Hi, I'm Josh Webb. Since we will be spending a few Thursday evenings together this semester, I thought it might be helpful if I introduced myself.

I am originally from Northern Virginia and made my way here, via Los Angeles, 3 years ago (so far, so good).

I went to Harvey Mudd College (a tiny little engineering school you've never heard of) to study Engineering and ended up with a degree in Engineering and another in Economics. Immediately upon escape, I went to work for Intel at a large semiconductor manufacturing facility in Arizona. I hated it, moved back to Los Angeles, and spent the next 5ish years working for an organization called Idealab. Working in a number of capacities under that banner, I had the opportunity to drive raw technologies from lab to income statement and eventually to acquisition.

After the second acquisition, I opted to go it on my own and work as a consultant in the space. My sweet spot expanded over time (investing and M&A, to technology commercialization, to turn-arounds, and eventually to internal innovation for mature businesses); I was fortunate to engage with MANY businesses; across a variety of industries, levels of scale, levels of maturity, and technical sophistication. A common thread through those engagements was being able to develop a sufficiently deep understanding of each side of the technology/business divide and leveraging that understanding to solve problems. Addressing that gap is of critical importance to early-stage ventures. My experience with that gap is something I hope to bring to bear throughout the course of this class.

One day, when I was living at the beach in Santa Monica, I met a girl. We hit it off. Eventually I learned that she was from New Orleans and had an eye on moving back. The rest, as they say, is history. I now work with Laitram here in Greater New Orleans doing technology commercialization. In my spare time, I make industrial furniture, help run a Harvey Mudd-based startup accelerator in Los Angeles, and co-teach an entrepreneurship class at Loyola's Business School on Thursday evenings.