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Gary Vaynerchuck, Wine Library TV
Gary Vaynerchuk
has captured attention with his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business. After primarily utilizing
traditional advertising techniques to build his family’s local wine business into a national industry leader, Gary rapidly
leveraged social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote Wine Library TV, his video blog about wine. As his viewership
swelled to over 80,000 a day, doors opened to a book deal, several national TV appearances, and a flurry of speaking engagements
around the world. Gary’s dual identity as both business guru and wine guy has made him the “Social Media Sommelier.”
His impact on the wine world has been commemorated via his inclusion in the 2009 Decanter Power List, an index of the 50 most
influential figures in the industry. Recently, Gary was named #18 on Askmen.com’s Top 49 Most Influential Men of 2009. In addition to the Web 2.0 keynote,
Gary’s remarks on personal branding, social media, and business at FOWA, Strategic Profits, and South By Southwest occasioned
praise from established web denizens including Kathy Sierra and earned the admiration of countless bloggers and aspiring entrepreneurs. Gary’s landmark
seven-figure book deal with Harper Studio was featured in The Wall Street Journal and he was recently profiled by The New
York Times and Market Watch.
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David Siegel is an author, consultant, and investor focusing on the future of technology, the Internet, and business.
Always on the cutting edge, David is credited with being one of the first entrepreneurs and designers in the emerging web
site design business, designing his first site in 1993. He started blogging in 1994 (before the term was invented) and started
one of the first web-design and strategy firms in the same year.David has been writing books about the
Web since 1995: Creating Killer Web Sites (Macmillan, 1995; translated into 16 languages), Secrets of Successful Web Sites
(Pearson, 1997), Creating Killer Web Sites II (Pearson, 1999), Futurize Your Enterprise (Wiley, 1999), Pull (Penguin, 2010).
David
has an undergraduate degree in applied mathematics from the University of Colorado at Boulder (1982) and a master’s
degree in computer science from Stanford (1986). He worked at Pixar Studios one year before going into business for himself.
He has designed or produced three of the world’s top-50 typefaces (in terms of sales) and started designing web sites
in 1993. He has taught graduate design courses and seminars in marketing and business. He started one of the first online
design and strategy firms, Studio Verso, which he sold to KPMG in 1999. David has been lecturing and speaking about the Web since 1995, and
about the semantic web since 1998. He has delivered over 100 speeches on the Internet and business. Since 2000, David has
been an active angel investor, advisor, and board member. He is chairman of LTR.com, based in New York City, and Primoris
Brick and Paver Company in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He also lectures on dark chocolate and has been doing professional chocolate
tastings since 2002.
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Moderator: Maureen Farrell, Forbes
Maureen is a staff writer for Forbes. She covers entrepreneurs,
small business and innovation and hosts a weekly video series called BreakOut! featuring entrepreneurs with potentially game-changing
businesses. Before joining Forbes in August 2006, Farrell worked as a writer for Mergermarket and Debtwire, both divisions
of the Financial Times. Farrell received a bachelor's degree from Duke University and a master's from the Columbia University's
School of Journalism.
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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.
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John Frankel, ff Asset Management
John Frankel founded ff Asset Management
LLC as an early stage venture fund because he saw a market that was not being served well by established venture funds.
There is a VC funding gap, that not only starves early stage companies of capital, but also of advice and expertise, impacting
companies ability to grow and attract talent. John Frankel has been an early-stage venture investor for the past ten
years, with a broad portfolio of investments. He has worked closely with entrepreneurs in a variety of fields and has
experience advising start-ups. Mr.
Frankel started his business career with Arthur Anderson & Co. in the audit and insolvency divisions. He spent the
following twenty one years at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in a variety of roles that involved technology development, reengineering,
and capital markets. His primary focus is helping early stage companies deploy lightweight disruptive business models
to become the low cost player in their respective market. Mr. Frankel was an early stage investor and director of Quigo Technologies, Inc. which was purchased
by AOL in December 2007. He has also served on the boards of Alerts.com and The Goldman Sachs Trust Company. He
is currently a director of Patents.com and StrongTech, and a member of the board of advisors of Phone.com and OneTxt.Mr. Frankel earned a Master of Arts from New College, Oxford
where he studied Mathematics, Philosophy and Logic, and is a Fellow Chartered Accountant of the Institute of Chartered Accountants
in England and Wales.
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Lewis Gersh, Metamorphic Ventures
Lewis Gersh is a Managing Partner at Metamorphic Ventures which
focuses on start-up and early stage companies in digital media and transaction processing technologies, often sharing space
in the fund’s accelerator facilities. Prior to Metamorphic, Lewis founded Worldly Information Network, which created
and provided investment information to both the retail and institutional markets. The company was sold in 2002. Lewis graduated from San Diego State University and earned his JD and Masters in Intellectual Property from Pierce Law and
is a member of the NY Bar Association.
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Moderator: Dan Shiff, YEP! Interactive
Dan is currently
the Chief Capital Markets & Biz Dev Guy at YEP! Interactive, a boutique online media agency with ownership in an affiliate
network, virtual currency monetization platform, media buying infrastructure, and relationship with YEP!'s sister company
that marries an online sales force with an-on-the ground sales force in over 12 countries. Prior to Dan's involvement
with YEP!, he spent most of his career on Wall Street working at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, in capacities including
traditional corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, equity capital markets, institutional sales, wealth management, and
prime brokerage. He also founded a software company called Dragonfly Wireless and acted as their CFO. Mr. Shiff earned
a business degree from McGill University and hails from Montreal, Quebec. He currently resides in Venice, CA with his Bulldog,
Dr. Sigmund Freud.
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Saul Richter, Emerald Stage2 Ventures
Mr. Richter is the Founder of Emerald Stage2 Ventures and has been active within
the technology community for twenty years as a venture capitalist, entrepreneur and technologist. Mr. Richter
brings the Fund broad experience in the venture capital industry, having worked at a number of leading venture firms over
the past 10 years. Mr. Richter’s strong technical background in software development and systems administration, his
ongoing avid interest in emerging technologies and deep early-stage venture experience make him a strong leader of the Emerald
Stage2 Investment Team.Since
founding Stage2 in 2006, Mr. Richter has led investments in Evident Software, Maverick Network Solutions and ClickEquations,
and he currently sits on the Board of all three companies. Prior to Stage2, Mr. Richter was a Principal
at Himalaya Capital, which he joined in early 2002. While at Himalaya, Mr. Richter was active on the boards of a number of
companies including Concerro (fka BidShift) and Wasabi Systems. Prior to Himalaya, Mr. Richter worked at Lucent Technologies
in the New Ventures Group, where he focused on the creation and launch of software startups. In addition to Lucent, Mr. Richter
has prior venture capital experience working at Softbank Ventures (now Mobius Venture Capital), Jerusalem Global Ventures
and Flatiron Partners.Mr. Richter
also has operational experience as the founder of Zapper Technologies’ US operations. He formed and built out the company’s
US office, developed the go-to-market strategy, hired a sales force and worked closely with the Israel-based development team
to coordinate product development. Mr. Richter also worked as a financial analyst at Salomon Smith Barney and as head of new
product development at Dubois, Brown & Co, a financial analysis software company sold to Thomson Financial (NYSE:TOC).Mr. Richter earned his MBA from Columbia Business School,
where he was awarded the Beta Gamma Sigma Alumni award for overall achievement. He received his BA in economics from Columbia
University. Mr. Richter is also a frequent speaker on technology and venture capital trends.
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Gaurav Tewari, Highland Capital Partners
Gaurav is a Principal at Highland focusing on the internet, digital
media, mobile, online marketing and financial services sectors. Gaurav represents Highland on the board of Affine Systems.
In addition, he currently is or has been actively involved with Highland's investments in Navic Networks (acquired by Microsoft),
StyleFeeder (acquired by Time Inc.), CMI Marketing, Gotuit, GlobalStreams and Coremetrics. 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.
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Note: Program and speakers are subject to change without notice
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