Jon Erlandson specializes in consulting to new ventures in a variety of fields and brings extensive business development expertise and contacts. His thirty years of consulting to and running start-up and turnaround businesses gives him a firm understanding what it takes to be successful. He also has extensive experience with angel groups such as Bay Angles and Keiretsu Forum in screening start-up opportunities.
Mr. Erlandson’s consulting experience includes Net Strategies Group, The Expedite Network, Summit Business Group, Blackstone Technology Partners and the Small Business Development Center. He also has seven years of commercial real estate transactional experience in the Bay Area. Mr. Erlandson received his B.S. degree in Business Management from San Jose State University.
Dr. Yasser Al Kazzaz
Yasser has over 20 years of industry leadership experience in the enterprise software solutions market , with proven expertise in technology transfer, having successfully made the transformation from scientist to entrepreneur, using his doctoral thesis in simulation and mathematical optimization, to co-found Ortems Inc., Europe's first Planning and Scheduling solution provider. With over 300 customers and generating $10 million annual revenue, Ortems was acquired by Finmatica, Inc. in April 2002. Yasser is also well known as a pioneer in this industry working with stellar companies like i2 Technologies, Dallas, TX, where he built the company's first integration platform and its first business intelligence offering, generating over $100 million revenue from 300 customers. During his 20-year career, Yasser has led several manufacturing and R&D projects in the pharmaceutical industry, with leaders like Pfizer, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Aventis etc. Yasser has a PhD from the reputed INPG (National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble), Grenoble, France. Dr Kazzaz is currently working for Hatch which is the “Canadian Bechtel”.