Will Knuff

Founder and Managing General Partner, Event Capital Partners LLC, L.P., a value and event-based investment fund 

Prior Experience

Managing Director, Tano Capital LLC

  • Second employee at this international PE firm started by Charles E. Johnson, former Co-President of Franklin Templeton Investments
  • Launched, co-managed and directed Tano India PE Fund I ($100MM), and Tano India PE Fund II; served on Investment Committee
  • Served on portfolio company boards – ABG Motors (India) Ltd., and C-Brite, Inc.
  • Head of Investor Relations

 

Principal, Sutter Capital Management LLC

  • Co-managed a fund and served as Chairman and CEO of a financial holding company that invested in real estate limited partnerships, publicly traded distressed debt and businesses across a variety of industries
  • Joined the board of Prandium post-reorganization to represent the fund’s investment interests and worked with restructuring consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal to restructure and ultimately liquidate the company

 

Sr. Associate, Mergers & Acquisitions, Robertson Stephens, Inc.

  • Involved in the completion of transactions in biotechnology, consumer services, financial services, and telecommunications industries.

 

Summer Associate, Allen & Company, Inc.

  • Worked on various media and technology transactions for partners Nancy Peretsman and Richard Fields

 

Board Directorships:

 

ABG Motors (India) Ltd. (prior); C-Brite, Inc. (prior); Diversified Risk Insurance Brokers Inc. (a sub of HUB International) (prior); Mid-Peninsula Boys & Girls Club Foundation (current); NOCA, Inc. (current); Prandium, Inc. (prior); RegalRetreats.com (prior); Sutter Holding Company, Inc. (prior); Tano Energy Assets Fund (prior); Tano India PE Fund I (prior); Tano India PE Fund II (prior)

 

Education:

 

MBA, Cornell University (Johnson School)

BS in Finance, University of Texas at Austin (McCombs)

California RIA; member of American Association of Individual Investors

What They Say About Us

"The wonderful thing about entrepreneurs is that their passion for starting new companies transcends languages and geographic boundaries."

Ron Conway, Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds, early stage investor in Google and PayPal

"Networking is very important for start-ups. The challenge for them is often not money: it is mentoring and finding people who can give good advice from experience."

Esther Dyson, Founder, EDventure Holdings

"This conference is clearly a labor of love for a group of dedicated professionals who care deeply about the Eastern European entrepreneurs. From the value-packed educational panels, to the star-studded key note speakers' line up, to an amazing quantity of venture capitalists – this is a not to be missed event for any high tech entrepreneur,"

Richard Guha, President of the Marketing Executives Network and Managing Partner at MaxBrandEquity

"As Stanford MBA students, we were exposed to a lot of VC firms both from the Valley and abroad. It is at Stanford that we met Anna Dvornikova, an absolutely amazing business leader and (by our big luck) our friend, who was the center of the Russian Silicon Valley professional community, and was doing a huge work to connect Russia and the Valley. Anna helped us a lot with kick-starting Wikimart, put us to our first-ever conference, introduced us to most of Russian VCs. And all that happened in a very short time span! It was the beginning of a six-month journey that despite the particularly tough times resulted in an extraordinarily group of investors backing our start-up."

Maxim Faldin and Kamil Kurmakayev,
co-CEOs, Wikimart