Investing in Early-Stage Technology companies out of PENN

MentorTech Ventures

Advisory Board

Dr. William F. Hamilton - Chairman

Director of The Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology and Landau Professor of Management and Technology in the Wharton School and the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Co-founder of the Department of Operations and Information Management at Wharton. Active in the creation of Penn’s Weiss Technology House, Wharton's Program in Emerging Technologies and the Executive Masters Program in Technology Management in the Engineering School. Specializes in  technological innovation and entrepreneurship, strategic planning, economic analysis, and health economics. Director of a number of public and private companies, including Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, Neose Technologies (NASDAQ NEOS), Neuronyx, NovaDel Pharma,  and Yaupon Therapeutics, formerly a director of Centocor, prior to it being acquired by Johnson & Johnson for $4.9 billion. Ph.D. from the London School of Economics,B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering and an M.B.A. degree in Industrial Management from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Dr. David J. Reibstein – Fund Advisor and Company Mentor

William S. Woodside Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Former Vice Dean and Director of the Graduate Division. Specializes in Internet marketing, competitive marketing strategy, market segmentation, marketing models and understanding brand choice behavior. Co-founded Shopzilla (previously Bizrate), a leading internet shopping portal based in Santa Monica, Ca with former students,  acquired in June of 2005 for $525 million by Scripps. Board of Shopzilla, And1, the basketball apparel company, XMPie, a digital printing software company, and several other companies.  Ph.D. in Industrial Administration at Purdue University,  BA in Statistics and Political Science and BS in Business Administration at the University of Kansas. 

Mark S. Menell,  Fund Advisor

Founding Partner at Rustic Canyon Ventures which has more than $700 million under management. including $180 million in the Rustic Canyon SBIC fund that invests in early and growth stage technology companies. Primary areas of investment have been in information technologies with a focus on communications, consumer oriented technologies, and media/technology convergence..Formerly co-head of Morgan Stanley’s Technology Merger & Acquisitions Group, advised on more than 50 completed transactions valued in excess of $150 billion. BA in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and BS in finance magna cum laude and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business.

Dr. Martin Lautman,  Fund Advisor

Dr. Martin Lautman is the former Chairman and CEO of GfK Custom Research North America, the fourth largest marketing consulting and research company in the world. Prior to GfK, Dr. Lautman was the Senior Managing Director of ARBOR, Media, Pennsylvania, where during a 20+ year span he directed over 500 research and strategy projects for numerous multi-national clients. While directing ARBOR, Dr. Lautman also served as the President of Numex Corporation, a public company which marketed health care products through infomercials and over QVC.  He also owned and operated a women’s apparel retail chain.  Currently, he is the President of Marketing Channels, Inc, a company which specializes in highly sophisticated analytic marketing consulting and research services and also supports companies with marketing professionals on an outsourced project basis. Dr. Lautman also helped found and is currently a Director of Stonemor (NASDAQ: STON), one of the largest owners of cemeteries and funeral homes in the U.S.  He currently serves on several public and private boards, including A. Duie Pyle, The Faulkner Organization, Aggregate Knowledge, and the University of Pennsylvania Hillel.  Dr. Lautman received his Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Brooklyn College and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mathematical Psychology (Behavioral Economics) with concentrations in Statistics and Computer Science from The Pennsylvania State University.

David W. Anderson, Fund Advisor and Company Mentor 

CEO of Gentis, Inc., an orthopedic biomaterials company founded at PENN and currently co-located with the Fund.  Prior to that he was the CEO of Sterilox Technologies, Inc., a high technology disinfection company where he grew sales from less than $400,000 to almost $20 million and successfully obtained FDA approvals for three products and EPA approvals for several more.  Previously, Mr. Anderson was the CEO of Bionx Implants, a high technology developer and manufacturer of resorbable orthopedic devices.  During his tenure at Bionx, Mr. Anderson lead the efforts that resulted in FDA clearances for over 60 products and sales growth from zero to over $20 million.  Mr. Anderson also successfully raised $15 million in venture funding for Bionx and led its IPO in 1997.  B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Cornell. Mr. Anderson is a Director of PhotoMedex (NASDAQ: PHMD) and several early stage companies in the orthopedic and cardiology fields.

Investing in Early-Stage Technology companies out of PENN

MentorTech Ventures

Dr. Leonard M. Lodish – Fund Advisor and Company Director

Samuel R. Harrell Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Currently Vice Dean for Wharton West.  Co-founded and leads the Wharton Global Consulting Practicum that works with venture backed technology companies in Israel and India. Specializes in entrepreneurial marketing, strategic and tactical marketing resource planning, marketing decision support systems,  sales force, advertising, and promotion planning. Co-founded Management Decision Systems, Inc. which merged with Information Resources, Inc. to become a premier international decision support and marketing data supplier.  Co-founder of Shadow Broadcast Services that was sold to Westwood One, Inc. Director of public companies: Information Resources, Inc., Franklin Electronic Publishers, Inc., and J&J Snack Foods, Inc. Ph.D. in Marketing and Operations Research from M.I.T. and an A.B. (Mathematics) from Kenyon College.