Prior to HBS, Matt spent seven years in various roles in the high technology industry. Most recently, Matthew was a Summer Associate at Jefferies Broadview in technology investment banking where he advised on sale, IPO and debt strategies of various companies in the technology industry. Prior to that, Matthew spent three years at ATI Technologies, a $4B 3D-graphics silicon provider. At ATI, Matt focused on the integration of 3D graphics and digital video and was responsible for the TV on the PC integrated circuit product line.  He researched, led development and launched the company’s flagship multimedia processor. Before joining ATI, Matt served for four years as co-owner and Senior Hardware Editor of the successful hardware review website, AnandTech.com, where he helped build one of the world’s largest hardware review sites.

Matthew holds a BA in Public Policy Studies from Duke University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Member of New York New Media in late 1990's (angel investing group). Member of Golden Seeds, angel investing group since 2009. Investments range from SAS cloud company to Golden Seeds Fund.  www.goldenseeds.com Profiled in the book Beyond 85 Broads. Selected as one of CVC 30 Columbia Venture Community's "30 Columbians who have accomplished the most interesting things in the technology, entrepreneurship, and venture industries" (http://bit.ly/KGoxDU). Served as a Judge for various start up competitions including Start Up Weekend NY, Technovation, Columbia Social Entrepreneurs and Vatortv.

Rahul is an active participant in the Columbia Venture Community (CVC) and serves on the board of the New York Venture Community (NYVC).

He has over 20 years of experience in private equity, venture capital, finance, M&A and entrepreneurial activities including starting and managing Ajax Capital Corporation, a family investment office with substantial private equity activities. While with Ajax, he led the acquisition and financing of the NHL's Winnipeg Jets and the team's relocation to Phoenix, where they became the Phoenix Coyotes, and led numerous other acquisitions and financing.

For more information, please go to www.SuperInterns.com and click on “Get Your Interns Now”!

Prior to LocalResponse, (which pivoted from buzzd, a leading real-time city guide), Nihal founded ipsh!, one of the first full-service mobile marketing agencies in 2001, which he sold to Omnicom (NYSE: OMC) in 2005. Nihal is also a Founding General Partner at the world's first venture fund focused on mobile startups, ENIAC ventures; a Founding Partner of the India Internet Group which incubates and invests in Indian startups; and is an active angel investor including investments/advisories in Admob (sold to Google), Greystripe (sold to Valueclick), Movoxx (sold to Adenyo). Nihal graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Philosophy and a BSE in Computer Science.

He continues to work with many notable early stage companies and very involved in the technology community. He has represented venture capital and other funds in their formation and capitalization.

Sheheryar recently co-authored Sandstorm: A Leaderless Revolution in the Digital Age, a book focused on the role of technology and social media in the 2011 Arab Spring movement. It has been taught at Harvard and numerous other national universities. Prior to founding SLF, Sheheryar assisted Senior Counsel at The Coca-Cola Company in its Marketing Division and also spent time in-house at Scientific Atlanta – A Cisco Company, where he assisted counsel with telecommunication licensing contracts. He is a nominated board member of the International Trade Committee of the New York City Bar Association, and holds a JD from Emory University. While the law and entrepreneurship control the day, by night Sheheryar is channeling his inner Daniel Day Lewis by preparing for auditions as an actor.

She creates real value for clients with her extensive knowledge and ability to conceptualize and translate vision andtools into actionable strategy and bottom-line results, while also leveraging an exceptionally strong background in strategic marketing, digital/social media, corporate/crisis communications and corporate branding/imaging.

Ronna recently returned to her role as CEO of Clear Peak Communications, a management consulting firm she founded in 1997 and led until 2008, where she established an exemplary track record providing leadership coaching and communication tools for clients worldwide. Most recently, Ronna was CEO of Videotrope, a technology enabled service provider she co-founded in 2008. Within 18 months of launch, the company had 6 Fortune 500 clients for its first easy to use flexible digital video communications platform and her well-known rainmaking ability made it possible to support platform development solely with partner capital and internal funding. She currently serves on Videotrope’s Advisory Board.

Earlier in her career, Ronna was Senior Vice President with Prudential Securities Inc., at the time a $10 billion investment and brokerage firm with over 200 subsidiaries, where she headed Marketing and became the first woman in the firm’s history named to its top management group, the Operating Council. She directed the firm’s communications during a $200 million dollar product crisis, personally defending the company in a Mike Wallace 60 Minutes interview.

Ronna graduated from Harvard Business School’s prestigious Advanced Management Program in 1990. Her books have been published in ten languages and as a former contributing editor for O, The Oprah Magazine, Ronna was featured in the O Anthology of best pieces for her breakthrough “Me, Inc.”development workshops. Her most recent book, “Pitch Like A Girl: Get Respect, Get Noticed, Get Results” received rave reviews from both the mass media,including USA Today, and the business press.

Some other things Brett is proud of include: teaching himself Ruby, going to Dartmouth, getting published by Harvard Business, founding a rock band, starting a non-profit, and sailing 6,000 miles in a 30 ft ketch.

etouches has received numerous business awards including being named to the OnDemand Top 100 and MTO’s Technology of the Year. Leonora Valvo has also received multiple accolades including winner of the 2011 Entrepreneurial Innovation and Leadership Women of the Year award and an Inc.500 honoree. Leonora also serves on the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute’s Advisory Board and is on the advisory council of the Event Leadership Institute.

Marc's passion is helping entrepreneurs build their businesses from start-up to ramp to exit. He has helped management teams build their executive teams, develop their operational and corporate strategy and assisted them with executing financings of every type. Marc has served on numerous boards of directors in partnership with management and co-investors.

Marc has been involved in many successful companies including Coinstar, Mountain Union Telecom, CADIS Software, FrontierVision, Open Development Software, Precyse Solutions, Telemundo, Crescent Card Processing, Reiman Publishing, Alaska Native Wireless, Tritel PCS, Triton PCS, Wireless One, Brooks Fiber, Bresnan Cable, and Peapod.

Marc graduated with a BA degree from Emory University in 1983 and a MBA from Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania in 1987.

Prior to Upstage, Wachen was the CEO/Founder of Optimost. Wachen founded Optimost, the company that pioneered multivariable testing and optimization on the internet, in 2001 and served as its CEO up until its acquisition by Interwoven in November 2007 (Interwoven was then acquired by Autonomy in March 2009).

Prior to Optimost, Wachen worked for seven years at Sony, overseeing a wide variety of Internet initiatives. Wachen was CEO of Indimi (Internet Direct Marketing Intelligence, Inc.), a company majority-owned by Sony. In this role, he spearheaded the acquisitions of InfoBeat, AdTools, and DailyRating. Prior to Indimi, Wachen was Vice President of Online Ventures for Sony Music, where he directed many online initiatives, including Sony Music's investments in Spinner (acquired by AOL for $300 million), and the launch of the Sony Music Online Website in 1994.

Wachen graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College and has an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Earlier in his career, Charlie was a Co-Founder & Managing Director of a Chicago-based digital media agency, KMF, focused on intranet design and e-commerce system integration. In addition to Revel, Charlie is a General Partner at Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, the leading NY-born community-driven incubator. He is also a Founding Officer & Chair of the New York City Venture Connection, a networking organization comprised of the leading venture capital firms in the Greater New York area.

Veronika was also named one of the Mobile Women to Watch 2012 by Mobile Marketer and one of the Top 50 Women to Watch in Tech by Femmeonomics.

Bo is also a member of the Entrepreneurial Sounding Board at Columbia University's Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center. He played an integral role in the 2012 launch of the Digital Media Center in New York which serves to provide a networking platform for emerging companies and members of the digital media ecosystem. Bo was also recognized by AlwaysOn as a 2012 "New York City Power Player" for helping entrepreneurs who bring technology breakthroughs to the world of digital media.

Bo has also been named among the Top 100 IPO Lawyers in the United States. He has represented both issuers and underwriters in public offerings by venture-backed issuers across a variety of industries and has served as counsel to many leading investment banks including Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Friedman Billings Ramsey, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Prior to joining Motorola he was Senior Vice President of operations and engineering at Magnolia Broadband, where he led engineering and operations for the company. Before that, he led the global technology organization at Multilink Technology Corporation, a company focused on high-speed solutions for advanced optical networks.  He has authored several publications, presentations, three US patents and several patent applications.  He earned an MBA from Fordham University and a B.S. from Rochester Institute of Technology (R.I.T.).   As a native New Yorker, William is uniquely positioned to assist rapidly growing technology companies in the New York Market.

Clarkson graduated from the University of Richmond, received his MBA from the University of Georgia, and serves on the board of the New York Venture Community (NYVC).

Infected by the start-up bug, and influenced by his early Internet roots (Viacom Interactive Services) he took his commercialization chops to mobile app developer envIO Networks before landing, as VP of Product and Operations, at Semi-Linear. David is a graduate of UVM and holds an MBA from NYU/Stern School of Business.

She currently is CEO of Sepiida, an analytics Internet marketing optimization company, whose clients include Zynga Games Network, Ryzing, JumpRamp Games, Haymarket Media, Coveroo, and Real WaterSports. Previously, she was VP of E-commerce at Nutrisystem and also head of product management for Ingenio, acquired by AT&T/YellowPages.com, as well as Wallop, spun off from Microsoft’s private ventures arm. Anita holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from Stanford University with a specialization in Human-Computer Interaction. She earned her B.A. from New York University majoring in Politics with a minor in Mathematics. She is a member of the Mayor Nutter’s Digital Philadelphia task force and also on the Board of the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) and The Enterprise Center. She teaches product management and online marketing internationally.

Anita won the Rising Star Award as a 2011 Woman of Distinction from the Philadelphia Business Journal. In addition, Sepiida was named one of the Top 50 Minority-Owned Businesses in Philadelphia in 2011.

Before Branded Evolution, Warner was a Marketing Executive at Clear Channel Communications where he focused on digital initiatives. He is originally from Baltimore, MD and graduated from Denison University in Granville, OH.

Graham is a frequent guest speaker, moderator, interviewer, and press source on startups and online business. He has been quoted in publications such as BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, Crain's, The Huffington Post and BBC News. Graham mentors entrepreneurs and startups at: - The NYU Stern Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship - The Founder Institute - Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator

Graham was named to the 2011 CVC30 - a list of the most interesting people in startup ecosystem out of Columbia University. - http://columbia.vc/ - http://www.markpeterdavis.com/getventure/2011/11/cvc30.html Graham's paper, "Law Markets: A model for Predicting Laws, Governments, and Institutions" was published in Summer/Fall 2008 edition of the Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations. The paper can be downloaded at http://www.thelawmarket.com/ Prior to founding Ultra Light Startups, Graham spent 10 years as an IT project manager at UBS and Deutsche Bank. Graham holds a BS in Philosophy from the University of Illinois and an MA in Economics from New York University.

A frequent speaker, panelist, moderator and ghost writer for clients, her articles and industry insights have appeared in numerous publications. Prior to working in PR, Alison was a broadcast news journalist on stations in New Jersey and Delaware. She holds a Bachelors Degree in Communications from the University of Delaware.

John has considerable experienceas consultant, coach and mentor to small and emerging companies beginning in the late ‘90’s duringthe “.Com” boom (and ultimate bust) and more recently during the revival of New York’s Silicon Alleyand the significant start-up activity in Connecticut. Companies that he has been most recently involvedwith in various ways include Lumesis, Visible Assets, Owl Computing, Brainscape, Lucky Diem,Fabulous and Frugal, LeadPlace and others. And having founded or co-founded 4 previous businesses,John is currently in the process of rolling out his 5th company, “Heroes in Transition”, a career and jobsearch coaching service targeting military veterans transitioning into the civilian work force.

Before YellowHammer, he was the co-founder of eVariant who created MyHealthConnect.com. HealthConnect is a a cloud management and marketing platform designed for hospital systems and was honored as a finalist in Salesforce’s AppQuest awards.

directly act on this data to drive sales and improve user experience.

Prior to Triple Lift, Ari was head of the performance sales team at AppNexus – an advertising technology company. Ari’s work at AppNexus focused on increasing the efficiency of media buying for advertisers, ad networks, and publishers. Ari started his entrepreneurial endeavors at the ripe old age of 17 when he purchased University Trucking, a shipping and storage company, grew it to 125 employees, and sold the company in 2009. He loves to travel and enjoys road cycling and snowboarding. Ari holds a B.S.B.A in Finance and Entrepreneurship from the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Prior to Optimal Anthony co-founded Concep, a B2B marketing technology provider, with offices in London, Sydney and New York. When not talking about social media Anthony chairs the Junior Board of Achilles International, a non-profit that enables disabled athletes to compete for fun an competition.

and venture capital financings, commercial contracts, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, strategic transactions and other business related matters.

Nigel frequently acts as a mentor and advisor to entrepreneurs and regularly serves as outside general counsel to businesses.  He is a member of the Technology & Venture Law Committee of the New York State Bar Association and a member of the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association. 

always focused on cost effectiveness, time to market, strong ROI & differentiation. He has been involved in various projects with global responsibilities and is now recognized as a pioneer of the mobile entertainment & flash sale spaces between Europe and North America.

Since 2005, he has been based in NYC and has been building digital businesses in the internet 3.0, mobile technology and e-commerce spaces. He has been capitalizing on his expertise with startup companies between Europe, NYC and Silicon Valley to launch great companies with amazing individuals.

Co-Founder, President & CMO at Totsy
Investor and Advisory board Member at Dailysingle.com
Investor and Advisory board Member at TheCast.tv
Advisory Board Member at Exclusively.in
Advisory Board Member at Thecools.com
Advisory Board Member at iTrain.com

Specialties
US & EU Market Exploration & Development
Internet 3.0/E-Commerce/M-Commerce/Social Media
Content Strategy, Acquisition & Licensing
Strategic Business Development
Online traffic growth/User acquisition/Viral marketing
Capital Raising & Investor Relations

to conduct mission critical business online every day.

Manish is a recognized expert in his field and a sought after public speaker on topics ranging  from ecommerce and online marketing to business leadership and entrepreneurship. GoECart has received numerous awards, including multiple prestigious Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) CoDiE Awards. Manish has been interviewed and featured in dozens of publications and magazines, including The New York Times, Entrepreneur magazine, and Internet Retailer. Manish received his B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Bridgeport. He also holds multiple business process patents in collaborative commerce. Follow him on twitter @GoECart.

Prior to ProFounder, Dana worked on the Corporate Product Innovations team at Estee Lauder and in Marketing at L'Oreal. Dana created a unique major at Stanford University, earning her BA in Product Development, and returned to earn her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2009. She is a champion powerlifter, and die-hard New Yorker.

doing acquisitions, investments, and strategy within the communications, collaboration, and video verticals.

Wheeler’s past experience also includes working briefly at the London-based venture capital firm DN Capital, focused on early stage ecommerce companies. She began her career in growth capital private equity at Summit Partners in Boston.

Wheeler graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University with a BA in Psychology and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Before TechStars she spent two years in Investment Banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch where she worked on IPO transactions within the Technology sector. Amanda graduated from The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School with a BS in Finance and Marketing.

Earlier he was President of a division of Sara Lee Corporation and CEO of a family consumer products company. He was President of the Harvard Business School Club of NY, Chairman of the Metro New York Chapter of the Young Presidents Organization, and is a graduate of the University of Southern California.

Bjørn has a master's degree in Strategic Marketing Management with an Internet focus from BI Norwegian Business School and Griffith University in Australia, a bachelor's degree in International Marketing from BI Norwegian Business School, and bachelor's equivalent in Multimedia from Griffith University.

in American Studies.

He is an industry leader as well as an accomplished public speaker, and in 2007, he was named CMIT Rookie of the Year. In 2009, Armando co-wrote and published his first book entitled: I Just Want My Computers to Work! The LI Press name CMIT of Long Island the #1 company in the Computer Support Category, and 2nd place in the Green Business category for their efforts to recycle and reduce power.

Prior to NNN, Mr. Klein was CEO of Times Mirror Magazines, a leading magazine publisher with $300 million in revenue and 25 titles including Golf Magazine, Popular Science, Transworld Skateboarding, and Skiing; and leading digital properties including popsci.com, and golfmagazine.com. 

He is a founder of MDconsult.com, an aggregator of medical information for professionals, now owned by Elsevier.  He also founded Healthy Living Media, a private-equity backed venture, with North Castle Partners.  Mr. Klein is a former management consultant with McKinsey where he developed growth strategies for media and consumer goods companies.  Mr. Klein began his career at Bain & Company in Menlo Park, CA.

Mr. Klein holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an AB from Dartmouth College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude in computer science. He is Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine and is on the board of the New York City Police Foundation. Mr. Klein can be found on twitter as @JKNews.

Peter comfortably straddles the worlds of traditional PR and digital communications, frequently lecturing and writing about the two on his blog and for Forbes.com. He maintains an active engagement in the social media graph, i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Quora, LinkedIn, Instagram, RebelMouse, and (far) too many others.

He serves as president of the Publicity Club of New York and on the advisory boards for Social Media Week, the Center for Communication, and the Communications & Media Studies Program at Tufts University from which he holds a BA in Political Science and French.

Prior to F#, he co-founded the digital media consultancy Fever Creative where he successfully helped launch five companies. Pete began his career at VF Corporation, the world’s preeminent global apparel leader. While at VF, he worked with the finance department and European business operations of VF’s brands, notably Reef and Vans, out of their Lugano, Switzerland office. Pete created and implemented the VF’s Analyst Development Program (ADP) to promote interdepartmental collaboration, cost savings, and “intrapreneurial” innovation.

Pete holds a B.A. in Finance from James Madison University and was a graduate of the distinguished Miller Leadership program while at James Madison.

Dan has 15 years of experience envisioning and building disruptive business models. Over the years, Dan has helped build or launch a number of successful startups, including: Bookrenter, Fileboard, Kno, Loudcloud, Zenprise and Savision.

He began his career at an early behavior and contextual advertising startup backed by Sequoia named Affinia. He later helped define cloud computing at Loudcloud (later known as Opsware; acquired by HP). He also co-founded BookRenter.com, where he fathered the textbook rental model. Previously, Dan lead product management for Zenprise, which is a leader in Mobile Device Management. Before Zenprise, Dan led several global service management initiatives at EDS (now HP Services) where he was responsible for driving significant technology investments globally.

Dan holds an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management, and a Bachelors of Science in Economics and Bachelors of Science in Operations Management from Santa Clara University.

Ben and the rest of the DigitalOcea team have recently completed the TechStars accelerator program in Boulder, CO and have been experiencing serious traction and growth since graduating with almost 40,000 virtual servers launched since inception. Ben has been interviewed and featured on Forbes, TechCrunch, PandoDaily, and TheNextWeb.

He is a graduate from Cornell University and University of Virginia's Darden Business School. In addition to his official roles, Larry serves as an advisor/mentor to a number of startups.

Mike has 16 years of software engineering and product management experience in startups and new product development in financial services, healthcare and education. He previously designed and developed cross platform systems and services for Schwab.com, SchwabPlan.com and the back-end systems from the brokerage and retirement planning units to support client assets and investor accounts.

Mike was a software architect and engineering manager for the RIS Logic CS 1.0 product that grew from annual revenue of $150,000 to $40 million over a four year period. At Dynamic Imaging, a New Jersey based early stage software company, he was the Director of Product Management responsible for new product innovation in the three years leading up to their acquisition by General Electric. At GE, Mike led product strategy for the Dynamic Imaging Solutions division and led product management for new product innovation for the parent business group.

Mike is currently on a leave of absence from Columbia University’s Mathematics program. Mike is the lead author of four patents in the areas of adaptive workflow, resource prioritization and user experience.

Prior to that, Michael founded Blue Angel Ventures, a seed funding and venture advisory firm in Research Triangle Park, NC and partnered with entrepreneurs in co-founding or turnaround management roles. Prior to entering venture capital, Michael held engineering and product management roles in fiber optics, wireless infrastructure, smartphones and applications at Nortel, Ericsson and Nextel. Michael earned his MBA from Duke University-Fuqua and MS in Electrical Engineering and Management of Technology from Georgia Tech.

Current affiliations include being a Board Member of Verity Wines LLC (the mid-tier $30M+ wine distributor in NY and NJ for 300 wineries and producers from 14 global wine-producing regions), a Trustee on the University of Rochester Board, a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Association, Membership Co-Chair for Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of NY, a Board Member of Harvard Business School Women's NYC Association, Member of the Executive Forum, Chair of Executive Forum Angels and has leadership roles at other organizations. She is quickly becoming an expert on social media, start ups and entrepreneurship.

Previously, Kathy created and led functions at PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP (PwC) as Managing Director of Operations. The functions included sourcing/procurement, real estate leasing/facilities, security, crisis management, operational risk management, records management, travel services, meeting/event management, supplier diversity …and the technology to enable these functions. Prior to 2000, she was at Aetna Inc as Senior Vice President of Aetna Retirement Services and as COO of Aetna Business Resources. She began her career in sales and marketing leadership roles at Aetna and at INA (now Cigna). Staff reporting to her has been over 3000 people with related budgets of $550 million, as well as the accountability for the firms’ spends of over $3 billion.

Her entrepreneurial lifestyle helps her expand my own mind, absorb new experiences and develop high-touch relationships with my customers and network.  She's actively involved in the entrepreneurship & innovation capital ecosystems via New York University’s Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Stern School of Business, Springboard Enterprises’ Tech/Media Accelerator, Founder Institute, Astia, NBIA (National Business Incubation Association) and NAWBO (National Association of Women Business Owners) where she served as a Board Member.

Her corporate background includes management consulting, M&A advisory, stakeholder buy-in, financial analysis & product development for multi-national firms including JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank Deloitte & Touche & PwC.  Veronica's deal sheet includes various multi-national transactions involving due diligence, senior executive evaluation, accelerated transition, enterprise valuation and interim-CFO special projects such as preparing enterprises for sale. Veronica co-founded & invested in a B2B new media & events company serving C-level executives in the financial services industry with key clients comprising the Fortune 500, Nasdaq 100 and Global Fortune 100 firms who manage over $13 trillion in the U.S. and over $30 trillion domestically; she continues to spearhead business development initiatives.  Veronica graduated from NYU’s Stern School of business with concentrations in finance & accounting and NYU’s Heyman Center for Philanthropy in Fundraising where she earned my certificate in philanthropy & fundraising.

Entrepreneurship is a journey where you can explore your passions and focus your energies to build something meaningful.  For anyone who has a vision:  to act upon it, recruit talented people, find partners who want to help you succeed, engage influencers who will spread your vision and execute well by scaling.  You will be rewarded exponentially!

Caitlin joined the firm in August 2012 from LearnVest, a personal finance start-up in NYC, where she served as Director of Business Development.  Previously, she was the Associate Director of Business Development at Behance, a platform for showcasing and discovering creative work online. Caitlin was also the President and Co-founder of Slope Media Group, a student-run media organization based out of Cornell University that includes internet radio, internet television and a digital magazine. 

Caitlin holds a BA in History from Cornell University with a minor in Science and Technology Studies.

Outside of the office, Caitlin enjoys kite-boarding, traveling and playing guitar.  At Cornell, she was a coxswain on the men’s lightweight crew team and played women's club basketball. And she once rode an elephant in Laos!

Alan Brody is the author of ARE YOU FUNDABLE? and founder of the iBreakfast.com, New York, NJ and L.A.s longest running Digital Media Executive Networking Group, the iNNNOVATOR iEvening for Start-Ups.