Mark Greaves, Vulcan, US

Thomas Bluth, CFO,  co.founder smapper, AT

Ruben Riestra, Inmark, ES

Christopher Clay, founder soup.io, AT

Web: http://www.soup.io/

Thomas Neuroth, Independent Business Angel, AT

Thomas Neuroth is a Business Angel and Serial Entrepreneur with more than 30 years of professional experience in ICT. Having an engineering background as well as a business education, he ran his own technology venture until a successful exit  to a public US vendor in the late nineties. Being a founding member and long term president of a leading Austrian collaborative research institute, he recently became a Fellow there.
After his exit he became an Angel, dealing with various ICT startups, either as shareholder, or board member. He is currently involved in two Software startups.
Thomas mainly helps in strategic positioning, market access, deal structuring and -making in early stages, financing or exit situations, or temporarily takes management positions. He also coaches founders and key management for the various pitfalls of entrepreneurial life.

Thomas Ecker, tecnet capital Technologiemanagement GmbH, AT

Web: www.tecnet.co.at

Currently: As investment manager at tecnet capital, Thomas Ecker has been responsible for the acquisition and analysis of, and negotiation with prospective portfolio companies since June of 2003. He supports existing investments and monitors exits. In addition, Mr. Ecker is in charge of deal flow generation and sits on advisory boards of various portfolio companies.
Professional experience: After several years in the tourism and computing industries (most recently at Austrian Airlines), Mr. Ecker held different positions in the IT industry. He joined the financial industry in 1997 as an analyst with one of the first private equity companies in Austria (G&H Kapitalpartner AG). During that time, he was employed in both the corporate finance department (IPO and M&A activities in Austria and abroad) and in the private equity funds department (€15 millions). When UBF Mittelstandsfinanzierungs AG was founded in 2000, Mr. Ecker held the position of investment manager with the incorporation of the BA-CA Private Equity Group (responsible for a total fund volume of up to €192 million). At UBF, Mr. Ecker mainly focused on investments in the information, communication, and telecommunication industries. In addition, he was responsible for the company’s internal IT and communication strategies.
Education: Thomas Ecker finished his higher education with a focus on information technology in Linz and is currently completing his degree in international business administration at Vienna University. He has also completed coursework at Heriott Watt University in Edinburgh as part of his European Master of Business Science Program. Mr. Ecker is a certified portfolio manager at the Austrian Organisation of Fund Management Companies (VÖIG) and has attended the Chartered European Financial Analysts Course (CEFA) at the Austrian Association for Financial Analysis and Investment Advisory Services (ÖVFA).

Petar Nedyalkov, New Europe Venture Equity L.P.

Petar Nedyalkov is an Investment Manager at NEVEQ, the first IT-focused VC fund in CEE. Petar is focusing on enterprise software, financial and semantic technology and digital signage technology. He started his professional carrier in Bulgaria where he worked for the Institute for Computer and Communication Systems at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Later he joined the young team of Orbitel - the first alternative telecom in the country, later successfully sold to Matav, Deutsche Telecom's division in Hungary. Before joining NEVEQ's team Petar worked as a CTO for Reality Invent, a bulgarian startup company developing an innovative digital signage solutions. In 2006 Petar joined NEVEQ as an Investment Manager. He is managing four of the portfolio investments of the fund.

Web: http://neveq.com/index.php?id=Home

Jürgen Marchart

Web: http://www.avco.at/AVCO.aspx

Jürgen Marchart, since Jan. 2007 Managing Director of AVCO – Austrian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, the independent umbrella organisation of the Austrian PE/VC. AVCO hast 58 members and represents more than 90% of the Austrian PE/VC Industry.
Previously he worked at Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), as head of the AplusB financing programme for start-up enterprises. He obtained particularly strong experience in start-up financing and in management of technology policy programmes. Earlier he worked at two high tech start-up enterprises in Germany (Munich) and Austria (Vienna).

Martin Kugler

Web: www.diepresse.com

Since 1998 Martin Kugler has been editor for science and economy at the Austrian daily paper “Die Presse”. He studied Biotechnology at the
University of Applied Life Sciences in Vienna. After his master of engineering Martin Kugler attended post graduate studies on business, law and economics at the Vienna University of Technology.