Robert M. Karr – CEO & Founder

Bob is the CEO/Founder of LinkSV, a website which connects the dots of the people, capital and companies of the Silicon Valley, and is positioned at the intersection of business intelligence and social networking. He has been an active angel investor, an advisor to emerging Internet companies, and was a co-founder of the Angels Breakfast Club. Bob retired from a 30-year career in the corporate liability insurance business where he spent 15 years as a Partner of Dinner Levison Company and another 15 years as SVP of the Sedgwick Group, where he managed Business Development & Client Services focused exclusively on emerging & pre-IPO companies in the Silicon Valley. Many of Bob’s emerging clients have turned into successful IPO’s. A graduate of University of the Pacific, he and his wife, Jonlyn, reside in Saratoga, California. Their sons David and Steven are co-founders of Guayaki Sustainable Rainforest Products, a socially and environmentally conscious beverage company producing and selling Guayaki Yerba Mate; a healthy and energizing drink. (http://www.guayaki.com/).

Dawn DeBruyn Novarina – COO & Cofounder

A three-time entrepreneur with twenty plus years of marketing, sales and business development, Dawn currently leads day-to-day operations, including marketing and development, for LinkSV and works with Silicon Valley companies as a principal at Traffic, Revenue & Results. She started her career selling software to Fortune 5000 firms and OEMs as chief rainmaker in her first company and went on to build a nationwide network of VARs and developers that doubled annual sales 3 years in a row. In 2003, she founded Traffic, Revenue & Results to focus on strategic and digital marketing. Today, Dawn helps companies increase traffic and sales by developing the best organic growth strategies to drive customer acquisition and increased sales. Dawn earned a BA in Economics at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She and her family now live on the San Mateo Coast.

Mario Chaves – Advisory Board

With over 25 years of software development and engineering management experience, Mario is currently the CEO of Avantica Technologies and led LinkSV’s original development efforts in 2005. Previously, Mario was Chief Technology Officer at Babcock & Brown, a leading investment banking firm, where he led a worldwide team and was responsible for all technology strategies and implementations. Prior to Babcock & Brown, Mario was the Director of Product Development for Intuit, where he led the development of new products for the Quicken product line and managed the development of Intuit’s International Products. Prior to Intuit, at Software Publishing Corporation, Mario created Harvard Graphics, which redefined the presentation graphics software category and was largely responsible for the company’s growth from $20M to over $100M in revenues. Mario earned an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Davis.