BIO

Yoni Argaman is currently a Product Marketing Manager at Yahoo! focusing on managing the company’s ad retargeting products. He was born and raised in Givatayim, a small town southeast of Tel Aviv, Israel and started his professional career in the military, serving in an infantry unit of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Previously, Yoni founded WhiteCity, a boutique advisory practice focused on producing legal documents, business plans, and fundraising decks for early-stage Internet ventures and also worked as a corporate attorney for FBC & Co., one of the top three law firms in Israel. He has also worked for NYC Seed, evaluating early stage investment opportunities in digital media startups, and for Amazon, where he was working as a Product Manager in the Amazon Payments group.

Yoni earned a bachelor’s (LLB) and a master’s (LLM, JD equivalent) degrees in Law at Bar-Ilan University. He also holds an MBA from NYU Stern, where he served as Co-President of the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club (EEX). Yoni is currently the President of NYU Venture Community (NYUVC), an alumni organization of NYU.

BIO

Tony Bacigalupo is cofounder and Mayor of New Work City, a coworking space and community center for independents in Manhattan. On the topic of coworking, he co-authored “I’m Outta Here: How coworking is making the office obsolete” and has been featured on the cover of October 2010′s Inc Magazine.

Bacigalupo has moderated and spoken on several panels about the future of work, including at SXSW, MakerFaire, NY Tech Meetup, and Influencer10. He is a cofounder and advisor to Girl Develop It, an organization that provides low-cost classes designed to help women become software developers. His current focus is on developing educational programs to support aspiring independent workers.

BIO

Steve Cheney currently leads Business Development at GroupMe and serves as a mentor at Techstars. He is an entrepreneur with a rich technology background across consumer, mobile, infrastructure and web industries. A Silicon Valley native, Steve spent the majority of his career at Integrated Device Technology, marketing Linux-based reference platforms to engineers, GMs, and CEOs at Apple, Cisco, Intel, Google, Sun, HP, Nokia, Foxconn and hundreds of other OEMs/ODMs worldwide. Steve has also worked as an M&A investment banker at Morgan Stanley, as a part-time associate at Investor Growth Capital, and in educational roles both independently and at Kaplan. Earlier in his career he founded an independent software business which developed custom productivity solutions for construction and law firms, and co-founded a ten-person construction firm which served thousands of residential clients. Steve is currently a contributor to TechCrunch, and his writings have appeared in national publications including CNN and The Wall Street Journal. He has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara and an MBA from Columbia University with an emphasis in finance and strategy.

BIO

Paul Dix is the author of “Service Oriented Design with Ruby and Rails.” He is a long time member of the NYC Ruby community and a frequent speaker at conferences and user groups including Web 2.0, RubyConf, RailsConf, The Gotham Ruby Conference, Scotland on Rails, and the NYC Ruby Users group. Paul is the founder and organizer of the NYC Machine Learning Meetup, which has over 1,550 members. He is the New York Director of Engineering for Flurry, a mobile analytics and advertising company.

In the past, Paul has worked at startups and companies including Google, Microsoft, and McAfee. He has done consulting work for the Air Force Space Command, the New York Jets, BBC U.K., Channel 4 U.K., and Flavorpill. Paul holds a degree in Computer Science from Columbia University where he focused on machine learning, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, and search.

BIO

Brad Hargreaves is a Founding Partner at General Assembly, an urban campus for technology, design and entrepreneurship. As an entrepreneur Brad has created market-changing products and companies that bridge online and offline worlds including GoCrossCampus, Aloysius Properties and General Assembly.

Prior to founding General Assembly, Brad was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Tipping Point Partners, an early-stage investor and incubator in Tribeca. Brad attended Yale, where he co-founded Yale’s first university-run entrepreneurship initiative. He blogs about entrepreneurship, New York City and life at http://bhargreaves.com.

BIO

Eddie Kim founded his first company while studying abroad in Shanghai and spent the next four years there as a serial entrepreneur. After the acquisition of his most recent venture, NextStepDirectory, he moved back to New York to start SimpleReach. Eddie graduated from the University of Virginia as a Music major and is an avid traveler (having been to over 40 countries).

BIO

Dan Leahy is the Co-founder and President of Savored.com (formerly VillageVines.com), the web’s leading yield management service for high-end restaurants. With Savored, members access a curated selection of their city’s most popular restaurants, book their reservations online and enjoy 30% savings on their party’s entire bill. Over 500 of the nation’s premier restaurants use Savored to discreetly market incentives on tables that are otherwise unfilled, and the discounts are discreetly applied at the meal’s end, eliminating the need for coupons.

Dan previously worked in the Mergers and Acquisitions group at Brown Brothers Harriman, where he covered emerging companies in the eCommerce and mobile communications industries. Prior to Brown Brothers Harriman, Dan worked as an analyst at Silver Lake Partners in Menlo Park, California, evaluating investments in software and telecommunications companies. Dan grew up outside of Portland, Maine, graduated with an Economics degree from Georgetown University and currently resides in New York City.

BIO

Jesse Middleton is the CEO and co-founder of Backstory, a platform that lets small businesses engage with their web visitors better by serving up special content to special people on the fly. He is also the co-founder of WeWork Labs, a startup residency in NYC that’s home to over 200 smart, passionate entrepreneurs that make up over 100 businesses. Prior to getting involved in the startup world in NYC, Jesse was the Director of Information Technology for LivePerson (NASDAQ: LPSN) and used to set sail on his boat as often as he could.

BIO

Shane Snow is cofounder of Contently.com, a marketplace for freelance journalists and brands-turned-publishers. His background is in tech writing for Mashable, and freelancing for Wired, HuffingtonPost, and Fast Company. Shane studied business and internet marketing at Brigham Young University – Idaho, and came to New York City for his master’s degree in Digital Media at Columbia Journalism School. He loves pizza, science fiction, his pet ferrets (Grizz and Dotcom), and his wife, Kristen – though not necessarily in that order.

BIO

Alexis Tryon is the co-founder and CEO of Artsicle, a site to discover your taste in art and rent original artwork to enjoy at home. Prior to Artsicle, Alexis worked with the restaurant group at American Express. Alexis graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008, studying Communications and Art History. Born and raised in Texas, Alexis is now enjoying life as a New Yorker.

BIO

Vinicius Vacanti is Co-founder and CEO of Yipit, which aggregates and recommends the best daily deals based on users’ locations and interests. Prior to Yipit, Vinicius co-founded UnHub and 140it. Earlier, he worked at Quadrangle Group and The Blackstone Group. Vinicius graduated from Harvard College in 2003 with a degree in Applied Mathematics. He served as a teaching fellow for Harvard’s Computer Science department for two years.

BIO

David Whittemore is an entrepreneur and startup enthusiast. He is currently the co-founder of Clothes Horse, an early-stage fashion technology startup in New York focused on helping consumers buy clothes that fit. The Clothes Horse team was in the DreamIt Ventures startup accelerator program in summer 2011. Before Clothes Horse, he co-founded V Bespoke, a custom clothing company that produced tailored suits and shirts.
David picked up the entrepreneurship bug working on products at startups in New York City. He was the Senior Product Manager at On Deck Capital, a venture-backed financial services startup, where he helped grow revenues tenfold and managed a technology platform for profiling, analyzing and lending to small businesses. Prior to that he was the first employee and Product Manager at Monitor110, also a venture-backed financial services startup.

He received a BA in Economics & Philosophy from Columbia University. As an alumnus, he has been active in the entrepreneurship community, serving as President of Columbia Venture Community. He is also active in the broader New York City startup community as President of New York Venture Community.