John Hartnett Founding Partner

In addition to being a Founding Partner at SVG Partners, John Hartnett is President and Founder of ITLG, Chairman of the Irish Innovation Center, and Chairman and Founder of Irish Technology Capital. Prior to this, Mr. Hartnett was Chief Executive Officer at G24 Innovations, and previously was Senior Vice President of Global Markets at Palm, Inc., where he was responsible for worldwide sales, service and support. Previously, Mr. Hartnett was executive vice president of worldwide operations, service, support and eCommerce at Handspring, Inc. and was an integral member of the executive leadership team that led the 2003 merger of Handspring and palmOne to form what is known today as Palm, Inc.

He has over 20 years of senior management experience across sales, marketing, and operations in the US and Ireland. His career in high tech boasts some of the industry’s leading companies such as Handspring, Metacreations, Claris, AT&T, Digital Equipment, and Wang.

Since 2004, Mr. Hartnett has been annually honored as one of the top 100 Irish American business executives in the US by Irish America Magazine. He is a member of the Wireless Advisory Board in the US for Enterprise Ireland and is the President and Chairman, as well as a founding member, of the Irish Technology Leadership Group (ITLG) in the US.

Mr. Hartnett earned a marketing degree through the Marketing Institute of Ireland, a post-graduate diploma in finance through the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and completed the executive management program at Stanford University. He is a native of Limerick, and on the board of the University of Limerick Foundation. John is a member of The American Ireland Fund and the US-Ireland Alliance.

John Stanton Founding Partner

John Stanton is a Founding Partner at SVG Partners and is the President of the Irish Innovation Center (IIC), dedicated to the growth of Irish technology start-ups in the Silicon Valley. He also serves as Executive Director of the Irish Technology Leadership Group (ITLG), a non-profit aimed at helping Ireland embrace new technology opportunities. In addition, John is a member of the Irish Technology Capital (ITC) management team investing in "Market Changing" early stage, high growth companies.

John has amassed a wide variety of technology and entrepreneurial experience over his 25 year career. Prior to joining the IIC in 2010, John served as President of MarketMinds, a consultancy firm he founded dedicated to bringing new products to market. He also served as Founder and CEO of CubeGuard, a simple but elegant office productivity tool for preventing interruptions and communicating availability status to coworkers.

Prior to founding his own companies, John served at Palm as Vice President of Product Marketing, Vice President of Mobile Software and Services, and Vice President Customer Support and E-Commerce. Previous to that, he held various leadership positions with several top technology companies in the Silicon Valley including: Apple, Intuit, Hewlett Packard and Eclipse, a highly successful supply chain consulting firm where he played a key leadership role in building the company's double and triple digit growth.

Matt Yearling Managing Partner

Matt Yearling is a Managing Partner at SVG Partners and the Entrepreneur In Residence at the Irish Innovation Center responsible for driving the organization's technology strategy. He joined SVG Partners following a 20 year career in developing enterprise software and cloud based solutions for some of the largest software companies in the world.

More recently Mr. Yearling was senior vice president of Technology Strategy and Product Development at Sage Inc., responsible for the delivery of the CRM product portfolio, cloud solutions, mobility, platform development and a number of technology initiatives across Sage Group. Prior to Sage, he served as the senior vice president and chief technology officer for Embarcadero Systems Corp (a Ports America company), where he developed and operated a variety of cloud solutions to many of the world’s largest transportation supply chain companies. Before Embarcadero Systems Corp, he spent over 15 years at Oracle Corporation holding several senior roles before heading the product management, engineering and service delivery of Oracle On Demand, and enabling it to become Oracle's fastest growing line-of-business.

Mr. Yearling holds an M.S. in Technology Management from Pepperdine University and an HND in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Plymouth, England.

Rich Moran Partner

Richard A. Moran is a Partner at SVG Partners, venture capitalist, bestselling author and evangelist for organization effectiveness. He began his career in Silicon Valley at Atari.  He is best known for his series of business books beginning with Never Confuse a Memo with Reality and is credited with starting the genre of "Business Bullet Books". His newest book is Sins and CEOs to be released in lat 2011. He is a Partner at Irish Technology Capital and serves on the boards of Accretive Solutions, Mechanics Bank and Integreon. 

Previously he served as a Partner at Venrock and was also the Chairman of Portal Software. He is a former Accenture Partner where he focused in the technology, media and financial services practice.

He often works with corporate boards to improve effectiveness and serves on the board of the Silicon Valley Chapter of the National Association of Corporate Directors. Mr. Moran holds an A.B. from Rutgers College, an M.S. from Indiana University and a Ph.D. from Miami University.

Cian Hughes Partner

Cian Hughes is a Partner at SVG Partners and operates as a full-time executive consultant where he specializes in Business Management, Operations & Strategic Management and new business startups in the High-Tech sector.

Cian Hughes has held key positions in General Management, Operations Management and Localization Management with some of the world's leading organizations over the past 19 years including Lotus/IBM, ITP (now SDL), Intel, MetaCreations (now Viewpoint), Pivotal, Curious Labs (now e-frontier).

Additionally Cian played a key role in the startup of the International Operations entities in Ireland for MetaCreations, Curious Labs & Pivotal.
Cian holds a BSc in Mathematics and Physics from University College, Dublin, Ireland, and a Diploma in Management from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

Dr. James G. Shanahan Partner

Jimi has spent the last 20 years developing and researching cutting-edge information management systems to harness information retrieval, linguistics and machine learning. During the summer of 2007, he started a boutique consultancy, Church and Duncan Group Inc. (CaDGi), in San Francisco. CaDGi’s major goal is to help companies leverage their vast repositories of data using statistics, machine learning, optimization theory and data mining for applications in areas such as web search, online advertising and mobile services. Church and Duncan Group’s clients include AT&T Interactive, Digg.com, eBay, SearchMe.com, Ancestry.com, MyOfferPal.com, and SkyGrid.com. In addition, since January 2008, Jimi is affiliated with the University of California at Santa Cruz. He advises several high-tech startups in the Silicon Valley Area and is an executive in residence Irish Innovation Center in San Jose.

Prior to starting Church and Duncan Group Inc., Jimi was Chief Scientist and executive team member at Turn Inc. (an online ad network and demand side platform). Prior to joining Turn, Jimi was Principal Research Scientist at Clairvoyance Corporation where he led the “Knowledge Discovery from Text” Group. Before that he was a Research Scientist at Xerox Research Center Europe (XRCE). In the early 90s, he worked on the AI Team within the Mitsubishi Group in Tokyo.

He has published six books, over 50 research publications, and 15 patents in the areas of machine learning and information processing. Jimi was General Chair for CIKM 2008. He will co-chair the International Conference in Weblog and Social Media (ICWSM) 2011 in Barcelona. Previously he has co-organized workshops on online advertising at SIGIR and NIPS. He is a regularly invited to give talks at international conferences and universities around the world. Jimi received his Ph.D. in engineering mathematics from the University of Bristol, U. K. and holds a bachelor of science degree from the University of Limerick, Ireland. He is a EU Marie Curie fellow and member of IEEE and ACM.

JonMichael Bukosky Partner, Los Angeles

Jon brings rich digital entertainment and content experience to SVGP, as well as his relationships with major entertainment and media companies, mobile operators and content creators. A brand strategist in emerging digital technologies, Jon leverages his many connections to build the firm’s library of brand partners and quality content and innovative gaming technologies. He has been an integral part of the mobile evolution, having held executive positions at prominent digital/mobile corporations, including VeriSign, m-Qube, MOVISO and USWeb/CKS. Jon also serves on the advisory board of Silicon Valley’s Irish Technology Leadership Group (ITLG), is a member of the New Media Council at Producers Guild of America (PGA) and, until joining SVGP, has advised leading digital companies both here and abroad through his consulting firm Bukosky Media Enterprises.

Norman Tajudin Partner, Los Angeles

Holding key roles with Sony Pictures, The Walt Disney Company, and Hilton Corporation, Norman most notably built and led the $35 million emerging markets portfolio across 65 territories for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Prior, he led the $3 billion division’s global Business Development & Strategic Planning group, striking more than $20 million in deals during his tenure. He holds an MBA from the Marshall School of Business at USC and graduated with honors.

Liam Moore Partner (Europe)

Liam Moore is a partner at SVG Partners responsible for Business Development, and for whom he is Legal Counsel, and for Irish Technology Capital and the Irish Innovation Center.

Following the major partnership forged with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the global authority on entrepreneurship, as a Kauffman Affiliate Liam is Program Director and Facilitator for the delivery of the Kauffman world-leading entrepreneurship and innovation FastTrac® programs to Irish and international companies, whether start-ups or existing businesses investigating next-stage growth and opportunity. This partnership is part of SVG Partners’ mission to develop a diaspora innovation strategy to combine university internship programs, entrepreneurship training, advice on entrepreneurship policy, the Irish Innovation Center and a global network of Irish technology executives, to serve existing and aspiring entrepreneurs in non-academic environments to produce a viable source of young entrepreneurial companies for the future.

Liam is also CEO of Ireland’s leading provider of Continuing Professional Development (‘CPD’) to the professions, with a venerable panel of expert speakers which includes the holders of the highest national and European offices in both the public and private sectors, and the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland. Prior to that Liam was personal advisor to leading Irish, American and European political, business, diplomatic and charitable figures, and ran a successful law practice for many years before working in international real estate in Europe and the Middle East. He continues to be a Consultant to his legal colleagues.

Liam read Law at University College Cork, Ireland before going on to qualify as a Lawyer, a Mediator and a Collaborative Practitioner. He was a legal journalist and lecturer, and now works with many Irish law firms to raise their awareness and help them improve and promote their businesses through the effective use of technology.