2011 Challenge Judges & Participating Banks

2011 Innotribe $100K Start-Up Challenge judges include both representatives of the global start-up ecosystem and senior executives from the financial industry. The Judge roster continues to grow, and biographies are being updated regularly, so please check back frequently.

Round 1 Judges, who will evaluate applicant's online submissions, include start-up professionals from:

Round 2 Judges, who evaluate finalist presentations at Sibos, include both Round 1 judges and innovation and investment executives from:

  • Banco Sabbadell
  • Bank of America
  • BNP
  • CBW Bank
  • CIC
  • CITI
  • Clearstream Banking Frankfurt
  • Commerzbank
  • Credit Agricole
  • Deutsche Bank
  • DNB-NOR
  • HSBC
  • JP Morgan
  • Lloyds
  • Metropolitan Bank Group
  • Royal Bank of Canada
  • Royal Bank of Scotland
  • SCBC
  • SEB
  • Standard Chartered
  • State Street
  • UBS
  • UNICREDIT
  • Wells Fargo Bank

Participating as a judge is by invitation only. If you are a serial fintech entrepreneur, investor or innovation executive that would like to request an invitation for the 2011 Challenge or future programs, please send your request, including your LinkedIn profile, to: challenge (at) innotribestartups (dot) com. 

Biographies

Denise Aptekar, Independent Advisor

Denise is an Online Payments and Risk Management expert. Joining PayPal in 2000, she spearheaded PayPal's initial anti-fraud features, built Instant Transfer, the bank funded payment method responsible for PayPal becoming profitable and led the teams behind authentications, online dispute resolution and financial services and products. She integrated the Israeli start up Fraud Sciences into PayPal after its acquisition in 2008. 

Since leaving PayPal in 2009, Denise has been an angel investor and advisor to startups. She specializes in e-commerce, social and mobile payments and trust and reputation management.

Denise earned her B.A. from Stanford University in Political Science.

Antonio Benjamin, Global CTO, Citigroup Institutional Clients Group/ Global Transaction Services

Antonio Benjamin is the Global Chief Technology Officer for Citigroup /Global Transaction Services / Institutional Clients Group. Benjamin is also the Chairman of Citigroup GTS Research Development Innovation and Learning Centres and is a member of the Citigroup GTS Executive Committee.

Prior to Citigroup, Antonio Benjamin was Partner at Ernst and Young, LLP. After E&Y, Antonio was Managing Director and Partner of the Business and Technology Risk Management group at Computer Sciences Corporation. Benjamin was also Chief Knowledge Officer at Cambridge Technology Partners’ Management Labs. Benjamin started his technology career as an Engineer at Lotus Development Corporation. Follow on Twitter: @afbenjamin

Rodney Bowen-Wright, Director of Business Development, Microsoft

Rodney Bowen-Wright is a Director of Business Development at Microsoft and manages Enterprise, Vertical Markets and Mobility portfolios globally in the Strategic and Emerging Business Group.

The Microsoft Emerging Business Group is a corporate function chartered to source, recruit and incubate next generation businesses and business models across market domains globally. This includes diverse areas like Digital Media, Mobility and Business Applications.

Rodney is currently one of seven panelists in the Microsoft BizSpark One program which selects new and innovative companies and chartered to find Microsoft's next big technology bets. The team currently manages a diverse portfolio of companies across domains including Enterprise, Gaming, Online and Cloud based businesses.

He is also has responsible for Microsoft Dynamics which is a platform for building line of business applications across vertical industries. Rodney holds a Masters degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and prior to Microsoft held various leadership roles and architected several successful commercial products for Time Warner and Cadence Design Systems (his previous employers).

Tom Carter, Managing Partner, Fountain Partners

Tom Carter is the founder of Fountain Partners, an investment firm focused on the capital equipment needs of venture, growth and expansion stage companies. In the 1990's Tom was in traditional bank lending, direct investment in private debt, and was an Equity Research Analyst at  Piper Jaffray following e-commerce and the intersection of financial services and technology.  In the most recent decade, Tom was CFO of StarMine through its growth phase and prior to its sale to Thomson/Reuters as CFO and in 2006 he started Fountain Partners.  Along the way, Tom has been an advisor, co-founder and equity investor in startups and expansion stage companies and usually takes an interest in anything to do with innovation and entrepreneurship related to financial services, markets and analytics. In addition to StarMine, Tom has had exits with CallStreet (sold to FactSet) and Majestic Research (sold to ITG).  Tom hopes to find one to four young companies a year that he can add value to.

Roger Chabra, General Partner, Rho Canada Ventures

Roger Chabra is a General Partner at Rho Canada Ventures. He has more than 15 years of venture capital, operating and entrepreneurial experience. Roger has been an investor and board director in a number of successful companies including Xkoto (acquired by Teradata), Whitehill (acquired by Oracle), NetShelter and Paymentus. At Rho, he currently sits on the boards of Chango and Eightfold Logic. He joined Rho in 2010 and focuses on investments in Internet, new media, software, wireless and communication companies at the early stages of development. Prior to Rho, Roger worked as a venture investor at GrowthWorks Capital and at the corporate venture arm of BCE’s wireless division. He was also previously a technology start-up co-founder & CEO at Mobilessence and worked in a variety of technology-focused roles at Rogers Wireless and Sapphire Technologies (acquired by Randstad). Roger received an M.B.A. from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.

Michael Cichowski, Principal, Edison Ventures

Michael Cichowski is a Principal at Edison Ventures, a growth stage venture capital fund with a significant focus on Financial Technology (37 investments). He originates, evaluates and leads investments in financial technology. He focuses on innovative technology and business models in securities/capital markets, payments, banking and real estate.

Michael joined Edison in early 2007 as a member of the Business Development group. He has followed and sourced hundreds of opportunities for Edison including investments in Presidium Learning (acquired by Blackboard), RewardsNOW and PHX. Michael was also actively involved in the evaluation and due diligence for investments in TraderTools and Notable Solutions.

Prior to Edison, Michael previously held a variety of operating roles within Technology, Financial Services and Strategy Consulting. He began his career at Merrill Lynch where he led numerous middle office product initiatives in data and client reporting for institutional clients. He served as a Consultant at Monitor Group where he helped organizations address strategic challenges such as M&A evaluation and supply/demand planning. Michael also led the creation of a new web-based product for Phanfare, a venture-backed photo and video sharing startup that was subsequently acquired by Carbonite.

Michael holds a BS in Computer Science from Rutgers University and a MS in Computer Science from Columbia University.

Jeff Clavier, Managing Partner, SoftTech VC

Based in Palo Alto, California, Jean-Francois “Jeff” Clavier is the Founder and Managing Partner of SoftTech VC, one of the most active seed stage investors in Web 2.0 startups. Since 2004, Jeff has invested in close to 100 consumer internet startups (Fund I, Fund II, Fund III)  in areas like social media, monetization, search, gaming or B2B/B2C web services. These investments are typically located in Silicon Valley, New-York and Boulder. With over 20 years of operational, entrepreneurial and venture capital experience, Jeff is able to add relevant perspective and value to his companies as they grow from inception to maturity, and hopefully, success.

In 2007, Jeff was recognized as one of the 13 “Web 2.0 King Makers” by (late) Business 2.0. BusinessWeek named him one of "The 25 Most Influential People on the Web" in 2008, and one of the "Top 25 Angels in Tech" in 2010. He was also nominated in the "Best Angel" category at the Crunchies in 2009 and 2010. He is often noted for his investments in categories such as “passion-centric communities” or online gaming, or for having sold a number of his Web 2.0 startups to the likes of Yahoo, AOL, Intuit or more recently Twitter and Groupon.

Prior to founding SoftTech VC, Jeff spent more than 16 years in the enterprise software world as an entrepreneur, senior executive and venture capitalist. Throughout his career, he was exposed to global markets leading development teams in Europe and on Wall Street, designing products sold internationally and investing in software infrastructure startups across the U.S. and Europe.

In 2000, Jeff became President of RVC Capital, the firm managing the Reuters Greenhouse Fund with $600M invested in 82 companies, including Yahoo!, Verisign, Phone.com and Infoseek. He joined the venture arm of Reuters from the company’s product development division, where he was leading a 250+ staff in Paris, London and New York, and was responsible for the Risk Management and Desktop products. Jeff joined Reuters through the acquisition of Effix Systems, a Paris-based startup company he helped develop in 1989 while still in school.

Jeff was born, raised and educated in France, earning a MS in Computer Science and a research degree in Distributed Computing. He has been happily living in Silicon Valley since 2000 with his wife @Bernadette and their two children. When he is not busy working, Jeff likes to spend time with his family and friends, cook, collect wine and wander around Northrend on his hunter. He also skis, hikes, dives and plays golf so poorly it is not even funny.

Errol Damelin, Founder & CEO, Wonga

Errol, 41, is a global entrepreneur and seasoned executive who loves building innovative businesses with inspirational people. He was recently named Entrepreneur of the Year at the UK's Growing Business Awards, The Guardian's Entrepreneur of the Year, Founder of the Year at the TechCrunch Europas, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for London and Digital Entrepreneur of the Year.

He is the founder and chief executive officer of Wonga.com, a ground-breaking online lender backed by some of the world’s leading VCs including Accel, Balderton, Greylock, Oak and the Wellcome Trust.

Prior to founding Wonga, he successfully co-founded two other substantial businesses, on different continents and in completely different markets. Most recently he was founder and chief executive of Supply Chain Connect Ltd, which he developed to become a leading provider of hosted supply chain collaboration solutions. With offices in the UK and US, the company serviced over 250 blue chip customers - including General Cable, Pirelli, Dow Chemical and DuPont - and was acquired by ChemConnect in 2005.

Wonga is undoubtedly Errol’s most ambitios project yet. The company is revolutionising the UK’s huge consumer credit market by enabling people to manage their cash flow without the need for a long-term credit card dependency or the cost of large overdraft fees. Leveraging purpose-built and fully automated risk and decisioning technology, Wonga.com went fully live in 2007 and has already provided millions of small, short-term cash advances to hundreds of thousands of customers. The company is passionate about responsible lending, which means providing complete transparency, using our sophisticated credit decision technology to ensure we only help appropriate people and giving customers unique control over the size, length and cost of their loan.

Errol grew up in South Africa, before spending eight years in Israel. Following graduation from business school, he became an investment banker and, while helping entrepreneurs turn their dreams into reality, was inspired to switch roles and become the innovator. He currently lives in London and enjoys an active lifestyle in his limited free time, including marathon running, mountain biking, sea kayaking and skiing.

Salil Deshpande, General Partner, Bay Partners

As General Partner at Bay Partners, Salil has invested approximately $50M into two themes: (1) open source and enterprise software infrastructure, and (2) apps and infrastructure leveraging social graphs. His investments in financial services sector includes Lending Club (peer to peer lending), Cake Financial (social investing; acquired by E*Trade), Financial Content (content syndicated to 1000+ news sites), Plastic Jungle (marketplace for gift cards), Finestrella (underwriting credit to the unbanked in Mexico), Marketocracy (social investing), Jambool (virtual currencies; acquired by Google), and Buddy Media (engagement tools for social media), and others. In the open source and enterprise software theme, investments include DynaTrace (application performance management; acquired by Compuware), SpringSource (open source; acquired by VMware), G2One (open source; acquired by SpringSource), Engine Yard (open source; cloud; Ruby on Rails), Sonatype (open source build automation and distribution), MuleSoft (open source middleware), and others.

Before joining Bay Partners, Salil was founder and CEO of Customware, a CORBA services company (acquired by Visigenic-Borland, now part of Micro Focus), co-founder and CEO of The Middleware Company (acquired by Precise, now part of Symantec), and of TheServerSide.com network of social media sites (acquired by TechTarget).

Previously, he was a software engineer and held technical leadership positions at several technology companies including Sun Microsystems, taught summer courses at Stanford University, and has served as an advisor to several companies.

Chris Eben, Partner, The Working Group

Chris is a Partner at The Working Group in Toronto and has helped to bring Startup Weekend to Canada, running some of the biggest events amongst the global Startup Weekend community. He's a product manager and tech entrepreneur. Chris has worked for 13 years in software, with startups and larger organizations focused on Business Intelligence and Performance Management technologies. His career has taken him all over the world and allowed him to live and work in San Francisco and London as well as Toronto which he currently calls home. Chris holds an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and sometimes gets teased about it by his techie friends and colleagues.

Alexis Fasseas, Chief Restructuring & Strategy Officer, Metropolitan Bank Group

Alexis Fasseas serves as Chief Restructuring & Strategy Officer of the Metropolitan Bank Group, the largest privately held bank holding company in Illinois.  Since 2004, she has played a key role in developing a vision for the next generation of Metrobank Group.  With a focus on organizational continuity, succession planning and enhanced leadership depth, Alexis has promoted or recruited executives with specialized expertise and management capability.  The enhanced holding company leadership team is charged with standardizing and centralizing key operational and management functions to optimize efficiencies, while maintaining the culture of localized customer servicing and contact.

Alexis is involved in day-to-day business operations while leading short-term and long-term strategic planning and also directing corporate governance, legal and regulatory initiatives.  

She co-founded PAWS Chicago and manages all of the organization’s publications including the semi-annual magazine.  She serves on the Large Corporate Advisory Board for Humana and completed JD-MBA from Northwestern University in 2010.

Tony Fish, CEO & Founder, AMF Ventures

Tony Fish: entrepreneur, strategist and author with over twenty years of experience with leading brands, high growth companies and in venture capital. Tony is an experienced and qualified board level executive with professional experience crossing mobile, web and TV and divides his time between his non-exec roles and board advisory work.

Tony is leading initiatives on the future of the Internet, is an acknowledged public speaker and has received recognition for his work through the recipient of independent awards such as placement in the top 10 in The Observer and Guardian newspapers ‘The future 500 rising stars’.

Tony is known for delivery, probing questioning, clear decision making, simple no-nonsense attitude, robust financial views and governance controls. Tony enjoys an unblemished professional reputation, has a wide and diverse professional network and will bring a truly innovative flair.

Tony Fish B-Eng MBA C-ENG FIET FCIM is the author of “My Digital Footprint: a two sided business model where your privacy will be someone else’s business” Nov 2009 and has previously co-authored two books on mobile and innovation.

Steve Gibson, Managing Director, Euclid Opportunities

Steve is Managing Director of Euclid Opportunities, ICAP's early stage financial technology project. Euclid offers technology start-ups a unique seed funding and acceleration program designed to bring innovative tools and platforms to the financial markets. Euclid is majority owned by ICAP, the world's premier voice and electronic interdealer broker and provider of post trade risk and information services. Steve has over 10 years’ experience in financial technology start-ups, most recently Marketpipe (acquired by Ipreo LLP) and Codefarm (acquired by Calypso Technology). Steve has a BSc Hons In Physical Sciences from University College London. 

 Mark Gorenberg, Managing Director, Hummer Winblad

Mark Gorenberg is a Managing Director of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Mark joined co-founders Ann Winblad and John Hummer as Hummer Winblad Venture Partners began investing our first fund in 1990. Prior to Hummer Winblad Venture Partners Mark was at Sun Microsystems where he managed emerging new media areas and was a member of the original SparcStation team. 

Over the last 20 years Mark has served as a board member for numerous successful Hummer Winblad start-ups, including Omniture (IPO and acquired by Adobe), AdForce (IPO and acquired by CMGI), NetDynamics (acquired by Sun Microsystems) and Scopus Technologies (IPO and acquired by Siebel). Currently, he serves as a Director of Aria Systems, Cenzic, Crowd Factory,Domo, ontheFRONTIER, Replay Solutions, and Signal Demand.

In 2011, Mark was appointed by President Barack Obama to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), a 21-person advisory group of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers(www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/pcast). Mark is a member of the Steering Committee of Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT, the Leadership Board of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, and was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Corporation from 2001 to 2011. He is also the current chair of the Board of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment. 

Mark received a B.S.E.E. from MIT, an M.S.E.E. from the University of Minnesota, and an M.S. in Engineering Management from Stanford University. 

Udayan Goyal, Managing Partner, Anthemis Group

Udayan Goyal is a Founder and Managing Partner at Anthemis Group and is also the Founder and Managing Director of FT Advisors, based in London. Udayan is a member of Swift’s enabler committee which looks at innovation and new initiatives at Swift. He has extensive transaction and domain experience within the payments arena with clients that include First Data, Western Union, Visa, MasterCard and Global Payments. More recently, he has been focused on developing mobile payment propositions for emerging markets in particular, with work in Europe, Africa, Middle East and Asia

Udayan was formerly a Managing Director and Global Head of Financial Technology Advisory at Deutsche Bank AG in the Global Financial Institutions Group based out of London. Prior to Deutsche, Udayan had specific responsibility for developing the pan-European specialty finance practice of Credit Suisse with a focus on financial technology. In this capacity he maintained relationships with payment processors, brokerage companies, inter-dealer brokers, hedge funds and stock exchanges globally

Originally from India, Udayan has an MA (Cantab) from Trinity College, Cambridge in England

Matt Harris, Managing Partner, Village Ventures

Matt Harris is the co-founder and Managing General Partner of Village Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm with over $175MM under management. Village Ventures is focused on seed and early stage investing in the media and financial services sectors.

Harris began his career as a consultant at Bain & Company, and subsequently joined Bain Capital. At Bain Capital, Harris’ most notable transactions included the $1.1 billion purchase and subsequent sale of a credit-reporting agency, and the $90MM purchase of a medical products distributor.  Harris left Bain Capital in 1997 to become the founding Managing Director of The Berkshires Capital Investors, a venture capital fund associated with Williams College. Under Harris’ leadership, BCI’s first fund of $5MM invested in 12 companies, with eight successful exits to date. The BCI organization, now a Village Ventures affiliate, has gone on to raise an additional $60MM.

Harris graduated from Williams College in 1994, and now lives in New York, NY.  Harris is a member of the NYC Seed Advisory Board, Chairman of the Board of the Williamstown Theatre Festival and was a founding Board Member and Treasurer of Camp Starfish, a camp for troubled and disadvantaged youth outside Boston, MA. He also sits on numerous corporate boards, including Bluetarp Financial, Vico Software, OnDeck Capital, TxVia, MetaMarkets and iSend.

Christine Herron, Director, Intel Capital

Christine Herron is a Director with Intel Capital. She is also a Venture Advisor at 500 Startups and an advisor to SSE Labs. Previously, Christine was a Principal with First Round Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm, where she worked with companies such as BillFloat, Double Verify, Get Satisfaction, Mint, and Xobni. As a Director at Omidyar Network, she developed the Media practice strategy and drove $15M in early-stage placements.

Prior to Omidyar Network, Christine held operational roles with Mission Research, NetObjects, and Microsoft, and was the founder and CEO of Mercury2, a SaaS developer of international e-commerce applications. She started as an investor with Geocapital Partners, where she funded early Internet and network infrastructure businesses including Netcom and AXON Networks.

Christine earned degrees from both Stanford University and Columbia University.

Jacob Jegher, Senior Analyst Banking, Celent

Jacob Jegher is a senior analyst within Celent’s banking group. Mr. Jegher’s research focuses on emerging technologies and business strategies in retail and wholesale banking. He heads up Celent’s online banking research (consumer, small business, corporate cash management) and is a recognized thought leader in this space. His recent research has focused on next-generation online and mobile banking, personal financial management, social media, and financial technology startups. Mr. Jegher has provided strategic consulting on issues ranging from online channel strategy to vendor selection.

Mr. Jegher manages Celent’s IT spending research and is the primary author of Celent’s global IT spending report. He also established the Model Bank initiative and is the creator of Celent’s annual Innovation and Insight Day.

Mr. Jegher has been widely quoted in the press including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, the Associated Press, the Globe & Mail, and the Financial Post. He is an experienced speaker and has presented at numerous national conferences and corporate events, including the NACHA Payments and BAI Retail Delivery conferences.

Before joining Celent, Mr. Jegher was an analyst for BCE Emergis, where he was responsible for business strategy as well as market and competitive intelligence. Previously, he held the position of manager of information systems at Research One International, a healthcare consulting and market research firm based in Canada.

Geoff Judge, Partner, iNovia Capital

Geoff Judge is a Partner at iNovia Capital and an investor in early stage Digital Media and Transaction Processing/Payment companies. He works closely with his investments on business strategy, business development and helping to build big companies. 

Geoff was an investor in IndustryBrains (sold to Marchex Nasdaq: MCHX), a Board member of Fetchback (sold to GSI Commerce), and today works actively with Collective, Madison Logic, Chango, PexCard, uKnow , Tapad, Good Health Media, and Transactis. He also sits on the board of Global Cash Access (NYSE: GCA) 

Mr. Judge was Senior Vice President & General Manager of the Media Division at 24/7 Real Media, and a co-founder of the company. He was formerly the President of Interactive Imaginations, one of three companies that merged to form 24/7 Media in 1997. 24/7 Media went public in August 1998 and was acquired by WPP in 2007 for $649MM. His first start-up was iMarket, where he was the CMO. Mr. Judge spent nine years at American Express in the Card Division in several roles including VP and General Manager, Travel & Corporate Insurance Group and VP Marketing, New Cardmember Group.

Mr. Judge received an M.B.A. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and a B.A. in Economics from Northwestern University. He is a founding board member of Children for Children/ Generation Now, and has recently been a Trustee for the Sacred Heart School in Manhattan over 6 years.

Kartik Kaushik, MD & Global Head of Business Development, Treasury & Trade Solutions, Citi

Kartik Kaushik is a Managing Director and Global Head of Business Development for Treasury & Trade Solutions. This role spans multiple integrated global businesses within Citi’s Global Transaction Services Group (GTS) including Cash Management, Trade Finance, Wholesale Card Services and Liquidity & Investments. Kartik leads a global team that identifies new profit pools, partnerships, acquisitions, divestitures and monetization of legacy platforms for the TTS business, particularly in highly developed economies and high-growth emerging markets. Prior to joining Citigroup, Kartik Kaushik was the President & Partner of Polaris Software, a leading global financial technology company, delivering mission critical products and services to the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance sector. 

Kartik Kaushik has been associated with building new products, new markets & new business models throughout his career. He spent a decade in brand management, advertising, and marketing with consumer product giants like Unilever, where he was associated with some of the most innovative product campaigns and launches in the marketplace.

Kartik Kaushik holds a bachelor degree in Physics and MBA in marketing.

Philip Korn, Managing Director, First Republic Bank

Philip is a Managing Director with First Republic’s Sand Hill Road office. First Republic is a NYSE-listed full service commercial bank (ticker FRC) with headquarters in San Francisco. Philip has 20 years banking experience and focuses on the venture capital community and startups - mostly early stage consumer internet, mobile, software, and other related technologies. Philip has a wealth of expertise in venture funding and extensive venture capital relationships at the General Partner/Managing Director level. He assists companies with venture capital fundraising, consults with them on business strategy, and makes key introductions within his network. He also has numerous referral sources in the venture ecosystem that help startups scale: attorneys, temp CFOs, realtors/shared spaces, CPAs, IT outsourcing, recruiters, HR/Payroll & business insurance and PR. Philip participates in many venture capital pitch events, conferences and industry events and hosts and produces VC & CEO events. He is a frequent panelist and is a volunteer / mentor with SVForum, Entrepreneurs Foundation and Endeavor.org.

Prior to First Republic, Philip led venture capital relationships and business development nationally for TriNet, an outsourced HR provider for venture backed companies and venture firms. Before TriNet, Philip spent 11 years at SVB Silicon Valley Bank, where he had a number of venture capital related roles. These included VC Relationship Manager for 30+ venture firms, Managing Director for Venture Exchange (advising CEOs on VC fundraising) and National Practice Leader for Emerging Technologies, a seed stage practice that SVB launched in the late 90s (most active group at SVB in terms of new clients). Prior to SVB, Philip was Risk Manager at a trade finance bank in Miami and started his banking career at the Federal Reserve in Miami and Washington, DC.

Philip earned a BS from University of Maryland, College Park and an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, AZ

Gottfried Leibbrandt, Head of Marketing, Swift

Gottfried is currently Head of Marketing for Swift, which defines the value proposition for SWIFT's customer segments and includes standards as well as Solutions. He is a member of the Executive Committee.

He joined SWIFT in 2005 and was previously Head of Standards.

Prior to joining SWIFT, he worked for McKinsey & Company for 18 years. He is Dutch.

Deborah Magid, Director, Software Strategy, IBM Venture Capital Group

Deborah Magid represents IBM’s $22.5 B software business in the company’s 11-year old Venture Capital Group.  Her expertise spans several industries.

Deborah is responsible for sharing insights about emerging markets, technologies, and business models with venture firms and entrepreneurs around the world.   She scouts for emerging business opportunities, and shares views on innovation and growth areas of the market.  As a director of strategy in IBM Software Group, she also brings insight from the venture community to the development of IBM’s growth strategies.  Deborah is responsible for fueling the ecosystem pipeline in strategic areas related to building a “smarter planet;” and contributes to filling out the IBM product portfolio through M&A.

Deborah’s relationships are global, and extend into emerging geographies.  Deborah is a frequent spokes-person on topics of relevance to entrepreneurs and investors.  She is the Incoming Chair of SVForum, the Silicon Valley emerging technology network; on the advisory board of White Bull, serving the European entrepreneurial and venture communities; and on the Steering Committee of the California Sustainability Alliance.

Previously, Deborah held positions in product management, marketing, and user-centered design at Taligent, GE Information Services and AT&T. 

Deborah holds degrees in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Connecticut.

Daniel Marovitz, Founder, Buzzumi

Daniel Marovitz is the founder of buzzumi, a knowledge monetization platform, and a board member of rbidr, and the Professional Diversity Network.  He is currently on sabbatical from Detusche Bank where he was, until June of this year, Head of Product Management for Deutsche Bank’s Global Transaction Banking business.  Previously, he served as Chief Information Office for investment banking.  He also served as a strategic advisor to the division’s technology banking practice. Daniel joined Deutsche Bank in 2000 as Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of the eGCI group at Deutsche Bank, charged with developing and implementing online products for Deutsche Bank’s investment and commercial bank.

Daniel joined Deutsche Bank from iVillage, the online Women’s Network, then one of the 15 most trafficked sites on the Internet.  At iVillage he was Vice President of Commerce and a member of the management team that took the firm public in, at the time, the 6th largest IPO in history.  Before iVillage, Mr. Marovitz worked for Gateway 2000 where he served as the head of Gateway.com- which sold the first PC over the Internet.  Prior to this, Mr. Marovitz was the co-founder of Gateway’s Japanese subsidiary in Tokyo.

A frequent speaker on the subjects of social media, banking innovation, IT management, and outsourcing, Mr. Marovitz has addressed audiences around the world. In 2001, he co-authored, Three Clicks Away: Advice from the Trenches of eCommerce, published by John Wiley. Daniel Marovitz graduated from Cornell University in 1994.

Dave McClure, CEO, 500Startups

Dave McClure is a venture capitalist and founding partner at 500 Startups, an internet startup seed fund & incubator program headquartered in Mountain View, CA. Dave has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over twenty years as a software developer, entrepreneur, startup advisor & investor, blogger, and internet marketing nerd.

Dave's passion is helping startups with product & marketing strategy, and he is a vocal & notable industry speaker on lean startup metrics. He has invested in over 100 startup companies including: Mint.com (acquired by Intuit), CreditKarma, Crowdflower, KissMetrics, Mashery, Sendgrid, Simply Hired, SlideShare, TeachStreet, Twilio, and Wildfire Interactive, among others. He also runs conferences and events on technology, marketing, design, & entrepreneurship such as SMASHsummit & WarmGun.

From 2008 thru 2010, Dave managed the FF Angel seed investment program for Founders Fund, and ran the 2009 fbFund REV incubator program on behalf of Facebook, Accel Partners, & Founders Fund. From 2006 thru 2008 Dave was an advisor and consultant to several startups including Mint.com; co-chaired technology & startup conferences for O'Reilly Media including Web 2.0 Expo and Graphing Social Patterns; and helped teach the nation's first-ever class on Facebook and social networking platforms at Stanford University in 2007. From 2005 thru 2006 Dave launched & ran marketing for job search engine Simply Hired & its evil twin SimplyFired.com. From 2001 thru 2004, Dave was Director of Marketing at PayPal (acquired by eBay in 2002), where he started the PayPal Developer Network program. Prior to PayPal, Dave was a database consultant & programmer for several companies, including Microsoft and Intel. In 1994 he founded Aslan Computing, an internet & e-commerce consulting group later acquired by Servinet / Panurgy in 1998.

Dave is the co-founder of Startup2Startup & Finance4Founders, monthly dinner meetings for Silicon Valley startup entrepreneurs & investors. He leads a travel group called GeeksOnaPlane to promote cultural exchange & education for tech entrepreneurs around the world. Dave helped co-found the StartupVisa program to reform & improve US immigration policy for entrepreneurs. He has been a board member for microfinance accelerator Unitus and advisor to microfinance lender Kiva, education lender Vittana, remote work platform SamaSource, & co-founder of the Silicon Valley Microfinance Network.

Before coming to Silicon Valley, Dave barely graduated from the Johns Hopkins University with a BS Engineering in Mathematical Sciences and a minor in frisbee, billiards, & foosball. His interests include microfinance and economic innovation, entrepreneurship and venture capital, ultimate frisbee, cartoons and animation, and an ever-growing collection of funny-looking hats.

Laura Merling, SVP, Application Enablement Platform and Strategy, Alcatel-Lucent

Laura currently leads strategy and execution for Alcatel-Lucent's companywide push to transform the network into an application platform for service providers, enterprises and developers. Laura has spent 20 years in high tech product management, marketing and business development. She was most recently VP of Business Development at Mashery, one of the earliest entrants in the Cloud and API Management infrastructure industry.  Previously, In her role as CEO at the SV Forum, the leading non-profit in the United States for entrepreneurship in technologies; her organization assisted thousands of entrepreneurs in defining business plans and raising  over $100 million in venture funding.   She has also lead product teams for the SybaseEnterprise App Server, Powerbuilder Development Tool, and the Intershop E-Commerce Platform. Before joining the high tech community, Laura was involved in technology transformation projects at Ford Motor Company and Pepsi-Cola.

Sramana Mitra, Founder, One Million by One Million

Sramana Mitra is the founder of the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) initiative, an educational, business development and incubation program that aims to help one million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant, she writes the blog Sramana Mitra On Strategy, and is author of the Entrepreneur Journeys book series and Vision India 2020. From 2008 to 2010, Mitra was a columnist for Forbes. As an entrepreneur CEO, she ran three companies: DAIS, Intarka, and Uuma. Sramana has a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Erik Nordlander, Engineering Partner, Google Ventures

Erik joined the Google Ventures team in 2010 as an engineering partner. He is based out of New York City. Along with his technical knowledge, he brings expertise in building top notch engineering teams and scaling complex systems.

Prior to joining Google Ventures, Erik led the team that built Google's next generation display ad serving system. He helped Google's acquisition and technical integration for Doubleclick (DCLK) and led a team that built statistical modeling and machine learning models for Google's ad businesses. Erik was also a developer on Google's core engineering infrastructure, including a distributed file system that key products, such as Google.com and Gmail, rely on today.

Erik studied Computer Science and Engineering at MIT, where he did his graduate research at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory on unique data extraction and disk forensics.

Erik is an avid runner and an expert in television game show theory.

Eghosa Omoigui, Founder, EchoVC Partners

Eghosa Omoigui is a Silicon Valley-based technology-focused angel investor. Before this, Eghosa was with Intel for nearly 10 years and his last role was as Intel Capital Director, Strategic Investments, Consumer Internet & Semantic Technologies, where he acted as a senior investment professional focused on platform-agnostic consumer web services and digital media-based investment opportunities. Omoigui also drove ICap's investment focus on next generation semantic technologies, smart data and the realtime web. Prior to this role, Omoigui was Chief of Staff to the President of Intel Capital (the largest global tech corporate VC), and Chief of Staff for Intel’s Treasury organization, helping oversee an $18B cash platform. Omoigui attended UPenn Law School and Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College. Representative investments include Stipple, Retailigence, SpeakerText, Betaworks, Sense Networks, Voxify, Yatra, BuzzInTown, & Cerebra.

Sean Park, Founder, Anthemis Group

Sean has been involved as founding investor in a number of disruptive and highly successful new ventures such as Betfair, Weatherbill, and Seedcamp and has extensive experience investing in and advising start-up and high growth companies in addition to over 16 years of experience working at a senior level in capital markets and investment banking.  Building businesses has been a key theme throughout his career.

Before founding Anthemis (and its predecessor Nauiokas Park LLP), he spent 16 years working in a variety of senior capital market roles, most recently at Dresdner Kleinwort.  He was also a non-executive Director of Markit Group and Board Chairman of the International Index Company (formerly iBoxx.)  He is currently a non-executive Director of FX Capital Group and Babuki Ltd. and sits on the advisory board of Zoopla.co.uk.  He is also a Managing Director of FT Advisors, the specialist financial technology advisory business of the Anthemis Group.

He is the author of the widely read Park Paradigm, a blog focused on the future of finance and markets and refuses to completely give up on his dream of one day skiing in the Olympics.  Originally from Calgary, Alberta, Sean has a BSc in Materials Science from Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is now based in Geneva.

Konstantin Peric, Head of Innovation, Swift

Konstantin (Kosta) Peric was appointed Swift's Head of Innovation in 2007. He leads the team whose main mission is to enable collaborative innovation within the financial industry. They are also the force behind Innotribe.

Kosta was previously Head of Securities Market Infrastructures in the sales division, with responsibility for negotiating and acquiring key strategic programmes. He was also the chief architect for SWIFTNet.

Kosta joined SWIFT in 1990. Prior to SWIFT, he worked for Solvay & Cie, Control Data Corporation and the Université Libre de Bruxelles. He is Belgian.

Philip Philliou, Founder, Philliou Partners

Philip J. Philliou is Managing Partner of Philliou Partners, LLC , a consulting firm founded in 2005 with a strategy focused on advising clients in payment-based sectors of the financial services industry.  With wide geographical experience across the European, North American, Middle Eastern, and African markets, Philliou Partners has advised retailers, airlines, 501(c)3 organizations, card issuers, acquirers, card associations, third party processors and private equity firms. Philip J. Philliou has been extensively quoted and featured in technology and financial services media, including the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, American Banker, Fast Company, Fox News  and CFO Magazine, among others. 

Philliou was interim CEO of Grameen America, a microfinance institution; Chief Product and Strategy Officer of UnitedHealth Group’s financial services division reporting to the CEO; Vice-President, Advanced Payments and Technologies, for MasterCard International; and Director, Strategy and Marketing at American Express. 

Philliou holds a Juris Doctor from Fordham Law School and a B.S. in Public Accounting from Fordham University’s College of Business Administration. Philliou was a Board Director of Atlanta, Georgia-based, Harbor Payments, Inc. (sold to American Express 12/06) and Imbot Technologies, Inc., a New York-based technology company. Philliou is an investor in several financial technology ventures.  Philliou was an Asst. Adjunct Professor at New York University’s School of Continuing Education, Law and Finance, teaching a course entitled International Strategic Alliances.

John Pyrovolakis, Founder, Innovation Accelerator

John Pyrovolakis is the founder of the Innovation Accelerator, the private side of a public-private partnership with the National Science Foundation.  The Innovation Accelerator's mission is promote our nation's economic competitiveness in the global economy by promoting our nation's economic competitiveness.  John is also the managing director of the National Innovation Fund.

John founded Collegescape - a software as a service company in the education space - out of the MIT Entrepreneurship in 1996.  John raised angel funding for Collegescape, which won Yahoo! Internet Life's site of the year in 1998, and was acquired by the Thomson Corporation (NYSE:"TOC") in 1998.  John then founded and sold another software startup in a confidential transaction.  John consulted for Jesup and Lamont Securities, Suntrust Bank, and United Health Care.

Mr. Pyrovolakis is a triple major in math, computer science, and philosophy out of NYU, where he won the school writing competition and was the first undergraduate teaching assistant in mathematic logic. From there, Mr. Pyrovolakis went to MIT for a PhD in Linguistics and Philosophy. While at MIT, Mr. Pyrovolakis did work at the Laboratory for Computer Science in automated theorem proving, and was a teaching fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics lab, where he won the Derek Bok prize for teaching excellence.

Mr. Pyrovolakis is a judge at the MIT Entrepreneurship Competition, as well as Columbia University's and Stonybrook University's.  Mr. Pyrovolakis has also served as a reviewer, and served on the “Committee of Visitors” for the National Science Foundation’s small business innovation program.   Mr. Pyrovolakis has lectured at the MIT Sloan School and Columbia University on entrepreneurship and innovation, and delivered the keynote address at the 2010 Banking Technology News Summit on Mobile Banking.

Suresh Ramamurthi, Vice-Chairman, CBW Bank

Suresh Ramamurthi is Vice-Chairman at CBW Bank and heads up wholesale banking including new products and services. He leads CBW Bank’s initiatives to support and foster innovation including working with financial services start-ups. He also serves as a Principal at BC Capital, an early stage investment firm.

A veteran technology entrepreneur, Suresh has founded and exited two start-ups, and has previously worked at Google Inc. Suresh’s first start-up, PowerFax, developed and manufactured wireless hardware and software applications. PowerFax’s wireless technology went on to become the basis for the ubiquitous “Guide Button” on television remote controls.

Suresh has a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering, a Master’s degree in Computer Science and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Chicago.

Jay Reinemann, Executive Director Strategy and Corporate Development, BBVA

Dan Rosen, Principal, Highland Capital Partners

Dan is a Principal at Highland, focusing on the mobile and financial services sectors. Dan represents Highland on the boards of PerkStreet Financial, Picochip, Triad 700 and TriStar. He also is currently or has been actively involved with Highland's investments in CampusLIVE, Optasite (acquired by SBA Communications), Quattro Wireless (acquired by Apple), WePay and Zoove. In addition, Dan is a Founding Executive Committee Member in First Growth Venture Network.

Prior to joining Highland, Dan worked at HarbourVest Partners, LLC, where he invested in and worked closely with several growth-stage technology and communications businesses, including Axerra Networks, eHelp (acquired by Macromedia), MobileAccess Networks, Nuera Communications (acquired by AudioCodes), and Quallaby (acquired by Micromuse).

Dan has also worked in corporate development at RSA Security (RSAS, acquired by EMC), as a software consultant for American Management Systems (AMSY, acquired by CGI Group), and independently consulted to several communications start-ups.

Gretchen Salyer, Business Development Leader, Intuit Small Business Group

At Intuit, Gretchen is focused on strategic partnerships, investments and acquisitions for Intuit’s Small Business Group.  Gretchen has been with Intuit for over 5 years, primarily focused on opportunities in the payments, small business finance, social and mobile spaces.

Prior to Intuit, Gretchen worked at Summit Partners, a Growth Equity firm focused on fast-growing, privately-held companies in their Boston, MA office.

Gretchen holds a B.A. in Economics from Harvard College.

Mike Sigal, Founder, StatsBank & Executive Producer, Innotribe Start-up Challenge

Mike Sigal is an entrepreneur, consultant and advisor with over 20 years’ experience working in the global startup ecosystem. He is serving as the Executive Producer of The Innotribe $100K Start-up Challenge.

Mike recently founded StatsBank, which is developing innovative solutions to address the financing gap experienced by many of the world’s estimated 200M small businesses. He is the author of the forthcoming book “Innovating with Startups: A Corporate Field Guide" and he advises corporations and government agencies on how to engage the global startup ecosystem to accelerate innovation. Mike serves as a non-executive director for Guidewire Group and Saaskwatch Systems, as an advisor to the Innovation Accelerator and Stanford/MIT Venture Lab, and as a Mentor for 500Startups and SeedCamp.

Previously, Mike co-founded Guidewire Group, and was responsible for the company’s business development and strategic relationships, as well as leading the development of Guidewire Group’s G/Score™. Developed under a grant from the US National Science Foundation and in partnership dozens of leading corporations, investors and government innovation agencies, the G/Score is the world’s first standardized diagnostic tool for assessing and benchmarking pre-revenue startups.

Prior to founding Guidewire Group, Mike co-founded several companies including FM WAVES (acquired by Blizzard Entertainment), Infragence (acquired by Rainmaker Systems), and WiFinder (acquired by Boingo). Mike holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Follow Mike on Twitter (@mikesigal) and connect via LinkedIn or Facebook (http://about.me/mike.sigal).

Bernard Slede, Managing Director, Breakthrough Venture Partners

Bernard Slede is the founder and Managing Director of Breakthrough Venture Partners, a firm that specializes in innovation consulting, startup mentoring and patent acquisitions. Past clients include two laureates of the Clean Tech Open competition, social media startups and a Lockheed Martin-funded startup accelerator.

Formerly the Managing Director of HP’s Startup Ecosystem Programs, Bernard Slede orchestrated the interactions of the largest Information Technology company by revenue with emerging high growth companies and their stakeholders. He also represented HP at the White House launch of the Startup America Partnership in January 2011 and architected HP's $100M commitment to the Partnership.

Prior to HP, Bernard held many roles, including entrepreneur, intrapreneur and venture capitalist. As an entrepreneur, he launched NAMASTA, the leading membership organization for mind-body professionals in America. He also was CEO of Nucleonet, a network security technology startup. As an intrapreneur, he was on the launching team of Television Par Satellite (TPS), a leading European satellite TV operator. He also built a partner ecosystem while at Intel’s Home Products Group, a new business incubation.

Bernard started his career in venture capital for ELF Technologies, a successful corporate fund based in Stamford, CT and Paris. More recently, he helped manage HP’s Corporate Ventures portfolio and design a new structure for startup investment.

Bernard is a graduate of Paris’ HEC School of Management and the International Management Program at ESADE (Barcelona) and McGill University (Montreal). He also was also on an Elf Aquitaine scholarship at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Graduate Chemical Engineering Department.

Reshma Sohoni, Partner, SeedCamp

As Partner, Reshma co-manages Seedcamp. Her investment focus is on B2B, Fashion, Gaming, Travel, and Financial Services.

Reshma helped found Seedcamp in 2007. During her tenure, she has managed companies like Mobclix (acquired by Velti), Zemanta, and Ubervu. Reshma was also on the board of Zoombu before it was acquired by Skyscanner and advises Launch48.

She joined Seedcamp from the Venture team at 3i. Prior to 3i, Reshma spent over 3 years at Vodafone in their Commercial Strategy team, working across the Europe and Japan footprints in marketing strategy and pricing functions. Her venture capital career started with eVentures India where she actively supported companies like Make My Trip (NASDAQ – MMYT), Contest2Win, and Clubgreetings. Reshma started her career in the US in investment banking with Broadview (now part of Jefferies).

She has a MBA from INSEAD and dual undergraduate degrees in Engineering and Business from the University of Pennsylvania.

She is also on the Advisory Board of Credo Ventures and the European Board of All Hands a non-profit organization that provides hands-on assistance to survivors of natural disasters around the world.

In the limited to none spare time, Reshma enjoys having a laugh with friends and family; seasonal adrenalized sports, and pretending to cook.

John Taysom, Managing Partner, RVC

John Taysom joined Reuters in 1982 and worked with them until 2001 in sales, marketing, and product management positions, eventually reporting to the main Board.  John has been helping to identify and build successful Internet businesses since 1995. In 1995 in Palo Alto California John founded the Reuters Greenhouse Fund which invested over 5 years in 82 start-up companies many of which are still at the heart of the internet (including UltraDNS, Verisign, Yahoo). John initiated the use of real-time NASDAQ quotes for consumers via a deal with Yahoo Finance: he was an investor board member at Forbes.com, the first 'free to air' product from Forbes ; and was a board member through their IPOs at : Tibco (Nasdaq:TIBX); Digimarc (Nasdaq: DMRC); and Equinix (Nasdaq: EQIXD, where John was additionally chair of the Audit Committee of the Board); John was a seed investor and director at Tideway Systems (UK) until its sale to BMC in 2009. 

He is currently a Board member and private investor in TagMan, Performance Horizon, and in we7 (which he founded). We7, now with 3 million UK users, was the first company to negotiate an advertising funded internet music contract with PRS. For 2011 in 2011John is additionally a  Harvard Fellow running a project on internet privacy. John is a member of the Editorial Board of The Journal of Financial Transformation published by Capco. 

He has been a speaker in the past at numerous conferences and seminars including the WEF in Davos, The World Bank, MSDW technology conference in California, and industry events in Holland, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Singapore. Most recently he was the keynote speaker at the Microsoft Cloud Computing BizSparc conference in 2009.   John is a past member of the Deans Council, The Kennedy School, at Harvard University, and is a Governor, at Hurstpierpoint College, Sussex.

Matt Turck, Managing Director, Bloomberg Ventures

Matt is a Managing Director at Bloomberg Ventures, the incubation and investment arm of Bloomberg L.P, which he joined upon inception.  In addition to actively pursuing investment and partnership opportunities, Matt is deeply involved in operating Bloomberg Ventures’ incubated businesses, and most recently spearheaded the creation and launch of the Bloomberg Institute, a new online education and recruiting business targeting college students and finance professionals.

Previously, Matt was the co-founder, President & COO of TripleHop Technologies, an enterprise search software company, acquired by Oracle.  Matt started his career as an M&A and securities attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York.  He holds an LL.M. from Yale Law School and is a graduate of Sciences-Po Paris.

Matt is also an active angel investor and a mentor (Techstars, Dreamit).

Brian Zisk, Executive Producer, Future of Money & Technology Summit

Brian Zisk is a parallel entrepreneur specializing in conferences, digital media, web broadcasting, and distribution technologies. He is the creator of the Future of Money & Technology Summit, and the SF MusicTech Summit. Brian is a Co-Founder and Technologies Director of the Future of Music Coalition and a Board Member and/or Strategic Advisor for a wide variety of tech companies and non-profits. Brian was previously a founder of The Green Witch Internet Radio which was sold to CMGI (NASDAQ: CMGI) at the turn of the millennium. He is active in many influential computer-mediated forums, is quoted and published extensively in the media, frequently appears on panels and at industry events domestically and abroad, and is an expert at creating new business models, brand awareness, and frenzy whipping.