Marcelo Calbucci

Publisher

Marcelo has been told he’s a professional technologist. He was born in Brazil and moved to Seattle in 1998 to work for Microsoft, where he worked for 7 years. After spending more time in meetings and answering emails than building cool products, Marcelo realized it was time to leave and jump head first into the Startup world. Living of noodle cups and soft drinks for more years than he should have, he launched Sampa, an angel-funded Seattle-based startup that allows people to create a personal, baby and family website on the web. While building Sampa Marcelo noticed a lack of resources about Entrepreneurship and Startups from entrepreneurs themselves. That’s when he founded Seattle 2.0, to be a place where he and guest bloggers could write about what they know that would be valuable to others Startups. Besides publishing the Seattle 2.0, Marcelo also has his personal blog where he writes mostly about building Sampa and is an avid Twitter @calbucci.

Danielle Morrill

Editor-in-Chief

As Editor in Chief for Seattle 2.0, Danielle envisions a community where technologists, entrepreneurs, "wantrepreneurs", investors, service providers, and technology enthusiasts come together to learn from one another, find support for their goals, and build great companies and products. She has an unusual background, which excludes a college degree and include 3 startups. She just joined Twilio, the cloud telephony company who will revolutionize telecom, as their community manager at the beginning of March 2009. Beyond tech, Danielle is passionate about the shipping industry and worked for Fortune 500 global logistics provider for almost 3 years after high school as a business process analyst. She attributes her love for customer service and efficient business processes to her two years with McDonald's.

If you ask Danielle for book recommendations, she'll tell you she hates to give them because they make people feel obligated. If you ask again, she'll tell you to read The Pyramid Principle (for thinking and writing) by Barbara Minto, Crossing the Chasm (for market making and product development) by Geoffrey A. Moore and the 4 Hour Work Week (quit your j-o-b already!) by Timothy Feriss. She might have some romance novel titles handy too, but that's better left as an in-person conversation (please ask!). She wrote this bio, so by now you've figured out that she digresses to talking about herself in the third person on occasion.

In her not-so-free time, Danielle sings and goofs around on other instruments for cover band S.L.E.D. with some other geeks, figures out how to generate even more content in 24 hours on the interwebs, plays with video cameras, pretends to be an early adopter, and generally makes trouble. She is responsible for @RafetheDog, Tech Karaoke Seattle, SocialKind, and a her personal site at http://www.daniellemorrill.com

Danielle's Sites: www.daniellemorrill.com, @DanielleMorrill (Twitter)

Matt Hulett

Entrepreneur-in-Residence

My name is Matt Hulett and I'm the entrepreneur's entrepreneur. I've always enjoyed the challenge of turning a single idea into a fast-growing and profitable company. I've also found a passion for sharing my learnings and experience with other entrepreneurs and executives through my personal blog, Startup Whisperer. I see writing for Seattle 2.0 as a healthy extension of this passion. Whether I blog about how to deal with one's Board, internal startup management issues or the VC funding process, I'm always energized by people's response, comments and extended questions. My other passion is Batman. I'm believed to be just one of three people in the greater Puget Sound area that owns and willingly wears a full Batman outfit on days other than Halloween (I don't know these people personally; they're probably a little strange). My day job consists of running WidgetBucks, which is the fastest growing ad network on the Internet, serving over a billion impressions each month across the Internet and Long Tail. I've been with Mpire, WidgetBucks' parent company, for over 2 years now (or 14 in "corporate years"), and during that time, Mpire has morphed a few times, as startups tend to do. We feel we've really nailed our recent iteration - WidgetBucks - by creating a distribution platform out of our standalone comparison shopping site, mpire.com. My business chronology looks something like this: president of Expedia's corporate travel division (turned idea into billion dollar worldwide leader in just a couple of years), founding partner of AtomFilms and president of Atom Entertainment (20 million monthly unique visitors, purchased by Viacom for $200M), and founding consumer products leader at RealNetworks, along with a few other product focused positions. On a personal note, I am a proud father of two wonderful children and have the most incredible wife. I have deep Seattle roots being a proud fourth-generation Seattleite.

Kevin Leneway

Products

Kevin Leneway is a geek with a passion for anything around startups and the Web 2.0 movement. He works on the Developer and Platform Evangelism team at Microsoft and loves writing simple, useful little pieces of software. In his spare time, he maintains his "A Startup A Day" blog, which is an outlet for any random ideas he has around new startup companies. In addition to blogging, Kevin enjoys snowboarding, playing the tuba, and watching Lost with his beautiful wife and two overweight kittens. Feel free to email Kevin at any time for any reason at kleneway@hotmail.com.

Kevin's Sites: www.AStartupADay.com, www.InnovateOn.com

Andy Sack

Angel Investment

Andy Sack is a serial online entrepreneur and has over 15 years experience running and investing in high tech businesses. Andy is Managing General Partner at Founder’s Co-op a peer-to-peer seed stage investment fund located in Seattle. Prior to that, Andy was co-founder and CEO of Judy’s Book, a local search social networking site that raised 10.5 Million in venture financing from Mobius Ventures and Ignition Partners. Prior to founding Judy’s Book in 2004, Andy co-founded three successful Internet technology companies: i) Kefta, which was acquired in 2007 by Axciom, was a leading provider of real time customer interaction solutions sold to big consumer companies like Overstock, Bank of America and IBM. ii) Abuzz, which was acquired by NYT Digital in 1999. The company, was a software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose products enabled enterprises to manage the expertise of their people. During his tenure as CEO, Abuzz Technologies was named number one in the Internet software category by Red Herring Magazine and the top company to work for by Boston Magazine. iii) Firefly Network, an Internet company that pioneered internet personalization technologies, and which was later acquired by Microsoft Corporation. Andy spent time as an entrepreneur in residence (EIR) for SOFTBANK Venture Capital (now Mobius VC). As an EIR, Andy founded and served on the board of three companies: BodyShop Digital, Quova, and Kefta. Andy currently serves on the board of and advises a number of companies TheStorebook, Cooler Planet, Zango and Orange line media. Andy was also a founder and board member of Students for Responsible Business, and is a regular lecturer at the University of Washington Business School. Andy received his undergraduate degree from Brown University in 1990. He received his MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT.

Andy lives in Seattle, WA with his wife and 2 children and writes the blog A Sack of Seattle.

Alyssa Royse

Contributor

With degrees in playwrighting and anthropology, Alyssa Royse is a born story teller with a short attention span, which naturally led her into the Startup world as the founder and current CEO of Just Cause It. (She really wants someone else to do the CEO part!) As a total novice to the startup world, she has spent the last couple years learning a lot, doing a lot, making tremendous progress and almost as many mistakes. Her blog, Start Her Up, chronicles her experiences as a chick in the Seattle Startup World, and she is a frequent speaker about entrepreneurship and startups. She sees both Start Her Up and Seattle 2.0 as an opportunity to share tales from the trenches with those who are working in the startup industry. Both personally and professionally she is known for speaking her mind, mostly because she wishes someone had "been real" with her when she started - it would have saved a lot of time and money. When she's not working and blogging, Alyssa can usually be found watching bad television, working with her bees, chickens and gardens, playing with her daughter, skiing, planning for Burning Man or trying to figure out what boundary to push next. But at her core, Alyssa really just wants to bring people together, have great conversations and save the world. Despite her sharp tongue and great wig collection, she's really an absolute mush-ball dreamer (but don't tell her we told you that.)

Alyssa's Sites: www.JustCauseIt.com, www.StartHerUp.com, www.Hudroy.com (her totally ignored personal blog.)