The New ROI: Return on Influence — How Influencers should Leverage their "Social Capital" in the Startup World
Social influencers are starting to get involved in the startup ecosystem with the expectation that they will use their influence to attract new investors, users and revenue. This panel will discuss the benefits of getting involved with a startup early, the potential upside of advisory grants (and how they work), the ability to use it for personal brand building, as well as the pitfalls including the opportunity cost in terms of time, money, brand dilution and effort.
Check out other Startup Alley programming here: http://sxsw.com/film/startup-alley
Presenters
Adam Lilling is an entrepreneur and investor, creating pioneering media and e-commerce companies for almost two decades. Adam is the founder and managing partner of Plus Capital, an early stage venture capital fund based in Los Angeles. Adam is on the board of Chromatik, and is an investor in and board advisor to transformation companies including ZEFR/Movieclips, ShareThis, MoviePass, BigFrame, Iconic, Triptrotting and MediaNet. Adam is also proud to be a founding director of LaunchpadLA.
Adam has been building Internet companies since 1994. His first venture, Pentagon CDs & Tapes, was one of the Internet’s first online retailers of music and video. Adam sold Pentagon to the Virgin Entertainment Group in 1999. Subsequently, Virgin took Pentagon’s e-commerce technology and formed a new venture with Adam in 2000 called Pazanga, becoming a worldwide entertainment e-commerce services company. Most recently, Adam co-founded BiggerBoat, a vertical search and ad network for entertainment.
Adam holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from the University of Michigan.
Walter Delph serves as the Chief Executive Officer at Adly, which provides an industry leading technology platform that connects brands with consumers via the most influential people in social media.
Previously he served as Senior Vice President at News Corporation responsible for guiding the strategic and operating direction for the company's wireless initiatives. He also served as General Manager at Photobucket where he oversaw its domestic and global business operations and he led corporate development for MySpace Music, IGN Entertainment, Fox Sports and Fox’s media software division.
Mr. Delph also served in Executive roles at Verizon, Time Warner, Bertelsmann and Goldman Sachs.
He is active in the start-up community serving in leadership positions at Vegas.com, Evospend, Lootsie, the ER Accelerator, Rogue Papers (acquired by ECDC) and XPD Media (acquired by Zynga). Walter is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the premier global think tank.
Mr. Delph holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A. from Middlebury College.
Chris is a serial entrepreneur in gaming, technology, and music. At age 14, he founded his first company-- a game testing business for clients like Sony Imagesoft. After university, he co-founded 3D Groove, online gaming technology company that powered the first online 3D games at sites like shockwave.com and nickelodeon.com. In 2003, he started ODVD games, whose premiere title, “Shout!”, a pop culture interactive DVD trivia game,was distributed globally by Hasbro and is returning in 2011.
In 2006, Chris combined his passion for creative and technology and co-founded Frank the Plumber, a leading concert design and production company creating digital and live experiences for such artists as Akon, The Strokes, Lady Antebellum, Stevie Wonder, Beyonce, Katy Perry and Madonna and brands like Ford, Apple and AOL.
Most recently, he co-founded his second technology company, Gobbler, along with his sister Jamie. Gobbler is a platform as a service creative cloud. Gobbler is currently integrated into Avid Pro Tools and is used by Box.com.
Specialties:Game Design, Concert Design, Software Architecture, Video Production
Sunday, March 10
