LPV8 Startup Most Likely to Succeed

Christoph Braun

Christoph [Braun] is one of four Founding Partners of Acton Capital Partners, a Munich-based venture capital investor in internet-based, consumer-oriented businesses. Before Acton he was Managing Director of Burda Digital Ventures, the investment company for digital businesses of Hubert Burda Media, one of the major media Companies in Germany, where he also served as Director Corporate Treasury for the group. Local current board memberships include Suite101.com Media in Vancouver and Nexopia.com in Edmonton. Before the company was acquired by Amazon, Inc. in late 2008 he was Chairman of the Board at Abebooks, Inc., Victoria, B.C.

Prior to joining Burda in 1997, he worked for McKinsey & Co., Inc. in Frankfurt and San Francisco on a client portfolio in the FMCG and media industry. Christoph holds an Master of Business Administration from The Tuck School at Dartmouth College, and earned his Doctorate in business at the University of Munich (LMU). Christoph is married and proud father to two adorable children.

Derek Smyth

Derek joined EdgeStone as Partner in February 2004. Prior to joining EdgeStone he was President and CEO of Bridgewater Systems Corporation. Before joining Bridgewater Systems, he held the position of COO at Ironside Technologies, where he was responsible for the overall direction of global business development, marketing, sales operations and product development. As COO, Derek grew the business from start-up phase to a multi-national organization, and a team of 14 to 240, while raising $72M in private equity. Previously, he held a number of positions with Bay Networks Canada and Radius Inc.

Derek serves on the Board of Directors of CiRBA, pVelocity, RedMere Technology and Shoplogix. Past EdgeStone portfolio companies with which Derek was involved include Decision Dynamics (TSX-V:DDY), Maximum Throughput, RSS Solutions (sold to Visiprise), Solace Systems and Varicent Software. He holds a B.A. (Commerce and Economics), University of Toronto and completed the Enterprise Program for Growing Companies (EPGC), Stanford University.

Gary Yurkovich

Gary Yurkovich is an experienced and successful executive in the technology industry. Previously, Gary was the Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Service for Creo Products where he helped grow the company from $6M to over $125M in revenue over a 3 year period prior to being purchased by Kodak for $1B. He was also the VP Sales and Corporate Development for BrightSide Technologies which was purchased for $28M by Dolby Labs in 2007 and was also COO of Resolution Health in San Jose, Ca which was recently purchased by Wellpoint.

Gary started his career with Digital Equipment Corporation where he served in a variety of management and operational positions, and was one of the most highly recognized contributors in the company’s history. He is a BCIT graduate in Electronics and has a B.Sc. in Biochemistry and Genetics from the University of British Columbia. Gary currently sits on the Board of Directors or Advisory Board of several technology companies and is an active angel investor.

Jim Derbyshire

Jim Derbyshire is a Serial Entrepreneur, CEO, Angel Investor, Mentor, Advisor and Consultant. Jim started as an engineer and moved through engineering management, management consultancy to the start up world for the last 18 years. He has been CEO at Symbionics (Cambridge, UK) and SiGe Semiconductor (Ottawa, Canada) and has co-founded or been actively involved with over ten start ups. Jim has experienced growing businesses in many business models, part time “student”, low capital “soft start”, Angel, Corporate and VC backed, raising over $100M of finance during his career. He has worked in multiple countries for large (ITT), medium (Racal, Decca, PA Consulting) and start up enterprises operating in Systems, Products, Components, Software and IP Licensing and Management and Technical Consulting Fields.

Jim has a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Kingston University in the UK, is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the I.E.T., participated in I.E.E.E. and E.T.S.I. standards groups and has several granted patents.

Michael Tippett

An Emmy nominee and successful entrepreneur for almost two decades, Tippett is recognized an as international expert on emerging news models. In 2005, Tippett co-founded NowPublic. The company has been named one of the top five most useful new sites on the web by The Guardian and Time magazine named it one of the Top 50 Websites for 2007.

In 1995, Tippett founded the WebPool Syndicate, one of Canada’s first Internet companies. After the success of the WebPool venture, Tippett travelled to the United States and worked for some of the largest web companies in North America, including TheGlobe.com, Afternic and Register.com.

Outside of his role at NowPublic, Tippett is a member of the University of British Columbia’s School of Journalism Advisory Board, Capilano University, Bachelor of Professional Communication Advisory Committee and is also a board member of CABINET, a Vancouver-based arts organization.

Tippett graduated from Queen’s University with a degree in Philosophy.

Patrick Lor

Patrick Lor is President, Fotolia North America. Fotolia.com is one of the world's leading providers of affordable stock imagery, with a database of over five million images and over one million international members. With web sites in 10 languages, Fotolia, LLC is based in New York and has offices in 11 countries. In 2007, Fotolia became the first independent microstock agency to enter the traditional stock marketplace with the launch of Fotolia Infinite Collections.

Patrick helped pioneer the microstock industry, joining the world's first microstock agency in 2001 as co-founder. Upon his departure, the company was selling over 12 million images annually, and was sold to Getty Images for US$50 million in 2006. He has also held senior marketing and product development roles at Adobe's Image Club Graphics Division, which produced and marketed fonts, photography, clip art and design applications to professional designers throughout the world. Patrick has extensive experience mentoring startups, and currently sits on the advisory boards of Aviary.com, Benevity.com and Bumptop.com

Rich Simons

Rich Simons is a proven business leader. His background includes building companies in Vancouver, Toronto and Seattle. His diverse experience, with the full range of marketing and business building skills, provides a unique perspective, strength and depth.

Touraj Parang

Touraj put the "str" in jaxtr! Since founding the company with Phillip in 2005, Touraj has been spearheading the creation and development of the web-based components of jaxtr while overseeing business operations. Touraj has been involved with over 50 Silicon Valley companies since 1999 with a particular focus on social networking since 2003. Previous work experience includes making early stage investments in Internet and communications start-ups with Amidzad Ventures and Earlybird Venture Capital, a global VC firm, and practicing corporate law at WSGR and O'Melveny & Myers. Touraj holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and majored in Philosophy and Economics at Stanford University.