Stephen Forte is currently the Managing Partner at Fresco Capital. He is involved in seed and early stage venture investment. Prior to Fresco Capital, Forte was the Chief Strategy Officer of the venture-backed company, Telerik, a leading vendor of developer and team productivity tools. He was the founder and executive director of Mach5, a Silicon Valley based startup accelerator and co-founder of AcceleratorHK, Hong Kong’s first startup accelerator. Involved in several startups, he was the co-founder of Triton Works, which was acquired by UBM (London: UBM.L) in 2010 and was the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Corzen, Inc., which was acquired by Wanted Technologies (TXV: WAN) in 2007. Prior to Corzen, Forte served as the CTO of Zagat Survey in New York City (acquired by Google in 2011) and also was co-founder of the New York-based software consulting firm The Aurora Development Group.

Forte is also a Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Professional, PMP, and also speaks regularly at industry conferences around the world. He has written several books on application and database development. Forte has an MBA from the City University of New York. Forte is also a board member of the Scrum Alliance.

An avid mountain climber, Forte leads a trek in the Mt. Everest region every fall to raise money for charity. After several years as an ex-pat in Hong Kong, Forte now lives in Silicon Valley with his wife. @worksonmypc

Based in California.