6:00pm: Networking/Light Dinner
7:00pm: Presentation
8:30pm: Adjourn

Cost: free

Title

Entrepreneurship in Photonics

Speaker

Dr. Larry R. Marshall, Southern Cross Ventures

Abstract

Dr. Larry R. Marshall came to the US from Australia in the late 80's - after getting on the job management training at Fibertek, he started his 1st company with no idea of who the customer was, or what exactly the product would be, and learned many valuable & somewhat painful lessons. As a foreign emigrant going he had no network, alumini, no idea of how to raise money or build a business. Bob Byer at Stanford was very kind to him, as was Milton Chang, which helped a lot. This talk will focus on his mistakes and what he leaned, how he learned to network, engineer, market and sell products and ultimately to build a successful business and take it thru an IPO. Since then he have co-founded 6 companies which were lucky enough to create 2 IPOs and 4 decent trade sales. He always learned a lot more from his mistakes, so this talk will sound a little like a comedy of errors, but hopefully be all the more informative as a result.

Biography

Dr. Larry R Marshall is Managing Director at Southern Cross Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley & Sydney, specializing on growing Australian technology companies on the global stage. Dr Marshall previously served as Managing Director of Arasor where he completed the company's IPO (ASX:ARR). He now serves on the boards of Quantenna, Mocana, RIO, SXVP, Wave Semi, and Advance. Dr Marshall has founded 6 successful US companies over the past 20 years, in biotechnology, photonics, and semiconductors; driving two of them to successful IPOs, and 4 to high-return trade sales. Before that he was Chairman of AOC, and of Intersymbol, an Intel Capital company, which he successfully sold to Kodeos, joined Kodeos board, and recently sold the company to Finisar (Nasdaq:FNSR). He was previously CEO and co-founder of Translucent, developing optical gain in Silicon for interconnects, which was acquired by Silex (ASX:SLX) after a successful partnership with a large US public semiconductor corporation. Prior to Translucent, he was CEO and founder of Lightbit Corporation manufacturing unique optical processors for Telecom Regenerators and Biotechnology chips which merged with Arasor Corporation in 2004. Prior to Lightbit, Larry was Vice President of Iridex (Nasdaq:IRIX) which completed an initial public offering on Nasdaq in Feb 1996, and co-founded spin-offs Iriderm and Iridex OEM Group. He was CEO and founder of Light Solutions where he rolled out the first visible semiconductor lasers and formed Iridex. Prior to Light Solutions he ran Business Development, and formerly Technical Programs at Fibertek, where he rolled out the first 1540nm parametric laser. He holds 20 patents protecting numerous commercial products, and has over 100 publications and presentations. He received a prestigious Federation Fellowship, chaired Advanced Solid State Photonics, sits on the Advisory Board of Laser Focus World and holds Board positions at Arasor, AOC, and Kodeos. Larry was born in Sydney Australia, and received his BS Honors from Macquarie University (Sydney), and PhD from the Commonwealth Centre of Excellence.