At Best Startup US we track over 1,000,000 US startups and over 3 million people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United States based CEO’ operating in the Social space. If you think a CEO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.us.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Edward Lando
Co-Founder & CEO of Goody
Edward Lando is the Managing Partner at Pareto Holdings.
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About Alpha, Catalina Crunch, CodeCombat, Conduit, Goody, Horizons School of Technology, Overtime, Pareto Holdings, Svrf: Goody makes sending gifts as easy as sending a text.
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Falon Fatemi
Co-Founder and CEO of Fireside
Falon Fatemi is Founder and CEO of Node and Fireside.
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About Fireside, Forbes Magazine, Node: Fireside is where the world’s greatest creators go to bring the audience into the story through live, interactive, virtual shows.
Jeff Weiner
Chief Executive Officer & Executive Chairman of LinkedIn
Jeff Weiner is the executive chairman of LinkedIn, where he continues to help LinkedIn realize its vision of creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. He’ll also continue to mentor and coach the leadership team, advise on key strategic initiatives, and help to represent the company externally. In addition to his ongoing work at LinkedIn, Jeff is focused on investing, coaching and his philanthropic work, including helping to ensure that compassion is taught and practiced in every primary school in the U.S. Prior to becoming executive chairman in June 2020, Jeff was the CEO of LinkedIn. During his 11-year tenure, LinkedIn grew its membership base from 33M to more than 690M, increased its revenue from $78M to over $7.9B and expanded the team from 338 employees to over 16,000. Also, presently resides on the board of directors for Intuit, Donorschoose.org and Everfi, an ed tech company with which he co-founded The Compassion Project, a non-profit whose mission is to ensure compassion is taught in every elementary school in the U.S. Additionally, an active early and growth stage investor through his Next Play Ventures fund and separately, the newly created Concrete Rose Capital fund, focused on investing in diverse founders, start-ups serving underserved communities and/or building diverse teams. Prior to LinkedIn, was an Executive in Residence at Accel Partners and Greylock Partners. Primarily focused on advising the leadership teams of the firm’s existing consumer technology portfolio companies while also working closely with the firm’s partners to evaluate new investment opportunities. Previously served in key leadership roles at Yahoo! for over seven years, most recently as the Executive Vice President of Yahoo!’s Network Division managing Yahoo’s consumer web product portfolio, including Yahoo’s Front Page, Mail, Search, and Media products.
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About LinkedIn, Next Play Ventures: LinkedIn is a professional networking site that allows its members to create business connections, search jobs, and find potential clients.
Steve Gatena
Founder & CEO of Pray.com
Steve is the founder of pray.com, the digital destination for faith. Steve is an American Entrepreneur, Media Producer, and NCAA Champion. In 2019, Steve was honored as a CSQ 40 Under 40 Visionary. Steve has also received an Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the United Nations in a program sponsored by Dell & Intel, and been named #8 on the Forbes list of Famous Multi-Generational Entrepreneurs.
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About Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Pray.com: Pray.com is the #1 app for daily prayer & faith-based audio content
Alex Chung
Co-Founder & CEO of Giphy
Alex Chung is currently the founder and CEO of GIPHY. His latest startups include Artspace, a leading ecommerce destination for contemporary art, The Fridge, a private social network acquired by Google, and General Displays a GE venture developing GE’s next generation of HDTVs. He has also directed media technology for MTV, NBC, Comcast, Charter, and managed future technologies for Paul Allen’s R&D lab. He was one of the early architects of interactive television and started his career as a hardware engineer at Intel. He was named on Business Insider’s Top 25 most influential technologists in New York and has degrees in philosophy, electrical/computer engineering, and graphic design.
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About Giphy: Giphy is an online database and search engine that allows users to search, share, and discover GIFs.
Paul Davison
Co-Founder and CEO of Clubhouse
Paul Davison is the Co-Founder and CEO of Clubhouse. Davison is a San Diego native who graduated from Stanford and then earned his MBA from Stanford Business School. He had an internship at Google between degrees. Davison worked at consulting firm Bain and Co. before joining database startup Metaweb, which was acquired by Google in 2010. Previously he was an entrepreneur in residence at Benchmark Capital.
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About Clubhouse, Clubhouse: Clubhouse is an audio-based social app that allows users to spontaneously join group chats.
Abraham Shafi
Founder and CEO of IRL
Abe attended UC Berkeley and studied the intersection of computer engineering, business, cultural anthropology and sociology before starting his first company, getTalent, a highly acclaimed social recruiting platform, prompting him to leave school. The platform was born of out a personal experience while job hunting and realizing there was improvements to be made with the resume-sorting process. The platform leveraged data science to take away the biases from the hiring process, thus helping organizations hire the best talent. getTalent had global clients including Walmart, JetBlue and Viacom, and was later sold to Dice in 2013. In 2018, Abe founded IRL because he was personally driven to build an app that would bring people together. He found his addiction to social media was related to his own depression and left him close to quitting social media all together. This propelled him to make a social product that could help people feel connected in a way that felt healthier and less addictive. Since inception, the app has brought friends together over 600M times. IRL has eleven employees and is based in San Francisco, California. In Abe’s spare time, he likes playing piano and composing music. Currently, he is most interested in merging electronic music with classical leveraging deep folkloric music from around the world, blending with archeologic tunes of humankind’s musical history.
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About IRL: Groups, Chats, Events
Whitney Wolfe Herd
Founder & CEO of Bumble
Whitney Wolfe Herd is the CEO + Founder of Bumble, a global group that builds and operates leading dating and social networking apps including Badoo, the first free dating site with over 500 million users worldwide, and Bumble, the women-first social networking platform with over 100 million users globally. In 2014, Wolfe Herd launched Bumble as the only connection platform where women make the first move and control the interaction. As the company has grown, Wolfe Herd has executed upon her vision of making Bumble the first social network where women make the first move to create empowered connections across all areas of life. The company launched Bumble BFF in 2016 as a friend-finding feature and launched Bumble Bizz for professional networking in 2017. In five years, her vision has led to Bumble’s growth of over 100 million users worldwide in 150 countries. In January 2020, Wolfe Herd welcomed Blackstone as Bumble’s new majority owner with a shared vision of growth for Badoo and Bumble. Prior to Bumble, Whitney Wolfe Herd co-founded Tinder, where she served as the Vice President of Marketing. In 2018, Wolfe Herd was named to TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, Forbes “30 Under 30” list, the Bloomberg 50 and InStyle’s 50 Women Who Are Changing the World. Wolfe Herd was also recently on the cover of Fast Company, Forbes and WIRED magazines.
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About Bumble: Bumble is an app that brings dating, friend-finding, and career-building into a single social networking platform.
Shlomo Zalman Bregman
Founder & CEO of Alpha Tribe Media
Shlomo Zalman Bregman (born June 27, 1977), is an American rabbi, attorney, media personality, and digital marketing expert. He is the CEO of Alpha Tribe Media and the Founder of the Jewish Executive Learning Network. Also know as “Sam,” he is a regular Commentator on Fox News and Fox News Radio. Today, he is best known for building massive social media followings and communities that accelerate his clients’ influence. Sam has been labeled a “social media star” by outlets such as the Huffington Post and his work has been featured hundreds of times in major media publications such as Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Inc., Fast Company, BuzzFeed, Yahoo, Bloomberg Radio, Reader’s Digest, MSN, Medium, and by American Express, Microsoft, the United States Air Force Academy, and on some of the top-ranked Entrepreneur and Business podcasts in iTunes.
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About Alpha Tribe Media: A full-service digital agency specializing in building massive social media followings & communities that accelerate our clients’ influence.
Jake Paul
CEO & Founder of TeamDom
Jake Paul is the Founder and CEO at TeamDom. He dropped out of high school and relocated to Los Angeles at 17, without a single meeting lined up. Jake became a Viner before becoming a Vloger. Also Jake has racked up over 15 million social media followers, and 3.5 billion video views, categorizing him as one of the top 20 social media influencers and a leading brand ambassador. Jake also lends his efforts to the acting world — starring as “Dirk” on Disney Channel’s Bizaardvark, “Lance” in the YouTube Red Original Movie Dance Camp and “Dugan” on Fox Digital’s new movie Mono.#Bloodynosegang
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About TeamDom: TeamDom is a media conglomerate that builds brands, stories, celebrities, and businesses around teen entertainment and media.
Kong Pham
CEO & Founder of Jumpcut
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About Jumpcut: Jumpcut creates captivating online courses.
Ketan Shah
CEO of Gameyola
• Past positions include VP engineering, VP product, VP technology, CTO and CEO • A successful entrepreneur and executive with engineering background and experience in local / online advertising, ad networks, digital media, SEM, SEO, lead generation, consumer and enterprise web applications, social networking, social gaming, healthcare and wellness • 17+ years of overall experience in technology, product design and management • 10 + years of experience in online advertising, digital media, social and web applications & enterprise platforms • Founded and sold multiple businesses with 3 successful exits • Co-author of a pending patent in local online advertising technology • Product development using technologies: C, C++, Java, .Net, RoR, SQLServer, MySQL, Oracle, Google AdWords API, Google Analytics, Yahoo SEM API, Facebook API, Kiva, Microsoft AdCenter API, MFC, Html, Javascript, CSS and more.. • B.S.( Electrical Engineering ), M.S.( Computer Engineering) Specialties: • Engineering, Entrepreneurship and general startup management • Complete technology lifecycle (design, development, QA, deployment ) of complex, web based consumer and enterprise software in various industries like retail, online advertising, legal, HR, social gaming • Team setup and development (National & International) • Operations • Business strategies & negotiations
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About Agentz, Inc, Gameyola: Gameyola provides a monetization and distribution platform for casual Flash games on social networks
Steven Galanis
Co-Founder & CEO of Cameo
Steven Galanis is the CEO of Cameo, the world’s leading marketplace for personalized video shoutouts. He launched the company in 2016 with co-founders Martin Blencowe & Devon Townsend after seeing a personalized video message taped by a prominent NFL player congratulating a friend on the birth of his son. To date the company has sold over 75,000 Cameos and seen over 4,500 athletes, actors, and influencers join the platform. He was named to Chicago Inno’s 2018 “50 on Fire” list. He is LinkedIn alum who previously worked as a trader on the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange, and founder of two film investment companies where he produced movies featuring stars such as Bruce Willis and Robert De Niro. Outside of work he is an avid Chicago sports fan and serves on the Board of Directors for Habitat for Humanity Chicago. Steven is a 2010 graduate of Duke University where he majored in History.
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About Cameo: Cameo is a marketplace where fans can book personalized video shoutouts from their favorite people.
Jay Meattle
CEO & Founder of Shareaholic
Jay started [Shareaholic, Inc.](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/shareaholic), a company fanatical about making sharing on the web better, faster, easier, and more measurable. Over 2 million people have used the award winning tools created by Shareaholic. Jay was Vice President of Products at Lookery, an online user-targeting network that offered lightweight, economical targeting data for over 200 million users. Before Lookery, Jay was the Product Manager and founding member of the small team that was responsible for creating and launching [Compete.com](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/compete), now part of the WPP Group [Nasdaq: WPPGY]. In addition, as co-founder of PopSignal, one of Boston’s largest professional networking organizations, Jay is actively contributing to the growth of Boston’s technology startup community. Jay earned a B.S. cum laude in Computer Science from Tufts University. He also minored in Entrepreneurial Leadership and Multimedia Arts. At Tufts he was awarded the MacJannet scholarship. Jay is also a TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) Leadership Fellow and in 2012 was named to the TR35 India — MIT Technology Review magazine’s annual list of the world’s top innovators under the age of 35. He loves creating, lives for technology and innovation, and likes making things happen. You can follow Jay on Twitter @meattle or his blog http://www.meattle.com/jay/
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About Shareaholic: Shareaholic is an Audience Engagement platform that helps over 300,000 businesses grow audience engagement, loyalty & conversions.
Sunmeet Jolly
Founder & CEO of GROTU
Founder and Patent holder – GROTU mobile app @ 101 Islands LLC. Angel investor in 40 pre-IPO technology startups. Frequently invited by accelerators and angel forums to Judge startup competitions and discuss technology innovation. Former IT Consulting industry executive who sold hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting services to Fortune 500 companies working for Cap Gemini, HCL, L&T, NTT data.
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About GROTU: Patented GROTU app provides a much needed “private” collection of productivity and communication tools for friends and family social groups
Shawn Fanning
Chief Executive Officer of Rupture
Shawn Fanning is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and angel investor. He developed Napster, one of the first popular peer-to-peer (“P2P”) file sharing platforms, in 1999. The popularity of Napster was widespread and Fanning was featured on the cover of Time magazine. The site in its initial free P2P incarnation was shut down in 2001 after the company’s unsuccessful appeal of court orders arising from its encouraging the illegal sharing of copyrighted material. A paid subscription version of the site followed, and was purchased by Rhapsody on December 1, 2011. Following his involvement with Napster, he joined, and invested in, a number of early-stage technology startup companies.
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About Airtime, Electronic Arts, Helium, Rupture: Rupture is an online social network that allows gamers to connect and share with one another.
Mark Weinstein
CEO, Founder of MeWe
Mark Weinstein is the Founder and CEO of MeWe, the Next-Gen Social Network. Mark is a leading privacy advocate, one of the visionary inventors of social networking, and an award-winning author. He founded SuperFamily and SuperFriends, precursors to today’s social and chat networks, at the turn of the millennium. Both became PC Magazine “Top 100” sites for multiple years. Mark sold them and then authored the “Habitually Great” book series endorsed by the late Dr. Stephen Covey, (2x Indie Book awards), and became an influential technology consultant/advisor. A few years ago when Mark Zuckerberg declared, “privacy is a social norm of the past,” that comment angered Weinstein greatly. It sparked him to create the Sgrouples beta project, hiring an engineering team to design and build the world’s first social network with privacy-by- design for its members. The 3-year beta project served as the testing platform for the launch of MeWe. Making its official launch during SXSW 2016 (South by Southwest), MeWe was honored as the 2016 Start-Up of the Year Finalist for “Innovative World Technology.” World renowned thought leaders and executives proudly serve on MeWe’s Advisory Board, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web; Raj Sisodia, the founder of Conscious Capitalism; Professor Sherry Turkle, leading technology expert; Professor Phil Rogaway, award-winning cryptographer; Cullen Hoback, award-winning documentary film-maker on privacy; Colin Sebastion, leading internet analyst; Simon Mainwaring, founder of WeFirst; Marci Shimoff, NYT Best-Selling author; Jack Canfield, co-founder of Chicken Soup for the Soul; and several others. Mark is one of the world’s foremost privacy advocates, and he is listed as one of the “Top 8 Minds in Online Privacy.” He was a Steering Committee Member of National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) – where he strongly argued against any “national identity system,” calling the idea a complete violation of the human right to privacy. The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada has named Mark “Privacy by Design Ambassador.” Mark has written about privacy and the social media industry in well-known publications such as USA Today, InfoSecurity Magazine, Daily Mirror (UK), Dark Reading, HuffPo, and many others. He has been interviewed on many media outlets, including PBS, BBC, FOX, FORBES, CNN, and ABC. Mark is often a featured speaker and social media/privacy expert on the stage at many conferences, including EY’s Strategic Growth Forum, the 16th Annual Privacy and Security Conference, Global Security Conference, GMIC Silicon Valley, and he was a recent keynote speaker at GMIC New York, Security BSides Vancouver, and the Customer Experience Asia. Mark received his BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz; and his MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. He resides in Los Angeles.
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About MeWe: MeWe is the rapidly growing high integrity alternative to Facebook. No Ads, No Targeting, No Newsfeed Manipulation, NO BS!
Marcy Boyle
Co Founder, CEO of Hot Bit VR
Marcy Boyle is the CEO and co-founder of Hot Bit VR, a upcoming webVR marketplace of experiential social shopping. Hot Bit VR has been featured on ZDnet, Entrepreneur, Fox News, and listed as one of the “30 Best Virtual Reality Companies to Change Your World Soon.” She and her co-founder’s VR experiences have been featured in art galleries, universities, conferences, and festivals including FIVARS in Toronto and VRUK in London. Hot Bit VR was selected for the first class of the AR/VR/XR accelerator at the Green Screen Institute, and Silicon Valley’s Women’s Startup Lab. Prior to working in VR, she co-directed the feature film, NOBODY CAN COOL, which was released internationally. Marcy is a graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University and is a member of Women in VR, Women in Film, and on the Board of the Alliance of Women Directors.
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About Hot Bit VR, Oculus: An experiential marketplace in virtual reality.
Andrew Gazdecki
Founder and CEO of MicroAcquire
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About Altcoin.io, Bizness Apps, MicroAcquire: MicroAcquire is a startup acquisition marketplace that helps startups find buyers and get acquired.
Ruben Harris
CEO and Co-Founder of Career Karma
CEO of Career Karma Co-Host of the Breaking Into Startups Podcast Previously at: AtlSchool, Honor, and Hustle Prior to Tech: Investment Banker and Professional Cellist
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About Career Karma: Career Karma helps people find career advice and job training to navigate their careers.
William Michael Cunningham
Founder and CEO of Creative Investment Research
William Michael Cunningham is an economist and impact investment analyst and creator. He is on the faculty at Georgetown University, and is currently working on an investment vehicle that deals with homelessness and another that deals with HIV/AIDS. Mr. Cunningham is the creator of one of the first impact-specific investment vehicles and the author of one of the first books on the JOBS Act and Crowdfunding, published by Apress. He has launched several innovative web-based services, including technology that allowed medical marijuana dispensaries to use bitcoin as a payment mechanism, one of the first websites targeting women and minority entrepreneurs, several ESG, CSR and impact investing websites, and the first diversity investing vehicle. Starting in 2003, he warned the SEC about the 2008 financial crisis and, in June, 2016, his economic forecasting model predicted the election of Donald Trump.
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About Creative Investment Research, Diversity Fund: Creative Investment Research creates tools, models, and ways of thinking, enabling investors to maximize social and financial returns.
Michał Borkowski
Co-founder & CEO of Brainly
Michał is the CEO and co-founder of Brainly and is responsible for product strategy, company strategy and culture. He and his co-founders established Brainly in 2009 in Kraków, driven by the conviction that collaborative online communities can empower students from around the world with knowledge and information. In a little more than a decade, Brainly has become the world’s largest online learning community for students, parents and teachers. After moving to New York City and living there for 4 years to open and build Brainly’s US office, Michał was only 16 when he started his first company, and he’s been shaking up the internet ever since. He grew up in a small town in Poland before heading to Warsaw to study corporate finance at the acclaimed Warsaw School of Economics. Michał now lives in Kraków with his wife, Kasia.
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About Brainly: Brainly is an online learning platform where students and parents get homework and study help from peers and experts.
Daniel Street
CEO of Scorpion
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About Scorpion: Scorpion exists to better local small businesses and the communities they serve.
Prerna Gupta
Founder & CEO of HOOKED
Prerna Gupta is the Founder & CEO at HOOKED.
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About HOOKED: HOOKED is redefining entertainment for the Snapchat generation.
Christopher Klaus
Co-Founder & CEO of Kaneva
Christopher Klaus is the CEO of Kaneva.
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About CyberLaunch, Kaneva, NeuroLaunch: Kaneva is an online 3D virtual world that supports 2D social networking, shared media, web browsing and online community interaction.
Tracy Chou
Founder & CEO of Block Party
Tracy Chou is an entrepreneur, software engineer, and diversity advocate. She spent five years at Pinterest as an engineer and tech lead and was an early engineer at Quora prior to that. She is a co-founder of Project Include, a non-profit working with tech startups on diversity and inclusion, and #MovingForward, a movement working with VC firms to establish and publish anti-harassment policies; and an investment scout and advisor for several Bay Area VC firms. In her latest venture she is CEO of Block Party, with a mission to solve online harassment and abuse.
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About Block Party, Pinterest, Project Include: Block Party is a consumer app that tackles online harassment and puts you back in control.
Dilip Keshu
CEO of BORN
Dilip Keshu is Chief Executive Officer at BORN Group (BORN). BORN is the new name for two agencies that were merged – GROUP FMG and POD1. BORN is a global provider of high impact marketing & media solutions; a new-age agency that integrates creative design, media/content production services and commerce enablement. BORN also offers digital marketing services, campaign management, support&Maintenance and analytics. BORN is headquartered in New York and London, with additional offices in Singapore and Chennai. BORN has delivered ecommerce flagships and creative design work clients such as Ethan Allen, DKNY, Tom Dixon, Glanbia, Red Bull, Fossil/Skagen, John Hardy, Mia Suki, Tom Dixon, Walgreens’ Beauty.com, Ferragamo, Erno Lazlo, Bulgari, Tag Heuer. Its media production services cut across various platforms including: print, mobile, tablets, interactive magazines, e-books, catalogues, e-commerce solutions, digital shop fronts, portals, websites, videos and loyalty programs. Its clients for such services are John Lewis, Random House, Haymarket, Sears, Staples, Pepsi, Boots, Harrods, Boden; Disney, Reader’s Digest, Penguin, Harper Collins, BBC, AMI; IBM, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Sony, Virgin Holidays, Sandals. BORN is funded by IVFA, a leading private equity fund, and Zodius Capital, a growth capital and build-out company.The management comprises of an international team of entrepreneurial leaders with deep experience of creating large global businesses. Prior to joining BORN, Dilip was a member of the Management Board of Xchanging plc., and also its Group Chief Customer Officer running all of sales, relations, service and marketing functions, in addition to the oversight of seven of the companys most strategic global customers. In this capacity he delivered $1.14 billion in top line revenues in 2010. His team of sales, service and relations comprises 146 people in the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Singapore and Australia. He was the executive sponsor for all big ticket sales to strategic customers and pioneers new deals/new platforms (which are usually acquired through Xchanging’s unique “Enterprise Partnerships” commercial structures where back office captive units are transformed to market utilities). As chief marketing officer he managed 3rd party influencers and a network of spotters and hunters who are C-Level opinion leaders. He also managed all digital assets such as websites, portals and social media initiatives. Prior to this he was a Board Member, President, ITO and Chief Strategy & Corporate Development Officer of Cambridge Solutions, a young publicly listed company with operations in 9 countries and offices in over 56 locations. Prior to that role Dilip led the company as its CEO including its listing in March 2005. By 2008, Cambridge was tracking at a profitable US$ 324m, at which point it was acquired by Xchanging. Prior to Cambridge, Dilip worked as the head of the Asia Pacific region for a corporate learning and development firm called DA Consulting Group, Inc. (DACG). It listed on the NASDAQ in 1998. Dilip acquired the e-business division of the firm in May 2000 and became an entrepreneur. A part of his firm was then acquired by Cambridge Solutions in 2003 and he joined Cambridge to lead its listing. As an entrepreneur, he raised money from Softbank and Newscorp and expanded his company from Asia to the UK and then the US. Prior to this, he served as Managing Director and Vice President, Baan Asia Pacific where he ran a successful P&L operation covering the Far East and south Asia. He was widely acknowledged for his substantial contributions in significantly growing the company’s market share and revenue in this region. Prior to Baan, he ran the Asian operations of Cincom Systems where he won several awards (Gold Circle, Quixote Club Award which is reserved for the firms top performers) and was given the firms top ‘AAA’ rating for performance. Before his tenure at Cincom, Dilip ran the Manufacturing Solutions Division of a large systems integration firm, which sold and implemented ERP and CAD/CAE/CAM and PLM products. He started his career as a management trainee in a large aerospace firm where he distinguished himself by winning the company’s top awards, the Chairman’s Gold Medal and Wilkinson Sword for high performance. He is a Charter Member of TiE which is one of the largest not for profit organization organized to help entrepreneurs. He is an Industrial Advisory Board Member of their Professional Science Master’s Program. Dilip holds a Master of Technology degree from IIT (M). He is an American citizen and lives in Princeton, New Jersey, USA. He has written two books (The Land of The Free, Home of the Brave, a booklet on America and The Nine Dots, a handbook for young leaders).
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About BORN, Fidovia LLC, Group FMG: BORN is an award winning global agency that focuses on enterprise, commerce, and experience design.
Jorn Lyseggen
Founder & CEO of Meltwater
Jorn Lyseggen, a serial entrepreneur and philanthropist, is the Founder & CEO of Meltwater. Launched in his home country of Norway in 2001 with just a $15,000 investment, Jorn and his team have grown the company to become a global leader in media intelligence. Today, Meltwater has more than 1,500 employees in 55 offices across six continents, with more than 30,000 clients worldwide. Jorn released his first book, Outside Insight: Navigating a World Drowning in Data, in October 2017. The book describes the emergence of a new software category that will leverage insights gleaned from the vast amount of external information available on the web to transform corporate decision-making.
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About Meltwater, Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST): Meltwater is a media Intelligence & social listening tools for measuring, managing and magnifying corporate reputation.
Michael Heyward
CEO of medialab
Serial entrepreneur Michael Heyward co-founded Whisper with Brad Brooks in 2012 with the mission of giving people a place to freely and authentically express themselves. Whisper is one of the fastest-growing media companies, generating over 17 billion content views per month. Prior to Whisper, the LA native worked in different roles related to consumer-based marketing at startup TigerText. As a teenager, Michael was an avid Formula One Racing fan and secured the United States commercial rights for the sport. In 2016, Michael was named one of AdWeek’s “Young Influentials”. In 2014, he was named one of Forbes Magazine’s “30 Under 30” and one of Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business.” Michael is a frequent keynote speaker and has spoken at a number of prominent conferences, including WSJ D, Fortune Tech Brainstorm, TechCrunch Disrupt, and Business Insider Ignition.
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About medialab: medialab is a media & technology company that engages in acquiring and growing internet brands.
Afif Khoury
Founder/CEO of SOCi
Afif Khoury has spent the last decade involved in startups and venture capital investments as an attorney, venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur. Afif is a published geneticist who earned his BS in Neuroscience and Physiology from UCSD in 1998, before attending Law School at Northwestern School of Law (JD 2002) and Business School at Kellogg School of Management. Afif started his legal career as a corporate and securities attorney in Silicon Valley at the premier technology law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR) representing technology companies and venture investors across multiple industries and at all stages. Afif left the Silicon Valley office of WSGR to help start their San Diego office, following which he left to open the San Diego office of Gunderson Dettmer (another Silicon Valley-based premier technology law firm). In 2010 Afif raised a seed and early stage fund named Scatter Ventures, which he continues to manage today. Afif is also the Founder and Managing Partner of Axon Venures, a Biotech focused venture fund in Southern California. Between the two fund, Afif has deployed more than $70 million. Afif is a director of the San Diego Venture Group and also founder and CEO of SOCI, Inc., a social data and intelligence technology startup. He is California Board certified as well as a Registered Attorney with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
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About Aspen Neuroscience, Axon Ventures, Cradle Genomics, Epic Sciences, EvoNexus, EY, Omniome, Oncternal Therapeutics, Singular Genomics, SOCi: SOCi is a centralized platform for multi-location marketers to reach and engage local customers.
David Siegel
CEO of Meetup
David Siegel is the CEO at Meetup.
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About Columbia University, Meetup: Meetup brings people together in thousands of cities to do more of what they want to do in life.
Edison Chen
Founder and CEO of Clapper
Edison Chen is the founder and CEO of Clapper. He has a master’s degree in Information Technology Management at The University of Texas at Dallas.
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About 5miles, Clapper: Mobile App
Joshua Stylman
Co-Founder, Managing Partner & CEO of Threes Brewing
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About TeamSnap, Threes Brewing: Threes Brewing is a brewery, bar & event space.
Alex Welch
CEO and Co-Founder of Lasso Media
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About Lasso Media, Photobucket: Lasso offers a mobile app that enables its users to share photos with their friends.
Ben Silbermann
Co-Founder & CEO of Pinterest
Ben (@8en) grew up in Iowa, where he spent a lot of time collecting bugs. Today, he helps millions of people collect and discover the things they love as co-founder and CEO of Pinterest. Before Pinterest, Ben worked at Google on AdSense and studied at Yale. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and two sons. Previously, Silbermann worked at Google in the sales organization; however, after a short time with the company he left and started designing his own iPhone apps with a college friend, Paul Sciarra. After their initial application, Totte, failed to gain significant traction, the cofounders created a pinboard product and Pinterest was born. However, Pinterest saw a low user base and very little engagement in its early stages. Silbermann said the prospect of telling people he failed was too embarrassing so he and Sciarra continued to tinker and improve the site. Today, Pinterest claims over 20 million users.
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About Cold Brew Labs, Pinterest: Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool for saving and discovering creative ideas.
Mahi de Silva
Chief Executive Officer of Triller
Mahi is the CEO at Triller.
Previously, Mahi was responsible for commercial activities for Opera’s consumer mobile products and services. Before joining Opera, Mahi was co-founder and CEO of AdMarvel, Inc., the global leader in mobile advertising platforms, acquired by Opera in 2010.
Prior to AdMarvel, Mahi co-founded Frengo
Corporation, a mobile social media platform. Mahi also spent 10 years at VeriSign, where he was part of the startup management team.
From 2002 to 2006, he served as senior vice president and general manager of Wireless and Digital Content Services at VeriSign, where he built the world’s leading mobile messaging and mobile entertainment business with revenues exceeding $600M per year.
Prior to VeriSign, he served in various technology leadership roles at Taligent, Apple and NCR Corporation.
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About Triller: Triller is an AI-powered music video app that enables anyone to make professional videos, effortlessly.
Declan Kennedy
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of StitcherAds
Declan Kennedy is a Co-Founder, CEO at StitcherAds.
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About StitcherAds, X-BOLT Orthapaedics: StitcherAds is a performance marketing platform for Facebook & Instagram, helping advertisers drive better performance across all channels.
Chris Lamontagne
CEO of Spring
> An enterprising and ambitious business leader, with proven entrepreneurial talent and innovative way of thinking. Strong experience of founding/working in high growth environments. > Successful track record in defining go to market business strategy, leading user acquisition efforts and driving hyper growth. > Interested marketplaces, e-commerce & mobile environments. With a specific interest in distressed or turnaround situations. Founded first business aged 20 – grew to become nationwide provider – successfully exited three years later.
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About Spring: Spring is the link between creators and commerce. Innovative tools and services empower creators to launch products while selling on social.
Kevin Long
Co-Founder & CEO of The Dyrt
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About : The Dyrt is consumer subscription software and top ranked camping app, with over 1.5M user-submitted reviews and tips across the U.S.
Blake Lawrence
CEO and Co-Founder of Opendorse
Blake Lawrence is the CEO and co-founder of Opendorse, the athlete endorsement company. More than 75,000 athletes use Opendorse to understand, build, and monetize their name, image, and likeness (NIL) value. Prior to Opendorse, Blake co-founded Hurrdat, a social media agency, in Lincoln, Nebraska. Over four years, Hurrdat grew from two to twenty-five employees, and was acquired in July 2014 by B2 Interactive. Prior to his journey as an entrepreneur, Blake was a member of the Nebraska football team. Lawrence was a highly recruited linebacker, who started at Linebacker in 2008 and 2009, before his career was cut short due to recurring concussions. Off the football field, Blake earned his marketing degree in just 2.5 years, and received his MBA from Nebraska in 2011.
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About Opendorse: Opendorse operates the leading SaaS-enabled Marketplace in the athlete endorsement industry.
Nick Hedges
CEO of MomentFeed
A 20-year veteran of the Internet and software as a service (SaaS) industry, Nick comes to MomentFeed having been President and CEO of Velocify, the leading consumer sales acceleration platform. Nick helped orchestrate the successful sale of the company to Velocify partner and leading cloud-based platform provider for the mortgage finance industry, Ellie Mae. A widely recognized thought leader on organization transformation, technologies, and sales strategies, Nick has held senior positions at Bain & Company, Accenture.com, and Ogilvy. He was named one of the 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management. A Fulbright Scholar, Hedges holds an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree with first-class honors from Manchester University.
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About ICE Mortgage Technology, MomentFeed, uberall: MomentFeed is a platform that helps multi-location brands optimize for proximity search in order to connect customers with brands.
Keith Messick
Cofounder & CEO of Origin.al
Keith Messick is Senior Vice President Marketing at LaunchDarkly
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About LaunchDarkly, Origin.al: Origin.al is a new way to represent a user’s work—projects and examples in real time.
Jackson Vaughan
CEO & Co-Founder of Whim
CEO and Co-Founder of Whim
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About Whim: Contacts ranked by availability and proximity
Michael Ritter
Founder & CEO of Maple Media
Michael Ritter is the Founder and CEO of Maple Media, a mobile apps and games company backed by private equity firm Shamrock Capital. Maple Media is a mobile media, advertising and technology company that acquires, manages and operates mobile applications focused on the utility, productivity, games and entertainment verticals. Popular titles include Snowboard Party: World Tour, Skateboard Party, Minesweeper Classic, Sudoku 🙂 and CalConvert. Previously he was SVP of Business & Corporate Development for Jam City, a large social and mobile game company based in Los Angeles where he oversaw mergers & acquisition activities, publishing, licensing, distribution, sales, legal and partnerships for social and mobile games. Michael was also the Founder and Publisher of Saturday Night Magazine, which at the time, he built into the largest circulated monthly collegiate lifestyle and entertainment magazine in the country.
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About Fantasy Baseball Arbitration, Maple Media: Maple Media is a mobile media, advertising, and technology company that acquires and operates category-leading, consumer apps.
John Bartling
CEO & President of Invitation Homes
John B. Bartling, Jr. chairs our Manager’s Investment Committee and is one of our Class I directors. He is also our Co-Chief Executive Officer (a position he shares with Todd S. Schuster). Mr. Bartling is a Senior Partner in and Co-Head of the Ares Real Estate Group and serves on the Management Committee of Ares. Mr. Bartling serves on the Ares Real Estate Group’s U.S. Equity, Europe Equity, and Real Estate Debt Investment Committees. He may from time to time serve as an officer, director or principal of entities affiliated with Ares Management or of investment funds managed by Ares Management and its affiliates. From May 2007 to September 2010, he was Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of AllBridge Investments, a portfolio company of Ares Capital Corporation. AllBridge sponsored four real estate investment funds, three of which Mr. Bartling saw through to disposition, and one corporate investment, Helix Financial, a commercial real estate due diligence and analytics firm with operations in India, which AllBridge sold to BlackRock Solutions in 2010. Prior to AllBridge, Mr. Bartling founded WMC Management Company, a privately held real estate operating company with over 3,000 employees and clients including Olympus Real Estate Partners, Arnold Palmer Golf Management, or APGM, Walden, and Hyphen Solutions. Mr. Bartling took Walden private as CEO in 2000, and sold it in March 2006 to a subsidiary of Dubai Investment Group. From December 1995 to October 1999, Mr. Bartling served as the CEO and President for Lexford, f/k/a Cardinal Realty, a publicly traded, fully integrated multifamily real estate investment trust. Lexford merged with Equity Residential Properties Trust in 1999. Before Lexford, Mr. Bartling served as Director of the Real Estate Products Group of Credit Suisse First Boston. Prior to CSFB, Mr. Bartling served as an Executive Vice President of NHP Incorporated. Mr. Bartling’s previous professional experience also includes Trammell Crow Residential, as a Development Principal, and Mellon Bank, N.A. as a Vice President of the Commercial Mortgage Banking Group. Mr. Bartling has served on the Board of Directors of APGM, the Children’s Hospital Research for Ohio State University, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies: Leadership Forum on Pension Fund and Endowment Investments in Domestic Emerging Markets, Big Brothers and Big Sisters Association of Columbus, Ohio and the NMHC Board of Directors. Additionally, he has served on the Executive Council and as Chairman of the Finance Committee for the National Multi Housing Council. Currently, Mr. Bartling is a member of Real Estate Round Table and on the Board of Directors of Texas Real Estate Council. Mr. Bartling won the BBB Business Integrity Award for Lexford, Inc in 1996 and was a judge for Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. He was the co-founder of Caring Partners for Kids, awarded the 2004 Community Service Award by Multifamily Executive, and served on the Strategic Planning Committee of Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Dallas. Mr. Bartling received a B.S. in Marketing from Robert Morris College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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About Invitation Homes: Invitation Homes specializes in acquiring single family homes in situations such as foreclosure or short sale, rehabilitating, leasing.
Anton Bernstein
Co-founder & CEO of Highrise
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About Highrise, Lux Group, Pocket Worlds: Highrise is a creative mobile community where people create avatars, express themselves, and make friends.
Jocelyn Mangan
CEO and Co-Founder of Him For Her
Jocelyn Mangan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Him For Her.
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About Him For Her, Snagajob: Him For Her is a social venture that accelerates the diversity on corporate boards.
Banu Guler
Founder & CEO of Co–Star
Founder and CEO of Co-Star, the hyper-personalized, social astrology app bringing astrology into the 21st century. Fashion industry veteran, working with brands such as Diane von Furstenberg, Alex & Ani, Ann Taylor, VFILES, and Michael Kors. Began career as a graphic designer. After realizing the power of digital in the fashion space, shifted focus to creating immersive, digital experiences to integrate community and content into commerce. Studied psychology at NYU. Scorpio.
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About Co–Star: Co–Star is a real-time horoscopes bringing astrology into the 21st century.
Maurice Harary
Founder and CEO of Fluz
Maurice is a Founder of the Fluz App. He is a serial entrepreneur with a 10-year background in e-commerce. He currently manages over 20 e-commerce sites in the B2B and B2C environment, ranging from interactive learning-based experiences to price-competitive marketplace trading sites. Experience in all areas of e-commerce sites, ranging from custom e-commerce software development to operational planning. He has extensive experience in fashion eCommerce and marketplace selling.
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About Fluz: Reinventing cashback to give you more. Get paid when you shop + when your friends shop. Earn Cashback Forever.
Derek Ting
CEO of TextNow
Derek Ting is the co-founder and CEO of TextNow.Prior to that, Derek served as a software engineer at Qualcomm and Phoenix Interactive Design Inc. Derek founded WoolNet LLC.
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About TextNow: Our mission is to break down the barriers to communication and free the flow of conversation for people everywhere.
Eric Grossberg
Co-CEO & Co-Founder of Brilliant Earth
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About Brilliant Earth: Brilliant Earth is a luxury jewelry company that offers ethically sourced jewelry.
Beth Gerstein
Co-CEO & Co-Founder of Brilliant Earth
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About Brilliant Earth: Brilliant Earth is a luxury jewelry company that offers ethically sourced jewelry.
Art Levitt
CEO of 4 JEMS Entertainment
In addition to serving as an active investor and advisor to runtriz, Art is currently a Venture Partner with Jerusalem Venture Partners and CEO of its portfolio company, Animation Lab. Art also operates 4JEMS Entertainment as a consulting practice focused on the improvement of business and industry. Prior to 4JEMS, Art founded, and served as President and CEO of, Fandango, Inc., the premier online movie ticketing and entertainment website. Previously, Art served as President of Disney Regional Entertainment, a division of The Walt Disney Company. Prior to Disney Regional Entertainment, Art served as President and CEO of Hard Rock Cafe, International. Levitt completed the Program for Management Development (P.M.D.) at Harvard University, and graduated Southampton college with a B.A. in Biology.
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About 4 JEMS Entertainment, Animation Lab: 4 Jems Entertainment, Inc.
Jeff Green
CEO of The Trade Desk
Jeff Green is founder and CEO of The Trade Desk, Inc., a demand-side platform that powers the desks of the world’s most advanced buyers in online advertising. Green built The Trade Desk as second-generation demand-side platform, positioning it at the center of online advertising’s trading future by offering efficient, transparent technology. Since its inception in 2009, the company has grown on pace with the now-$3B RTB industry, having been included as an alpha partner in Facebook’s launch of the Facebook Exchange, and having been recently being named one of OnMedia’s “35 [Private Companies] to Watch.” By focusing on the technology of the buy-side, Green has shaped The Trade Desk into one of the fastest growing companies in ad tech. He was a finalist for the Ernst & Young 2013 Entrepreneur of the Year award for Greater Los Angeles. Prior to The Trade Desk, Green founded AdECN, which he built in 2004 as the world’s first online advertising exchange. As COO, he led all strategy, product, and business development. AdECN was acquired by the Microsoft Corporation within three years of launch. At Microsoft, Green not only oversaw the AdECN exchange business, but also all reseller and channel partner business. Additionally, he advised the all-up strategy for the Online Services Division. In 2009, Green left to launch The Trade Desk. Green has also played a leadership role in the ad tech industry, having served on the Networks and Exchanges Quality Assurance Guidelines Committee for the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) from 2011-2012. Green led working groups that established rules and best practices for acquiring inventory, and set data transaction standards.
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About The Trade Desk, Trade Desk Inc.: The Trade Desk is an online demand-side platform that provides buying tools for digital media buyers.
Joe Chen
Founder & CEO of Renren
Yizhou Chen is the chairman and CEO of China InterActive Corporation. Chen attended Wuhan University and received his B.Sc degree in Physics in 1987, and his M.Sc in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in 1993. He also went on to receive his MBA and M.S. degree in Electromechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 1997. In 1999 Chen co-founded ChinaRen.com and served as Chairman and CEO of the company. He was later appointed Vice President of Sohu after Sohu acquired ChinaRen in 2000. He also founded China InterActive Corporation in 2002.
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About Renren: Renren.com is an online social network service that offers an extensive interactive communication platform for Chinese users.
Akin Jones
CEO & CO-FOUNDER of Aella
Akin Jones is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Aella Credit.
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About Aella: Aella helps africans get credit, invest, get health insurance, and make payments.
Matt Marshall
Founder and CEO of VentureBeat
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded \”Journalist of the Year\” by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
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About VentureBeat: VentureBeat is an online technology news platform that is engaged in technology publication and events business.
Greg Fell
CEO of Tsū
Greg Fell is the Chief Executive Officer at Tsū and the Chairman at InvestorsCollaborative. He comes to Tsū from Gama Signature Aviation, the largest private jet charter operator in the United States and the exclusive air carrier for WheelsUp, where he served as chief operating officer. Prior to joining Gama Signature, Fell held leadership roles in information technology with Ford Motor Company and Terex Corporation.
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About Tsū: Tsū is a social media platform that shares ad revenue as well as provides tools that inspire content creation.
Grant Canary
Founder & CEO of DroneSeed
Grant Canary is CEO of DroneSeed, a Techstars Seattle 2016 company which is paid by Timber companies per acre to plant tree seeds, spray to protect them, and monitor growth–by drone swarm. This year DroneSeed received the FAA’s first approval for up to five aircraft to be flown by a single pilot each carrying a 57lb payload. DroneSeed works for 3 of the 5 largest timber companies and recently signed a contract with The Nature Conservancy to restore post wildfire burn sites. They are backed by Social Capital and Spero Ventures. This is Grant’s second venture. His first was acquired. Under the acquirer the team raised $10M and built a 60k square foot factory to produce industrial insect protein from food waste for sustainable salmon feed. The company is still going strong. Grant’s spent his entire carrier working within for-profit companies to benefit the environment including Vestas Wind Energy and the US Green Building Council. Grant loves meeting and championing awesome people working on cool things and sometimes hires them.
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About DroneSeed: DroneSeed is paid per acre to plant tree seed vessels after a wildfire — using heavy-lift Drone Swarms
Eric Dahan
CEO & Co-founder of Open Influence
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About Open Influence, YPO: Open Influence is a marketing company that helps brands and advertisers engage and grow their desired audiences through social media.
Hao Li
CEO & Co-Founder of Pinscreen
Hao Li is Founder and CEO of Pinscreen, Inc., and Distinguished Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, Director of the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, a visiting professor at Weta Digital and a research lead at Industrial Light & Magic / Lucasfilm. For his contributions in non-rigid shape registration, human digitization, and real-time facial performance capture, Hao received the TR35 Award in 2013, recognizing him as one of the top 35 innovators under the age of 35, from the MIT Technology Review. He was named Andrew and Erna Viterbi Early Career Chair in 2015, and was awarded the Google Faculty Research Award and the Okawa Foundation Research Grant the same year. He won the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award in 2018. He is best known for his work on dynamic geometry processing, facial animation, and data-driven techniques for making 3D human digitization and facial animation accessible to the masses. During his PhD, Hao co-created the first real-time and markerless system for performance-driven facial animation based on depth sensors. The team later commercialized a variant of this technology as the facial animation software Faceshift (acquired by Apple Inc. in 2015 and incorporated into the iPhone X in 2017). He was brought on as visiting professor at Weta Digital to build the high-fidelity facial performance capture pipeline for reenacting the deceased actor Paul Walker in the movie Furious 7 (2015). His recent research focuses on combining techniques in Deep Learning and Computer Graphics to facilitate the creation of 3D avatars and to enable true immersive face-to-face communication and telepresence in Virtual Reality.
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About Pinscreen, University of California Berkeley: Revolutionizing digital communication and online human interactions with user-generated and personalized 3D virtual avatars.
Justin Romano
CEO & Creative Director of Backspace
Founder of Backspace.
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About Backspace: Gamified Social Network with Self-Deleting posts.
Andrei Cherny
CEO and Co-Founder of Aspiration
Andrei Cherny has spent nearly twenty years working to make the financial system more open and fair. He combines a background as an advisor to some of America’s top companies, the co-founder and president of a media start-up, a financial fraud prosecutor, a historian, a White House aide, a Navy reserve officer, and a nationally-recognized economic policy expert. Andrei has provided strategic counsel to companies such as Intel, Qualcomm, and Bank of America. He launched and grew Democracy Journal to one of the most widely read idea journals in America. There, he helped start the successful fight for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A former Clinton White House aide, he was the youngest White House speechwriter in American history. His 2000 book, The Next Deal, showed how business and government would be transformed by people’s demands for more and better choices. He is also the author of the The Candy Bombers. He graduated from Harvard University and from the University of California Berkeley law school. Source: https://www.aspiration.com/team
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About Aspiration: Aspiration offers retail banking and investing services that enable customers to spend and save their money in ways that protect the planet.
Jesse Leimgruber
Co-Founder & CEO of NeoReach
Jesse is a Stanford Alumni, co-founder of NeoReach and Bloom, Thiel Fellow, and angel investor in a dozen startups. Jesse is a partner at the Alchemist Accelerator, mentor at European Innovation Academy. He frequently guest lectures classes at Stanford University and USC.
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About Alchemist Accelerator, Bloom, Bloom, Clash, NeoReach, Rank Executives: Influencer Marketing For Big Brands
Matt Mahan
CEO & Co-Founder of Brigade
Matt is responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of Brigade. He served as CEO of Causes and has previous experience in political campaigning and community organizing. In 2004, Matt ran the first political campaign to leverage Facebook data when he was elected Student Body President at Harvard.
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About Brigade, City of San Jose, University of Southern California: Brigade wants to make civic engagement easy, effective, and enjoyable — and in so doing, restore political power back to the people.
Robert Gabel
Founder & CEO of Tubular Labs
Robert (“Rob”) Gabel is the founder and CEO of Tubular Labs, the leading marketing and analytics platform that helps companies grow and engage their online video audience on YouTube. Building a marketing and analytics platform for online video unites two of Rob’s passions – online video and online marketing. Rob became fascinated with the promise and power of online video while serving as SVP of Advertising Performance at Machinima, YouTube’s 2nd largest network. Rob broadened his online video experience by consulting to YouTube-centric media companies DanceOn and AwesomenessTV. Rob’s online marketing experience includes serving as a SVP of Marketing for LowerMyBills and VP Marketing for both Inadco and Netflix. As one of the first employees at LowerMyBills, Rob helped the company grow from pre-revenue to over $200 million organically before being acquired by Experian in 2005 for nearly $400 million. Robert Gabel earned his M.B.A. from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and graduated Magna Cum Laude from The Honors College at the University of Houston with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering.
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About Tubular Labs: Tubular Labs is the global leader in video intelligence for the cross-platform world.
Austin Smith
CEO of Racket.com
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About Coughdrop Capital, LAUNCH, Racket.com: Let’s make a racket.
Jon Fisher
Co-founder & CEO of CrowdOptic
Chief Executive Officer (Co-Founder) / Director Jon is CrowdOptic’s CEO and served as CEO of Bharosa (Oracle NASDAQ: ORCL), NetClerk (NYSE: ROP) and AutoReach (AutoNation NYSE: AN). Jon is a recipient of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year, Award (Emerging Category, 2007) and lives in Marin County, CA with his wife and daughter.
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About CrowdOptic, ViciNFT: CrowdOptic uses algorithms and real-time sensor data from electronic devices to enhance security, social media sharing, and advertising.
Christopher Sopher
Co-Founder and CEO of WhereBy.Us
CEO at WhereBy.Us.
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About WhereBy.Us: A platform that enables creators to build a media business for their community.
Matt Sunbulli
Co-Founder & CEO of Fishbowl
Matt Sunbulli is Cofounder, CEO and Chief Product officer of Fishbowl, a a social network that connects professionals within companies and industries to have workplace conversations. Fishbowl was acquired by Recruit Holdings Co., which also owns Indeed.com and Glassdoor, in 2021. Previously he was CEO and Cofounder of Social Amp, the first CRM platform optimizing Facebook’s Open Graph for business. Social Amp was acquired by Merkle Inc., a leader in CRM database marketing, in February 2012. Matt’s work has been showcased at the Direct Marketing Association Conference and Exhibition, ad:tech Digital Marketing Conference and Facebook’s F8 Developers Conference. Social Amp’s work with Levi’s, Estee Lauder and 1-800-Flowers.com has been widely showcased in the social commerce industry. Prior to Social Amp, Matt served as a digital product manager at Viacom MTV Networks where he pioneered the release of new digital and social technologies and launched the first video blog. He is a graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.
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About Fishbowl, Fishbowl: Fishbowl is a social network that connects professionals within relevant communities to have candid and relevant conversations.
Brett Garfinkel
Co-Founder & CEO of SYLO
Brett Garfinkel is a Co-Founder & CEO at SYLO.
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About SYLO: SYLO provides marketers and creators with 3rd-party validation and standardized measurement to confidently invest in influencer marketing.
Michael Boswell
Co-Founder, CEO of Cue
Co-Founder and CEO of Cue. Previously an Entrepreneur in Residence at Khosla Ventures; Design Lead at Facebook, Google and Coatue. Founding member of several products with successful exits including Jobr, Pagemodo, and ContactMe.
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About Cue: The world’s first social calendar
Brian Hamachek
Co-Founder, CEO of Nearby
Brian is the Co-Founder and CEO of Nearby.
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About Nearby, Social Foundry, LLC: Meeting new people is hard. We wanted to create something to help.
John R. Adler
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Scribd
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About Scribd: Scribd is an unlimited reading subscription that offers access to books, audiobooks, magazine articles, documents and more.
Jonathan Wygant
Founder and CEO of BigSpeak Speakers Bureau
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About BigSpeak Speakers Bureau: BigSpeak is a full-spectrum speakers bureau providing business speakers to corporations, non-profits, and associations.
Victor Alston
President and CEO of IXIA
Victor Alston is a professional who’s multi-faceted career has helped him acquire impressive skills in a number of industries, including real estate development – where he’s working as President and CEO at Big Sur Construction and Luxe Living – as well as venture funding, where he identifies and invests in late-stage tech development companies. Previously in his career, Victor Alston assumed Ixia’s chief executive role in May of 2012, where his vision has aggressively moved the company forward into exciting industries such as cyber security, data center visibility, and more. Vic was instrumental in architecting Ixia’s success as it grew from a startup to a 350 million per year, leading enterprise IT solutions provider. Since joining Ixia in 2004, Vic has led Ixia innovation and growth as the head of product and technology development, engineering, and as chief operating officer for the company. Prior to joining Ixia, Victor Alston was senior director of engineering at SAP, a publicly-traded enterprise software company. Vic honed his entrepreneurial skills as a co-founder and vice president of engineering in two successful enterprise software companies – later sold to Computer Associates and Oracle Corporation, respectively. Before starting those two companies, Vic rose through the ranks at Oracle in the RDBMS and PLSQL group. Victor Alston received both his B.S. in Computer Science and M.S. in Computer Science (MSCS) from Stanford University.
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About IXIA: Ixia provides IP network validation and network visibility solutions for equipment manufacturers, service providers and government agencies.
Michael Sanchez
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder & BOD of CafeMom
I co-founded CafeMom out of respect and admiration for moms. I play a lead role in driving the company’s strategy, growth, and overall operations. I get to think about many different aspects of the business – the team, what’s happening in moms’ lives, the product, marketing, sales, finance — and how they are all connected. I also get to work with an amazing group of people across the company. Prior to CafeMom, I was the Co-Founder and President of Do Something, a national organization that helps millions of young people get involved in their communities. I also co-founded and served as the Chief Executive Officer of the profitable, ’94 Cup Daily, the nation’s only daily newspaper dedicated to the 1994 World Cup Soccer Tournament held in the United States. Columbia Law School, with honors; University of Virginia undergrad, where I majored in Economics.
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About CafeMedia, CafeMom: CafeMom is social networking site targeted at mothers and mothers-to-be offering a host of contents from pregnancy, relationships and more.
Jonathan Gray
CEO and Co-Founder of Encore Music Technologies
Jonathan Gray, founder and CEO of Cask, is an entrepreneur and software engineer with a background in startups, open source, and all things data. Prior to founding Cask, Jonathan was a software engineer at Facebook where he drove HBase engineering efforts, including Facebook Messages and several other large-scale projects, from inception to production. An open source evangelist, Jonathan was responsible for helping build the Facebook engineering brand through developer outreach and refocusing the open source strategy of the company. Prior to Facebook, Jonathan founded Streamy.com, where he became an early adopter of Hadoop and HBase and is now a core contributor and active committer in the community. Jonathan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University.
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About Encore Music Technologies, Orcada, The Apache Software Foundation: Encore is an interactive live music mobile-based platform aiming to help artists monetize their connections with fans.
Brian Freeman
Founder and CEO of Heartbeat
Brian Freeman is a Entrepreneur, Consultant & Investor At Present he is Founder of Heartbeat Technologies, Inc of Heartbeat (getheartbeat.co). He also founded Wyldfire, where Ladies are the Gatekeepers. He has been featured for his work in entrepreneurism in Forbes, Business Insider, Huffington Post, Techcrunch, etc. He was Director Channel Partners at MOGL Loyalty, Inc & Investor & Consultant for MobilePay USA an early mobile payments provider.
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About Heartbeat: Heartbeat is a platform for millennial women to join, provide feedback to, and promote brands via their personal networks.
Saad El Yamani
Founder & CEO of Ambi
Saad El Yamani is the Founder & CEO at Ambi Inc
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About Ambi, Babson College: Ambi is designed to centralize the college experience for students through a productive and powerful social network.
Adam Mosseri
CEO and Head of Instagram
Adam Mosseri is a VP at Facebook and leads the product and engineering teams responsible for News Feed and Sharing. Before this role Adam was the PM director for News Feed and before that the design director for the Mobile product group, where he was responsible for the design of all of Facebook’s mobile apps. Prior to Facebook he worked at TokBox as the company’s first designer. Adam began his career founding a design consultancy in 2003 with offices in New York and San Francisco that focused on graphic design, interaction design and exhibition design. Adam holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Study from the Gallatin School of Interdisciplinary Study at NYU where he studied Information Design and Media. He and his wife Monica are proud parents of sons, Nico and Blaise
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About Instagram, Meta: Instagram is a free photo-sharing application that enables its users to take photos, apply filters, and share them on social networks.
Dmitry Shapiro
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Koji
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About Koji: Koji is the world’s most powerful Link in Bio platform. With hundreds of free apps created by Koji and its community of independent developers, the Koji Link in Bio gives leading creators on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms new ways to engage audiences, connect with supporters, and monetize. Koji launched in March 2021 and has raised $36 million in venture capital.
Ken Ma
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of AreaHype
Ken Ma is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer at AreaHype.
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About AreaHype: We connect small businesses with clients.
Ulrik Bo Larsen
Founder & CEO of Falcon.io
Ulrik Bo Larsen founded Falcon Social in 2010 after working in the groove between marketing and technology for an A-list of global clients such as PANDORA Jewelry, Carlsberg, Georg Jensen, JWT, IUM, Mindshare and MediaEdge CIA. Prior to Falcon, Ulrik founded and ran the digital agency Mingler, producing data-driven, social campaigns and assets for a global audience. He also created the first Scandinavian social network and led it to a successful exit to Danish media company – JP/Politikens Hus.
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About Falcon.io: Falcon.io provides an SaaS platform that allows marketing departments to create, launch and measure social media campaigns in real time.
Anil Dash
Chief Executive Officer of Glitch
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About Glitch, Monegraph, Stack Overflow: Glitch is the friendly community where everyone builds the web.
Ben Anderson
Co-Founder and CEO of Amino Apps
Benjamin Anderson is a co-founder and CEO at Amino Apps.
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About Amino Apps: Amino Apps enables people to discover, develop, and express their interests and passions.
Alex Beckman
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of GameOn Technology
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About Elastic Holdings, GameOn Technology: Our technology powers intelligent chat applications across multiple platforms for some of the world’s largest brands.
Joel Simkhai
Founder and CEO of Blendr
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About Blendr: Blendr is a geo-social networking application and social discovery platform for Android, iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Facebook.
Jon Vlassopulos
Founder & CEO of Tribalist
Jon Vlassopulos is the founder and CEO of Trailerpop, where he leads a mission to revolutionize the way people discover entertainment and engage with advertising. Jon has spent the last 17 years building businesses in and around the mobile, entertainment and advertising industries and as a founder, senior executive, investor and advisor, his work has driven hundreds of millions of dollars worth of innovation and delighted tens of millions of consumers. Prior to founding Trailerpop, Jon has served as CEO of award winning mobile entertainment studio skyrockit, where he managed major US carrier content platforms for companies like Sprint and built innovative branded entertainment products and experiences for companies like GAP, Intel, Coca Cola, Kraft and Zippo. Dubbed a digital media and advertising visionary by The Hollywood Reporter, Jon has created successful industry firsts in the areas of mobile, games, advertising, TV and music. Before skyrockit, Jon was the SVP of digital media and branded entertainment for Endemol, the world’s largest independent production company, where he was responsible for its worldwide digital & advertising business. Jon is credited with launching interactive TV in the US with shows like Deal or no Deal and 1 vs. 100 and with creating some of the first live, multi-platform game formats for networks like BET and TBS. He also produced games that were successful on multiple platforms including Xbox, online, and mobile and sold and produced some of the first online web series. Jon served as senior director of business development & strategic partnerships at AT&T Wireless, establishing the first phase of messaging and mobile data. At AT&T Jon ran the mobile content business and mobile marketing where he established the first mobile marketing campaigns with major brands and led the youth marketing team responsible for tracking and implementing new applications and business models Early in his career Jon was at Bertelsmann, where he helped to create BMG’s global digital strategy and held multiple executive positions with other Bertelsmann divisions in New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Jon has served on the board of NATPE, the Producer’s Guild and was a founding member of the Mobile Marketing Association. He holds a degree from Durham University and is fluent in French, Spanish and Mandarin. Jon got his start as a DJ and radio host, from where he nurtured his love of music & entertainment, building a career that blended interests in original content, emerging platforms and marketing innovation.
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About A-Force Ventures, Fabric, Roblox, Tastemates, Trailerpop, Tribalist: Tribalist is a site that offers the best entertainment & lifestyle lists from top publishers to help people discover new things to do.
Osman Rashid
CEO & Chairman of Convo
Osman is a seasoned entrepreneur in the field of educational technology. He is currently the CEO of Convo Corp. and Founder & CEO of **Galxyz** , an intergalactic science adventure on a mission to ignite the fascination of science and unlock the true potential in every student. Previously he was the co-founder and CEO of online textbook rental leader **Chegg** (NYSE:CHGG) until early 2010, and also co-founder and CEO of **Kno, Inc.** (acquired by Intel in 2013), a digital education platform company. He is also on the Board of Trustees at a health focused non-profit, ChildLife Foundation, which provides urgent care to the poorest in Karachi, Pakistan. CLF runs Karachi’s largest children emergency rooms and is deploying satellite urgent care centers to provide critical care and prevention education. Osman has received several honors, including Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of The Year Award (CA) in 2009, which is the world’s most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs, as well as Forbes Impact 15 for 2012 and Inc.’s Immigrant Edge: 9 Wildly Successful Entrepreneurs. To find out more about Osman, check out his LinkedIn profile. You can also follow him on Twitter @osmanrashid.
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About Convo, Galxyz: Convo provides an enterprise social collaboration platform that enables easy, secure conversations between desk/non-desk workers.
Jonah Peretti
Founder & CEO of 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.
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About BuzzFeed: BuzzFeed is a cross-platform digital media company delivering news and entertainment content to a global audience.
Konstantin Stoyanov
Founder & CEO of 411 Marketing
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About 411 Marketing: 411 Marketing is a fully-certified Google Partner, and we are actively following all the strict standards of the SEO to improve rankings.
Jerome Ternynck
Founder and CEO of SmartRecruiters
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About SmartRecruiters: SmartRecruiters is an end-to-end recruiting platform that helps companies with talent acquisition.
Johannes Waldstein
Founder & CEO of FanAI
Johannes Waldstein is the Founder & CEO at FanAI Inc.
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About FanAI: FanAI is an AI-driven Audience Monetization platform focusing first on esports.
Justin Davis
Co-Founder & CEO of Spectrum Labs
Currently Spectrum’s Co-Founder & CEO, Justin previously managed and scaled Salesforce’s Data Studio platform as a Product Director. He’s worked for numerous industry stalwarts – including Krux, Adobe, SAS, and Microsoft. Sales: sales@getspectrum.io | Blog: getspectrum.io/blog
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About Spectrum Labs: Spectrum Labs helps consumer brands recognize and respond to toxic behaviors happening within their online communities.
Yael Vizel
CEO & Co-founder of Zeekit (a Walmart company)
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About Zeekit (a Walmart company): Zeekit is a technology company, a part of the Global Tech department at Walmart, specializing in virtual dress-up technology.
Stanley Adrianus
CEO & Founder of Gamenauts
Stanley is currently the founder & CEO of Gamenauts, a games developer/publisher in San Francisco Bay Area. The company has remained profitable and 100% self-funded since its founding in 2005. Gamenauts maintains a portfolio of several Top 10 titles in the App Store and over 16 million mobile downloads. Prior to Gamenauts, Stanley was Lead Designer at Yahoo! Games, where he was responsible for the UI/UX when the site grew to be #1 games portal on the web.
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About Gamenauts, Plato: Gaemnauts is a game developer and publisher of applications for mobile devices.
Mark Bishof
President & CEO of Clarabridge
Mark Bishof is a seasoned CEO with a track record of creating high performance organizations, shaping new markets and delivering world class solutions and results. – Served as CEO of Flexera Software. – Held senior executive positions at IBM, Deloitte Consulting, Macrovision, Crossworlds Software, and Booz Allen Hamilton. – Serves as a Board Director of Infogix and Pace Harmon, and is a Board of Trustee member of The Nature Conservancy (Virginia Chapter).
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About Clarabridge: Clarabridge is a Customer Experience Management platform that provides insight from customers.
Chris DeWolfe
CEO & Co-Founder of Jam City
Chris DeWolfe is co-founder and CEO of Jam City, a global leader in mobile entertainment that provides social gaming experiences for millions of players around the world. Prior to Jam City, Chris co-founded and served as CEO of MySpace, where he popularized social networking and revolutionized the music industry. The site, formed in 2004, became the most visited in the U.S. by 2006 with 90 million members. When Chris left the company in 2009, MySpace had more than 130 million monthly active users around the world. Chris received Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2015 and the Producers Guild of America’s Vanguard award in 2009. TIME included him among its 2006 list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and Barbara Walters named him one of her 10 Most Fascinating People in 2007. He studied finance at the University of Washington and attended the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, which honored him in 2006 with its Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year award. Chris is an advisor at USC’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and a board member of Uproxx Media Group. He lives in Los Angeles with his family and actively participates in animal rescue operations.
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About Jam City: Jam City is a mobile entertainment company, connecting the world through technology, creativity, and play.
Alex Collmer
Founder & CEO of VidMob
Alex Collmer is the founder and CEO of VidMob, the world’s largest video creation platform.As the web transitions to a video-driven medium, Collmer recognized the need for businesses to have access to the world’s best video creators who could produce quality content for a variety of platforms that was affordable. Since founding the company in 2015, Collmer has raised more than $13M and counts the leading brands and agencies as clients. Combing an elegant interface with a roster of more than 5000 video creators enables anyone to maximize their video presence and make a brand impact with video. An engineer by training, Collmer’s career has always been at the intersection of technology, design, and consumer entertainment as those sectors have evolved. Prior to founding VidMob, Collmer was the co-founder and CEO of Autumn Games, a premier publisher of video game franchises. Under his leadership, Autumn Games developed successful partnerships with such personalities as Jimmie Johnson, the 7-time NASCAR champion and companies like Def Jam, the leading urban culture brand, as well as the award-winning fighting game franchise, Skullgirls. Previously, Collmer was a founder and board member of the New York Video School, an online film school focused on empowering people all over the world to become “video literate” (www.nyvs.com). Collmer received a B.S. from Cornell University’s School of Engineering and was a certified E.I.T. in the field of structural engineering in the state of New York. Collmer sits on the board of several technology and media companies and has spoken at numerous universities and conferences on entrepreneurship and media. In his spare time, he coaches little league soccer and baseball.
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About VidMob: VidMob is a video content creation network and platform where brands can create digital video ads with expert teams.