Divya Gugnani

Founder of Behind the Burner

Divya Gugnani acquired a taste for her future in culinary arts while building a career in finance. In addition to a B.S. from Cornell University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, Divya holds a degree from the French Culinary Institute, where she discovered her inner chef. Divya started her career at Goldman Sachs and then worked at Investcorp International and Millennium Technolgy Ventures. Most recently, as a venture capitalist and Principal at FirstMark Capital, Divya provided companies with strategic and operational guidance to achieve their visions. Divya has also catered events and worked in restaurant kitchens while managing her corporate boardroom responsibilities. With the creation of Behind the Burner, Divya blends her long-time passion for culinary arts with her expertise in business.

Divya currently advises several startups and establish brands with board level roles. She appears on MSNBC: Your Business and has been featured in BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, The Deal, Eat.Drink.Better and several other publications.

Gautam Gupta

Associate at General Catalyst Partners

Gautam focuses on investments in new and existing technology businesses.

Gautam joined General Catalyst from Procter and Gamble, where he analyzed brand strategy and consumer preferences in the Consumer Market Knowledge group of Procter and Gamble's North American Fabric Care business unit. Prior to that, he worked closely with the sales and marketing groups at Wireless Services Corporation and CTV Live on Campus, during his studies at Babson College.

Gautam received a B.S. in Business Administration from Babson College, with a concentration in Entrepreneurial Studies.

Girish Gupta

Associate at RRE Ventures

Girish Gupta is an Associate with RRE Ventures. Girish is actively involved with the following RRE portfolio companies: drop.io, Ember, Payfone, and Rave Wireless.

Prior to joining RRE, Girish was an Investment Banker in the Global Technology Group at Lehman Brothers. At Lehman, Girish was primarily focused on financing and M&A transactions in Software, Digital Media, Communications Equipment, and Technology Services. Prior to Lehman, Girish was with Alkeon Capital Management, a technology focused hedge fund. At Alkeon, Girish helped form sector and company investment theses for portfolio managers and educated investors on competitive technologies and trends in the semiconductor space. While studying Electrical Engineering at Columbia University, Girish was a research assistant at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information, a university-based research center focusing on strategy, management, and policy issues in telecommunications, computing, and electronic mass media. Girish graduated with honors from Columbia with a BS in Electrical Engineering and minor in Economics.

Girish is a strong supporter of youth entrepreneurship and socially minded enterprises, serving on the advisory board of Ashoka's Youth Venture in New York City.

Ross H. Goldstein

Co-Founder and Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham Ventures

Ross H. Goldstein is Co-Founder and Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham Ventures, an early-stage IT venture capital fund based in New York City. He has worked directly with technology, communications, media and other emerging growth companies for most of his 25-year career. Mr. Goldstein has a combination of venture capital, technology start-up operating, and investment banking experience. Mr. Goldstein is DFJ Gotham's representative on the boards of Mimeo.com, Lumeta, ContextWeb, Searchandise, IZEA and Drop.io.

Prior to co-founding Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham Ventures, Mr. Goldstein was Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Interactive Imaginations, Inc., one of the East Coast's pioneering Internet companies, and the predecessor company to 24/7 Real Media, Inc., which was recently acquired by WPP Group. Prior to Interactive Imaginations, Mr. Goldstein was with Morgan Stanley for 13 years, where he had most recently been a senior banker responsible for equity financings for the firm's technology, telecommunications and media clients. He also serves on the Board of Directors of New York Cares, a non-profit volunteer organization based in New York City. Mr. Goldstein received a B.S. in Applied Mathematics-Economics, magna cum laude, from Brown University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Liz Hamburg

Founder and President of Upstart Ventures

Liz Hamburg is a “serial entrepreneur” with extensive experience launching new products and companies in areas of communications, technology, entertainment and media. She is the founder and President of Upstart Ventures, consulting to and incubating early stage companies. Through Upstart, she has been involved in the startup of 15 new businesses including her latest venture, ApplyWise, an online college admissions counseling company.

Liz is the co-host on WOR radio (WOR 710AM) of “Launchpad”, a weekly radio segment focusing on entrepreneurs and small business. She also blogs about small business for the Huffington Post.

Liz was Chairman and Founder of Hypnotic, a broadband content and branded entertainment company and was one of the founding managers and Director of the Board of Vimpel Communications (NYSE:VIP), the leading cellular company in Russia.

She has launched new products for Reuters Tokyo and Fujisankei Communications, one of Japan’s largest media conglomerates, where she worked on the first international television home shopping show and played a leading role in the introduction of Fuji’s Nintendo game software into the U.S.

Liz received an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a B.A. from Brown University. She is a Director of the Board of Safe Space, a New York based non-profit; the President of the Advisory Board of the Brown University Entrepreneurs Program and a member of the Advisory Panel of the Columbia Business School's Eugene Lang Entrepreneur Initiative Fund. She is a frequent lecturer on topics concerning entrepreneurs and women-owned businesses.

Stephanie Hanbury-Brown

Managing Director of Golden Seeds LLC

Ms. Hanbury-Brown is the Managing Director of Golden Seeds LLC, which provides investment capital to early stage, high growth companies.

Prior to that, she spent 20 years working in the financial services industry in Sydney, London and New York. The majority of her career was with J.P. Morgan, where she headed several global businesses including Global Head of Futures and Options, Head of International Private Banking, Chief Operating Officer of Global Equities and Head of eCommerce.

She is currently a member of the board of directors of Design2Launch and Artemis Woman, both private companies, as well as Count Me In, a not-for-profit organization.

Wenda Harris Millard

President of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia

Wenda Harris Millard was named Co-CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. (MSLO) in June 2008. She is also the company’s President, Media, a position she assumed when she joined MSLO in July 2007 after three years of service as a member of the Board of Directors. Ms. Millard oversees MSLO’s media businesses, which include Publishing, Internet and Broadcasting.

During her tenure, Ms. Millard has been rapidly expanding the company’s presence in the digital space, including spearheading the company’s investments in WeddingWire and Pingg Corp. She has been the driving force behind creating cross-platform programs for marketers to leverage MSLO brands’ passionate consumer connection.

A seasoned executive with over thirty years of publishing and advertising experience, Millard was formerly Chief Sales Officer at Yahoo!, Chief Internet Officer at Ziff Davis Media, President of Ziff Davis Internet, and Executive Vice President of DoubleClick. Millard has also served as President and Group Publisher of SRDS, Senior Vice President and Publisher of Family Circle and Executive Vice President/Group Publisher of Adweek, Mediaweek and Brandweek magazines.

Millard is currently Chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Ad Council. She also serves on the Boards of Do Something, Pop!Tech and The James Beard Foundation.

Millard holds an MBA from Harvard University and a BA from Trinity College.

Rick Heitzmann

Managing Director at FirstMark Capital

Rick Heitzmann, a Founder and Managing Director of FirstMark Capital, focuses on investments in the emerging media & advertising and data & analytics sectors, and serves on FirstMark Capital’s Investment Committee. Prior to founding FirstMark Capital, Rick was a Partner with Pequot Ventures. Rick led Pequot’s investments in StubHub (Acquired by eBay), First Advantage (NASDAQ: FADV) and US Search. Rick has led and sits on the board of 4 FirstMark portfolio companies, including Clickable, Weplay, Live Gamer and Riot Games.

Rick has a B.S. from Georgetown University and an M.B.A from Harvard Business School.

Darren Herman

Head of Digital Media at The Media Kitchen

Darren is a serial entrepreneur, adviser, and board member within the media, advertising, and technology industries. Mr. Herman is fascinated with the white-space that exists between the above industries and looks for companies who try and bridge them together. Darren's belief is that 98% of ideas aren't really new; they are repackaged and spun differently to the marketplace. He's been through the first and second dot com wave, and learned quite a few lessons and look forward to applying them to his latest endeavors.

Over the past few years Darren has started and been involved with several companies including IGA Worldwide, The Media Kitchen, MDC Partners, Varick Media Management, FortuneCity, Shopflick, and many others. Herman has raised over $40MM for his own ventures and helped raise $30MM+ for ventures he's working with.

Herman has won numerous awards during his career for both execution and innovation but most notably, BusinessWeek's Top Entrepreuenr Award in 2007.

Erik Hopf

Director of Operations at Disperse Interactive

Erik Hopf is Director of Operations at Disperse Interactive - a pioneering, interactive marketing agency specializing in helping clients navigate and leverage the fast-evolving world of social media (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Delicious, Plaxo, LinkedIn). In his role, Erik oversees and coordinates all client-facing departments, including production and creative teams, Disperse teams, research and analytics, and client services. Erik has been involved in social media since 2002, having worked on brands including Pepsi, TVLand/Nick@Nite and Alberto Culver. Additionally, he is a frequent speaker on industry panels.

Erik holds a MA in English Literature from Seton Hall University and currently resides in his hometown, Jersey City, NJ.

Doug Imbruce

CEO & Founder of theU.net

Doug Imbruce is the Founder and CEO of theU.net, an online advertising network that reaches over 8,700,000 college-bound students and parents monthly. 80% of the domestic 15-18 YO college-bound audience visits at least one of our sites every quarter, while our tools and services (including flagship destination theU.com) assist hundreds of thousands of students daily in determining vocations and post-secondary education options. The company is headquartered in New York City and was founded in 2005 while Mr. Imbruce was a Senior at Columbia University.

Amish Jani

Managing Director at FirstMark Capital

Amish Jani, a Founder and Managing Director of FirstMark Capital, focuses on software and systems investments in the enterprise, communications and digital media sectors, and serves on FirstMark Capital’s Investment Committee. Amish also leads FirstMark’s investment strategies for the Indian marketplace. Prior to founding FirstMark Capital, Amish was a Partner with Pequot Ventures. Amish has led and sits on the board of 7 FirstMark portfolio companies, including IMImobile, Conductor, Boomi and Lumos Labs.

Amish has both a B.S. and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jalak Jobanputra

Senior Vice President of New York City Investment Fund

Currently Senior Vice President at the New York City Investment Fund (NYCIF) where she oversees technology and digital media venture investments, Jalak spearheaded the formation of NYCSeed in 2008, a seed fund dedicated to funding early stage tech entrepreneurs in NYC, and sits on its investment committee.

Prior to NYCIF, she was a Principal at New Venture Partners, a $300 million early stage venture fund. At NVP, she founded and served as interim CEO of Real Time Content and was a Director of Procelerate Technologies. From 1999-2003, Jalak was at Intel Capital in Silicon Valley, where she oversaw enterprise software and digital media investments, including Demantra (sold to Oracle), Extricity (sold to Peregrine), Viacore (sold to IBM), Yodlee and Zinio. She was on the launch team of online financial research startup Horsesmouth in the early days of Silicon Alley in 1996, and began her career in media, telecom and tech investment banking at Lehman and Broadview in NYC and London.

Jalak has invested, and traveled extensively, in India, Europe, Africa, East Asia and Latin America. She is also active in supporting education reform and social entrepreneurship and serves on boards of Achievement First Bushwick Charter School (Brooklyn) and Echoing Green and has consulted for the Big Picture and Fenway charter schools in New England as well as Jobs for the Future. Jalak spent four months setting up microfinance programs and training women entrepreneurs in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania after receiving her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management in 1999. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Communications from the Annenberg School and a BSE in Finance from the Wharton School.

Robin Kent

Former Chairman & CEO of Universal McCann Worldwide

Robin is the Co-Founder of Rebel Digital. A company which consults to a number of digital music platforms and sells advertising on their behalf to “blue chip” advertisers.

Prior to this Robin was the founding CEO of SpiralFrog from May 2005 to December 2006 where he was responsible for raising funds, creating the brand, putting in place the ad sales team and signing record label and publishing contracts. He left along with the majority of his team and the Board in December 2006 to establish Rebel Digital.

Until April 2005 Robin was the Chairman & CEO of Universal McCann, the media arm of McCann Erickson advertising and a part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.

Robin joined Universal McCann in 1996 and was appointed EVP, Regional Director for Europe, Middle East and Africa in January 1997. Under his leadership in EMEA, Universal McCann has led all media agencies in winning media-only new business throughout Europe for three consecutive years. Many proprietary research programs and strategy methods that were developed under his leadership have since been adapted worldwide within Universal McCann’s 123 countries, 180 offices and over 4000 employees.

In April, 2002, Robin was promoted to the worldwide post of Chairman & CEO of Universal McCann. In addition to his role of global Chairman, Robin assumed the role of Regional Director of UM North America and focused on elevating the quality of client servicing and new business development in the United States. In 2002, Universal McCann won over $1.7BN in new business in the US; $2.5BN globally. Under Robin’s leadership, Universal McCann was named “2002 U.S. Media Agency of the Year” by industry leading publications Advertising Age and AdWeek. Under Robin’s Global leadership Universal has been successful every year at the Cannes advertising festival, winning many media Gold Lions and the Grand Prix in 2003.

Robin has been in the media industry for 33 years and has expertise across all communication disciplines. He began his career at Saatchi & Saatchi in 1976, where he managed the media planning and buying for Proctor & Gamble, Dunlop and BP. Subsequently, Robin spent 11 years at Leagas Delaney as Media Director, responsible for Porsche, Harrods and Adidas. After Leagas, he moved to Paris as Client Services Director for Carat, managing Disney, Danone and VW.

Robin has received several prestigious industry awards including:

- AdAge Media Maven award 2002.
- AdWeek/MediaWeek: “Media All Star” for the media executive category 2002.
- AdAge Global: “Top 100 Marketers” (AdAge Global, July 2003) where he was recognized for his “fresh thinking and initiatives.”
- AdWeek and AdAge voted Universal McCann “Media Agency of the Year” in 2002.
- Gotham Top ten advertising people September 2004.

Nataly Kogan

Founder of Work It, Mom!

Nataly Kogan is the founder of Work It, Mom!, the leading online community and resource for working moms and the Chief Community Officer for Daily Grommet, a new company that discovers, sells and tells the story of one unique product every day.

Prior to becoming an entrepreneur Nataly was a Managing Director with an early-stage venture firm based in New York City. While there, Nataly focused on investing in digital media and software start-up companies, had her share of great successes and dismal failures, but most importantly, learned one thing – she wanted to build companies rather than invest in them. Some of her favorite investments were Constant Contact, the leading email marketing company for small businesses, and Scanbuy, the leading global provider of mobile marketing solutions that use the camera phone as the link between the physical world and the digital world.

Before becoming a venture capitalist, Nataly worked in operations and business development at several early-stage technology companies, some of which managed to survive through the dot com bust. She began her career as an analyst with McKinsey & Company in New York.

Nataly has always loved to write and has a great appreciation for the power of content. A few years out of college, she started a publishing company together with her husband. They created a series of books called Students Helping Students, all authored by college students. After several years of running the company out of their one-bedroom New York apartment while still working at their day jobs, Nataly and her husband sold the book series to Perigee, an imprint of Penguin.

Nataly is also the author of The Daring Female’s Guide to Ecstatic Living: 30 Dares for a More Gutsy and Fulfilling Life, which was published by Hyperion in 2006. Nataly grew up in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to the US with her parents when she was 13. She graduated from Wesleyan University with University and High Honors.

Nataly has recently moved from New York City to Boston with her husband and young daughter, but she forever remains a New Yorker at heart.

Robert Levin

Editor-in-Chief, Publisher & Founder of New York Enterprise Report

Robert Levin founded THE NEW YORK ENTERPRISE REPORT in 2003 to serve the needs of the small business community with which he has worked so closely throughout his professional career. Available both in print and online, THE NEW YORK ENTERPRISE REPORT is the only media that caters exclusively to decision makers in the New York tri-state area’s small business market. Featuring award-winning "how-to" articles written by experts, each issue of NY REPORT provides critical knowledge that makes it a must-read for those looking to grow their businesses. In addition to its print and online properties, NY REPORT also produces events for business owners as well as hosting the annual Small Business Awards.

Prior to launching THE NEW YORK ENTERPRISE REPORT, Levin was the CEO of Profile Pursuit, a custom magazine publisher with clients such as Crunch Gym and the ATP. While CEO, he was in charge of revamping the company's sales process and improving its relationship with partners.

Levin was also the CFO of PenOp, a software developer based in New York and the U.K. Soon after joining PenOp, he became part of a three-man team that raised $4.4 million from venture capital and institutional investors, enabling the company to survive a cash crunch.

He has also served as COO and CFO of NutriPlus, LLC, an international marketer of personal care products. His responsibilities for NutriPlus included building a multi-functional management team, automating operational processes and designing and implementing a strategic planning and budgeting system.

Prior to his tenure at NutriPlus, Levin had his own consulting firm in Los Angeles that specialized in business management and finance.

Levin began his career as a tax consultant in Arthur Andersen LLP's Enterprise Group, assisting dozens of clients with tax and business issues associated with growing companies. A certified public accountant, Levin was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and earned his BS from SUNY Albany and his MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA.

J.B. Lockhart

Vice President of Greenhill SAVP

Mr. Lockhart joined Greenhill SAVP in 2006. Previously, he was a Manager in The Walt Disney Company’s Strategic Planning Group, where he worked on the acquisition of Pixar and the formulation of Disney’s new media investment strategy. Prior to Disney, JB worked in media investment banking and technology strategic investments at Lehman Brothers.

JB currently serves as a Board Observerat Pontiflex and Serious. He is also a junior Board Member at The Beginning with Children Foundation,a non-profit charter school organization.JB received a BA with honors from Yale and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Mark Mackenzie

Senior Digital Media Analyst at AllianceBerstein ESG/VC

Mark Mackenzie is the Senior Telecom, Media & Technology Analyst and heads the TMT Venture Capital effort at AllianceBernstein. Mark analyzes emerging global trends and utilizes that knowledge to drive late-stage venture capital and advise on themes that impact the firm’s public equity and fixed income portfolios.

In this cross-over roll, Mark leverages the largest publicly traded money manager (AllianceBernstein has almost half a trillion dollars under management) on behalf of his private investments - complementing existing venture capital by offering: a unique strategic vision through access to 300 internal and thousands of sell-side analysts; introductions to potential business clients through significant ownership in public companies; and insight into Wall Street's thinking as AllianceBernstein is one of the largest consumers of IPOs. Mark’s portfolio includes Brightcove (online video), Hillcrest Labs (digital home), JumpTap (mobile advertising), Lingtu (Chinese location based services), Obopay (mobile payments), Pure Digital (maker of the Flip camcorders) and Visible World (intelligent TV advertising).

Prior to his current role, Mark was at AllianceBernstein’s sell-side subsidiary Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. where he co-founded the media & communication strategy team and analyzed the impact of technology on film, internet, music, television and wireless. In this role, Mark co-authored books on the digital home, internet video and media’s digitalization. Prior to co-creating the M&C Strategy team, he was part of Bernstein’s Global Media research team covering large, publicly traded companies such as Comcast, Disney and Time Warner. Before joining Bernstein in 2002, he was a telecommunication, media & technology investment banker with Lehman Brothers in New York and London and a manager for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Beijing. Mark also worked for PwC in London where he co-founded a company, Pilgrim House Services.

Mark has a BBA in accounting from the University of Texas and an MBA from New York University. He is also a CPA.

Tad Martin

Founder of Cross Commerce Media and former COO/GMM of Overstock.com

Mr Martin joined Overstock as one of the company's early employees reporting directly to Patrick Byrne, Overstock's CEO. During his tenure at Overstock, the company grew from roughly $70MM in revenues to over $800MM, and went from a privately funded startup to a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: OSTK). Mr. Martin is a frequent speaker and has been sited for his extensive experience by many publications include The Wall Street Journal, Internet Retailer, and CMO magazine.

Mr. Martin earned a Six Sigma Black Belt and applied the methodology to operations at Overstock. Prior to Overstock Mr. Martin was a member of the nine person team which successfully bid for the right to host the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

Mr. Martin earned his Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Utah.

Louis Meade

Chairman, CEO & Founder of PCM Exchange

Louis J. Meade – Chairman/Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Meade brings over twenty-five years experience in private and public companies. Mr. Meade was a founding member and investor in Anthrogenesis, Inc., a company which was sold to Celgene (CELG-Nasdq) in 2002 for $ 70 million dollars. Mr. Meade has been involved in founding two private companies and has served on the board of another private company. He has experienced both sides of the private company challenge: as a person responsible for raising capital as well as an Accredited Investor placing capital at risk.

In his dealings with public companies Mr. Meade had worked for the American Stock Exchange for three years and was responsible for listing companies on the American Stock Exchange. He is Series 7 and Series 63 registered. Mr. Meade has also worked on numerous offerings.

Mr. Meade holds an M.B.A. from Pace University and has a B.B.A. from Benard M. Baruch College. Mr. Meade is also a CPA

Stephen Messer

Founder of LinkShare

Mr. Messer is the President of World Evolved, LLC. Prior to World Evolved, Mr. Messer served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of LinkShare until it was sold to Rakuten for $425m in 2005. As one of the co-founders of LinkShare, he revolutionized the world of online marketing creating one of the first technology platforms to measure and manage advertising relationships. Under Mr. Messer's leadership, LinkShare was recognized by Deloitte and Touche for two consecutive years as the number one fastest growing technology company in the New York region. In 2005, Mr. Messer was awarded the prestigious Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the New York Region.

Mr. Messer holds a Juris Doctorate from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lafayette University in Pennsylvania.

Dave Morgan

Former Chairman & CEO of TACODA

Dave is the CEO of New York City-based Simulmedia, Inc., a marketing technology company serving the television industry which he founded in late 2008. A serial entrepreneur, Morgan founded and ran both TACODA, Inc., an online advertising company that pioneered behavioral online marketing in 2001 and was acquired by AOL in September 2007 for $275 million, and Real Media, Inc., one of the world’s first ad serving and online ad network companies and a predecessor to 24/7 Real Media (TFSM), which was later sold to WPP for $649 million. After the sale of TACODA, Dave served as Executive Vice President, Global Advertising Strategy, at AOL, a Time Warner Company (TWX).

Earlier in his career, Morgan served as General Counsel and Director of New Media Ventures at the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association and was an associate with the Philadelphia law firm Duane Morris.

Morgan received a B.A. in Political Science from The Pennsylvania State University and a J.D. from the Dickinson School of Law. He serves on the boards of directors of newspaper publisher AH Belo, Inc. (AHC) and the American Press Institute and lives in Manhattan with his wife, writer Lorea Canales, and their two girls.

Howard Morgan

Partner at First Round Capital

Howard was Professor of Decision Sciences at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Professor of Computer Science at the Moore School at the University of Pennsylvania from 1972 through 1985. He has been a Visiting Professor at the California Institute of Technology and the Harvard Business School. During his academic career he served as an editor of Communications of the ACM, Management Science, Transactions on Office Information Systems and Transactions on Database Systems. His research on user interface technology, and on optimization of computer networks led to his bringing the ARPAnet to Philadelphia in 1974. As a result of this early participation in the internet, he advised many corporate and government agencies on the uses of electronic and voice mail, implementing it throughout the Wharton School in the mid 1970s.

From 1983 to 1989, he served as President of Renaissance Technologies Corp. in New York, where he supervised venture capital investments in high technology companies. He was a founding board member and technical advisor of Franklin Electronic Publishers, one of the first manufacturers of personal computers. He has been an active consultant and speaker to users and vendors in the information systems area for more than 30 years, and has worked with many of the Fortune 100 companies and numerous government agencies.

Since 1989, he has been President of the Arca Group, Inc., nurturing early stage companies and taking them from seed stage through initial public offerings. He also serves as a Director of Idealab, where he was a founding investor in 1996. Dr. Morgan serves on a number of public company Boards, including Franklin Electronic Publishers and Internet Brands, Inc. He is also Chairman or a member of the board of numerous private companies including CarsDirect.com, Partsearch Technology, Energy Innovations, MagicWorks LLC, and Planalytics, Inc. He has also served as CEO of Kentek and Franklin during various turnover or transitional periods. In 1997, he was named Delaware Valley Entrepreneur of the Year. Howard is a respected author and a frequent speaker at major industry conferences.

He received a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Cornell University in 1968, and a B.S. in physics from City College of the City University of New York in 1965.

Ross O'Brien

Business Development Manager at Geller & Co

Ross O’Brien serves as Business Development Manager at Geller & Company. He has experience working with emerging businesses focused on advising clients on strategy, business planning, raising angel and VC funds, and structuring debt and equity.

Prior to joining Geller & Company, Ross served as Assistant Vice President at JPMorgan Chase where he primarily structured debt to small business clients and provided day to day cash management services. His experience also encompasses many entrepreneurial ventures ranging from being the first employee of a UK based Digital Media Technology firm where he launched their North American business. Following that he founded his own digital technology company which was acquired in 2006. He began his career at Sony BMG and has international experience working in Hong Kong and Canada.

He is a current MBA candidate in finance at Baruch College and obtained a BS in Business Marketing & Management from Ferris State University. He is also a graduate of the Investment Banking Institute where he received intensive training focused on financial statement analysis, valuation methodologies and financial modeling. Ross is a member of many industry groups and frequently is a feature panelist for business planning and raising capital symposiums.

Jason Olim

Co-Founder of CDNOW.com

Jason Olim experienced just about every aspect of leading and operating a growth company. As the founder and CEO of CDNOW (NASDAQ:CDNW) and as a member of public and private company boards, he raised venture, debt and public capital; he acquired and merged with other companies; and took his company private through a sale to Bertelsmann, the third largest media company in the world. In his various roles, he hired management teams, developed strategic plans and acted as spokesman to the media.

A graduate of Brown University with a degree in computer science, Olim worked for two years at Soft-Switch, designing software systems for multinational corporations. Olim founded CDNOW in February of 1994, and became a highly recognized Internet entrepreneur. He has earned Entrepreneur of the Year awards from various organizations, including the Small Business Association, Arthur Andersen and the Greater Philadelphia Venture Group. Olim consults for startup companies on strategy, fundraising and organizational development.

Jason is a frequent guest lecturer at business schools, an instructor at The Wharton SBDC and needs to take his comprehensives to get his MA in organizational psychology at NYU. His current project is www.freshmanfund.com.

Andrew Parker

Associate at Union Square Ventures

Andrew has been a member of the investment team at Union Square Ventures for over two years. His responsibilities include sourcing investment opportunities, product strategy, due diligence, fundraising and fund administration.

Prior to Union Square Ventures, Andrew was a Producer at Homestead Technologies where he designed web interfaces, managed the realization of the designs through the dev-cycle, and managed user experience initiatives. Prior to Homestead, he worked for Groupspace.org as a Developer on a web service for asynchronous online deliberation, built on the LAMP stack.

A graduate from Stanford in 2005, Andrew received his B.S. in Symbolic Systems, which is a hybrid of Computer Science and Cognitive Psychology.

Santo Politi

Founder & General Partner of Spark Capital

Santo Politi is a founder and General Partner of Spark Capital. An engineer by training, Santo follows a force in his work that will never be found in any engineering texts: passion. He is passionate about the areas he invests in and he looks for entrepreneurs who burn with the same intensity. His success has been built on combining this intensity with an equally strong drive to eliminate, as much as possible, risk from the picture. His unique approach has taken him around the world pursuing opportunities. And his approach has been very successful. Santo has led Spark's investments in Admeld, Inform, CT-100/CNET (acquired by NYSE:CBS) Genie, KickApps and OneRiot. He has also participated in Spark's investments in thePlatform (acquired by NASDAQ:CMCSA) as a board member.

Santo most recently was a Partner at Charles River Ventures (CRV) with an investment focus on media and entertainment infrastructure. His investments at CRV include BigBand Networks (NASDAQ:BBND), Broadbus Technologies (acquired by NYSE:MOT) and Groove Mobile (acquired by NASDAQ:LVWR).

Prior to joining CRV in early 2001, Santo served as President of New Media for Blockbuster Entertainment (NYSE:BBI), where he was responsible for establishing a new operating division focused on extending the company beyond its brick-and-mortar retail stores into digital broadcast and video on demand.

Before his work at Blockbuster, Santo co-founded BT Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm affiliated with Bankers Trust. Some of his successful investments at BT Venture Partners include Aether Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:AETH), Novatel Wireless, Inc. (NASDAQ: NVTL) and DigitalThink (NASDAQ:DTHK).

Santo has held various engineering and management positions with the Video Systems Division of Matsushita Electric Industrial in Osaka, Japan; Panasonic Broadcast and Television Systems Company; and Weston Instruments, a subsidiary of Schlumberger Industries.

Santo is the recipient of an Emmy® Excellence in Technology Award. He has also been named multiple times to the Forbes Midas List, which ranks top venture capitalists who have created the most wealth for their investors.

Santo Politi holds an MBA in finance from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, an MS in electrical engineering from NJIT and a BS in electrical engineering and a BS in physics from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. He is fluent in Japanese, conversational in Spanish and French and is a native Turkish speaker.

Hooman Radfar

CEO & Co-Founder of Clearspring

As chief executive officer and co-founder, Hooman actively drives platform marketing and strategy initiatives at Clearspring. He was recently named one of Tech's Best Entrepreneurs in BusinessWeek and was nominated for Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year. When he is not busy building a better web, you can find him writing his blog Widgify.

Radfar graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in Economics and Computer Science. He holds an M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University where he researched Social Networking Theory.

Angelo Rajadurai

Senior Technical Evangelist at Sun Microsystems

Mr. Rajadurai is a Senior Technical Evangelist specializing in application optimization at Sun Microsystems. Angelo has been with Sun Microsystems for over 15 years where he has held various technical roles. Angelo's areas of focus varied from working on the Solaris x86 kernel, to supporting Sun's strategic partners and customers on various engineering and optimization projects, and more recently is addressing the technology challenges experienced by the Startup Community. He has presented on web technologies to audiences worldwide. One of Angelo's area of interest is cloud computing and related technologies. He has been working in recent times on helping Startups scale their application and application platforms.

Bradford Rand

Founder of Go Green Expo and Rand Luxury

Bradford Rand and his team have produced over 700 trade shows and events.

His latest entrepreneurial endeavor is Go Green Expo, and eco-friendly trade show that features the latest earth-friendly products & services. He runs a face paced firm that produces job fairs, luxury events, charities & beyond. Started in 1993, his company has helped nearly a million people find new careers! Some of job fairs that the company produces; TECHEXPO; for technology professionals: www.TechExpoUSA.com and Fashion Career Expo a career fair for the fashion industry; www.FashionCareerExpo.com. His other company, Rand Luxury, produces affluent lifestyle events for exotic car launches such as Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin, Lamborghini and Bugatti and charities such as the Red Cross and New York's City Harvest. Showcased at these events are the finest watches, private jets, wines & more for the affluent consumer: www.RandLuxury.com

Lastly, his team has successfully produced a children's television series for the family called "Gagsters" – which aired on WB & Oxygen as "Kids Behaving Badly" & 30+ countries worldwide. www.Gagsters.com

William Reinisch

CEO and Founder of XIV River Consulting LLC

William Reinisch is the CEO and Founder of XIV River Consulting LLC. XIV River Consulting specializes in strategy, venture capital, technology, fund raising, due diligence and innovation for high tech startups and companies that are pioneering new markets and venture capital firms.

Reinisch served as the Vice President in Motorola’s strategy and technology organization. In this role, he was responsible for intellectual property, standards and the corporate technology portfolio, in addition to positioning Motorola for growth in emerging new market segments and part of Motorola Ventures (Motorola’s Venture Capital Group). Previously, Reinisch was vice president of strategy and new initiatives. He joined Motorola in 2004 as a strategic advisor to the Chief Strategy Office, working to define and develop technology, intellectual property and investment strategies for the corporation.

Prior to joining Motorola, Reinisch was Senior Vice President of operations and engineering at Magnolia Broadband, where he led efforts in engineering, operations and radio frequency integrated circuit development for the company until 2004. Before that, he led the global technology organization at Multilink Technology Corporation, a company focused on high-speed component solutions for advanced optical networks. Reinisch has also held various positions at ANADIGICS, Inc., including manager of strategic technology alliances. Prior to 1992, he worked for Analog Devices in the company’s semiconductor division.

Experienced in many different aspects of the industry in both technology and operations, Reinisch has authored several publications, presentations, two U.S. patents and several patent applications. He holds a master of business administration degree from Fordham University and a bachelor’s degree in microelectronic engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.

Adeo Ressi

Co-Founder of thefunded.com

Adeo Ressi is The Founding Member of TheFunded.com, an online resource for CEO’s to research, rate, and review venture funds worldwide. Adeo serves on the Board of the X PRIZE Foundation, a non-profit chartered to inspire human achievements through competition, joining a recognized group of Trustees that includes Larry Page, Craig Ventor, Elon Musk, and Dean Kamen, among others. Mr. Ressi is a serial entrepreneur, focused on launching companies in new markets. Over the course of his career, Adeo was an early pioneer in the growth of the World Wide Web, an advocate for the burgeoning private space exploration industry, and a champion of casual games and related entertainment. Mr. Ressi’s affable and honest business style has helped him to build and grow companies from inception to market leadership.

Adeo was most recently the founder and former CEO of Game Trust, Inc., the leading community and ecommerce software platform for online casual game play. Game Trust, Inc. was sold to RealNetworks, Inc. (RNWK) on October 1st, 2007, for an undisclosed amount. Mr. Ressi secured over $15 MM in venture capital and acquired two companies to build Game Trust, as well as orchestrated large licensing opportunities with AOL, Viacom, MiniClip, and other global media brands. In 1994, he was a founder of Total New York, Inc., one of the first advertiser-supported web media and entertainment properties. The property was later sold to AOL and Tribune Media, becoming AOL Digital Cities.

In 1995, he founded methodfive, inc., a strategic web development firm focused on the media and entertainment industry. methodfive developed strategies and systems for global media companies including The New York Times, The BBC, NewsCorp, The Economist, Scripps, and Fox Networks. As CEO, he secured a $2 million investment from PricewaterhouseCoopers and grew the company to 250 employees worldwide, selling the company to Xceed for $88 million in 2000. Mr. Ressi was then Chief Strategy Officer of Xceed, Inc., the NASDAQ-listed web architecture and design firm with over 1,000 employees worldwide. At Xceed, he oversaw the filing of a secondary stock offering, organized complimentary service offerings across 13 offices worldwide, and developed the first intra-company financial projections. Before founding Game Trust in 2002.

Mr. Ressi founded Sophos Partners, a venture consulting and turnaround firm with offices in New York, Boston, Sao Paulo, and Tokyo, where he acted as interim CEO of EBusiness.com, an idealab company.

Sue Ross

Senior Counsel at Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P.

Sue Ross joined Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P.'s New York location as senior counsel in 2007. Sue's extensive experience with technology and technology contracts includes negotiating, drafting, and interpreting computer hardware and software, consulting, Internet, electronic signatures, web hosting, application service providers and non-disclosure agreements, many of which were for a federal government contractor. Another area Sue handles is U.S. privacy matters, including security breach laws, Gramm-Leach-Bliley and HIPAA. She also has experience counseling clients on advertising, entertainment and sports contracts. Additionally, Sue responds to inquiries from the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in matters of antitrust counseling.

Sue received herr JD and MBA from the University of Illinois.

Ellen Sandles

Executive Director, Tri-State Private Investors Network

Ellen Sandles is Executive Director of the Tri-State Private Investors Network (www.angelinvestorfunding.com), an exclusive angel investor membership network based in New York City. The network considers early stage ventures from throughout the United States. From 2006 through 2008, members of the Tri-State Private Investors Network invested more than $1 million in startup and early stage companies.

In the January 2009 issue of Inc. Magazine, the Tri-State Private Investors Network was listed as one of the leading angel groups in the country.

In addition to meetings where screened entrepreneurs seeking capital present to investors, the Tri-State Private Investors Network hosts investor-only dinners where current and prospective members can form new business relationships and learn about the organization. Frequently, the dinners have hosted professional investor guest speakers talking about such relevant topics as: due diligence, deal structuring, deal flow generation and interaction with entrepreneurs

Ms. Sandles has frequently lectured on Business Angel Financing, and was most recently heard at the Hatchery, the iBreakfast Club, the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce and the Harvard Club. She has been interviewed in the press including New Jersey Business News, Crains New York Business, Bloomberg Small Business and Bloomberg Business Radio. She has also served as a judge at various venture events including for The Funding Post and iBreakfast Series. Several clients of Ms. Sandles – a provider of reverse auction software/services for hospitals, a manufacturer of non-allergic latex, a provider of digital photo optimization services, a security software company, an oncology management firm, two Internet companies, and a provider of health care services -- raised initial funding through her angels.

Ms. Sandles graduated magna cum laude from Barnard College/Columbia University

Vincent Sbano

General Cousel/Co-Founder of PCM Exchange

Vincent G. Sbano JD- General Counsel Mr. Sbano was one of the founders and served as the Treasurer of Anthrogenesis Corporation a bio-technology pioneer in the field of stem cell acquisition and development which was purchased by Celgene (CELG –Nasdaq) in 2002 for $70 million. Mr. Sbano has managed real estate brokerage, mortgage brokerage and general contracting companies and worked as a Tax Director for Fortis Inc., a multi-billion dollar foreign insurance and banking concern.

Mr. Sbano holds a J.D. from New York Law School and holds a B.S. from New York University. Mr. Sbano is a licensed attorney in the State of New York.

Beth Schoenfeldt

Co-Founder of Collective-E

After graduating from Texas A&M with a Bachelors Degree in Finance and earning her MBA from Columbia University, Beth developed Marketing and Sales programs for major international brands including Clinique, ibeauty.com and American Express. She then went on to establish the highly successful learning solutions company FLOinc, which lead to her co-founding Ladies Who Launch (LWL). Beth grew this lifestyle and business-focused media company to over 53 cities and over 50,000 members.

Due to her reputation as a forward thinker and expert on women in business, some of the world's top media outlets rely on Beth for her insights into the latest trends among female entrepreneurs and business. Beth has been featured in outlets including Time Magazine, Elle Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, Pink Magazine, The New York Times, MSNBC, and "The Today Show".

Beth left LWL and co-founded Collective-E in 2008 and serves as both a business and branding expert, coordinates events and panel discussions, and enjoys her role as a expert guide and strategist in this area for all members. Beth resides in New York City with her husband and son.

Danny Schultz

Co-Founder & managing Director at DFJ Gotham Ventures

Danny has worked closely with private early-stage and mature public companies in the communications, media and technology industries for over two decades. He has been active investing in and helping guide several successful entrepreneurial start-ups prior to co-founding Atlantic Venture Partners, the predecessor to DFJ Gotham Ventures.

Danny focuses on investments in financial services, digital media, network infrastructure and mobile technologies. Currently, he is a member of the Board of Directors of Pivot Solutions (IM for Wall Street) and Magnolia Broadband (RF smart antenna chipsets) and is a Board Observer with ViVOtech (contactless hardware and software solutions).

Danny led Gotham's successful investment in XOsoft (disaster recovery software) sold to CA in 2006 and was a member of the Board of Massive (in-video game advertising) helping to steer it to a successful acquisition by Microsoft also in 2006. Additionally, he sat on the board of Pantero (data integration middleware) guiding it through its sale to Progress Software and was a board member of SMART System Technologies (contactless payment and CRM platform).

Danny is a member of the High Tech Evaluation Committee of the Yissum technology transfer unit of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem - Yissum. He is a member of the board of the Venture Industry Association of New York, an advisor to the NYC Seed Investment Fund and is a member of the Israel Venture Association.

Prior to co-founding DFJ Gotham, Danny was a senior banker with Lehman Brothers in the Equity Capital Markets groups in both New York and London focused on technology and emerging growth companies. He is a member of the Investment Committee of the endowment fund of the American Friends of The Hebrew University and is the Assistant Treasurer and a member of the National Board of Governors of AFHU.

Danny is a graduate of Columbia University where he received his bachelor's degree in Economics. He and his family reside in Westchester, New York. Outside of his entrepreneurial, VC and family-related activities, he can frequently be found at roughly 10pm somewhere in Westchester playing ice hockey.

Peter Shankman

Founder of Help a Reporter Out

PR Week Magazine has described Peter as "redefining the art of networking," and Investor's Business Daily has called him "crazy, but effective." Peter Shankman is a spectacular example of what happens when you harness the power of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and make it work to your advantage.

An entrepreneur, author, speaker, and worldwide connector, Peter is recognized worldwide for radically new ways of thinking about Social Media, PR, marketing, advertising, creativity, and customer service.

Peter is perhaps best known for founding Help A Reporter Out, (HARO) which in under a year has become the de-facto standard for thousands of journalists looking for sources on deadline, offering them more than 100,000 sources around the world looking to be quoted in the media. HARO is currently the largest free source repository in the world, sending out over 1,200 queries from worldwide media each week. HARO's tagline, "Everyone is an Expert at Something," proves over and over again to be true, as thousands of new members join at helparepoter.com each week.

In addition to HARO, Peter is the founder and CEO of The Geek Factory, Inc., a boutique Marketing and PR Strategy firm located in New York City, with clients worldwide. His blog, which he launched as a website in 1995, (www.shankman.com) both comments on and generates news and conversation.

Peter's PR and Social Media clients have included the Snapple Beverage Group, NASA, The US Department of Defense, Walt Disney World, The Ad Council, American Express, Discovery Networks, New Frontier Media, Napster, Juno, Dream Catcher Destinations Club, Harrah's Hotels, and many others, and he sits on the board of the Scott-e-Vest, the world's first technologically enabled clothing line.

Peter is the author of Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work and Why Your Company Needs Them (Wiley and Sons 2006) and a frequent keynote speaker and workshop presenter at conferences, and tradeshows worldwide, including The Public Relations Society of America, The International Association of Business Communicators, CTIA, CTAM, CES, PMA, OMMA, Mobile Marketing Asia, and the Direct Marketing Association.

A marketing pundit for several national and international news channels, including Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, Peter is frequently quoted in major media and trade publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, and USA Today.

Peter started his career in Vienna, VA, with America Online as a Senior News Editor, helping found the AOL Newsroom and spearheading coverage of the Democratic and Republican 1996 conventions, which marked the first time an online news service covered any major political event.

Tokumbo Shobowale

COO of New York City Economic Development Corp

Tokumbo E. O. Shobowale is the Chief Operating Officer of the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), the City's primary vehicle for promoting economic growth in each of the five boroughs. NYCEDC works to stimulate investment in New York across industry sectors and broaden the City's tax and employment base, while meeting the needs of businesses large and small. Tokumbo previously served as an Executive Vice President overseeing strategy and policy, business development, and energy and telecommunication policy. Prior to joining NYCEDC Tokumbo was a strategy consultant for Dalberg Development, a firm http://dalbergdevelopment.com/institutions.html strengthening global public institutions (e.g. UN and bilateral aid agencies) and also for McKinsey & Company, a global consultancy. He was previously Honduras program director for a small not-for-profit organization facilitating rural enterprise and energy development. He serves on the boards of the Dodge YMCA in downtown Brooklyn, the Excellence Charter School of Bedford Stuyvesant, and is chair of the board of the Leadership Prep Charter School in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Tokumbo earned his Bachelor's degree from Stanford University, an M.A. at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, and an M.B.A. at the MIT Sloan School of Management, earning each degree with academic distinction. He was born and raised in Minneapolis, MN.

Barry Silbert

CEO & Founder of SecondMarket

Barry E. Silbert is the Founder and CEO of SecondMarket (formerly Restricted Stock Partners), the largest secondary market dedicated to creating liquidity for illiquid assets, including auction-rate securities, bankruptcy claims, collateralized debt obligations, limited partnership interests, mortgage-backed securities, private company stock and restricted securities in public companies. Prior to founding SecondMarket in 2004, Mr. Silbert was an investment banker at Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin, where he focused on financial restructurings, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate financing transactions. Before joining Houlihan Lokey, Mr. Silbert worked at Bear Stearns, Smith Barney and Rydex Funds.

Mr. Silbert graduated with honors from the Goizueta Business School of Emory University, and holds Series 7, 24 and 63 licenses. He is a frequent speaker at conferences on the topic of trading illiquid assets and has appeared in many leading publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, USA Today, BusinessWeek, Forbes and Fortune. Mr. Silbert has been featured on Bloomberg News, Fox Business News, Business News Network and TheStreet.com.

Mr. Silbert is also the chairman of Pluris Valuation Advisors, LLC, a New York-based valuation firm specializing in illiquid assets.

Cindy Sperling

Director at Softbank Capital

Ms. Sperling joined SoftBank Capital in 2000 from SoftBank’s former subsidiary, Ziff-Davis. Her responsibilities include reviewing deal opportunities, conducting due diligence and monitoring current portfolio companies.

Ms. Sperling has over 10 years of experience in corporate development, strategic planning, and managing private equity and venture fund investments. Prior to joining SB Capital, she was a Senior Financial Analyst at Ziff-Davis. As part of the Corporate Development team at Ziff-Davis, Ms. Sperling helped execute on multiple acquisitions and divestitures and was a member of the executive team that effected the reorganization of Ziff-Davis. Prior to Ziff-Davis, she was a Senior Financial Analyst with private equity firm Dyson-Kissner-Moran. Ms. Sperling began her career as a Financial Analyst and Auditor at a major accounting firm.

She is a CPA and holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Michigan.

Marshall Sponder

Founder, WebMetricsGuru.com

Marshall Sponder is a Senior Web Analyst for a large IT Services company based in the Northeast and an Artist who maintains his own Search Engine Marketing Consultancy with B2B and B2C clients.

Marshall's blog, www.WebMetricsGuru.com is considered an influential blog on Web Metrics in the analytics community. Marshall also writes ArtNewYorkCity.com which covers the New York Art world along with his own art and is a chat moderator for Search Engine Workshops and World Resource Center.

Brad Steele

Managing Director, Square 1 Bank

Brad is responsible for identifying great young, venture-backed companies in the New York Metro area, making them Square 1 clients and serving as their full service commercial banker until a very successful exit. From 1998 until joining Square 1 in 2005, Brad worked for Comerica Bank’s Technology and Life Sciences Division as a Senior Vice President, Regional Manager and Senior Lender within its Mid Atlantic and New York Metro regions. Brad has served as the Senior Banker to over 150 venture-backed technology and life sciences companies. Prior to Comerica (Imperial Bank), Brad worked in various commercial lending, investment management and business development capacities with Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C., Citizens Bank of Maryland, and Norwest in Baltimore serving small to mid market companies in the greater Washington, D.C. and Baltimore corridor.

Brad received an MBA from The George Washington University and a BA from Gettysburg College.

Allen Stern

Founder of CloudContacts & CenterNetworks

Allen Stern is the Founder of CloudContacts and the Editor of CenterNetworks, a social media industry resource. Prior to CenterNetworks, Allen was responsible for the Internet marketing team at Georgia-Pacific. Allen has been in the Web space since the early 90s. Allen holds a Bachelors in Accounting and a MBA in Marketing and eCommerce.

Jeff Stewart

Angel Investor & Founder of Mimeo

Jeff Stewart is an entrepreneur and investor. His most recent company, Urgent Career, pioneers the use of linguistic technology to find, screen, and assess sales professionals.

Jeff has founded over a half-dozen companies, which combined employ over 600 people. Immediately prior to founding Urgent Career, Jeff started a technology-based financial intelligence firm that provided real-time analysis of semi-structured text information to hedge funds and other institutional investors. Jeff is also the founder and managing director of Geometric Group LLC and Urgent Ventures LLC, two companies that focus on seed-stage investments.

He is the founder, former CEO, and current chairman of Mimeo.com, a state-of-the-art, Internet-based document production service included in the 2004 and 2005 Inc. 500 lists of the fastest growing companies, the Red Herring 100 list of private companies that drive technology, and Deloitte’s Technology “Fast 500” list.

Mr. Stewart’s entrepreneurial career began with his launch of Square Earth, an Internet technology company whose customers included Citibank, Compaq, UPS, Merrill Lynch, Oppenheimer and AIG. Consistently profitable, Square Earth grew at a rate of over 100% per year, merged with Proxicom in January 1998, and successfully completed an IPO as the combined company. Jeff’s blog can be found at www.urgentspeed.com

Benjamin Sun

Founder, Community Connect Inc.

Benjamin Sun is an internet entrepreneur. Mr. Sun’s first venture was Community Connect Inc. where he served as President & CEO for 12 years. Mr. Sun co-founded Community Connect Inc. in 1996 and grew the company to be a leading online publisher targeting various niche markets. According to comScore, Community Connect’s sites - AsianAvenue.com, BlackPlanet.com, MiGente.com (pronounced mee-hen-tay), FaithBase.com and GLEE.com collectively generated over 500 million page views each month. This made Community Connect not only the leader in reaching Asian Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Christians and the LGBT community but also positioned their network of sites as one of the Top 50 highest trafficked sites on the Internet based on page views. Mr. Sun started Community Connect in his Manhattan based apartment with a small team of friends and a business plan. He was responsible for growing the company by raising over $20 million from notable investors including Comcast and Sandler Capital and using those resources to build powerful new media brands. In April 2008, Community Connect Inc. was acquired by Radio One, Inc. the fifth largest radio company in the U.S.

Mr. Sun has been recognized as playing a major role in bringing social networking into its modern day popularity while paving the way for advertisers and marketers to reach and engage niche market consumers online. Additionally, he has been responsible for developing the largest online diversity recruiting service in partnership with Monster Worldwide Inc. to allow corporations to source a more diverse candidate pool. Mr. Sun has been profiled by Crain’s New York Business as one of the top under-40 executives to watch.

Prior to helping launch Community Connect, Mr. Sun worked in Merrill Lynch’s Technology Investment Banking Group where he was involved in numerous corporate finance and merger and acquisition transactions in the technology industry. He executed over $500 million in equity financing transactions for Internet, enterprise software, and wire and cable industry companies. Mr. Sun holds a BA degree in Economics from the University of Michigan.

Sarah Tavel

Associate at Bessemer Venture Partners

Sarah focuses primarily on software, eCommerce and Internet investments. She has been closely involved in the firm's investments in Diapers.com, Yodle, Cornerstone OnDemand, Metalogix, Onestop Internet and CPower.

Prior to joining Bessemer, Sarah started and ran a general contracting business and was a strategy consultant with The Kerdan Group. She graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Philosophy. While at Harvard, she captained the women's Rugby team and was a Harvard Scholar. She maintains a blog at www.adventurista.com.

Guarav Tewari

Principal at Highland Capital Partners

Prior to joining Highland Capital Partners, Gaurav was a Corporate Strategy manager at Microsoft Corporation, where he worked with the top leadership to define and implement corporate-wide growth opportunities via organic initiatives and acquisitions. Before Microsoft, Gaurav was a consultant with McKinsey & Company, where he led strategic projects for Fortune 100 companies across a number of verticals, including high tech, financial services, healthcare and energy. At McKinsey, Gaurav extensively advised senior management on investments and divestitures, operational improvement and organizational initiatives, and in developing and executing technology strategies and roadmaps.

Gaurav’s other experiences include working within product management at Microsoft (.NET initiative), within software engineering at IBM and as an investment professional at Mission Ventures.

Gaurav holds seven US technology patents. He has authored nine published works of research and has spoken at various conferences.

Matt Turck

Principal at Bloomberg Ventures

Matt is a Principal with Bloomberg Ventures, an incubator and strategic investment vehicle targeting businesses that are synergistic with Bloomberg L.P. Prior to joining Bloomberg Ventures in 2008, Matt was a Senior Director at Oracle, where he focused on new product launches in the search, eDiscovery and collaboration spaces. Matt joined Oracle in 2005 as a result of the acquisition of TripleHop Technologies, a venture-backed enterprise software company that he co-founded and where he served as President & COO. Matt started his career as an M&A lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York.

Matt holds an LL.M. from Yale Law School and is a graduate of Sciences-Po Paris.

Rod Underhill

Co-Founder of MP3.com

Rod Underhill made his initial splash in the technology sector when he cofounded MP3.com, an Internet business that became worth more than six billion dollars. He is the author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Making Millions on the Internet" and other technology books. In 2008 he received a Webby Award, honoring his work in mobile technology relating to Podlinez.com. Attorney, law professor and technologist, Professor Underhill serves as an advisor to technology start ups.

He works with software companies and web based businesses as well as providing pro-bono advisory services to noted cancer research scientists and medical research driven universities. His help spans venture capital expertise to technology development as well as legal issues and business modeling and has two significant patents pending before the US Patent Office. Recently, the New York Times praised his Podlinez.com project by making it a "Tech Tip of the Week." Underhill is currently assisting several new start ups to reach their goals. He has appeared on the Geraldo Show and NPR and was profiled in Rolling Stone Magazine.

Rod serves as an adjunct professor of law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego, where he teaches music law. He resides in the remote mountain village of Julian, California with his wife and two children.

Albert Wenger

Partner at Union Square Ventures

Albert combines over 10 years of entrepreneurial experience with an in-depth technology background. As an entrepreneur, he has founded or co-founded five companies, including a management consulting firm (in Germany), a hosted data analytics company, a technology subsidiary for Telebanc (now E*Tradebank), an early stage investment firm, and most recently (with his wife), DailyLit, a service for reading books by email or RSS. Albert also served as the president of del.icio.us through the company’s sale to Yahoo. His technology background goes back to winning the German national computer science competition at age 18. Albert graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in economics and computer science and holds a Ph.D. in Information Technology from MIT. He has managed technology projects for organizations as diverse as Tacoda (startup) and Telebanc (leading Internet bank).

Albert currently serves on the boards of Clickable, a platform for managing online advertising; and Maptuit, a provider of realtime navigation; he is a board observer at Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade goods. Albert is married with three kids and lives in Scarsdale, New York.

Jason Yeh

Associate at FirstMark Capital

Jason focuses on investments in the emerging media sector, specifically in online gaming, social media and advertising. Prior to joining FirstMark Capital, Jason served as an Associate at Pequot Ventures. Jason began his career as an Analyst at Oliver Wyman, where he worked on several engagements across the retail, media and Internet sectors.

Jason graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006 with a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School and a B.A. in International Studies from the College of Arts & Sciences.

Allan Young

Founder of Rockdale Station

Allan Young is founder of Rockdale Station, a stealth-mode startup addressing the Search Engine Optimization/Search Engine Marketing industry. He has a background in software startups, venture capital, and private equity.

Previously, he was VP of Business Development at mediaFORGE, a venture-backed startup that pioneered widget-serving display advertising technology. Prior to that, he worked at Sorenson Capital, a private equity firm engaged in leveraged buyouts of manufacturing companies.

As an undergrad, he was one of the early team that launched the University Venture Fund where he sourced the firm's investment in Omniture, a startup that subsequently went public and is the leader in web analytics. Other venture capital investments include Infinera and Socialtext. Allan studied economics and political science at BYU and was a Fellow at Harvard Law School's Civil Rights Project. He also served as a basic infantryman in the United States Marine Corps.