Jon Burgstone

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Jon Burgstone

Jon Burgstone (born 1972) is an American business executive, educator and investor. He was born and raised in suburban Chicago, Illinois and graduated from Waubonsie Valley High School. Skilled in math and science, he majored in engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before attending the University of Michigan where he received a masters degree in engineering. As a student he conducted significant research at the Engineering Psychology Research Laboratory. He also received an MBA from Harvard Business School, while concurrently completing coursework at MIT. He was co-founder and CEO of SupplierMarket.com, which created software to transform strategic sourcing for global corporations. The company was acquired for $1.1B in 2000. Burgstone is the founding Faculty Chair of the Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology at the University of California, Berkeley. He currently works as Managing Director of Symbol Capital LLC, a private investment partnership.

1 SupplierMarket
2 Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology
3 Symbol Capital, LLC
4 Personal
5 External links

[edit] SupplierMarket

After completing consulting projects for clients in semiconductors, online financial services and telecom, Burgstone decided to launch a software company. In a studio apartment on the campus of Harvard Business School, Burgstone and co-founder Asif Satchu formed the idea for SupplierMarket.com. Burgstone served as CEO of the company and led the company's executive team. SupplierMarket developed innovative software that could help manufacturing companies streamline the sourcing of $100B’s in products and materials. The software enabled customers to more easily identify, qualify, select and negotiate with prospective vendors.

Investors took notice of the concept. Sequoia Capital and Battery Ventures invested $8MM of venture capital. Soon additional firms invested another $40MM[1]; the group included: Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Fenway Partners, Onex Corporation, Fleet Equity Partners and Madison Dearborn Partners. SupplierMarket grew quickly, adding 14,000 companies as buyers and suppliers. Customers realized costs savings ranging from 3% to 65% on purchases of many different products.

On March 2, 2000, Suppliermarket.com filed an S1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and on June 28, 2000 the company announced an acquisition agreement with Ariba. The transaction was completed, as of September 5, 2000 the 6.3MM shares [2] paid for SupplierMarket were worth approximately $1.1 billion. After the acquisition, the SupplierMarket product was renamed Ariba Sourcing[3].

Burgstone and Satchu teamed to make other investments through private partnerships.

[edit] Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology

Berkeley Campus

Burgstone is the founding Faculty Chair of the Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology at UC Berkeley. During an interview Burgstone explained, “We teach the entrepreneurial process and give students a set of tools to translate their technical and scientific skills into commercially viable ideas." [4]

UC Berkeley recruited Burgstone to teach a class in Leadership & Organizational Behviour to engineers. Students approached him about learning entrepreneurship, and Burgstone discovered a need for an entrepreneurship program focused on the requirements of engineers and scientists, thus forming the Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology.

Founding board members of the CET include Burgstone, Michael Marks of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co, Jim Davidson of Silverlake Partners, Allen Morgan of Mayfield, Tom Byers of Stanford University, Rich Newton of UC Berkeley and Stacey Lawson of UC Berkeley.[5] Burgstone was recently appointed Board Chairman.

Upon forming the CET, students oversubscribed classes by a four to one ratio. Looking to expand, Burgstone recruited Ikhlaq Sidhu as Executive Director to lead and grow the CET. Sidhu had previously built a major entrepreneurship program at the University of Illinois. Through 2006 more than 2,000 students had completed CET classes in entrepreneurship, marketing and finance. The CET features a guest lecture series, workshops, network opportunities and a certificate of mastery. Another notable CET program is the annual Technology Breakthrough Competition. This contest seeks to indentify the most commericially promising new technologies under development in UC Berkeley laboratories[6]. Several start-up companies have been successfully founded by CET alumni.

[edit] Symbol Capital, LLC

Currently Burgstone works as Managing Director of Symbol Capital, LLC a private investment partnership serving a select group of investors. Due to SEC rules, little information is made publicly available about the firm.

[edit] Personal

Burgstone has been active with board work, serving as a member of the Board of Visitors at the University of Illinois College of Engineering. He also serves on the board of the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School and as a trustee of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Burgstone advises and mentors numerous start-up companies and investment funds. He was awarded a 2006 Distinguished Alumni Award by the University of Illinois Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering[7]. Burgstone has been an active donor to schools and universities. These funds support high school science programs, scholarships and international education efforts.