Successful Inventing: Early-stage funding

Gwen is an active angel investor, executive leader, educator, research advocate, advisor and board member. She combines an extensive record of accomplishment of innovation with her ability to shape and scale business ventures. 

She is the co-founder of the Silicon Valley chapter of Golden Seeds, the female-leader-focused angel investment organization with over 350 investor members. She is also Board Chair of the Angel Resource Institute and has hands-on involvement in the creation of ARI’s yearly HALO Report on angel investment trends, as well as creation and delivery of training programs for both entrepreneurs and angel investors worldwide. She is also a global advisor to the Astia Angel community.

Her career has a constant theme of innovation — from research at Stanford Research Institute, to introducing new products and services in corporate structures, with new product definition and development, sales and revenue growth assignments, then full profit and loss responsibility at Bell Canada, Bell Northern Research, Northern Telecom, and Pacific Bell / SBC / AT&T.

In the latter position, Cisco named her “Fastest Growing Reseller” of the year. Shortly thereafter, Gwen was recruited as CEO of Middlewire, a venture capital backed company, during the dot-com boom (and bust). 

Gwen is a constant supporter of entrepreneurs in their efforts to define new products, deliver them to market, find beachhead customers, and deliver returns to their investors. Blending her experience as an entrepreneur and venture-backed CEO with her knowledge of investing, she offers unique perspectives of the challenges and opportunities facing entrepreneurs, and how to tackle them.

Gwen currently manages a portfolio of over 25 angel investments, and serves on multiple boards. She also selectively consults on innovation with the F500, ecosystem leaders, and emerging growth companies, seeking new ways to structure investments and encourage growth.  

Gwen often champions revenue-based financing structures, enabling greater certainty of exit for investors and greater equity for qualifying companies; she is passionate about advancing positive social impact, gender parity, and greater transparency in governance.

Louis Foreman is founder and Chief Executive of Enventys, an integrated product design and engineering firm. Louis graduated from The University of Illinois with a degree in Economics. His interest in starting businesses and developing innovative products began while a sophomore with his first company, founded in his fraternity room. Over the past 34 years Louis has created 10 successful start-ups and has been directly responsible for the creation of over 20 others. A prolific inventor, he is the inventor of 10 registered U.S. Patents, and his firm is responsible for the development and filing of hundreds more.

The recipient of numerous awards for entrepreneurial achievement, his passion for small business extends beyond his own companies. Louis is an Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Entrepreneurship Program at Wake Forest University. Louis is an adjunct professor and the Entrepreneur in Residence at The McColl School of Business, and was the 2013 Distinguished Visiting Professor at Johnson & Wales University, where he continues to teach. He also teaches IP for Entrepreneurs at Central Michigan. He is a frequent lecturer and radio / TV guest on the topics of small business creation and innovation, and is frequently invited by universities and national trade associations to be a featured speaker on the topic of entrepreneurship and innovation.

In addition to being an inventor, Louis is also committed to inspiring others to be innovative. Louis was the creator of the Emmy® Award winning PBS TV show "Everyday Edisons," and served as the executive producer and lead judge. The show won two Emmys in four seasons and appeared nationally on PBS. In 2007, Louis became the publisher of Inventors Digest, a 35-year-old publication devoted to the topic of American Innovation. In 2009, his first book, "The Independent Inventor’s Handbook," was published by Workman Publishing. In 2015, Louis was awarded the IP Champion Award by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In June of 2022, Louis was inducted into the IP Hall of Fame.

In 2008, Louis was appointed to serve for a three-year term on the nine-person Patent Public Advisory Committee (PPAC) of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. In 2011, he was appointed to serve an additional three-year term. 

Louis currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the James Dyson Foundation. He is a board member of the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO), The Federal Reserve Bank Industry Roundtable, Beyond Campus Innovations, Cryptyde, the Intellectual Property Owners Educational Foundation (IPOEF), and the advisory board of Park National Bank. In 2013, Louis was appointed by the SBA Administrator to serve on the National SBDC Advisory Board until the end of 2024.

Eric Rosenblum has had a career spanning the U.S. and China for over 25 years, and is currently a Managing Partner with Foothill Ventures, a $150M seed fund investing in early-stage technologies spanning China and the U.S.

Prior to Foothill Ventures, Eric was a senior product executive at both Google and Palantir, and was COO of Drawbridge (sold to LinkedIn) and CEO of SmartPay (sold to Ping’an Group). He has an AB from Harvard University and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Eric graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and received his MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management.

Arthur Lipper has been affiliated with the international financial community for all of his adult life. His Stock and Commodity Exchange memberships have included: NYSE, American, Midwest, Pacific Coast, Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, Bangkok, NY Comex and NY Futures Exchange. He has served as an advisor to Mid-America Commodity Exchange and Bourse de Beyrouth. He was the Founder and CEO of Arthur Lipper Corporation and Co-founder and Chairman of New York & Foreign Securities Corporation. He is Chairman and CEO of British Far East Holdings Ltd.

Forward Contract Exchange Company Ltd. was a subsidiary of Arthur Lipper Corporation, conceived and created stock index futures, and refined petroleum product futures in Amsterdam in the 1972-74 period. 

Larry Udell is best known as founder and Chairman of the California Invention Center created in 1995 at California State University with federal funds. He has taught courses, new ventures, and entrepreneurship for over 40 years at universities throughout the United States and in foreign countries for World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). A member of the Licensing Executives Society since 1982, he founded the Silicon Valley Chapter in 2000, which today is the number one chapter in Licensing Executives Society International (LESI) countries.