Lead Partner: Stewart Alsop, Jason Preston

Location: Dublin Ireland; San Francisco, CA

Founded  in 2012, Drop Kitchen dba Fresco is the only neutral, cross-brand  platform that seamlessly brings appliances, home cooks, and recipes  together. More than 100 different appliance models from brands like  Bosch, Electrolux, GE Appliances, Kenwood, LG Electronics, and Thermomix  can be controlled from the Fresco KitchenOS platform. With offices in  Dublin, Ireland, and Zaragoza, Spain, Fresco’s mission is to spread the  love of home cooking by using technology to empower home chefs in the  kitchen. 

Stewart is a Partner. He spent the first 20 years of his professional career as a business journalist and commentator. It did not start well: he earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1975, but had to stay the summer to complete his credits. Then he couldn’t find a job, so he went to bartending school. But bars weren’t hiring. He persisted and, from 1975 to 1996, had a series of jobs in which he learned how to be a business editor. This included becoming Executive Editor of Inc. Magazine, where he became fascinated by both entrepreneurship and personal computers, and as the third editor of InfoWorld, the job that got him moved from Boston to Silicon Valley in 1983.

In 1985, having been fired from two jobs, he started his own business, a newsletter called P.C. Letter, which became widely read in the executive ranks of the major hardware and software companies that formed and grew the personal computer industry. He also started two conferences, Agenda and Demo, and published the “Social Register to the PC Industry.”

In 1996, Stewart changed careers to become a venture capitalist, joining New Enterprise Associates, a top-tier venture capital firm with a long track record of success in investing in early stage and growth companies. He was a general partner with New Enterprise Associates and led that firm’s investments in companies such as TiVo, Portola Communications (sold to Netscape), Netcentives, Glu Mobile, and Xfire. From 1996 to 2003, he wrote Alsop On InfoTech for Fortune.

Stewart left NEA in 2005 and invited Gilman Louie to become his partner in a new venture capital firm designed to put to use everything the partners had learned about entrepreneurship, technology, and innovation over the prior 25 years. From 2005-2013, Stewart was a member of the board of directors of Sonos, Inc., which has become a thought leader in the world of digital audio and the digital living room.

Stewart Alsop

Partner

Jason Preston is a Partner. He is the  co-founder of a conference and community called Dent, and for a time  ran a consultancy that helped companies build great teams. Like most who  find themselves doing interesting things, it is difficult for Jason to  explain how he wound up doing them. 

Jason was born in Texas but grew up  in Bellevue, Washington. After attending Occidental College in Los  Angeles, Jason moved to Seattle and began working on one of the first  conferences about business blogging. From there, he followed his nose:  he met Matt Mullenweg and learned the ins and outs of WordPress (when  MovableType was the thing), he worked with the early team at Twitter to  build the world’s first Twitter conference, and helped connect Hollywood  to Silicon Valley through a series of hospitality suites.  

Throughout this process, Jason  started to wonder at the difference between leaders that saw  extraordinary success and those that merely did OK. Why did some people  and some teams “dent the universe” — as Steve Jobs once said? 

This question led Jason to co-found  the Dent Conference with Steve Broback. The conference finds actionable  lessons from success and creates an environment for people to meet each  other and build friendships. Dent draws a remarkable set of  participants: astronauts, artists whose medium is genetically engineered  plants, technology CEOs, magicians, young entrepreneurs, world champion  free divers, and consulting detectives. OK — just one consulting  detective. 

Members of the Dent community began  asking Jason for advice, so he decided to share the lessons from years  of interviews, pattern-matching, and practice. As a consultant, he  helped companies and teams make foundational decisions about their  culture and smart strategic decisions about their products and their  stories. 

Jason is also a part-time lecturer in  the Human Centered Design and Engineering department at the University  of Washington. He reads a lot of books, is a fan of esports, and is the  dungeon master in his local D&D game.

Drop Kitchen dba Fresco

Disruptive Tech, Consumer Tech

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