John Richards: Co-Managing Partner
John E. Richards is an active angel investor, focusing primarily on Internet and software companies headquartered in the Wasatch Front area of Utah. He often mentors entrepreneurs on a regular basis, employing the combination of his experience and teaching skills to help new ventures achieve their goals.
John was president of a publishing company in Seattle, Washington for several years and later had the experience of being part of a company that went from nothing to an initial public offering on the NASDAQ stock market.
John is an associate professor at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, teaching courses in entrepreneurship, e-business, and management consulting in the Marriott School of Management and the School of Technology. At BYU he also serves as Associate Director over Technology Entrepreneurship of the Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology and Associate Managing Director the Center for Economic Self-Reliance.
John and his family reside in Provo, Utah.
Robb Kunz: Co-Managing Partner
Robb Kunz is a Founder & CEO of several high-technology Companies, an Active Angel Investor and also the Founder & Managing Partner of ventureblue Capital, an early-stage high technology investment firm and incubator
As an Entrepreneur, his expertise and track record revolves around starting, launching & funding emerging Companies. He is the Founder/CEO of KnowledgeBlue, an Open Source Systems Integrator and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) firm. KnowledgeBlue was recently acknowledge as the 37th fastest growing Company in the State of Utah as part of the elite Utah100 group for 2009.
As an Investor, he founded and created ventureblue Capital an early-stage high technology investment firm and incubator. He is an active Angel Investor as a member of the Olympus Angels Investors based in Salt Lake City, Utah and recently was acknowledge as one of the top 15 Angel Investors in the State of Utah for 2009. He is an active Director / Board Member of RedSpan Inc and GuestSpan.
Josh James: Investor-Mentor
Josh James was previously the CEO and co-founder of Omniture, Inc., acquired by Adobe in October 2009. James co-founded Omniture in 1996 and successfully took the company public in 2006 as the youngest CEO for a NASDAQ-traded company. Through his leadership and visionary business practices, Omniture has earned one of the the highest customer retention rates in the industry with marquee clients including eBay, AOL, Wal-Mart, Gannett, Microsoft, Oracle, GM, Countrywide, and HP.
In 2007 and 2008, he spearheaded five successful acquisitions that helped propel Omniture’s technology innovation, expand the company’s footprint in key geographic areas and increase market share. As a result, Omniture was named to the 2008 Fast Company Fast 50 list of the world’s most innovative companies, and was recognized on the Inc. 500 for four years in a row and the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 for seven years.
Prior to co-founding Omniture, James founded three successful, Internet-focused, high-technology companies. He was the recipient of the 2006 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Technology Entrepreneur of the Decade by Brigham Young University, and was recently recognized by Fortune Magazine in its 2009 feature “40 Under 40.”
John Pestana: Investor-Mentor
John Pestana is the Co-Founder of Omniture, a software company based in Orem, Utah. John helped build and grow Omniture to company of over 1200 employees. Omniture grew from a student run business to a world-wide, publically traded company in 2006. Omniture was sold to software giant Adobe for 1.8 Billion dollars in November of 2009.
A distinguished entrepreneur, John has been awarded many awards such as Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and Entrepreneur of the Decade by the BYU center for Entrepreneurship.
Off to the races again, John currently owns and operates several new companies, including: ObservePoint, a software as a service company, ExactRail, a model railroad manufacturer, as well as managing an active real-estate portfolio of housing complexes in Utah and Idaho.
Of all his accomplishments John is most proud to be married to his lovely wife, Heidi, and the father of three wonderful children.
Ralph Yarro: Investor-Mentor
Ralph J. Yarro is the president and CEO of ThinkAtomic, Inc. a high-tech venture accelerator and incubator. Under this portfolio, Ralph serves as Chairman and CEO of Voonami, Inc., Xymbiot, Inc., Sumavi, Inc., SurfRecon, Inc., Nuevana, Inc., and Jumpseed, Inc. Ralph also Manages VentureQuest, Inc. a venture lending and capital company.
Ralph has served in a multitude of other companies during his past business career including The Canopy Group, Inc. as CEO, and Altiris, Inc. as chairman of the board. Ralph has also been part of over 120 other startups including: Caldera, Center 7, Helius, Iarchive, Keylabs, Lineo, Maxstream, MTI, Power Innovations, SmartBomb, Trolltech, Vintela, Vinca, and ViaWest.
As of late, Ralph has devoted part of his time and resources to the CP80 foundation, of which he is the founder and chairman, and its mission to fight pornography on the internet. Ralph has served as a director on the Kevin Rollins eBusiness Center Board at BYU. Ralph serves as a Trustee and as Chairman of the Foundation Board of Utah Valley University.
Martin Frey: Investor-Mentor
Martin Frey is an active angel investor and a partner in Connect, a consulting group that helps startups acquire and retain customers.
He served as the Managing Director of the Economic Development in the Huntsman administration where he helped start, grow and recruit companies in Utah.
Previously Martin spent 13 years as a Sr. Director at Cisco where he lead the post sales support teams for Cisco’s 250 largest customers; and 9 years at ITT in the defense industry.
He serves on the advisory boards of BYU College of Engineering, UVU School of Business, University of Utah College of Humanities, and several businesses.
Warren Osborn: Investor-Mentor
Warren Osborn was the CEO and founder of the Seastone group of companies. His products have penetrated more than 70% of US households. One of his companies developed the Blu-ray case and established the global standard for high definition DVD packaging.
Warren has founded six companies, all of which have been very successful. He has also acquired and/or operated companies in consumer products, technology, media production, marketing/promotion, international trade, and manufacturing. His clients include Walmart, Disney, AOL, Time Warner, Comp USD, American Express, Visa, Staples, The Home Depot, Walgreens, and numerous other Future 500 companies.
His first company, Osborn Video, became the largest video replication company in the Intermountain West. One of his companies, Give-A-Gift™, pioneered the gift card accessories market and was ranked by Inc. 500 as the 11th fastest growing consumer products company in the US. In 2007, his company was ranked as the second fastest growing company in Utah. Warren was named Businessman of the Year by the Provo/Orem Chamber of Commerce (2008). He has invented multiple patented properties and won awards for many of his product designs.
Warren is an active venture and private equity investor. He founded the Pebble Foundation (formerly Seastone Foundation), which has provided medical and other humanitarian aid to orphan children in China. He graduated from BYU in Chinese and received his MBA from Duke University.
Rod Watson: Investor-Mentor
Rod Watson’s angel investments deal mainly with software and biotech companies based in Utah and Oregon. He is an involved board observer for virtual drug development and consumer media consumption start-ups. He is quite active in researching product viability and potential across diverse industries. Rod worked for Hewlett-Packard for 26 years in information technology retiring as a product manager for HP’s enterprise data warehouse and planning and strategy manager.
Brock Blake: Investor-Mentor
Brock Blake is the CEO of FundingUniverse LLC. His primary role with the company is to lead the strategy and execution of the FundingUniverse team. The company was established in 2005 to help make the angel investing and small business financing industries more efficient by increasing the amount of completed deals across the nation. Blake is also a founder or advisor of several other companies including iFan Media, Portfolio Dashboards, KnowMarketing, and GrowAmerica Ventures.
Blake has received several awards of recognition on behalf of the FundingUniverse team including the #2 Startup to Watch Award from Business Q Magazine and Utah Technology Council’s 2007 Emerging Executive of the Year. At age 24, Blake was recognized by Utah Business Magazine as one of the Top 40 Under 40 business professionals in Utah, and his peers selected him to vSpring Capital’s prestigious v100 list in 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2010.
Blake speaks regularly at national entrepreneur conferences and seminars, and he currently serves on several advisory boards including the Utah nonprofit organization LaunchUp, the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum, Launch Magazine, Brigham Young University’s Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization and Weber State University’s Entrepreneurial Society. He graduated from Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management in Entrepreneurial Finance and played semi-professional soccer for the BYU Cougars when they won the 1999 Collegiate Club National Championship. Blake is happily married and has three children.
Nobu Mutaguchi: Investor-Mentor
Nobu Mutaguchi has invested in over 25 Utah-based startup and emerging companies. With homes in Japan and Utah, Nobu manages his business interests by mentoring those in whom he invests. Early investments in Utah companies have provided Nobu with large returns on investment, including his early belief in the founders of Omniture, which recently sold to Adobe for $1.8 billion. Nobu was also a finalist for the 2009 Utah Angel Investor of the Year Award.
