Location

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Silicon Valley Spring 2013
Applications: Mar 17, '13
Sessions: Apr 01, '13 - Jul 09, '13

Vision

Our vision is to Globalize Silicon Valley by creating and fostering local startup ecosystems in promising markets across the globe. We aim to help launch 1,000 technology companies per year in over 50 cities worldwide.

Join the Program

Founder Institute Directors

Our 80+ Directors are the backbone of the Founder Institute - providing the passion, dedication, and support that has helped launch hundreds of businesses across the globe. Learn more about the Founder Institute Directors below;

Founder Institute Global

Adeo Ressi, Founder & CEO, Founder Institute

Adeo Ressi is Founding Member of TheFunded.com, an online community of 19,000 CEOs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide. Adeo also runs the Founder Institute, a tech entrepreneur training program that helps founders launch thousands of companies across the globe. The Institute is the eighth start-up that Adeo has founded or built, four of which were acquired and three of which are still operating. He also serves on the Board of the X PRIZE foundation, a non-profit chartered to inspire human achievements through competition.

Jonathan Greechan, Partner, Founder Institute

Jonathan Greechan has been heavily involved in startups and online marketing since 2004. As the Director of Content and Marketing at Game Trust, Jonathan was integral to the gaming company's growth, venture financing, and eventual sale to Real Networks in 2007, where he then briefly ran product for their online gaming community offering. Since then, he has helped launch TheFunded.com, the web’s leading online community of technology entrepreneurs, and The Founder Institute, the world's largest startup accelerator. He is also the Executive Producer of the Founder Showcase, a quarterly startup pitch and networking event in Silicon Valley. Throughout his career Jonathan has advised hundreds of startups on marketing and PR. Follow him on Twitter at @jonnystartup.

Barcelona Founder Institute

Oriol Bes, CEO of Startup Catalyzer

Oriol Bes is the Co-Founder of Mobility Brain, startup dedicated to providing solutions to more reliable and fun to use electric vehicles. He is also the CEO of Startup Catalyzer, in which he helps entrepreneurs perfect and launch their startup ideas. Prior to entering the startup space Oriol spent more than 20 years in the ITC sector. His specialties includes analysis, strategic vision, and innovation.

Urs Rothmayer, Startup Advisor

Urs is a skilled leader who currently acts as a mentor and advisor for Coupies and 3 Day Startup. Prior to his mentorship roles he held the position of Digital Business Manager at RACC Automóbil Club. At RACC he focused on Convert racc.es in a service portal for more than 1 million club members. Urs’ specialties include helping companies become more profitable, leading new business initiatives, and helping companies start up.

Berlin Founder Institute

Maks Giordano, Co-Founder of Nunatak

Maks is the co-founder of Nunatak, a highly specialized consultancy for the digital age. He has been active in the digital arena since the early nineties. After Management Board Positions with ID Media and MetaDesign, Maks Maks co-founded iconmobile in 2003, one of the first and largest mobile service agencies Worldwide. The company became part of the WPP Holding in 2007. Before founding Nunatak in 2011, Maks worked for KYTE as their managing director for Europe and was a member of the management board of the multimedia unit of the ProSiebenSat1.

Sascha Karstadt, Founder of CarvingDreams

Sascha is the Founder and former CMO of CarvingDreams, a leading talent agency and entertainment company based in Mumbai. Prior to CarvingDreams, Sascha held the position of CMO at LRC Management GmbH, and SEO of online marketing at lmedo. He attended Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.

Belgium Founder Institute

Didier Vermeiren, Founder of SmartCheckups

Didier Vermeiren is the founder of SmartCheckups, a company which makes innovative mobile business applications that improve existing work flows in the real estate, property management and construction industry. Didier is also an entrepreneurial manager active in the ecosystem of internet: social commerce, ecommerce, mobile disruption and new media. He loves startups, entrepreneurs, kick-ass growth and setting sails to blue oceans.

Wim De Waele, CEO of iMinds

Wim De Waele is CEO of iMinds. Previously he built the European consulting organisation of the Canadian software company Numetrix, specialized in planning software for the consumer packaged goods and process industry. In 1994 Wim joined i2 Technologies as Services Director for Europa, where he also built te European organisation from zero. He then was promoted to vice-president of consumer goods and retail, and moved to i2 headquarters in Dallas. Upon his return to Europe in 2001, he became Chief Technology Officer of the Real Software Group prior to it being sold to a PE group.

Chicago Founder Institute

Jason Jacobsohn, Startup Advisor

Jason Jacobsohn is a master connector who is truly an advocate for the entrepreneur. Jason has worked with over 100 emerging business with services such as investor readiness preparation and coaching, strategic alignment of resources, business development, strategic advisory services, capital formation, and resource development. He has spearheaded the development of several prominent networking events in the Chicagoland area. He is the Co-Producer of the Greater Chicago Networking Extravaganza, the premier annual business networking event in downtown Chicago. Jason Earned a MBA in management and entrepreneurship from DePaul University.

Chile Founder Institute

Gonzalo Illesca, Manager of First Tuesday Americas

Gonzalo is the manager of First Tuesday Americas, the largest entrepreneur's community in LATAM and general coordinator in Founder Institute Chile. He has previously held roles as Co-founder in voypa.com, a web-based tourism services provider and Operation Manager in Pindeco, a services company. Gonzalo is also professor in marketing and entrepreneurship in different universities in Santiago. He graduated from Universidad de la Frontera, as Business and Management Engineer. Outside work, Gonzalo enjoys travel, peruvian food and play soccer either soccer field or in the PSP which carries everywhere.

Pablo Ambram, CEO of AgentPiggy.com

Pablo is a Founder Institute graduate and the founder and current CEO of AgentPiggy.com, a financial literacy platform for kids. He has a strong financial background and has won several awards from the Chilean government for his contributions to financial education in Latin America. Outside of work, Pablo loves to practice Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Capoeira.

Tim Delhaes, Co-Founder of Tigabytes.com

Tim is a German serial and social entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in technology, networks and building businesses in Latin America. Tim is currently director for the Americas of First Tuesday an organization that he co-founded in Chile in 1999. Before dedicating to First Tuesday Tim pioneered internet businesses and successfully co-founded and let MSM Interactive, one of Latin America first web integrators and most recognized multimedia agencies to be acquired by Quebecor-Nurun. In 1998 he also co-founded Santiago.cl, a local social network that became Chile’s largest independent web during those years. In 2006 Tim co-founded Tigabytes.com, Google´s first Enterprise Partner in Latin America focusing on Enterprise Search as well as Google Apps. In 2010 Tim Delhaes stepped down as CEO to dedicate to the non-profit expansion of First Tuesday.

Colombia Founder Institute

Alan Colmenares, Founder of SuperTrendi

Alan moved to Latin America from the states at the age of 31 more than 10 years ago. As a Strategic Investment Manager for Intel Capital he received more than a hundred investment proposals and presented recommendations for four of these to the company's investment committee all of which were approved. He is also an avid writer about topics concerning digital innovations and has contributed articles that have been published in VentureBeat, NYTimes, VARBusiness and others. He holds a BSEE degree from Lehigh University and worked for a number of start-ups in Silicon Valley including SCO and Netmanage.

Croatia Founder Institute

Dino Bendekovic, Investor

Dino is an experienced investor and investment professional with extensive background in emerging markets private equity/venture capital and corporate finance. He's a founder and managing partner at Interfokus Advisors, a Southeast Europe based investment services firm focused on small and medium sized companies in emerging markets. Before, Dino was a Managing Director at SEAF Venture Capital fund. He founded a start-up in food and food processing sector which he exited through trade sale. He holds an MBA from Boston University.

Vladimir de Franceschi, Founder of De Franceschi & Shefayee

Vladimir is a corporate, securities and intellectual property licensing attorney in Silicon Valley, where after practicing with Venture Law Group, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and Baker & McKenzie, he founded De Franceschi & Shefayee, a Palo Alto and New York law firm that represents cross-border startups from US, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Vladimir has counseled startups as well as their US and nonUS angel, venture capital and corporate investors in over $300mil in early and expansion stage equity and debt financings. He currently represents European startups from Finland, Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Greece and Russia.

Denver Founder Institute

Adam Swiecki, Founder of Swiecki Enterprises

Adam Swiecki founded Swiecki Enterprises in 2003 after serving as an Army Officer and financier. Focused on the action sport market, he has built leading ecommerce businesses in skate (SkateboardsEtc.com), surf (SurfboardsEtc.com), and snow (SkiGogglesEtc.com). The quintessential bootstrapper, Adam avoided startup costs by learning to program a website, partnering with drop shippers, and housing inventory in his basement. After years, he is out of the basement, expanding his multi-million dollar ecommerce footprint, and still growing using free cash flow. Adam holds a BS from the United States Military Academy at West Point and an MBA from Georgetown University.

Jim Franklin, CEO of SendGrid

Jim is the CEO of SendGrid, the leader in email deliverability. Previously, James Franklin was the VP and General Manager of the Crystal Ball Global Business Unit and the VP for Enterprise Performance Management for Oracle Corporation. Previously Jim was the CEO of Decisioneering, Inc., CFO at Vericept Corporation and was a founder of webfamilies.com. Jim has a BBA in accounting and a JD/MBA all from the College of William and Mary. Jim is a past president and current board member of the Rockies Venture Club. Jim has also served as a mentor for Boulder Techstars and has invested in early stage startups.

Jon Nordmark, Co-Founder of Wambo

Jon is the co-founder of Wambo and co-founder/board member of eBags. Wambo’s "properties" are a portfolio of companies in which Wambo has become an investor, which includes UsedTunes, TrekShare, UsingMiles and a few more Web-based businesses. Jon founded eBags in 1998 and remained CEO through Spring 2008 (to 9.4 million bags sold, 1.4 million customer reviews). Previously, he held the position of senior director of product management at Samsonite, America. Jon received his B.S. in marketing from the University of Colorado at Boulder and has earned numerous awards and honors including Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year (Rocky Mountain Region, 2003) and the Bob Newman Lifetime Achievement Award.

Mike Stemple, CEO/Founder of Mosoro

Mike currently is CEO/Founder of Mosoro which builds a developer platform that enables real-world objects to communicate with smartphone apps. Prior to cofounding Mosoro, he served as Founder and CEO of Odojo, which was acquired by SafetyWeb in July of 2010. Previous to Odojo Mike served as Founder and President of SkinIt, and Original Wraps. After leading SkinIt Inc. through two years of revenue growth and international expansion, he navigated the successful sale of the company to Global Wireless Entertainment, Inc. Mike's background also includes serving as Founder, Chairman and CEO of nReach Inc. which was purchased by SmartServ, Inc. Mike is a Colorado native, a graduate of Metropolitan State College, a sponsored athlete, a governor appointee to The Colorado Governors Council for Physical Fitness, a semi-famous artist, and a proud veteran of the US Army.

Helsinki Founder Institute

Petri Lehmuskoski, Co-Founder of Gorilla Ventures

Petri Lehmuskoski is the Co-founder at Gorilla Ventures. He has close to 30 year experience in founding and running companies, taking those to €120M turnover with operations in multiple countries, and is currently working with startups helping them into the global market. Petri's educational background includes recent studies at Harvard Business School. He has also received multiple entrepreneurial awards: Entrepreneur of the Year, Entrepreneurial family of the Year, Finalist at "Entrepreneur of the Year" competition etc.

Istanbul Founder Institute

Kutlu Kazanci, Co-Founder of WeDecide

Kutlu co-founded WeDecide in 2010, a crowdsourcing and innovation software and service company based in Istanbul and Copenhagen. Kutlu is also founder and CEO of Endogen, an organizational, innovation and entrepreneurial development consultancy. He also helped set-up Galata Business Angels and Endeavor Turkey. Previously, Kutlu worked as a banker at JPMorgan, BCP Securities and World Bank in New York and Jakarta. Kutlu is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a degree in Industrial Engineering.

Jakarta Founder Institute

Andy Zain, CEO of PT Numedia Global

Andy is CEO of PT Numedia Global, pioneering the new mobile VAS industry in Indonesia, with a focus on distribution, discovery, engagement and payment in the mobile sector. He has 15 years in the mobile & ICT businesses - launched the first mobile content provider and ringtone business, and pioneered the "old" mobile VAS businesses, which is now an annual USD 1.2B industry in Indonesia. He earned a BSBA degree in marketing and an MBA.

Novistiar Rustandi, Serial Entrepreneur

Novistiar is an entrepreneur with a passion for internet startups and digital businesses. He has worked in management roles at Price Waterhouse Coopers in the United States as well as Indonesi. Novistiar earned an undergraduate accounting degree, as well as dual master’s degrees in business administration and information systems development from George Washington University, and is a graduate of the inaugural semester of the Founder Institute in Silicon Valley.

Sanny Gaddafi (SaGad), Founder of FUPEI

Sanny (nickname: SaGad), has been a tech entrepreneur since his university days and developed the first local Social Networking site called FUPEI (Friends Uniting Program Especially Indonesian) which now has over 190,000 members. Using that experience he co-founded several social networking sites, such as a Social Networking for Moms called BundaGaul.com and a Social Networking for Sport Enthusiast called SixReps.com. Additionally, he is a graduate of the inaugural semester of the Founder Institute in Silicon Valley and earned undergraduate degrees in informatic and statistics, as well as a graduate degree in finance.

Lima Founder Institute

Arturo Calle Flores, CEO of Alterlatina

Arturo is the Founder and CEO of Alterlatina, a pioneer in media streaming. He is also a primary organizer for Startup Weekend Peru and on the Committee on Research, Science and Technology of the Chamber of Commerce of Lima. His specialties include streaming media, startups, and entrepreneurship.

Jorge Jaime, Founder/CEO of Overwave

Jorge Jaime is the Founder and CEO of Overwave, an agency that focuses on innovation giving advice to new ventures and big companies on the new innovation methodologies. He is also an analyst at Belcorp, and a local organizer for Lima Startup Weekend. Jorge’s specialties include new venture development, financing, innovation, and project management.

Lisbon Founder Institute

Hugo Macedo, COO of ActualSales

Hugo is an Electronic Engineer turned Corporate-Marketeer turned Entrepreneur and wanna be Venture Instigator. From Procter&Gamble to Sonaecom till joining as partner and COO of a once start-up now multinational ActualSales, in 15 years of experience he has managed areas from IT, Marketing, Sales, Finance and HR. His primary area of expertise (and passion) is Consumer Marketing and Internet Business.

Sofia Pessanha, Co-Founder of ActualSun

Sofia Pessanha is the co-founder of ActualSun, a web based, intelligent software platform where owners of multiple solar power plants can independently manage, compare & market their entire portfolio of assets. She studied Business Management at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and has extensive business, product development, mobile and online, marketing and sales experience.

Los Angeles Founder Institute

Jeanine Jacobson, Co-Founder of FounderList

Jeanine is the co-founder of FounderList, a community of Founders that share and exchange information about resources for Founders in San Diego and around the globe. She was formerly the co-founder of StatupCircle and she was also with Athena, the premier organization for executive women in technology and life sciences, where she served as executive director/President for seven years. Prior to Athena Jeanine worked in business development for a healthcare system, and for the wireless company Wind Systems. She is active in the Corporate Directors Forum and a number of other industry and professional societies in the San Diego area. Jeanine is a graduate of the University of San Diego, where she earned MBA and MSN degrees.

Madrid Founder Institute

Eduardo Vilar, Founder/CEO of äctucast

Eduardo is the Founder and CEO of äctucast, a platform that builds relationships between big data and revenue turning marketing into a profit. Eduardo is also the Founder of ReadWriteWeb España, th Founder of TypePad Spain, and the Founder of LotoJuegos.com. Eduardo holds a Degree in Actuarial and Financial Sciences from Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Miguel Galera, CEO of Grupo IntegralCom

Miguel is currently the CEO of Grupo IntegralCom. Prior to IntegralCom, he held the position as CEO of Lotojuegos.com and CEO of TICbeat.com, a Spanish site covering new technology, society, culture, and economy. Miguel holds s PhD in Economics from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia - U.N.E.D.

New York Founder Institute

Bryan Janeczko, Founder of Wicked Start

Bryan is the founder of Wicked Start, the online startup incubator for aspiring entrepreneurs. He sold his last venture, NuKItchen- an online diet service- to Nutrisystem in late 2008. Prior to that he worked in Finance at J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley in New York. Bryan holds a B.S. from Marquette and an MBA from the Stern School of Business.

Gabe Zichermann, Editor of Gamification.CO

Gabe is the editor of Gamification.Co and the chair of the Gamification Summit. He has previously held roles as the founder and CEO of beamMe, an SMS information service company, the CMO at Boonty, a digital gaming solutions company; the VP of strategy and communication for Trymedia Systems, and director of marketing in the game and web division at CMP Media. Gabe is an expert, author, speaker and writer on the subject of gamification and engagement mechanics. He graduated from the University of Waterloo with a BIS in human intelligence/gifted kids/statistics and received his MBA from Rollins College. Outside of work, Gabe is endlessly fascinated by food and travel.

Paris Founder Institute

Alain Baritault, Correspondent for PC Expert Magazine

Alain is the US correspondent and columnist for PC Expert magazine, as well as editor-in-chief of Collectiv-IT e-magazine. He has previously worked as a US correspondent for several publications, the editor-in-chief at Groupe Test, and co-founder of Cités Numériques, a market research company. Alain received his MBA and completed post-grad work in computing from Université Paris Dauphine. He is interested in wireless technologies and mobility, telecom services, fiber optic infrastructures, software, e-administration, open source, and Web 2.0.

Bruno Levy, Co-Founder of Value Logic SAS

Bruno is the partner and co-founder of Value Logic SAS, which helps companies carefully define and select their innovation investments in order to boost their grow and competitiveness in a target market. Bruno's previous positions include co-founder of SmartTrade, president and co-founder of Hypermind, worldwide product manager at ILOG, and CEO at Sobesol. He holds an engineering degree from Ecole Poytechnique, a master's degree in EE and MBA in entrepreneurship from Carnegie Melon University, and is a scholar of robotics from Tokyo University.

Pierre Beyssac, Founder of Gandi.net

Pierre is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Gandi.net, one of the first domain registrars in France. He has been in the Internet & IT industry in various technical roles and founder positions since 1993. Pierre earned his DUT in computer science from IUT d'Orsay and an engineering degree in electronics and comptuer science from École supérieure d'électricité (Supélec).

Perth Founder Institute

Claire Robertson, Consultant at Evantage Ltd.

Claire is an eCommerce & Digital Marketing Consultant at Evantage Pty Ltd, as well as a mentor for Startup Weekend. Prior to returning home to her native Australia, she spent 6 years in London working as the Product & Marketing Director for MedicAnimal.com, the largest online pet supplies retailer in the UK. Claire joined MedicAnimal as the company's vet and employee #5, eventually leading MedicAnimal's marketing and product effort through an institutional fundraising round and a competitor acquisition.

Dash Dhakshinamoorthy, Founder of StartupMalaysia.org

Dash is a serial entrepreneur, startup catalyst and evangelist driving StartupMalaysia.org. Dash leads the Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) movement in Malaysia as its host for the last three years and was also an attendee to President Obama’s Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in Washington D.C in 2012.

Rome Founder Institute

Nicola Mattina, Co-Founder of Stamplay

Nicola is an entrepreneur and a management consultant with a strong experience in the field of corporate communication and marketing. He is currently co-founder of Stamplay, a startup that offers a unique catalogue of web applications to build and manage marketing campaigns. From 2007 to 2012, he co-founder and managed Elastic, a consultancy firm specialized in the design, implementation and management of social networks and online services that foster social interaction and create value for organizations and people.

San Diego Founder Institute

Jeanine Jacobson, Co-Founder of FounderList

Puerto Rico Founder Institute

Marcos Polanco, CEO of iCare Medical

Marcos Polanco is CEO of innovation consultancy Clearshore. Marcos started his career performing database research at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, and went on to become Founding CEO of Imana, Inc. in San Francisco to commercialize the social search technology he co-invented and patented. He went on to become the Founding Director of the investment promotion division of the Government of Puerto Rico responsible, a position through which he led the establishment of the aerospace engineering industry on the island and funded entrepreneurship development programs and incubators. He was also project manager for the Puerto Rico Science, Technology & Research Trust from legislative deliberations through incorporation and board selection. Marcos has a BS in Computer Engineering from Stanford University and in his free time studies ancient Indian philosophy.

Ramphis Castro, Founder/CEO of TainoApp

Ramphis is the Founder and CEO of TainoApp, a content-syndication platform that is the easiest way for publishers to share their content through fully native mobile apps on all smartphones. Ramphis is also a global facilitator for Startup Weekend, Curator for TEDxSanJuan, and Founding Member of Startups of Puerto Rico - all focused on growing a vibrant tech startup community in the Caribbean. He received his Bachelors in Computer Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez and is a licensed professional computer engineer (NCEES). He subsequently obtained his Juris Doctor from the University of Puerto Rico School of Law, and focuses on startup and intellectual property law.

Seattle Founder Institute

Dave Parker, CEO of Bundled and DKParker

Dave is the CEO at Bundled the CEO of DKParker, a software and technology business consulting company. He was previously the CEO of 9Spaces, an offshore development provider. Additionally, he is the co-founder of OneAccord, and a board member/trustee for several companies. Previously, Dave has the worked as the CEO/president of License Online, director of sales at Excell Data, and Regional Manager at Nextel Communications. Dave received his B.A. in speech communication from the University of Washington, where he was an Evan’s scholar. His interests include entrepreneurship, ventures, and international business.

Silicon Valley Founder Institute

Misha Chellam, Co-Founder of Scanadu

Misha has over 11 years of experience as an entrepreneur. Prior to taking over the flagship Silicon Valley Founder Institute chapter, Misha was the co-founder and COO of Scanadu, a medtech startup based out of NASA Ames. Before Scanadu, Misha brought the Founder Institute to Brussels, Belgium and before that he co-founded a commercial real estate company in Hanoi, Vietnam that was later merged with Knight Frank. His first entrepreneurial adventure was as co-founder of Speechwriters LLC, an indie-rock band which licensed music to network television & film, performed for the LA Chapter of the Grammy Society, and received over 3 million plays on internet radio.

Singapore Founder Institute

Jeffrey Paine, Golden Gate Ventures

Jeffrey is an executive director at Battle Ventures and a producer at Lotus Entertainment Ltd./Flutter Films, a North Asian film production and distribution company. His past career roles include general partner at General Origin, VP at Cutler Venture Partners, and investment manager at MPH Ventures. Jeffrey received his B.S. in business administration from the University of Southern California. In his spare time, Jeffrey enjoys movies, great stories, Japanese dramas, tennis, and golf.

Sydney Founder Institute

Benjamin Chong, Director of Jetabroad.com

Benjamin is a director of a number of companies including Online Marketing Group, Jetabroad, Right Click Capital, Online Agility, and SG. He previously worked in project management at Volvo and consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Benjamin graduated with a bachelor of commerce degree with honors from the University of New South Wales.

Tom Frazier, CTO at HotHouse

Tom is an American expat who is a serial entrepreneur. He has founded 3 different companies, is an advisor to several more and has a stake in more than a dozen companies. He is a regular speaker on technology, the CTO of Australia's largest digital agency and occasionally even teaches dance.

Vietnam Founder Institute

Cao Cong Minh, Co-Founder of TOPICA Education

Cao is the co-founder and marketing director at TOPICA Education Group and a director at Amazing Wiz English. He previously worked in the investment banking industry and holds a degree in engineering from Hanoi University of technology.

Cong Tran, Vice Director of TOPICA Accelerator

Cong is Vice Director of TOPICA Business Accelerator (TBA, a part of TOPICA Education Group). Previously, he served as Director at Startups Incubator .,JSC, and President at BINGO Vietnam (Business Incubation of Global Organisations, Vietnam chapter). Before that, Cong also co-founded SEE Technology (mobile store solution for telcos in Vietnam), started-up and tasted failures with several dotcom companies such as shome.vn (coupons of super markets), zee.vn (estores), blogger.vn (music social network), see.vn (mobile search). His major was International Studies at Hanoi University.

Tuan Pham, Serial Entrepreneur

Tuan is a serial entrepreneur and accomplished academic. He is currently the chairman of the TOPICA Education Group, president of Elite Vietnam Entertainment Group, and a steering committee member of the Asian Pacific Incubation Network. He has previously held roles in management consulting, higher education, venture capital, and software. Tuan has earned master’s degrees in business administration and information technology, and a PhD in information management.

Warsaw Founder Institute

Agnieszka Oleszczuk-Widawska, Co-Founder of Eventlabs

Agnieszka is the co-founder of Eventlabs, where she specialized in sales management and public relations. She has also held positions at Deutsche Bank and Lukas Bank, where she coached and trained new employees, oversaw sales, and opened new locations. Agnieszka attended the School of Economics in Warsaw where she earned a degree in marketing.

Anita Kijanka, Owner of Com Creation

Anita is the Owner of Com Creation, a company specializing in organizing events, trainings, PR, and consultancy services in the field of image creation. Her educational background includes a Bachelors degree in English Philosophy from Kielce University and a Doctorate in Political Science from Maria Curie-Sklodowska University.

Pawel Widawski, Programme Manager at Polish Bank Association

Pawel is the SEPA Programme Manager at the Polish Bank Association and a member of the supervisory board at First Data Polska S.A. He is also an expert in Polish and European payment regulatory and business environment: PSD, EMD2, SEPA, e-Money, Credit Institutions, Payment Institutions, Electronic Money Institutions, other PSPs, mobile payments, retail payment services, payment startups, payment and regulatory strategy.

Washington DC Founder Institute

Cynthia Traeger, CEO of Pacific Siren International LLC

Cynthia Traeger concurrently serves as CEO, Pacific Siren International LLC and President, VSI Pacific. Ms. Traeger serves as an advisor to the board, Faulkner Information, was a participant and author with the American Bar Association's Digital Evidence Work Group, and has been a contributor to the Journal of the ACM Special Interest Group on Graphics. Her contributions to the Telecommunications Development Fund's Corporate Governance Project received the highest regards by the Emerging Business Forum and Washington Post. Ms. Traeger served as a Corporate Ambassador for Vital Voices’ Corporate Ambassadors Program (CAP) launched in cooperation with the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) at the U.S. Department of State.

Jill Stelfox is the CFO of Corporate Development at Binary Group

Jill Stelfox is the CFO & EVP of Corporate Development at Binary Group. Jill has run four companies, including founding two venture capital backed technology companies. She has 15 years experience in the mobile & wireless software. She is a successful serial entrepreneur, having bought & sold dozens of companies, raised over fifty million in venture capital & returned over 1000X to investors.