The Founding Team Edition
Entrepreneurs Unpluggd
Wed March 21 at 6pm – What makes for a great founding team? Are single founder companies more likely to succeed or fail? This Entrepreneurs Unpluggd will feature three amazing entrepreneurs who have cofounded companies as well as started successful single founder companies.
Tonight’s speakers Mike Evans, co-founder of GrubHub; Rona Borre, founder and CEO of Instant Technology and Joe Dwyer a VC and internet entrepreneur.
Register online – www.http://www.entrepreneursunpluggd.com
Wed March 21 at 6pm – What makes for a great founding team? Are single founder companies more likely to succeed or fail? This Entrepreneurs Unpluggd will feature three amazing entrepreneurs who have cofounded companies as well as started successful single founder companies.
Mike Evans, co-founder of GrubHub, will talk about the team dynamics he and his cofounder Matt had, as well as how they brought people onto their founding team. Rona Borre, founder and CEO of Instant Technology, will share her experiences bootstrapping her company as a single founder from her spare bedroom to the Inc 500. And Joe Dwyer, currently a VC and internet entrepreneur who has founded and cofounded several companies in the last fifteen years.
About the Speakers
Mike Evans – Co-Founder and COO, GrubHub
Mike Evans graduated MIT in 2000 with a pile of degrees and an equally impressive pile of debt. Following along the dotcom bandwagon Mike moved to Chicago to work at Apartments.com. While there he came to understand the value of lead generation Internet advertising.In 2004 Mike wrote version one of GrubHub.com because he was frustrated with futilely searching for delivery restaurants and grumbling through inaccurate orders. After refining the Web site he jumped ship and went full time to pursue making GrubHub.com a real business. Armed with a “Sales for Dummies” book Mike and co-founder Matt Maloney bootstrapped the business for two years. In 2006 GrubHub won the University of Chicago’s New Venture Challenge. The company’s rapid growth has led to five rounds of investment funding, totaling $84 million.
These days, Mike is the COO of GrubHub. The process has made him prone to pontificating on his blog, GrubHub Mike, about Technology Leadership and the Chicago Technology Community.
Rona Borre – Founder and CEO, Instant Technology
Rona Borre, Founder, President and CEO of Instant Technology began her career in the technology staffing industry as an Account Manager at a global recruiting firm in 1996. She quickly became the top producer in Sales corporate-wide for four years in a row and exceeded every sales goal and company benchmark previously established.Rona built and ran a $30 million book of business before venturing out on her own to establish Instant Technology. Since founding Instant Technology in 2001, the company has become a nationally-recognized Woman-owned Business Enterprise and consistently doubled in total revenue and net income the first five years in business. Rona has been honored as an Influential Woman in Business by The Business Ledger and the National Association of Women Business Owners, and an Enterprising Woman of the Year by Enterprising Women Magazine, in addition to the number of accolades awarded to her agency.
Joseph Dwyer – Venture Partner, OCA Ventures
Currently, Joseph Dwyer is a Venture Partner with OCA Ventures in Chicago. For the 15 years prior to joining OCA, Joseph Dwyer was an Internet entrepreneur creating high-growth technology companies.Joseph’s past ventures include: CEO and founder of The Virtual Market, one of the first dynamically generated e-commerce sites; CEO and founder of Blir, a technology consulting and custom software development company serving clients such as Bain & Company, Albertsons, and Exodus Computing; CTO and board member of LoanSurfer.com, a venture-backed online mortgage bank; and President and Founder of TouchPoint Solutions, an enterprise Software-as-a-Service company with customers including Kodak, British Petroleum, and Lockheed Martin.
Joseph is an expert in web application design and development, including the architecture of a web-based device management, ad delivery, and content distribution software system licensed by Kodak for use on its worldwide network of 70,000 kiosks.
Register online – www.entrepreneursunpluggd.com
Performers
Mike Evans, Rona Borre and Joe Dwyer