Bambi Francisco is the founder and CEO of Vator, one of the largest social networks dedicated to high-tech entrepreneurs and investors. Vator properties include VatorX, a platform licensed by organizations to host entrepreneur communities and competitions; VatorNews, which provides news, analysis and editorials about entrepreneurship and innovation, and Vator Events, which runs the popular Splash startup event and competition.
History
Francisco is a frequent speaker on innovation and entrepreneurship. In the spring of 2014, she gave a talk in Las Vegas about what kind of foundation is needed for tech hubs to flourish. She has also become a leading proponent of bringing more tech opportunities to emerging areas, such as Oakland. She has also been credited for helping to boost Oakland's tech image. Francisco's events and interviews continue to attract leading entrepreneurs and investors. In the fourth quarter 2014, she sat down for a one-hour interview with long-time friend Peter Thiel at Post Seed and she interviewed Jessica Alba and Brian Lee at Splash LA. She has interviewed Elon Musk, Brian Chesky, Jack Dorsey, Marissa Mayer, and many more luminaries. With Vator, she has turned her insights into picking startups. The 175 startups that have gone on stage in the last 5 years have raised an aggregate of $675-plus million in follow-on capital. Francisco is a former syndicated columnist and correspondent for Dow Jones MarketWatch. She covered Internet trends and investments across the public and private sectors. Her newsletter subscriber base reached more than 400,000 subscribers. She started her career at MarketWatch in 1999, as Internet editor and morning business anchor for KPIX, a CBS affiliate. At the time, MarketWatch was owned by CBS. In 2001, Bambi was named to the "blue-chip" financial reporting all-star team by The Journal of Financial Reporters, the leading organization for the business news industry. Adweek named her one of the top ten most influential journalists on the Web. When Spike TV launched in 2003 as the "first network for men", Bambi Francisco anchored daily business news reports on the current state of world markets and finance as host of "CBS MarketWatch" on Spike TV. She left MarketWatch in April 2007 to manage her internet startup, vator.tv, full-time. Concerns were expressed by management regarding conflicts of interest concerning her ownership of the venture during her employment at MarketWatch. Before Vator even launched, Francisco's project received a tremendous amount of press from the front page of the Wall Street Journal, to television media conglomerates, such as the BBC, to respected tech magazines, such as Wired. Among the articles she wrote at MarketWatch was a diary-like account of her three-week trek to Nepal. In it she made a quick allusion to how hiking in the Himalayas was similar to watching the rise and fall of the Internet bubble.
