Chris Gill, President & CEO of SVASE, the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs (www.svase.org ), has co-founded 8 companies, with 6 achieving profitable liquidity events. In addition to running 10 – 12 events each month for entrepreneurs, SVASE also runs a monthly TV show for entrepreneurs (http://bit.ly/d1GliB ) and an annual product launch event, Launch: Silicon Valley (www.launchsiliconvalley.org). Over 6,000 people attend SVASE events annually, and since Jan 2008, SVASE Members have raised over $170MM in venture capital. In Feb 2010 SVASE launched a Seed Fund Program in conjunction with Cambridge West Ventures, and has made investments in two startups to date, appbackr (www.appbackr.com) and Taggstr (www.taggstr.com )
Chris has experience as a business executive in Europe, North America and Asia, with Fortune 100 companies as well as privately funded and venture backed startups. He is a member of Sand Hill Angels (www.sandhillangels.com), has been a Guest Lecturer on entrepreneurship at the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India, and has been an invited speaker at startup and venture capital conferences in cities around the world, including Barcelona, Belfast, Berkeley, Dublin, London, Montreal, Palo Alto, Toronto, and Vancouver. In addition, for 2 years, Chris coached the winning teams of the global Microsoft Innovation Accelerator program, on business and entrepreneurship.
Chris has been featured in and written articles on business and technology issues for the Financial Times, Business Week, Linux Journal and other publications, and his book, “Learning from Silicon Valley Legends” was published in the spring of 2006. Chris was awarded a BSc in Computer Science from Manchester University (UK).
You can contact Chris at President at SVASE dot org
