How To: Build a Company

How To: Build a Company

The first event in this series, How To: Build a Company, will present two complementary perspectives on building a well-structured and profitable company: that of the venture capitalist and that of the serial entrepreneur. 
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Join Venture Lab speakers Michelle Goldberg, Principal at Ignition Partners, and Paul Johnston, CEO and Founder of Entellium as they share their knowledge, experience and perspective surrounding this exciting topic. (Michelle is now Ignitions representative for this event)

Issues discussed will include:

- Assuring that the venture idea has a market.

- Knowing that the venture can deliver its service or product.

- How delivery can be done at a cost that allows for a profit.

- How to create productive links between capital, ideas and implementation to serve the customer.  
 

Speakers:

Michelle Goldberg - Principal - Ignition

Michelle is a principal at Ignition, investing in enterprise and consumer software and services. Michelle represents Ignition as director on the boards of Entellium and Mpire. She also acts as Ignition observer on the boards of Jobster and Liberty Dialysis. She was an observer on UIEvolution (sold to Square Enix, Japan).

Prior to joining Ignition Michelle worked as an independent consultant at Microsoft where she developed the initial business plans for products in the enterprise server space. Michelle was an investment banker at Olympic Capital Partners where she specialized in mid-market mergers and acquisitions.

Michelle also worked in management consulting for A.T. Kearney. As an associate in the Financial Institutions Group, Michelle focused on strategic and operational improvements for Fortune 100 clients. She also spent time working in Taipei with a group developing export strategy for the Chinese government.

Michelle earned her B.A. degree from Columbia, and an M.A. degree from Harvard University.

Paul Johnston - CEO & Founder - Entellium

Paul Johnston is President and CEO of Entellium, a Seattle-based hosted CRM provider. A former Apple executive, Mr. Johnston is a recognized leader in usability and workflow-powered CRM. Prior to establishing Entellium, Paul co-founded and managed two Workflow software companies, selling one of them to OPTIKA, a provider of enterprise content management and business process automation software, based in Colorado. His 15 years of management experience include product development, marketing, sales and consulting with a strong focus on imaging, document management, workflow, and CRM applications.