Coming Soon: 500 Startups HQ Talks on Mind Control, Blind Dates for Telepaths, DIY Holodeck

ZAP! KAZAM! POW! A super-secret society of powerful tech-heads is gathering their forces even as we speak, coming together with a shared mission of world domination – er, no, wait, we mean souped-up startup support. This week, we announce that some of tech’s most powerful brains are banding together as mentors and venture advisors for 500 Startups. Emerging triumphant from the darkness of their butlered bat caves, cryptically white-boarded cubicles and secret Sand Hill Road sanctuaries, this new, energy drink-fueled League of Leaders will be sharing what they’ve learned about fighting for truth, justice, and the entrepreneurial way.

Here’s the breaking news about these two teams of high-test techies….

The Masked Mentors:

Our mentors are a super-human group of pros, and we’re thrilled to have them in our midst when they’re not busy saving the world from moon-based lasers. They’ll step right from their cell phone booths and into the dazzling 500 Startups Universal World HQ to work closely with our startups by giving 1:1 advice, delivering talks, holding office hours, and generally lending our startups a helping hand as they learn to leap vast data centers with a single bound. A few of our mentors will even be regularly working from our space (you’ll easily recognize them by their capes and tights).

Our super-mentors are diabolically diverse, representing a wide range of skills, experience, and superpowers – startup founders, evil geniuses, platform company leads, human fireballs, UX designers, code warriors, marketing ninjas, mind readers, mad scientists, business development experts, caped crusaders, and more. Beyond world domination, they share a passion for sunsets, long walks on the beach, and helping startups succeed, thrive and scale to daring new heights.

While many of our 60 mentors are based here in the SF Bay Area, others hail from all over North America and around the globe, including lairs in Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Austin, Vancouver, London, Paris, Beijing, and Tokyo. We can’t tell you EXACTLY where they live or we’d have to kill you, but we’ll be adding even more super-mentors over the next few months, so stay tuned to the same bat time, same bat channel.

But wait, there’s more! In the coming weeks, our mentors will make special appearances on this blog and regale you with tales from their many adventures. But be warned: If you stare too long at the screen, you could be hypnotized into service as an embarrassingly named sidekick….. Bazinga!

Meet the Mentors…. we have received special permission to reveal their true identities

 

• Aaron Lee (Red Beacon)

 

• Adam Nash (LinkedIn)

 

• Amit Kumar (Vurve)

 

• Andre Charland (nitobi)

 

• Ben Lewis (Tapjoy)

 

• Benjamin Joffe (Plus Eight Star)

 

• Bhanu Sharma

 

• Bill Hudak (Ztail)

 

• Blake Commagere (Commagere Ventures)

 

• Bradley Heilbrun (YouTube)

 

• Brenden Mulligan (ArtistData / Sonicbids)

 

• Bret Terrill (Leveraged)

 

• Brian Witlin (ShopWell)

 

• Cathy Edwards (Chomp)

 

• Charles Hudson (CH3 Media Holdings LLC)

 

• Chris Messina (Google)

 

• Christina A. Brodbeck (TheIceBreak)

 

• Colette Ballou (Ballou PR)

 

• Craig Mod (craigmod.com)

 

• Cyril Ebersweiler (SOSventures)

 

• Dan Greenberg (Sharethrough)

 

• Dan Martell (Flowtown)

 

• Danielle Morrill (Twilio)

 

• Dave Schappell (TeachStreet)

 

• David Marcus (Zong)

 

• Edward Baker (Friend.ly)

 

• Eric Ries (Lean Startup)

 

• Fred Oliveira (Webreakstuff)

 

• Hiten Shah (KISSmetrics)

 

• Hunter Walk (YouTube)

 

• James Levine (Simply Hired, Inc.)

 

• Jason Putorti (Votizen)

 

• Jeff Lawson (Twilio)

 

• Jeffrey Kalmikoff (SimpleGeo)

 

• Jeremy Toeman (Stage Two)

 

• Joe Hyrkin (Trinity Ventures)

 

• John Zeratsky (YouTube)

 

• Joseph Smarr (Google)

 

• Josh Baer (Other Inbox)

 

• Josh Elman (Twitter)

 

• Karl Jacob (Coveroo)

 

• Katherine Barr (Mohr Davidow Ventures)

 

• Kenneth Lin (Credit Karma)

 

• Lane Becker

 

• Leonard Speiser (Society)

 

• Lukas Biewald (Crowdflower)

 

• Maneesh Arora (RateBrain)

 

• Mark Fletcher (Winged Pig Ventures)

 

• Mark Schulze (Quantcast)

 

• Matt Monahan (The Epic Media Group)

 

• Michal Kopec

 

• Patrick Vlaskovits

 

• Paul Singh (Results Junkies)

 

• Rashmi Sinha (SlideShare Inc)

 

• Rebecca Lynn (Morgenthaler Ventures)

 

• Rob Garcia (Lending Club)

 

• Robert Fan (Sharethrough)

 

• Roberto Lino (Cisco Systems, Inc)

 

• Roy Rodenstein (Going.com/AOL)

 

• Ryan Freitas (about.me)

 

• Ryan Junee

 

• Sachin Rekhi (Blackflipper)

 

• Shaherose Charania (Women 2.0)

 

• Stew Langille (Mint.com)

 

• Ted Rheingold (Dogster, Inc.)

 

• Victoria Ransom (Wildfire Interactive)

 

• Zach Allia (Free Gifts)

The Vigilant Venture Advisors:

Our venture advisors make up an elite strike force who will be advising the 500 Startups team. Many of them are also mentors and founders/CEOs of 500 Startups companies (and they’re more good than evil, but we’re not keeping exact score). They’ve been tremendously valuable and responsive to us so far — one flash of our secret signal (a glowing dollar sign) in the night sky and they’re at our doorstep, ready for action.

We look forward to working with them in this new capacity, and hope they won’t crush us with their bare hands.

Meet the Venture Advisors…

 

• Benjamin Joffe (Plus Eight Star)

 

• Bill Hudak (Ztail)

 

• Brady Forrest (O’Reilly Radar)

 

• Charles Hudson (CH3 Media Holdings LLC)

 

• Dave Schappell (TeachStreet)

 

• Edward Baker (Friend.ly)

 

• Eric Ries (Lean Startup)

 

• Hiten Shah (KISSmetrics)

 

• Jason Putorti (Votizen)

 

• Leonard Speiser (Society)

 

• Rashmi Sinha (SlideShare Inc)

 

• Sean Ellis (Startup Marketing)

 

• Stew Langille (Mint.com)

 

• Tim Ferriss (4-Hour Workweek)

Please cheer on our new League of Leaders – our mentors and venture advisors –  as they help us make the planet safe for humanity and really cool startups.