Meet the Thought Leaders of the Venture Capital Community

The Women of Mohr, Davidow Ventures (MDV) and Girls in Tech Present:

STRATEGIC INVESTING

IT, Life Sciences and GreenTech

During a down economy, it’s difficult to grasp how venture capital firms are continuing to thrive and prosper by making strategic investments in IT, Life Sciences, GreenTech and every other sector that is destined to obtain major revenues, become profitable, achieve an attractive exit or even IPO. MDV has upheld not only a strong track record of investing in promising portfolios but also, has proven time and time again that they hire and cultivate relationships with the right people at the right time. During this Girls in Tech session we will highlight three of these women with powerfully impressive backgrounds in their academic, professional, and personal careers alike.

As thought leaders in their respective fields, Girls in Tech is honored to showcase these female role models that represent some of its major guiding principles: engagement, education and empowerment of like-minded, professional, intelligent and influential women in technology. Through this panel discussion we hope to provide skills, share experiences and provide answers to questions on what it takes to become a successful venture capitalist and how to make strategic investments in some very influential industries. The panelists will touch upon collaborating on winning products and marketing strategies, developing smooth operations, establishing effective distribution strategies, and fine-tuning business models.

The Panelists:

IT: Katherine Barr
Katherine Barr is a member of the investment team at MDV focused on Internet-enabled companies. Prior to joining MDV, she was a Negotiator/Senior Consultant at Vantage Partners (spin-off of the Harvard Negotiation Project) helping high tech clients such as IBM, Cisco and HP to better negotiate and manage their critical business relationships (including customer, supplier, outsourcing service provider or buyer, and alliance partners). Before Vantage, she led a development team as a Senior Product Manager at HSA, an education technology startup in Boston. Katherine teaches a yearly Professional Education Negotiation program for the School of Engineering at Stanford. During her graduate studies at Stanford, she was involved in running the E-Challenge business plan competition for BASES (Business Association of Stanford Engineering Students). Katherine sourced MDV's investments in Visible Measures, Infusionsoft and VirtuOz, and works with various portfolio companies such as PBwiki and hi5. She is a director of Samasource and founding sponsor of Startup2Startup. Katherine received her B.A. from McGill University, and completed an M.A. and the M.S. core curriculum in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University.

Life Sciences: Rowan Chapman
Rowan Chapman joined MDV in 2001. Through her relationships with industry and academic leaders advancing the fields of personalized medicine, drug discovery technology and regenerative medicine she both sources new life sciences investments and works to develop and grow MDV life sciences companies including Artemis Health, Pacific Biosciences, Adamas Pharmaceuticals and ParAllele BioScience (acquired by Affymetrix). Rowan is also a member of the Personalized Medicine Coalition. Prior to joining MDV she held the position of director of business development at Rosetta Inpharmatics (acquired by Merck) where she established collaborative partnerships with organizations in the pharmaceutical, agricultural and biotech fields as well as among various research institutions. Previously, Rowan held the position of marketing manager at Incyte Genomics. Rowan holds a Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge University, United Kingdom, where she also earned a bachelor's degree with first class honors in Biochemistry. She served postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California, San Francisco, as well as at the MRC-Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge. Prior to her work in industry, she authored or co-authored more than a dozen articles and patents.

CleanTech: Marianne Wu
Marianne Wu is a Partner at MDV where she focuses on Cleantech investments. These typically involve significant technology or business model breakthroughs applied to large, evolving markets such as solar, biofuels and chemicals, clean coal, energy efficiency and water treatment and management. She leverages a decade of technology development and business experience to help entrepreneurs build meaningful, successful businesses. At MDV, she works closely with a number of the portfolio companies including ZeaChem and Catilin. Prior to joining MDV, Marianne was VP Marketing at ONI Systems where she was responsible for product strategy and market development. Earlier in her career, Marianne was a consultant at McKinsey and Company where she advised major technology clients on strategic and operational issues. Marianne has conducted state-of-the-art research in materials, devices, and systems at Stanford University and started her career as a design engineer at Nortel Networks where she developed high-speed networking technologies. She is a member of the Hua Yuan Science and Technology Association (HYSTA) VC Group, Environmental Entrepreneurs, and is on the Advisory Committee of the Western Governors' Association. Marianne earned both her doctoral and master's degrees from the School of Engineering at Stanford University and her bachelor's in Applied Science at the University of British Columbia.

About MDV
MDV invests in entrepreneurs creating businesses that address significant challenges and opportunities associated with Driving the Digital World, Personalizing Medicine and Powering the Planet. For nearly 25 years MDV has partnered with entrepreneurs and taken a hands-on approach to architect and help build successful companies. MDV's team and the firm's extended network of industry experts bring years of real-world experience to accelerate each company's time to market and optimize its long-term success. The firm has $2 billion under management. Among the many MDV funded companies that have gone public or been acquired are: Actuate; Agile; Auspex; Broadbase (KANA); Brocade; Epigram (BRCM); FormFactor; Freshwater Software (MERQ); Ipsilon Networks (NOK); Kalpana (CSCO); Numerical Technologies (SNPS); ONI Systems (CIEN); Pivotal Technologies (BRCM); Rambus; Vantive; Vitesse; and Zip2 (AltaVista).