Ronald Schmelzer, Managing Partner at ZapThink, is a well-known expert in IT, XML, Web Services, and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). He is well regarded as a startup marketing and sales adviser, and is currently mentor and investor in the TechStars seed stage investment program, and has been involved since 2009. In addition, he has started a number of successful IT startup companies including VirtuMall, ChannelWave, and ZapThink, and he sat on the working group committees for standards bodies such as RosettaNet, UDDI, and ebXML.

Ron also founded and was CTO of ChannelWave, a successful Partner Relationship Management (PRM) firm, which raised over $60M in VC funding and was subsequently acquired.

Ron founded and served as CEO of VirtuMall and VirtuFlex from 1994-1998. Ron later hired a CEO for the company, when it was subsequently renamed and refocused as ChannelWave Software Corp.

Ron Schmelzer was the lead author of XML And Web Services Unleashed (SAMS 2002) as well as co-author of Service-Orient or Be Doomed (Wiley 2006) with Jason Bloomberg.

Ron received a B.S. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an MBA from Johns Hopkins University.

He is currently a mentor in the Techstars Seed Incubator program since 2009, and an investor in Techstars since 2010. Ron has served as the chair of the RosettaNet Cluster 1 Workgroup, working group member of CPExchange, member of the UDDI advisory group, and was a member of the CompTIA Electronic Commerce Standards Board (ECSB). He has served on the board of the MIT Enterprise Forum, and an advisor to many startup technology companies.

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