BSS I Speakers

Opening Remarks: Richie Hecker, producer, The Bootstrapper Summit

Richie Hecker is an entrepreneur based in New York City. He is best known for running Bootstrapper.com, the popular blog site featuring startups and investors. Richie has a rich history in the New York tech community, having once been the youngest executive in the interactive space and successfully managed a profitable ad network during the dot com bust. He also founded an international outsourcing & lead generation company based in India, which he ran until selling in 2005. He enjoys building companies and working with entrepreneurs to realize their dreams. He was recently voted the 5th most influential person in the NYC tech industry.

Alan is the pioneer of Internet publishing having founded Internet World & Internet.com. He has created 27 newsletters, 15 database publications and published over 500 books and countless trade shows including Search Engine Strategies & the Web 3.0 Conference.

Matthew Weiss is President of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, New York Chapter (www.eonetwork.org), a worldwide organization with 7,000 business owner members. To qualify for EO, you must own or co-own a business with, at least, $1 million in revenue and be under 50 years old. The mission of EO is to help business owners grow themselves so they can grow their business. EO NY holds about 26 business expert events per year and members meet monthly in smaller groups called forums to engage in peer-to-peer learning. Matthew also runs a successful Manhattan legal practice, dubbed 888 Red Light (www.nytrafficticket.com), which fights thousands of traffic and truck tickets each year.

Kevin P. Ryan, one of Silicon Alley’s most well known Internet entrepreneurs, has started six New York-based businesses - Alley Insider, Gilt Groupe, Music Nation, Panther Express, ShopWiki and 10gen - in the past three years. Prior to AlleyCorp, Kevin was first president then later became CEO of DoubleClick. There, he was instrumental in building the company from a 20-person startup to a global leader with over 1500 employees. Silicon Alley Reporter voted DoubleClick “New York Company of the Year” and Kevin was named one of the “50 Most Influential Business People” by Crain's New York Business.

Scott Cohen is Co-CEO of Dimestore Media (www.dimestore.com), which has developed a branded entertainment platform for Internet marketing, and is changing the way consumers view and interact with advertising on the Web. Prior to Dimestore, Cohen was a co-founder and senior level executive of two companies that went public in the past ten years: 24/7 Media, which sold to WPP Advertising Group for $649 million in 2007, and LivePerson (NASDAQ: LPSN). Scott is also the former President of Game Trust, Inc., which was acquired by Real Networks in 2007, and was a founding partner in Red Tie Media Group, an interactive media consulting company.

Owen has worked in all aspects of the online world. He created one of the first 200 web sites on-line, and founded Thinking Media in the summer of 1995, an online marketing firm which pioneered client-side tracking of pages and advertisements, which has become the standard method for online measurement. He co-founded Sonata in 1999, a wireless company that provided location-based services and marketing to cell phones. Owen also co-founded, Petal Computing, a firm that developed software which allowed large numbers of commodity PCs to act like a single unit, useful in industries ranging from image rendering to pharmaceuticals. He was also an original member of the Board setting online advertising and media specifications and has served as Managing Director of the Wireless Advertising Association. Owen was named various times as one of the 100 Top Internet Executives in New York by The Silicon Alley Reporter. Owen currently runs NYC Seed, the first true seed fund in NYC in partnership with the City of New York.

Hank is an entrepreneur currently leading a new company called KloudShare focused on developing a new Internet development platform. Among many other ventures, Hank was Founder of one of the Internet's first interactive radio services, Ciick Radio, where he raised over forty million dollars from investors, who included Philips Electronics and Merrill Lynch. There, he pioneered many of the concepts and technologies that that underpin the current interactive music space.

Paul Sciabica is the Executive Director of the New York Angels. Prior to joining the NYA, he was an investment banker at Merrill Lynch where he managed a venture fund and was responsible for 50+ investments. He has also been a technologist/strategic planner for The Washington Post, The National Association of Securities Dealers and The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Jeevan is a technology entrepreneur and investor. In 2004 Jeevan helped shape the podcasting market as chairman and CFO of RawVoice, Inc., which created the first podcasting network and was first to monetize the medium. At RawVoice, Jeevan oversaw the company’s first acquisition and signed agreements with GoDaddy, Citrix and Nokia. In 1994, Jeevan founded Simply Blimps, an arena blimp manufacturer and led it to 150 employees and $30M in sales in 5 years.

Sam Klepfish, is an investor in early stage companies and takes an active role in managment in his portfolio companies He is currently the CEO of Innovative Food Holdings Inc. A gourmet chef quality food company. Since February 2005 Mr. Klepfish was also a Managing Partner at ISG Capital, a merchant bank. Since January 2001 Mr. Klepfish has been a member of the steering committee of Tri-State Ventures, a New York investment group.

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 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.

Eric Litman is Chairman and CEO of Medialets, a leading mobile advertising delivery platform based in NYC. Eric began his career with technical and software engineering positions at GEnie, a pre-Internet online service provider, and NeXT Computer. He is a pioneer of the Internet's commercialization, and as a co-founder of Proxicom, helped to build one of the first, largest, and most successful publicly traded interactive agencies. Eric most recently served as Managing Director of WashingtonVC, an early-stage fund and incubator.

Ryan co-founded GrandBanks Capital in 2000 and currently serves on the Board of Directors uLocate Communications, GlassHouse Technologies, First Coverage, Vela Systems, Vivox, Inc and SendMe Mobile. Ryan managed and served on the board of GrandBanks' investment Enpocket which was sold to Nokia Corporation in October 2007. Prior to co-founding GrandBanks Capital, Ryan had worked at SOFTBANK Venture Capital (Mobius Venture Capital), and SOFTBANK Capital Partners.

Sita Vasan has worked for Intel Capital for 7 1/2 years and closed over 58 venture capital investments in media, enterprise software, semiconductor, and wireless sectors. She currently focuses on the digital media sector for Intel’s Digital Home team. Prior to Intel Capital, she worked for the International Finance Corp/The World Bank where she was head of the Client Derivative team and also worked in Telecom/Infrastructure project finance; she was VP of Banque Indosuez’s Foreign Swap Marketing team in Paris; she also worked for Bank of Tokyo in London and Orion Royal Bank in New York and London. She holds a BA from Bryn Mawr and an MBA from Wharton, University of Penn.

Lewis Gersh is a Managing Partner at Metamorphic Ventures, a venture capital firm he co-founded with David Hirsch. Metamorphic Ventures specializes in digital media and transaction processing technologies, focusing on the start-up and early stage cycle. The Metamorphic team is actively involved with the portfolio companies, which include IndustryBrains, a market leader in CPC that was sold to Marchex, FetchBack, a retargeting company, Precision Prospects in cost-per-lead and Good Health Advertising, a vertical ad network, among others. Metamorphic has 11 portfolio companies that range from pre-revenue to $70 million in annualized sales, many of which share space on one of two floors in Manhattan.

Lubna Dajani is founder and CEO of Stratemerge Inc, a multinational management and marketing consultancy firm with offices in NY, London and Milan. She is also the Co-founder of the NY chapter of MobileMonday, the global networking phenomenon dedicated to the enablement of innovation and entrepreneurship. Ms. Dajani is an engaging moderator & public speaker who is widely recognized as a visionary & innovator of insightful user-centric solutions. Ms. Dajani launched her entrepreneurial career having achieved influential positions with leading companies in media, information & communication technologies such as GE, Viacom, Microsoft, Nokia, DotMobi, IWO, & a host of global network operators. Lubna is passionately engaged in several cause related initiatives.

Jay Levy launched his entrepreneurial career while in High School starting A Net Site, which provided web development services to early stage companies. After college and a stint at Morgan Stanley, Jay then helped to launch MPI Professionals a NY based consulting which was later sold to a publically traded consultancy. Currently, Jay is a founding principal of Zelkova Ventures an early stage investment fund, which is helping to fill the gap in the lack of ‘institutional’ early stage money in the tri-state area. In 2007 Jay received the 40 under 40 award from Westchester along with top 5 Entrepreneurs to Watch in New York from Crain’s.

Mr. Gupta is with RRE Ventures, an early stage venture fund in NYC. Prior to joining RRE, Girish was an Analyst at Lehman Brothers in the Technology Investment Banking Group. At Lehman, Girish was primarily focused on financing and M&A transactions in the Software, Communications Equipment, and Technology Services sectors. Mr. Gupta graduated with honors from Columbia University with a BS in Electrical Engineering and minor in Economics.

Peter Kestenbaum, Mini-Keymote & Business Development and Partner Advisor to the BootStrapper Summit

Peter Kestenbaum is a retired executive from SUN Microsystem where he managed the Sales and Marketing organization for Financial Service's segment for many years and while as Director of Americas Field Marketing owned SUN's Java business development and marketing program for Eric Schmidt which broke many of the existing business models in the industry at that time. He initiated many of the radical cross industry arrangements such as the landmark agreements between SUN, IBM and Microsoft over Java usage which became the seeds of the opensource movement. During the ".COM" era he served as the Chief Marketing and Business Development officer for Agency.COM and has served as a senior staff advisor at IBM. For the past few years, Peter spends his time advising clients in building business development and partner relationships during emerging or new market growth stages.

Jeff is a successful serial entrepreneur in NYC having founded his first company when he was just 10 years old. Over the last ten years he started over a half dozen companies that employ over six hundred people. One of them, Mimeo.com, is a Deloitte Fast 50 Technology company that has made the Inc. 500 twice in the last three years. Jeff is currently hard at work on his latest venture, Urgent Group, which uses voice analysis for recruiting talent.

Mark Mackenzie runs Digital Media Venture Capital at AllianceBernstein. Mark can leverage New York’s largest money manager (AllianceBernstein has around three quarters of a trillions dollars under management) on behalf of his investments - complementing existing venture capital and insight into Wall Street's thinking as AllianceBernstein is one of the largest consumers of IPOs. Prior to his current role, Mark was at AllianceBernstein’s sell-side subsidiary Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. where he co-founded the media strategy team and analyzed the impact of technology on the $4 trillion landscape including Film, Internet, Music, Telecom, Television and Wireless. Mark is a CPA and MBA.

Jim Brinksma joined Goldman Sachs & Co. as Vice President of Network Products & Strategy in 2004 and is responsible for the creation, development and execution of the global network technology vision. Jim previously held the position of Network Architect at Ciena Corporation and was responsible for driving strategic technology initiatives into key accounts and participating in business development efforts for partnerships and acquisitions. From 1992 through 1999, Jim served in the United States Navy and held several technical and managerial positions.

JB joined Greenhill SAVP in 2006. Previously, he was a Manager in Disney'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 received a BA with honors from Yale and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Hugh has been a fixture in the Silicon Valley scene for years having raised close to $100MM for his own ventures and helped other companies raise $52MM just in the last two years. Hugh is also a connector in Silicon Alley and an active investor. He has been instrumental in the financings of www.radarnetworks.com, www.worldgolftour.com and www.bitarmor.com.

Henry is a producer of the The Bootstrapper Summit and produces several events each year for market professionals in NYC. In 1971 he founded ASI Computers a company he ran for 20 years. As one of NYC's first Apple dealers, he set up ITT’s first microcomputer division and NYC’s Board of Education Apple program, with a client roster from blue chips such as ATT to many individual small businesses. He began his career as a computer industry analyst with a recommendation of a start up called APPLE and has developed a long term track record in distinguishing winning and losing high-technology strategies and stocks. Since 1988, he has been Managing Director of the Astrologers Fund, Inc., which employs Astrology as the primary analysis tool to manage investment funds and advise money managers worldwide. Over 20 publications including Barron’s have documented his prediction accuracy and results.

Currently Mr. Whitehill is Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Connectors Group and the Investment Analyst for a $4BN Hedge Fund, a Life Science and Technology-focused Angel Investor Group and a resource development principal investor. Mr. Whitehill is also the Co-Founder of the Young Political Society; a 501(c)4 non-profit organization providing an educational resource and aggregated bilateral platform to engage the next generation of executives, entrepreneurs and the politically interested while leveraging their collective untapped innovation, power and influence to foster change throughout this country on a local, state and federal level.

Rebekah Wu founded Right-Hand Partners based on her own experiences as an entrepreneur seeking start-up capital. Rebekah decided to be THE "solution" for entrepreneurs... someone that could be counted upon as a "right-hand partner" to facilitate critical introductions, and to catalyze business transactions that will catapult them to the next level. Since founding RHP in 2001, Rebekah has coached 28 companies raise over $160M of venture capital. 6 of those companies have been acquired. She has produced over 150 events bringing together active VCs and quality entrepreneurs. Rebekah was not only an experienced Founder and CEO of a software startup, but she was previously the E-Commerce Strategy Mgr. at a Fortune 1000 company, and a Regional Mgr. of Internet Solutions at AT&T.