06 Jun June 6, 2018 – Reverse Acquisitions & Startup Playbook Will Herman and Billions Lost Hilarie Gamm
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Will Herman – Angel Investor and Author of The Startup Playbook: Founder-to-Founder Advice From Two Startup Veterans
Will Herman is an active angel investor, corporate director, author and startup mentor. Will was previously a serial entrepreneur, having started 5 companies – mostly successes, but with a couple of miserable failures. Will sold his last company, Innoveda (NASDAQ: INOV), a supplier of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software tools to Mentor Graphics in 2002. Innoveda was created when Viewlogic, his previous company, did a reverse acquisition of Summit Design, a public company. Will co-founded Viewlogic (NASDAQ: VIEW) in 1984 and left the company in 1992, a year after the company’s IPO. He then rejoined the company in 1995 initially as President, then as CEO. Viewlogic Systems was acquired by Synopsys in 1997. One year later, most of the assets acquired by Synopsys were re-purchased by a small team he led via an MBO re-forming Viewlogic as a new private company. During his hiatus from Viewlogic, he was first the President of Scopus Technology, a startup supplier of software automation tools in the customer information systems marketplace. Will later helped create Silerity, a developer of high-performance electronics design tools where he was President and CEO. Silerity was purchased by Viewlogic in 1995, thus completing his great career circle of life. He is currently a director at JumpCloud. Will is also a mentor at TechStars and Bolt and actively advise about a half-dozen individual startups. Previously, Will served as a director of several other public and private companies including, Standing Cloud, Stillsecure, Template Graphics Software, Hall Kinion, Rebar, Lexra, Quintus, Carbon Design, MobileDay, Viewlogic Systems, Innoveda, Silerity, ChannelWave, AccuRev, Bionaut Pharmaceuticals, and Zipix. WOW.
Hilarie Gamm – Author of Billions Lost: The American Tech Crisis and The Road Map to Change
Hilarie Gamm has been at the frontlines of America’s high-tech industry. The woman behind the stunning revelations in “Billions Lost: The American Tech Crisis and The Road Map to Change” is a nationally recognized leader in technology with both domestic and global exposure. For over two decades, Hilarie has amassed a wide-sweeping professional portfolio at virtually all levels of the tech industry hierarchy – from field work to middle management to executive leadership. Her work experiences include help desks, tech support, web development, mainframes, client servers, cloud computing, testing, and data centers. She has managed IT departments, projects, application development, and client services. She has consulted for large international corporate IT programs, has deployed applications in over 40 countries, and managed multi-lingual offshore teams. So, from help desk to executive suite, her compelling insights provide a lucid glimpse into the transitions, miscalculations, and prevailing vulnerabilities for the American economy. Despite the massive accrued economic damage and the momentum to maintain a harmful status quo, Hilarie remains optimistic that by exposing the crisis, identifying the causes, and then outlining remedies – change is possible. She also believes that it is imperative that American industry embrace the enormous potential of a domestic remote workforce. Hilarie is not her real name! She is using a pseudonym to protect her career and identity.
