TYE Business Plan Competition Judges

The TYE Business Plan Competition is just around the corner and the TYE Team is proud to announce this year's impressive list of judges. As we have discussed before, if you are presenting, it would be a good idea to "understand your audience" by doing a little bit of reading (we've provided some biographies below). Students, best of luck on your finishing touches and let us know if you have any last minute questions. We are here to help!

• Anand Daniel, Senior Associate, Flybridge Capital Partners

Anand is a senior associate at Flybridge Capital Partners whose investment interests and expertise include semiconductor, telecommunication, wireless and energy-related technologies. He currently represents Flybidge Capital Partners as an observer on the boards of CHiL Semiconducter and Sciformix.

Anand joined the firm after completing his MBA at the MIT Sloan School of Management. While at Sloan, Anand was the managing director of the 9th Annual MIT VC Conference, co founder of the MIT VC Competition and an organizer of the first ever MIT Energy Conference. He led the team that won the prestigious International Venture Capital Investment Competition (1st out of 50+ teams). In addition, while at Sloan, Anand led a project with IDG Ventures India to analyze the Indian wireless value added services market.

Prior to Sloan, Anand spent several years in key engineering and project management positions at Intel Corporation. While at Intel he focused on semiconductor design and design automation for Intel's cutting-edge microprocessor products. He also worked for Intel Capital, where he helped formulate the strategy for investments in next generation high performance computing ecosystem.

• Oscar Jazdowski, Senior Vice President, Silicon Valley Bank

Oscar Jazdowski has spent over 25 years financing technology companies at all stages of development, from young venture-backed startups to large multinational companies. Jazdowski joined Silicon Valley Bank in 2002 as a senior relationship manager focused on the Boston software industry. Silicon Valley Bank is the pre-eminent bank providing innovative banking and financial products and services to emerging growth and middle-market technology companies, focusing primarily on venture-backed technology and life science companies and the venture capital community. Having started his career with Bank of Boston in the U.K., Jazdowski was transferred to Head Office in 1983 to join the High Technology Lending Group. Over the next 13 years he held various positions and was involved in financing young emerging, middle market and large corporate, public-traded technology companies.

Between 1989 and 1993, Jazdowski ran Bank of Boston’s Silicon Valley office in Palo Alto, Calif., where he oversaw the development of numerous relationships with prominent Silicon Valley technology companies. In 1996, Jazdowski started the East Coast Technology Group of Imperial Bank (now Comerica) in providing debt financing and other financial services to young, emerging, venturebacked companies. In 2000, Jazdowski opened and spent two years running the East Coast office for Sand Hill Capital in Boston, focused on providing short term bridge financing to venturebacked technology companies.

• Ajit Kambil, Global Research Director: CFO Program, Deloitte

Ajit Kambil is the Global Director of Deloitte Research where he leads global research initiatives enabling the creation and delivery of new management ideas, insights, and innovations to clients. In this role, he creates and nurtures new ways of looking at and solving problems. Ajit is also a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Babson College. Prior to joining Deloitte, Ajit was a senior research fellow at Accenture's Institute for Strategic Change where he led diverse research initiatives in electronic commerce, innovation, supply chains and marketing. As faculty at New York University's Stern School of Business, he introduced electronic commerce into the MBA and executive programs, and led the National Science Foundation sponsored project that pioneered the dissemination of US corporate disclosures on the Internet in 1993. He has also served as an adviser to startups and venture capital.

Ajit is a public speaker on his varied research topics such as: globalization of R&D; venture investing in China; the opportunities and challenges created by aging populations; customer centric innovation; dynamic pricing, etc. He is widely published in leading business journals and magazines such as the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Across the Board, Journal of Business Strategy and Management Science. As a leading expert on the design of electronic markets and auctions, Harvard Business School Press published his book (co-authored with Dr. Eric van Heck) - Making Markets: How to Profit from Online Auctions and Exchanges, in June 2002. He is also published in technology journals such as Communications of the ACM, IEEE Computer and the Journal of the American Society for Information Sciences. His technical research focused on combining human and machine intelligence to improve information retrieval and knowledge management in organizations.

Ajit earned a PhD in Management Information Technologies, Master of Science degrees in Technology and Policy, and Management Science and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.


• Matthew Kleiman, Associate, Wilmer Hale

Matthew Kleiman is an associate in the WilmerHale Venture Group, and a member of the Technology Transactions and Licensing Practice Group. He joined the firm in 2006
Mr. Kleiman's practice focuses on general corporate law, with an emphasis on legal issues facing early stage life science and technology companies, and representing emerging and established clients in intellectual property licensing and other technology-related transactions.
While in law school, Mr. Kleiman worked for Duke University's Office of Licensing and Ventures and helped launch a biotechnology start-up company in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. He also participated in the Duke Community Enterprise Clinic, where he provided corporate legal services to local non-profit organizations and low income entrepreneurs.


• Matt Lauzon, Founder & CEO, Paragon Lake

Matt Lauzon founded Paragon Lake in 2006 as a student at Babson College. Lauzon enrolled at Babson because of its reputation as the number one school in the world for entrepreneurship education and leveraged all the college had to offer while exploring various business opportunities. Paragon Lake was born when Lauzon and a fellow student uncovered a niche in the jewelry industry at the intersection of e-commerce and mass customization. Serving as co-founder and CEO, Lauzon took Paragon Lake from an idea incubating in a Babson dormitory to become an institutionally funded company in just two years.

Lauzon created a leadership team that includes industry veterans from both the software and jewelry spaces and built a national network of independent jewelers that use Paragon Lake’s proprietary platform to drive made-to-order sales in their stores. In addition to building the team and driving growth, Lauzon led the company through two rounds of institutional funding totaling over $6M in financing from Highland Capital Partners and Canaan Partners.

Lauzon earned a B.S. in Business Management from Babson College where he was an Arthur M. Blank Scholar. At Babson, he was named one of “America’s Top Entrepreneurs Under the Age of 25” by BusinessWeek, was the winner of the John H. Muller Jr. Business Plan Competition, and was awarded the Shelby Cullom Davis prize for social entrepreneurship.