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SoCal Startup Day, Feb 26 2020

Here are the Investor speakers from our Sold-Out Los Angeles VC and Angel Investor Conference, sponsored by McCarter & English, Oasis Outsourcing, Contap, Nolcha, InList. This event was in Cross Campus Santa Monica on Thursday March 28, 2019.

Joseph Daniels Partner McCarter English Read the full profile for Joseph here!

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.

Robert Mai Managing Director Scopus Ventures Read the full profile for Robert here!

Previously managed the Klingenstein Fields Wealth Advisors $200 million of Alternative Investments portfolio as well as the fixed income trading platform. He served as Member of the Board of Directors for Gold Mobile, essDOCS Limited, Tracx Systems, HyPr Brands, Imprint, and Aquicore. Mr. Mai graduated from the University of California, Irvine with a B.S. in Biological Sciences and received an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business.

Andrew Ly Angel Investor Read the full profile for Andrew here!

Andrew Ly is a tech entrepreneur, Angel Investor, and the Founder/CEO of ticktBox. Passionate about creativity and technology, he is the driving force behind the company’s innovative culture, game-changing work, and cutting-edge technology.

Prior to founding ticktBox, Andrew worked at various technology startups, including CreativeMob, a five time award-winning, full-service digital marketing and technology agency that he founded.

Andrew is also an experienced marketing professional active in both the entertainment and technology industries. Andrew previously worked at 20th Century Fox Filmed Entertainment, marketing top-tier films such as X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Marley and Me.

Over the course of his career, Andrew has received numerous recognitions, including a spot on the Emerging Generation: 25 In Their 20's list, as voted on by the San Diego Business Journal. Additionally, Andrew has been featured on online publications such as Under30CEO.com and the prestigious INC. Magazine.

Brandon Maier Founding Partner LvlUp Ventures Read the full profile for Brandon here!

Brandon Maier is the founder of LvlUp Ventures and has extensive experience building financial and marketing strategies for startup companies. Prior to launching LvlUp, Brandon was a Founder and Managing Partner of Quake Capital, an industry-leading accelerator and investment firm with offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Austin. Under Brandon’s tenure and leadership at Quake, their portfolio companies raised over $100 million, including $25 million raised directly from Quake’s fund. Quake was named one of Forbes’ Top-Ten VCs and highlighted by CrunchBase for making the second-most investments in female-led startups (2018).

Brandon is also passionate about giving back to both the local and University entrepreneurship community, from University lectures on entrepreneurship and capital raising-related topics as well as providing office hours to student start-ups from his alma mater NYU, to Penn State, USC, Brown and Veteran Entrepreneurs through Bunker Labs & Veterati. He has also served as a judge for several pitch competitions including Princeton’s Tiger Launch, Global Entrepreneurship Week, and Next Gen, has mentored at Columbia’s AlmaWorks Accelerator, and is part of Invent Penn State’s Selection Committee. Brandon also serves as an advisor for several early stage startups in both NYC & LA.

In addition to his experience as an investor and mentor, Brandon has also been a part of two capital-backed startup teams, including the Winklevoss-backed pioneer in cryptocurrency, BitInstant - at its peak, it was the leader in all Bitcoin exchanges.

Mark Linao Principal AET Fund Read the full profile for Mark here!

Mark is a Principal at the AET Fund, and early stage fund of Akatsuki Inc focused on the future of media and entertainment. Prior to AET Fund, Linao was a senior multi-disciplined engineer at aerospace and defense firm Raytheon. He has also worked at the Rubicon Project and Amazon. After that, Linao was an Associate at Technicolor Ventures eventually transitioning to Director of Corporate Development and Strategy at Technicolor.

Kelly Perdew Managing General Partner Moonshots Capital Read the full profile for Kelly here!

Kelly Perdew is the managing general partner at Moonshots Capital a $20M committed fund and he has previously invested over $10.5M in 60+ companies through his angel and syndicate deals. Perdew has founded or held senior executive operating roles in ten companies and his notable investment/advisory/board roles have included: LinkedIn (LNKD), Pandora (P), TrueCar (TRUE), Active Networks (ACTV), ID.me, Scopely, Fair, Olive, RideScout (DAI), Harvest.ai (AMZN), Ustream (IBM), Klout (Lithium), Fitmob (ClassPass) and Bitium (GOOG).

Perdew co-founded with his wife a direct to consumer consultative media agency, DuMont Project, that accelerates growth for Fortune 500 and growing venture-backed companies such as J&J, GNC, Brooks Brothers, Casper, Zillow, Hulu, Boxed, Tile, Bonobos and many more.

Perdew earned a BS from the US Military Academy, West Point and served in the US Army as a Military Intelligence Officer and completed Airborne and Ranger training. He earned his JD/MBA degrees from UCLA.

In 2005, Perdew won Season 2 – The Apprentice – and worked directly for President Donald Trump in NY on multiple projects and published his book, Take Command, focused on applying military leadership principles to business.

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Dawn, and 8-year old twins – Grant and Grace.

Richard Sussman Managing Parnter Nordic Eye Venture Capital Read the full profile for Richard here!

Richard Sussman is a veteran venture capitalist, serial entrepreneur and seasoned executive with 20 years’ experience as a founder, board member, advisor and investor. His background spans numerous VC-funded, early stage and globally-traded companies all with market caps above $100M. Sussman is a proven builder of big business whose passions include monetization, transformative innovation, and disruptive content, products, services and technologies that change the way consumers interact with brands, companies and devices. Among his previous ventures include executive roles with The Nielsen Co., IPG Mediabrands, TiVo / Rovi Corporation and Tribune Media / Gracenote. Richard is also Managing Partner in a European Venture Fund Nordic Eye based in Copenhagen and Los Angeles, where with his hands on approach he most recently took his portfolio company Weblife – a Cyber Security firm based in Santa Monica, CA – from $350K to $6M in annual revenue in just eleven months by opening up sales channels across the US and UK. The result of this revenue growth yielded an all-cash acquisition of Weblife by Proofpoint (NASDAQ: PFPT), which turned a $3M capital investment from Nordic Eye into an exit with a 690 percent annualized return on investment in less than a calendar year. Earlier in his career, Sussman was CEO and founder of GorillaExchange, Inc., a web 2.0 social entertainment, virtual currency platform, as well as CEO and co-founder of two .com 1.0 ventures: StreamExchange, Inc. and Quickflicks.com. StreamExchange was the first technology service provider that enabled global advertisers to embed television-style commercials into targeted streaming content over the Internet. Quickflicks.com was the first streaming content search engine with 30,000+ video titles. All entities had respectable exits. Sussman is often interviewed and profiled on the state of technology by media publications such as Los Angeles Business Journal, TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, CNBC and The Los Angeles Times. He is often seen speaking at industry events such as the Goldman Sachs’ Special Situations Group, Digital Hollywood, Digital Analytics Association, Venture Capital Symposiums and the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). He also speaks at various Private Equity firms and is an occasional Guest Lecturer at UCLA's Anderson School of Management MBA program and USC's Marshal School of Business. He is a recipient of numerous industry awards, including the two time recipient of ARF’s Great Mind Award and Nielsen’s Best of the Best Award. Sussman is originally from London, England. He became a naturalized US citizen in 1990. He was raised in Los Angeles, studied and worked in Germany, South Africa and Switzerland. Sussman is a graduate of The Harvard Business School and a devoted husband and “co-founder" of two children who enjoy spending time together skiing and traveling.

Trevor Wilkins Venture Partner Quake Capital Read the full profile for Trevor here!

Trevor Wilkins has experience in developing strong go-to-market strategies and scaling mobile platforms. In his last role as Co-Founder of KÜDZOO – a students rewards app – Trevor helped manage day-to-day operations and grow the app’s user base to over half a million students world-wide. In 2016 Trevor and his partner were recognized by Forbes Magazine and named to the 30 Under 30 list in Education for their work with KÜDZOO. As a Principal at Quake, Trevor will help manage cohort operations, assist in sourcing potential portfolio investments and expanding Quake’s presence on the West Coast.

Edwin Loredo Vice President Core Innovation Capital Read the full profile for Edwin here!

Edwin Loredo is a Vice President at Core Innovation Capital, a venture fund focused primarily on early-stage fintech companies that aim to democratize prosperity by providing products that help save people money & time, and ultimately create upward mobility. Portfolio companies include NerdWallet, Fundera, Oportun, Fair, and Distilled Identity. Edwin currently spends the majority of his time reviewing opportunities in the personal finance, consumer lending, and digital identity verticals. Prior to Core, he was an investment banker at GCA Advisors in New York, a technology-focused, middle-market firm, where he spent the bulk of his time advising fintech and digital media companies through the capital raise process. Edwin received his B.A. from Princeton University in Economics, with minors in Finance and Spanish.

Delilhah Panio Vice President, Capital Formation Toronto Stock Exchange Read the full profile for Delilhah here!

As the VP of Capital Formation for Southern California for TMX Group, Delilah advises U.S. companies on the opportunity to list and raise capital on Toronto Stock Exchange or TSX Venture Exchange.
As the founder of Stiletto Dash (a consulting firm), Delilah works with early-stage companies on their business and funding strategy and on getting investor-ready.
Delilah is also the Executive Director and Co-Founder of We Are Enough, a non-profit that educates women on why and how to invest in women-owned businesses and/or with a gender lens.
Delilah is very active in the LA entrepreneur community, including as a frequent speaker, mentor for the Stubbs Alderton Markiles LLP Preccelerator Program, and pitch coach for organizations such as the Women Founders Network. Delilah is the former Co- Chair of Women in LAVA (Los Angeles Venture Association), and was the L.A. Lead for SheEO's 2016 Radical Generosity program, an innovative new model funding model that calls upon women to commit $1,000 each into a perpetual fund to invest in women-led ventures.
Delilah’s background is as a capital markets expert with 10 years previously in business development at Toronto Stock Exchange, including as the Director, Business Development & Strategy. She has advised many companies on the going public process and can provide an understanding of private and public financing options in Canada and the United States.
Delilah holds an MBA in Enterprise Development and a BA in English, and has completed a certification as a Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Master Practitioner.

Asher Leids Investor Angel Investor Read the full profile for Asher here!

When I worked, I specialized in practicing venture capital, securities, mergers & acquisitions and general corporate law. My clients ranged from start-ups, such as Scour.net (a company that was founded by, among others, Travis Kalanick-who went on to be the founder and CEO of Uber) and Ceiva, to Fortune 100 companies, such as IBM. I also worked on the initial public offering for Shopping.com that was subsequently acquired by Compaq Computer Corp. within one year of it's IPO (one of the first internet IPO's) for approximately $1 Billion.