Emerging Growth Enterprise LLC

Tony Medrano is an experienced technology entrepreneur and executive. He currently leads SEED Enterprise's start-up practice and works alongside the founding teams of high tech start-ups and growing companies (i.e. SAIC spin-out, 3E Company, Parity Computing) by augmenting their Sales, Marketing, business management, operations and venture financing experience in an interim-executive role and by developing and implementing business plans and strategies for technology start-ups. The handful of San Diego companies he has worked for over the past 2 years have successfully won business plan competitions, been awarded numerous government grants, closed paying customers and raised over $25M in VC financing with Tony & EMERGING GROWTH on their management teams.

Previously, Tony co-founded and served as President of DoDots Inc., a software infrastructure company in Silicon Valley. Tony led the company through two rounds of top-tier venture financing, over a dozen angel investments and grew the company to over 120 employees and 50 paying customers. He personally raised over $17M in equity from SOFTBANK (now Mobius Venture Capital), Chase Capital Partners, H&Q, Merrill Lynch Private Equity, Staenberg Venture Partners, Platform Ventures, and numerous other VC's. He also initiated, negotiated and closed over $7M in multiple rounds of complex debt financing. He led all Board of Directors meetings as acting Chairman and managed all company efforts on operational, business development and financing matters.

Tony is a recognized expert in entrepreneurship and raising venture capital for technology companies, and for the past 3 years has co-taught Stanford graduate school class titled “Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital.” Tony's leadership in company operations and fundraising was the subject of two case studies published by Stanford University Press on entrepreneurship, in which Softbank stated, “they have never seen anyone stretch $2M so far.” As acting chief of Business Development, Tony has also personally initiated, negotiated and closed numerous public company customers (Merriam-Webster, ZDNet, ABC, etc.) to revenue generating licensing contracts, even before product release.

Tony has a BA from Harvard, an MA from Columbia, and a MBA and JD from Stanford (under scholarships from Scott McNealy of SUN Microsystems and Doug Carlisle of Menlo Ventures). Tony also served as an officer in the US Navy, where he led a 100 person engineering department aboard a technologically advanced guided missile destroyer. He has been named one of the “100 Most Influential Hispanics” in 2000 by Hispanic Business Magazine.