Prior to founding Affinity Labs, he founded Military.com, the nation's largest military membership organization. Military.com connects its 10 million plus members to the lifelong benefits of military service and provides public and private sector clients efficient access to the military market. Members trust Military.com for career, education and financial services. Founded in 1999, Military.com raised over $30 million from leading investors and strategic partners, including A&E Television Networks. In 2004, Military.com was also acquired by Monster.

Chris also served as a Naval Flight Officer in the United States Navy. While on active duty, Chris flew as a P-3 Navigator, Tactical Coordinator and Mission Commander in support of maritime interdiction operations in the Red Sea, NATO enforcement operations in the Adriatic, and counter-narcotics missions in Central America. Following his operational tour, Chris worked in the Pentagon as Aide to the Chief of the Naval Reserve.

An advocate for those who serve, Chris is a frequent speaker and has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Business Week, Financial Times, and other publications. He is also a regular guest on CNN and other national radio and TV programs. In addition, he is the author of The Military Advantage (Simon & Schuster 2006).

Chris serves as a Director of Dale Carnegie and Alliance Health Corporations and is a Governor on the USO World Board. He's also an active investor and advisor in a variety of digital media companies.

Chris earned his commission from the NROTC program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he graduated with high distinction and was named a Distinguished Naval Graduate. He also holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Stan Chudnovsky is Co-Founder of Ooga Labs, a technology greenhouse in San Francisco, developing multiple Internet businesses simultaneously. Prior to Ooga, Stan spent 6-plus years at Tickle Inc., which was sold to Monster for over $100 million. Starting as VP of Engineering, Stan gained responsibilities over Product and Operations and then was named CEO after Tickle's founder and CEO, James Currier, departed in December 2005 to start Ooga Labs. Prior to Tickle, Stan was VP of Engineering at SayIt Inc. Before that, he managed and developed a number of pioneering applications for Fortune 500 companies. Stan moved to San Francisco from Moscow in 1994 and obtained both his Bachelor and Masters Degrees in Applied Mathematics from the University of Moscow.

James Currier is Co-Founder and CEO of Ooga Labs, a technology greenhouse in San Francisco, developing multiple Internet businesses simultaneously. Prior to Ooga, James was the Founder and CEO of Tickle Inc., which he founded in 1999 and sold to Monster.com in 2004 after growing it to 80 people and $32 million in annual revenue. Prior to Tickle, James was an Associate at Battery Ventures, where he helped the partnership make information technology investments between 1994-1997. Prior to that, James worked at STAR TV in Hong Kong and GTE New Ventures in Los Angeles, developing new digital technology businesses for the entertainment industry. James has degrees from Princeton University and Harvard Business School.

John Danner has over 30 years of professional experience advising and managing both large, complex organizations and emerging start-up ventures. As a management consultant, he worked in a diverse array of industry settings, from energy and healthcare to consumer products and multimedia. He currently teaches two MBA courses in venture development at the Haas Business School at the University of California, Berkeley. He also conducts seminars for the school’s international Executive Education program and serves as a senior moderator of the Aspen Institute Executive Seminar. In addition to his consulting and teaching activities, his professional career includes experience as an entrepreneur, corporate lawyer and senior policy advisor at both the state and federal government levels. In the 1970’s he served as an aide to then-Governor Bill Clinton and to U.S. Secretary of Education Shirley Hufstedler. Mr. Danner holds J.D., M.P.H. and M.A.Ed. degrees from U.C. Berkeley and received his A.B. cum laude in government and economics from Harvard College. He has been married for 34 years and has three sons.

As a General Partner, John Hamm brings a powerful combination of skills, knowledge and expertise to the VSP team. John's diverse background as an operating executive, a start up CEO, a venture investor, a leadership coach and an advisor/board member to dozens of technology companies gives him a unique and informed perspective on early stage investing. John currently serves on the board of Centive, SiliconStor, IconoCulture, Encentuate, Truveo and IronPort Systems, and has served on the boards of Brocade, Documentum (acquired by EMC), and Sylantro Systems. Most recently, John was a managing director at TCG Advisors, a division of The Chasm Group, where he advised CEOs and executive teams in the areas of leadership coaching and management systems. At TCG Advisors, John developed custom seminars for early stage tech companies and Global 2000 firms, as well as a quarterly CEO Boot Camp program for Deloitte & Touche that reached over 600 entrepreneurs nationwide. Prior to TCG, John was a venture partner at Redpoint Ventures and a managing director at Internet Capital Group (ICG), where he evaluated investment opportunities and provided management and leadership coaching to portfolio companies. As a private investor, John has a strong track record of successful technology start-ups, including Brocade and IronPort Systems. John has taken on leadership roles at several high-growth companies, including Whistle Communications, where he served four years as president and CEO. Backed by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) and Mayfield, Whistle became the leader in small office Internet appliance products and was acquired by IBM in June 1999. Prior roles included EVP and general manager of advanced storage products, a $520M business division at Adaptec and executive positions at Western Digital both in the U.S. and Europe. John started his professional career at Hewlett-Packard. John has been published in Fast Company, Business 2.0, Business Week, Fortune, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. His latest published work, Why Entrepreneurs Don't Scale, appeared in The Harvard Business Review, December 2002. John holds B.S. degrees in Engineering Physics and Engineering Management from Purdue University, and completed the UC-Irvine Executive MBA program.

Daphne Kis is a strategic business advisor to young companies. She has over thirty years experience creatively managing content and bringing people together to collaboratively achieve compelling outcomes. Until recently, she was Vice President of Business to Business Programs at CNET Networks which had acquired her company, EDventure Holdings, in 2004. At EDventure, Kis was President and CEO, as well as publisher of the influential business report, Release 1.0, and executive producer of the technology industry's premier executive gathering, PC Forum. Her prior range of marketing and business experience includes The Nation, Random House, the City of New York, Jewish Museum and Arista Records. With extensive experience in private equity investing, Kis sits on the boards of ApplyWise and iPerceptions, on the advisory board of Affinity Labs and BeaconStreetGirls.com; she previously served on the boards of About.com and Chapbooks.com. She is a member of the board of Girls Learn International and the Fire Island Synagogue, and on the development committee for LaGuardia High School for Music and Art and the Performing Arts. Kis earned a bachelor degree in women's history from Hampshire College and an MBA from New York University's Stern School of Business. She lives in New York City with her husband and two teenage daughters.

Davis Masten creates customer inspired breakthroughs for his clients with innovative brand and product experiences. Davis joined Cheskin Associates, Inc. in 1975 and worked closely with founder and motivation research pioneer Louis Cheskin. Davis stepped down as the CEO of Cheskin+Masten to gain increasing flexibility to pursue his passions.

Focusing on the areas of youth culture, branding, trust, and product development, Davis has offered his expertise to more than 2,500 projects in innovation for retail environments, packaging, interactive environments, corporate positioning and identity, as well as industrial design and product development. He is a pioneer in expanding client perspectives, offering a unique and time-tested view of marketplace trends. He applied ethnography to branding in the early 1980’s. Current clients include Microsoft and Coca-Cola among many others.

In 2003, Davis was selected to be a mentor at the Oxford University School of Business and a member of the President’s Circle of the National Academy of Sciences. He has coauthored an article for the Design Management Journal on Digital Ethnography appearing in the Spring 2003 issue and was quoted in the NY Times. Until recently, Davis was a board member of TRUSTe and also chaired the AIGA Center for Brand Experience where they explore the variety of points of interaction between brand, culture, science and technology.

Don Mathis is the Chief Operating Officer of AzoogleAds, Inc., a leading online performance-based advertising network backed by TA Associates and The Stripes Group. His prior general management experience includes serving as COO of the online fantasy sports company Small World Media, where he helped develop the company’s web properties into being consistently among the very top "stickiest" sites on the web, and co-led the sale of the company to Vulcan Ventures. Earlier senior management experience includes serving as Chief Financial Officer at FHI, an international research company. Don has also served as an operational restructuring advisor for the noted turnaround consultancy AlixPartners, LLC, as well as a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company. He began his career as a programmer and project manager with Accenture.

In addition to his civilian experience, Don served as a Naval Officer on both active and reserve duty. He held several operational leadership positions with the Navy, most recently as a mobilized reservist following 9/11, when, after serving in the search & rescue effort at Ground Zero, he became the Executive Officer of a security and anti-terrorism joint task force composed of 130 sailors, marines and soldiers. He was later deployed to the Middle East, where he was Deputy Group Commander for all US Navy expeditionary logistics forces in the Navy Central Command Area of Operations.

Don graduated with honors from Harvard Business School (MBA) and Vassar College (BA in Asian Studies), where he was awarded the S. H. Chen Zen prize for best thesis written. He wrote a Harvard Business School case on the Asian economic crisis, and co-produced two public television documentaries – "A Measure of War" (focused on the war in El Salvador) and "The Last Wall" (focused on sectarian violence in Northern Ireland). He serves on the board of directors of Mystic Entertainment Corporation and on the advisory board of Affinity Labs.

Sergio is a venture capital investor at Norwest Venture Capital (www.nvp.com) where he is focused on investments in the consumer internet and software sectors. Prior to NVP, Sergio was the first business executive and Vice President of Marketing at Photobucket, Inc., which was sold to News Corp for $300 Million. At Photobucket, Sergio drove viral marketing, public awareness, and user experience, which helped accelerate Photobucket’s growth to more than 25 million unique visitors per month in just a few years from inception. Photobucket is now one of the top 50 most visited sites on the internet and the leading photo & video hosting and sharing service on the internet. Prior to Photobucket, Sergio was Director of New Ventures at eBay, Inc. where he developed and led eBay’s digital goods marketplace and its consumer created content efforts. Sergio was responsible for launching several successful products and services including catalogs via a partnership with CNet. Prior to that, Sergio was General Manager of the consumer electronics marketplace at eBay, which he grew from $150 million to over $500 million in gross merchandise sales in 3 years. Prior to eBay, Sergio was the co-founder and led sales and marketing at Cymerc from inception to more than $15 million in sales. Sergio has also worked in a variety of roles at various business software and services companies such as Siebel Systems, Portal Software, and Morgan Stanley. Sergio serves on the board or as an advisor of several business and consumer technology startups, including SayNow, Affinity Labs, and Adzilla. Sergio is also officer of the Harvard Business School Tech Club, which he helped start and grow to one of the largest alumni networking organizations in the country.

Eric L. Motley serves as Managing Director of the Henry Crown Fellowship Program, which was established in 1997 with the aim of developing a new generation of community-spirited leaders. The program honors the memory of Chicago industrialist Henry Crown (1896-1990), whose legendary career was marked by a lifelong commitment to honor, integrity, industry and philanthropy. Eric is also Vice President for Special Initiatives, guiding the development of several new leadership programs at the Institute. Prior to joining the Aspen Institute, Eric served as the Director of the U.S. Department of State's Office of International Visitors where he also served as a senior advisor to the Deputy Under-Secretary of Public Diplomacy. As Director he oversaw the International Visitor Leadership Program, a program that is designed to build mutual understanding between the U.S. and other countries through carefully designed programs that reflects the participant's interests and support U.S. foreign policy goals. In 2003, he became Special Assistant to the President for Presidential Personnel, where he managed the appointment process for over 1,200 presidentially-appointed positions. He joined the White House staff as Deputy Associate Director, Office of Presidential Personnel in 2001. Eric is a graduate of Samford University (BA) and St. Andrews University in Scotland (M.Litt. and Ph.D.), where he was a John Steven Watson Scholar.

Major General Myatt retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1995 to work for Bechtel Corporation. In September 2001, General Myatt was selected to be President and CEO of the Marines' Memorial Association. He assumed that posting on 10 September, 2001. In his Marine Corps career, General Myatt served in command and staff positions in all three active Marine Divisions. On 8 August 1990, General Myatt was assigned as the Commanding General, 1st Marine Division, Camp Pendleton, California. A few days later, in mid-August, and in reaction to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, he deployed his Division of 22,000 Marines to Saudi Arabia as part of I Marine Expeditionary Force for Operation Desert Shield. During the 4-day ground war in February 1991, his Division defeated seven Iraqi Army divisions in zone, seized Kuwait International Airport and liberated Kuwait City. Prior to his retirement he was assigned as the Director of Expeditionary warfare, serving in that billet until the summer of 1995 to work for Bechtel.

Lou Reda is the President and Executive Producer of Lou Reda Productions, Inc., a television production and publication packaging company. For over 25 years, Lou Reda Productions has been a leading and innovative source of high-quality historical documentary films, with an emphasis on military subjects. Lou Reda Productions has produced over 200 cable and network specials and series episodes, seen regularly on the A&E Television Network, the History Channel, and the Discovery Channel. Lou Reda Productions has been honored with several awards including The Peabody People's Choice Award, the George Marshall Award, the Department of Defense Award, the Colonial Dames of America Annual Book Award, the Columbus International Award, the Ohio State Award, the Cine Golden Eagle Award, and a Golden Apple Award. Lou Reda enlisted in the United States Navy in 1943. He served with the 100th Battalion, Seabees, in the Marshall Islands and the Philippines, and was discharged 1946.

President and chief executive officer of the Kauffman Foundation since 2002, Carl Schramm is one of the world's most recognized thought leaders on fostering and advancing entrepreneurship. The Economist has hailed Schramm as the "evangelist of entrepreneurship," and USA Today noted, "On every front, the Kauffman Foundation has worked intelligently to promote and sustain entrepreneurs – in the fields of entrepreneurship education, research, policy, economic development, and access to capital." Most recently, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez appointed Schramm as chairperson of the Department of Commerce's Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economic Advisory Committee. Schramm's recent books, Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, with Robert Litan and William Baumol (Yale University Press, 2007) and The Entrepreneurial Imperative (HarperCollins, 2006), are regarded as emerging classics, providing new insight into the American and international economies.

An entrepreneur himself, who brings a variety of experiences in business, public policy and academia, Schramm has developed a unique perspective on the financial power of entrepreneurs and how public policies encouraging entrepreneurship can cultivate more dynamic economic growth. Under his leadership, the Kauffman Foundation has developed innovative programs that: expose students to the power of entrepreneurship, open new pathways to effectively move university innovations into the marketplace, create better-qualified angel investors as a critical source of seed capital for entrepreneurs, and engage economists of the highest caliber to study the impact of entrepreneurship. Schramm also has been instrumental in the development of the Foundation's international entrepreneurship fellowship program, which is funded by the UK government for aspiring British entrepreneurs.

As a result of its thought leadership and its work, business leaders and government officials from around the world now look to Kauffman for leadership in helping them make entrepreneurship a part of their long-term economic development agendas.

Before joining the Foundation, Schramm enjoyed a successful career in the health care industry. He was a cofounder of HCIA, Inc. and Patient Choice Health Care, and he founded Greenspring Advisors, a consulting and merchant banking firm in the health information and risk management industries. Schramm also served as executive vice president of Fortis (now Assurant) and as president of its health insurance operations. While there, he developed several innovations, including transition coverage for recent college graduates.

Trained both as an economist and lawyer, Schramm began his career on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University and emerged as a respected thinker in health care finance, regulation, and insurance. He founded the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Care Finance and Management in 1980, the first such research center in the nation. While at Hopkins, he led the country's only post-doctoral training program in health finance, sponsored by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In 1987, he chaired the American Assembly on Health Care Costs and edited its volume, Health Care and Its Costs. He left Johns Hopkins to head the Health Insurance Association of America, which developed a number of industry-wide innovations in health insurance.

Besides many leading academic journals, Schramm’s work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Newsweek. He is a contributing editor of Inc. magazine. In addition to his graduate fellowships (New York State Regents and Ford Foundation), Schramm received two consecutive NIH Career Scientist Awards and was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow at the National Academy of Science, Institute of Medicine. He is a Batten Fellow at the Darden School of the University of Virginia, a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He received the George Eastman Medal from the University of Rochester in 2005.

In 1994, Loy founded Consumer Financial, a full-service marketing consulting firm that develops marketing strategies for leading financial institutions. Previously she was a Vice President at Providian Financial, where she managed the bank's retail deposit business and new account marketing for unsecured lending. Loy has also worked for McKinsey & Company and Edgar, Dunn and Company. At both firms, she worked with financial services firms. She received her MBA from Harvard Business School with highest honors (Baker Scholar) and her BA in economics and political science from San Diego State University, magna cum laude. She also participates in a range of professional and community activities.

Ken Wirt is an independent technology marketing consultant specializing in the development and launch of new products and categories. From 2001 to 2006 Ken was Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and Product Marketing at Palm Inc where he developed and launched the Zire and Tungsten line of handhelds as well as the Treo 650 and Treo 700 line of smartphones. In the early days of the Internet, Ken was the founder and CEO of Riffage.com, a leading independent music site. Previously Ken held senior marketing positions at Diamond Multimedia, Apple, NEC and Atari. Ken has pioneered the development and launch of several new categories of electronic products including: home computers (Atari), CD-ROM drives (NEC), the Newton PDA (Apple), and the Rio MP3 player (Diamond). Ken has an MBA from Stanford and an undergraduate degree in “The Psychology of Kinetic Media” from the University of Michigan.

Anna Zornosa joined Cobalt as General Manager of the Dealix.com division in November 2007. In this role, she directs operations and strategy for Dealix, Redwood City, CA, the largest provider of quotes to automotive buyers. Prior to joining Cobalt, Zornosa served as General Manager and Vice President for Yahoo Personals, the largest online dating community, with an emphasis on driving growth and maintaining product leadership. Prior to Yahoo!, Zornosa served as chief marketing officer of Knight Ridder Digital, a unit of Knight Ridder Inc., San Jose CA (NYSE: KRINC), where she directed KRD’s product strategy, audience development and metrics, and business units including national advertising sales, ShopLocal, and private party online classifieds. As a member of KRD’s strategic team, she drove development decisions including the evaluation and acquisition – with partners Gannett and Tribune, Inc. – of ShopLocal and Topix. Zornosa joined KRD from Topica Inc., San Francisco , one of the nation’s largest email services providers, where she served as president and CEO and directed the company to profitability through the introduction of paid services. Prior to Topica she senior positions at Women.com and PointCast, Inc., where she was responsible for sales strategy and created affiliate agreements with 15 media properties, such as the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Wired, and Times Mirror.

A frequent speaker at industry conferences, Zornosa has been recognized for her work. In 2000, PR Week honored her team at Women.com with the Public Relations Campaign of the Year award. The Advertising Women of New York presented the company with an AWNY Award for advertising that same year. In 1997, Advertising Age named Zornosa a "Digital Visionary." In 2002, she was asked to speak before the Federal Trade Commission as it formed legislation to deter unsolicited email. She is a member of the Advisory Board for start-ups including Glam.Com, OurStory, Tumri and Affinity Labs. Her board participation has included Topica, Inc. and the Online Publishers Association.