Aspen Investment Forum

CEO at Australian Small Scale Offerings Board (ASSOB), is one of Australia’s leading authorities on peer to peer investing and equity based investment for early stage growth companies. He is no stranger to managing growth businesses, having spent the past few years as CEO of both ASX and NSX publicly listed businesses. Before that he managed and developed businesses in Singapore, the Middle East and Sweden.

Founder and CEO at OurCrowd (Israel), the largest European crowdfunding platform for accredited investors and business angels. He is a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Medved was the co-founder and CEO of Vringo between 2006-2012, a leader in the mobile social and video applications area. Vringo trades on the NASDAQ under the symbol of VRNG. Prior to founding Vringo, Medved founded Israel Seed Partners in 1995 in his garage and co-managed the fund until January 2006. Israel Seed had $262M under management in four funds and has been an investor in 60 leading Israeli companies.

Founder & Chairman at GrowVC (UK), is an investor and entrepreneur across the US, Europe and Asia. Starting his first software company at the age of 16, Jouko then held progressively senior positions at diverse technology firms including Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Powerwave Technologies Inc., Nokia, and Sonera. He and played a significant role in developing the first social marketing intelligence solutions for mobile and media companies. Jouko sits on the boards of various start-up companies and is a co-founder or seed investor at six companies, including Replicon and Xtract. Jouko is a certified advisor for NasdaqOMX Stockholm and Helsinki early phase company lists. He has been voted among The NEXT 100 Top Influencers of the Digital Industry in 2013.

Founder and Managing Director at Symbid (Netherlands). He holds an MSc in New Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship and has a background in Sociology and Business Administration. He is a frequent writer of expert blog articles on Social media, Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding. After holding a position as Marketing Manager for a Dutch software company (www.mendix.com), he co-founded Symbid as a means to help entrepreneurs succeed in their entrepreneurial efforts and to connect investors and pioneers on a global scale.

Fundraising products at AngelList, the largest early-stage fundraising platform in the world. AngelList drives tens of millions in fundraising per month and has more than 150K companies raising money, recruiting and finding customers on the platform. Previously, Ash founded and sold Topguest, worked at Macquarie, and studied Law at Sydney, resident at St Paul’s College.

An inventor and serial entrepreneur. He has 20 U.S. patents for products for treating cardiovascular and heart disease. His inventions have treated over 140,000 patients in 60 countries. He was South Florida Entrepreneur of the Year 2003 and State of Florida Entrepreneur of the Year 2004. Leonhardt has founded 20 companies to date, most them majority funded by his venture firm Leonhardt Ventures and their associated angel networks LeonhardtVentures. Leonhardt helps lead Startup California. He founded in 2008 The California Stock Exchange, which is coupled with Leonhardt’s Launchpads, his startup business incubator booster program. He founded the public policy institute The Entrepreneurship Party in 2006 and is an independent candidate for the Governorship of California 2014.

An investor and entrepreneur with two decades of experience building, restructuring and acquiring companies in life sciences. A founding member of InCube’s venture fund, Andrew co-founded VentureHealth to democratize investing for accredited investors who have a passion for improving patient outcomes. VentureHealth may be the first equity crowdfunding venture in healthcare to adopt a carried-interest business model – which is a significant departure from the broker-deal model. VentureHealth has raised almost $8 million for several companies such. In the past year alone, Andrew has been involved in four company acquisitions totaling over $800 million. Andrew holds a MBA from Harvard University and a Bachelor’s with high honors from the University of California at Berkeley.

Founder and CEO of RockThePost. Alejandro has an extensive business and legal background. Prior to RockThePost, Alejandro was employed as an Associate at King & Spalding LLP New York office, where he was involved in the Chevron vs. Ecuador case, one of the biggest investment arbitration cases in history with $113 billion in damages at stake. He earned his Master of Laws degree in International Business & Trade Law from Fordham Law School.

Co-Founder & COO at Kabbage, Inc. Kathryn started Kabbage along with her two co-founders in late 2008, and it has grown from 3 employees to 95 employees and over 100,000 customers in just over four years. Prior to Kabbage, Kathryn was with Revolution Money, an Internet-based credit card startup, where she was Vice President of Strategy. Before Revolution, Kathryn was a corporate development executive with CompuCredit Corporation, where she was responsible for entering new markets, product development initiatives, as well as the establishment of multiple strategic alliances. Kathryn was also one of the founders of WorthKnowing.com, a consumer financial services portal whose IP was later sold to CompuCredit and TransUnion.

Co-Founder & CEO at GroundBreaker. Before founding GroundBreaker, Joey spent his career fundraising for institutional real estate owners on Wall Street. Joey secured over $6 Billion in real estate financings while at CBRE, issued over $8 Billion in real estate securitizations while at Morgan Stanley and collaborated on $435 Million of mixed-use developments while at ZOM. Joey experienced the painful and tedious process of private fundraising when he founded Byron Partners, a small balance real estate investment firm.Joey’s education includes Cornell (in Business) and Columbia University (Masters with Distinction, in Real Estate). Joey played water polo for Cornell and Columbia and gets super stoked about extreme sports and meditation.

Founder and CEO at CrowdStreet. As a CCIM, Darren is in the top 6% of commercial real estate practitioners nationwide. Darren has successfully negotiated $200,000,000 of commercial real estate transactions since 2003. In addition to taking care of clients, Darren served as President of Compass Commercial, a leading Oregon commercial real estate company. Darren has been an entrepreneur since the age of 19 in Boulder, CO. After earning his BS in Business from the University of Colorado, Darren worked with an international software company in San Francisco. At home, he’s a loving dad, husband and weekend warrior.

Founder and CEO of American Homeowner Preservation, which empowers accredited investor to crowdfund the purchase of distressed mortgages from banks, and then offer families viable, long-term solutions for families to stay in their homes. Jorge has over 23 years of experience in distressed real estate and mortgage investing and has helped guide AHP from a 501(c)3 nonprofit in 2008 to a socially-responsible multi-million dollar hedge fund. He champions win-win solutions, and enjoys executing AHP’s dual missions: the social mission to keep families in their homes and the financial mission to deliver strong returns to investors.

Founder and CEO at iFunding, is an alternative investment professional dedicated to the concept of accredited crowdfunding, a term he coined in 2012. Accredited crowdfunding allows accredited investors to pool small amounts of capital together to make investments in large-scale opportunities which they may not have access to as an individual.

Co-Founder at Realty Mogul, a marketplace for accredited investors to pool money online and buy shares of pre-vetted investment properties or loans secured by real estate. Justin is a licensed real estate professional in the state of CA and prior to Realty Mogul, Justin was the Founder and CEO of a consultancy in Los Angeles helping businesses manage online communities and build web presences. Justin has a passion for all things technology and loves to educate new investors on the benefits of real estate investing. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Cognitive Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

President and Co-Founder at ForeFund, is a self-made real estate developer, hotelier and coastal land use expert. His most recent mid-rise project sold for $30 million in Q4 2013 realizing 150+%IRR returns for investors. Neil’s development projects and investments have been featured in Sunset Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Vancouver Sun. In 2012, Governor Jerry Brown and the California EPA awarded Neil the Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award. He has also received accolades from the US Department of Energy and honors for Best Overall Project and Most Innovative Design by The US Green Building Council for his work to develop net-zero energy buildings.

A corporate and securities attorney at the law firm Pepper Hamilton LLP. Brian has appeared on Fox Business Television, CCTV America, Bloomberg and National Public Radio. He has also been published or quoted in 2013 in Forbes, CNBC, MSNBC, New York Law Journal, Law360, Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Financier Worldwide and Review of Securities & Commodities Regulation. Mr. Prior to joining Pepper, Brian was director and head of equity capital markets for the Americas at Barclays and a senior vice president and assistant general counsel for Citigroup Global Markets Inc. Brian is the author of “The Trouble with Crowdfunding” published in Forbes, as well as the Forbes article announcing the SEC’s crowdfunding rules proposal.

Founder of Royse Law Firm. Roger is a Northern California Super Lawyer, is AV Peer-Rated by Martindale Hubbell and has a “Superb” rating from Avvo. Roger is a participating instructor of corporate law for the Center for International Studies (Salzburg Austria) and has been an adjunct Professor of Taxation for Golden Gate University and also owns websites RoyseUniversity.com (a legal content site) and RoyseLink.com (a resource site for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists). Roger is the founder of the philanthropic organization “Team Motion to Dismiss Cancer” which conducts auctions of meetings with venture capitalists to raise money for charity and has been recognized on behalf of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society by being named the 2012 San Francisco bay area chapter Man of the Year.

Founder and Managing Director of Funding Circle USA. Funding Circle is the world’s leading dedicated marketplace for small business loans, matching investors with small businesses in need of loans between $25,000 and $1,000,000. He is also a Partner of Endurance Companies, an investment holding company that manages diversified entrepreneurial ventures and investments, including ones in the healthcare, technology and retail sectors. Prior to that Sam was VP of Business Development for SecondMarket, the world’s leading alternative investments marketplace. Sam has also made early and growth-stage investments at FirstMark Capital and Bertelsmann Asia Investments. Sam received his MBA and MS from Stanford University and graduated magna cum laude from Brown University.

CEO and Co-Founder at Orchard, a leading provider of technology and strategic services to institutional investors deploying capital in Online Lending. He has spent his entire career helping build, scale, and optimize the internet’s top advertising exchanges (Google, Admeld, LiveRail) and has overseen trillions of trans actions. He was the #7 employee at Admeld ($400 million dollar exit to Google in 2011) and has worked in Product, Operations, Technical Support, Business Development, Sales Engineering and Sales roles. He is a three time Texas State Tennis Champion and loves racket sports.

Founder of Channel Medsystems, a company which is using equity crowdfunding to finance its growth. After graduating from University of Pennsylvania, Dan worked at the Food and Drug Administration both testing devices and writing congressional reports. Following receipt of his MD and MBA degrees from Duke University, Dan completed his internship at the Mayo Clinic. After working for two years as a General Partner with MedVenture Associates, a medical device venture capital firm, Dan left the firm and committed himself to innovating in the medical device space through TheraNova and its subsidiaries. Since 2006 Dan has raised, or helped raise, ~$100MM for the six venture-backed TheraNova spinouts.

CEO and Co-Founder at DealSruck, a business loans company. Before founding DealStruck, Ethan ran Internet marketing for a lead generation startup – Ampush Media – growing annual spend to $15M in less than two years. Prior to Ampush, he worked as a distressed credit analyst at Lehman Brothers and graduated Summa Cum Laude from Wharton Business School.

A member of Ellenoff Grossman & Schole LLP, the firm, which has established itself as a leader in various capital market initiatives, such as, Crowdfunding, SPACs, PIPEs and Registered Direct offerings. In the last few years alone, he has been involved at various stages in numerous registered public offerings, including 100 financings and over 500 private placements into public companies, representing either the issuers of those securities or the registered broker-dealers acting as placement agent. With respect to Crowdfunding, he is actively engaged with clients (funding portals, broker-dealers, technology solution providers, software developers, investors and entrepreneurs); he has been to both the SEC and FINRA numerous times to discuss the proposed rules. He also provides counsel with regard to their respective ongoing (SEC, AMEX and NASD) regulatory compliance.

Founder and CEO at Asurvest. Experienced Lawyer, Entrepreneur, and Purpose Driven Philanthropist. 12 years of investment experience in startups & late stage companies. Syracuse University (J.D. 2001), Babson College (M.B.A. 2011). Notable exit- CTS Solutions sold 18 months after launch for $3.8M.

President and Co-Founder at PayNet, Inc. Prior to co-founding PayNet, Mr. Phelan managed an investment portfolio of fixed income securities for Trustmark Insurance Company in Lake Forest, IL. In this fiduciary role at Trustmark, Mr. Phelan managed asset and mortgage backed securities and corporate bonds to achieve policy holder goals of total return and safety of principal. Mr. Phelan worked at Dain Rauscher Securities helping pension funds, banks and asset managers. Previously, as a consultant at Ernst & Young, Mr. Phelan advised privately-held companies on acquisitions and valuations. Mr. Phelan earned the designation of Chartered Financial Analyst from the CFA Institute and completed a Masters in Business Administration from Loyola University Graduate School of Business. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Carleton College.

Jeff is the co-founder and COO of SparkMarket, a Georgia based crowdfunding platform. He is a Georgia attorney with over six years of experience in securities and corporate law. He was one of the first attorneys to identify the crowdfunding potential of the Invest Georgia Exemption (“IGE”) and has worked closely with regulators and experts in the state and national crowdfunding community to design IGE campaigns that are compliant and safe for issuers and investors. His specific expertise is in “intrastate” crowdfunding campaign design and execution, and his company SparkMarket hosted the nation’s first successful securities based crowdfunding campaign in the nation’s history, which closed above its funding goal in November 2013.