VCChat: Working with Investors Scale VP and Luma Capital Partners

DISCUSSION: Sharon Wienbar, Partner Scale VP; Sumeet Jain CoFounder/General Partner LUMA Capital Partners; MODERATOR: Abhi Dugar Lead IDC worldwide research

Sharon Wienbar, Partner Scale VP. Sharon is the CEO of Hackbright Academy, the engineering school for women, based in San Francisco. Sharon brings her passion for the power of education and her drive to #changetheratio in tech to Hackbright. Sharon serves on the boards of Actiance, Applause, Colfax Corp. (NYSE: CFX) and Kaleido Health Solutions. Previously, Sharon was a Venture Capitalist at ScaleVP, where she led investments in software, internet and mobile companies. Prior to joining ScaleVP in 2001, Sharon was Vice President, Marketing for Critical Path and Amplitude Software. She spent most of the 1990’s at Adobe Systems, starting as Product Manager for Asian Products and later led marketing for many of Adobe’s applications, and spearheaded numerous cross-product initiatives. Before her technology line experience, Sharon practiced strategy consulting at Bain & Company for nearly five years. Married and the mother of two university-aged daughters, Sharon is also a competitive rower and enjoys the team aspects and the competitive thrills of the sport. Sharon has served on Microsoft’s Venture Advisory Committee, is a frequent public speaker, has authored and taught several case studies at Stanford Graduate School of Business, is a multi-year “AlwaysOn Power Players in Digital Media Winner,” was recognized by the Huffington Post as one of the “Top 25 Women in Tech to Follow on Twitter” and as one of “40 Over 40” women to watch. Sharon holds an S.M. and an A.B. in Engineering from Harvard University, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Sumeet Jain CoFounder/General Partner LUMA Capital Partners and invests in innovative commerce and marketing technology companies. He is focused on software and products that are accelerating the digital marketing transformation. He is based in San Francisco and previous was with Intel Capital in its Digital Media group. Prior to that he was a partner at CMEA Capital and a technology investment banker at Goldman Sachs. He also was with two startup companies, Personify and iManage.

MODERATOR: Abhi Dugar Lead IDC worldwide research, strategic analysis, advisory services, and client relationships with major Information Technology and financial services industry clients on IoT Security and Cloud and Enterprise Infrastructure. His current focus is on developments and adoption trends of open source platforms in public, private, and hybrid cloud environments, Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), and cloud services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS). Abhi’s work covers analysis of technology trends, workloads, products, vendors, supply chain, and end-user adoption strategies in enterprise IT and datacenters of Web, Cloud, and Telecom Service Providers. Prior to IDC, Mr. Dugar has 15+ years’ experience in technology product line and P&L management, corporate strategy, marketing, and business development. He is based in IDC’s San Mateo, California office and is the founder of IEEE Consumer Electronics Society’s Silicon Valley chapter.