Join Wilson Sonsini and special guests Flying Fish & Mayfield Fund as we go behind this quarter’s venture financing numbers. Wilson Sonsini will share with us detail directly from their recent Entrepreneur’s Report, and our guests will cover the trends in the various stages of funding. If you are interested in the latest fundraising data or are planning to raise a round soon, this learn-in is for you!

We will be discussing:

• Trends in venture financing – what is getting funded and who are the winners/losers (so far)?
• Insight on how to adapt to the current market landscape
• The implications of fundraising during Covid-19
• Valuation data
• Handling uncertainty at your startup

OUR SPECIAL GUESTS

Craig Sherman

Wilson Sonsini, Partner

Craig Sherman is a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where he focuses on corporate and securities laws, representing companies, venture capital firms, and investment banks in private placements and public offerings. Craig also has extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions, technology licensing, and domestic and international joint ventures.

Craig began private practice in 1989 with Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York and Paris, and joined Perkins Coie in Seattle in January 1995. He became a director in the Kirkland office of Venture Law Group in December 1996 and was managing director of the Kirkland office from May 2000 until August 2002, when he joined Wilson Sonsini. He has been a member of the firm’s Policy Committee, Compensation Committee, Nominating Committee, and Finance Committee.

In addition to English, Craig is fluent in French and knowledgeable in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean.

Andrew Sparks

Wilson Sonsini, Of Counsel

Andrew Sparks is Of Counsel in the SOMA office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where his practice focuses on representing fast-growing emerging technology companies and the entrepreneurs who build them. Over the course of his legal career, he has advised scores of entrepreneurs, helped build hundreds of start-ups, and been involved in financing transactions with an aggregate value of tens of billions of dollars. He has a broad range of experience in venture capital financings and corporate matters, including counseling founders in starting new businesses, capitalization structures, fundraising, strategic issues, negotiations with investors and acquirers, and other legal matters. He has worked for technology companies across a spectrum of industries including fintech, artificial intelligence, SaaS, robotics, IoT, security, crypto, clean technology, and digital health.

Andrew has represented hundreds of private companies and venture capital investors in venture capital financings, including transactions led by Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, Menlo Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Norwest Venture Partners. In addition, his corporate experience includes transactions involving Autodesk, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Skype, Tesla, and Slack.

Andrew regularly gives presentations on start-up issues and venture capital financings for various programs at the University of California, Berkeley, and at start-up community events, such as for AngelPad, 500 Startups, Venture University, and LAUNCH. He also has an active pro bono practice, which focuses on representing disabled veterans before the Board of Veterans Appeals and in various U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs adjudicatory processes.

Andrew speaks conversational Swedish and began his career at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.

Heather Redman

Flying Fish, Co-founder & Managing Director

Heather Redman is Co-founder and Managing Director of Flying Fish Partners, a seed stage venture firm investing in artificial intelligence and machine learning based companies.

Heather Redman has had a multi-faceted career in early stage and high growth companies, including as Senior Vice President at each of AtomShockwave, Inc., Getty Images, Inc., and PhotoDisc, Inc., VP Business Operations at Indix Corporation and Senior Vice President at Summit Power Group. She is experienced in corporate development and finance, M&A, business development, and intellectual property strategy.

Heather is a consummate networker and believes in service to the community. Heather serves on the boards of the the Greater Seattle Chamber (Past Chair), Washington Technology Industry Association (Chair), the Technology Alliance, the Hawthorn Club, Global EIR Coalition, Beneficial State Bank (Audit and Technology Committees), and Coldstream Holdings. She is a Regent of WSU. She speaks and writes frequently on a variety of topics, and is regularly interviewed nationally on a variety of issues..

Heather holds a JD (with distinction) from Stanford and her BA from Reed.

Ursheet Parikh

Mayfield Fund, Partner

Ursheet invests in the enterprise sector and co-leads Mayfield’s Engineering Biology investment practice.

His Mayfield investments include Versa Networks, ShiftLeft, Rancher Labs (pending acquisition by SUSE), CloudGenix (acquired by Palo Alto Networks) and Netsil (acquired by Nutanix) in the enterprise sector and Mammoth Biosciences, Mission Bio, Qventus, Endpoint Health and unannounced companies in neuromodulation therapeutics and precision diagnostics for maternal and fetal health in Healthcare & Engineering Biology.

He is a proven repeat entrepreneur and executive at Cisco and Microsoft. Prior to joining Mayfield in 2013, he was a co-founder & CEO of StorSimple and then a GM at Microsoft. StorSimple was the leading cloud-integrated storage company that was acquired by Microsoft. StorSimple was the largest acquisition among the first generation of cloud IaaS/PaaS technology companies and has been highlighted by Microsoft as one of its most successful acquisitions. Ursheet holds an MBA from the Wharton School and a Bachelors in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, from which he received the Young Alumni Achiever award in 2015.

Moderated By: Nicola Corzine

Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, Executive Director

Nicola Corzine serves as the Executive Director of the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, a non-profit that delivers world-class resources and mentoring to enable every entrepreneur across the globe to realize their maximum potential. As Executive Director, Nicola is responsible for strategic and operational leadership that help drive research, programing, fundraising, and operations for the organization.

Nicola brings over 17 years of strategic business development and entrepreneurial thought leadership programming experience to the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, most recently in her role as Deal Manager for the Band of Angels, a position held since 2004 as well as Investment Partner in the 2009 Acorn fund which includes investments in Practice Fusion, Niveus Medical, and Flywheel, one of the biggest names in the E-hailing industry. During her time at the Band, she was as an early advisor to Startup America and led the development of the first national and regional Angel Capital Association conferences.

Prior to Band of Angels, Nicola was the founder and executive director of Financing Partners, an organization that delivered education to both entrepreneurs and investors to enable them to reach their mutual objectives. Before Band of Angels, she was part of three startup companies in the US and UK.

Nicola is a frequent speaker on angel investing, technology trends and seed financing at Universities including Stanford, Wharton and Duke, national conferences, including IEEE Women in Engineering, NVCA and Innovation Enterprise, and has served as a formation advisor to several regional and international angel groups and seed funds.

The Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center is a 501c(3) public charity whose mission it is to make entrepreneurship accessible to all. We deliver world-class resources and mentoring to enable every entrepreneur across the globe to realize their maximum potential. Please join us and make your gift to ensure these transformative programs may continue to reach the underserved.