Speakers

We are pleased to have the following speakers join us at Disrupt NY. Speakers and guests will be announced on a rolling basis. Please check back for announcements. If you’re looking to buy tickets, you can do so here.

SPEAKER SUGGESTIONS:    We have limited panel slots available but always appreciate recommendations that align with our content agenda.  Please click HERE for form submissions.  We regret that we are unable to follow up on all submissions but will be in touch if we see a specific fit.

mikeMike Abbott
Senior Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Mike Abbott joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a partner in 2011. He focuses on investments in the firm’s digital practice, helping entrepreneurs in the social, mobile and cloud computing sectors rapidly scale teams and ventures. Mike serves as an expert resource on enterprise infrastructure, cloud computing and “big data.” He also helps entrepreneurs win the race for talent in a hyper-competitive recruitment environment.

An engineering leader, entrepreneur and investor, Mike led the building of innovative, high-performance applications and services at Twitter, Palm and Microsoft before he joined KPCB. Mike is also an expert in “big data” businesses, having founded Composite Software. Formerly the vice president of engineering at Twitter, Mike led the team to rebuild and solidify Twitter’s infrastructure, growing the engineering team from 80 to more than 350 engineers in less than a year and a half, and scaling Twitter’s architecture to support 250 million daily tweets. Before joining Twitter, Mike led the software development team at Palm that created HP/Palm’s next-generation webOS platform. Earlier in his career, Mike was the general manager at Microsoft for .NET online services, which became Azure. He was also co-founder of Passenger Inc. Mike has advised and invested in numerous software companies throughout his career, including Cloudera, Hearsay Labs, Jawbone and Saynow.

Mike holds a bachelor’s degree from California Polytechnic State University and has completed coursework toward a Ph.D. at the University of Washington.

bongIme Archibong
Platform Partnerships, Facebook

Ime Archibong leads platform partnerships in the music, video and TV industries at Facebook. Prior to joining Facebook, Ime was an Advanced Technology Business Development Professional at IBM where he focused on the licensing of IBM’s global portfolio of storage research technology.

Ime started his career at IBM as a software engineer working in the Systems and Technology Group before moving over to corporate strategy, and eventually settling in business development.

Ime holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Yale University and a MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

jimJim Bankoff
Chairman and CEO, Vox Media Twitter

Jim runs all aspects of Vox Media, one of the fastest growing online publishers, focused on the sports, personal technology and gaming categories. Vox is solving the problem of developing high-value digital journalism, storytelling and brand advertising at scale. Its audiences are among the most engaged and affluent on the web.

SB Nation, its sports brand, boasts over 30mm users per month across 300 individually branded, fan-centric sports communities, each covering a specific professional or college team, league or sport. In November 2011, Vox Media launched The Verge, which has quickly established itself as a category leader and the fastest growing site that covers technology. In October, Vox launched Polygon, a site dedicated to news and community for fans of gaming, anchored by an all-star roster of writers. All Vox Media sites are built upon, Chorus, its world-class proprietary publishing platform.

The company enjoys support from leading investors including Accel Partners, Comcast Interactive Capital, Khosla Ventures and Allen & Company.

deborahDeborah Benton
President & COO, Nasty Gal

Deborah is a seasoned consumer retail executive with a specific passion for industries focused on women. As president and COO of Nasty Gal, a global online retail destination for fashion-forward, free-thinking women, Deborah is focused on delivering an incredible shopping experience to each and every customer as well as ensuring the company has the infrastructure, resources and technology required to scale the business through tremendously rapid growth.

Prior to Nasty Gal, Deborah was COO of ShoeDazzle, an online women’s fashion retail site that provides stylist curated selections within personal showrooms, where she oversaw Merchandising, Client Services and all sourcing and operations. Earlier, Deborah served as Executive Vice President, Operations and Inside Sales at Teleflora, managing a $100 MM P&L and over 125 employees across multiple departments.

Deborah began her retail career as part of the pre‐IPO team at eToys as Director of Customer Service Strategy, managing large-scale call center and operations initiatives. Deborah’s business career began as a management consultant at the Mitchell Madison Group. Deborah holds an MBA and BA in Health from Queen’s University (Canada).

nikoNiko Bonatsos
Principal, General Catalyst

Niko is a Principal at General Catalyst and GC Seed, the firm’s seed investment vehicle. Niko focuses on investments in IT (mobile, education technology, consumerized IT business applications & consumer health) as well as seed-stage opportunities with an outlier potential. He is particularly interested in working with first time founders, who have a strong perspective about solving big problems their way.

Concurrent with his academic career, Niko worked on lean manufacturing for Yokogawa Electric Corp, biomedical signal processing at Harvard Medical School/MGH, cloud computing at Stanford University and as a founding team member of myLinkpower, a social networking start-up.

Niko is a graduate of Stanford University, earning an M.S. in Management Science and Engineering as a Fulbright Scholar; the University of Cambridge, earning an M.Phil. in Manufacturing Engineering and Management; and the National Technical University of Athens, earning an engineer’s degree (Dipl.-Ing) in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

john-1John Borthwick
CEO, betaworks

John Borthwick is CEO of betaworks. betaworks is a technology company that operates as a studio. betaworks builds new products, runs companies and seed invests.

Prior to betaworks John was Senior Vice President of Alliances and Technology Strategy for Time Warner Inc. John’s company, WP-Studio, founded in 1994, was one of the first content studios in New York’s Silicon Alley. John holds an MBA from Wharton (1994) and an undergraduate degree BA in Economics from Wesleyan University (1987). He sits on the board of WNYC and Rhizome@ the New Museum.

bothaRoelof Botha
Partner, Sequoia Capital

Roelof Botha is a partner at Sequoia Capital, and works with a broad range of companies. Some democratize technology access (Square, Eventbrite, Unity, Nimbula); some create global user communities (YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram); and others disrupt markets through innovative business models (Evernote, Weebly, Xoom). Roelof also sits on the boards of Aliph, Mahalo, and TokBox. Roelof is a champion of consumer Web plays and considers himself “just another consumer.”

Roelof led the initial financing of YouTube on behalf of Sequoia Capital in 2005.

Roelof served as the Chief Financial Officer of PayPal, where he led the company through its IPO in 2002, and the acquisition by eBay before joining Sequoia Capital in 2003.

Roelof loves to hear a founder recount what inspired them to strike out on their own and to gain an understanding of how the founder is uniquely solving a customer pain point.

jayJay Bregman
Founder and CEO, Hailo

Jay Bregman is the Founder / CEO of Hailo – a network that matches passengers and licensed taxi drivers using a tool which helps to make cabbies’ days more sociable – and profitable. Hailo has raised $50M in investment from an all-star cast of investors including Union Square Ventures, Accel Partners, Wellington Partners, Atomico Ventures, Richard Branson and KDDI. Together they’ve funded Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and Tumblr, founded Skype, and brought loads of other fanatistic companies to life all over the world.

Previously Jay founded eCourier.co.uk which was voted London’s most inspirational business by the Evening Standard in 2007. He holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an MSc from the London School of Economics. Jay was named on the Times’ 100 People to Watch in 2012.

carterTroy Carter
Chairman CEO, Atom Factory
Co-founder Backplane

Troy Carter is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Atom Factory, an entertainment management company defining popular culture globally. As a digital and social entrepreneur, Carter has defined the careers of numerous recording artists, including multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winner Lady Gaga. Carter began his career in Philadelphia working for Will Smith and James Lassiter’s Overbrook Entertainment, and joined Bad Boy Entertainment in 1995 where he worked with disruptors such as Notorious B.I.G. In 1999, Carter formed the boutique talent management company, Erving Wonder. Erving Wonder quickly became one of the preeminent artist management firms and was acquired by the Sanctuary Group in 2004.

After founding Atom Factory in 2010, Carter and his Atom Factory artists began scaling the web’s largest social media audiences on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. In 2011, to focus the potential of these distributed networks, Carter co-founded Backplane, a Silicon Valley startup that unites people around affinities, interests and movements. The following year, Carter incorporated A \ IDEA, a product development and branding agency, as well as AF Square, an angel fund and technology consultancy.

Today, the AF Square portfolio holds interest in more than 40 technology companies at various stages of growth. A \ IDEA will launch Pop Water, a new beverage category product, later this year.

chienChi-Hua Chien
Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Chi-Hua Chien joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2007. At KPCB he focuses on investments in consumer web and mobile. He serves on the Board of Directors or works closely with the teams at Booyah, Chegg, Erly, GOGII, Home Value Protection, Klout, Path, Reputation.com, Spotify, and Twitter. Prior to KPCB, Chi-Hua worked with Accel Partners as a Venture Advisor and Associate focusing on software as a service, consumer Internet, and online advertising infrastructure. Chi-Hua was instrumental in Accel’s investments in AdECN (acquired by Microsoft) and Facebook, while also working on the firm’s investments in BitTorrent, fbFund, Glam, Trulia, and YuMe Networks.

Previously, Chi-Hua was the Director of Marketing at hosted software provider Coremetrics, where he led the marketing and inside sales teams as the company grew from 20 to more than 200 customers. He also served as the company’s interim CFO through two rounds of venture funding. Chi-Hua’s prior roles include corporate development at Google, business development at start-up eCoverage, and investment banking with Morgan Stanley’s Technology Group.

Tracy Chou
Backend/ Infrastructure Software Engineer, Pinterest

Tracy is currently a backend/infrastructure software engineer at Pinterest. She was previously at Quora, where she joined as the second engineer.

She holds an MS in Computer Science and a BS in Electrical Engineering, both from Stanford University.

conwayRon Conway
Angel, SV Angel

Ronald Conway has been an active angel investor for over 15 years. He was the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds (1998-2005) whose investments included: Google, Ask Jeeves, PayPal, Good Technology, Opsware, and Brightmail.

Ron was previously with National Semiconductor Corporation in marketing positions from 1973-1979, and Altos Computer Systems as a co-founder, President and CEO from 1979-1990. He eventually took Altos public in 1982 and served as CEO of Personal Training Systems (PTS) from 1991-1995. PTS went on to be acquired by SmartForce/SkillSoft. Ron has served/serves on Boards/Advisory Boards including: Twitter, Digg, Brightmail, Ask Jeeves, Rupture (acquired by EA), Associated Content(acquired by Yahoo!), Facebook, RockYou, ScanScout, Zappos, Trulia, StumbleUpon, Plaxo (acquired by Comcast), Photobucket (acquired by Fox), and Anchor Intelligence (co-founder).

Ron was recently named #6 in Forbes Magazine Midas list of top “deal-makers” in 2008 and is actively involved in numerous philanthropic endeavors. Ron is Vice Chairman of the UCSF Medical Foundation in SF, Board Member of The Tiger Woods Foundation, and SF Homeless Connect, and on the Benefit Committee of Ronald McDonald House, College Track, and the Black Eyed Peas-PeaPod Academy Foundation.

Conway is also featured in Gary Rivlin’s book “The Godfather of Silicon Valley: Ron Conway and the Fall of the Dot-coms”, in which he is described as ‘the man who has placed more bets on Internet start-ups than anyone else in Silicon Valley.’

dennisDennis Crowley
Co-founder, Foursquare

Dennis Crowley is a co-founder of Foursquare. Previously, he co-founded Dodgeball, a network of the same nature which sold to Google in 2005.

He has been named one of the “Top 35 Innovators Under 35” by MIT’s Technology Review magazine (2005) and has won the “Fast Money” bonus round on the TV game show Family Feud (2009). His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Time Magazine, Newsweek, MTV, Slashdot and NBC. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Dennis holds a master’s degree from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and a bachelor’s degree from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University.

dixonChris Dixon
General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz

Chris Dixon is a Partner at and co-founder of Founder Collective. He is also a contributing writer for TechCrunch.

He previously was the CEO and Co-founder of SiteAdvisor, which was acquired by McAfee, and Hunch, which was acquired by eBay. In addition to his work with Founder’s Collective, Chris is a personal investor in early-stage technology companies, including Skype, TrialPay, DocVerse, Invite Media, Gerson Lehrman Group, ScanScout, OMGPOP, BillShrink, Oddcast, Panjiva, Knewton, and a handful of other startups that are still in stealth mode.

ebayJohn Donahoe
eBay, President and CEO

John has been President and CEO of eBay Inc. since March 31, 2008. Under John’s leadership, the company has become a global commerce platform and payments leader, with revenue in 2012 of $14.1 billion. Across its eBay, PayPal and GSI Commerce platforms, the company enabled $175 billion of commerce in 2012, which represents about 18 percent of e-commerce worldwide and about 2 percent of global retail. The company also is a mobile commerce leader, with eBay mobile commerce volume of $13 billion in 2012, and PayPal mobile payments volume of $14 billion. The company is focused on enabling commerce as a partner — not a competitor — to sellers of all sizes, from entrepreneurs and small businesses, to global brands and retailers.

John joined eBay in March 2005 as President of eBay Marketplaces, responsible for all elements of eBay’s global ecommerce businesses. In this role, he focused on expanding eBay’s core business, which accounts for a large percentage of the company’s revenues. John also oversaw a number of strategic acquisitions, including Shopping.com, StubHub and classifieds sites, such as Gumtree. During his three-year tenure as President of Marketplaces, revenues and profits for the division doubled.

Prior to eBay, John spent more than 20 years at Bain & Company, a worldwide consulting firm based in Boston. Starting as an Associate Consultant, John rose to become the firm’s president and CEO in 1999, overseeing Bain’s 30 offices and 3,000 employees.

John received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Dartmouth College and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Additionally, John serves on the Board of Directors for eBay Inc. and Intel Corp.

hillHill Ferguson
Vice President of Global Product, PayPal

Hill Ferguson is Vice President of Global Product at PayPal, where he leads the global product management team responsible for worldwide product strategy and execution. Hill has over 12 years’ experience creating new products and managing existing ones for both large and small consumer Internet and mobile technology companies.

Prior to PayPal, Hill was the Vice President of Product and Marketing at Zong, where he led product management and marketing functions. Hill has also previously served as GM at Yodlee, where he helped develop and market personal management (PFM) and consumer payments products used by top-tier Financial Institutions. At Yahoo!, Hill was part of the product team that produced the award-winning Yahoo! Finance website. Hill also founded LoanBack, a leading peer-to-peer loan management service which has helped consumers manage over $1.5B in “friends and family” loans.

Hill received a Bachelors of Science in Political Science with a minor in Spanish and holds an MBA with a Marketing Concentration from Vanderbilt University.

John Frankel
Partner, ff Venture Capital

John Frankel has been an early-stage venture investor since 1999. Mr. Frankel was one of the earliest investors in Quigo Technologies, which was purchased by AOL in December 2007, and in Cornerstone OnDemand (CSOD on NASDAQ) which had a successful IPO in March 2011. He has also served and/or now serves on the boards of 500px, Apparel Media Group, Alerts.com, ClearPath Immigration, Infochimps, Klout, Patents.com, Phone.com, Quigo Technologies, StrongTech, The Goldman Sachs Trust Company, Track.com, and Voxy. He is also a Mentor with the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator program.

He worked at Goldman, Sachs & Co. for 21 years in a variety of roles that involved technology development, re-engineering, and capital markets. In particular, he established Goldman’s Cayman offshore administration business, its London global custody business, and re-engineered its global prime brokerage business. In capital markets, he worked closely with some of the world’s leading hedge funds, and developed a keen understanding of portfolio risk/return management. He started his business career with Arthur Anderson & Co. in the audit and insolvency divisions.

limorLimor Fried
Founder, Adafruit

Adafruit was founded in 2005 by MIT engineer, Limor “Ladyada” Fried.
Her goal was to create the best place online for learning electronics and making the best designed products for makers of all ages and skill levels.

Over the last 6 years Adafruit has grown to over 45 employees in the heart of NYC. Adafruit has expanded offerings to include tools, equipment and electronics that Limor personally selects, tests and approves before going in to the Adafruit store.

Limor was the first female engineer on the cover of WIRED magazine and was recently awarded Entrepreneur magazine’s Entrepreneur of the year.

patPat Gallagher
General Partner, CrunchFund

Pat has 17 years of technology investing, operations and finance experience. Prior to starting CrunchFund, Pat was a Partner at VantagePoint. Before that Pat worked at Morgan Stanley Venture Partners.

His experience cuts across many different IT sectors and stages and he has made dozens of initial and follow-on investments.

Before joining Morgan Stanley, he held management roles at RealNames, an internet services company, and Toyota Motor Corporation. Pat is a graduate of Claremont McKenna College (BA).

daveDave Gilboa
Founder, Warby Parker

Dave Gilboa is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Warby Parker, a transformative fashion brand offering designer eyewear at a revolutionary price while leading the way for socially-conscious businesses.

Prior to Warby Parker, Dave was an Associate at merchant bank Allen & Company and, earlier, worked at Bain &Company. He also served as Special Assistant to the Founder and CEO of the TriZetto Group, and has held strategy and business development roles at Genomic Health and Crescendo Bioscience.

Dave has worked extensively with non-profit organizations, and serves as a founding member of the Entrepreneur Board of Venture for America, an organization dedicated to mobilizing graduates as entrepreneurs in low-cost cities.

Born in Sweden and raised in San Diego, Dave graduated with a BS in Bioengineering with Honors from UC Berkeley and holds an MBA from Wharton Business School.

Nicole Glaros | CrunchBase Profile-1Nicole Glaros
Managing Director, TechStars

Nicole Glaros has been a Managing Director for TechStars since 2009. Since April 2013, Nicole has been based in NYC and is co-managing TechStars NYC with Eugene Chung.

Nicole got her entrepreneurial start in the 4th grade, orchestrating cousins into theatrical plays and charging neighbors admission. From there, she founded three startups including Property Management Shop, all of which are still operating. She has spent nearly a decade working to improve the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Colorado through leadership roles at various organizations and incubators such as CTEK, Investor Avenue, CleanLaunch, and the Advance Colorado Center. She considers herself privileged to have worked with nearly 100 brilliant and gutsy seed-stage web software entrepreneurs. Nicole graduated with her Master’s Degree from the University of Florida, likes to do at least one philanthropic thing annually, and shares the wonderment of parenthood with the love of her life, Mark. When not thinking about TechStars, you’ll find Nicole on the slopes or on her bike, hanging with her big fat Greek family, traveling to some exotic destination, or generally making a fool of herself to entertain others.

billBill Gurley
General Partner, Benchmark

Bill Gurley has spent over 10 years as a General Partner at Benchmark. He joined in 1999 after spending two years as a partner with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.

His current investments and board seats include Brighter, DogVacay, GrubHub, Linden Lab, Nextdoor, OpenTable (IPO: OPEN), Sailthru, Scale Computing, Uber, (UBNT), and Zillow.com (IPO: Z).

Before entering the venture capital business, Bill spent four years on Wall Street as a top-ranked research analyst, including three years at CS First Boston focusing on personal computer hardware and software. His research coverage included such companies as Dell, Compaq, and Microsoft, and he was the lead analyst on the Amazon IPO. In both 1995 and 1996, Bill was a member of the Institutional Investor All-American Research Team.

Prior to his investment career, Bill was a design engineer at Compaq Computer, where he worked on products such as the 486/50 and Compaq’s first multi-processor server. Before Compaq, he served in the technical marketing group of Advanced Micro Devices’ embedded processor division.

aarefAaref Hilaly
Partner, Sequoia Capital

Aaref works with enterprise, Internet, and mobile companies. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 2012, he was the CEO of Clearwell, a leading provider of analytics software for electronic discovery. Aaref grew Clearwell from a handful of engineers into a profitable company with an annual revenue run-rate of over $100 million, leading to its acquisition by Symantec in 2011.

Prior to that, Aaref was the Founder and CEO of CenterRun, a pioneer in datacenter automation, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems.

Aaref holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, a Master’s degree in Economics from McGill University, and BA degree from Oxford University.

kapDavid Karp
CEO, Tumblr

Tumblr founder David Karp was born and raised in New York City, attending the Bronx High School Science before dropping out at age 15.

An internship at Frederator Studios led to a gig leading product at UrbanBaby. When CNET acquired the company in 2005, Karp started his own development agency, Davidville.

In 2007 his team launched Tumblr, now the home and platform for more than 100 million creators. As a top 15 US network, Tumblr serves an audience of more than 170 million people worldwide.

17698v5-max-250x250Jason Kincaid
TechCrunch

Jason Kincaid worked as a writer for TechCrunch from April 2008 through 2012.

He grew up in Danville, California and later relocated to UCLA in Los Angeles, California, where he studied biology with a minor in ‘Society and Genetics’.

You can reach him at jkincaid@gmail.com

ashton-1Ashton Kutcher
Actor, Investor, Producer

Ashton Kutcher is an actor, tech investor and producer. In 2011, Kutcher created a venture fund, A- Grade Investments, with Ron Burkle and Guy Oseary. A-Grade has invested in multiple tech companies including Spotify, Airbnb, Foursquare, Fab, Uber, Dwolla and Path. Kutcher is also co-founder of Katalyst, a media company creating original content for digital media, television and film. In 2010, Kutcher was named one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People. In that same year, his company, Katalyst, was named one of the year’s Top 50 Most Inspiring Innovators by Ad Age and one of Fast Company Magazine’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies.

Currently Kutcher stars in the CBS comedy series Two and a Half Men. Averaging over 14 million viewers per week, the show ranks as the second most-watched comedy on all of network television. Kutcher first gained recognition as Michael Kelso on the Fox/Carsey Werner series That 70’s Show, which aired for eight seasons. Kutcher went on to star in a variety of box office hits on the big screen, including What Happens In Vegas with Cameron Diaz, The Guardian with Kevin Costner, Valentine’s Day, No Strings Attached with Natalie Portman and the cult hit Dude, Where’s My Car. Kutcher has long been recognized for his tech investments and social media prowess, beginning with Twitter. In 2009, he was the first Twitter user to obtain 1 million followers, beating out CNN in a highly publicized race.

sahilSahil Lavingia
CEO, Gumroad

Sahil is the founder and CEO of Gumroad.

Gumroad exists to help every creative earn a living selling the stuff they make directly to their audience.

Previously, he was early at Pinterest — a service that lets users collect, organize, and share the things they are into — and worked on turntable’s mobile apps.

He designs and builds products for fun and profit.

leeDavid Lee
Founder & Managing Member, SV Angel

David Lee is the Managing Member at SV Angel, where Ron Conway is a Special Partner. SV Angel focuses its investments on early-stage consumer media companies.

He focuses on investments within the consumer Internet, mobile, video and other IT industries. Prior to SV Angel, he was at Google, where he led new business development efforts in video, media and content/data partnerships. After Google, he led all business development-related efforts for StumbleUpon.

Recently he was a partner at Baseline Ventures and also an attorney at Morrison and Foerster representing high-tech companies in commercial transactions. He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins, NYU (JD) and Stanford (MSEE), where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate fellow. He is an individual investor in Square, WePay, Chomp and EQAL; an adviser at ScanScout, SocialDeck (acq. by Google) and Rupture (acq. by EA); and was on the board of directors of BookFresh (acq. by Sugar Inc.).

tomTom Lehman
Co-founder, Rap Genius

Originally from Miami, Tom Lehman attended Yale University where he was best friends with Mahbod and Ilan. He majored in Ethics, Politics, Economics, Mathematics and Philosophy… 5 majors. (Just kidding – it’s actually just two joint majors).

Tom wrote his senior thesis on Kelo v. The City of New London, a seminal Supreme Court ruling on Eminent Domain (but if you read the paper you’ll find it wasn’t thaaaaat seminal). Though his passion for takings almost took him to law school, in the end he opted for money rather than justice and worked at the hedge fund of David E. Shaw, where he learned to code… so it was a good choice.

He went on to build Rap Genius and is often referred to as the “swagged out Mark Zuckerberg” by the press.

benBen Lerer
Co-founder and CEO, Thrillist Media Group

Ben Lerer is the co-founder and CEO of Thrillist Media Group, a digital media company converging leading men’s lifestyle brand Thrillist.com; members-only shopping club JackThreads.com; and local experiences platform Thrillist Rewards.
The three brands collectively reach over 4 million daily subscriptions, targeting a young, urban male demographic locally and nationally, online and offline, through content and commerce.

Since its launch in 2005, Lerer has overseen the growth of Thrillist’s marketing, sales and business development efforts, as well as its expansion into e-commerce with the 2010 acquisition JackThreads and launch of Thrillist Rewards.

Lerer was among Crain’s “40 under 40”, Entrepreneur Magazine’s “Top 5 Entrepreneurs of the Year,” and Silicon Alley Insider’s “100 Coolest People in Tech” for five years running, in addition to being featured on the cover of AdWeek’s “Digital Hotshots” Issue and the front page of The New York Times’ Business Section.

kenKen Lerer
Managing Director, Lerer Partners & Co-founder, The Huffington Post

Managing Director at Lerer Partners and Co-Founder and former Chairman of The Huffington Post. Lerer Ventures‘ companies include: MakerBot Industries, Simple, SideCar, gdgt, Chartbeat and Backplane.

Want exits? He has them. How about GroupMe, DailyBooth and Cabana?

joeJoe Lonsdale
Formation 8 Partner

Joe Lonsdale is a Partner at Formation 8, a fund which invests in top Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and connects them with Asian conglomerates in order to give innovation a global impact.

Before that, Joe co-founded Palantir Technologies, a multi-billion dollar software company which develops mission-critical analysis systems used by government and financial organizations around the world.

He is also the founder of Addepar, a leader in private wealth management technology. Previously, he worked with the financial arm of PayPal while still a student, and then joined as an early executive at Clarium Capital, and was a key player in growing Clarium into a $5-billion AUM global macro hedge fund.

On the side, Joe is Chairman of both ONEHOPE Inc, a charity-focused wine brand with partners such as the Mondavi family.

Joe has a variety of philanthropic pursuits, including the board of cacs.org. He earned a BS in Computer Science from Stanford University in 2003.

Marissa Mayer
CEO, Yahoo

Marissa Mayer is CEO of Yahoo.

Previously as a VP at Google, Marissa Mayer lead the product management and engineering efforts of Google’s local, mobile, and contextual discovery products including Google Maps, Google Maps for Mobile, Local Search, Google Earth, Street View, Latitude and more. At 36 years old, she was also the youngest member of Google’s executive operating committee. During her 12 years at Google, Marissa led product management and design efforts for Google web search, images, news, books, products, toolbar, and iGoogle. She started at Google in 1999 as Google’s 20th employee and first woman engineer.

Marissa’s contributions and leadership have been recognized by numerous publications including the New York Times, Newsweek and BusinessWeek. Fortune magazine has listed her for the past 3 years on their annual Most Powerful Women’s list, and she was the youngest ever to appear on the list. In 2010 Marissa was honored by the New York Women in Communications, Inc. with a Matrix Award. She also been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and Woman of the Year by Glamour Magazine. Marissa serves on the board of various non-profits, including the Smithsonian National Design Museum, the New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Prior to joining Google, Mayer worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland, and at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. Marissa received her B.S. in Symbolic Systems and her M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University. For both degrees, she specialized in artificial intelligence.

masonHilary Mason
Chief Scientist, bit.ly

Hilary Mason is the Chief Scientist at bit.ly, where she finds sense in vast data sets. Her work involves both pure research and development of product-focused features.

She’s also a co-founder of HackNY, a non-profit organization that connects talented student hackers from around the world with startups in NYC.

Hilary recently started the data science blog Dataists and is a member of hacker collective NYC Resistor.

She has discovered two new species, loves to bake cookies, and asks way too many questions.

mccueMike McCue
CEO & Co-Founder, Flipboard

Longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mike McCue founded Flipboard in early 2010, with former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll. Together they set out to build a global service that would let people make all of their news, photos, and videos from across social networks accessible from a single place.

In July 2010, they launched Flipboard for iPad, a social magazine that brings people the most informative, entertaining and amazing stories from around the world and from their daily life. With each flip, people can learn about stories and events that take place thousands of miles away or right at home; see life’s great moments in one place; and be inspired by what others share. Today, Flipboard works across iPad, iPhone and Android.

In 1999, Mike founded Tellme Networks, one of the world’s largest Internet networks for voice communication. He successfully led the integration of the company’s technology into Microsoft’s infrastructure following its acquisition. Microsoft bought Tellme in 2007 for $800 million.

Before founding Tellme, Mike worked at Netscape as Vice President of Technology. He joined Netscape after their successful acquisition of the first company he founded, Paper Software, a leader in 3-D browser technology. Mike was honored with a Kilby International Award as a Young Innovator for his work bringing 3-D technology to the world through Netscape’s Web browser.

dwDwight Merriman
Chairman & Co-Founder, 10gen

Dwight is one of the original authors of MongoDB, the open-source document database. In 1995, he co-founded DoubleClick (acquired by Google for $3.1 billion) and served as Chief Technology Officer for 10 years. Dwight was the architect of the DoubleClick ad serving infrastructure, DART, which serves tens of billions of ads per day.

Earlier he was Co-Founder, Chairman, and the original architect of Panther Express (merged with CDNetworks), a content distribution network (CDN) technology. Dwight is also a Co-Founder of, and investor in, Business Insider and Gilt Groupe.

Dwight received a B.S. with honors in Systems Analysis from Miami University of Ohio.

heidiHeidi Messer
Co-founder and Chairman, Collective

Prior to Collective[i], Ms. Messer and her brother, Mr. Stephen Messer, co-founded LinkShare Corporation, which is host to one of the world’s largest online affiliate networks.

With Ms. Messer as President and COO, LinkShare was recognized by Deloitte and Touche for two consecutive years as the fastest growing technology company in the New York Region.

LinkShare was also named the Best Affiliate Network Provider in 2002 by ABestWeb. Ms. Messer and her brother managed LinkShare until its sale to Rakuten (4755:JASDAQ) for $425 million in 2005.

Ms. Messer received her B.A. from Brown University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude. She received her juris doctorate from Harvard Law School, graduating cum laude.

mahbodMahbod Moghadam
Co-founder, Rap Genius

Mahbod Moghadam is a graduate of Stanford Law School and worked as an attorney for the firm of Dewey & Leboeuf in New York before beginning work on Rap Genius. He is childhood friends with Tom and Ilan from their days at Yale University. Mahbod is Iranian and studied the history of Iran as an undergraduate. He explained some of the first rap songs on Rap Genius – including “99 Problems” by Jay-Z, which has a legalistic storyline – and has expanded to explaining the works of Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Herman Melville and the Persian poet Rumi, on Rap Genius.

Before law school, Mahbod was a Fulbright scholar to France; he speaks Persian, French, some Arabic and English too.

Mahbod has played piano since age 15 – alongside hip-hop, his musical passions include Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert.

nealNeal Mohan
Vice President of Display Advertising Products, Google

Neal is responsible for Google’s display advertising offerings across desktop and mobile devices. This includes the Google Display Network, AdSense, AdMob, Ad Exchange, InviteMedia, AdMeld and our suite of DoubleClick products. His efforts have focused on growing the overall industry by bringing innovative solutions to Google’s advertiser and publisher partners around the world.

Neal is a regular speaker at industry events and was listed as one of Ad Age’s 10 Most Influential Players in Marketing in 2011. Prior to joining Google through the DoubleClick acquisition in 2008, he was senior vice president of strategy and product development at DoubleClick, building the company’s strategic plan, leading the product management team in its execution, and growing the business rapidly. Previously, Neal held various leadership positions at DoubleClick and NetGravity in technology development, business operations, and client services. In this process he played a key role in pioneering the digital marketing industry. He has also served in strategy and consulting roles at Microsoft and Accenture.

anthonyAnthony Noto
Global Co-Head, TMT Group

Anthony Noto is global co-head of the Technology, Media and Telecom (TMT) Group. Before that, he was co-head of the Global Media Group for TMT Investment Banking. Anthony rejoined Goldman Sachs in 2010 after serving as the National Football League’s executive vice president and chief financial officer for nearly three years. While at the NFL, he oversaw league-wide finance and strategy functions, including corporate development, labor finance, operational finance and accounting, tax and treasury.

Prior to joining the NFL, Anthony was the Internet, Entertainment and Cable Equity Research analyst and business unit leader for the Communications, Media and Entertainment Equity Research team at Goldman Sachs. Anthony joined the firm in 1999 in Equity Research to cover the Internet sector and added coverage of the Entertainment sector in 2003. He was a top- ranked analyst in both the Internet and Entertainment sectors in the annual Institutional Investor poll and Greenwich Survey from his first year covering each sector. Anthony also achieved the distinction of being the No. 1 ranked Internet analyst from 2003 to 2007. He was named managing director in 2003 and partner in 2004.

Prior to first joining Goldman Sachs, Anthony worked at Lehman Brothers, where he was part of the Institutional Investor All- American Team covering the Broadline Retailing sector. Before transitioning to equity research, Anthony was a brand manager at Kraft Foods, Incorporated and a captain in the US Army as a telecommunications officer. Anthony serves on the boards of Women’s World Banking and Greenwich Academy.

guyGuy Oseary
Principle, Untitled Entertainment
CEO, Maverick Records

Guy Oseary is the current the manager for singer, Madonna. He began his career at what is now known as Maverick Records and quickly rose through the ranks to become chairman of the label.

Guy Oseary’s entrepreneurial leadership and global vision includes the development and innovative business management of artist brands, (Madonna), producing films (vampire film trilogy Twilight), concert tours (Madonna’s “Sticky & Sweet Tour” grossed 408 million dollars), management of three-time American League MVP Alex Rodriguez, advisor to the leading coconut water brand company (Vita Coco), and a joint venture partnership with Iconix Brand Group in the apparel industry.

During Oseary’s tenure at Maverick Records, he guided the label to sales of over l00 million units globally including 33 million copies of the debut album of his young discovery Alanis Morrisette. Her “Jagged Little Pill” album would take home four Grammy Awards in l996, including Album of the Year, securing a spot for Maverick Records as one of the industry’s leading boutique labels. During Oseary’s tenure the label also released albums by Michelle Branch, Prodigy, Deftones and The Wreckers as well as soundtracks to “The Wedding Singer,” “The Matrix,” “Austin Powers,” and Quentin Tarantino’s films “Jackie Brown” and “Kill Bill.”

chChamath Palihapitiya
Founder and Managing Partner at The Social+Capital Partnership

Chamath Palihapitiya is the Founder and Managing Partner of The Social+Capital Partnership – a venture capital fund based in Palo Alto, CA that incubates and invests in breakthrough companies in healthcare, education, financial services and mobile/internet technology.

Preceding his focus as an investor, Chamath was the longest tenured member of Facebook’s senior executive team and helped drive its ascension to one of the most important companies in the world. Prior to Facebook, Chamath had leading roles at The Mayfield Fund, AIM and ICQ, and Winamp. In addition to his focus at the fund, Chamath is Owner and Director of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors. Chamath was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in Canada, and graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

davidDave Pakman
Partner, Venrock

David Pakman is an internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is currently a Partner at Venrock, an early-stage venture fund where he focused on digital media and consumer internet startups.

Most recently he was the CEO of eMusic, the online music retailer. He previously founded the digital music locker company MyPlay with Doug Camplejohn. Myplay was sold to Bertelsmann eCommerce Group in 2001.

He has worked at Apple, N2K and Bertelsmann.

He is an Overseer of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Ron Palmeri | CrunchBase ProfileRon Palmeri
Founder, MkII Ventures

As an early stage product and markets guy, Ron launched a number of highly innovative companies, including Grand Central/Google Voice, OpenDNS, Scout Labs and Swivel as managing director of Minor Ventures.

As founder of MkII Ventures, Ron cofounded Prism Skylabs which is working to brings physical spaces online, creating new places for people and businesses to understand and engage each other.

sunilSunil Paul
Co-founder and CEO, SideCar

Sunil Paul is co-founder and CEO of rideshare community SideCar. SideCar has operations in San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, Austin, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Brooklyn, NY, and Washington DC.

Sunil coined the term “cleanweb” to describe the aggressive application of social, mobile, and Internet media to accelerate cleantech deployment and restructure sectors as diverse as hotels, automobiles, agriculture and food, clothing, buildings, lighting and renewable finance. SideCar is a realization of Sunil’s cleanweb vision.

normanNorman Pearlstine
Chief Content Officer, Bloomberg L.P.

Norman Pearlstine joined Bloomberg L.P. in June 2008 as Chief Content Officer, a newly-created position. In this role Pearlstine is charged with seeking growth opportunities for Bloomberg’s television, radio, magazine, and online products and to make the most of the company’s news operations.

Prior to joining Bloomberg, Pearlstine was a Senior Advisor to The Carlyle Group’s telecommunications and media group in New York. Before joining the private equity firm, Pearlstine had spent nearly four decades working as a reporter and editor. He was editor-in-chief of Time Inc., the magazine subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. from 1995 through 2005 before becoming a Senior Advisor to Time Warner. At Time Inc. Pearlstine oversaw the editorial content of Time Inc.’s 154 magazines, including Entertainment Weekly, Fortune, In Style, Money, People, Real Simple, Sports Illustrated, and Time.

nancyNancy Peretsman
Managing Director, Allen & Company LLC

Nancy Peretsman, Managing Director at Allen & Company LLC, has served as advisor to many of the world’s largest media, communications and consumer companies.

Since joining Allen & Co. in 1995, Nancy has provided advice and capital to over one hundred small high growth businesses, including Priceline.com, on whose board she continues to serve.
Prior to Allen & Co., Nancy worked as a Managing Director at Salomon Brothers, heading the worldwide media investment banking practice.

Over the last decade, Fortune has named her among the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business. Additionally, Ms. Peretsman serves on the Boards of Trustees at Princeton University and Institute for Advanced Study and on the Board of Directors at Teach For America.

She received an undergraduate degree from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School in 1976 and earned an MBA from the Yale School of Management in 1979.

jonahJonah Peretti
Founder and CEO, BuzzFeed

Jonah Peretti is Founder and CEO of BuzzFeed, the first true social news organization that provides a pioneering mix of breaking news, entertainment and shareable content. Mr. Peretti, known for creating viral hits, tracking online social behavior and building technology to amplify buzz is also a co-founder of The Huffington Post. He has been called a “viral marketing hotdog” by the New York Times, “the poster boy of guerilla media” by AlterNet and a “computer-whiz” by The New Yorker.

Fast Company named Mr. Peretti one of the “New Faces of Social Media” and named BuzzFeed as one of the “50 Most Innovative Companies” in 2012. Business Insider listed him as one of the “11 Rising Tech Stars to Watch in 2012.”

Mr. Peretti is a graduate of the MIT Media Lab and has taught at NYU and the Parsons School of Design. His work has been covered by Time, the Economist, Fortune, and Business Insider and he has appeared as a guest on the Today Show, Good Morning America and CNN.

In 2012, Mr. Peretti hired Ben Smith of POLITICO to lead as Editor-in-Chief. BuzzFeed reaches over 40 million monthly unique visitors and gets the majority of its traffic from social sources like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and more.

phamPeter Pham
Co-Founder and President, Color

Currently is the Co-Founder and President of Color.

Previously Peter was Entrepreneur In Residence at Trinity Ventures and former CEO of Billshrink.com and Vice President of Business Development at Photobucket.com. which was acquired in 2007 by Fox Interactive Media, a division of News Corporation for $300M. Both companies were funded by Trinity Ventures.

Prior to Photobucket, Peter was in the enterprise space for over 8 years being involved in multiple startups in areas such as mid-range server computing, software as a service, solid state storage, and mobilization of enterprise software.

He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences and a minor in Business Management from the University of California, Irvine.

brianBrian Pokorny
CEO, Dailybooth

In March 2010 Brian Pokorny became the CEO of Dailybooth.

Brian Pokorny was previously a general partner at SV Angel, where he focused on investments within the consumer Internet, specifically within social media, mobile, and real-time data companies. Prior to SV Angel he was a founding team member and partner at Baseline Ventures, a leading seed-stage investment firm. Prior to joining Baseline, Brian spent 3.5 years at Google within various positions in the Content Partnerships team and Direct Sales Organization.

Before this, he had various roles within sales operations and finance at Juniper Networks, TIBCO Software, and Applied Materials. Brian is an angel investor in Twitter, OMGPOP, Square, Tweetdeck, Dailybooth, Bump, Blippy, Milo, Posterous, Chomp and has advisory positions with Ooyala, Spotzer, Stitcher, and Rupture. Brian graduated with a degree in Operations and Management Information Systems from Santa Clara University.

michaelMichael Preysman
Founder, Everlane

Michael Preysman is the founder and CEO of Everlane.

Prior to starting Everlane, he was an investor at Elevation Partners for both their New York and Menlo Park offices investing in media and entertainment companies.

Michael enjoys sitting at the intersection of design and technology.

He graduated from Carnegie Mellon with degrees in Computer Engineering and Economics.

quinnMegan Quinn
Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Megan is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers where she focuses on consumer Internet investments. She specializes in designing, building and scaling transformative consumer products and companies.

Megan joined KPCB from Square, the company revolutionizing payments for buyers and sellers. As Square’s director of products she led strategy and development of the company’s products across merchant and consumer audiences.

Prior to that, Megan spent seven years at Google where she held various leadership positions in communications, business development and product management. She oversaw the development and marketing of some of the company’s most successful products, including Google Maps. Her team’s work continues to serve as the foundation for Google’s location-based consumer and advertising products.

Megan also previously worked at Genentech. She received her degree in political science and history from Stanford University.
gokulGokul Rajaram
Product Director, Ads at Facebook

Gokul Rajaram is Product Director, Ads at Facebook. In this role, he drives the product roadmap and execution for Facebook’s advertising products.

Before Facebook, Gokul was Co-Founder and CEO of Chai Labs, a semantic technology startup he grew to profitability and a multi-million dollar annual revenue run-rate before its acquisition by Facebook.
Earlier in his career, Gokul was Product Management Director for Google AdSense. He helped conceive and crystallize the product in early 2003, and played a key role in its launch and growth from 2003 onwards into a multi-billion dollar product line. Gokul was also product lead for a number of acquisitions for Google, including DoubleClick (display advertising/ad serving), AdScape (in-game advertising) and dMarc (radio advertising).

navalNaval Ravikant
Founder, Angel List

Naval is an entrepreneur and angel investor, a co-author of Venture Hacks, and a co-maintainer of AngelList.

Previously, he was a co-founder at Genoa Corp (acquired by Finisar), Epinions.com (IPO via Shopping.com), and Vast.com (large white-label classifieds marketplace).

He has advised Bix.com, iPivot, and XFire, among others, and invested in many companies, including Twitter, Foursquare, DocVerse (sold to Google), Mixer Labs (sold to Twitter), Jambool (Social Gold), SnapLogic, PlanCast, Stack Overflow, Heyzap, and Disqus.

kevinKevin Ryan
Founder & CEO, Gilt Group

Kevin P. Ryan is the Founder and CEO of Gilt Groupe, an innovative e-commerce company offering highly coveted products and experiences at insider prices.

In 2007, Kevin along with a founding team created Gilt Groupe as an invitation-only site for coveted women’s apparel and accessories. Today, Gilt Groupe has over three million members and has added business lines in home; children; men’s apparel and gear (GiltMAN); vacation travel (Jetsetter); local services and experiences (Gilt City), and has launched the leading flash-sale site in Japan (Gilt Japan).

Kevin is one of the leading Internet entrepreneurs in the United States launching several New York-based businesses, including Gilt Groupe, Business Insider, ShopWiki, and 10gen/MongoDB. Kevin helped build DoubleClick from 1996 to 2005, first as president and later as CEO. He fostered DoubleClick’s growth from a 20-person startup to a global leader with over 1,500 employees.

Currently, Kevin serves on the board of Human Rights Watch, the NYC Investment Fund and INSEAD, and is a member of the Yale International Council and the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds a BA from Yale University and an MBA from INSEAD.

daveDave Samuel
Founder and General Partner, Freestyle Capital

Dave Samuel is Founder and General Partner at Freestyle Capital. Dave was President of Rogers Wave from its inception and led North America’s most aggressive rollout of high-speed Internet access over cable.

Dave was also a consultant with McKinsey & Company and a Senior Executive with Torstar Corporation. Early in his career, Dave was an investment banker with Morgan Stanley & Co., where he executed various financial transactions.

From there, Dave founded several businesses, including Spinner (acquired by AOL Time Warner for $320 million), Brondell, Grouper (acquired by Sony for $65 million), 4 kids, and now, Freestyle.

40962v10-max-250x250MG Siegler
General Partner, CrunchFund

MG Siegler is a general partner at CrunchFund and a columnist for TechCrunch, where he has been writing since 2009.

Prior to TechCrunch, MG covered various technology beats for VentureBeat.

Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where he was a web developer. He also writes at his own blogs, ParisLemon and Massive Greatness, and tweets a lot.

He now lives in San Francisco.

zachZach Sims
Co-founder and CEO, Codecademy

Zach is the cofounder and CEO of Codecademy, the easiest way to learn to code. Since the company started in August of 2011, millions of people have begun learning to program using the site. Codecademy has worked with organizations like The White House, the Government of Colombia, American Express, Rakuten, and more. Zach and his cofounder Ryan have grown Codecademy to 18 full time employees in New York and have raised $12.5m in venture capital financing from top tier investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Union Square Ventures, Index Ventures, Yuri Milner, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, SV Angel, Richard Branson, Y Combinator, and more.

Prior to founding Codecademy, Zach was a student at Columbia University. He has worked in product and business development/strategy capacities at startups including GroupMe (sold to Skype) and drop.io (sold to Facebook). He also has experience in the venture capital industry with AOL Ventures, the venture capital arm of AOL.

Zach and Codecademy have been honored by many publications. TIME Magazine called Codecademy one of the “50 Best Websites of 2012,” while TechCrunch awarded Codecademy the “Best Education Startup” Crunchie Award in 2013. Zach has been named to Inc. Magazine’s 30 Under 30 list, along with Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 list. The City of New York named him a New York City Venture Fellow in 2013.

scottScott Stanford
Co-founder, Sherpa Foundry

Mr. Stanford has been engaged in the Internet sector for fifteen years and active in Technology for twenty-nine years in the capacity of advisor, operator and investor. He is currently working on a new venture, Sherpa Foundry.

Most recently, Mr. Stanford co-headed Goldman Sachs’ Global Internet Investment Banking business as a Managing Director based in the San Francisco office. In his twelve years at Goldman he advised clients on $80 billion of financings and strategic transactions and was deeply involved in making over $850 million of Internet principal investments into companies including Facebook, Uber, DST and Linkedin. His client coverage responsibility included companies such as Google, Yahoo, Zillow and Airbnb.

Prior to rejoining Goldman, Mr. Stanford was an early employee of LookSmart, helping build the company from a start-up to a NASDAQ-traded company. He held several technical, product, financial and strategic management positions including heading eCommerce, overseeing Product and Development, running Strategy and Corporate Development and running Business Development.

While earning his MBA, Mr. Stanford coded prototype applications for two startup ideas. He spent the summer between his first and second year in business school as an Associate at General Atlantic Partners.

98909v5-max-250x250David Tisch
Founder & Managing Partner, BoxGroup

David is the Founder and Managing Partner of BoxGroup, a New York City boutique seed-stage capital firm.

David is also the co-founder of TechStars NYC and previously served as Managing Director of the program.

David was named to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Advisory Council on Technology and serves on the Investor Board of Venture for America. He is also a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal’s ‘The Accelerators’ online blog.

Prior to joining TechStars, David served as Executive Vice President of Interactive Strategies at kgb, a global information services company. While at kgb, David founded and led Knowmore.com, a social aggregation startup within kgb.

David has a B.A. in American History from the University of Pennsylvania and a J.D. from New York University School of Law.

146082v2-max-250x250Gentry Underwood
CEO and co-founder, Mailbox

Gentry is a designer and entrepreneur who has a passion for creating simple products that help people work together. He co-founded Mailbox, now a part of Dropbox, where he continues to build the mobile inbox that puts email in its place. Before Mailbox, Gentry led IDEO’s Knowledge Sharing domain and the creation of IDEO’s TUBE, an award-winning social intranet.

Gentry has a BS in human-computer interaction from Stanford University, a MA in psychology from Santa Clara University, and an MS in anthropology and community development from Vanderbilt University.

deenaDeena Varshavskaya
CEO, Wanelo

Deena Varshavskaya is the founder and CEO of Wanelo (“wah-nee-lo,” from Want, Need, Love), an online community for all of the world’s shopping. Wanelo is democratizing and transforming the world’s commerce by reorganizing shopping around people.

Originally from Siberia, Deena launched her first web startup straight out of college, only to learn that she loved designing websites, but knew nothing about design. She then pursued user experience design working for a social network and later established her own design agency.

After realizing the need for a radically different shopping experience that empowers the individual, Deena launched Wanelo in late 2010. Today, Wanelo is an advertising-free shopping environment with hundreds of thousands of stores and is a growing movement of millions of people.

Yossi Vardi | yossi ProfileYossi Vardi
Israeli Investor

Yossi Vardi is an Israeli investor most famous for being the original investor in ICQ—the first Internet-wide instant messaging system. Vardi has invested in over 50 tech companies in diverse areas of software, energy, Internet, mobile, cleantech, and others.

Vardi has been an active civil servant in Israel through projects involving energy and infrastructure. He also co-founded Alon, an Israeli oil company. Vardi acted as an advisor to the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program on issues of energy in the developing world.

Vardi has received many awards including The Prime Minister Award, The Industry Award, Entrepreneur of the Year (Tel Aviv University), and the CEO’s Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame from the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization.

weilKevin Weil
Senior Director of Product for Revenue, Twitter

Kevin Weil is the Senior Director of Product for Revenue Twitter, where his team is responsible for product strategy and execution for Twitter’s monetization products. Mr. Weil formerly led the analytics team at Twitter, where he was an early evangelist of and contributor to the Hadoop ecosystem.
Prior to Twitter, Kevin was the first employee at web media startup Cooliris, working in user growth and analytics.

He has also worked at municipal wireless network provider Tropos Networks, Microsoft Research, and, in a past life as a physics Ph.D. student, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

He holds a B.A. in Mathematics and Physics from Harvard University, and an M.S. in Physics from Stanford.

Fred Wilson
Partner, Union Square Ventures

Fred Wilson began his career in venture capital in 1987. He has focused exclusively on information technology investments for the past 17 years. In 1996, Fred co-founded Flatiron Partners.

While at Flatiron, Fred was responsible for 14 investments including, ITXC, Patagon, Starmedia, TheStreet.com and Yoyodyne. Fred currently serves on the boards of Alacra, Comscore, iBiquity, Return Path, Instant Information and Tacoda Systems.

samSam Yagan
CEO, Match, Inc.

Sam Yagan is the Chief Executive Officer of Match, Inc., a division of IAC/InterActive Corp (Nasdaq: IACI) and co-founder of OkCupid. Sam oversees the management of IAC’s global online dating portfolio which comprises over forty brands around the world, including leading properties like Match.com, OkCupid, OurTime, Meetic, Twoo, and ParPerfeito. These businesses generated revenues of over $700 million and profits of over $225 million in 2012. Sam has been a leader in the dating industry since he co-founded OkCupid in 2003. He and his co-founders grew OkCupid into one of the most popular dating sites in America, amassing nearly four million active users. OkCupid has earned widespread media acclaim and has been described as “the Google of online dating” and where “dating meets Facebook.” In 2011, Match, Inc. acquired OkCupid for $90 million.

Sam’s prior entrepreneurial ventures in the consumer internet sector include eDonkey, Inc. (founded in 2002), once the largest P2P file-sharing application in the world and SparkNotes (founded in 1999), still the dominant brand of study guides. He sold SparkNotes to Barnes & Noble, Inc., where he served as Vice-President and Publisher and oversaw the expansion of the previously all-digital brand into an expansive multi-media business.

Outside of work, Sam’s primary passion is working with early-stage entrepreneurs. In 2009, he co-founded Excelerate Labs (now TechStars Chicago), a leading start-up accelerator, and served as its first Chief Executive Officer. As a board member of TechStars Chicago, he helps to guide its growth and continues to work closely with its portfolio companies. Sam is also an active angel investor and sits on the board of several start-ups, including BabbaCo, ShiftGig, LiveMinutes, StatHat, AllTuition, and OVM. He also advises several venture capital funds, including Hyde Park Venture Partners, Great Oaks Venture Capital, and the FireStarter Fund, which he co-founded.

Michelle Zatlyn
Co-Founder and Head of User Experience, CloudFlare, Inc.

Michelle is the co-founder and Head of User Experience at CloudFlare, Inc. Michelle creates products people love. Growing up in Canada, she earned a degree in Chemistry and now applies the scientific method to improving businesses. Prior to CloudFlare, she worked at Google and Toshiba, launched two successful startups and got her MBA from Harvard Business School.

Michelle holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry and a minor in Management, with Distinction, from McGill University. She also holds her MBA from Harvard Business School and was awarded the Dubliner Prize for Entrepreneurship.

Ilan Zechory | CrunchBase ProfileIlan Zechory
Co-founder, Rap Genius

Ilan Zechory is from Detroit Michigan; Malcolm X was an important figure in his early development. It may have been Malcolm X’s swagger and preachings that led Ilan to focus on religious studies at Yale University, where he, Tom and Mahbod first became lifelong friends.

His senior thesis at Yale was on the Divine Religion of the Actual God, a study of a reclusive man who created his own religion (similar to Rap Genius in certain aspects) in the 1980s. Prior to beginning his life’s work on Rap Genius, Ilan wrote for HBO’s Deadwood. He worked at Google for two years, where he learned to appreciate sushi and eat it every day. Ilan is also a clinically trained hypnotherapist.

lior-1Lior Zorea
Partner, Perkins Cole

Lior Zorea is a Partner in the Menlo Park office and a member of the firm’s Emerging Companies practice group.

Lior has a corporate and securities law practice encompassing venture capital, debt and other private financings, public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance and general business counseling.

Lior focuses on representing emerging growth technology companies and their founders in the information technology space including the internet, software, digital media and semiconductor sectors.