NYC Venture Fellows

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Who We Are — Fellows

The inaugural class of NYC Venture Fellows includes 23 entrepreneurs from nine countries. They are the leaders of fast-growing ventures from NYC and around the world, including international digital media pioneers, nonprofit entrepreneurs, and cleantech innovators from countries including China, Germany, and India.

Eric Beckman (GKIDS)

Eric Beckman is founder and CEO of GKIDS Inc, which uses digital and social media to distribute award-winning filmed entertainment to American families via multiple media platforms. GKIDS engineered a successful "stealth" 2010 Oscar campaign to snag an upset Academy Award nomination for The Secret of Kells in the Best Animated Feature category-the only independent nominated along with major release pictures from Disney, Pixar, Universal and Fox. The GKIDS.TV website has over 200 short films available commercial free, and is a place where children, teens, and adults can watch, rate, review, buy and share award-winning film and animation from around the world.

Beckman is also founder and director of the New York Int'l Children's Film Festival, North America's largest festival of film for children and teens, with an annual attendance of 25,000. Prior to founding GKIDS, Beckman spent four years as head of content business development for Wavexpress, an early pioneer in online video and interactive television. Before that, he founded EBE inc, an international concert event company that produced tours and festivals with Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Snoop Dogg, Backstreet Boys and other top recording artists. Beckman was raised in Manhattan and currently lives downtown with his wife and three children. He holds an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business and a BA in Broadcast Communications from SF State University.

Seth Besmertnik (Conductor)

Seth Besmertnik guides corporate strategy and develops strategic partnerships for Conductor. His vision and thoughtful leadership have established the company as a recognized authority in natural search. Since co-founding the company in 2005, Besmertnik has navigated the company through multiple finance rounds and extraordinary growth. Today the company boasts a customer list of more than one hundred Fortune 500 and Internet Retailer 500 companies and hundreds of the world’s most recognized publishers. In addition, Conductor provides natural search solutions for more than half the top search engine marketing and optimization agencies in the United States.

Besmertnik frequently speaks at industry events as an expert in search marketing and is a frequent guest lecturer on entrepreneurship at various universities. In 2009, Besmertnik was selected as a Finalist for Ernst & Young’s prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Besmertnik holds B.S. in Entrepreneurial Management from Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business.

Dennis Crowley (foursquare)

Dennis Crowley is the Co-founder and CEO of foursquare. Previously, Dennis founded Dodgeball, one of the first mobile social services in the U.S., which was acquired by Google in 2005. He has been named one of the "Top 35 Innovators Under 35" by MIT's Technology Review magazine (2005) and has won the "Fast Money" bonus round in the TV game show Family Feud (2009). His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Time Magazine and Newsweek. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).

Dennis holds a master's degree from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program and a bachelor's degree from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University.

Caterina Fake (Hunch)

Caterina Fake is an American businesswoman and entrepreneur.

She is the co-founder of Hunch, a site that is building the "taste graph" for the internet, mapping every person on the internet to every entity, and their affinity for that entity. It launched in June 2009.

Fake co-founded Flickr, the popular photo-sharing service which ushered in the so-called Web 2.0 integrating features such as social networking, community open APIs, tagging, and algorithms that surfaced the best, or more interesting content. Flickr was acquired by Yahoo! in 2005.

At Yahoo! she ran the Technology Development group, known for its Hack Yahoo! program, a stimulus to innovation and creativity, and Brickhouse, a rapid development environment for new products.

Prior to Flickr, she was Art Director at Salon.com and heavily involved in the development of online communities, social software and personal publishing.

Caterina is a Founder Partner at Founder Collective, and sits on the boards of Etsy and Creative Commons. She advises many startups and new businesses.

She has won many awards, including BusinessWeek's Best Leaders, The 2010 Most Influential Women in Technology, and received an Honorary Doctorate from RISD in 2009. She was named to the Time 100, Time Magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people, and appeared on the cover of Newsweek the same year.

Suhas Gopinath (Globals Inc.)

Suhas Gopinath is a 24 year-old resident of Bangalore.
At the age of 14, Gopinath was recognized as the world’s youngest certified Professional Web-developer through his project coolhindustan.com. He set up Globals Inc. in 2000 in San Jose, California, as laws in India would not allow him to set up a company as a minor. Since then, Globals Inc. has grown as a multi-national IT consulting company with representation in more than 11 countries.

At the age of 16, Gopinath was recognized as the world’s youngest entrepreneur by CNBC and e-Business, Canada. At the age of 17 he was recognized as the World’s Youngest CEO by leading media sources across the globe including the BBC and The Washington Times. He is now an Advisory Board member at IIT Bombay Entrepreneurship Cell, and is also on the Board of the ICT Advisory Council of the World Bank.

In 2007, Gopinath was awarded the “Young Achiever Award” by the European Parliament and International Association for Human Values. In 2008, he was announced as one of the “Young Global Leaders” by the World Economic Forum, becoming the youngest member ever in the World Economic Forum’s history. In 2009, the Social Innovators Park (SIP), Singapore conferred on him the SIP Fellow Award at the Global Social Innovators Forum.

In 2009, he received his Diploma on Global Leadership from the Kennedy School at Harvard University. The same year, Suhas was conferred the Make a Difference Award at the Incredible Europe summit held in Vienna.

Adam Green (Rocking the Boat)

A native of Manhattan, Adam graduated in 1996 from Vassar College. Throughout his childhood he spent time on the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, learning about the beauty of the river and the hand that human beings have in both destroying and restoring natural resources.

The idea for Rocking the Boat began while Adam was volunteering at an East Harlem junior high school in 1995. He led 10 students in the construction of an 8-foot dinghy that they launched at the end of the semester in the school’s swimming pool. Following college, Adam was offered an opportunity to build on his initial boatbuilding education experience and ran the first Rocking the Boat after-school program for high school students in the South Bronx. The boatbuilding and environmental education after-school program incubated for three years in a South Bronx community college before growing into its own independent nonprofit in 2001. Currently, Rocking the Boat has 12 full-time staff and 14 part-timers (all of whom are former students), serving more than 2,500 students and community members annually.

Through his work developing Rocking the Boat, Adam has received an Echoing Green Fellowship, a Union Square Award for grassroots organizing, was a New York 1 News New Yorker of the Week, and was the focus of the “Adam G. Urban Boatbuilder” episode of the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy reality television series. He served for six years as a board member of the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, and is currently a board member of the Bronx River Alliance.

Felix Haas (amiando)

Felix is CEO of amiando, Europe’s leading online service for on-demand event ticketing. In late 2006 he co-founded amiando and as the company’s CEO, he is in charge of its product, financing and communication. amiando continually grows over 40% per quarter and today processes millions of Euros in monthly gross revenue over 15 countries. He founded his first venture, an international website network, in 1996 and sold it in 1999. During 2001 and 2006, he co-founded several non-profit organizations and spent more than two years at the BMW Technology Office in Palo Alto where he worked on projects in conjunction with Google and Stanford University. He is co-author of multiple U.S. patents, including the Google Maps “Send To Car” functionality. Besides working at amiando, Felix is an angel investor in growing internet companies like Kaeuferportal, Schenkando and a leading European browser game company.

Felix attended the World Economic Forum 2010 in Davos as a “Technology Pioneer 2010”, and is a member of the Entrepreneurs Organization and a frequent speaker on internet innovation. Felix is an instrument-rated commercial U.S. pilot and loves to fly when not obsessed with his other passions.

Felix studied electrical engineering at Technical University Munich and the ETH Zurich.

Haidong Pan (Hudong)

Haidong Pan, Ph.D., is founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hudong.com Inc. Under his excellent leadership, www.hudong.com has grown to be the largest and most influential wiki-enabled “Knowledge Media” where over one million contributors have collectively edited three million articles. The company’s product, HDWiki, the first open source Chinese wiki software, dominates with 90% market share in China. Before that, Dr. Pan served as Chief Information Officer (CIO) with AsiaEC.com (now Office Depot China), the largest online e-procurement office supplies company in China. While studying at Boston University, Dr. Pan acted as co-president of the Harvard China Review and organized its annual conference that attracted mainstream media in both the U.S. and China. Besides that, the MIT talent forum he organized as conference chair stirred the returning enthusiasm among overseas Chinese students and scholars.

Mr. Pan obtained a Ph.D. in systems engineering from Boston Univ., an M.S. from Tsinghua Univ., and a B.S. from Beijing Science & Technology University. He also joined the "Advanced History Studies Program" in the Department of History at Peking University.

Dr. Pan is a frequent speaker at ad:tech, CHINICT, iResearch, AAMA, and other events. Dr. Pan is the “Cradle Plan” entrepreneur with the Asia America Multi-technology Association (AAMA). Dr. Pan is a council member for the All-China Youth Federation and a committee member of the Overseas Returnee Association ACYF. Dr. Pan currently serves as vice chairman for the Boston University Alumni Association in China.

Rob Kalin (Etsy)

Rob Kalin is the founder and CEO of Etsy, the largest marketplace for the buying and selling of handmade items.

Etsy was conceived by Rob in early 2005. A painter, carpenter, and photographer, Rob found there was no viable marketplace to exhibit and sell his creations online — other E-commerce sites having become too inundated with overstock electronics and broken appliances. Ever industrious, he, along with Chris Maguire and Haim Schoppik, designed the site, wrote the code, assembled the servers, spliced the cables, and launched Etsy on June 18th, 2005 after only three sleepless months.

Rob served as CEO from Etsy’s founding until August 2008. In December 2009, Kalin came back in as CEO. Before founding Etsy, Rob was a woodworker and carpenter. He attended 5 colleges including the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, MIT and NYU before graduating with a BA in individualized study in 2004.

Tal Keinan (SemantiNet)

Tal Keinan was born and raised in Israel. At the age of 21, and upon completion of his Army service with the IDF Computer Division, Tal relocated to New York. In New York, Tal worked for the Government of Israel’s Mission to the United States. In 2004, Tal graduated with honors (Phi Beta Kappa) from Columbia University with a B.S in Computer Science and Economics. Upon graduation, Tal joined Morgan Stanley's Risk Management Department in New York where he was in charge of the bank's Scenario Analysis product suit. In 2008, together with Tal Muskal, Tal founded SemantiNet with an objective to simplify access to web data.

Achim Kopmeier (Epuramat)

Achim Kopmeier has a degree in Civil Engineering. Supported by a scholarship from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Bonn, he studied at the Saarland College of Technology and Management, majoring in Water Management and Traffic Engineering.

He worked for eight years in the blast furnace sector. He rose quickly from the initial role of trainee to that of construction manager, and was responsible for waste processing, as well as street and drainage construction sites. In three and a half years, he became the youngest project manager at Hochtief Umwelt, leading a number of big international projects. Achim was then made manager of the Hochtief Umwelt office in Saarbrücken. He then moved on to head the Luxembourg branch of the German construction company Löw. Later on he worked for the Luxembourg consultancy firm Best, where he headed site management and catenary projects in the local public works sector. In 2005, he founded what we now know as Epuramat S.A. as joint CEO with David Din – based in Luxembourg. Achim has now taken on the role of Chief Technology Officer.

Achim is the inventor of the patented ExSep®-technology. He was named a Technology Pioneer 2010 at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. Achim is 42 years old, and has lived in Luxembourg since 2000. He is married with two children.

Todd Krizelman (MagazineRadar)

Todd Krizelman is founder and CEO of MagazineRadar. Mr. Krizelman is an expert in the Internet and traditional magazine publishing. Founded in 2006, MagazineRadar works with 510 publishers to help them improve their ad sales, including industry leaders Condé Nast, Hearst, Hachette, and Meredith. For four years, Mr. Krizelman worked for Bertelsmann in publishing, working in Barcelona and New York City. Prior, he was founder and CEO of theglobe.com, leading the company for 8 years, raising $170 million, and taking the company public on NASDAQ. The company hosted an internet community of 20 million monthly users and published a collection of video game magazines. He is knowledgeable about the magazine market in both Europe and the U.S. Mr. Krizelman is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Business School.

Olga Kubassova (Image Analysis)

Olga was educated in Russia, Finland, and the UK in mathematics and computer science. With 2 Masters Degrees in Mathematics and Information Technology, a PhD in Computer Science, 40 peer-reviewed articles, 6 business awards, and more than 3 years of hands-on management experience, Olga is today responsible for business administration and day-to-day operations at Image Analysis Ltd.
Image Analysis Ltd was set up in 2007 to commercialize the results of Olga’s PhD related to computer-aided detection of disease in MRI scans. The developed software DYNAMIKA is now commercially available and being actively used in clinical trials, clinical research, and imaging-based clinical practice. It allows clinicians to save up to 50% of the time previously required for data reading, helping them to make accurate diagnosis of cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory gout disease, and other inflammatory conditions imaged with MRI. The software optimizes clinical workflow and reduces a possibility of error.

Since setting up the company, Olga has won more than £150,000 in grants, received investments from angel investors, and secured interest from multi-billion dollar international pharmaceutical companies and MRI hardware manufacturers, allowing her to employ 6 more people and to transform her 1-person start-up into a vibrant, profitable business with an increasing customer base. Olga has won countless business awards in recognition of her endeavors including most recently Spin-out Company of the Year 2009, and International Business of the Year 2010. Olga has been a lead in several multi-national healthcare projects and a scientific and technical advisor to several global healthcare organizations, MRI manufactures and pharmaceutical companies.

Rachel Lloyd (GEMS)

Reebok Human Rights Award winner, Ashoka Fellowship winner and Hunt Alternatives Prime Mover Fellowship winner Rachel Lloyd is a leading advocate for commercially sexually exploited and domestically trafficked children. In 1998, with only a computer and $30, Lloyd established GEMS: Girls Educational and Mentoring Services to support American girls and young women victimized by the commercial sex industry.

Since its inception as a one-woman outreach program, GEMS has grown to become the nation’s largest organization offering direct service to American victims of commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking. GEMS serves over 320 girls each year through its clinical recovery, housing and youth leadership programs, and 1,000 youth through education and outreach.

As the Executive Director of GEMS, Lloyd has been a leading advocate for survivor leadership and spearheaded the first US Summit of Commercially Sexually Exploited Youth, the first youth survivor-led Congressional briefing in DC, and the first youth survivor-led legislative briefing in Albany, NY.

Lloyd is a nationally recognized expert on the issue of commercial sexual exploitation of children and domestic trafficking in America and played a key role in the successful passage of New York State’s groundbreaking Safe Harbor Act for Sexually Exploited Youth, the first law in the country to end the prosecution of child victims of trafficking. Her trailblazing advocacy is the subject of the critically-acclaimed Showtime documentary “Very Young Girls” for which she was also the Co-Executive Producer.

Lloyd received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Marymount Manhattan College and her Masters in Applied Urban Anthropology from the City College of New York.

Alexis Maybank (Gilt Groupe)

Alexis is the Co-founder and President of Gilt Groupe, the fashion and luxury shopping website offering one-day, designer-specific “sample sale”-type sales. Guilt Groupe also runs men’s and travel-focused shopping sites Gilt Man and Jetsetter.

Alexis has focused on ecommerce and new media her entire career. She most recently served as General Manager and Director of Business Development for AOL's ecommerce businesses. Prior, Alexis launched and ran eBay Canada, which at the time existed as Canada's largest ecommerce business. She helped found eBay Motors, which grew to over $2.5B in gross sales and continues to be the largest category of goods sold on eBay today. She holds a B.A. and M.B.A. from Harvard University.

Carlos Moncayo (ASIAM)

Voted “Asia’s Best Young Entrepreneur” by BusinessWeek magazine readers and “Business Man of the Year” by the Ecuadorian Chinese Chamber of Commerce in 2009, Carlos Moncayo is a trained lawyer with a business background. He has studied at Willamette University’s College of Law and Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in the US, as well as at China Europe International Business School in China.

Moncayo is the youngest permanent member of the World Entrepreneurship Forum, an invitation-only global think tank. Through the World Entrepreneurship Forum (WEF) network, he recently played a major role in facilitating a partnership between the Ecuadorean and Singaporean governments which will see entrepreneurship-related policies implemented in Ecuador. In recognition of his efforts, he was named one of the five WEF members who made the greatest contributions to entrepreneurship in 2010.

His areas of expertise include entrepreneurship, cross border investments, supply chain management, and angel investments in China and Latin America. He regularly writes articles/columns in national and international publications about political and business relations between Asia and Latin America, as well as pieces on Chinese business culture. In 2010, he was invited to address the Latin Asia Business Forum (Singapore), the Emerging Markets Global Meeting (Washington DC), the Executive MBA class of INCAE Business School (Costa Rica) and the MBA class of China Europe International Business School (China).Born in Ecuador, Moncayo is also Co-Founder of the “Niños Atletas del Futuro” Foundation, which provides financial support and customized training programs for promising young athletes.

Zvika Netter (Innovid)

Selected by Time magazine as one of eight "Tech Pioneers Who Will Change Your Life," Zvika Netter, CEO and co-founder of Innovid, is an online video visionary and thought leader.

A serial entrepreneur with over 16 years of experience in founding and managing tech companies, Zvika also co-founded the non-profit GarageGeeks to promote not-for-profit innovation and creativity. He was previously the vice president of business development at Ness Technologies, and a co-founder of NTR, a software company.

Ory Okolloh (Ushahidi)

Ms. Ory Okolloh is the co-founder and Executive Director of Ushahidi (www.ushahidi.com). Ushahidi, meaning “testimony” in Swahili, was first developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout in early 2008. Today it is a global, open-source platform, particularly designed for employment during disaster or emergency situations, that any person or organization can use to gather and visualize data collected from SMS, email, or web technology. The platform has been utilized to monitor political tension, civil unrest, and violence in areas as diverse as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gaza, and India, as well as being used to monitor global health issues like the recent swine flu outbreak. Ory is also the co-founder of Mzalendo, a website that tracks the performance of Kenyan Members of Parliament.

Ory graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. degree in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh, and with a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She is a frequent speaker at conferences including TED, Poptech, Clinton Global Initiative, Techonomy, and the World Economic Forum on the role of technology in Africa, citizen reporting, and the role of young people in reshaping the future of Africa. She blogs on her personal blog Kenyan Pundit, www.kenyanpundit.com.

Alastair Onglingswan (GreenSoul Shoes)

Alastair Onglingswan is a serial entrepreneur, having successfully created, financed and launched two online technology companies and a real estate company. Before starting these ventures, Alastair was an attorney specializing in structured finance at Brown & Wood, LLP and a litigation associate at Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz, Edelman and Dicker. He holds a J.D. degree from Fordham University, School of Law and a B.A. degree from Trinity College at the University of Toronto. He is now on the Management Team of GreenSoul Shoes, a 100% up-cycled, waste reducing shoe company. GreenSoul Shoes works with local artisans in developing nations to produce eco-friendly sandals to sell via their website. For every pair of shoes purchased, the organization gives away a pair of shoes to a barefoot child in the same community as the cobbler.

Shabnam Rezaei (Big Bad Boo)

Shabnam is the co-founder of Big Bad Boo Studios, dedicated to teaching kids about culture through entertainment. Shabnam produced the widely-distributed TV series Mixed Nutz, the first multicultural series, featuring friends from Iran, Cuba, India and Korea. While producing Mixed Nutz, Shabnam and her partner Aly Jetha opened their own animation facility in Vancouver. The studio is a 2D outfit with over 60 employees and has serviced clients such as Fisher Price and Runaway Products. In addition, Shabnam and Aly launched oznoz.com, a platform for distributing multicultural content for kids.Shabnam also started PersianMirror.com, an online magazine that brings Iranian culture to the world. The website currently receives more than 4 million hits per month and has over 10,000 Iranian business listings. With a BS in Computer Science and a BA in German Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as an MBA from New York University, Shabnam has spent over 10 years selling financial software to Fortune 500’s such as Bank of America, JP Morgan, and ING. She has held managerial positions at EXIS and Deloitte & Touche. Before starting her own company, she was the Head of Professional Services for Misys’s Treasury and Capital Markets division. Shabnam won the NYU business plan competition in 2006. In 2009, she won Vancouver’s 40 Under 40 Award and Canada’s Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Shabnam was born in Iran and grew up in Austria. She lives in New York and Vancouver with her husband & business partner Aly Jetha.

Naveen Selvadurai (Foursquare)

Naveen is a Co-founder of foursquare. Prior to founding foursquare, he was Lead Architect at Socialight and was a Senior Software Architect with the Global Digital Business group at Sony Music Entertainment. In this role, he oversaw and developed various applications that dealt with content management and distribution of mobile products and was the lead developer of Sony's Music Box mobile application. Before Sony, he consulted for New York-based Run Tones and enjoyed software engineering stints at Sun Microsystems and Lucent Technologies.
Naveen holds a master's degree in computer science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Barry Silbert (SecondMarket)

Barry Silbert is the Founder and CEO of SecondMarket, the world's largest marketplace for buying and selling alternative financial assets, including private company stock. Founded in 2004, SecondMarket has conducted billions of dollars in transactions across nine different asset classes. Since 2009, more than $350 million in private company stock traded over SecondMarket in numerous venture-backed companies, including Facebook, Zynga, Twitter and LinkedIn. SecondMarket's customized liquidity programs provide private companies with an effective way to organize and control secondary activity in their shares.

SecondMarket was recently honored by the World Economic Forum as a 2011 Technology Pioneer. In 2009, Barry was a category winner of Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award, a winner of Crain’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award and was included on Treasury & Risk’s list of the 100 Most Influential People in Finance. Barry was also recognized by Fortune as “One to Watch” in the publication’s annual 40 Under 40 issue. In addition, SecondMarket was named one of the “Top Fifty Tech Startups You Should Know” by BusinessWeek and was recognized by Fast Company as one of eight startups “brimming with hope” for the financial industry. Earlier this year, the company was recognized by AlwaysOn Media as the overall winner of the “Global 250” list of the top private companies in the world.

Barry is also active angel investor with investments in a number of exciting start-ups, including Behind the Burner, ProFounder, RealDirect, Send-the-Trend, Slated, TapAd and Vator.tv.

Alexandra Wilkis Wilson (Gilt Groupe)

With over twelve years of international experience in luxury goods and retail, Alexandra Wilkis Wilson is Founder and Chief Merchandising Officer of Gilt Groupe, an innovative company that has revolutionized the fashion industry and ecommerce in general. Each day, Gilt offers its members insider prices for a new, curated selection of highly coveted merchandise, including apparel, accessories and lifestyle products for women, men and children, home entertaining and decor, along with luxury travel packages and fantastic offers on local services and experiences. Since Gilt Groupe’s November 2007 launch, Alexandra has been featured in Forbes, Fortune, Crain’s, The Wall Street Journal, Women’s Wear Daily, InStyle, The Los Angeles Times and The New York Observer in addition to on-air appearances on ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC. Prior to co-founding Gilt Groupe, Alexandra oversaw retail operations at Bulgari, managing 15 North American stores, and managed Leather Goods Sales Planning for Louis Vuitton North America. She began her career working for three years in investment banking at Merrill Lynch predominately based in London. She subsequently worked as a consultant for retail guru Marvin Traub at Financo Inc. Alexandra holds a B.A. from Harvard College where she graduated Magna Cum Laude and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Alexandra speaks five languages. She lives in New York City, her hometown, with her husband and young son.