Speakers & Mentors

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  Kareem Kouddous
  Crowdtap
  Kareem is the Head of Technology at Crowdtap and has been an entrepreneur in New York tech since it wasn't cool and founded beYOU.tv and Hapnin prior to Crowdtap. Kareem also is the founder of the NYC Lean Startup Meetup and a regular mentor and serves as an advisor to a handful of New York and Egyptian companies.
• 
  Lucas Nelson
  DFJ Gotham
  Proud geek, hacker turned VC.
• 
  Adam Dinow
  Wilson Sonsini
  Adam Dinow is a partner in the New York office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Adam focuses on early-stage technology with clients including Meetup, GroupMe, Flavorpill, and General Assembly, among others.
• 
  Murat Aktihanoglu
  ER Accelerator
  Founder and Managing Director at ER Accelerator, Technology Entrepreneur, Author
• 
  Jay Decker
  Sproutlet
  Jay has over 5 years experience in product development and managing distributed agile software teams. At Sproutlet he works on building strategic partnerships with startups, practicing lean methods and aligning customer development with product engineering.
• 
  Jack Aboutboul
  Twilio
  Jack has over 10 years of professional experience both at large public companies (Red Hat) and several successful startups. Jack is currently a developer Evangelist for Twilio and is loving every minute of it.
• 
  Heather Gilchrist
  RAK Tech Fund & Socratic Labs
  Heather was Director of Academics at Grockit in 2007 and is currently Managing Director of RAK Tech Fund where she invests in and advises early stage startups. She also serves as Startup Ambassador for NJ Tech Meetup, organizer of Startup Weekend NYCEDU, and is excited to be a founding partner at Socratic Labs.
• 
  Farrah Bostic
  The Difference Engine
  Farrah is a creative strategist using an evidence-based approach to helping start-ups, established businesses and brands develop innovative online products, services and experiences.
• 
  Bret Morgan
  BandsOnABudget.com
  Bret is a co-founder of BandsOnABudget.com a startup that makes merchandising simple and affordable for bands, brands, & Businesses, Cowerks, an Asbury Park, NJ based Coworking space, and DBLSystems.com, a Ruby on Rails development shop. He is also the founder of the Jersey Shore Tech Meetup as well as a co-founder of Asbury Agile, a 1-day tech conference held in Asbury Park, NJ in October.
• 
  Will Peng
  Raptor Ventures
  VC at Raptor Ventures. Product at drop.io + Hot Potato. Maker of ice cream.
• 
  Brian Cohen
  Launch.it
• 
  Igor Lebovic
  CalorieCount.com
  Co-founded CalorieCount.com (+3 million members) which was acquired by the New York Times. Mostly focused on product, but also experienced in design and development.
• 
  Charlie Nichols
  SunCulture
  Charlie co/founded 3 technology companies over the past 5 years. His current startup, SunCulture, is developing solar irrigation systems for farmers in Kenya.
• 
  Brian Sowards
  USEED
  Brian Sowards is the Founder of USEED, a crowdfunding platform designed for College and University students to post student projects to their website, and invite their alumni to donate to a fund on their behalf.
• 
  Aaron Smyth
  CafeMom
  Aaron has been a part of the New York tech scene for 5 years, starting as the 2nd employee at Yext. He holds a degree in Business and Information Systems from NYU Stern, spent a year building his own company, and currently works at CafeMom as a PHP developer.
• 
  Edwin Chau
  Betterment
  Edwin has over 7 years of software development experience starting out at a tech/business consulting firm working with large public companies before moving on to startups. Currently, he's the lead software engineer at Betterment.com.
• 
  Jonathan Basker
  betaworks
  Jonathan is the VP of People and focuses on growth and organizational health at betaworks. Basically his job is to hire good people into betaworks and then make sure they're happy. He likes this job very much.
• 
  Larry Mai
  Hearst Ventures
  Larry is an early stage venture investor focused on digital media. He has many roles prior including software development, marketing, and finance for both startups and large companies.
• 
  Thor Ernstsson
  Audax Health
  Thor creates connected and casual experiences across a variety of fields ranging from social gaming (ex-Zynga) to healthcare (Audax Health).
• 
  Michael Simmons
  Empact
  Serial, award-winning, young entrepreneur & best selling author
• 
  Greg Gopman
  AngelHACK
  Greg travels the globe setting up AngelHACK, the largest hackathon competition in the world, where top teams get flown to Silicon Valley and win seed investment capital.
• 
  Tikva Morowati
  Charming Robot
  User Experience Designer, Researcher and Strategist with Charming Robot.
• 
  Ben Willman
  ClientHat
  Ben has founded and been involved with startups since the late 90's, is a developer and an enthusiast for Lean startup methodologies. He is currently working on a new startup ClientHat.
• 
  Rob Underwood
  Deloitte