Silicon Alley: Startup Ecosystem That Never Sleeps
Start spreading the news...the New York City tech renaissance is underway. ‘Silicon Alley,’ as NYC’s booming tech startup cluster is known, has a vibrant culture with unique competitive advantages. Through its recent rapid expansion, Silicon Alley has outpaced Boston and begun to rival Silicon Valley. What will Silicon Alley look like in 10 years, and how does tech community collaboration and competition foster its growth? Can your startup 'Make it in NYC?' Join us as leading NYC entrepreneurs discuss the strategic factors contributing to the ongoing evolution of NYC’s diverse, cross-industry startup ecosystem.
Presenters
Barry Silbert is the Founder and CEO of SecondMarket, the world's largest marketplace for buying and selling alternative financial investments, including private company stock. Founded in 2004, SecondMarket has conducted billions of dollars in transactions across all of its asset classes. Since 2009, over $1 billion in private company stock has traded over SecondMarket in numerous venture-backed companies, including Facebook and Twitter. SecondMarket's customized liquidity programs provide private companies with an effective way to organize and control secondary activity in their shares.
In 2011, SecondMarket was honored by the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer, recognized by Fast Company as one of the “Ten Most Innovative Companies in Finance” and named as one of Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 companies. Barry was also invited to join Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Council on Technology and Innovation, and was named to Fortune’s prestigious “40 Under 40” list. In 2009, Barry was a category winner of Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award and a winner of Crain’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award. In addition, SecondMarket was recently named as one of “America’s Most Promising Companies” by Forbes.
Prior to founding SecondMarket in 2004, Barry was an investment banker at Houlihan Lokey, where he focused on financial restructurings, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate financing transactions. Before joining Houlihan Lokey, Barry worked at Bear Stearns, Smith Barney and Rydex Funds. Barry graduated with honors from the Goizueta Business School of Emory University, and holds Series 7, 24 and 63 licenses.
Barry is a frequent speaker at conferences and has appeared in many leading publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, USA Today and Forbes. Barry has been featured on CNBC, CNN Money, Bloomberg News and Fox Business News.
Barry is also an active angel investor with investments in a number of exciting start-ups, including Art.sy, Murfie, Peek, RealDirect, Send the Trend, Slated, SponsorHub and Tapad.
David S. Kidder is Co-founder and CEO of Clickable, a web service that brings simplicity to online advertising. Prior to Clickable, Kidder co-founded SmartRay Network, a mobile advertising delivery pioneer acquired by LifeMinders and Net-X, a web-authoring platform acquired by Target Vision. Kidder is a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, and received ID Magazine’s International Design Award and Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2008. David is an active angel investor through his fund, Alt Option Return, and is a founding member of The Acumen Fund One Percent Fund. David serves on the National Board of the Smithsonian and is the creator and co-author of the two-time New York Times bestselling book series, The Intellectual Devotional, published by Rodale. He is currently authoring The Startup Playbook, published by Chronicle Books in April 2012. He lives in Westchester County, New York, with his wife Johanna Zeilstra, Co-founder of Giveback.org, and three sons Jack, Stephen and Lucas.
Divya started her business career in Investment Banking at Goldman Sachs and then moved on to private equity and venture capital at Investcorp International and FirstMark Capital. Currently she serves as the CEO of Send the Trend (www.sendthetrend.com) which offers curated fashion accessories and beauty for women online. She also serves as CEO of Behind the Burner a culinary media brand focused on tips, tricks and techniques for food, wine, mixology and nutrition.
Divya currently advises several startups and established brands with board level roles. She appears regularly on MSNBC: Your Business, NBC Weekend Today and NBC Nonstop. She has also been a guest on FOX & FRIENDS and has been featured in The New York Times, BusinessWeek, TIME Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The Deal, Crains, among several other publications. Divya contributes to The Huffington Post, TODAYshow.com, Daily Beast, MSN's Glo, The Nest Magazine and Woman's World. She is the author of the book Sexy Women Eat: Secrets to Eating What You Want and Still Looking Fabulous, published by HarperCollins.
Divya was honored as a 2010 Game Changer by The New York Enterprise Report and will be receiving an award as one of the Top 50 Outstanding Asian Americans in business. Additionally, Divya is on the Board of Directors for New York Entrepreneur Week, a non-profit movement formed around a single belief: entrepreneurs change the world. She also enjoys teaching entrepreneurs at The Founder Institute.
In addition to a B.S. from Cornell University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, Divya holds a degree from the French Culinary Institute.
Kristy Sundjaja oversees the Industry Transformation Teams Department (ITT), which is responsible for developing and implementing citywide policy recommendations and programs to strengthen New York’s position as a global leader in the media, fashion, financial services, bioscience, education, and emerging technology industries. In this role, she has spearheaded efforts to increase collaboration between private companies and academic institutions with the creation of programs such as NYC Media Lab and the Urban Technology Innovation Center and Incubator program. Under her leadership, ITT has launched several Mayoral programs, including Media.NYC.2020 and Fashion.NYC.2020, to develop a vision and a strategic plan to support the growth and transformation of each of New York’s core industries in the next 5-10 years.
Kristy’s efforts also include the City’s BigApps competition, which challenges software developers to create mobile and online applications that utilize datasets provided by City agencies. Since the competition’s launch, over 140 applications have been entered. Additionally, to attract and support New York startups, Kristy led the launch of NYC Venture Fellows, a global program to help promising young entrepreneurs take their businesses to the next level, as well as a series of training workshops designed to teach business owners how to navigate legal and marketing issues to make their companies more successful.
Prior to joining NYCEDC, Kristy was an Associate Partner at Oliver Wyman, a global management consulting firm. She has advised some of the world's leading media and technology companies, including IBM, Microsoft, HP, and AOL, as well as a number of private equity and non-profit organizations. Her consulting focus centered on creating growth strategies for new products and markets, transforming business designs, and redesigning organization structures.
Kristy is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied at the Wharton School of Business and the School of Engineering to earn a B.S. in Economics and a B.S. and an M.S. in Engineering with academic distinction. She also holds an Executive MBA degree from Columbia University.
Liz Crawford is the CTO of Birchbox (http://www.birchbox.com), the beauty subscription brand that brings members access to the newest and best in high-end beauty. Subscribers receive a monthly box of 4-5 deluxe, curated samples and visit birchbox.com to learn more via articles and videos and purchase full-size versions of the products they love. Liz has a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon and has published papers on topics ranging from Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing to Intelligent Tutoring Systems and Robotics. Prior to Birchbox, Liz was the CTO at Aprizi.
Monday, March 12
