CONFERENCE SPEAKERS
Will Weisman
Executive Director, Singularity University
Will Weisman is a leader who is passionate about people and ideas and has spent his life working to bring them together to help unlock great opportunities and positively impact the world.
Will currently serves as an Executive Director at Singularity University where he oversees the company's domestic and global conferences and summits. Prior to Singularity University, Will spent time as an investor, advisor, and operator working with a range of companies in the consumer tech. and non-tech. world.
As an investor, Will has a record of picking and influencing winners. Companies he's invested in or been actively involved with have attained over $6B in exits. Starting in 2003, Will served as one of six investment professionals at Maveron, a consumer-focused venture capital firm founded by Howard Schultz, founder and Chairman of Starbucks, and Dan Levitan. The firm has over $800M under management and investments highlights include eBay, Zulily, PotBelly Sandwich Works, Capella, Pinkberry, lucy and Cranium.
Prior to Maveron, Will served initially as an Entrepreneur in Residence and then later as a Venture Associate at Foundation Capital, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm with over $2B under management. From Foundation, his favorite war story is the dramatic turnaround of SuccessFactors where he personally recruited Lars Dalgaard to be the CEO and temporarily joined the company to help craft a new business plan and provide operational support. From near death, Lars drove SuccessFactors to be a public company, which was acquired for $3.4B by SAP.
As an entrepreneur, Will has created and sold two companies. In 2006 he founded phix, a healthy beverage company whose mission was to help individuals live healthier and more energized lives. As CEO, Will helped guide the company from launch and distribution in Whole Foods and other natural product retailers through its sale in 2010. Earlier, he founded and built World Wrapps, a restaurant chain focused on creating delicious and healthy multi-cultural meals wrapped inside tortillas. As a result, Will is well known for inventing the wrap - yes, that now ubiquitous, burrito like thing. The company grew to 30 units with 600 employees before it was acquired.
Will began his career at Intuit and considers his years there, where he saw Scott Cook take the company from a hundred employees to a public entity with several thousand, to have been key to creating his passion for consumer driven businesses.
Will earned a MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.A. from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is the recipient of Nation's Restaurant News' Hot Concepts Award as well as a Visionary Award - From Mind to Menu for his efforts around World Wrapps and the creation of the wrap.
