Acclaimed scientist and speaker, Fred J. Bourgeois, III is founder or co-founder of six high-tech companies in fields ranging from software development, networking, security, robotics, and most recently space exploration technologies. Some current and former clients include NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force, Eaton, Lockheed Martin, MetaWare, De La Rue-Giori, NEC, Transmeta, Philips Semiconductor, Borland, Resilience, Sun Microsystems, SGI, WebSideStory, the University of Minnesota, Tulane University, and San Jose State University.

As the leader of “Team FREDNET”, he is developing a robotic Lunar mission with over 600 volunteers from 63 countries on six continents in pursuit of the Google Lunar X Prize. Fred and his Team gained notoriety through numerous media reports in outlets including CNBC, CNN, ABC News, National Public Radio, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Popular Mechanics, New Scientist, the San Jose Mercury News, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Wired Magazine, Space Fellowship, The Register, Space News, The Daily Tech, Euro News, Asia Times Online, Linux Devices, Control Engineering, and the International Herald Tribune.

“Innovation, creativity, devising paradigm-shifting ideas: those are the things that drive me,” writes Fred.

Honored as a “Chief Financial Officer of the Year” within the small public company category by the San Diego Business Journal in 2009 for his transformative work at St. Bernard Software, John Burke has a proven track record of success in providing operational and financial leadership to fast growth technology companies.

John’s specialties include business valuation and forensic accounting, public offerings and reporting, Sarbanes Oxley compliance, mergers and acquisitions, as well as design and implementation of sophisticated operational systems. Beyond his financial expertise, John Burke is also a proven operator and an analytics industry expert.

John’s experience includes President and CEO of BOSS Corporation and TakeActionMarketing.com, Chief Financial Officer of St. Bernard Software and Global Domains, and Corporate Controller of WebSideStory. John started his career with PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Roger Haddad is a visionary entrepreneur with a 35 year track record as a computer software industry expert. He has expertise in successfully running companies with multiple channels of distribution, and developing new companies into profitable enterprises.

In 1977, Haddad founded Metrologie International, a leading software and hardware provider, which went public on the Paris Stock Exchange in 1985. When Mr. Haddad left in 1991, Metrologie had 4,500 employees, $900M in revenue and subsidiaries in 13 European countries.

From 1993 to 1998, Roger Haddad was president of Azlan France, the first network distributor in France. Under his management, sales revenues increased 850 percent in four years.

Haddad founded both Informatica Partners and KXEN in 1998. Informatica Partners was acquired by Informatica Corporation in 2001, while KXEN is the third largest data mining player worldwide and the leader in data mining automation.

Roger Haddad holds a Master’s degree in electrical metrology from George Washington University and a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Ecole Supérieure d’Electricité, Paris, France.

Gavin Mandelbaum is recognized as one of today’s Internet leaders in terms of innovation and profitable practical deployment. Described as a “pioneer of eCommerce” whose “creativity, ingenuity and functionality are unparalleled”, Gavin has a gift for understanding how to motivate Internet users to take desired actions with clean and streamlined applications. Gavin founded iBaby, an online baby retailer, which was acquired by iVillage as part of iVillage’s IPO. He went on to co-found BabyCenter.com (acquired by eToys & later by Johnson & Johnson) and iMaternity.com (acquired by Destination Maternity). Later, he founded iHome.com which was acquired by the original Linens ‘n Things.

Gavin is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. Gavin enjoys spending time with his family, running stairs, golfing, and playing with the latest in cell phone technology.

Eric Otterson is Vice President of Business Development at Cooley LLP. He joined the firm in 2006 and brings business oriented legal solutions to publicly traded, middle market and emerging growth companies in Southern California. He often engages connections between emerging growth companies and the Firm’s capital provider clients.

Previously, as the Director of Client Operations at a CRM company, Eric facilitated sales closure and lead the implementation and relationship teams for clients such as Fiserv, Countrywide, AT&T, and British Telecom.

Eric is an active board member of the CONNECT Foundation, a member of the Evo-Nexus Oversight Committee, and a trustee at the San Diego French-American School.Eric holds a B.A. in Environmental Design from UC Berkeley and an M.B.A. from The Anderson School at UCLA.

Raising more than $100 million in private capital and orchestrating transactions with a combined value of nearly a billion dollars over the course of his career, Michael Robertson is an accomplished technology entrepreneur with a consistent track record of identifying promising trends often in disruptive sectors, building pioneering companies, and leading them to profitability and acquisition.

Mr. Robertson founded MP3.com (the largest internet IPO of all time and eventually sold to world’s largest music company Vivendi / Universal), Linspire (sold to Xandros Corporation), and Gizmo5 (acquired by Google).

Currently Mr. Robertson is founder and CEO of MP3tunes, a vanguard in personal cloud music making collections accessible from any net aware device, even car devices. Hardware partners include Logitech, Nokia, Roku and Clarion.

Mr. Robertson is also CEO of the non-profit REEF and a board member of the San Dieguito Boys & Girls Club. He holds a bachelors degree from the University of California, San Diego in Cognitive Science.

Jerome Rota is the original creator of the DivX video compression technology and co-founder of DivX, Inc., a NASDAQ traded company. As a brilliant engineer and artist, Jerome has overseen codec development as well as led teams to introduce new consumer and business platforms, products and services. Responsible for software and hardware development, open source and business partners developer tools, and consumer website as Vice President in Charge of Media Experience, Jerome still serves on the DivX Board of Directors.

Mr. Rota is known as a global technology visionary and spokesperson. He holds two degrees, one in Entertainment Arts, Picture, Cinema and Audio-Visual and the other in Electric Engineering and Industrial Computing.

With more than 25 years of diverse entrepreneurial endeavors, Neil Senturia is currently the CEO of Blackbird Ventures. He also serves as Chairman on the Board of Directors for Valore, an eCommerce used and rental textbook company.

Neil’s background ranges from developing over 1.8 million square feet of residential and commercial building space to screen writing for popular television sitcoms including M*A*S*H. He also founded companies in the software and material sciences industries, which subsequently sold to Lockheed Martin and to Kofax. Most notably, Neil developed Atcom/Info, which pioneered high-speed Internet access in hotel rooms and was sold for $80 million (currently owned by Cisco).

Neil was an adjunct professor in the MBA program at San Diego State University where he taught new venture creation, and he has served on the Board of Directors of SDSU’s Entrepreneurial Management Center. He is a member of the San Diego Venture Group and the MIT Enterprise Forum.