Organizers

Dave McClure likes to hang out with entrepreneurs, and occasionally help or invest in their startups if they let him. Dave has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over twenty years, and has worked with companies such as PayPal, Mint, Founders Fund, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare, Twilio, Simply Hired, O’Reilly Media, Intel, & Microsoft. Many years ago he used to do real work like coding or marketing or running conferences, but these days he mostly does useless stuff like sending lots of email, blogging, and hanging out on Facebook and Twitter. Dave also likes to play ultimate frisbee when his knees don’t hurt.

Based on her network of China contacts and her love of new media, Christine Lu launched a series of podcasts for Entrepreneur Magazine upon her return to the US and used that base of content to found The China Business Network. She sold her stake in the company in early 2009 and went on her version of a sabbatical since has involved being an organizer of two [re]think conference, two GeeksOnAPlane tours, two TEDx events in Shanghai and Honolulu, getting pulled into some great advisory roles and supporting the Startup Visa movement. She plans to move to Hawaii this summer to launch a new venture called Affinity China which is focused on China luxury, outbound travel and cross border investment projects.

Benjamin Joffe is a renowned expert on Asia’s digital scene and Founder & CEO of Asia-based digital strategy consultancy +8* | Plus Eight Star (www.plus8star.com). During the past 10 years, he has been part of Japan’s mobile revolution, Korea’s Internet boom, China’s mobile crash and web 2.0 revival. His research today covers trust networks, digital identity, virtual economies and social dynamics.
Benjamin is also a Founding Partner in the 3D social gaming company Cmune (www.cmune.com) and founder of Mobile Monday in Beijing, where he held over 30 events welcoming more than 3,000 participants since 2006.

George Godula, Shanghai resident for 4 years, is co-founder of Web2Asia (http://www.web2asia.com) – a full-service market entry partner for Western Internet companies in China, Japan and Korea. The company additionally incubates and invest in local start-ups in the region. George is also the Managing Director of the international direct marketing agency MH | direkt’s (http://www.mhdirekt.com) Asian subsidiary.

George is an active member of the Asian web scene and co-founder & organizer of several established events and conferences such as of the pan-Asian web conference Open Web Asia (http://www.openwebasia.com).

William Bao Bean is a partner at Softbank China & India Holdings, an early stage venture capital firm that is backed by Softbank of Japan and Cisco and focused on the technology, media and telecom sectors, since March 2007. He currently sits on the boards of advisors/directors for companies including Punch Entertainment, Radiance, Tokiva, TalkDaTalk, Iotum, iTalki and the Music Matters and ad:tech China conferences. He holds a BA from Bowdoin College.

William is a regular presenter at industry conferences and has authored a number of white papers including: The Digital Home Handbook – Intelligence At The Edge and China Internet WVAS – The Second Coming

Dan is co-founder of Namesake. He previously founded Newroo, a builder machine learning news and targeting tools that was acquired by News Corporation. Previously, Dan founded Corridor, which built the first modern social networking system. He has also worked as a researcher in cell biology at the National Institute of Health, as a graphics and HCI researcher at the Brown Computer Graphics Lab and on the first Brain-Computer interface at Cyberkinetics. Dan is also an angel investor and advisor to various startups.

Who you’ll be meeting…