Finding Early Funding:
Mon, Feb 18 - 12:00 - 1:30 PM - F45
Vikram Joshi WG '08
Vikram previously worked in a high technology start-up environments where he established a track record for building businesses from the ground up. He has led various business development activities including venture financing, strategic planning, corporate partnerships, and IP licensing. He holds degrees from Cornell University, Stanford University, and is currently an 2008 MBA candidate at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Peter S. Linder - Angel Investor
Peter is Chairman of the Executive Committee of the MAG Fund, a new member managed fund that bridges the gap between angel funding and institutional venture capital funding. For five years he was Chairman of LORE (Loosely Organized Retired Executives), one of the oldest angel investment groups in the country. He is Chairman, Investor Resources Group, Ben Franklin Investment Partners, providing guarantees to qualified angel investors, and a member of the Advisory Committee of Edison Venture Fund V.
In addition, Peter is Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Muhlenberg College, a member of the faculty, and teaches courses in venture capital and entrepreneurship. He is a member of the Board of Governing Trustees of The Jackson Laboratory -- the premier genetics research and resources institution in the world. He was president of ETHIX, a managed care company operating HMOs and PPOs in 13 states. He founded the company in 1984 and grew the health plan membership to over 500,000 and revenues of $50 million. He also founded American Interactive, a company specializing in hospital laboratory data processing systems. The company operated in the United States and Europe. Earlier in his career he served as Manager, Federal Government Marketing, for Burroughs Corporation.
Neel Premkumar WG '08
Neel is the founder and CEO of CreativeHUB.com. Prior to his current venture, Neel worked in Brand Management at Wyeth Consumer Healthcare, running advertising development, managing the $20M P&L, developing the Annual Business Plan, and creating Internet & consumer promotion strategies for the $80M Advil Respiratory business. Neel is an experienced Internet marketer with a background in viral, buzz, and grassroots marketing campaigns. At Wyeth, he led a multi-million dollar Advil re-branding initiative – conducted focus group research, modeled brand revenue drivers & profitability analysis, developed six new strategic platforms as well as the 5-year Business Plan, and launched a $10M global new product: Advil Multi-Symptom Cold.
How to Write a Business Plan:
Mon, Feb 18 - 4:30-6:00 - 240
Eric Siegel - Lecturer at Wharton
Eric is a co-author of The Ernst & Young Business Plan Guide. Eric has consulted with growth companies, acquisition candidates, industry consolidators, public market candidates and business turnarounds since 1980. In 1983, he formed his own company, Siegel Management Company. The firm provides a combination of consulting and investment banking services to a diverse client base.
Prototyping Your Product:
Tues, Feb 19 - 4:30-6:00 - F92
Greg Bibas WG '08
Greg's first venture into the world of entrepreneurship began in high school when he owned and operated several vending machines, and then later, began a business importing white label computer disks and branding them under his own brand (Dillo Disks), and then selling the disks to computer stores and user groups in Texas. In college, he managed a crew of ten students who did home improvement tasks for local homeowners. After college ,Greg worked at a startup for 9 years (American Homeowners Association) serving in various positions, starting as employee #3 in a company which became 60+, and helping to raise $5MM for the company by writing business plan and pitching it to VCs. Greg is currently working on a life insurance business in the Wharton VIP Program, and is planning to work with Bain Consulting in New York following graduation.
Jennifer Campbell WG '09
Jennifer graduated from Harvard in 2001 and began working for a financial payment technology start-up in 2003. In her role, Jennifer was directly involved in capital raising, in securing pilot agreements for the company’s technology with both MasterCard and First Data Corporation, in investor relations and in financial reporting. Two years later, Jennifer left the technology company to co-found a surfing wetsuit and apparel brand with her brother. As a co-founder of a consumer products brand, Jennifer has dealt with material sourcing, outsourced manufacturing, brand positioning and product distribution. The company Jennifer co-founded is now run by her brother with projected 2008 revenues of $1 million.
As a liberal arts major in college, Jennifer believed that business school was a critical component to her long term success as an entrepreneur. She came to Wharton to build-out her professional network, to focus on developing a technical skill-set in finance and accounting and to leverage the Wharton experience into a retail industry coverage position at a major investment bank. In the medium to long-run, Jennifer plans to return to entrepreneurial endeavors in either a principal investing or operational capacity.
Greg Neichin WG '08
Greg is the Co-Founder of PlaceVine (www.placevine.com), a web-based information service for facilitating brand integrations transactions between marketers and content creators launched this past summer with the support of the 2007 Wharton Venture Award. Prior to launching PlaceVine, Greg spent four years on the management team of GetActive Software (acquired by Convio, Inc.), a developer of online relationship management software for public interest and charitable organizations. He led a variety of sales, marketing, and partnership efforts as Vice President, Business Development & Western Sales and spearheaded the firm’s growth into a variety of new market sectors. Prior to GetActive, he wrote on technology trends for SRI Consulting and worked in strategy and business development for Redback Networks. He began his professional career as a Consultant with Mercer Management Consulting where he worked on technology commercialization and salesforce optimization projects for Philips Electronics and NCR. He has a B.A. in Economics and Government from Dartmouth College and is earning an M.B.A. from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he is a recipient of the Price Fellowship for studies in Entrepreneurial Management.
Maria Redin WG '08
Before joining Wharton, Maria started the engineering consulting firm
M S redin and associates that specialized in building early stage
electronic prototypes for proof of concept and demos. Her team
worked with pre-VC funded companies to create early models. Prior to
her company Maria led an engineering team at Mattel that developed
new technology for toys. She spent her undergrad years at MIT where
she obtained a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Engineering
as well as a Masters Degree from the MIT Media Lab.
Acquiring Your First Customer:
Wed, Feb 20 - 12 - 1:30PM - F45
Morris Levin WG '08
Jeremy Kossler WG '08
Mayank Mehta WG '09
As an electrical engineer (McGill U) my passion for technology and my belief in the difference it can make led me to start my first company Ambient Technologies ( www.iambience.com ) right out of undergrad. Ambient dealt in the home automation space and currently operates in Montreal, Canada. In founding Ambient, I led an international, cross-functional team of eight members to take a suite of nine hi-tech, home automation products from the concept stage to the market stage. These products generated over $100,000 in revenues for Ambient in year one. In 2005, I founded Cooliris in Palo Alto, a company trying to improve the online advertising model while trying to enhance the end-user experience in browsing links and rich media; Previews enabled users to view content without clicking or leaving their page context, while Piclens transformed the browser into a full-screen slideshow experience. These innovations not only pushed next generation browsing and augmented the web experience for over 4 million users (and counting), but also disrupted the status quo in the online ad industry. The company grew and in early 2007, we were funded by Kleiner Perkins. The company is currently incubated in the KPCB office.
Bootstrapping Basics:
Wed, Feb 20 - 4:30 - 6PM - 270
Mark Meras WG '08
Mark Meras is President and founder of Allodia Corporation, a software services firm headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Allodia specializes in customized software solutions for the enterprise search market. Allodia's clients are small businesses and Fortune 500 firms, regional enterprises and multinational corporations, start-ups and companies listed on the NYSE and NASDAQ.
Mark has been in the consulting industry since 2000, and specializes in
designing and implementing custom integration solutions. He has worked with clients in the desktop search industry, the pharmaceutical
industry, and the litigation support industry. Previously, Mark has
worked at Microsoft, designing the next generation of digital home
technology for Windows XP. Mark also has regulated industry experience, having worked with a major pharmaceutical company on implementing clinical trial investigator management solutions.
Mark holds a B.S. in Computer Science as well as an M.S. in Computer
Science from Yale University.
Mohit (Mo) Bhende WG '08
Mo is the founder of Topic Magazine, a quarterly magazine that takes a topic (e.g. “food”, “prisons”, “fads”) and publishes a diverse set of first-person writing that connects to the topic. Founded in 2002 while Mo was studying at Cambridge, it currently has 20,000 readers and a staff of editors in NYC. Topic is currently funded through sponsorships with leading brands (e.g. ABSOLUT, Marc Jacobs, Dewars Scotch). Past writers have included Nobel Peace Prize winners, death row inmates, competitive eaters, and rock musicians. Prior to Topic, Mo worked in management consulting at Mercer Management Consulting and completed a B.S. at Penn State and M.Sc. at Cambridge University (England). This past summer, Mo worked at Microsoft’s corporate strategy group developing plans to fund and launch an internal start-up related to speech and gesture recognition.
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Adam Erlebacher WG '08
Launching Your Website:
Thurs, Feb 21 - 12:00 - 1:30PM - F50
Jack Roe WG '08
Steve Engelbrecht WG '09
Steve Engelbrecht is a first-year MBA student and a serial entrepreneur. After completing his undergraduate studies in computer science at Cornell University in 2001, Steve moved to Boston where he founded Sitation, an e-commerce strategy consultancy focused on designing and implementing scalable internet solutions for small business, startups, and business units of several well-known firms such as S.C. Johnson, Travelocity, and Carlisle Companies. In addition to his work at Sitation, Steve was a founding partner of College Cellular, a web-based distributor of cell phones to college students, and CTO of travel startup Custom Golf Vacations, a high-end golf vacation packager whose website won Steve and his colleagues a Forbes “Best of the Web” award in 2004.
Steve’s professional interests remain focused on internet-based software, most notably Web 2.0 technologies such as social networking, distributed services, and B2B collaborative and operational platforms. Following the Wharton MBA, Steve hopes to remain involved with technology as both an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, focusing on early-stage investments in internet services and enterprise software firms.
Peter Handy W '08
Gil Shulman WG '08
Gil Shulman is the inventor and co-founder of Amobee, a Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners backed Startup. Amobee is the first company world-wide to offer online-advertising solutions via mobile phones. He is an inventor of two US patents in the telecom space. Prior to Amobee, Gil worked as a product manager in the online advertising industry, leading and managing product development from idea to market deployment. Gil started his career as a software developer and has vast technological background in software engineering.