Tuesday, April 19, 2011

6:30 - 9:30 PM
Location: Emerging Center at Foley Hoag the Bay Colony Corporate Center, Waltham, MA

Start-up Advisor Selection: How to Get Professional Assistance When You Can't Afford It

Congratulations! Your start-up idea has progressed from cocktail napkin to powerpoint, and maybe even some late night tinkering has delivered a prototype of your software or device and you're poised to take over the world. Unfortunately, all those friendly lawyers, accountants, bankers, marketers, headhunters, consultants and the like have stopped returning your calls because they’ve figured out that you have no money to start your next phase. They LOVE your idea, but they’re not going to work for free. Now what?

The April 19th EntreTech Panel will dig into this classic problem faced by most 1st time entrepreneurs and provide insights on how to develop the right team to help you deliver your product/concept/service when nickels and dimes are tight. Our panel is drawn from the leading lights of the Boston-area start-up scene, and as ever will focus on delivering high quality, actionable information in an informal back-and-forth panel setting.

Moderator: Lawrence C. Grumer – Managing Director – TAA Corp., iVEST, LLC

Panelists:
Christopher Mirabile – Managing Director – Launchpad Venture Group
Mike Gurau – President – Clear Innovation Partners
Reed Sturtevant – Managing Director – Project 11
J Singh – President & Founder – Early Stage IT

Meeting Organizer: Andrew Fairbairn – Managing Principal – Fairbairn Ventures

Moderator:

Lawrence C. Grumer – Managing Director – TAA Corp., iVEST, LLC
(http://www.taacorp.com/, http://ivest.us)
Larry is an expert in the commercialization of technology. He has partnered to launch ten companies, across wireless internet, web 3.0, mobile power sources, propulsion systems, software defined test and measurement, corporate marketing, and a 30-person engineering consultancy. He is a Phase 2 proposal Grant Reviewer for the National Science Foundation.

TAA is the management advisory and investment firm Larry formed in 1994 that commercializes and capitalizes technology for early-stage technology ventures and corporate spin-outs. He is Managing Partner of iVEST Partners LLC providing corporate development, finance advisory and investment banking affiliation. Larry is Chairman of the EntreTech Forum and Chairman Emeritus of the Boston Entrepreneur’s Network and. He has held management positions at Arthur D. Little, Textron and Foster-Miller, led a US-CDN joint venture and managed business restarts, turnarounds and restructures. Larry received a BSME and an MBA from Northeastern University. He has held a Top Secret clearance.

Panel:

http://www.racepointcapital.com/ and http://launchpadventuregroup.com/

Christopher Mirabile is the Managing Director of LaunchPad Venture Group, a venture investment group focused on seed and early-stage investments in technology-oriented companies. In addition to his work with LaunchPad, Christopher is an active member of the Boston-area angel investing community with active investments in more than 15 start-ups.  

Christopher has served as a public company CFO, a corporate and securities lawyer and as a management consultant with Price Waterhouse's Strategic Consulting Group. 

Christopher is an adjunct lecturer in the MBA program at Babson College, a regular advisor and mentor to start-ups, a frequent panelist and speaker and has been published and quoted in numerous business periodicals. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Boston World Partnerships, and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Babson's Olin School of Business. 

Christopher earned his J.D. from Boston College Law School and his B.A., with honors, from Colgate University.

Mike Gurau – President – Clear Innovation Partners
http://www.clearvcs.com/

Mike is president of CEI Community Ventures, a venture capital fund located in Portland, ME. His background includes twelve years of venture capital, most of it spent with Advent International in its London and Boston offices, and four years of startup operations experience, including work in product management, marketing and strategy with Silknet Software (now Kana Communications), a software development company in Manchester, NH. Prior to Silknet, he was General Manager of Living Balance, a direct mail and eCommerce start-up that was part of Oxford Health Plans' Alternative Medicine Division. Mike earned his BS Finance from Babson College and his MBA from the University of Virginia's Darden School

Reed Sturtevant – Managing Director – Project 11

http://project11.com/

Reed Sturtevant's career spans 30 years in the software industry and includes company formation, technology strategy, engineering management, product management, and software development.

Reed is a Managing Director at Project 11 which invests in and assists early stage startups. Reed was the founding director of Microsoft Startup Labs in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Prior to Microsoft, he was Chief Technology Officer of EONS, Inc. Before EONS he served as a Managing Director and Vice President of Technology for Idealab, Boston, which founded several companies including Picasa and Compete. Prior to Idealab, Reed co- founded Radnet and RadioAMP.

He was architect and designer of Freelance Graphics, a best selling presentation package acquired by Lotus Development in 1986. Reed was an innovative force at Lotus where he served as a key member of the senior technical staff and launched many products including InterNotes, Lotus' first web product.

J Singh – President & Founder – Early Stage IT
http://www.earlystageit.com/

J Singh bring many years of experience in developing technology businesses. Mr. Singh is currently President & Founder at Early Stage IT, and serves with The Indus Entrepreneurs - Boston chapter (TiE Boston) as Co-chair of the Software and Services Special Interest Group.

In the past Mr. Singh has been a director at Boston Entrepreneurs' Network, a principal at Quantitecture, Inc., Director of Software Development at Fidelity Investments, a Teaching Fellow for BioInformatics at Harvard University, Architect at Computervision Corp, and Assistant Professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Mr. Singh received his degrees from Syracuse University and the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi

Meeting Organizer:

Andrew Fairbairn – Fairbairn Ventures – Managing Principal
(http://fairbairnventures.com)

Andrew is a Cambridge-based investor, entrepreneur and advisor who partners with driven entrepreneurs to rapidly prove out value propositions and to build solid businesses. He has worked with many executive teams over the course of his career to launch, build, expand, transition and/or retool their businesses.

Prior to establishing Fairbairn Ventures, Andrew was a founding partner of JVKellyGroup, Inc. (JVKG), a New York-based management consulting, performance management and software development firm recently sold to D&B. He has also served as Vice President of Deutsche Bank, focused on corporate venturing in financial technology companies and strategic planning roles in New York and London. Andrew began his career with UBS Securities in New York, where he worked on global networking and telecommunications industry financings, across a range of geographies and investment banking product disciplines.

Andrew earned his B.A. in Economics and M.A. in International Development Policy from Stanford University.