Wednesday, April 29th, 2015

Track III: Poolside Tent I

2:15 PM - 3:30 PM

Venture Funding, Investment & Mergers - Leadership in the Entertainment & Technology Space: Broadband, Social, Mobile

Steven Masur, Senior Partner, Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard LLP

Pilar Stella Ingargiola, co-founder & Managing Partner, Alchemy P4 Fund

Renata RA Akhunova, Partner, Formula VC, Venture Fund

Juston Brommel, Founder, Advisor, CEO, CMTO, Free(dom) Agent

Monica Dodi, Managing Director, Women's Venture Capital Fund

Joey Tamer, President, S.O.S. Inc., Moderator

Renata RA Akhunova, Partner, Formula VC, Venture Fund:  An entrepreneur - turned angel investor - turned VC.  Partner at FormulaVC Venture Fund Advisory Board Member at 500 Startups Fund Seen on Forbes USA "The Top Women in Venture Capital and Angel Investing"   Invited as an Expert of Analytic Center under The Government of Russian on issues: National innovation system design, Integration of the Eurasian economic system, Russian international financial center, Development of competitive markets.  More than 20 technology early stage companies mentored by Renata received more than $30M of external funding from such state institutions, as well as fundraised private $20M in addition to that.  Having personal experience in entrepreneurship, Renata built one of the most successful franchise networks.

Monica Dodi, Managing Director and Co Founder, The Women's Venture Capital Fund: focused on early stage women led new ventures in digital media and sustainability, Monica has over 20 years experience as a new media pioneer. Monica is an international, multilingual new media entrepreneur with a proven track record in creating, launching and building highly successful global brands. A visionary on the cutting edge of the virtual and high-tech landscape, she has founded four highly successful companies, spearheaded rapid turnarounds and negotiated numerous licensing deals with Fortune 500 companies. As co-founder of MTV Europe, Monica's marketing expertise, operations and negotiating skills led to MTV becoming the fastest growing channel on the continent covering 16 countries and reaching breakeven in less than a year by launching the first ever Pan European advertising deals. She then joined Walt Disney/Europe where, as head of European Licensing, she was responsible for the successful turnaround of their Consumer Products business, creating new revenue streams for classic and newly released brands. Seeing an opportunity in creating a paper products venture with a Disney license, Monica founded CD Productions which was later acquired by American Greetings. Returning to the U.S. to help Warner Bros. roll out television channels worldwide, Monica was recruited by Brandon Tartikoff to be CEO in charge of launching AOL's Entertainment Asylum which soon became the fastest growing entertainment destination on the web with 4 million daily users and reaching breakeven in less than a year. Subsequently, at Softbank Technology Ventures, Monica focused on new media convergence and served as the Fund's Entrepreneur in Residence. She continues to be a sought-after advisor to and angel investor in new ventures spanning virtual worlds, music technologies, mobile applications, and social media.

Steven Masur, Senior Partner, Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard LLP: Steven Masur focuses his practice on corporate finance, M&A, intellectual property, strategic transactions, entertainment and new business concepts. He has over 20 years of experience advising digital media and entertainment clients on their corporate and intellectual property transactions and day-to-day business issues. Mr. Masur brings unique strategic business experience to CDAS. He has counseled enterprise level clients including Shazam, Virgin Mobile, Liberty Media, Yamaha, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Bob Vila and Conde Nast Publications in corporate, digital media, and new business matters. He has also helped clients in a wide variety of early stage businesses, including mobile, games, digital music, film, publishing, advertising, retail sales, software and hardware to achieve breakthrough results. Mr. Masur’s transactional experience includes a wide variety of deals in angel and venture capital finance, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and other strategic transactions in the US and abroad. He is passionate about helping new businesses break through to the mass market, and frequently assists clients with identifying and formalizing partnership opportunities with Fortune 500 and celebrity brands. Mr. Masur is especially knowledgeable about mobile, internet, social media, emerging content distribution models, e-commerce, games and mobile payments. Mr. Masur serves a variety of corporate and nonprofit boards and industry associations, lectures and regularly writes about major issues in venture capital, emerging businesses, entertainment law, technology and corporate strategy.

Joey Tamer, President, S.O.S. Inc.: is a widely-acclaimed strategic consultant to technology and media CEOs, U.S. and worldwide. Her work helps create wealth for founders and investors of entrepreneurial ventures.  Her capital strategies drive up her clients’ valuations and profitability. She has a special expertise in working with emerging and disruptive technologies. She consults to Fortune 500 companies, capitalized start-ups, and investment funds, often serving as a “shadow CEO” to extend her clients’ bandwidth. She advises product and service companies and consultants. Her work optimizes her clients’ growth, deal flow and profitability. Successes include the 1st Internet B2B IPO with $30M to each of the three founders in year 5; the sale of a husband/wife software company for $50M in year 4; the raising of $2.2M in seed capital with no equity out, for a software venture she built in China; the sale of a start-up Internet company within 8 months of writing their first investment pitch piece. These have included J.P. Morgan Capital, Sony, IBM, Apple, Hearst, Blockbuster, Technicolor, Harper Collins, Discovery Channel, Time-Warner, Agfa and Scitex. Her many early stage ventures include Earthweb (IPO 1998) and iSuppli (sold to IHS 2010). Her clients say she is “a brilliant strategist and a practical, down-to-earth, get-it-done person,” “invaluable in understanding the competitive landscape and alternative strategies” and that she “cuts right through the noise, giving a clear vision of the future,” “protecting us from liability and cutting our costs.” Her clients have been in the business, enterprise and consumer sectors, with companies in technology, SaaS, hardware and software, mobile, media and entertainment, publishing and advertising, distribution, and investment and venture funding. She has worked in the U.S., Europe, China and Qatar. A strategist, policymaker, dealmaker, and negotiator, her work includes strategies on entry, exit, capitalization, return on investment, growth, positioning, pricing, distribution, social media outreach, risk-assessment, new market and international expansion, due diligence, and intellectual property. She speaks and publishes widely on entrepreneurship. Her published credits include 5 books, 60 published articles, and a weblog with hundreds of blog posts of advice to entrepreneurs. She can be reached through her website at www.joeytamer.com.