** Click Here to Register for our next Early-Stage VC & Angel Investor events:

SoCal Startup Day, Feb 26 2020

Here are the Investor speakers from our Sold-Out VC Angel Blockchain and ICO Dinner, sponsored by McCarter & English, LLP, revealit, BDO USA, LDJ Capital, XYO Network, Sputnik ATX, Iconiqlab, Group Project. This event was in Austin, TX on Sunday March 11, 2018.

Moderator: Jared Sorin, McCarter & English LLP

I am an attorney with the law firm McCarter & English, LLP and a member of the firm's Early Stage, Emerging Growth and Venture Capital Practice Group. Our practice group focuses on the representation of early stage and emerging growth tech and tech-enabled companies as well as the financial institutions, investors, directors, and executives who support and lead them, advising entrepreneurial clients in a broad range of industries in the areas of general corporate, transactional and securities law matters.

Moderator: Joe Daniels, McCarter & English LLP

Mr. Daniels represents startup to publicly-held technology, life science and consumer companies, venture capital and private equity funds and investment banks in a wide range of seed and venture financings, mergers and acquisitions, IPOs and other public offerings. He regularly advises a broad range of startups, venture-backed companies and VC funds, and has led hundreds of venture and strategic financing transactions. Mr. Daniels has helped companies and private equity firms handle over $5 billion of merger, acquisition and disposition transactions. Additionally, he has represented issuers and underwriters in more than 25 IPOs and follow-on public offerings involving companies in the technology, life sciences and consumer sectors, including leading investment banks such as Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and Oppenheimer.

Mr. Daniels also serves as outside general counsel for numerous companies, assisting them with everything from day-to-day business transactions to multinational strategic alliance transactions ranging from technology and distribution partnerships to joint ventures. He focuses on representing clients involved in high-growth sectors, and has experience with a broad range of industries, including adtech, biotech, cleantech, consumer, digital media, ecommerce, energy, Internet of Things, Fintech/financial services, life sciences, mobile, semiconductor, software, UAVs and telecommunications.

Joshua Siegel, Rubicon Capital

As General Partner – New York, Joshua oversees the day to day activities and operations of Rubicon including evaluating early stage technology companies seeking funding, assisting current portfolio companies with development and interaction with our angels, attracting LP capital, and development of our network. Joshua has extensive experience and connections in technology, real estate, luxury lifestyle brands, digital media, and consumer products.

Previously, Mr. Siegel was an early stage strategic advisor for startups and real estate concerns, and board member of The Founders Club, an equity exchange based liquidity platform for entrepreneurs. Formerly CEO Professional Connection Resources, an enterprise level marketing system for the legal community, Manager Eastern European Banking Systems at Citibank, Director of Market Intelligence at Citicorp Debt Capital Markets.

Mr. Siegel received his BA degree from Boston University in Economics and Business Administration and received his MBA from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business in Finance and Entrepreneurship in 2000. He also holds a Degree in Gastronomy from the Institute of Culinary Education in New York. Joshua was born and raised in New York City, attending Horace Mann, where he lives with his wife, son and daughter.

Stephen Smith, BDO USA

Welcome Address: Oksana Malysheva, Sputnik ATX

Petra Franklin, Vault Capital

Yoli Chisholm, STEAM Role

I'm a serial internet entrepreneur whose been creating and building Internet startups since 1998. Back then I was co-founder and CEO of ImageCafe.com, an online superstore of pre-fabricated websites for small businesses. ImageCafe was acquired for $23 million by Network Solutions/Verisign in November 1999, 7-months after we launched and just before the dot com bubble popped. Timing is everything ;-) In 2006, I founded Groupsite.com, a self-serve SaaS platform for building private, branded communities of interest. At present, Groupsite.com is profitable and powers more than 50,000 online communities. In 2011 after 5 years as Groupsite's CEO, in order to pursue other opportunities, I transitioned to the role of Executive Chairman where I continue to guide product vision and strategy. After being an entrepreneur based in Maryland my entire career, in early 2011, I moved to Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley, with the goal of doing it bigger and better. In pursuit of this goal, I founded: Progressly, an enterprise platform for executing business processes and monitoring progress across your organization; and STEAM Role, a Tinder-like app for finding your dream career by following the roadmaps of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) role models. STEAM Role is more than a startup to me, it’s a calling — stay tuned! As a serial founder and product architect, my startup and investing activities are primarily focused on funding and leading the early product development, strategy and company-building activities with talented co-founders and teammates. There is nothing like working with a driven team of smart passionate people. I am a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and was honored as a distinguished alumnus in 2010. In 2006 I was named an honorary alumni of the University of Maryland. I also serve on the board of trustees at Philadelphia University - one of the nation's top design schools.

Randall Crowder, Nove Ventures

Randall is passionate about new venture creation and the innovative spirit that fuels entrepreneurs. As an investor and entrepreneur, he understands what makes companies successful. Entrepreneurs rarely lack passion or vision, but often fail to properly prepare and execute. This level of planning and attention to detail is something Randall internalized as an officer in the United States Army. Having successfully completed Airborne and Ranger School, Randall went on to receive two Bronze Stars for actions during combat where no playbook or historical precedence existed. In the absence of clear guidance and with lives on the line, innovation and execution were paramount to success. After leaving the military, Randall began working throughout Austin’s entrepreneurial eco-system and took over the Central Texas Angel Network (CTAN). As Executive Director, he led it to becoming one of the most active angel networks in the country according to the Angel Capital Association (ACA). Like many angel networks, however, CTAN lacked the proper resources to effectively scale its operations. Leveraging his relationships within the University of Texas at Austin, Randall founded Texas Venture Labs (TVL) to not only support the local investor community with valuable graduate student resources, but also provide the mentoring, team-building, market and business plan validation, technology commercialization and domain knowledge needed to start and grow innovative ventures. Throughout his time at CTAN and TVL, Randall worked with numerous healthcare companies before moving on to co-found TEXO Ventures in order to provide both the capital and collaboration needed for healthcare entrepreneurs to be successful. At TEXO, Randall focuses primarily on the convergence of health information technology and healthcare services. Randall also founded Novē Ventures in order to focus on financing and growing companies leveraging blockchain technology.

Ben Way, Rainmakers Global

Way is involved in a large number of startup companies that are listed on the Rainmakers Global website, such as GoDine, the restaurant booking service; FuelMyBlog, the blogging product review service; Truevoo, the iPhone apps store review service; an SME advice service called Smarta; and a graduate recruitment company called BraveNewTalent.[20][21] In 2009 Rainmakers opened a United States (US) branch and consequently became involved in a number of US startups, including Traffic Spaces, the ad management platform, and BoostCTR, the Google adwords optimizer. He is also one of the founders of Alpha Concierge Matchmaking, which describes itself as the worlds most exclusive matchmaking app.

Way was also involved in a number of green start-up companies, such as SellMyMobile and SellCell,[20] and is a cofounder with Paul Williams of Freetricity, a renewable energy provider based in the UK and the US.

Way is the founder of Viapost, an online postal company. The POIP service allows printing of documents over the internet which are then sent by Royal Mail.

He is involved in his sister's production company Newspepper, a citizen journalism site that covers a large number of UK tech sector events.

In 2011 he worked with the founding team at TradeHill the first US crypto exchange on the BitCoin.com deal.

Way and Hermione Way developed GoIgnite, a health and lifestyle smartphone app and hardware for the Bravo TV reality television show they both appeared in.

Steve Kuh, Group Project

Steve is interested in providing solutions to combat counterfeit goods using blockchain technologies. ICO is planned for Q2-2018. The blockchain technology presents opportunities to solve many social issues such as counterfeits, identity and credit card plastics in wallets, and digital security tags in general. With the ICO, it is hoped that products are developed from current prototypes to custom solutions that will be marketed to take advantage of the blockchain based decentralized digital public ledger and change the world one person at a time. With over 20 years experience as a founder and CEO of an IT firm, his specialty includes communications systems engineering, creation and production of digital IT products.

Chad Aroo Anderson, MT Digitalassets.com

Chad “Aroo” Anderson is a blockchain + cryptocurrency expert and ICO advisor who serves as President and Co-Founder of www.MTDigitalAssets.com a leading fund in the hyper growth blockchain industry. Chad started his career working in the finance department at Hewitt Associates a fortune 500 company now called Aon. He worked directly with the CFO, Director of Budgeting and Forecasting, and the Controller. Chad then moved on to myspace.com from 2004-2008 as a strategic marketing consultant. During that time the site grew to over 500 Million active users, and was acquired for 580 Million Dollars. His team worked on events including Lollapalooza, Sundance Film Fest, Ultra Music Fest, SxSw, and more. Upon leaving Myspace he joined the team at Engage BDR an LA based Ad-Tech firm in Strategic Marketing and Biz Dev Role. He helped grow the company to reaching over 500 Million monthly uniques. Chad left there in 2014 to found Aroo Industries a talent management and marketing company. His clients have worked with some of the biggest brands in the world including Calvin Klein, Victoria Secret, Coca Cola, Virgin, Vogue, Patron, Grey Goose, Google, Paramount, Sony, Warner Bros and more.

Marcus Weller, Ph.D., Interstellar Capital

-Started Augmented Reality Company in Silicon Valley in 2012, raised $20M. -Author of 19 patents -PhD Data Science / Industrial Psychology -Advisor to a $250MM/year private Crypto investment fund -Co-founder, Object Ledger, Blockchain and deep learning for Fortune 50 supply chain and manufacturing optimization -Co-founder, SignalWat.ch, Applied data science for trading. Trading software built for institutional investors seeking to leverage advanced data science. Also coming soon a simple app for individual traders to use these tools. -Advisor, Luxury Ledger, Anti-counterfeit decentralized exchange platform -Advisor, Cryptonite AI, Suite of artificial intelligence trading tools crypto traders. -Co-founder, Halcyon Biotechnologies, cognitive and mood enhancement therapeutics for professionals.

Garry Smith, Revealit.io

Markus Levin, XYO Network

Markus mined his first Bitcoin in 2013 and has been captivated by blockchain technologies ever since. Markus is one of the founders of the XYO Network, the world's only decentralized, trustless, and authoritative location oracle. The XYO Network gives blockchain developers and smart contract creators the power to interact with the real world as if it were an API by introducing the revolutionary concepts of "Proof of Origin" and "Bound Witnesses." Originally from Germany, Markus has over fifteen years experience in building and growing innovative companies around the world.