Mentors

Julia A. Spicer

Julia Spicer, as Executive Director for the Mid-Atlantic Venture Association (MAVA), represents the unique interests of hundreds of company leaders building high growth enterprises and the more than 300 investment professionals from across the private investor spectrum helping to fund those enterprises. Investors range from institutional venture, growth and private equity funds, family offices, fund of funds, corporate and angel investors, and debt providers investing across a multitude of technology industry sectors.

Ms. Spicer joined MAVA from private equity firm Columbia Capital, a telecommunications specialty investment firm. Previously, she served as corporate vice president of strategic planning and communications for GTE Corporation, with responsibilities for public policy, strategic positioning and investor relations for $4B of the corporation’s emerging and new technologies businesses which included wireless, mobile, air-to-ground, and global research laboratories. Ms. Spicer also served as President of the GTE Foundation, recognized as one of the top twenty in the United States which focuses principally on science and mathematics education, the arts and community engagement.

Ms. Spicer’s corporate technology career, experience in working with private and corporate investors, and most importantly, her early operational and entrepreneurial roots in founding two boutique services companies have become invaluable in her work with both entrepreneurial and high growth technology enterprises.

Capital Connection, one of the most recognized and respected platforms for growth companies, and later with the creation of TechBUZZ, an event exclusively designed for seed-stage companies, founded in 2008; Ms. Spicer has helped to create and develop some of the most innovative and well-respected pitch events in the United States designed to accelerate business growth.

Jacqueline Vanacek

Jacqueline is a Silicon Valley Executive who advises on cloud, mobile, social and big data to advance entrepreneurship and streamline government.

With 28 years in corporate multi-nationals HP, Fujitsu and SAP, she is

• 1st business professional sponsored for a Fellowship in one of China's Ministry of Transport Research Institutes
• industry advisor for Eisenhower Fellows chaired by General Colin Powell,
• international speaker, writer, student/startup coach and Board member in U.S. and China.

A leader in the U.S. Cloud Commissions for Government, Jacqueline was also active in the European CloudUP Consortium to drive EU adoption for small business. And she produced a high-level cloud roadmap for Republic of Kazakhstan.

While Vice President of Cloud Computing at SAP, she achieved White House recognition for SAP, Stanford and Germany's NCT for their genomics research to advance precision medicine.

She is most passionate about helping students and entrepreneurs pursue their gifts to help reinvent our world.

Burton Lee

Dr.Burton Lee PhD MBA – Lecturer, European Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Stanford University, School of Engineering; Managing Director, Innovarium Ventures, Silicon Valley, CA   

Based in Silicon Valley, Dr. Burton Lee lectures on European Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the   Stanford School of Engineering, where he is considered one of Silicon Valley’s leading experts on the   European innovation ecosystem, startup and venture finance, corporate and university innovation,  and government innovation policy scenes. While at Stanford, over the past seven years he has   successfully developed and executed partnerships with European national and regional governments,   venture finance organizations and industry in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Italy, Finland,   Norway, Ireland, France, Spain, Romania, Bulgaria and Estonia.   

Dr. Lee concurrently serves as Managing Director of Innovarium Ventures, a financial, technical and   strategic advisory services firm with technology startup, angel investor, venture capital fund,   university, corporate and national and regional government clients in Europe, Latin America and the   USA. Current/recent advisory engagements include DG CONNECT - European Commission (Brussels),  UniCredit Bank Austria (Vienna), Sofia Tech Park (Bulgaria), the Gdansk Metropolitan Authority   (Poland), the German Silicon Valley Accelerator, Ireland’s University of Galway (NUI Galway),   Denmark’s Midt Jutland Region and Aalborg University, the Universidad de los Andes Engineering   School (Bogota), as well as the TIVIT ICT Industry Association (Finland), the CETICS ICT Industry   Association (Colombia), and the CAPATEC Chamber of Commerce of Technology Companies   (Panama).   

Burton’s professional history encompasses 15+ years entrepreneurial, investment and senior   executive leadership and advisory experience in venture-backed technology startup companies;   venture capital and private equity funds; angel investor networks; global technology corporations  (Daimler, HP and General Electric); federal S&T agencies (NSF, NIH and NASA); the European   Commission (serving as a Horizon2020/FP7 expert evaluator and advisor on Horizon2020 programs);   research universities, and national and regional governments. He is a researcher and frequent   conference speaker and media commentator on the US and European entrepreneurship, innovation   ecosystems, university reform, regional economic development, venture finance, university   commercialization, social media and product design scenes. In 2007, he co-founded Space Angels   Network, the leading source of seed-stage capital for space and aviation-related startups.

Matija Kopić

Matija is the CEO of Farmeron, a cloud-based farm business management software company with offices in United States and Croatia. Coming from an agricultural background and after growing up on a farm in Croatia, he founded Farmeron with a vision to integrate different disconnected farming data sources, allowing producers across the world to consolidate their databases and become more efficient managers. Matija is an IT engineer but today runs the company's expansion to different markets around the world. He graduated in 2010 from University of Zagreb. Matija graduated from music school and has written a musical book.

Farmeron aggregates the reams of data generated on a farm and then processes it in the form of real-time production and profitability improvement strategies, so that producers can automatically and productively assess their options and address certain issues (like culling and replacement strategies, health improvements, breeding programs, inventory management etc.) From cow flow to cash flow, herd management to business management - Farmeron is the tool which runs the entire operation.

Denis Sušac

Denis Sušac isdirector and co-owner of the Osijek-based company Mono Software, Ltd. Mono was founded in 2003 and has built its success on the export of software products to overseas clients including multi-national companies , banks, hospitals and other state giants.

In addition to software development, Denis is the program director of the famous developer conference The Geek Gathering, and within the association Osijek Software City also participates in projects for the development and improvement of the Osijek IT community organizing lectures, workshops and other events.

Stevica Kuharski

Stevica Kuharski has been developing software for web and mobile platforms for the past 15 years. Among other technologies, he prefers programming languages that have their origins in plain old C, such as Objective-C. He has been an entrepreneur since 2003 and has had two exits and secured investment for an educational project called Habbits. In 2014 he started Ombotics, a robotic development company that is developing Alamo, an autonomous robotic lawn mower. Stevica also serves as an advisor at Intersat Telekomunikacije. Using the motto "sharing is caring," , he manages Startup Camp, an event he developed with support from the U.S. Embassy in Zagreb, the Science and Technology Park of the University of Rijeka and the Zagreb Entrepreneurship Incubator, where early stage startups learn to prepare themselves for the market.

Bela Ikotić

Bela is very dedicated to the development of the IT industry of the city of Osijek through a variety of functions. He currently works as Microsoft Innovation Manager , Coordinator Technology Officer Business Incubator BIOS and Secretary General of Osijek Software City.

He is involved in a number of projects which are developing the industry and the labor market of Osijek including Coworking Osijek , Proof of Concept , Software Startup Academy , Microsoft Innovation Center in Osijek , CodeCamp , boot camps , Hour of Code, e-Business, KulenDayz conference.

As Secretary General of Osijek Software City, he is working to strengthen the open source, community Lab , Microsoft, freelance and design communities gathered around the coworking space.

Nandino Lončar

Nandino works at Inchoo as office manager, where he organizes and oversees all administrative activities required for the smooth and efficient everyday operation of the company. He is also recognized as the main point of contact for most community engagements.

As one of the Osijek Software City association founders, Nandino was actively engaged as project manager and general secretary for almost three years. These days he is mainly active as a mentor in the local startup community.

He joined Inchoo after previouslyl working as an administrative assistant at the Faculty of Economics in Osijek, and the editor of the local web portal Osijek031.com. While in college, he was a member and vice-president of the local committee of the world’s largest student-run organization, AIESEC.