availability of online connectivity and simple content creation tools are putting media power in the hands of consumers. User generated content, such as podcasting, blogging, and video-blogging, has emerged as a vastly growing market.
With few technical and regulatory limitations, people are busy creating content to publish on the internet. Many entrepreneurs are making bets that content created by consumers is a viable and sustainable business model.
Leaders in this space will join a panel to discuss what the market is witnessing and the emerging business models. In addition, key uncertainties will be discussed such as issues of quality control and the affect on traditional media outlets.
Speaker:
Evan Williams 
CEO
Odeo, Inc.
Evan Williams is the co-founder and CEO of Odeo, Inc. — a new company focused on giving people new ways to record and share audio. In 1999, as CEO of Pyra Labs, he co-created Blogger.com, one of the first blogging tools, and helped define the blogging phenomenon. Evan sold Pyra Labs to Google in 2003, where he served as a product and engineering manager until October 2004. In 1994, Evan started his first Internet company, in Nebraska, where he grew up amongst the cornfields. He now lives in San Francisco with his girlfriend and her cat and can be found on the web at evhead.com.
Moderator:
Randy Haykin
Founder and Managing Director
Outlook Ventures
Randy Haykin is a founder and Managing Director of Outlook Ventures, an
early-stage software-focused fund he established in 1996. For the past
nine years he has been investing in software firms in the consumer,
enterprise and infrastructure sectors. He led the firms early
involvement at Overture, and has represented Outlook on the Boards of Reconnex, Loyalty Lab Bridgestream, NetBrowser Communications, nSite Software, Impulse Network (acquired by Inktomi ” N: IKTM), eTeamz (merged with Active Networks), Voquette (merged with Semagix), Qbiquity (acquired by Collabrys) and, Logilent (merged with Toolwire, Inc). Much of Randy’s work as a VC has been in the area of user-generated content, including hands-on work with Yahoo, AOL Greenhouse, SBC @Hand service, Electric Minds, eCircles, Active Networks, and Classmates.com.
Prior to Outlook, Haykin held various senior sales and marketing positions in the high technology arena over the past 19 years with high-profile companies such as Yahoo!, Viacom, Paramount, BBN, IBM, and Apple Computer.
Randy served as the founding Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Yahoo!, where he was responsible for building the company’s marketing team, establishing agency relationships and generating initial business model and advertising sales for Yahoo. Haykin served as interim VP Marketing at NetChannel, which was successfully acquired by America Online in 1998. He has also served as part of the core team that launched America Online’s Greenhouse, a successful venture incubator.
Haykin holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Organizational Studies from Brown University, magna cum laude, and an MBA from Harvard’s Graduate School of Business. He is the author of “Demystifying Multimedia” (Random House, 1993). Randy enjoys “soccer-parenting”, playing the guitar and family outings with his wife, Patty and three daughters, Elise, Julianna and Kayla. He is on the Governing Board of Opportunity International, a non-profit that provides micro-loans for 3rd World countries and the Board of the American Cancer Society.
Panelist:
Jim Barton
Co-founder, CTO, and Senior Vice President of Tivo
TiVo Inc.
At TiVo, Jim sets the technical vision for the company, including our product, service and partnership roadmaps. In addition to responsibility for all product development, his special area of emphasis is on the software and digital video streaming technologies behind the TiVo Service.
Prior to co-founding TiVo, Jim was President and CEO of Network Age Software, Inc., a company he founded to develop software products targeted at managed electronic distribution. The concepts he developed at Network Age form the foundation of the TiVo Personal TV Service.
Jim began his executive career at SGI, holding a position as Vice President and General Manager of the Systems Software Division, and continued with executive roles in both operational management and R&D organizations within the company. While at SGI, he became the lead system software architect of the Full Service Network in Orlando, Florida, in which he worked to develop the only large-scale interactive television system to be put into operational service. He also served as CTO of Interactive Digital Solutions Company, a joint venture of Silicon Graphics and AT&T Network Systems created to develop interactive television systems.
Prior to joining SGI, Jim held technical and management positions at Hewlett-Packard and Bell laboratories in the areas of operating system and networking technology and product development. Jim holds a B.S.E.E. and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
David Hornik
General Partner
August Capital
David Hornik is a General Partner with August Capital. He invests broadly in information technology companies, with a focus on consumer-facing software and services, enterprise applications and infrastructure software. Prior to joining August Capital, Hornik was an intellectual property and corporate attorney at Venture Law Group, Cravath Swaine & Moore, and Perkins Coie LLP. Hornik teaches business and law at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and writes about the venture capital industry in VentureBlog. Hornik sits on the board of Six Apart and has been an investor in or advisor to When.com, Evite, Ofoto and Tickle, among other user-generated content services.
Gary Stein
Senior Analyst
Jupiter Research
Mr. Stein is the Senior Analyst for online advertising and marketing for Jupiter Research; he also focuses on the Consumer Packaged Goods industry. Topics that Stein covers include advertising formats, rich-media, media purchasing tactics, marketing strategies, and consumer behavior online.
Mr. Stein writes a column on marketing for the online journal ClickZ and maintains a Weblog covering online marketing trends. He has appeared on CNN, in The Wall Street Journal, and in many newspapers and trade journals. He also teaches a class at San Francisco State on strategic interactive marketing and design.
Prior to joining Jupiter Research, Mr. Stein worked as the Senior Strategist at Red Sky, an interactive marketing and advertising agency, where his clients included Procter & Gamble, The Coca-Cola Company, Lands’ End, and Nike. Before Red Sky, he worked at Poppe Tyson. Hen started his career at Mactivity, Inc., a firm focused on tradeshows and publications targeting the then-emerging interactive services market.
Mr. Stein holds a B.A. in English and M.A. in American Literature from California State University at Chico, and currently lives in San Francisco.
