Event Recap

On December 4th, 2012, VentureOutNY hosted Silicon Alley Meets Tech City, a conference focused on helping drive collaboration between two of the world’s fastest growing tech communities, in partnership with the British Consulate, and the Tech City Investment Organisation (TCIO).
The event featured each of the city’s prominent technology entrepreneurs, venture investors, and leaders in government committed the continued growth of their technology community.
To watch a recap of the entire event, click here.

Introductions

Brian Frumberg

Founder, VentureOutNY

Brian Frumberg is the Founder of VentureOutNY, an advisor to DFJ Gotham Ventures, and a startup mentor with iKatapult, a CEE-focused technology incubator. With experience in sales, business development, and product management, Brian's career has spanned finance and technology, startups and venture, and now he is firmly planted as a member of the New York tech community. Driven by a passion for technology and startups, Brian has been immersed in New York’s technology community since 2009 and now, as the Founder of VentureOutNY, he is helping to foster and grow that community by supporting international entrepreneurs interested in launching their startups in New York City.

The Role of Government in Supporting a Tech Ecosystem

Ben Southworth

Deputy CEO, Tech City Investment Organisation

Benjamin Southworth is Deputy CEO of Tech City Investment Organisation (TCIO). He focuses on helping develop existing and new events for the Tech City cluster and ensuring that the community’s views are communicated to policymakers in government and City Hall. Before joining TCIO, Ben was involved in a number of tech start-ups and a was a founder of Digital Sizzle and Silicon Drinkabout events in East London.

Euan Robertson

Executive Vice President, NYC Economic Development Corporation

Euan Robertson is an Executive Vice President at NYCEDC who, alongside colleague Ann Li, leads the Center for Economic Transformation (CET). CET at NYCEDC aims to develop the City’s major business sectors by implementing policy and programmatic initiatives that address current issues faced by each industry, create good jobs, and promote entrepreneurship and economic diversification across the five boroughs. Prior to his current role, Euan led the NYCEDC Strategic Planning Department. Euan also continues to play a lead role in developing Applied Sciences NYC, an effort to grow applied sciences in the city by creating a new world-class technology campus. Before to joining NYCEDC, Euan worked on healthcare strategy for the national government of the United Kingdom. He also spent nearly a decade in the private sector in both consulting and in-house strategy roles, working with large listed companies, venture capital firms, and international NGOs. Euan holds an M.A. with Honors from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and an M.B.A. with Distinction from the London Business School.

David Hochman

Executive Director, Business Incubator Association of New York State

David Hochman is the Executive Director of the Business Incubator Asso- ciation of New York State. He is a board member of the New York State Economic Development Council, co-heading an innovation section. David is also a consultant in technology-based economic development, serving clients in the government and non-profit sectors. He is a long-time affiliate of Battelle’s Technology Partnership Practice, where he coauthored several landmark studies and has consulted to numerous state governments and non-profit intermediaries that are supporting strategies for innovation-based economic development. Earlier in his career, he served as Deputy Director of the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology, where he managed a $125 million program of capital investment and annual operating grants for a network of academic/industrial research centers and associated commercialization pro- grams. He holds an A.B. in the history of science from Princeton University and an MBA in finance from NYU’s Stern School of Business.

Silicon Alley Vs. Tech City: Perspectives from Founders & Venture Investors

Nic Brisbourne

Partner, DFJ Esprit

Nic has been in Venture Capital since 2000. In that time he has worked in London, Europe and Silicon Valley. His main areas of focus have been software and media. Nic’s investment experience includes Zeus Technology (acquired by Riverbed for $140m), and buy.at (acquired by AOL for $125m). He currently sits on the boards of Conversocial, Lyst, StrikeAd and Tribold. Prior to joining DFJ Esprit Nic was with Reuters Venture Capital, a software and services start-up called Operis; and Cap Gemini. Nic also authors a popular blog commenting on the European technology and venture capital markets. Please see www.theequitykicker.com.

Thatcher Bell

Managing Director, DFJ Gotham Ventures

Thatcher is a Managing Director at DFJ Gotham Ventures. He works closely with DFJ Gotham portfolio companies Sailthru, AdStruc, Fynanz, Altruik, EXPO, Lumeta, Verterra and Widetronix Thatcher also led DFJ Gotham’s successful investment in SinglePlatform, which was acquired by Constant Contact (NASDAQ: CTCT). In addition, Thatcher serves on the Board of Directors of the NY Tech MeetUp and is Co-Chair of the New York chapter of Wharton Private Equity Partners. Thatcher’s background includes venture investing, operating and consulting roles with software, Internet, and financial services companies. Thatcher has a B.S. cum laude in Engineering from Cornell University and an M.B.A. with honors from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Thatcher also serves on the Board of Directors of the Children’s Museum of the Arts in New York City.

Azeem Azhar

Founder & CEO, PeerIndex

Azeem is founder of PeerIndex, a startup building an expertise directory for the social Web. Previously he was worked with started or, advised or invested in startups like Seedcamp, Dopplr, Powerset, New Energy Finance, Zygo, TrueKnowledge, Mondus.com, PlanetOut, esouk and AMI Software. He was for a time Head of Innovation at Reuters; and had stints at the BBC, The Economist and The Guardian.

Neil Capel

Founder, Saithru

Neil Capel is the CEO and Founder of Sailthru, a technology company providing personalized communications in email, mobile and across the web. Years of experience working on large-scale, high-demand web systems led Neil to develop Sailthru's unique actionable analytics capabilities. Prior to founding Sailthru, Neil was the Chief Technology Officer for MusicNation (an AlleyCorp company), ASmallWorld, and MoneyMedia (acquired by the Financial Times). Neil was also named to the The Silicon Alley 100 as one of New York City's most influential technology leaders in both 2011 and 2012.

Neil can provide unique insight as the founder of a startup headquartered in New York that has successfully expanded to London.