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Who better to learn how to analize VR investment decisions from than Virtual Reality Investors & Founders pioneering the industry? The following VR experts are nice enough to volunteer their time, thoughts and experiences to help educate the next wave of VR investors.
March 24th, 6:00 PM
Upload Collective
1535 Mission St,
SF, CA 94103
For sponsorship details please email Partnerships@virtualrealityinvestment.com
VR Pioneer since 1990's
Tony Parisi
Gavin Teo
Managing Partner,
Super Ventures
Marco DeMiroz
Peter Wilkins
Founder,
Emergent VR
Robert Scoble
Futurist,
Upload VR
Principal,
Signia Venture Partners
General Partner & Founder,
The VR Fund
Sunny Dhillon
Special Thanks:
Amitt Mahajan
Dylan Flinn
Director of Investments,
Rothenberg Ventures
Principal,
Comcast Ventures
Jeff Wasson
Partner & VRAR Investor,
Boost.VC
Founding Partner, Presence Capital
Greg Castle
Angel Investor
Ori Inbar
Orange Silicon Valley (OSV) is the Bay Area division of Orange, one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators, serving 236 million customers across 28 countries. Through research, development, and strategic analysis, we actively participate in the disruptive innovations that are changing the way we communicate. OSV contributes to and engages with the regional Silicon Valley ecosystem through numerous programs, such as our Orange Fab startup accelerator, Orange Institute, and ongoing collaborations with our partners.
Our featured sponsor:
Dr. Xiao Wang
General Partner,
Innospring Seed Fund
Greg Castle
Angel Investor
An entrepreneur and corporate marketer turned angel investor, with a keen interest in early-stage, disruptive technologies. Greg has made 17 investments over the last 2 years with one of them being Oculus (acq 2014). Greg has developed strong ties to the VR/AR community and focuses much of his time investing in and mentoring startups in this sector. Previously, Greg led marketing for the widely popular game development tool Scaleform (acq. 2011) and for Autodesk's 3D animation suite. Greg has a dual degree in International Business & Marketing from the University of Maryland, Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Dylan Flinn
Director of Investments @
Rothenberg Ventures
Dylan Flinn is the Director of Investments at Rothenberg Ventures, the frontier technology investment firm. Over the last three years, the Rothenberg Ventures team invested in over 25 virtual reality companies including industry leaders like Altspace, 8i, Matterport, Jaunt, WeVR, Fove, and more. Dylan also manages the River Accelerator which is a 3 month sprint in frontier technology innovation and networking. The River Accelerator provides $200,000 worth of capital as well as mentors, development resources, and more.
Gavin Teo is a Principal at Comcast Ventures, where he invests in VR/AR, IoT and healthcare IT. His VR investments include AltSpace, NextVR and Baobab Studios. Comcast Ventures is a returns-oriented venture capital fund with the strategic resources of Comcast and NBC Universal.
Prior to joining CV in 2012, Gavin managed product on FarmVille at Zynga and previously worked at Microsoft Xbox and Bain & Company. Gavin graduated magna cum laude from Claremont McKenna College and earned his MBA from The Wharton School, graduating as a Palmer Scholar.
Jeff Wasson
Partner @ Boost.VC
Jeff Wasson is a Partner at Boost VC. Boost is the "before the chasm" accelerator. Boost is currently looking to make early stage investments in VR, AR and Bitcoin related companies. Jeff is an entrepreneur, startup mentor and investor. Jeff began his career as one of the founders of TravelNow.com, one of the first online travel agencies. Jeff led the TravelNow.com expansion as CEO to the NASDAQ and through the acquisition by Hotels.com. Jeff has been a startup investor since 2001. In various investor and advisory roles, Jeff has worked with both small and large companies as well as the US and Foreign Governments and has extensive international experience. Jeff has acted as a mentor to numerous companies and has served on various boards of public and private companies as well as nonprofit entities and has been an investor in businesses across a wide range of industries.
Tony Parisi
VR Pioneer & Legend
Ori Inbar
Managing Partner @
Super Ventures
Peter Wilkins
Founder @
Emergent VR
Peter helped invent 360 video in 2013 when he saw the potential for immersive video using the Oculus Rift. He created the first movie for VR, Zero Point, and then founded Emergent with the mission of making it easy to capture and share your life using VR. Before virtual reality, he was an R&D Engineer at DreamWorks Animation, working on Academy-Award nominated films like Kung Fu Panda 2 and How to Train Your Dragon 2. He’s also worked on AAA games like The Bureau: X-COM Declassified and Bioshock Infinite.
Amitt Mahajan is a founder and managing partner of Presence Capital, a virtual reality and augmented reality-focused venture fund, and an entrepreneur based in the San Francisco. He was previously the CEO and co-founder of Toro (acquired by Google in 2015) and the CTO and co-founder of MyMiniLife (acquired by Zynga in 2009). While at Zynga, Amitt co-created and launched the game FarmVille and served as the CTO of Zynga Japan. Prior to his entrepreneurial work, he was a software engineer at Epic Games on the Unreal Engine, one of the main 3D platforms being to developed VR content. Amitt holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from University of Illinois - Urbana / Champaign.
Robert Scoble
Futurist @ UploadVR
Robert searches the world looking for what's happening on the bleeding edge of technology and brings that learning to both the Internet and to strategists at UploadVR.
As Futurist for Rackspace, the leading Managed Cloud Computing Company, Scoble travels the world looking for what's happening on the bleeding edge of technology for Rackspace. He's interviewed thousands of executives and technology innovators and reports what he learns in books ("The Age of Context," a book coauthored with Forbes author Shel Israel, has been released at http://amzn.to/AgeOfContext ), YouTube, and many social media sites where he's followed by millions of people.
Sunny Dhillon
Principal @
Signia Venture Partners
Sunny joined the Signia team in 2012. He was previously an M&A analyst in technology investment banking at Rothschild in London, a business development manager at a venture backed spin-off of New Line Cinema, and a corporate strategist for Warner Bros. He is a mentor for various incubators in Silicon Valley and is on the board of Cents of Relief, a charity based in Connecticut that focuses on reducing human trafficking in Indian urban slums. He is also a board member for Next Gen Partners, the Valley’s leading venture capital mentoring organization.
Sunny invests across consumer and enterprise sector startups, with a particular interest in gaming, consumer, and digital health. Sunny graduated with his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where he was a Lee Hague Scholar. He has an undergraduate honors degree in Economics & Management from Oxford University and a master’s in International Relations & History from the London School of Economics (LSE), where he graduated with distinction.
Marco DeMiroz
VR Investor @
The Venture Reality Fund
Mr. DeMiroz has extensive experience in executive roles with leading technology companies and in global investments. He was a Managing Director of Evolution Media Parters and led its investment in JauntVR where he currently serves as a Board Observer. He is also a Board member at the leading mobile marketing company, Swrve, and actively advises various media and technology companies in VR/AR sectors. Earlier, Mr. DeMiroz was President and CEO of PlayFirst, Inc. and sold PlayFirst to Glu Mobile (NASDAQ: GLUU).
Mr. DeMiroz obtained his MBA from Carnegie Mellon University; a post-graduate Engineer Degree in Aeronautics/Astronautics from Stanford University; an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from San Jose State University; and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.
Tony Parisi is an entrepreneur and career CTO/software architect. He has developed international standards and protocols, created noteworthy software products, and started and sold technology companies. Tony’s passion for innovating is exceeded only by his desire to build great products. Tony is a pioneer in virtual reality, the co-creator of the VRML and X3D ISO standards for networked 3D graphics, and continues to innovate in 3D technology. Tony is the co-organizer of the San Francisco WebGL Meetup (http://www.meetup.com/WebGL-Developers-Meetup), and the San Francisco WebVR Meetup, and a member of the Khronos COLLADA working group creating glTF, the new file format standard for 3D web and mobile applications. Tony is also the author of O’Reilly Media’s books on Virtual Reality and WebGL: Learning Virtual Reality(2015), Programming 3D Applications in HTML5 and WebGL (2014), and WebGL Up and Running (2012). Tony is currently VP of Web and Open Technologies at WEVR, a virtual reality community and VR media player for aspiring and professional creatives.
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Amitt Mahajan
Managing Partner @
Presence Capital
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Gavin Teo
Principal @ Comcast Ventures
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Dr. Xiao Wang is the General Manager of InnoSpring Silicon Valley and General Partner of InnoSpring Seed Fund. She also is the Director of International Partnership at InnoSpring Inc. headquartered in Shanghai and the Director of Jiangsu Industrial Technology Research Institute (North America). Previously at InnoSpring, she headed the business development and cross-border partnership team upon joining the company in 2012. Prior to InnoSpring, Dr. Wang was the Project Manager at Entelos, a pharmaceutical consulting company. She advised global pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies in regards to drug development decisions, including target evaluation/prioritization, translational medicine, biomarker analysis, and clinical trial design. Dr. Wang co-founded China America Innovation Network (CHAIN), a professional nonprofit organization envisioned to help transform innovation into value through fostering entrepreneurship in 2011. She is an honored associate member of Tsinghua Entrepreneur and Executive Club (TEEC) and the president of Tsinghua Alumni Association of Northern California (THAA-NC). Dr. Wang earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio and her B.S. in Biological Sciences from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.
Dr. Xiao Wang
General Partner of Innospring Seed fund
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Mr. Ori Inbar co-founded AugmentedReality.org and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. He is the Founder and General Manager at Super Ventures. Mr. Inbar serves as an Executive Producer of Augmented World Expo. Mr. Inbar is an advisor for Augary, Cimagine, Eyeway Vision, and Fringefy. He served as a pilot with the rank of Major in the Israeli Air force. During his career, he has lead the development and introduction to the market of more than 25 multimedia and business applications including the world's leading enterprise portal. He has been a Director of Infinity Augmented Reality, Inc. since September 11, 2013. Mr. Inbar is a board member for InfinityAR. His 20+ years of experience as software executive and industry leader, makes him a sought-after advisor in augmented reality initiatives. He has spent the past 9 years fostering the AR ecosystem. As the author of Games Alfresco (the leading blog for augmented reality) and President of the Augmented Reality Consortium, he has established himself as a thought leader in the industry. He is a recognized speaker and a sought after advisor for Augmented Reality initiatives around the world. Mr. Inbar is a graduate of INSEAD University leadership program. Mr. Inbar holds a BA from Tel Aviv University, Israel as a double major in Computer Science and Cinema & TV.
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