A serial entrepreneur, international seed fund founder, and former executive vice president with Wells Fargo Bank, Bill has been accessing the capital markets to build durable business models for twenty-five years.

Bill managed the Silicon Valley region for Wells Fargo Bank in the 1980s, and in that capacity participated in the meteoric growth of the valley’s now famous entrepreneurial culture. He subsequently managed the $12 billion northern California division for Wells, and there he witnessed first-hand the life cycle of thousands of small businesses. His conclusion: timely access to investment capital was the most critical factor to small businesses’ long-term success, and too little attention was paid to learning the skills necessary to compete for investment dollars.

Founding his own first business venture in 1995, Fisher began to establish a systematic methodology for efficiently tapping into the capital markets for fi nancing early- stage companies. Since then, his deep understanding of how to speak to the private company investor community has allowed him to raise more than $500 million for a succession of start- up companies.

As a cofounder of the Tiburon family of international seed funds, he has realized twenty-one successful exits, including Xing, Trivago, Cadooz, and Lokalisten.de, along the way successfully coaching scores of entrepreneurs.

As founder/cofounder and CEO, he has pioneered new business models with GetSmart.com, GetMobileEu rope.de, and Hometown Commercial Capital. As a manager, he has led small, nimble teams and organizations of 15,000 employees. His business-building methods have been featured at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, and at the World Bank. Soul Htite, cofounder of LendingClub.com, says: “Bill is one of the hidden trea sures of Silicon Valley, always willing to share the lessons he’s learned with younger entrepreneurs.” Bill is an avid fly fisherman, and he resides in northern California with his wife and three children.