Charles Hudson, Host, Virtual Goods Summit
Charles Hudson is VP of Business Development for Serious Business. He was formerly the Sr. Director for Business Development at Gaia Interactive, the fastest growing online hangout for teens. Prior to Gaia, Charles worked in New Business Development at Google and focused on new partnership opportunities for early-stage products in the advertising, mobile, and e-commerce markets. Prior to joining Google, he was a Product Manager for IronPort Systems, a leading provider of anti-spam hardware appliances that was acquired by Cisco Systems for $830 million in 2007.
Charles spent several years working at In-Q-Tel, the strategic venture capital group for the Central Intelligence Agency. While at In-Q-Tel, he focused on identifying investment opportunities that could deliver significant value to the CIA and the commercial market in both the short and long term.Charles Hudson holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.A. in Economics and Spanish from Stanford University.
David Sachs
David Sachs was most recently a Senior Associate at Trident Capital, a growth equity firm in Palo Alto, where he focused on venture capital and buyout investments in online media and marketing, financial technology, software-as-a-service and health care. Prior to Trident, David was an Analyst at Redpoint Ventures and Brentwood Venture Capital, where he worked on investments in early-stage software, internet, and communications infrastructure companies.
Before that, he was a Product Manager at online golf retailer Chipshot.com, and an Analyst in the Software and Internet group at NationsBanc Montgomery Securities. David has also consulted for private equity clients at Bain & Company, worked on IPO and merger transactions at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, and researched counter-drug strategies at the U.S. Department of State’s Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau. He is a co-founder of Valuative Software, a provider of capital structure modeling and analysis software.
David earned an A.B. degree in Government from Harvard University and an M.B.A. in Finance and Accounting from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a Palmer Scholar.
