Flywheel's Team
Flywheel Fellows

Andrew Constantin

Co-founder, Constantin Partners

Mr. Constantin is a co-founder of Constantin Partners, an angel investment partnership. The focus of the fund is seed- and early-stage financings in software, communications, and Internet companies. Representative portfolio companies include: Aravo, Atlantes, Garage.com, Tripwire Security Systems, Coremetrics, and Digital Fountain. Prior to Constantin Partners, Mr. Constantin was a founding partner and vice president of marketing for PFI, a regional competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) with networks in 12 western cities, which was successfully sold to Brooks Fiber Properties in 1997. Mr. Constantin actively consults for communications companies and has been featured in Red Herring Magazine. He also serves as an advisor to Staenberg Venture Fund, II. A graduate from the University of Pennsylvania with a BS in Communications, Mr. Constantin has been involved in numerous charities including Amnesty International and the V Foundation Wine Celebration, a wine auction for cancer research.

Audrey MacLean

Private Investor & Consulting Associate Professor, Stanford University

Audrey MacLeanhas a unique track record for entrepreneurial success as a founder, CEO, seed investor and board member in a variety of high- technology and consumer industries. She has been listed by BusinessWeek as one of the 50 most influential business women in America and was featured by Forbes in a cover article on Angel Investing. Ms. MacLean has over two decades combined experience in the computer and communications industry. She co-founded and was Vice President of Network Equipment Technologies (NET) which went public in 1987. She later co-founded and was CEO of Adaptive which merged with NET in 1993. Since that time, MacLean has continued her involvement in early-stage companies as a private investor and board member. Companies financed at the seed stage by MacLean that have gone public include Pete’s Brewing Co., Pure Software and AdForce. Her successful acquisitions include: Avedia by PairGain, Internet Middleware by Network Appliance and Firefly by Microsoft. Other start-up portfolio companies include: Acheiva, SpecialtyMD.com, Informed Diagnostics, Datacore, dsl.net, Selectica, Schoolpop, Conduit and Talkstar.com. She is also an affiliate in a number of first tier Venture Funds. In 1997, MacLean joined the faculty at Stanford in the Graduate School of Engineering where she is the lead professor on the Stanford Technology Venture Program’s flagship course entitled “Technology Venture Formation”. In addition, MacLean serves on the board of the Marrkula Center for Applied Ethics, Hospice of the Valley , the Churchill Club, Mitty High School and the Kauffman Foundation Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership.

Bill Garcia

Private Investor

Mr. Garcia is a former Director of Public Affairs for Intel Corporation in Rio Rancho. Prior to joining Intel, Mr. Garcia served as cabinet secretary for the New Mexico Department of Economic Development. In that position, he was involved in policy development for NAFTA and recruited Intel to locate its semiconductor fabrication facilities to NM. Mr. Garcia also was with U S West for 23 years. He serves or has served on more than 16 boards, including: the ASM Foundation Board, the Albuquerque Economic Forum and on the boards of New Mexico Technet, Rio Tech and United Way, the UNM Foundation, and the Bank of Albuquerque.

Craig Johnson

Founder, Venture Law Group (now Heller Ehrman Venture Law Group)
Johnson represents high technology emerging growth companies from incorporation through initial public offering or acquisition. Among the companies he has represented are Adaptec, Wyse, Collagen, StrataCom, Aspect, SnapTrack, Gupta, MediaQ and IP Wireless. He is also the co-founder of Garage Technology Ventures, Financial Engines, Grassroots Enterprise and Concept2Company. These companies have raised more than $200 million in venture capital. Mr. Johnson has played key roles in starting Yahoo!, Cerent (sold to Cisco for $7B), Lightera (sold to Ciena for $.6B), Foundry Networks, and Rosetta Inpharmatics (sold to Merck for $.54B). Mr. Johnson has been recognized by Business Week as one of Silicon Valley's top 25 "movers and shakers" (1997), Red Herring Magazine as one of nine Silicon Valley "top power brokers", (1999), as one of the 100 most influential attorneys in America by The National Law Journal (2000), and by Forbes as one of the country's top private company investors ("Midas List") in 2001.

David Albin

Managing Partner, Natural Gas Partners
NGP is a private equity firm that manages over $1.6 billion of capital devoted solely to investing in the energy industry. NGP VII closed in March 2003 with $600 million. Prior to co-founding NGP Mr. Albin worked with Goldman Sachs.

David Alderson

Post Doctoral Scholar, California Institute of Technology

David is currently completing his post doctorate work at the California Institute of Technology. David’s research focus is on complex networks and national infrastructure protection. David has been a research fellow with the Center for Intl. Security & Cooperation, Santa Fe Institute, the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA, and at the Control and Dynamical Systems at Caltech. In private industry, he has played key roles in several venture-backed companies.

While at Reactivity, makers of internet security software, David helped to create and spinout CenterRun. CenterRun provides application provisioning solutions for the enterprise data center. Reactivity is backed by Accel Partners, Austin Ventures, Diamondhead Ventures and JK&B Capital. CenterRun is backed by Sequoia Capital, Crosslink Capital, and Needham Capital Partners. In the past, David has also worked with Goldman Sachs building technology for the Equity Derivatives Sales and Trading Group, for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and with the Palo Alto Research Parc (formerly Xerox PARC).

Julie Constantin

Co-founder, Constantin Partners

Ms. Constantin brings over 10 years of venture financing and investing experience in technology seed- and early-stage ventures. She is the co-founder of Constantin Partners, a San Francisco-based seed-stage fund focused on software, communications, and Internet infrastructure companies. She has invested in 18 portfolio companies, including successful market leaders Tripwire Security Systems, Garage Technology Ventures (formerly Garage.com), Coremetrics, New Vine Logistics, Samba Holdings, and Digital Fountain. Previously, Julie was the director of the Internet Initiative for PFI, a telecommunications start-up that was. She also was a director with Phoenix Growth Capital, a venture financing firm focused on software and communications investments. Julie holds BA and MBA degrees from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Tom Byers

Chairman, Flywheel Board of Advisors
Professor, Stanford University

Tom Byers is a professor at Stanford University where he focuses on high-technology entrepreneurship education. He is founder and a faculty director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), which serves as the entrepreneurship center for the engineering school.  Tom is also a faculty director of the AEA/Stanford Executive Institute, a general management program for technology executives. Tom is co-author of the textbook called “Technology Ventures: From Idea to Enterprise” (McGraw-Hill, 2005). Tom also holds a visiting professor appointment at the London Business School and University College London.

Tom currently serves as a director on the boards of Reactivity, Swift-Find, and Flywheel Ventures. In addition, he serves on advisory boards or committees of the American Society for Engineering Education’s Entrepreneurship Division, Harvard Business School’s California Research Center, and the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) for inner-city youth.  Tom has a range of business experience including executive vice president of Symantec Corporation and founder/president of Slate Corporation.  Tom holds a BS in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research and an MBA from UC Berkeley. He also earned a PhD in Business Administration (Management Science) at UC Berkeley.

For his efforts at Stanford, Tom holds an endowed chair known as the McCoy University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. Tom was given the 2005 Gores Award for excellence in teaching (the university’s highest award) and the 2002 Tau Beta Pi Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching (the engineering school’s highest award).  In the past, Tom was named Northern California Entrepreneur of the Year in Ernst & Young’s competition and was given the Academy of Management’s Innovation in Entrepreneurship Teaching Award and Price-Babson’s Appel Prize for bringing entrepreneurial vitality to academia.