Join the NYC Alumni Club for Conversations with Successful Entrepreneurs.
This panel will focus on topics pertaining to all entrepreneurs and start ups, including:
Choosing a business
Developing Marketing and Sales
Raising Investment
Recruiting/Incentivising Quality Employees
Dealing with operations - HR-benefits/Accounting/IT
$30 (includes one drink ticket and appetizers)
Speaker Profiles
Sabena Arora (Panelist)
Managing Director o, Pinnacle Advisory Group
http://www.pinnacle-advisory.com
Sabena over 16 years of hospitality real estate experience. Prior to joining Pinnacle Advisory Group, she spent six years with Highgate Holdings, specializing in acquisitions. During that time she was responsible for evaluating over $50 billion in national and international hotel investments and transacting on hotels totaling more than 12,000 rooms with approximately 4,700 of those rooms in Manhattan. She is experienced with transactions involving resorts, timeshare, mixed use projects, multiple asset portfolios, REITs, and casinos. Prior to Highgate, she spent two years at Hotel Equity Investors as a Director of Hotel Acquisition, and eight years at HVS International, where she appraised and provided consulting services on more than 200 hotels for corporate and institutional clients throughout the US. Ms. Arora holds a B.S. in Hotel Administration from Cornell University and a MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
David Olk (Panelist)
COO and Founder, Shopkeep
http://www.shopkeep.com/
David is COO and co-founder of ShopKeep, a one of a kind cloud based full service integrated SaaS/tablet POS solution for retailers based in NYC. He was formerly Director of Mergers and Acquisitions for IAC which owns and operates a number of consumer facing new media brands including Match.com, Citysearch, evite, ServiceMagic, Ask.com, CollegeHumor, and formerly Ticketmaster. A native of Brooklyn, NY, David is a former board member of Kickstarter.com and began his career within PwC's Transaction Services team where he spent ten years leading M&A advisory initiatives for large strategic and private equity investors. He has an accounting degree from Tulane University and an MBA from Columbia.
David Drinan (Panelist)
Managing Director and Founder, Freedom Square Group
http://freedomsquaregroup.com/
David is the Founding Principal at Freedom Square, LLC. Prior to forming Freedom Square, he was a corporate restructuring professional at Conway, Del Genio, Gries & Co., LLC and AlixPartners. Prior to starting his career in restructuring, Mr. Drinan was an investment analyst and portfolio manager with experience in public equities and venture capital.
Mr. Drinan has advised distressed and underperforming companies in a variety of industries, including: Manufacturing, Distribution, Real Estate, Power, Consumer Products, Health Care, Chemicals and Construction.
Mr. Drinan holds a B.A. in Finance from The University of Illinois and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst, a Certified Insolvency and Restructuring Advisor and passed the examinations to qualify for the Certified Turnaround Professional designation.
Vasu Kulkarni (Panelist), Founder, CEO and Chief Intern at Krossover
http://www.krossover.com/
Krossover is NYC based digital media and video analytics company that focusses on extracting meaningful data from sports video footage. The company's products convert raw footage into data-rich video clips that are searchable, sortable, and shareable over a number of devices. Prior to founding Krossover, Vasu was a member of the JV Basketball team at the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated with a degree in Computer Engineering and Entrepreneurship.
Morrie Sandler (Panelist)
Chairman, RePlanter Energy, Inc.
Mr. Sandler is a successful entrepreneur, strategist and leader of companies. He is currently Chairman of RePlanter Energy LLC, an operator and up-grader of biomass energy plants. He has financed over $275 million for early stage companies. He has over 30 years of international focus primarily in financial services, venture capital, green energy and telecom as well as having held executive positions at Goldman Sachs. Mr Sandler was a Founder, COO, EVP of Corporate Strategy of Global TeleSystems Group, Inc., a startup, where he joined forces with George Soros and built emerging market telecom company with a market cap exceeding $2 billion.
For the last ten years, he has focused his activities on the green energy sector, smart grid and renewables. He has been involved with over 10 startups, serving various positions from Interim CEO, Chairman, and board member and advisor.
He has earned an MBA from the University of Chicago, and a BA from Cornell University.