FORWARDMETRICS - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Founder and CEO at Modify Industries, Inc.
Aaron Schwartz is Founder and CEO at Modify Industries, Inc., which designs interchangeable custom watches known as Modify Watches. He loves working on startup ideas and has spent innumerable (happy) hours advising friends and former students on how to grow their ideas.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder of Single Grain
AJ Kumar is the co-founder of Single Grain, a digital marketing agency based in San Francisco. Single Grain specializes in helping startups and larger companies with search engine optimization, pay-per-click, social media and various other marketing strategies.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and President of Track Marketing Group
Alex Frias is co-founder and president of Track Marketing Group, an award winning brand experience company specializing in live event and social activations. Alex has spent the last decade blending Fortune 500 brands with entertainment and lifestyle programming. Alex also curates young & social, a marketing blog dissecting the convergence of brands, music, fashion, and lifestyle marketing.
Alexandria Lee knows firsthand what it's like to grow up struggling. The daughter of a single mom and a drug addict dad, her story could have been one of the thousands of tragedies happening in American schools every day. Except for that one teacher who challenged her to do more. Thanks to him-a transplant from Senegal-she switched to honors classes and surprised everyone by graduating not just from high school, but also from Spelman College and Harvard Law School.
Now, Nashville-based Lee has a new vision for education for African-American boys.
"9% of black males in the 8th grade can read at a proficient level," she said in her NewME pitch. Well, obviously, that's not acceptable.
Lee's solution is to open a school in Ghana and transplant at-risk boys for a few years of out-of-their-element education. Besides honors-level classes, the boys will be paired with a local student to learn leadership and entrepreneurship. They will work together to devise community action plans that solve real problems in the local community. The school wants to teach African-American boys where their roots really are, not in the tragedy of slavery, but in the deserts of Africa.
"Our goal is to transform discarded youth into community leaders. Our students will come into the program underperforming. We will first catch them up, and then excel them past their classmates back home. But, more than just academic gap closure, our students will be trained in emotional competence, given the desire to serve others, and learn manhood lessons. At an early age they will become global citizens and return to their communities with broadened horizons, prepared to begin finding solutions to ills within their own communities," Lee told me in an email.
Alexis Wolfer is working to empower women and promote confidence through beauty as the founder and editor-in-chief of TheBeautyBean.com, a television host/on-air expert, and a Real Beauty activist. Her first book, The Recipe For Radiance: Discover Beauty's Best Kept Secrets In Your Kitchen (Running Press, April 2014) is available on Amazon now!
Job Titles:
- Community and Recruiting Manager for ShipCompliant
Analiese Brown, Community and Recruiting Manager for ShipCompliant, said, "Social good should become an outcome of what you're trying to build, rather than an afterthought. What is the fundamental belief that drives your business? If you can get clear on why you do what you do at that very basic level, it becomes easier to see how you can achieve social good as an extension of your product and brand. That doesn't mean your product has to solve a social problem explicitly (although it might), but it does challenge founders to think about how they could use their existing resources - their team, their technology, their solution - to make the world a better place."
Job Titles:
- Money Crashers Personal Finance
Andy Karuza is the CEO of brandbuddee.com and a long-time social media consultant with experience in Enterprise, Startup and local small business. Also an active nightlife, fashion, entrepreneur and charity community member.
Bert Gervais, a.k.a. "The Mentor Guy", is the founder of Success Mentor Education. He is a national best selling author, speaker, and award-winning entrepreneur. You can follow him @BertGervais.
Job Titles:
- Principal and Co - Founder of Ink
Beth Monaghan is principal and co-founder of InkHouse Media + Marketing, a PR and content marketing agency with offices in Waltham, MA and San Francisco, CA. She blogs at InkLings and you can find her on Twitter @bamonaghan.
Job Titles:
- Founder and CEO of Magoosh
- My Adviser
My adviser Bhavin from the Magoosh team always says that fundraising is a full-time job, so a co-founder should "quit" other parts of the business during the funding cycle. Personally, I have found this campaign to require even more work than raising our first round.
Job Titles:
- President of Edison Nation Medical
Bobby Grajewski is President of Edison Nation Medical, a healthcare product and medical device incubator and online community for people that are passionate about healthcare innovation. Prior to joining Edison Nation Medical, Grajewski, a serial entrepreneur, co-founded two online companies (Heritage Handcrafted and eCollectors) and spent 5 years in venture capital and private equity both in the middle market and at larger LBO firms.
Job Titles:
- Techstars and Foundry Group Co - Founder
Techstars and Foundry Group co-founder Brad Feld to speak at early stage symposium event in Madison Wisconsin.
Job Titles:
- Principal Consultant at Colorwheel Media Consulting
Brendan Mangus is Principal Consultant at Colorwheel Media Consulting, a new breed of tech consultants specializing in helping early and mid-stage startups refine their product, define and grow their market and community and execute their outreach and go-to-market strategy. Prior to starting his consulting practice, he spent more than a decade providing marketing, branding and public relations counsel for a variety of clients.
Job Titles:
- Kapture Turns You into a Brand Ambassador
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder of Terrible Labs
Cort Johnson is a co-founder of Terrible Labs, a boutique design and development shop, and TicketZen, the easiest way to pay parking tickets with your mobile phone. He also works with Flybridge Capital Partners and its general partners as an advisor to support and broaden the firm's investment activities.
Job Titles:
- CEO and Co - Founder at Walk
Dan Adika is CEO and Co-Founder at WalkMe, an online guidance and engagement platform. WalkMe provides a cloud-based service designed to help professionals - customer support managers, user experience managers, training professionals, SaaS providers and sales managers - to guide and engage prospects, customers, employees and partners through any online …4
Speek co-founder Danny Boice has lot's of tattoos, his co-founder John Bracken has just one (photo: NMI 2013)
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder of Equitable Payments
Darrah Brustein is the co-founder of Equitable Payments, a merchant services brokerage, and founder of Network Under 40, a monthly networking event for young professionals. Darrah recently authored Finance Whiz Kids, a series of kids book that teach the basics of financial education.
David Adelman is the Founder and CEO of ReelGenie, an online platform that revolutionizes the way stories are told and shared. David is also Founder and CEO of Reel Tributes, the premier producer of high-end documentary films. Reel Tributes' films preserve timeless stories and memories for families and family-owned businesses.
Job Titles:
- Founder and CEO of Early Growth Financial Services
David Ehrenberg is the founder and CEO of Early Growth Financial Services, an outsourced financial services firm that provides early-stage companies with day-to-day transactional accounting, CFO service, tax, and valuation services and support. He's a financial expert and startup mentor whose passion is helping businesses focus on what they do best. Follow David @EarlyGrowthFS.
David Hassell is a serial entrepreneur and presently Founder & CEO of 15Five, a SaaS company focused on helping individuals and organizations reach their highest potential. Hailed by Fast Company as the "15 Most Important Minutes of Your Work Week," 15Five creates an internal communication process that enables the most important information to flow seamlessly throughout an organization.
David Spinks is the CEO of CMX Media, hosts of CMXSummit and CMXHub, the world's largest conference and online publication for the community industry.
Job Titles:
- Founder, Chairman and CEO of Global
Don Coleman, founder, chairman and CEO of GlobalHue, the largest multicultural marketing agency in the United States, recently told me how, as an entrepreneur, his focus is on knowing and being where the consumer is going.
"Whatever we are doing as marketers and consumers, we need to focus on where the consumer is going," said Coleman.
Job Titles:
- Founder and CEO of Real Life
Elizabeth Grace Saunders is the founder and CEO of Real Life E®, a time coaching and training company, and the author of "The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success With Less Stress."
Job Titles:
- Managing Director of the Impact Angel Group, Sai
Elizabeth Kraus, Managing Director of The Impact Angel Group, said, "To really achieve social good, startups should first start thinking about it early in the process so it can shape the company culture and be supported by the early investors and stakeholders. Startups can't forget that they must survive in order to create social good. If used as support for customer acquisition, employee retention and other startup challenges, a social good strategy can be a competitive advantage."
Job Titles:
- Professor of Management at Loyola Marymount University
Job Titles:
- Leader Has to Be Practical and a Realist, yet Must Talk the Language of the Visionary and the Idealist
Job Titles:
- Founder & CEO of SimpleRelevance
Erik Severinghaus is the founder & CEO of SimpleRelevance, a Chicago-based company focused on digital marketing personalization. Prior to that he received a patent while in IBM‘s IT Optimization organization, and helped co-found iContact - a leading Email Service Provider.
Erin Meagher is the developer of Kelapo™ Extra Virgin Coconut Oil, a product manufactured and marketed by Beneficial Blends LLC, headquartered in Tampa, Florida. Kelapo™ was launched in 2009 with the goal of producing the best-quality coconut oil on the market while ensuring fair and ethical treatment of the farmers who cultivate it.
Job Titles:
- Lead Me Follow Me or Get the Hell Out of My Way!
Job Titles:
- WeCounsel Co - Founder and CEO
WeCounsel co-founder and CEO Harrison Tyner told Nibletz by phone that UltraGroup was on their radar to talk with earlier this summer.
The real leader has no need to lead, he is content to point the way.
Job Titles:
- Company Co - Founder and CEO
As company co-founder and CEO James Bell told me a few months ago, after major surgery getting up and walking around is a very important part of recovery. That's why as soon as you are able, doctors like for patients to walk to other parts of the hospital for testing and therapy. The problem in the past was that all of the equipment tied to a patient recovering from surgery often requires more than one technician to accompany the patients on these walks. Often taking technicians away from other duties.
Jesse Lipson is a VP & GM for Citrix, which acquired his company ShareFile in 2011. ShareFile is a file-transfer service built for business users who need secure, reliable and easy tools for sharing data. He launched ShareFile in 2005 and bootstrapped the company from zero to four million users in six years. Jesse has also launched and/or led several other cloud and e-commerce businesses, including Rapidata.net, a pharmaceutical market research company, and the website development firm novelProjects.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and CEO at Jumyo
John has been a serial entrepreneur since his undergraduate days at the University of Alabama. He's had a few successful exits, most recently with Nashville-based interactive agency Ten Fast Feet.
John is our high-level strategy guy, and you'll usually find him debating any number of topics, from politics to business strategy with anyone who will listen. Most commonly, forcing Monica to listen to his diatribes.
Job Titles:
- CEO
- Co - Founder
- See Lemon.Ly Co - Founder and CEO
Kim Kaupe is the co-founder of ZinePak, a custom publication company that creates engaging fan packages for entertainers, brands, and celebrities. She graduated with a B.A. in marketing from the University of Florida and roots loyally for her Gators. Most recently, she was named one of Forbes 30 Under 30. Previously she was named to Advertising Age's 40 Under 40 List and featured in The Wall Street Journal's Start Up of the Year Documentary.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder of Ministry of Supply
Kit Hickey is the co-founder of Ministry of Supply, a brand which is inventing the future of men's professional wear. The company has been featured in NYT, TechCrunch, Inc., Forbes and Elle Magazine. In addition, Kit is a lover of mountain sports and has half an MBA from MIT. Follow her: @kit_hickey
Lea Woodward is a Business strategist for micro-businesses and first time entrepreneurs. She is location independent and the creator of the original Location Independent website, having coined the term in 2007. She is the founder of Startup Training School, an online school dedicated to empowering women with the skills they need to get their business online. Find out more about Lea at http://www.LeaWoodward.com
Job Titles:
- Chief Meeting Officer and Founder of Lighthouse Conferencing, Sai
Marc Gutman, Chief Meeting Officer and Founder of Lighthouse Conferencing, said, "My biggest piece of advice to startups looking to do this is do it for the right reasons. Do it because it is meaningful to you and your team. Do not enter into it as something that's going to be monetized or to bring you business. If it does, that's a bonus, but you'll most likely be disappointed if this is your main reason for starting one of these programs."
Job Titles:
- Sportifik 's Co - Founder and CEO
Entrepreneur Mark Suster speaks of a time when his company was trying to produce too many products at the same time. One of his managers pulled him aside and advised that the company should narrow their focus. After a company-wide discussion he cut down the number of items in production from four to just one - the one that would ultimately turn out to be an industry-leading product.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director
- Founder
Melissa Kushner is the Founder & Executive Director of www.goodsforgood.org. She runs offices in New York City and Lilongwe, Malawi where her small team runs programs with big impact. goods for good supports over 70,000 orphans and children in need. goods for good provides goods and build businesses at community centers, Malawi's grassroots and sustainable solution to the orphan crisis.
Job Titles:
- Youth Leadership Specialist
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and President of Kapture
Michael Szewcyk, the co-founder and President of Kapture is no stranger to startups. In fact, he was working for a Silicon Valley based startup, Qwiki when he had the idea for Kapture. He quickly moved back to New York and began the launch process.
Miguel Ramirez is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded mediotiempo.com, the largest sports site in Mexico and one of the most relevant Internet success stories in Latin America. The company was acquired in 2010 by Time Warner. Today, Miguel is co-founder and CEO of soccerly.com, which was launched in January 2013 with the ambitious plan of becoming "the online destination for soccer fans in the U.S." Miguel is also a partner at kiwilimon.com, a leading food/community site. Follow him @mrlombana.
Monica is our resident content guru. As the cofounder and editor of Nibletz, she's talked to hundreds of startup founders and understands the unique struggles of building a business from scratch. She's passionate about solving real problems with innovative technology and good business sense.
With her way with words, Monica is more than happy to engage in (and beat) John in any debate.
Job Titles:
- Leader Is a Dealer in Hope
Job Titles:
- Media Inc
- Nathalie Lussier Media Inc
Job Titles:
- Founder and CEO of Portable Boutique Inc.
Naveed Lalani is the Founder and CEO of Portable Boutique Inc., a company that creates Plug & Play Bitcoin Widgets. Previously, Naveed was Chief Strategy Officer at DonorNation.org, and Co-Founder at Rally.org. Naveed gives back by advising the Thiel Fellowship and leading entrepreneurship initiatives at the Ismaili Professionals Network.
Job Titles:
- Founder and CEO of LabDoor
Neil Thanedar is the founder and CEO of LabDoor, a mobile health startup providing consumer-focused product safety ratings. At 24, Neil is the visionary and scientific mind behind a company seeking to replace the FDA and Big Pharma as our top sources of safety information about pharmaceuticals, supplements, and cosmetics.
Panos Panay is a passionate entrepreneur and active startup mentor in the creative media space. As the founder of Sonicbids, he created the leading platform for bands to book gigs and market themselves online. He writes weekly about startups and entrepreneurship for blogs and publications such as Huffington Post, WSJ Accelerators and Fast Company; and guest lectures at universities including MIT Engineering, Boston University and Brown University.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and Managing Partner of Main Street ROI in New York
Robert Hartline, the founder of CallProof, created CallProof to help solve a problem he saw in his company each and every day. He observed that there was no accountability for day-to-day sales activity and decided to build an app to create just that, accountability.
Robert Weneck has made incredible contributions to the fields of news media and journalism over the past 40 years. Throughout the course of his career, he has been a consultant and publicist for the White House and has worked on major projects with seven U.S. Presidents and news colleagues such as Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, and John Chancellor. He also served as a news media advisor to President Ford and several sports figures and celebrities, such as Don King, Evil Knievel, and Marvin Hamlisch. Weneck's valuable contributions recently earned him the honor of being Florida Businessman of the Year.
Rohit Singal, 38, founded Sourcebits in 2006. A trained radiologist, he quit medicine to found a startup in India. Sourcebits developed the first iPhone app from India - an alarm clock called Nightstand that was a major hit. The company has since built more than 500 products, including 30+ chart-topping mobile apps. Sourcebits employs more than 300 people, and secured Series A funding from Sequoia Capital and IDG.
Ronnie Castro is co-founder of http://porch.com, a start-up aimed at helping people manage and love their biggest asset - their home. Operations, revenue generating and customer acquisition experience with Google, Expedia and WildTangent.
Job Titles:
- Founder of Negri Electronics
Ryan Negri, the founder of Negri Electronics and now a startup called Laicos, and Kyle Mathews, the co-founder of Laicos believe that everyone is "one social person" so they should only have one social app. They are hoping that app is Laicos' first app, Fuse.
Job Titles:
- President of Salter Spiral Stair
Sam Saxton is currently the President of Salter Spiral Stair, Mylen Stairs, and Paragon Stairs. He previously has operated a residential construction company and has experience in acquiring small businesses as well as advanced marketing/sales strategies. He is a graduate of Babson College with a focus in entrepreneurship.
Job Titles:
- CEO and Founder of University
Sarah Schupp is the CEO and founder of UniversityParent.com, the #1 site for college parents to find everything they need to help their student succeed. Follow her on Twitter @Sarah_Schupp
Sean Kelly is a Johns Hopkins and Columbia-University-trained biomedical engineer and nutrition-focused social entrepreneur who co-founded HUMAN (Helping Unite Mankind And Nutrition) in 2008 to make healthy food more convenient than junk food while turning the $42B vending industry on its head. HUMAN is now the world's leading socially-responsible franchisor of healthy vending machine businesses and healthy micro-markets with hundreds of franchisees and thousands of machines and markets placed across the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Sean has landed on many coveted business lists, including Forbes' "30 Under 30," CNN Money's "Top 10 Generation Next Entrepreneurs," Business Week's "Top 25 Young Entrepreneurs" and Mother Nature Network's "Innovation Generation: 30 Fresh Thinkers Helping Humanity Adapt to What's Next."
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of ContextMedia, Put It This Way
Shradha Agarwal, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of ContextMedia, put it this way: "Women mentors are really great at helping build confidence, teaching communication skills, and training on other hard skills that are needed to succeed. Male mentors add perspective and allow us to learn how we are being perceived - whether it is body language, dressing, or tone of voice. I think both sets of mentors together - male and female - build a strong and comprehensive team."
Stacey Ferreira is a bad ass startup chick, and quite frankly has one of the most bad ass stories we've ever heard. That story starts when she was a student at an all girls Catholic high school in Phoenix, Arizona. When you hear about entrepreneurs starting out as developers in high school, a lot of times those stories are about boys.
Well Ferreira was lonely and missing all of her public school friends who were about 40 miles away. Looking for something to do to pass the time she turned to her brother Scott. He had just begun teaching himself how to program, so the two of them decided they would learn how to become game developers.
Through the rest of her time in high school, Ferreira spent her free time creating and developing different projects with her brother. Then the time came to graduate high school and their parents insisted that they had just one more summer left before they had to go get real internships like everyone else. The Ferreira siblings decided to go all in and move to Los Angeles to build out one of the projects that they had worked on in high school. That project became MySocialCloud.
During that summer Richard Branson held a fundraiser contest of sorts that said if you could donate $2,000 to his charity you could have cocktails with Branson in Miami. Stacey wasn't even old enough to drink, but quickly realized the value in spending time with Branson. Oh, the other problem was they didn't have the money. To make matters worse, when they called and talked with someone in Branson's office they discovered the two of them would need $4,000 not $2000.
Scott and Stacey now had the daunting task of selling their dad on getting a loan. Dad wanted a business plan, Stacey told the standing room-only crowd at a startup event Tuesday in Chattanooga. So she and Scott developed a business plan. Almost reluctantly their dad said yes, but they had to return the money in 3 months.
Job Titles:
- Leader Leads by Example, Not by Force
Job Titles:
- Founder and CEO of Buzz Marketing Group
Tina Wells, founder and CEO of Buzz Marketing Group earned her B.A. in Communication Arts graduating with honors from Hood College in 2002. She is the author of the tween series Mackenzie Blue, published by HarperCollins Childrens Books.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and CEO of Banyan
Vasu Kulkarni, CEO of Krossover, explains one surprising strategy for pricing your prototype - charging early adopters for your product, so that they see the value in it long term. Other ideas include: