LiveOps Advisors
| Bill Gurley | Jeffrey D. Jordan |
| Tien Tzuo | Jim Watson |
Bill Gurley
Bill joined Benchmark Capital in 1999 after spending two years as a partner with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Before entering the venture capital business, Bill spent four years on Wall Street as a top-ranked research analyst, including three years at CS First Boston focusing on personal computer hardware and software. His research coverage included such companies as Dell, Compaq, and Microsoft, and he was the lead analyst on the Amazon IPO. In both 1995 and 1996, Bill was a member of the Institutional Investor All-American Research Team. Prior to his investment career, Bill was a design engineer at Compaq Computer, where he worked on products such as the 486/50 and Compaq's first multi-processor server. Before Compaq, he served in the technical marketing group of Advanced Micro Devices' embedded processor division.
For the past twelve years, Bill has authored the Above the Crowd newsletter, which focuses on the evolution and economics of high technology businesses. Bill holds a MBA from the University of Texas, 1993; and a BS in computer science from the University of Florida.
Jeffrey D. Jordan
Jeff is the CEO of OpenTable and brings over 25 years of operating, strategy and marketing experience as an advisor to LiveOps. He comes from eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY), where he was the president of PayPal and before that general manager of eBay North America. As president of PayPal, the Web-based payment system owned by eBay, Jeff was responsible for establishing the company as the global standard for online payments. Under his leadership, PayPal expanded both beyond the eBay.com marketplace and internationally, resulting in a business that had 133 million user accounts and $38 billion in payment volume in 2006.
Prior to PayPal, Jeff served as senior vice president and general manager for eBay North America for five years. In that role, he helped build eBay into the Internet’s leading commerce brand and led the successful acquisitions of PayPal and Half.com. From September 1998 to September 1999, Jeff served as chief financial officer for Hollywood Entertainment Corporation, a video rental company, and president of its subsidiary, Reel.com. Previously, Jeff served in various capacities at The Walt Disney Corporation for eight years, most recently as senior vice president and chief financial officer of The Disney Store Worldwide. Before that, he worked for The Boston Consulting Group.
Jeff holds an M.B.A. degree from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.A. from Amherst College. He put himself through school working as a chef at Joe Theismann’s Restaurant in Northern Virginia and at Restaurant LaTerrasse and The White Dog Café in Philadelphia. He also serves on the Board of Directors of OpenTable.
Tien Tzuo
Tien Tzuo is the Founder and CEO of Zuora, a company with a sharp focus on making it easy for any company to build, manage, and grow a subscription business. Widely recognized as one of the thought leaders in the software-as-a-service industry, Tzuo recognized a shift to a new business model where both consumers and businesses favored a subscription model verses a one time transaction, and that it was clear that this shift was going to drastically change the way companies do business. He founded Zuora to enable these companies to succeed in this new economy. Under his leadership, Zuora has become one of the fastest growing SaaS companies, carries an extensive list of prestigious industry awards, and became cash-flow positive at a record rate.
Before Zuora, Tzuo was one of the “original forces” at salesforce.com, joining as employee number 11. In his 9 years at salesforce.com, Tzuo built salesforce.com’s original billing system and held a variety of executive roles in technology, marketing, and strategy organizations, including building out the product management & marketing organization, serving as Chief Marketing Officer for two years, and most recently as Chief Strategy Officer. Prior to salesforce.com, Tzuo was at CrossWorlds Software, where he launched CrossWorlds' Telecommunications business unit focused on integration with billing systems such as Portal, Kenan, Amdocs, and MetaSolv. Earlier, at Oracle Corporation he managed several of Oracle's largest Telecommunications accounts, including MCI, NYNEX, Bell Atlantic (now Verizon), and AT&T.
Tzuo holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University and a master’s in business administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Jim Watson
Jim is a General Partner at CMEA Ventures and is on the Board of Directors of Apriso, iSuppli Inc., Key Research and Teros. Prior to joining CMEA, Mr. Watson was a consultant to several professional services firms and venture capital partnerships in the areas of strategic planning and partnering, board development, and supply chain management. Mr. Watson was also one of the Founders of Monterey Bay Partners, a venture management firm specializing in high technology start-ups. He founded Skyway Systems, a high technology logistics company where he served as president and leader behind the supply chain strategy that twice landed Skyway on the Inc. Magazine list of fastest-growing U.S. companies in the 1980s. In 1993, Inc. Magazine named him as one of the Entrepreneurs of the Year. Prior to Skyway, Mr. Watson was with IBM's large computer systems division where he worked with several large companies, such as United Airlines, in designing and marketing computer systems for all phases of business.
A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, he served five years as a Navy pilot from 1969 to 1974.
