Judges Panel
Frank FosterBio: Frank Foster is a Managing Director of DFJ Frontier. He also manages the Gideon Hixon Fund, the venture capital investment vehicle for the Hixon Family. Prior to that, he was a General Partner of Allen & Buckeridge PTY LTD, a leading Australian venture capital firm with approximately A$250 million under management. He received his MBA from The Harvard Business School and a BA cum laude from Harvard University.
Jonathan YorkBio: Jonathan York is an entrepreneur and educator who has dedicated his career to helping companies succeed and students learn the issues of entrepreneurship. He recently joined the faculty of the Orfalea College of Business at Cal Poly after a career in business as the first professor dedicated to entrepreneurship. At Cal Poly, he is focused on helping students understand and experience the challenges of management and decision-making in growth companies. Since joining Cal Poly, he has been instrumental in starting the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship – a university-wide effort dedicated to transforming motivated students into resourceful, entrepreneurial and innovative leaders through classroom and hands-on experiences. Dr. York also serves as the advisor to Cal Poly Entrepreneurs, a student-run entrepreneurial organization that engages students campus-wide in entrepreneurial activity and learning.
Dillon McDonaldBio: Dillon is an accomplished entrepreneur, operator and startup veteran. He was the first non-founder employee at OpenAuto in 1999. At Jumpstart Automotive Media, Dillon was employee number two and held several senior executive roles including COO and ultimately CEO as the company grew to over one hundred employees and more than $50 million in revenue. After Jumpstart, Dillon joined Trooval to help the startup through its early stages of development. Dillon loves to work with young companies and is a founder of the Entrepreneurship Center at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
Kyle WiensBio: Kyle Wiens is the co-founder and CEO of iFixit, the largest online repair community and Apple parts retailer. iFixit is dedicated to helping people everywhere keep their hardware running longer. In 2011, he started Dozuki, a software company that is revolutionizing online technical documentation. He co-authored the first free repair manuals for Apple hardware while studying Computer Science at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Kyle is a board member of Softec and the IEEE CE Society. He has spoken widely on cloud computing, technical writing, repair, making service documentation accessible to a global audience, and sustainable consumer electronics device design. In his spare time, Kyle kayaks and tinkers with robots.
