There are some seriously heavyweight VCs at the beGLOBAL conference in Palo Alto, September 13. One highlight will surely be the Seed Funds Going Global Panel, featuring top names such as David Lee (SV Angel), Jeff Clavier (SoftTech Ventures), Aydin Senkut (Felicis Ventures), and Christine Tsai (500 Startups), all moderated by the edgy Sarah Lacy, CEO of PandoDaily. The Line up for this panel is so impressive that we will divide the introduction in two parts. Today we will be introducing David Lee and Jeff Clavier for you.
Jeff Clavier
Jean-Francois “Jeff” Clavier is the Founder and Managing Partner of SoftTech VC, one of the most established seed VC firms in Silicon Valley, having closed 150 investments since 2004. The firm is currently investing out of its $55M 3rd Fund, making 20 commitments of $500K per year in mobile/cloud saas, monetization infrastructure, marketplaces and e-commerce. An early angel investor in Web 2.0, Jeff and his team have backed many successful startups and his exits include Mint, Tapulous, and UserPlane. The portfolio has also seen acquisitions by Groupon, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo and AOL.
As an early stage investor, Jeff follows his own “3 asses rule” when evaluating startups: "I look for a smart ass team, building a kick ass product, in a big ass market". Not all the asses are of the same importance to him, however. The factors are weighted and Clavier says the most important thing by far is how strong, passionate and relevant the team is going to be. Jeff admits that the evaluation processis often more art than science, and that the best way to think of it is through a scale analogy: every positive factor weighs in on the scale until a tipping point is reached and investing begins to feel right. In 2008 Jeff was named one of Time Magazine's top 25 most influential people on the web.
David Lee
For those who don’t know him, David Lee is a co-founder and the managing partner of SV Angel. David Lee’s SV Angel founder is Ron Conway, who has long been considered as the Godfather of the Silicon Valley seed-investing scene. Prior to SV Angel, David was at Baseline Ventures, a leading seed-stage venture firm. He was a founding member of Google’s New Business Development team and led business development at StumbleUpon prior to its sale to eBay. His star has risen in the last few years, as he’s become the managing partner of SV Angel and invested a lot of time in mentoring entrepreneurs. And his personal blog has also developed a loyal following.
Both David Lee and Jeff Clavier spoke at beLAUNCH 2013, Korea's biggest startup and technology conference and we are proud to invite them back at beGLOBAL, on their home turf to discuss the topic of investing in an ever globalizing world.
More about beGLOBAL: beGLOBAL is a global tech conference, with a touch of Korean spice. Produced by the organizers of beLAUNCH, the top Startup/Tech Conference in Korea, beGLOBAL aims to bring together the best of Tech from the East and West. We will feature the top giants from Silicon Valley discussing the latest tech trends, with a global perspective. Additionally, ten of the best Korean startups will showcase their services to our audience, offering an opportunity to see a snapshot of the next generation of tech from Asia.
Please click on links below for further details:
Full speaker line-up please click here
Conference agenda click here
To purchase tickets click here.
