We have assembled a network of entrepreneurs, CEOs and individuals committed to working with very early stage companies. Members of the mentor network will work with NYC Seed companies on everything from marketing plans to partnerships.
AMOL SARVA
Amol Sarva, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer and founder of Peek. Amol was the second person hired at Virgin Mobile USA, where he was in charge of finance and corporate development. He left to join McKinsey & Company where he served telecom clients around the world from the New York office. In 2005, he co-founded Blue Mobile, where he was Vice President of Corporate Development and ran Product Management. He is an original member of the Founders' Roundtable and the Wireless Founders Coalition for Innovation, and was an Advisor to Frontline Wireless in 2007.
Amol has a Ph.D. from Stanford with a dissertation about cognitive science, and an undergraduate degree from Columbia in economics and philosophy.
DOUG SCOTT
Doug Scott is President of Ogilvy Entertainment where he is responsible for developing and producing brand funded entertainment initiatives for Ogilvy's clients, including IBM, Cisco, Unilever and BP, as well as creating original entertainment programs in partnership with "best-of-breed" production companies. With over fifteen years of marketing experience, Doug has developed and produced some of the most successful integrated marketing programs including: LOHAS 8, a three-day forum sponsored by Ford Motor Company; BLENDER Sessions in Park City, Utah, during the Sundance Film Festival; "Diddy Runs the City" for MTV; the Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival; Terry Tate Office Linebacker for Reebok; Eternal Darkness for Nintendo; Hollywood Stock Exchange's (HSX) Music Stock Exchange; Virtual Producer; Annual Academy Awards events; and weekly radio shows on CBS Radio. Doug has also been responsible for structuring and overseeing content syndication relationships with Access Hollywood, Advertising Age, Entertainment Weekly, and other national media outlets.
Doug sits on the advisory boards for Desi hits, Veoh, Sogua, and Transmedia Capital.
JOE COVEY
Joe Covey is CEO of Mag Rack Entertainment, a television VOD business which he acquired from Cablevision in October 2008. Prior to Mag Rack, he managed a family office fund/incubator where he launched several businesses. He was an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Milestone Venture Partners from 2005-2006. Prior to Milestone, Joe spent 12 years running early-stage technology companies. These included two start-ups and one turn-around. From 2001-2004, He completed the turn-around and sale of Call Sciences/Onebox, a venture-backed Internet communications company (acquired by j2 Global). In 1997 Joe was a founding employee of MessageClick, which was acquired by Verso Technologies in 2000. Prior to MessageClick, Joe was with Klausner Technologies, which licensed a technology patent portfolio.
Joe received a B.A in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from New York University's Stern School of Business.
JAMES GREEN
James Green is a serial entrepreneur and CEO of Giant Realm, Inc. Mr.
Green began his career in the entertainment industry and spent eight years with The Walt Disney Company (Buena Vista International) culminating in his appointment as the General Manager of the Japanese market. From Disney, Mr. Green moved to Pixar Animation Studios where he worked for Steve Jobs as the Vice President of Marketing and New Business Development. In 1998, Mr. Green became a founding partner and CEO of Sabela Media, an Internet ad serving company. After an explosive 18 months of revenue growth, during which time offices were opened on four continents, Sabela Media became the subject of a bidding war and was ultimately sold in January 2000 for $70 million to
24/7 Real Media. Mr. Green remained with 24/7 Real media for nine months as President of Technology Solutions. In Oct 2000 Mr. Green was recruited by LiveWire (an investor in Sabela) to become CEO of GiantBear. He successfully launched new products with major carriers (Cingular, Rogers AT&T, and others.), and then sold the business to InfoSpace in March 2002. After GiantBear, Mr. Green became CEO of PVI (www.pvi.tv), a virtual advertising company most famous for the virtual first down line in football and the ad behind the batter in baseball. He took the company private in 2003 and then sold it to Cablevison in May of 2005.
Mr. Green joined Giant Realm as CEO in January 2007.
KEN DIRCKS
Kenneth M. Dircks is a Senior Executive with Accenture, and co-leads their New York City government practice. He is charged with identifying, developing and delivering on opportunities to assist government clients with large-scale business change and technology implementation projects. He was the lead executive on the implementation of the highly successful NYC 3-1-1 function for Mayor Bloomberg, which not only introduced leading CRM and call center technology but transformed the way the City provides access to its services. Dircks was also the lead executive on NYCAPS, the City-wide implementation of a single, integrated HR/Benefits administration solution for over 250,000 active City employees. Dircks' 18 years with Accenture also include significant work in Business Intelligence, eGovernment and IT Planning. An avid musician, Dircks is a board member for Harmony, a nonprofit program that trains college and graduate student musicians to teach music to underprivileged young people.
MICHAEL LAZEROW
Michael is a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded four successful internet-based media companies. He has a passion for creating, managing and growing companies from the ground up.
Michael's first foray into entrepreneurship came with the founding of University Wire, an Associated Press-like network of more than 700 student-run newspapers that is now owned by CBS Corp. Building on his growing experience in the online space, Michael next founded GOLF.com, which was purchased by Time Warner's Time Inc. division in January 2006. Michael left GOLF.com in February 2007 to start Lazerow Consulting, which helps finance, launch, manage and grow internet-based media businesses. Michael's client list included CSTV, a CBS Corporation company. At CBS, Michael helped launch two new businesses in the sports community and student media spaces. Michael is currently the chairman and CEO of Buddy Media, Inc., a New York-based company that is a leading developer of applications for social media sites, including Facebook and MySpace.
Michael graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. with a B.S. and M.S. in Journalism in 1996. His byline has appeared in more than a dozen newspapers, including Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, the Miami Herald, the Delaware State-News, The Capital Times in Madison, Wis., and the Montgomery Journal.
STEVE JACOBS
Steve Jacobs leads the High Performance Computing, Solutions & Engineering group at Merrill Lynch. In this role he is responsible for designing and building the computational and data grids, globally. His team works with operations and businesses to innovate and build successful, scalable and cost effective solutions. Prior to this role he was responsible for Merrill's Global Business Intelligence and Data Integration platform. He built that team from zero to 20 people in New York, London, Mumbai and Chennai.
Before entering financial services, Steve was the CTO of online marketing company, Poindexter Systems, which serves, tracks and optimizes the delivery of over 10 billion ads per month. In his 5 years there, Steve was responsible for development, architecture, operations, optimization and innovation. To gain massive cost-effective scale, he implemented one of the first utility computing models to outsource operations of the high volume, globally load balanced ad server. Steve led development teams at two other startups prior to joining Poindexter.
Steve holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University with a focus on video compression and networking.