Move over, David Letterman!  StartOut SF has its own Top 10 Lists for Entrepreneurs! 

As part of our StartOut University Program, we are excited to present a panel of attorneys and their clients, with a focus on entrepreneurship.  They collectively have decades of experience working with entrepreneurs to help them build and grow their businesses. 

Our expert panel will cover our first "Top 10" topic:

• The top 10 biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make, from a lawyer's perspective

Along the way, our panel will share war stories about issues they have helped entrepreneurs face.  

The event will take place from 6-9pm on Wednesday, July 21st, as follows:

6:00-6:30pm Welcome Networking Reception

6:30-8:00pm The "Top 10" Panel

8:-8:45pm Post-Event Networking Reception

Our fantastic panel includes several attorneys with a distinguished history of working with entrepreneurs and several entrepreneurs who have had extensive exposure to the intersection of law and entrepreneurship:

Top 10 Panel

Mike Sullivan Emerging Companies Partner Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP

Mike Sullivan is a partner in the emerging companies group at Pillsbury, a leading San Francisco law firm. He has counseled entrepreneurs/startups and their investors for over 20 years. Mike has handled hundreds of angel and venture capital financings and over 50 public offerings, including an IPO for PlanetOut (owner of gay.com; Nasdaq symbol: LGBT) in 2004, eBay’s $1.3 billion stock offering in 1999, and the first-ever Internet IPO in 1994, for NetCom.

His clients have included eBay, Digital River, PlanetOut, Grouper Networks, Urchin Software (now Google Analytics), H5 Technologies, Pie Digital, Inc., Real Girls Media Network, PBwiki, Cardstore.com and WebMynd. He has deep experience with Internet/digital media/software business models, but also works with consumer (St. George Spirits, maker of Hangar One vodka) and cleantech (BPL Global, a leading smart grid company) companies. He also represents a number of venture capital and angel investors, including Blumberg Capital, IDG Ventures, WaldenVC, Felicis Ventures, Levensohn Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures and The Roda Group. Mike is a graduate of Williams College and Michigan Law School. His outside interests skew green – his book, the Trees of San Francisco, was published in 2004, and he was appointed by Mayor Newsom to the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission in 2007.

Michael Heuga Intellectual Property Partner Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP

Mr. Heuga’s practice focuses on technology and commercial transactions, in particular licensing, intellectual property and marketing matters. He has negotiated and drafted agreements involving complex technology licenses and transfers, information technology procurement, asset acquisitions and divestitures, distributor matters, and real property transactions.

Mr. Heuga also counsels a wide variety of clients on intellectual property and related subjects, as well as on compliance with advertising, antitrust, consumer protection, and other trade regulation laws. He also has significant experience with the resolution of competitor advertising disputes.

Mr. Heuga works with clients ranging from start-ups to well-establishedFortune 500 companies, as well as public entities in California. He advises clients in a variety of industries, including energy, consumer retail, advertising and marketing, and software; hardware and other technologies.

Paula Weber, Employment Law Partner Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP

Ms. Weber is leader of Pillsbury's Employment & Labor practice. She focuses on complex employment litigation, supplemented by compliance advice and counseling on employment issues for both large institutional employers and smaller companies. Ms. Weber has handled a wide variety of individual and multi-plaintiff cases in federal and state court including race, sex, disability, and age discrimination suits, as well as breach of employment contract, wrongful termination, fraud, defamation, whistle-blower, misappropriation of trade secrets, wage and hour and other employment-related litigation.

She has trial experience in both state and federal court including trials in defamation, breach of contract, sex discrimination, and termination in violation of public policy cases. Ms. Weber also has wide-ranging ADR experience, most recently the successful defense in a binding arbitration of law firm partners charged with breach of fiduciary duty by their former partner.

Brian Backus, CEO/Founder and King of Kidlandia

Backus began his interactive media career as an award-winning Producer for Disney Interactive. He holds an MBA and AB from Harvard, an MFA from USC, and a Certificate in Studio Art from UC Berkeley. Kidlandia is his third and favorite company. After finishing business school, Backus started UBUBU, a software company that created educational computer interfaces, and Qi Spirits, a producer of premium liqueurs made with organic tea and spices, sold worldwide.

He was raised in La Jolla, California, and lives in San Francisco and Kidlandia (where he spends most of his time), and has been creating imaginary beasts and maps since he was four years old. 

Lorenzo Thione, StartOut Founder, Former Founder of PowerSet (now Bing.com) and Broadway producer

Lorenzo is the co-founder of Powerset, Inc., an innovative search startup founded in 2005, with the vision of bringing to consumers a more natural and effective type of Internet search than conventional keyword search. Funded by notable Silicon Valley VCs and angel investors, Powerset was acquired by Microsoft Corp. in 2008 to complement and innovate on its own search technology and offering. Currently, he is a Principal Program Manager in charge of the Powerset division of Bing, Microsoft’s innovative “Decision Engine”.

Lorenzo is an active angel investor, board member and advisor in several startup, including Dolores Labs, an exciting and energetic San Francisco startup building a scalable platform for human-based computing and crowdsourcing, Crowdflower, and several others at various stages, in the US and abroad.

Lorenzo is also a commercial theater producer currently busy in bringing several new works to the Broadway stage, including the recently emerging Green Day musical, American Idiot of which he’s Associate Producer. His current and most ambitious project is a brand new musical bound for the Broadway stage. Jay Kuo’s original musical Allegiance, starring George Takei and Lea Salonga, follows the story of a Japanese American family during the years of the WWII Japanese American internment, and is currently aiming for a 2012 Broadway debut.

A native of Milan, Italy, Lorenzo moved to Austin, Texas at age 21, to complete his studies at the University of Texas at Austin, from which he holds a M.S. in Computer Engineering, and has co-authored several publications in Software Engineering and Computational Linguistics. He is a named inventor on 10 issued and over 20 pending patents in the US and world-wide.

Kim Frank is founder of Corp-Growth, a growth and M&A consultancy firm. Through Corp-Growth Kim serves as interim corporate and business development officer and provides growth strategy, fund raising, board and M&A services to start-ups and mid size technology companies. Kim has a broad cross-domain operating experience as Corporate Development Executive, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary and Board Member for companies such as Cadence Design Systems, Inc., Intel and Nakamichi.

StartOut would like to thank David Trudring of Energy Talk Radio for webcasting this event.  For more information visit http://www.energytalkradio.com

StartOut would also like to thank Shae Rocco Photography for photographing the event. For more information visit www.shaerocco.com