Friends of Auren Hoffman
Updating you on a member of Auren, Inc.
Friends
(in chronological order from most recent profiles in Summation Push)
August 2003
Mark Gerson
CEO of Gerson Lehrman Group and TheCouncils
Mark was introduced to me by my friend Joel Hornstein, a fellow graduate of Yale Law School. Mark is currently the CEO of Gerson Lehrman Group, a company dedicated to providing research experts to hedge funds and other institutions. Mark has been a very successful entrepreneur and is a fixture in New York City's political circles.
Mark has authored " In the Classroom: Dispatches from an Inner-City School That Works" (Free Press, 1997) about his experiences teaching in an inner-city Catholic high-school right out of Williams College. Mark also wrote "The Neoconservative Vision" (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1995) and "Essential Neoconservative Reader" (Addison-Wesley, 1996). He's a modern-day Ben Franklin.
Mark is a forward thinker who serves on the boards of the Manhattan Institute, Student Sponsor Partnership, the Yale Chai Society and Imentor. Even though he's extremely busy, he somehow finds the time to read three books a week!
June 2003
Stacey Abrams
Deputy City Attorney of the City of Atlanta
I met Stacey in February, 2002, at Renaissance Weekend. She's an accomplished lawyer, author, and thinker.
She is Yale Law 1999, Spellman College 1995, and a former Truman scholar. Stacey has transformed a very successful academic experience into a promising professional career. She seems like someone that has been underestimated most of her life -- so do not be surprised if you see Stacey as mayor of Atlanta one day.
One the side, she already authored three best-selling spy romance novels under the pen name of "Selena Montgomery": Rules of Engagement (May 2001), The Art of Desire (January 2002) and The Laws of Love (November 2002).
April 2003
Steve Vachani
CEO of Locksley Ventures & FreeRazor.com
Steve founded Qool Media (http://www.qool.com/) and was a co-founder of FreeLotto (http://www.freelotto.com) and he is an entrepreneur that is a free spirit. Not tied to any geography, Steve spends most of his time in Rio, Miami, New York, and San Francisco.
I've know Steve since we went to college together at Berkeley. He was an entrepreneur back then too. Steve started a roller hockey league business in high school and then started a meal delivery (to dorm rooms) service while at Berkeley.
Since then, Steve has been into online ads, portals, nanotechnology, and more. He's now pushing FreeRazor.com (http://www.freerazor.com) which, you guessed it, gives you a free razor when you commit to buying the blades online (and having them mailed to you regularly).
February 2003
Andrei Cherny
I met Andrei through my college friend Richard Schwartz -- they went to high school in Los Angeles together. Andrei was a senior speech writer to Al Gore when he was just 21 -- becoming the youngest White House speech writer in American history. He was also the author of the 2000 Democratic platform.
He is the author of The Next Deal which details the "third-way" approach of the New Democrats. Check it out on Amazon and you'll even find a favorable review by Newt Gingrich. Andrei is currently living in Southern California where he is consulting for large corporations and non-profits.
Because he understands all sides of the debate, Andrei is a Democrat that even a Republican can like.
January 2003
Joel Rosenberg
Joel was introduced to me this year by Rich Thau, the wonderfully connected Executive Director of Third Millennium (and FOA from February, 2001). Last month, Joel authored his first fiction book, The Last Jihad (http://www.lastjihad.com), which has quickly become a best seller.
The Last Jihad is a fictional account of Saddam Hussein going nuclear. Though this is Joel's first fictional book, he has been a writer for sometime. He is a political columnist for WORLD magazine and helped write Steve Forbes' A New Birth of Freedom.
In Washington DC, Joel is CEO of November Communications and works closely with many conservative figures including Rush Limbaugh, William Bennett, Natan Sharanksy and Benjamin Netanyahu.
December 2002
Andy Choy
Andy has been a close friend of mine ever since I ran into him during my junior year of college at Berkeley in Statistics 135 class (Andy graduated UC Berkeley with a bachelors in Statistics).
After graduation from Berkeley, Andy went to McKinsey and then to Virgin Cola followed by Virco Manufacturing Company (AMEX: VIR) where he is today running strategic initiatives. Last June, Andy got his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He currently lives in Los Angeles.
A few observations about Andy:
* He's infamous for his financial models. Even when he was just 19 years old he was building complex financial models in Excel.
* He loves brain teasers. I've never met anyone better at solving them. He was the college job interview master! (Andy and I even wrote a few articles about it in 1998 -- see http://www.pangaea.net/IGN/HOFF0198.HTM and http://imprint.uwaterloo.ca/issues/112197/1News/news02.shtml).
* He watches a LOT of television and movies.
October 2002
Tom Campbell
Former U.S. Congressman & current Dean of the Haas Business School at UC Berkeley
I ran into Tom in 2000 when he was running for U.S. Senate against Diane Feinstein. Although Tom had an uphill struggle, he fought hard and was always in a great mood.
Tom was then a very distinguished U.S. Congressman representing Silicon Valley (at the time he was the only Republican Congressperson from the Bay Area) -- and he was rumored to be the smartest person in Washington (and I believe it). Before that Tom was a law professor at Stanford university.
Tom holds a bachelor's, master's, and PhD degree in economics from the University of Chicago. He also has a law degree from Harvard. He was a White House Fellow from 1980-1981.
Tom has always been a person that strives to expand the intellectual development of those around him.
September 2002
Price Roe
Brian Frank, one of my venture capitalists at WR Hambrecht, likes to say that he will forever regret the day he introduced me to Price. Since we met in April 2001, Price and I have been a great team in San Francisco -- co-founding the New Century Leadership Circle (NCLC) together (more at http://www.newcenturycircle.org).
Price is one of the best story-tellers I have ever met. He's hilarious and can command a room.
Price is a native of Houston (he'll never let you forget that) and earned his B.A. degree in History from Colgate University and his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 2000.
He worked a long stint at Accenture (then Andersen Consulting) and Heidrick & Struggles. He also worked for the Bush 2000 presidential campaign in Karl Rove's "strategery" group on the e-campaign, helping direct and implement website, email, coalitions, and executive outreach strategies.
Right now, Price is the Assistant Campaign Manager for the Simon for Governor campaign out of Sacramento.
August 2002
Laurence Toney
I met Laurence Toney back when I was an undergrad at UC Berkeley as he was getting his MBA at Haas Business School and completing the Management of Technology program there-- which is a joint curriculum program with the College of Engineering. We were introduced by Jenny Redo -- one of his classmates.
After receiving his MBA, Laurence headed off to work for PricewaterhouseCoopers' Emerging Companies Services practice. While he was helping many young companies raise money and hone their business model, Laurence got the entrepreneur bug himself and co-founded NetAbacus and served as its VP of Business Development. He later worked for Rivio Corporation (which acquired NetAbacus).
Today Laurence is the EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence) with Opportunity Capital Partners (http://www.ocpcapital.com/) -- a $100 MM venture fund.
Laurence received his B.S. from Hampton University in Virginia.
July 2002
Gregory Slayton
Gregory Slayton is always known as "the guy with the baseball cap." And he is.
Frequently sporting his "Silicon Valley for Bush" cap, Gregory is a fixture in both Silicon Valley and Washington DC. Gregory is an active Republican fundraiser and adviser to people like President Bush, Karl Rove, and Senator Pete Fitzgerald (R-IL).
Gregory serves as the Chairman of ClickAction (NASDAQ: CLAC) and before that was on the executive management teams of Paragraph International, Worlds Inc, and Paramount Technology Group. Gregory attended Dartmouth and Harvard Business School.
Gregory is also a political mentor to me and to the New Century Leadership Circle (NCLC).
June, 2002:
Justin Segal
I got to know Justin about a year ago -- which is a long time in San Francisco. At the time he was the Founder and Director of Start-up Services for Startups Inc. He has since left that company and moved back to his real-estate roots founding Core Group Properties.
Justin previously founded Stemmons Software, a developer of financial accounting solutions for the real estate industry. Justin also co-founded Boxer Property Management Corporation, a national leader in the small- and medium-sized tenant sector, with over 4,000 tenants in over 4.5 million square feet. Justin graduated cum laude from both the NYU School of Law and the University of Pennsylvania.
Last month (April 20) Justin was married to Jennie Gillary.
Visit Justin's Ryze page: http://www.ryze.org/view.php?who=justinsegal
May, 2002:
Caroline Waxler
I met Caroline just a few months ago through Joel Hornstein -- a common friend. Caroline is a world-class writer who used to be the main finance writer for Forbes. She has since written for the Financial Times, the New York Times, Talk, Business 2.0, Newsweek, and was a founding editor of eCompany Now.
After a 2-year stint in San Francisco, Caroline recently moved back to NYC to be the business editor of the newly-published New York Sun (http://www.newyorksun.com/). The New York Sun debuts on April 16, 2002 and according to their web site "the five-days-a-week publication will be available on newsstands Monday through Friday for 50 cents per copy and by home and office delivery for $2.50 per week. Estimated to be between 12 and 18 pages in length, the Sun will feature nine pages of editorial copy, including a full-color front page. It will distribute over 60,000 copies at roughly 4,000 newsstands across the city." The paper is headed by Seth Lipsky and Ira Stoll and is looking to have a less-liberal daily alternative voice to the New York Times.
Visit Caroline's Ryze page: http://www.ryze.org/view.php?who=Caroline
April, 2002:
Scott Bonds
I met Scott when he was 17, just a few weeks after he started at UC Berkeley. We decided to become active in student government and have been partners in various campaigns ever since.
In college, Scott dominated student government and had a great appetite for battling for what was right.
As it turns out, Scott is also an awesome software engineer -- we started Kyber Systems together when I was 21 and he was just shy of 20. We moved into a small duplex in Berkeley and ran the business out of our house before getting a tiny office above a Vietnamese store on Shattuck Avenue. Scott was the genius behind all our technical solutions. We sold Kyber System to Human Ingenuity and both joined the management team and then left to start BridgePath together.
Scott left BridgePath to work for QuickStart Technologies but still had the entrepreneurial bug. So he now runs Bonds Consulting -- building serious Intranet applications for large corporations.
March, 2002:
Ellen Hancock
I cold-called Ellen in 1999. At the time she was the CEO of Exodus Communications. I heard she was interested in foreign affairs -- there are not very many of us in the Bay Area. We talked and I got to know her -- it turns out Ellen grew up in the town next door to me (in New York) and once took a summer class at my high school. Since then, I have learned that Ellen is a street-smart, highly-knowledgeable leader.
Before Exodus, Ellen was EVP and CTO of Apple and COO of National Semiconductor. Before that she spent 29 years climbing the corporate ladder at IBM rising to SVP and Group Executive.
Ellen is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Colgate Palmolive and Aetna.
January, 2002:
Chris Alden, Vice Chairman and co-Founder of Red Herring
Chris is one of the most intellectually interesting people I know. Chris and I both serve as members of the Center for Freedom and Technology (CFT) Advisory Board at the Pacific Research Institute and we are also both very active in the New Century Leadership Circle (NCLC). Chris is in his element in these discussions of public policy and broad societal issues.
It was Chris who introduced me to the thoughts and writings of Virginia Postrel and her theories on Dynamists (see a very good article by Postrel at:
Chris and his wife Daphne recently had a baby girl -- their first child.
December, 2001:
Gil Amelio, Managing General Partner at Sienna Ventures
I was at a breakfast for Steve Forbes four years ago (Fall, 1997) and the person sitting next to me looked really familiar. After striking up a conversation about our tax burden and Congressional spending, I realized I was sitting next to Gil Amelio who had just recently left Apple Computer as CEO.
At the time I was 23 and only had been in the technology business for 2 years. Having a conversation with Gil -- who before Apple was the CEO of National Semiconductor and before that was CEO of Rockwell Communication Systems -- was the highlight of those months.
Gil took a liking to me and invited me to lunch the next month and has given me terrific help and advice ever since. Today Gil is a successful telecommunications VC and a regular at the Silicon Forum.
Gil earned Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate degrees in Physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is an IEEE Fellow and has been awarded 16 patents.
From October, 2001:
Neil Weintraut, General Partner at 21st Century Internet Venture Partners
I met Neil a little more than three years ago when he was on the Board of a company called CareerBuilder and he stopped by my office to chat. Since then, I've seen Neil almost every month as he has become a co-host of the Silicon Forum -- a gathering of elite Silicon Valley opinion makers to discuss public policy -- an event which I chair.
At 21st Century Internet, Neil and his partner has invested in companies like When.com, AdForce, AvantGo, and Vicinity. Before founding 21st Century Internet Venture Partners (http://www.21vc.com). Neil led the Internet practice at Hambrecht & Quist where we was a partner and helped take companies like Netscape, UUNET, and Lycos public. Neil holds an MBA from Wharton and a BSEE from Drexel University.
From August, 2001:
Eileen Tso, high-tech executive and non-profit leader
I have gotten to know Eileen through the Silicon Forums that I run. Eileen is a terrific combination of tech executive, engineer, and big-world thinker. Most recently Eileen was doing business development for 12 Entrepreneuring (the Halsey Minor start-up), managing some of their key portfolio companies. Before that, Eileen was Director of Business Development for Phone.com (now Openwave). She was also group manager at Sun's Java Software division, product manager at Apple's Newton division, and a network engineer at GTE Mobilnet.
Eileen is now heading the Learning Coalition (more on that in future Summations) -- a revolutionary non-profit promoting education and real learning. She graduated from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana with a BS in Computer Science.
From July, 2001:
Jad Duwaik, writer and former dot-com entrepreneur
Jad is a really interesting guy. He's now a full time writer (under the pen name TokyoJad) who just packed his Silicon Valley bags and headed to New York City. Jad writes a Summation-like column called "Lies & Damned Lies" (http://www.liesdamnedlies.com) and has written a very good piece called "Diary of a Failed Startup" (
In San Francisco, Jad started Greenhouse for Startups -- a venue to meet other entrepreneurs. Before that, in Denver, Jad started and sold Planet Internet, a local Internet Service Provider. Jad received bachelor degrees in Mathematics and English Literature, and a minor in Accounting from UCLA.
From June, 2001:
Khalid Azim, Vice President, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
Khalid is a technology banker at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in the Investment Banking division out of Menlo Park, California and is now moving back to New York City. His previous investment banking experience at MSDW comes in the Debt Capital Markets area. He served as the Asian Bank Capital Product Manager and worked in both Hong Kong and New York.
However, Khalid doesn't have your typical banker background. I first met Khalid at a Council of Foreign Relations event in the Fall (he and I are both term members of CFR). He served as an officer in the U.S. Navy on a fast attack nuclear-powered submarine and a surface ship. He was also selected as a White House Fellow for the 1999-2000 class (which is a huge honor).
From May, 2001:
Bob Saldich, Retired CEO, Raychem
Bob was at Raychem for 32 years and served his last six of them as CEO. Bob has also been the past chair of AEA. Since Bob retired, he has become more involved in politics and policy. Bob has become active in the Outreach Advisory Board for the University of California where he has been working to enhance California students' preparation for college and implement the recommendations. Bob even spent time supporting an organization that promotes a world government democracy. I've known Bob through his active participation in the Silicon Forum.
From April, 2001:
Chris Kelly, Chief Privacy Officer at Excite@Home (http://www.excitehome.com)
Chris is a political guy in a non-political Valley. And though he's a hard core Democrat, he's learned enough to have a reasoned debate on any topic. Before becoming Excite's Chief Privacy Officer, Chris held the same job at a start-up called Kendara (which was acquired by Excite). Before that he was one of Gary Reback's trust-busting attorneys at Wilson Sonsini. Before that Chris was a member of Clinton's 1992 campaign and held a variety of White House positions through 1994.
Privacy issues are some of the most important concerns of the future and Chris is well suited to take these issues head-on.
From March, 2001:
Dan Engel, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Idealab
I grew up with Dan in New York. He's the younger brother of Eric Engel, one of my high school friends. Dan, now 24, is at Idealab serving as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Before that, Dan was at LiveSky Solutions (http://www.liveskysolutions.com), a wireless systems integration/strategic consulting company, which he helped build from idea stage to a 30 person venture funded organization. Prior to joining LiveSky, Dan was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Reach Ventures, a high tech venture acceleration company in Boston. Prior to Reach, Dan was the CEO and Founder of GrapeApe.com -- a magazine subscription e-commerce company. Dan attended Tulane University and now lives in Cambridge, Mass.
From February, 2001:
Rich Thau, executive director of Third Millennium
I met Rich Thau a few years ago and have watched him build Third Millennium (http://www.thirdmil.org) into a very formidable organization. Rich and others started Third Millennium in 1993 to help "promote sustainable reform of Social Security and Medicare by informing and mobilizing the nation's opinion leaders."
Rich has become one of the foremost experts on social security and I expect him to be the Domestic Policy Advisor to a future president. Rich lives with his wife Nicole in New York City.
From January, 2001:
Dominick Ibelli
An old high school friend of mine called me a few years back to say hello and I've been able to stay in touch with him ever since. After traveling from job to job after graduating college, Dom landed a sales job at a small start-up in New York City called Social Circles (http://www.socialcircles.com). Dom was one of Social Circle's first employees and is now their top salesperson and runs the sales staff. Social Circles is half Party Planner half match.com, but it has over 1300 members who all pay a hefty fee to be part of a club that puts together events for single people in New York.
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