Software Council of Southern California

IMPACT! Sales & Marketing

How To Get Discovered … On A Budget

July 30, 2003

No matter how powerful and exciting your new mousetrap is, you will not succeed unless the world knows about your company and your products. Large firms may be able to spend millions of dollars on advertising and PR to get their message out, but what about the rest of us?

This program will share some effective, real-world techniques to get discovered on a limited budget. Hear what a panel of PR and advertising professionals suggest, and then hear from some companies how they used these and other approaches to get discovered in their marketplace without spending the big bucks.

Panelists:

RICK SHARGA, President & CEO, CJ Patrick Company

Moderated by Phil Becker, Managing Partner, The Venture Group

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Panelist Bios

Rick Sharga, President & CEO, CJ Patrick Company
Rick Sharga is the Presidet & CEO of CJ Patrick Company, a consulting firm that helps B2B and technology companies create or re-create a position of competitive advantage, and then leverage it in their markets. Over the past 20 years, Rick has developed corporate and product branding strategy for companies such as DuPont, Philips, Honeywell and JD Edwards; and orchestrated international sales and marketing programs for companies like
Fujitsu, Hitachi, Sybase and Toshiba.

COREY OLFERT , Vice President, Fleishman-Hillard
As a vice president in Fleishman Hillard's Corporate/Technology Practice,
Corey Olfert brings a broad professional background in public relations and
corporate communications. Mr. Olfert joined the firm in 1997.

Mr. Olfert helps his clients meet business objectives through strategic communication initiatives, and is responsible for consulting with leading clients -- early-stage companies, private and public mid-sized growth firms and Fortune 500 companies -- in areas of corporate and product brand positioning, internal communications, financial communications, crisis counsel, litigation support, and mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Olfert has a broad range of industry experience, including technology, consumer services,
private equity and venture capital, management services and utilities.

Mr. Olfert graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication studies
from California State University at Northridge.

DAN D. GUTIERREZ , CEO/CTO/Founder, AMULET/eCriteria
As CEO of AMULET Development Corp., a back-end Web development firm, and chief architect of the company's eCriteria web-hosted database service, Dan Gutierrez brings a seasoned professional history in the IT field, specifically Web, database, and data mining technologies. Mr. Gutierrez founded the company in 1984.

Mr. Gutierrez directs the business development effort for AMULET and the eCriteria product in order to locate new client and technology partner relationships. Through regular research of industry trends, he also guides the company's technology focus to ensure expertise in emerging areas. Mr. Gutierrez serves as system architect for new e-commerce projects, and it responsible for new feature-set initiatives for eCriteria.

In addition, Mr. Gutierrez has taught IT courses for UCLA Extension for the past 15 years. His current course list includes "Database Security" and "Data Mining Techniques."

Mr. Gutierrez graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from UCLA.

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