About

William Bryant (Venture Partner, Draper Fisher Jurvetson)

William K. (Bill) Bryant has had early and instrumental involvement in over twenty leading software and Internet companies, as a founder, senior executive, investor and Board Member. After serving as founding Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Visio (now part of Microsoft Corporation) in the early 1990s, Bill went on to found Netbot (which built the first comparison shopping agent for the Internet, Jango, as well as the first metasearch engine, Metacrawler, prior to being acquired by Excite) as its President; Qpass (www.qpass.com, acquired by Amdocs) where he served as CEO and later Chairman; Medio Systems (www.mediosystems.com) where he contines to serve as a Strategic Advisor; and 3Guppies (formerly Mixxer, www.3guppies.com), a market leader with over 4M members in the consumer mobile entertainment and community sector. In these founding capacities, Bill drove definition of the core product and market strategy; raised >$125M in venture capital; recruited senior management teams; and built customer, partner and channel relationships in launching software products, Internet and mobile services.

Previously, Bill was an early investor or Board member in nine other companies that were later acquired or went public, including Loudeye (Nokia), AEI Music (DMX/Liberty Media), Viafone (Extended Systems), Teamplate (Captaris), Exstatic Software (Xchange Applications), Throw (Excite), Singing Fish (Thomson/AOL); NearMe (Hands On Mobile) and WebRelevance (Medio).

Sunil Dhaliwal (General Partner, Battery Ventures)

Sunil joined Battery in 1998 and focuses on investments in IT infrastructure and financial services. Sunil is currently an investor in GreenBytes, Next Investments, Opscode, and Viridity Software. He has previously served as a director or board observer at CipherTrust, Inc. (acquired by Secure Computing), Netezza Corporation (NYSE Arca: NZ), Storigen Systems (acquired by EMC), @stake (acquired by Symantec) and Storability Software (acquired by StorageTek). Sunil has also been involved with other Battery investments including Cbeyond (NASDAQ: CBEY), and Akara (acquired by Ciena). In 2011, he was named to the Forbes Midas List, which ranks the top 100 venture capitalists around the world.

Mitch Hill (Chief Executive Officer, Opscode)

Hill brings more than 30 years of executive leadership experience in high-growth, technology companies. He previously served as CEO of Avanade, a technology services joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft, and was responsible for launching the company in 2000. As the founding CEO of Avanade, he led the team that created a billion-dollar technology services firm successfully providing infrastructure, development and business solutions built on Microsoft technology. He was also managing partner for Accenture's electronics and high tech business in the western United States. Since retiring from Avanade he has served as an advisor to a number of technology start ups in the Pacific Northwest. Mr. Hill earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics and Information Systems from California State Polytechnic University in Pomona.

Adam Jacob (Chief Product Officer, Opscode)

Adam Jacob is a co-founder of Opscode and the creator of Chef. Prior to Opscode, he founded HJK Solutions, an automated infrastructure consultancy. During two years at HJK, he built new infrastructures for 15 different startups. Including his time at HJK, Adam has 13 years of experience as a systems administrator, systems architect, and tools developer. He has been responsible for large production infrastructures, internal corporate automation, and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance efforts.