Jeff Wallace
Jeff Wallace is a long-time Bay Area resident who works with global startup ecosystems, including governments, corporations & startup accelerators/entrepreneurs, to help catalyze startup environments & create a bridge to Silicon Valley. He is an Adjunct Instructor at UC Berkeley and is co-founder of Silicon Valley in Your Pocket, a global virtual startup accelerator, serving 1000s of companies across 40+ countries. He is co-founder & co-owner of Batchery, an incubator for seed stage startups. He is an active angel investor with equity positions in 250+ companies and an active advisor & investor at Berkeley SkyDeck. He is an Executive Board Member for the Rutgers Business School Road to Silicon Valley Program (RSVP). Previously, he worked at Cognizant & Brillio as founder & Global Head for Mobility & UX practices. He is a frequent keynote speaker at global tech & startup events. He holds a BA in Economics/Finance from Rutgers College & an MBA from UC Berkeley.
Three Fun Facts about Jeff:
1) Jeff worked with the two Steves who co-founded Apple – Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
2) Jeff has traveled to over 50 countries
3) Jeff has lived about 1/2 his life on the East coast & 1/2 on the West coast of the U.S.
4) Jeff now lives half time in New Zealand and half time in Silicon Valley
Tell us about your life before the venture/ leading up to your venture?
After starting my career on Wall Street in New York, I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area for my studies (MBA) at UC Berkeley. Upon graduating, I worked for a management consulting company serving the C-suites of many Fortune 500 companies. But, I realized that I wanted to put myself to the test of creating my own company. From the mid-1990s, I was a serial entrepreneur until 2011 when I was hired by Cognizant to lead the Enterprise Mobility practice. I did that for about two years before deciding that my passion was with the startup ecosystem and I left to start my first of two startup accelerators. To date, we have served thousands of startup founders across 40+ countries. It has been an amazing and inspired journey!
Tell us something about your organization. What is it about and how is it helpful for people?
We work with startup founders to help them enhance their investor readiness. We use a combination of proprietary educational curriculum, group & one-on-one coaching/mentoring, dozens of tools including a robust investor readiness assessment that quantifies where the startups are relative to what investors are expecting to see. This helps founders tremendously as they seek to raise capital to move their innovations forward.
What has been the response of the consumers towards your venture?
With thousands of founders around the world having been served by our programs, we have a 4.9 out of 5.0 ratings. We are blessed to have an incredible team of instructors and coaches/mentors to help us serve governments, universities, chambers of commerce, NGOs, accelerators, and more across the entire globe.
How has your life changed because of your venture?
I am humbled by the creative founders and the innovative solutions they come up with to address challenges faced by many across countless industries. It gives me great pride to be able to serve them by helping guide their journeys along with my amazing team.
What are you working on right now?
We are launching a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) acceleration program to help founders understand the implications and opportunities afforded their businesses by AI. It is very timely and we have some wonderful, knowledgeable instructors/partners working with founders to identify efficiencies and new revenue streams from data monetization, AI models, and more.
Give a motivational message for the audience/women who are reading this.
Pursue your passion, believe in yourself, don’t listen to the naysayers. Prove it to yourself if you are right before blindly believing those that negate your ideas, visions or creativity!
Get in touch:
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jeffwallace913
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/jwallace913
- https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleyinyourpocket/
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/silicon-valley-in-your-pocket/
- https://x.com/svinyourpocket
- https://www.youtube.com/@siliconvalleyinyourpocket
- https://www.facebook.com/SVIYP
- https://www.instagram.com/batchery/
- https://x.com/thebatchery
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-batchery/