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FALL 2017 - Bob Dorf is co-author with Steve Blank of The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step by Step Guide for Building a Great Company. The 608 page painstakingly detailed guide is the most comprehensive, rigorous step by step roadmap available anywhere for guiding startup founders. He travels the world helping startups, foreign governments and major corporations learn how to effectively deploy Customer Development process through intensive 8-10 week training sessions, one-two day workshops and hands-on consulting. He teaches the Lean LaunchPad program at Columbia Business School where he is Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship. Bob co-founded Marketing One to One (later Pepper and Rogers Group) in 1993, growing it to 400+ people as the then preeminent CRM consulting firm. As founding CEO, Bob helped conceive and implement customer focused strategies at Bertelsmann, Ford, Oracle, HP, Jaguar. NCR, 3M and Charles Schwab, among others. Entrepreneurial since the age of 12, Bob received his last W-2 some 40 years ago. Of the 7 companies he has founded he has had -as he puts it -2 homeruns, 2 base hits and 3 solid tax losses. His 24 personal investments include 7 IPOs, 6 colossal failures and everything imaginable in between. His first startup, Dorf+Stanton Communications, was founded in his living room at age 22. It grew from a staff of 2 (Bob and a St Bernard) to 150 when sold in 1989. Bob lives  in Stamford with his wife Fran and considers his proudest startup to be his daughter Rachel, who has made him grandpa twice over.

Guy is serial fintech entrepreneur and intrapreneur having spent his entire career in financial services during a period of dramatic technology and regulatory change. He has alternated stints as a founder with corporate engagements, always focused on innovations to better deliver customer value and sustainable growth. As he advised TechXel graduates, “the founder’s Journey is fraught with diversions and misdirection. Finding your way efficiently – whether this is your first or fifth venture – is the key to successful outcomes.”  Having started as a portfolio manager with EF Hutton, he launched his first startup, Advantage Family of Funds in 1986. It was acquired by a Fortune 500 insurer in 1994. He then served as an officer in Putnam Investments and American Skandia Marketing, Inc., moving Putnam from #6 to #1 among wire houses and developing an industry leading pension and 401k management platform at American Skandia. In 2003 he founded New York based Ogdenburr Partners, LLC , which became the leading broker dealer in alternative investments to family offices. He sold Ogdenburr to a private equity firm in 2012 and started Fund Forensics LLC., a wealth advisory service helping families navigate the bewildering array of fund alternatives.

Guy is a graduate of Cornell University with a BA in Chemistry and a minor in Neurobiology. He has recently retired after nearly 9 years as a FINRA Neutral Arbitrator. On a pro bono basis, he has been a Senior Advisor to the United Nations Capital Development Fund and Chair of the Connecticut Council on Developmental Disabilities. In 2017 Guy joined Merrill Lynch. On this new leg of the Founders Journey, he is focused on helping entrepreneurs.