Advisors

Joshua D. Auerbach

Josh Auerbach advises young companies on strategy, corporate finance, and business development. He has worked with Betaworks, an internet business-creation platform; OMGPOP, an online multiplayer gaming site; and Quantcast, a web-measurement firm. He advised the search engine Summize on its sale to Twitter in 2008.

Josh was most recently Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development for Quantcast, where he led partnership and data-licensing negotiations, developed the company's pricing model, and led privacy and data-use initiatives.

Before Quantcast, Josh was Vice President and Group Head for Strategic Planning at Time Warner. In that role, he and his team supported senior management in developing Time Warner's corporate strategy, including identifying and acting on domestic and international growth opportunities for the company.

Laura Fitton

Laura "@Pistachio" Fitton is leading the charge of sussing out intelligent and productive business uses of emergent technologies like Twitter, where she is read by thousands of community members. The first to publish a white paper on "Enterprise Microsharing" (popularly called "Internal Twitter") she also writes for an runs the TouchBase blog and is an early beta tester of Seesmic and Qik. She re-launched Pistachio Consulting in September 2008 to connect businesses to new ideas and innovations using all the tools of microsharing. Pistachio comprises the TouchBase blog (covering business use of microsharing), the TouchBase Link Blog (stream of Twitter and microsharing articles for businesspeople, wherever they are published), serves clients like Johnson & Johnson, Ford Motor Corporation, PeopleBrowsr, The Sister Project, Transplant-1 and CommuNteligence, and is writing Twitter for Dummies for Wiley publishing, due July 2009.

Laura's innovative use of social media has gotten the attention of the top minds in technology, as profiled by Naked Conversations author Shel Israel for his Global Survey. Her work is featured in five books published in 2008 including Seth Godin's Tribes, Liz Lynch's Smart Networking, Paul Gillin's Secrets of Social Media Marketing, and Julio Ojeda's Twitter Means Business. Laura has also been widely quoted in the press including The New York Times Magazine, BusinessWeek, The New York Times, The LA Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, NPR, NECN, Newsweek.com, Inc.com, CIO Magazine, CNET, ZDNet, ComputerWorld and many other magazines, publications, web shows and blogs. She speaks on business use of microsharing for private clients and at technology conferences. Guest lectures on social media and Twitter for Business include Harvard Business School, Bentley College, Clemson and Emerson.

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John Loftus

As past Executive Vice President and Managing Director of the Technology Group at Safeguard Scientifics, John evaluated new opportunities and provided strategy leadership to Safeguard and its partner companies. With more than 20 years of experience in executive management, entrepreneurship and technology leadership, John has founded, raised capital for and served in senior management positions with companies representing all stages of growth.

Prior to joining Safeguard in 2001, John co-founded Gestalt LLC, which focuses on mission critical software solutions for the U.S. Department of Defense as well as energy customers. He also served as Senior Vice President with Breakaway Solutions, where he managed all strategy and implementation consulting engagements and directed an organization of nearly 1,000 consultants in the U.S. and Europe. In addition, John was part of the senior management team that took Breakaway Solutions public in October 1999. Prior to Breakaway Solutions, John was the Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of WPL Laboratories, which earned recognition as an Inc. 500 company. He also held senior executive positions at PECO Energy and spent the first ten years of his career in technology and as a program management executive with General Electric. He has developed and taught graduate level courses at La Salle University and lectured at the University of Pennsylvania.

John has served on the Boards of Avista Advantage, Mantas, Inc., Pacific Title & Art Studio, Inc., ProModel Corporation and WPL Laboratories, and was the past Chairman of the Computing Advisory Board of La Salle University. He currently serves on the boards for Safeguard's partner companies Acsis, Alliance Consulting, Beyond.com, Nextone and Portico Systems as well as Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Gestalt, LLC and the Mid-Atlantic Capital Alliance.


Jerry Michalski: As a guide to the relationship economy, Jerry Michalski (ma-call-ski) helps companies develop strategies that build authentic, productive relationships with their customers as well as among their employees. Jerry's consulting clients include the Institute for the Future (IFTF), Best Buy and Havas Media. His perspective was formed over 12 years as a technology industry analyst, first for New Science Associates (a company like Gartner) and later writing Esther Dyson's monthly newsletter, Release 1.0. Jerry earned an MBA from the Wharton School and a BA in economics from UC Irvine. He was raised in Peru and Argentina and speaks fluent Spanish and German — and pretty passable French.