dot.life

The woman with the midas touch

• Maggie Shiels
• 25 Feb 09, 09:10 GMT

Chris Shipley has been called everything from a "Woman of Distinction" to one of the "Top 10 Minds in Small Business."

Chris Shipley has been called everything from a "Woman of Distinction" to one of theOutside of the Valley, her name may not be as familiar as other top females executives like Meg Whitman, Carol Bartz or Carly Fiorina. But her influence is just as impressive.

For the last 13 years she has been responsible for bringing more than 1,500 new products to market including Java and Palm Pilot . Every year she meets with more than 500 companies before whittling that number down to a handful who are invited to launch at DEMO,which is regarded as a major launch pad for start-ups.

Over the years some of those products and companies put under the spotlight have included BitGravity, Green Plug, LeapFrog Enterprises, Six Apart, Trend Micro, NASA Ames Research, Handspring, Autonomy and Mobio.

While the companies might not be household names, in the industry these starts-ups get tagged as the ones to watch and often end up being acquired by others. For example Homestead Technologies was bought by Intuit for $170m, CISCO bought Ironport for $830m and HP purchased Bitfone for an undisclosed sum.

Next year will be Ms Shipley's last running the conference, and later on Wednesday I will get the opportunity to sit down with her and talk to her about her years at the helm.

While I have my own thoughts about what I want to ask her, I figured this was a great opportunity to find out if you have any questions for the woman who has been at the centre of the start-up world for so many years.