ECE 507 Seminar (Spring 2015)
2.00–3.15pm Friday, April 24th, Room EB-103
Entrepreneurial Activities…..Team building
…..and Venture Capital.
James Rudolph,
Former Stanford Professor/Visiting Scholar, Portland
 Current start-up ventures
 How to put a team together for funding
 How to seek out Angels and VCs that do pre-seed and seed level investing
Biography
Professional Career
Employed at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Communications Research. Took a two year Leave of Absence to
serve in the Army as an Officer working with Werner Von Braun in Huntsville, Alabama on guided missile
strategies. Returned to Bell Labs and then moved to California and HP Labs as Department Head of Computer
Architecture. I ran for public Office and was elected a Trustee of the Community College in San Mateo. Next
became President of Gnostic Systems a Start-up company. Then recruited to become a Technology Partner at
Booz Allen and Hamilton working world-wide. Recruited to become a Venture Capitalist at OSCCO Ventures,
a small early stage investor in Silicon Valley. Invested in 12 companies, took one public and sold off several
others. Finally, became an Expert Witness for 14 Law firms and 16 major assignments. This was heavily
targeted to Patent analysis. I also made volunteer assignments in Bahrain and Jamaica. The Emir of Bahrain
asked me to find new revenue sources for Bahrain since the Country was running out of oil deposits.
Academic Career
Graduated from Illinois and then received my Masters in Engineering from NYU/Bell Labs. Went to Syracuse
as an Instructor for my PHD in Engineering (heavily Digital). Moved to California and became an adjunct
Professor in Digital Engineering at Stanford on and off for 20 years. Also was a Visiting Scholar in Computer
Science at Stanford. Took a one-year leave to become a Visiting Professor at the University of Sao Paulo in
Brazil. Here I taught the Graduate students how to build the first Brazilian Mini Computer that went into
production. Back in California, I took over as Dean of the Business School at Golden Gate University in a turnaround situation. Finally, I focused on Medical Research at Stanford and joined the Dean of the Medical
Schools SPARK program. I joined other Professors and VC’s and Big Pharma professionals in evaluating all
the basic research going on at the Medical School. We gave grant awards to some of the best for one or two
years. I then moved to Portland in 2011.
All welcome