Trend spotting like venture investing is a contact sport. And being able to spot early investment opportunities in technology markets is an art that's afforded a few smart investors first mover competitive advantage. To better understand the forces at work, we put together a panel of expert analysts, bankers and VCs to analyze the past year investment and M&A landscape and examine emerging market opportunities for 2007. We'll attempt to make sense of the tea-like leaves of development apparent in 2006 and how it's likely to shape the market next year.

Mark Boslet

Ray Bingham’s distinguished career of more that 30 years has spanned businesses in high tech, chemical engineering, and hospitality real estate development with accomplishments in mergers and acquisitions, global trade and venture capital. From 1993 to 2005, he served in executive management roles at Cadence Design Systems, the world’s leading electronics design automation (EDA) software company. He was named executive chairman in May 2004, after serving as president and chief executive officer since May 1999. Under Mr. Bingham’s leadership, Cadence developed from a $360 million company to a $1.3 billion global industry leader. During his tenure as CEO, the company’s technology leadership grew through a series of strategic acquisitions, internal research and development and venture investments. Mr. Bingham also directed Cadence’s global expansion into India, China and Russia, a decade ahead of today’s focus in those emerging markets. He is a director of four public companies: Oracle Corporation, Flextronics International Ltd., Freescale Semiconductor and KLA Tencor. Mr. Bingham earned a Bachelor of Science degree with Honors from Weber State University and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School.

Kamran Elahian

Mr. Elahian is a veteran entrepreneur with over twenty-eight years of experience in the high-tech industry. He has co-founded ten high-tech companies, one venture capital firm and two non-profit organizations. In addition to Global Catalyst Partners, he is chairman of Centillium Communications, Planetweb, Greenfield Networks, Entopia, Actelis Networks, the Global Catalyst Foundation and Schools Online. He co-founded Schools Online (1996), a non-profit public charity organization with the goal of bringing the Internet to every school in the world. Additionally, he co-founded the Global Catalyst Foundation (2000), a private philanthropic foundation. Mr. Kamran received a B.S. in computer science, a B.S. in mathematics (at the age of twenty), and a masters of engineering degree in computer graphics from the University of Utah.

Doug Gonsalves

Gonsalves has over 17 years of experience executing mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, private placements, recapitalizations, growth capital financings, privatizations, and preparing and delivering fairness opinions. In this role he advises later-stage private and emerging public companies in the software, Internet and services industries. Before joining SVB Alliant, Gonsalves was a founding partner of The Spartan Group, a boutique investment banking firm. Prior to founding his own firm, Gonsalves spent four years with Merrill Lynch & Co, as director and head of the company’s growth banking group and then as director of the middle market M&A group and co-head of Western U.S. activities. Gonsalves also served as vice president and team leader of BancAmerica Robertson Stephens’ M&A group. He began his investment banking career in the M&A group of Banc of America Securities and its predecessor entities. Gonsalves holds an MBA from the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University and a bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, from California State University.