It was in the Stanford University where Bechtolsheim started working on the roots of Sun Microsystems, designing a powerful computer called the SUN workstation. After establishing Sun Microsystems, he left and founded Granite Systems in 1995, a company focusing on the development of high-speed network switches. Cisco acquired Granite Systems, but Bechtolsheim stayed on board as Vice President and the general manager of the Gigabit Systems Business Unit. He left in 2003 and headed Kealia, Inc., a company he also founded in 2001. In a somewhat ironic twist of fate, Kealia was in turn acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2004. With almost all of his investments taking off spectacularly, Bechtolsheim is considered to be one of the most successful of angel investors in his chosen industry.
Andreas von Bechtolsheim, more fondly referred to as Andy, is an electronic engineer famed for co-founding Sun Microsystems back in 1982 and becoming the company’s chief hardware designer. He was also one of the first major investors for Google and a host of other computer networking companies in the past.
It was in the Stanford University where Bechtolsheim started working on the roots of Sun Microsystems, designing a powerful computer called the SUN workstation. After establishing Sun Microsystems, he left and founded Granite Systems in 1995, a company focusing on the development of high-speed network switches. Cisco acquired Granite Systems, but Bechtolsheim stayed on board as Vice President and the general manager of the Gigabit Systems Business Unit. He left in 2003 and headed Kealia, Inc., a company he also founded in 2001. In a somewhat ironic twist of fate, Kealia was in turn acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2004. With almost all of his investments taking off spectacularly, Bechtolsheim is considered to be one of the most successful of angel investors in his chosen industry.
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Born on January 3, 1929, Gordon Moore was to grow up to be a successful American businessman and later on the co-founder of the Intel Corporation. He is also attributed for authoring Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors on a chip approximately doubles every two years. This is the very same principle that Intel has maintained for decades, following this golden rule not only for guidance but also as a springboard for advancing technologically. With Moore’s words, Intel was able to expand the functions of a chip while lowering costs per function and the required power of every transistor by shrinking sizes and introducing new materials and structures for transistors.
After Moore co-founded Intel, he became the company’s Executive Vice President, President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of the Board before finally becoming Chairman Emeritus in 1997. Staying true to being a visionary, Moore and his wife Betty donated $200 million to the University of California and Caltech in 2007 to aid in the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope, slated to be the largest optical telescope in the world. Previously in 2001, Moore also donated $600 million to Caltech to keep the institution at the forefront of technology and research. Today, Moore remains a member of Caltech’s trustees. Other awards and recognitions for Moore include the Bower Award for Business Leadership in 2002 and the IEEE Medal of Honor in 2008 for his work in pioneering technical roles involved in integrated circuits processing and his leadership in the semiconductor and microprocessor industry. He also received the National Medal of Technology and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Moore was also inducted as a Fellow of the Computer History Museum in 1998 and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2003. The Moore Laboratories building in Caltech and the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the Cambridge University were also named after him. Alejandro Santo Domingo Davila is the new face of the Santo Domingo Group, a conglomerate of companies in Human Management. He took over the business after the death of his father Julio Mario Santo Domingo Pumarejo at the age of 87. Alejandro is a Colombian American financier who partners with his cousin, Carlos Alejandro Perez Davila to run several family businesses.
He was educated at Hotchkiss School and earned his bachelor of arts in history from Harvard. He is the eldest son of the beer magnate Julio Mario Santo Domingo Pumarejo and Beatriz Davila. He currently sits as the chairman of the board at Grupo Empresarial Bavaria S.A.. He is also connected with the New York based Quadrant Capital Advisors Inc. and is currently holding the position of managing director. It was in 2009 that he got elected to the Board of Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Arts. Other than working for his family’s businesses, he also keeps himself busy with the non-profit charitable institutions that he is an advocate of. He sits as board of director for both DKMS Americas and Colombia’s Endeavor. Germany has a lot of billionaires and Stefan Quandt is one of the leading names on the list. He is not only one of Germany’s richest men because he also currently holds the 76th spot in the list of richest people in the world as listed by Forbes.
Stefan Quandt is an engineer and an industrialist who was born on May 9, 1966 to Herbert Quandt and Johanna Quandt. His father is the notable person who salvaged BMW from going bankrupt and in the process made a huge profit. This in turn made Stefan Quandt’s net worth go up to $11.9 billion after inheriting 17.4% of BMW’s shares after his father’s death in 1982. There are several other companies that he also inherited from his father that he now manages through his holding company Delton AG. He studied engineering from 1987 to 1993 at the University of Karlsruhe. Shortly after, he had a short stint in the Boston Consulting Group in Munich from 1993 to 1994 which was then followed by his marketing manager work in Hong Kong for Datacard Group of Minneapolis. Other than inheriting a substantial amount of wealth from his father, his mother also gave him 18.3% shares of Gemplus International, a digital security company. Some of the businesses that he manages under hi holding company are: CEAG, Logwin AG, Heel GmbH and CeDo Household Products. He currently sits on the supervisory boards of Dresdner Bank AG and Gerling Konzern Allgemeine Versicherungs AG. Together with his mother and sister Susanne Klatten, who is also a major stockholder in BMW, they form one of the wealthiest families in the world. Stefan maintains a very low profile despite his wealth and has been sighted several times watching football matches. He got married to Katharina, a software engineer in 2005 and has a daughter who was born on New Year’s Eve that same year. Considered as the nation’s largest family owned and operated department store, the third generation of the Belk family are the ones in charge of running the business now. Belk is a chain of department stores started by William Henry Belk in Monroe North Carolina in 1888.
More than a century old, the business now operates in 301 locations in 16 Southern States. The business offers various private label fashion brands ranging from shoes to accessories, from wedding registry to home furnishings at a moderate price. When the company was first created, it used the name “New York Racket” and then to “Belk Brothers”. Through bargain sales and various advertisements, the company started growing throughout the South. After more than a century of using their slogan “All For You!” the company had made a decision to have it replaced with “Modern. Southern. Style.” Starting October 3, 2010, the company had embarked on a $70 million campaign to market their new slogan. When it comes to greeting cards, the first name that would likely pop-up would be Hallmark! It is the greeting card of choice for the majority for more than a century now. It was Joyce Hall who founded the business in January 10, 1910. In the words of Joyce Hall, greeting cards are “a representation of class, a promise of discretion and they are more than a form of communication – they are a social custom.”
It was the postcard craze in 1903 that inspired Joyce to venture into the wholesaling of postcards from his retailing of various items. It was in 1915 that Hall together with his brother Rollie started marketing Valentine’s Day and Christmas cards. They also created the modern wrapping paper. From a staff of 4, the business grew to a manpower of 120 people in 1922. They also increased their market from holiday cards to everyday greeting cards. It was in 1928 that the company adopted its current name. It was patterned after the symbol of goldsmiths in London in the 14th century. It was also on the same year that they started printing their logo at the back of each card. Together with these events, they also became the first greeting card maker to advertise their product nationally. It was Joyce himself who created their ad that got printed in Ladies’ Home Journal. Hallmark Cards as a company is no longer just in the business of creating greeting cards as they have ventured into the production of other materials for arts and crafts. They have art supplies and stationeries that are marketed in over 100 countries. The brand name Crayola is also a subsidiary of the company. To date, the business is considered as one of the largest privately owned companies in the United States with estimated annual revenue of $3.78 billion. An organic yogurt manufacturer headquartered in New Hampshire, USA, Stonyfield Farm is one of the few firms that have made its supply chain sustainable and profitable at the same time. Established in 1983 by Samuel Kaymen as an organic farming educational institution, the company went on to become one of the leading brands of organic yogurt in the entire United States, which produces best-sellers Oikos, YoKids, YoToddler and YoBaby.
Over the past six years, the company has launched various environmentally-friend innovations not only in their manufacturing methods, but also in packaging, transportation and waste reduction – all of which have cut costs by a whopping $24 million. Today, Stonyfield Farm is helping its suppliers and business partners do the same and has launched a program to create small, transportable processing plants at banana cooperative in Costa Rica so that growers can minimize their wastes by 50% and at the same time augment their profit. The project was patterned after Stonyfield’s parent company, Danone Group, which makes sustainable development the core of its operations. In the past decade, there have been fundamental changes on how guests find places they can dine in. If years ago, local newspapers and word of mouth were the only means for restaurant discovery, today, owing to the breakthrough advancements of technology, the world already boasts of countless services that drive customers to restaurant doors. One app after another are being introduced to the market, some of which can fill restaurant seats in just a short span of time, while others require gargantuan effort with little rewards.
Needless to say, such bewildering developments have increased the restaurateurs’ workload and made running a restaurant even more complex. Not only are restaurant proprietors expected to operate their businesses flawlessly, they also need to become high-end marketing experts. Unfortunately, not all are gifted which such talents, which is why the need for an honest broker who understands the nuts and bolts of the restaurant industry as well as the innovations of the digital world, has become of utmost importance. This is where Copilot Labs come in. Created as a marketing analyst for all kinds of restaurant owners, Copilot Labs gathers point-of-scale data, scrutinizes these using vanguard expertise, compares the findings to similar establishments and identifies various opportunities for growth. The company tracks ways that can really work for a certain restaurant, so that owners can concentrate on initiatives that will help boost their business. Launched by Eli Chait in 2012, this marketing analytics company also looks into visits, spending, and profitability of guests that utilizes promotions from Restaurant Week, LivingSocial, Groupon and others to help draw a direct line between the latest marketing strategies and the results they yield, and at the same time, hold marketing firms to account. In the perplexing age of Groupon promotions, Yelp reviews and the like, Copilot is around to help restaurateurs make good sense of it all. They no longer need a PhD in Economics or Math because the company will do all the hard work. Copilot will provide answers, and all restaurants owners have to do is review the data that they discover, take action, and measure the success of their marketing strategies. An extensively accomplished healthcare sector executive with more than 35 years of experience in his field, Cástulo de la Rocha acts as President and CEO of California’s non-profit AltaMed Health Services Corporation. Under Mr. de la Rocha’s supervision, AltaMed has grown to become the state’s largest Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) with a network of 21 clinics and 11 senior care facilities spread across the greater Los Angeles area and throughout Orange County. Committed to providing treatment of the utmost quality to patients from economically challenged backgrounds, Mr. de la Rocha has earned numerous accolades and distinctions for his work over the years including the U.S. Surgeon General’s Gold Medallion for Public Health, the Mexican American Bar Foundation’s Pioneer for Justice Award, the National Medical Fellowships’ Champion of Health Award, and a Tribute Award from The Latino Coalition.
Inducted into the National Association of Community Health Centers’ Grassroots Hall of Fame in 2011, Cástulo de la Rocha maintains a wide range of professional affiliations outside of his responsibilities at the helm of AltaMed Health Services. To this end, he has chaired the Estelle Doheny Eye Hospital’s Community Advisory Committee since 1980 and functions as President of the California Network of Health Providers. Mr. de la Rocha also sits on La Familia Publications’ Board of Directors and oversees an $18 million budget for the Los Angeles Regional Family Planning Council as the organization’s longtime Secretary. Cástulo de la Rocha received his Juris Doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law in 1975. Additionally, he holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from UC Santa Barbara and a Certificate in Management from Stanford University. Actively engaged in philanthropy, Mr. de la Rocha has devoted a considerable amount of energy to benefit the American Diabetes Association, one of many local and national medical charities he supports. Trying to target a client is as difficult as targeting the consumer. They are constantly inundated with e-mails, advertising, and calls from other businesses, trying to make that vital connection. Navigating through this storm can be a difficult, but lucrative, undertaking. Bizo has specifically targeted the decision makers of the business and clients with high net worth giving their customers the best methods to get to these markets.
Bizo’s strength is its database that anonymously identifies the people who are making purchasing decisions. Rather than a scatter approach, the company can filter the audience for a product to those who will be the most likely buyers. Furthermore, Bizo’s Audience Marketing Platform ensures that business audiences only receive relevant advertising. Once the audience has been identified, Bizo makes sure that its clients’ products are advertised on the sites these targeted audience will visit. Their methods have brought in top corporations including AMEX, Microsoft, AT&T, and UPS. |