Dan Frawley – CEO, Iconoculture

Dan joined Iconoculture in December 2002 as CEO. Formerly CEO of Techies.com from 1998 to 2001, he raised over $100M in venture capital and grew the company from less than $1M in sales to over $30M in two years. Techies.com filed an S-1 to become a public company but withdrew in Spring 2000 because of poor market conditions. From August 1996 to July 1998, Dan was a senior vice president of Channel Strategies at Gartner Group, where he was responsible for helping to re-architect the distribution strategy for Gartner. In 1989, Dan was a founder and president of J3 Learning Corp., a technology-based, computer-training developer/marketer based in Minneapolis. He remained there until 1996, when the corporation was sold to the Gartner Group. Dan also served for seven years as an aircraft carrier fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy, flying active missions throughout the Middle East and Africa. Dan is a graduate of the Harvard Business School and the U.S. Naval Academy.

P. Gayle Fuguitt – VP Consumer Insights, General Mills

As vice president for Consumer Insights at General Mills, Gayle oversees all of the global marketing research and data analyses to generate insights about consumers and translate them into business opportunities. She oversees a staff of 150 and recently created the Center for Learning and Experimentation to further build proprietary techniques. She holds leadership positions in several professional associations, including the Iconoculture board, Dean’s Advisory Board at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the board of the Carlson School Institute for Research in Marketing. She chaired the 2002 General Mills United Way Campaign, and has provided pro bono services to the Minnesota Orchestra, Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis YMCA. She has also served on the board of the Tubman Family Alliance, where she chaired the Communications Committee and created Very Vintage Sales, connecting antiques and vintage items to fundraising. She is currently on the Minneapolis Institute of Arts Antique Show Committee. Gayle holds an MBA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and two bachelor’s degrees from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Matt Miller – Managing Director, Walden Venture Capital

Matt has 20+ years of management experience, including 14 years at Silicon Valley software companies. He has over 8 years of experience as an officer of a public company or CEO of a private company. Matt joined Walden from Moai Technologies, a Walden portfolio company. As CEO of Moai, Matt helped to build revenues to over $14 million and focused the company on enterprise customers. Before Moai, Matt served as VP & General Manager at Remedy Corp., where he managed a division with over $175 million in revenue and 200 employees in Engineering, Marketing, and Business Development. He has also served as VP of Marketing at both Remedy and Gupta Corp. and Director of Marketing at Oracle Corp. and Versant Object Technology Corp. At Oracle, he was a part of the small Desktop division that developed and launched the first database server running on an Intel chip in 1989.

Gary P. Smaby – Principal, Quatris Fund

Gary is a principal at Quatris Fund, a venture capital fund that offers promising Minnesota-based companies start-up financing and strategic advice. Following a successful 10-year entrepreneurial career, Mr. Smaby joined the Minneapolis-based investment banking firm of Piper Jaffray in 1982, where he built an international reputation as a leading Wall Street analyst in the information technology sector, encompassing a broad spectrum from high-performance workstations and supercomputers to networking and decision support systems. After forming Smaby Group, Inc. in 1989, Gary set out to use his experience and contacts to keep clients abreast of the emerging trends that shape the technology landscape. Over the past decade, his retainer clients have included corporate giants like AT&T, Cray, HP, IBM, Intel, SGI, Sun and Unisys, as well as many high-profile start-ups. He also serves on the boards of many companies and institutions, including Algos Therapeutics. Gary is a 1971 Cum Laude graduate from St. Olaf College.