Thursday, May 23rd, 2019

2:15 PM - 3:30 PM

Track II: Herscher Hall, 3rd Floor, Room 305

ICOs, Financing, Packaging & Investment: From Entertainment & Indie Project to Technology & Startups

Cecile Baird, co-founder, Decentrl & Blockchain For Good

Michael Leventhal, Partner, Holmes Weinberg, P.C.

Steven Masur, Senior Partner, MG+

Kelly Siobhan Laffey, Associate and Director of Business Affairs, Stubbs Alderton & Markiles, LLP

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

Steven Masur, Senior Partner, MG+: Steven Masur has over 22 years of experience advising emerging and established businesses on new opportunities and business challenges. He focuses his practice on corporate finance, M&A, intellectual property, entertainment, emerging businesses and strategic guidance. Steve has extensive experience in angel and venture capital finance, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and cross-border transactions in Europe and Asia. He is passionate about helping new businesses plan a path to success, and helping older businesses bridge the gap to new markets. Steve brings a unique mix of legal, business, and strategic experience to bear on client matters. 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 emerging businesses in a wide variety of sectors, and is especially knowledgeable in media, entertainment, advertising, consumer products, food and technology, including mobile, games, digital music, social media, augmented and virtual reality, software and hardware. Steve has been recognized as a “Rising Star” and a “Super Lawyer” by Super Lawyers. He serves on a variety of corporate and nonprofit boards and industry associations, and lectures and writes about major issues in venture capital, emerging businesses, entertainment law, technology and corporate strategy.

Cecile Baird co-founded Decentrl a boutique consultancy for international blockchain startups based in Los Angeles and London, having worked in crypto since 2013 with over 40 startups znd raised over $500M in funding. Cecile is currently Executive Producer of a documentary, raising funds via a Security Token Offering (STO). Cecile is also the founder of Blockchain For Good, the first ever think-tank which in this space which explores and debate the development of blockchain for the greater good. She is a regular speaker of blockchain at conferences such as SXSW, and a mentor at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, UC San Diego and UC Berkeley. Cecile has written for CoinDesk, Coin Telegraph, as well as for numerous magazines and blogs. She is also an expert advisor to the UK Government’s All Party Political Group on Blockchain

Kelly Siobhan Laffey is an Associate of the firm and the Director of Business Affairs at the Preccelerator. Kelly’s practice focuses on advising emerging growth and middle market companies in the technology, digital, internet, interactive media (i.e., AR and VR), and entertainment industries. Kelly counsels clients on issues related to corporate governance and formation, venture capital and other financings, joint ventures, employee compensation, complex stockholder and operating agreements, securities law regulation and other general corporate matters.  Kelly also advises investors and funds in connection with venture capital and other financings. Kelly also counsels clients in connection with mergers and acquisitions matters, including asset and equity acquisitions and dispositions, cross-border transactions, spin-off transactions, secured lending transactions, financing restructurings and corporate reorganizations. Drawing on her diverse work experience in the entertainment arena, including time spent with talent agencies, and music and television production companies, Kelly also assists on matters related to licensing, marketing, and exploitation of intellectual property rights.

Michael Leventhal is a partner at Holmes Weinberg, P.C. He specializes in providing corporate, intellectual property and business transactional services for media/entertainment and technology companies. While managing partner of the entertainment law firm Codikow Leventhal & Carroll in the late 1980’s and early ‘90’s, Michael also developed a practice in high technology and digital media, which began even before the internet was a business model. In 1992, he combined his entertainment and digital media practices, when “multimedia” meant the CD-ROM business. Since that time, Michael has been on the forefront of the legal and business aspects of nearly every major technological innovation in digital media, from payment for electronic transmissions of entertainment content (rather than just shiny discs), to dispute resolution over domain names, to co-branding and cross-licensing agreements for online services, to pay-per-click advertising services, to digital music download services, to television/internet hybrids and the development and licensing agreements required to make them run, to user generated content sites, including development in SecondLife, for social media, and for mobile devices, including phones and tablets, to Alternate Reality Games, to 3D display technology, augmented, virtual and mixed reality. Among his clients have been Fortune 500 companies such as Fox Interactive Media, NEC, and Transamerica; digital vanguards like MySpace, Pop.com, Oversee.net, and GoTV; entertainment/digital technology hybrids such as Motion Theory, Compendia Media, Virtual Netcasting Corporation, the Interactive Television Alliance, PaidContent.org, RockWeb, Satellite Events Enterprises, and Vimby; traditional companies moving into digital media,; and various celebrities in need of  digital media guidance or protection. Most recently, Michael spent the last several years as chief legal officer and vice president at Magic Leap, Inc., the well-known augmented/mixed reality venture.  His duties included standard general counsel responsibilities, content and technology licensing, intellectual property strategy and planning, working with the content team, business development, marketing, HR, and the CEO on special projects, among many other tasks. Michael has represented hundreds of entertainment, digital media and high tech start-ups, early stage companies and middle market companies in music, film, visual effects, interactive television, sports, stand-alone online ventures, entertainment and non-entertainment web-based businesses, software, and more traditional businesses—from formation to strategic planning, structuring companies, M&A and alliances, to licensing matters, to obtaining financing. Working with entrepreneurs and visionaries at all stages of development has long been one of Michael’s passions. Michael has been a partner in a large national firm, a co-owner of several boutique law firms and a business consultancy, a solo practitioner and a senior executive at a high flying technology company. The combination of law firm and business consultancy is consistent with Michael’s holistic approach to representing businesses, both large and start up.

Joey Tamer (www.joeytamer.com) 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, and a high return on investment for Fortune 500 in-house 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 sale of a B2B Internet company for $100M, the IPO of the 1st Internet B2B with $30M to each of the three founders in year 5; the sale of a 2-owners software company for $50M in year 4; and the raising of $2.2M in seed capital through deal-making with no equity out, for a software venture she built in China. Her Fortune 500 clients retain her to start in-house new business unit initiatives; 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. Her website is www.joeytamer.com.