Class 1 - Introduction to Business Plan

Instructor: John Zhang, Founder and President, Systems Analytics

Dr. John Zhang is currently a Founder and President of Systems Analytics. The company develops and applies data mining and pattern recognition software for the analysis of biological data. The software has been used by biotech and pharmaceutical companies, environmental conscious organizations, and healthcare industry to identify accurate and robust biomarkers for various applications. The software also finds applications in financial data analysis, web information mining, and marketing or business intelligence development.

Prior to this, Dr. Zhang was Vice President of Engineering at Delta Search Labs. Working closely with MIT, Harvard, and major investment companies, the firm searches, incubates, and develops technologies with large commercialization potentials. Before that, Dr. Zhang served as Vice President of Technology at Sparkice, Inc, an e-commerce company sourcing products made in China for retailers in western countries through internet. Before that, he was a program manager at Aerodyne Research, Inc., managing the development and marketing of engineering software products, and a senior engineering consultant for Earth Technology Corp. (now part of Tyco Corp.).

Dr. Zhang received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, an M.S from Beijing University, and a B.S. from Zhejiang University. He is a licensed professional engineer.

Speaker: David Singer, JuzMaKinOyz

David Singer lives in Lakeville, MA on the campus of a nursing home, married to one of the owners. He has two Golden Retrievers, an ugly Jeep, a private office, grandkids in Texas, and an understanding wife. 

David has worked in 140 degree plastics factories, operated heavy earth moving equipment, fought forest fires, piloted airplanes, single-handedly sailed bluewater yachts, owned and drove a team of draft horses, was a cowboy clown, held the highest possible security clearance (Top-Secret-Crypto), raced motorcylces & built stock cars, was a sailmaker, SCUBA diver, was in municipal county, and state management, ran away from home, was a commercial dishwasher, a surfer dude, drove an 18wheeler, drove a tank, tracked Russian satellites, fired machine guns, played guitar, threw grenades, protested wars, took a canoe down the Colorado River, climbed Mount Whitney, and set still-existing records in track. David took eight years to get through four colleges, then built houses and barns in California, New Hampshire, and Maine. He has his BS in Economics from Loyola-Marymount in Los Angeles because he was asked to not return as a student at University of California at Santa Cruz after he seriously angered a visiting Harvard professor. It seems David aced the final without ever attending classes (he did, however, read the professor's book). David was hit by lightning shortly after he got an ulcer from corporate stress as TRW Industrial Operations budget manager at the age of 23. A survivor, David has several times extricated himself from extraordinary financial difficulties not of his own making (aka "starting all over with nothing"). He has successfully raised $100,000 using a pen, the back of an envelope, and 5 minutes in the banker's office. He has 39 years experience in large-scale systems design for computers and software, starting way back in Fortran, Cobol, and APL, now in relational databases, yet butchers the language when he speaks French. 

David currently is a producer of movies and music. 

This list of David's experience is intentionally out of chronological order, because every one of these experiences, especially his failures, have helped David to survive business startups in one fashion or another, as demanded by the situation. 

David is now foolishly entwined in still another startup called JuzMaKinOyz. (pronounced "Just-Making-Noise" when said very rapidly). Apparently, he is still not afraid to risk all even when his option is to kick back, relax, pet the dogs and watch TV.