The comScore Story: Farming Fruits in Lebanon to Farming the Entire Internet’s Activity.

Author:

In April, Startup Grind Washington DC had the privilege to speak with Dr. Magid Abraham, co-founder of comScore. This event marked Startup Grind DC’s first time hosting a speaker out of 1776, DC’s newest (and very promising) co-working space. The event was certainly an interesting and eventful occasion for all those involved: interesting due to Dr. Abraham’s remarks, and eventful due to an unexpected fire alarm that temporarily moved the event to the building’s lobby, stairwells, and sidewalk (not even kidding, on the street networking definitely happened). It was certainly a Startup Grind first, but in the end, we all came away with some insightful and powerful points provided by comScore’s legendary leader.

Read more →

Startup Grind San Francisco Hosts Logan Green (CEO at Lyft & Zimride)

Author:
Tuesday, 24 September

Reserve Your Ticket Here

Zimride is the largest ridesharing community in the US with over 200 million miles shared. We provide private ridesharing networks for 150 universities and companies across the US. Zimride also partners with hundreds of events each year such as Coachella, Bonaroo, and the Dave Matthews Band tour.

Startup Grind San Francisco Hosts Halle Tecco (Rock Health)

Author:
Tuesday, 6 August

Reserve Your Ticket Here

Halle is responsible for building partnerships and overseeing Rock Health’s strategic direction. She previously worked for Intel and Apple, and founded YogaBear.org. She earned a BS at Case Western Reserve University and an MBA at Harvard Business School. Halle was named one of CNN’s “12 Entrepreneurs Reinventing Healthcare” and Forbes “30 under 30″.

Startup Grind Dallas Hosts Nina Vaca (CEO of Pinnacle)

Author:
Thursday, 11 July

Reserve Your Ticket Here

Nina Vaca founded Pinnacle in 1996 as an information technology services provider to the Fortune 500.  Today, Pinnacle has evolved into a true workforce management solutions provider that delivers staffing, payrolling/IC compliance, vendor management and vendor management systems (VMS) technology to recruit and manage contingent labor across multiple industry verticals.

Under Vaca’s leadership, Pinnacle has become one of the fastest growing firms in a $100+ billion dollar industry, with revenues approaching $250 million and over 4,000 personnel working throughout the US and Canada. Pinnacle is one of the most widely recognized and honored companies nationwide with over 50 national and local awards over the past decade, including seven consecutive years among the Top 10 fastest growing firms in its industry, two recognitions as National Supplier of the Year by the National Minority Business Development Council, and global recognition by AT&T as one of its top six suppliers worldwide. In 2011, Pinnacle acquired Provade, which delivers the only enterprise Vendor Management System (VMS) for global workforce spend management.  The acquisition made Pinnacle the world’s largest minority-owned VMS.

Vaca has appeared on CNBC Squawk Box, FOX News, CBS Evening News and has emerged in Fast Company Magazine as one of the Top 25 Women Business Builders in America. She has also been featured in numerous magazines both domestically and internationally, including Forbes, Kiplinger, Entrepreneur, Latino Leaders, Vanidades, Ali, HISPANIC, and KERA CEO Review. Vaca’s story opens the Entrepreneur chapter of Understanding Business, a McGraw Hill textbook used for teaching entrepreneurship at universities today. She is also a recipient of the coveted Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for Technology and Communications for the Southwest Region.

She is a graduate of Texas State University with a B.A. in Speech Communications and Business Administration where she was honored as the youngest Distinguished Alumna in university history.  Vaca holds Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa degrees from Northwood University and Mount Mary College; and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School – Corporate Governance Executive Program. Ms. Vaca has represented the U.S. internationally in numerous transatlantic leadership forums, including the German Marshall Memorial Fellow program and the British-American Project.

In 2011, Vaca joined the Startup America Partnership as a founding board member offering strategic guidance on bringing the private sector together to provide startups with the resources they need to start and scale their organizations. Ms. Vaca is a Director with Comerica, Inc., a Director with Kohl’s Corporation, is Chairman Emeritus of the Board of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and has been recognized in each of the past three years as one of the 101 Most Influential Latinos in America by Latino Leaders magazine.

Startup Grind Dallas Hosts Shridhar Mittal (CA Technologies, CEO of ITKO)

Author:
Tuesday, 11 June

Reserve Your Ticket Here

Shridhar Mittal, general manager of Application Delivery at CA Technologies, leads a team responsible for addressing the most critical challenges enterprises face when operationalizing their DevOps practices. The group is focused on helping IT organizations respond to changing business dynamics while accelerating their ability to innovate with a fully optimized application development strategy. This includes service virtualization, continuous delivery, DevOps data mining and environment management.

He draws on more than 20 years experience in the software industry to lead a global team that combines research, development, product management and solutions engineering to drive the company’s Application Delivery business.

Shridhar comes to CA Technologies as a result of the ITKO acquisition in 2011. As CEO he guided ITKO into a strong position across the highly specialized SOA (service oriented architecture) field. Before joining ITKO in 2005, he held several key management roles during his 10-year tenure at i2, including CMO, SVP and GM of the High-Tech Business Unit and VP of eBusiness solutions. His deep understanding of sales management, product management, development and end customer business needs were essential in helping i2 grow from a startup to a world-class enterprise software company.

Shridhar is a native of India and received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of New Delhi. A holder of multiple patents, he has also earned a master’s degree in industrial engineering from the State University of New York, Buffalo and a PhD in industrial engineering from Purdue University.

Startup Grind Dallas Hosts Jere Thompson (Co-Founder and CEO of Ambit Energy)

Author:
Tuesday, 21 May

Reserve Your Ticket Here

Jere Thompson, Jr. is Co-Founder and CEO of Ambit Energy. Ambit provides electricity and natural gas services to 1,100,000 residential and small business consumers in nine deregulated states. In less than seven years, Ambit’s trailing twelve month revenues passed $1 billion. Inc. magazine named Ambit the #1 Fastest-Growing Private Company in America in 2010. SMU Cox awarded Ambit the #1 fastest growing company in The Dallas 100 in both 2009 and 2010. Additionally, Mr. Thompson won The Dallas 100 top award a third time with CapRock Communications in 1998. Ambit currently employs 615 people and offices in a 100-year old warehouse in the West End of downtown Dallas.

Mr. Thompson founded CapRock Fiber Network to build fiber and broadband networks throughout Texas and neighboring states. As CEO, Mr. Thompson expanded operations to include local, long distance and data services, took the company public and managed its growth from infancy to 1,300 employees and $300 million in annual revenues.

Mr. Thompson sits on the Executive Committees of the Southwestern Medical Foundation, the Dallas Citizens Council and the Texas Transportation Alliance, as well as on the Boards of The Dallas Foundation, Cistercian Preparatory School, the Bank of Texas and the North Central Texas Regional Transportation Council. He previously served for 11 years as chairman and a member of the board of the North Texas Tollway Authority and its predecessor the Texas Turnpike Authority.

Mr. Thompson received an Economics degree from Stanford University and an MBA from The University of Texas in Austin. He and his wife, Carolyn, live in Dallas, have been married for 26 years and have five children.

From The Vault Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC)

Author:

Personally the first Startup Grind event I ever attended, complete with Cash Money Records music, free pizza, and great networking. I was lucky enough to see one of the legendary VCs from Silicon Valley, Jeff Clavier. Throughout this interview he goes over a variety of topics any entrepreneur will still find valuable today such as how to get a meeting with SoftTech VC, how to perfect your pitch, and what NOT to do when trying to get a VCs attention.

[00:00:05.20] QUESTION: What about this thing right now, are you seeing, there’s been a lot of talk of, that just there’s all these companies that were funded at the angel level, they’re now coming in for a series A, not able to get that funding. Are you seeing that with your companies that you’re having, or not you specifically but companies in general, that is this a real trend that’s happening that companies raised angel round are now struggling to raise series A, maybe because they shouldn’t have deserved an angel round or some other reason?

Read more →

From The Vault Jason Calacanis

Author:

One of the first big interviews Startup Grind ever hosted was with Jason Calacanis. Jason was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule during his meetings in Palo Alto to come and speak  to small intimate group at the Startup grind offices. Watch and learn more about Jason’s early entrepreneurial ventures during Web 1.0, what catches his eye in an entrepreneur and how to perfect your pitch.

[00:02] DEREK: On that note, let me introduce Jason; he needs no introduction, he’s worldwide.

[00:08] JASON: I’d like one.

[00:09] DEREK: Well then let me give it.

Read more →

Startup Grind San Francisco Hosts Ali Partovi (Code.org, iLike, LinkExchange)

Author:
Wednesday, 24 July

Reserve Your Ticket Here

Startup Grind San Francisco welcomes Ali Partovi, angel investor, startup advisor and serial entrepreneur on Wednesday, July 24.
Ali Partovi
Co-founder. LinkExchange, iLike, & Code.org
Investor/Advisor. Zappos, Facebook, Dropbox
Donor. Vittana, FoodCorps
Based in San Francisco, Ali is an angel investor, startup advisor, and serial entrepreneur. He co-founded and sold two high-profile startups: iLike, acquired by MySpace in 2009, and LinkExchange, acquired by Microsoft for $265 million in 1998. Ali is also a co-founder of computer education non-profit Code.org. His portfolio as an investor / advisor has included such successes as Zappos, Ironport, and Facebook, as well as newer ventures such as DropBox, Viagogo, and OPOWER (see complete Partovi portfolio). As a visionary, he was among the first people to see the potential of the Facebook Platform (in 2007), and among the earliest to grasp the business opportunity of search (in 1997). His current passion is sustainable food and agriculture, based on his recent articles Food is the New Frontier in Green Tech and Hacking the Food System: Focus on the Supply Chain, and related angel investments in Farmigo and BrightFarms, and serves on the board of FoodCorps.

From The Vault David Cowan (Partner @ Bessemer Ventures)

Author:

In one of the earliest Startup Grind interviews, David Cowan from Bessemer Venture Partners joined us to discuss a variety of things going on in Silicon Valley. From what VCs are really looking for, seeing potential in the right entrepreneurs, and being on the board of one of the most successful app developer, Smule.

[02:34] DAVID: OK. I didn’t mean to get involved in the technology industry, it was an accident. I loved computer science and studied it in college. I had some friends that worked with me in the Science Center and we were called Terminal Watchers. They told me when I graduated that I had to interview with a company called Oracle. I didn’t know what it was or care, I was all set to get a job at some investment bank or management consulting firm; that was more glamorous back then. My friends urged me to go to the interview so I did. Back then, Oracle was hiring like crazy and didn’t know who I was, just that I was a computer science major.

Read more →