Bill Jacobson
Bill Jacobson works with emerging mobile and Internet companies to help them realize the full potential of their business strategies. Companies Bill is actively involved with include, MuseTrek, PickupZone and Workbar - all Boston based start-ups.
With business, technical and early stage start-up experience spanning back to the mid nineties, Bill most enjoys finding and growing seed stage concepts. Prior business successes include co-founding the Boston based company InterStep Inc., a two-person start-up that Bill developed into a profitable Internet database marketing company. Recognizing industry consolidation, Bill led InterStep through a series of acquisitions, leaving the company's investors with over 25 fold gains within five years.
Bill's earlier career technical achievements include real-time meteorological modeling systems at the MIT's Lincoln Laboratories. Bill holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, where he graduated with honors.
Bill serves on the board of advisors for various Internet based companies including Candyspark, TradeLoop Corporation, and Floodgate Entertainment.
An avid sailor, Bill lives on the Boston waterfront and with his wife and two children.
Pierre Jean
Pierre Jean has US and international business experience in the fields of information technologies, database marketing, scientific computing and Internet operations. He has worked in large organizations and startup ventures achieving IPO goals. His line experience covers sales and marketing, distribution channels, business development and managing product introductions. He has also lead joint venture and merger and acquisition programs totaling several hundred million dollars in investments.
Pierre was recently Vice President of sales and marketing at e-tractions, an Internet marketing software and services firm responsible for, among other engagements, the 5th fastest consumer drug launch in the US market. Prior to e-tractions, Pierre worked at Engage, a CMGI subsidiary, where he led the development of Internet database marketing systems and online advertising for consumer-oriented industries such as automotive, travel and hospitality and financial. Engage, the second largest online advertising network, reached IPO and was the fastest growing unit of CMGI, a multi-billion Dollar Internet ventures conglomerate.
Prior to CMGI Pierre was Director of international sales for Sky Computers, a division of Analogic and a provider of high performance hardware and software systems sold in compute-intensive applications such as medical imaging, radar, sonar, image processing and simulation. He started his career at TRW (now Northrop), a leading technology and information systems provider for the Aerospace, Defense, Industrial and Automotive markets. While at TRW, Pierre led multinational accounts sales of TRW integrated systems sold worldwide through a network of partners including Matra in France, Nokia in Scandinavia and Fujitsu in Japan. He was also part of a 12 person internal management consulting unit dedicated to divisional and group management across TRW's wide range of operations.
Pierre has an MBA from the University of California at Los Angeles and a degree of economics from Ibero University in Mexico. He is fluent in three languages, has living and working experience in the US, Europe and Latin America and has considerable travel experience including two transoceanic crossings under sail. He is the founder and President of BISEA (Boston International Sailing Events Association), a non-profit organization promoting the sport of professional offshore racing in the US and a member of the Mentonet US-European executive network.
P.K. Shiu
Mr. P.K. Shiu founded Imperial Consulting, Inc in 1988 to provide systems development and services to the financial industry. He designed and developed financial market data systems and electronic trading applications for major brokerage and mutual funds companies throughout Hong Kong, San Francisco, and Massachusetts. Since 2005 he is focusing on developing community networking services, most recently KindNeighbor.com, a private secure information exchange platform for affluent metrolitan home owners.
Mr. Shiu also served as Chief Technology Officer of AdvisorTech Corporation, a global investment service company providing financial products and applications for investment advisors in Japan, Korea, and German. He was responsible for the technology direction of the company,
and the architecture and development of their system products globally. Mr. Shiu's experience in the investment advisor market is extensive,
including developing Internet-based order management and portfolio management systems for Fidelity Investments and Schwab.
Before founding his own company, Mr. Shiu was employed with Fidelity Investments and Logica, Inc., a British system consulting company.
Mr. Shiu graduated with honors from Imperial College at the University of London with a BS in Computing Science. In addition, he holds an MBA from Boston University.
Dave Ulrich
David Ulrich combines years of enterprise software development and image processing experience together with work on microarray data storage, processing and analysis methods.
Most recently, David founded Gene Home Inc, a company delivering software and systems for the ever-growing computing demands of genetic based research and clinical applications. Prior to Gene Home, David worked for startup companies in the machine vision and financial services fields where he worked on non-contact measurement systems for the automotive and electronic manufacturing industries and mutual fund portfolio management systems.
