pariSoma innovation loft. coworking and tech events.

Who are they?
The pariSoma Innovation Loft Mentors are a group of experienced entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, engineers, marketing wizards, product specialists, journalists, designers and more amazing professionals, who are on the cutting edge of innovation. We are thrilled and thankful for having them in our ranks.

How can they help?
pariSoma Mentors provide all types of advice for making you and your startup succeed. Ranging from business modeling to customer acquisition to community management, all of our mentors will be able to answer your questions. They love chatting with lean startups that have great ideas, strong teams, a great product, measurable, performance-driven metrics, and passion.

How do I meet them?
There are two channels you can use to meet the pariSoma Mentors:

1)Mentor lunches: Every two months, we’ll host a Mentor lunch at pariSoma, where Mentors will quickly talk about their expertise and then mingle with our coworkers.

2)One-on-one meetings: Fill out this form to meet one-on-one with our Mentors. After 3 coworkers have signed to meet with the same Mentor, we’ll schedule a time mutually convenient so that our Mentors can drop-in the space and conduct advice office hours for our coworkers.

Who can access Mentors’ help?
Only coworkers at pariSoma have the benefit of participating in our Mentor lunches and one-on-one meetings.

Without further ado, here are our wonderful pariSoma Mentors:

 

Alastair Goldfisher | Editor at Venture Capital Journal

Alastair Goldfisher is Editor-in-Charge of VCJ, a Thomson Reuters publication that covers the VC industry. He also contributes to peHUB.com as a blogger and an editor. Alastair primarily reports on venture capital and startups, touching upon topics such as fundraising, investments trends, personnel moves and other news related to the VC industry.

Alastair has worked in business journalism as an editor and a reporter since 1994 and has been at Thomson Reuters since 2003. Before joining Thomson Reuters, he was the founding editor of California CEO and before that he was a reporter with the San Jose Business Journal. You can reach him on Twitter, as well as on Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn and numerous other social networking sites.

Specialties: Alastair is a business journalism pro, especially when it comes to venture capital and tech, but he also has covered marketing, cleantech, transportation and the business of sports. He now has a growing interest in social media as a means to communicate and interact with readers and sources.

Alexis Finch | User Experience Researcher

Alexis has consulted for Fortune 500 companies on everything from pet food to panty-liners. She's been sent around the globe as a drop-shipment solution to cultural conundrums like the meaning of heath vs wellness, and the individual's relationship with water. She now works with startups to get them from insight to problem and on to solution. When she's not playing with startup puzzles, Alexis creates sketchnotes for GraphiteMind explaining tricky technology topics.

Specialties: Rebranding, brand architectures, SKU rationalization, package design, packaging navigation, website UX, shopper UX, health and wellness, sketchnotes, visual thinking, ethnography, cultural positioning, women in technology

Benjamin Mestrallet | Owner & CEO at eXo Platform

Benjamin Mestrallet is Chief Executive Officer of eXo Platform, a company he founded just out of university to serve its first customer, the U.S. Department of Defense. With eXo's recent expansion to North America, Benjamin now oversees the Company's growth, marketing and sales strategy from San Francisco. He first created the eXo project while a student and, in December 2002, delivered the industry's first Java portlet container.

Under Benjamin's leadership and care, eXo has expanded globally with operations in five countries and grown its product line to be the most comprehensive portfolio of open source collaboration software on the market. In recognition on his leadership and business savvy, a jury of France's top technology executives honored Benjamin as 2008's most outstanding young technology leader with the IVY Award. He holds an advanced master's degree in management science from the University of Paris IX Dauphine.

Specialties: J2EE, business management.

Caleb Sima | EIR at Andreessen Horowitz

Caleb Sima is currently at one of the top Venture Capitalist firms in Silicon Valley, Andreessen Horowitz.  Here he provides strategic insight as an EIR. Before signing on Caleb was most recently CEO of Armorize Technologies, an internationally acclaimed, SaaS-based Web Malware monitoring and code security analysis firm headquarted in San Francisco.  Before his tenure at Armorize, Caleb served as Chief Technology Officer for HP’s Application Security Center and was responsible for directing the lifecycle of the company’s web application security solutions. He joined HP following the acquisition in 2007 of SPI Dynamics, the company he co-founded and led as CTO, where he oversaw the development of WebInspect - a solution that set the bar in Web application security testing tools.  Prior to co-founding SPI Dynamics in early 2000, Caleb worked for Internet Security Systems’ elite X-Force R&D team and as a Security Engineer for S1 Corporation.

Caleb has been engaged in the Internet security arena since 1996 and has become widely recognized as a leading expert in web security, penetration testing and the identification of emerging security threats. His pioneering efforts and expertise in web security have helped define the direction of the web application security industry.  Caleb is a member of ISSA and is one of the founding visionaries of the Application Vulnerability Description Language (AVDL) standard within OASIS, as well as a founding member of the Web Application Security Consortium (WASC).  He is also a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in Visual Developer Security, a frequent speaker, press resource, and is featured regularly in the Associated Press and global security media.

Chantal Yang | Chief Marketing Officer at The Medici Group

Chantal Yang leads marketing strategy for The Medici Group. This includes branding, product marketing, and promotion. She has 15 years of public relations and marketing experience and has worked with companies at all stages of growth. She has launched startups, fueled successful IPOs and spinoffs, and helped rebrand established companies. Chantal was most recently a director at LEWIS Pulse, where she worked with emerging growth companies backed by leading venture capital firms. Previously, she ran communications for Red Hat’s Middleware division, oversaw global PR programs as a director at Schwartz Communications, managed a fellowship program at Boston Children’s Hospital, and did market research at Smith Barney. Chantal loves to explore cultures, learn languages, and travel, and worked for the popular Let’s Go travel guides while earning her bachelor’s in sociology at Harvard University.

Specialties: Putting emerging growth companies on the map; launching startups/products; market positioning and communications strategy. High tech experience includes application development, open source, virtualization, mobile computing, and embedded systems.

Danielle Morrill | Director of Marketing at Twilio

Danielle is a Seattle transplant to the Bay Area. When she isn't busy marketing Twilio's cloud communications APIs to developer, she's mentoring 500 Startups companies, rocking Startup Weekend, and helping run the Twilio Fund, a seed investment fun do Twilio-powered startups. She is a professional customer acquisition specialist and prides herself on being an honest mentor with connections to smart people who can answer the questions she can't.

Specialties: business process analysis, lean manufacturing, developer marketing, community management, project management, online marketing, social media strategy, social media execution, media relations, blogger relations, business development, sales, training, public speaking, customer satisfaction, product management, developer platforms, platform marketing, logistics, supply chain

Jared Goralnick | Founder & CEO at AwayFind.com

Jared Goralnick is Founder and CEO of AwayFind.com, a web application that addresses email interruptions. He recently sold his technology productivity training company, SET Consulting, that worked with organizations like NTT, HP, NIST, and the FBI. He is also the EVP of the Information Overload Research Group, a Founder of Inbox Love and Ignite DC, the Founder of Bootstrap Maryland, and a Mentor at Founder Institute and 500 Startups.

You can find Jared blogging/tweeting online at Technotheory.com/@technotheory, and he’s also written for sites like Lifehacker and WebWorkerDaily. He received a software engineering degree at 17 and Bachelor’s in Philosophy at 20. When he’s not addressing (or suffering from) information overload on his blog or at conferences, he’s a big fan of photography, swing and blues dance, and hopping around between San Francisco, Buenos Aires, and Washington, DC.

Specialties: email productivity, personal productivity, attention management, attention economy, awayfind.

Jay Jamison | Venture Partner at BlueRun Ventures

Jay Jamison joined BlueRun Ventures as a Venture Partner in November 2010 and is based in Menlo Park. He focuses on early stage mobile, consumer and enterprise opportunities, and he serves on the boards of AppCentral, AppRedeem, Foodspotting and Opinionaided. Jay has over 13 years of product management and marketing experience in the software and internet industry. He has started his own company, successfully founding and leading Moonshoot, a venture backed online English education service for children, and has worked in a variety of senior roles at Microsoft.

Jay is a popular speaker on topics of entrepreneurship and building businesses. He is the only venture capitalist involved in the Founder Institute, where he led the first ever San Francisco branch in 2011. He has also been a featured mentor and speaker at the Startup Digest University, the Hacker Dojo, and the Founders Showcase. He received his MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and holds a BA from Duke University. You can reach him on Twitter and learn more about him through LinkedIn,

Specialties: startups, personal and career development, fund-raising, marketing, business strategy, brand building, product management, pricing, revenue / P&L management.

Joan Varrone | Principal at CFO Consulting and Services

Joan is an experienced high tech CFO who now provides CFO and financial consulting services to start ups. As CFO, Joan lead a successful IPO during a difficult market, raised over $100M in private equity and debt, built infrastructure and metrics to support growth and lead successful exits. Joan has demonstrated success leading the administrative functions at rapidly growing companies. She also has held senior management positions at large multinationals with strategic and operational responsibility for financing over 40 operations worldwide and leading the corporate planning function. Joan is highly analytical and a decisive problem solver with tangible achievements outside the finance function.

Joan has experience across a broad spectrum of industries including software, digital media, e-commerce, semi- conductor, nanotechnology, telecom. Her areas of expertise are:

• Capital Markets: IPO, $100M+ private equity, managing $500M in Senior Debt
• Financial Planning Building financial plan and infrastructure for SMB and large enterprises
• International Finance Financing 40 affiliates, FX hedging, setting up subsidiaries, int’l tax
• M&A Lead sale of company, evaluation of acquisitions and divestitures
• Admin Management: HR, Legal, IT, IR, IP, Customer Service, Facilities, Sales Operations
• Technical Accounting SOP 97-2, FAS 52, Hedge Accounting.

Specialties: CFO and financial consulting services, financial planning, fund raising, building infrastructure, setting up and financial management of foreign operations, valuation, foreign currency exposure management.

Krystyl Baldwin | Digital Marketing Manager at Circle and Square

Having successfully managed, and coordinated several events throughout San Francisco, LA, NY, and Las Vegas, Krystyl has been listed as one of San Franciscos leading entrepreneurial women to follow on Twitter in the bay area, and is the founder of Events for Nerds, hostess to SFBeta, SFMusicTech, evangelist for Mogotix, former director of events and marketing for BrianSolis.com and former Director of HootSuite University just to name a few. Currently, Krystyl is a Marketing and Advertising independent Consultant, and the Digital Marketing Manager at Circle and Square.

Specialties: superb organizational, priority management and analytical skills, strengths in defining and meeting objectives, social media monitoring, engagement, event management and coordination.

Mike Rowehl | Founder/Hacker at Churn Labs

Mike is a programmer, entrepreneur, and investor based in San Francisco, CA. He’s been on the initial team for a number of high growth startups such as Ning, AdMob, Skyfire, and Chomp. In 2003 he helped to start the Silicon Valley chapter of Mobile Monday (a global group that organizes free monthly meetups for mobile enthusiasts in more than 100 cities around the world) and in 2006 he was on the founding team of the Mobile 2.0 conference series. In 2008 he started a mobile content adaption and directory service called Mowser which sold to dotMobi. Mike is one of the founders of Churn Labs, which focuses on bringing new mobile products and services to market by cooperating with entrepreneurial engineers. He blogs at thisismobility.com and is on Twitter.

Specialties: mobile, service scalability, initial prototyping.

Othman Laraki | Director, Search & Geo at Twitter

Othman is Director at Twitter, working on Search and Infrastructure. Prior to Twitter, he was the co-founder & President of Mixer Labs (GeoAPI.com/TownMe), which Twitter acquired. Before Mixer Labs, Othman was at Google, where he managed a number of products including the Google Toolbar, Google Gears, early Firefox extensions, as well FastNet (real-time fetching and caching infrastructure). Prior to Google, Othman was at ACCESS Systems, where he ran server-side engineering. Othman currently serves on the board of directors of ESI Group, a publicly traded French software company. Othman has an masters from MIT and a BS + MS in Computer Science & Industrial Engineering from Stanford.

Philip Korn | Managing Director at First Republic Bank

Philip is a Man aging Director with First Republic’s Sand Hill Road office. He participates in many venture capital pitch events, conferences and industry events and hosts and produces VC & CEO events.  He is a frequent panelist and is a volunteer / mentor with SVForum, Entrepreneurs Foundation and Endeavor.org.

Prior to First Republic, Philip led venture capital relationships and business development nationally for TriNet. Before TriNet, Philip spent 11 years at SVB Silicon Valley Bank, where he acted as a VC Relationship Manager for 30+ venture firms, Managing Director for Venture Exchange (advising CEOs on VC fundraising) and National Practice Leader for Emerging Technologies. Prior to SVB, Philip was Risk Manager at a trade finance bank in Miami and started his banking career at the Federal Reserve in Miami and Washington, DC. Philip earned a BS from University of Maryland, College Park and an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, AZ

Specialties: 20 years banking experience, venture capital community and startups: early stage consumer internet, mobile & software, venture funding, extensive venture capital relationships at the General Partner/Managing Director level, venture capital fundraising, business strategy, making key introductions within his network: attorneys, temp CFOs, realtors/shared spaces, CPAs, IT outsourcing, recruiters, HR/Payroll & business insurance and PR.

Renata Quintini | Principal at Felicis Venture

Renata works at Felicis Ventures since 2011, where she focuses on opportunities in e-commerce, education and health. Prior to joining Felicis, she was an institutional investor at the Stanford Management Company, where she helped manage the endowment’s venture capital portfolio and build out its micro-VC exposure. She also worked at JPMorgan’s Tech, Media and Telecom group in San Francisco and coordinated the business, legal and fundraising strategy for a Brazil-based social media start-up.

Prior to pursuing her MBA she practiced tech M&A law both in Brazil and Silicon Valley, her last position being with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom in Palo Alto. Renata has a Law degree from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, an LL.M in Law, Science and Technology from Stanford Law School and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Reza Alizadeh | Architect Evangelist at Microsoft

Reza Alizadeh is an Architect Evangelist with Microsoft’s Developer & Platform Evangelism team. His main focus is working with top mobile app partners and supporting their efforts to adopt the Windows Phone platform. Reza has been involved in the mobile space for over four years, having created a successful mobile app startup prior to joining Microsoft, which published over twenty applications and accumulated 3M+ downloads on iOS and other platforms.

Tim Van Loan | Social Chair at INFORUM

Tim is currently the Social Chair at INFORUM. He is an entrepreneur with over 12 years of experience in product development, marketing, technical sales, and engineering. Tim is passionate about developing products and communities from inception to their larger scale.

 Specialties: product development, technical sales, software marketing, partner management, channel expansion, social media execution, developer relations, community evangelism, media relations, public speaking, customer satisfaction.