Meet the members of the AppQuest 2010 at Dreamforce Expert Panel:

Robin is a software entrepreneur and investor. He invests in cloud computing applications, open source, virtualization, and security sectors in enterprise software.

Prior to joining Mayfield in 1999, Robin was a founder and/or key member of several successful software startups including CATS Software, Infinity Financial Technology, acquired by SunGard (SDS) and Risk Management Solutions.

Robin earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A.S. dual degree in industrial engineering and economics from Stanford University. Robin has been recognized as the Top Open Source investor by Infoworld magazine and is a frequent speaker at technology and venture industry events.

At Mayfield, Rajeev focuses on Software, Internet and Services.

Prior to Mayfield, Rajeev was at American Capital Strategies (NASDAQ: ACAS), Mobius Venture Capital (fka Softbank Venture Capital) and Austin Ventures. In the past, he has worked with companies such as Klocwork, Ecast and MessageCast (acquired by Microsoft).

Rajeev has held a number of sales, marketing and technical positions at high growth software companies, such as Siebel Systems, Scopus Technology and Open Environment Corporation (OEC), which pioneered service oriented architectures and n-tier computing. He was a key contributor in the company’s growth from a bootstrapped startup to its IPO and acquisition by Borland. Rajeev was also a member of the founding team of NetNumina Solutions, an IT consulting firm, which was acquired by Keane.

Rajeev received an MBA from Harvard Business School, an M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, and a BSEE Honors from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 2004, Jim served as a General Partner at Accel Partners where he led the investments in Entrisphere (ERIC), Peribit (JNPR), RGB, and Rhapsody (BRCD) and was part of the team responsible for BroadJump (MOTV), Timetra (ALA) and Topspin (CSCO). Earlier, Jim was a Founder of VitalSigns (LU) where he went on to serve as VP/GM of the VitalSoft division of Lucent. Prior to VitalSigns, Jim was the Vice President of Network Management for Bay Networks. Prior to Bay and Synoptics, he held various product and marketing positions at AT&T, AT&T Bell Labs, and Digital Equipment.

Jim has a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Cincinnati and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Dan Scholnick joined Trinity Ventures in 2007 with significant experience in mobile and Internet applications as well as enterprise and infrastructure software. Most recently, Dan founded a venture backed mobile application startup. Dan also worked for SVB Capital supporting the software and services practice for the firm’s $56 million equity fund.

Dan started his career as an early employee at Wily Technology, an application performance management company acquired by CA. As the company’s first technical hire, he collaborated with the founder to develop the first version of Wily’s flagship product. During his tenure at Wily, Dan also worked in the sales organization on pre and post sales engagements with many of Wily’s Fortune 500 clients.

Dan received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and his A.B. in Computer Science from Dartmouth College.
 

Steve Gillmor is the editor of TechCrunchIT, producer of the Gillmor Gang and one of the technology industry’s most well-known and pervasive commentators and pundits. Gillmor contributed to various publications such as BYTE, InformationWeek Labs, and has worked as Senior editor of Fawcette Technical Publications, Editor in Chief of Enterprise Development Magazine, and Editor in Chief and Editorial Director of XML and Java Pro Magazines.

Gillmor later joined InfoWorld Magazine as Test Center Director and back-page columnist. He also served as Editor of eWEEK.com’s Messaging & Collaboration Center and OpEd columnist of eWeek’s print publication. As blogging emerged, he wrote the first blogs for Ziff Davis Media, CMP’s CRN, and CNet’s ZDNet, where he remains a contributing editor. A podcasting pioneer, he developed and hosted the seminal Gillmor Gang podcast with industry notables such as Jon Udell, Dan Farber, Mike Arrington, Jason Calacanis, Michael Vizard, Doc Searls and others. Gillmor has also championed development of industry standards, most notably as co-creator of the attention.xml specification and co-founder of the Attention Trust, a non-profit organization to protect user data rights.

John Somorjai is Senior Vice President, Corporate Development & Strategy of salesforce.com. He leads the evaluation, deal execution and integration of coporate strategic transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, and investments. He joined salesforce.com in 2005 having previously worked for Ingenio (acquired by AT&T), as Vice President, Business Development, responsible for partnership, sales and strategic corporate activities; and for Oracle Corporation, as Senior Director, Corporate Development, responsible for strategic transactions. Mr. Somorjai was previously Oracle's Corporate Counsel in the Corporate Legal Department. Prior to Oracle, he worked with Stroock & Stroock & Lavan and Dewey Ballantine as an Associate Attorney. He holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.  

Peter Coffee joined salesforce.com in January of 2007, after spending 18 years as an analyst and columnist at the enterprise technology journal eWEEK (including time under its former title PC Week). Based in the Los Angeles area, he works with corporate, commercial and public-sector IT leaders and application developers to build a global community of best practices on Force.com: the salesforce.com platform for Custom Cloud computing.

Peter has 27 years' experience in guiding the adoption and management of innovative information technologies and practices as a developer, consultant, educator, and internationally published author and lecturer. He has appeared on multiple U.S. TV and radio networks, and on India's Network 18 and Mexico's Grupo Fórmula newscasts, addressing a broad range of eBusiness issues. He chaired the four-day Web Security Summit conference in Boston during the summer of 2000; he has been a keynote speaker, moderator or workshop leader at technical conferences, business and academic events throughout the U.S. and in India, Singapore, Australia, China, Korea, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, the UK, Spain, Italy and The Netherlands.

Peter was previously the first manager of PC planning at The Aerospace Corporation, where he also worked in space systems project management and in space-asset applications of artificial intelligence techniques. Before that, he was a Senior Engineer working in arctic project planning, chemical facility construction management, and alternative-fuels engineering for several divisions of Exxon Corporation. He holds an engineering degree from MIT and an MBA from Pepperdine University, where he also served as a faculty member for the core curriculum in IT management; he has held other faculty appointments in computer science (artificial intelligence) at UCLA and in business analytics at Chapman College. He is the author of two books, How To Program Java and Peter Coffee Teaches PCs.