With only four days left until disrupt NY 2017, we are more excited than ever. We have 19 unique companies competing in our Startup Battlefield competition which all culminates on Wednesday, May 17th at 11am during our Battlefield Finals. After making it through a prior competition round, 4-5 companies will be chosen to compete for the Disrupt Cup and $50,000.
We have expert judges who will be tasked with making this decision. Our Final Round Judges are Stuart Ellman (RRE Ventures), Annie Lamont (Oak HC/FT), Susan Lyne (BBG Ventures), Deven Parekh (Insight Venture Partners), Matthew Panzarino (TechCrunch) and Reshma Saujani (Girls Who Code.
Take a more in-depth look at our Final Round judges and mark your calendar for Wednesday, May 17th at 11am. Tune in right here.
Startup Battlefield Final Round Judges
Stuart looks primarily at Fintech and Robotics deals at RRE, which he founded with Jim Robinson in 1994. Stuart is currently a director of Bark & Co., Clarity Money, Clearpath Robotics, Jibo, One Drop, and Payfone, and is involved with Airware, Giphy, Ready Robotics, and DriverUp. His previous investments include Business Insider, Kroll Bond Ratings, Proofpoint, WatchGuard, and MessageOne.
Since 2002, Stuart has taught a popular Venture Capital Seminar to MBA candidates at Columbia Business School. He is a member of the investment board of Columbia’s Tamer Fund for Social Ventures, the New York City Investment Fund’s Innovation Council, the VC Advisory Group of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the Economic Club of New York, and the NYC 2020 CEO Roundtable. Stuart also serves on the President’s Council for Wesleyan University and on the Board of The Browning School.
In addition to his professional work, Stuart Ellman is Chairman of the Board of 92Y where he served as President from 2012 to 2015. During his tenure, Stuart was instrumental in launching a number of philanthropic and entrepreneurial initiatives including #GivingTuesday, a global day of giving; 7 Days of Genius, a multi-platform, multi-venue festival of ideas; 92Y’s first MOOC, “How to Change the World,” offered in partnership with Wesleyan University; 92YOnDemand, a new content website with more than 103,000 followers; and an expanded partnership with NYCEDC to host the NYC Venture Fellows program, in which Stuart serves as a mentor to promising young entrepreneurs.
Annie Lamont is a Managing Partner of Oak HC/FT where she focuses on growth equity and early-stage venture opportunities in healthcare information services and financial services technology.
Annie has been ranked as the top healthcare and fintech investor on the Forbes Midas List. Additionally, Annie has been recognized as the first ever recipient for Excellence in Healthcare Innovation by the National Venture Capital Association.
She currently serves on the Boards of Acculynk, Aspire Health, Benefitfocus (NASDAQ: BNFT), Candescent Health, Castlight Health (NYSE: CSLT), Freshbooks, Hometeam, Independent Living Systems, Poynt, Precision Medicine Group, Quartet Health, VillageMD and xG Health Solutions. Prior investments include athenahealth (NASDAQ: ATHN), American Esoteric Laboratories (acquired by Sonic Healthcare Limited), Argus Information & Advisory Services (acquired by Verisk Analytics), CareMedic Systems (acquired by Ingenix), CLARiENT (acquired by GE Healthcare), Harbor Payments (acquired by American Express), Health Dialog (acquired by British United Provident Association), Odyssey Healthcare, Oak Tree/Oxford, NetSpend (acquired TSYS), PayFlex Systems (acquired by Aetna), PharMEDium Healthcare (acquired by CD&R), Point Carbon (acquired by Thomson Reuters), Psychiatric Solutions (acquired by Universal Health Services), TxVia (acquired by Google), United BioSource (acquired by Medco Health Solutions) and Vesta.
Annie also serves on the board of HCA Holdings and is a member of The Advisory Council for the Financial Solutions Lab (CFSI and JP Morgan Chase). She served on the Stanford University Board of Trustees, and on the Executive Board of the National Venture Capital Association.
Annie graduated from Stanford University with a BA in Political Science.
President and Founding Partner
BBG Ventures
Susan has had a long career in media, commerce and consumer products. She has held leadership positions at companies of all sizes and stages, from startups to public companies, often during periods of internal or external change.
She began her career in the magazine industry, where she founded and led Premiere Magazine. She spent almost a decade at Disney, rising to President of Entertainment at ABC. She was the CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia; CEO and then Chair of Gilt.com; and she led AOL’s Brand Group, overseeing such brands as TechCrunch, Engadget and Moviefone, immediately before launching BBG Ventures.
She has four daughters, three sisters, and a wide circle of entrepreneur-advisees who give as much as they get. Her biggest wins have all come from listening to, building for and betting on women.
Deven Parekh (Insight Venture Partners)
Managing Director
Insight Venture Partners
Deven Parekh is a Managing Director at Insight Venture Partners and joined the firm in 2000. Deven manages investments in application software, data and consumer internet businesses globally. Notable previous companies in Deven’s portfolio have included Buddy Media (acquired by SalesForce, NASDAQ: CRM), Chegg (IPO), Football Fanatics (acquired by GSI Commerce, later acquired by eBay), Media Mind (IPO and subsequent sale to DG Fast Channel), Procuri (acquired by Ariba, NASDAQ: ARBA), ECI Solution (sold to Carlyle), Russian Trading System (merged with MICEX), Tumblr (acquired by Yahoo!), Hayneedle (sale to Jet.com), Syncsort (sale to Clearlake Capital), Alibaba (IPO), Twitter (IPO), JD.com (IPO), and Website Pros (IPO). Deven is a global investor, actively working with investments in China, Latin America, Europe and Russia.
Matthew Panzarino (TechCrunch)
Editor-in-Chief
TechCrunch
Matthew Panzarino has been a retail jockey, founded a professional photography business and a news blog covering the Apple ecosystem. He has served as News Editor and Managing Editor at The Next Web and is now Editor-In-Chief at TechCrunch.
He has made a name for himself in the tech media world as a writer and editor, relentlessly covering Apple and Twitter, in addition to a broad range of startups in the fields of robotics, computer vision, AI, fashion, VR, AR and more.
Reshma Saujani (Girls Who Code)
Founder and CEO
Girls Who Code
Reshma Saujani is the Founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, a national non-profit organization working to close the gender gap in technology. Started in 2012, the organization has grown to reach 40,000 girls in every state by the end of 2016. This year, Girls Who Code will run 78 Summer Immersion Programs and 1500 Clubs. The results speak for themselves: 90 percent of alumnae have declared or intend to declare a major or minor in computer science.
Reshma began her career as an attorney and activist. In 2010, she surged onto the political scene as the first Indian American woman to run for U.S. Congress. During the race, Reshma visited local schools and saw the gender gap in computing classes firsthand, which led her to start Girls Who Code.
Reshma is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and Yale Law School. She’s been named one of Fortune’s World’s Greatest Leaders, Fortune’s 40 under 40, a WSJ Magazine Innovator of the Year, one of the 50 Most Powerful Women in New York by the New York Daily News, CNBC’s Next List and Forbes’s Most Powerful Women Changing the World.
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