CoolTech Club Experts Panel : Start-up Building Strategies - From an Idea to Launch

WHEN

October 19,2006

WHAT

Ori Cohen: High level tips for entrepreneurs that are in pre-funding and immediate-post-funding stages of a technology start up. Practical ideas for VC fund raising and company setup are listed. (PDF)

Abigail Johnson: Typically, most people think about public relations exclusively as a tactical activity designed to get "ink" for a company for very short term reasons. This presentation makes the the case that public relations and strategic communications is critical to a start up company from the beginning because it should be focused on establishing a unique, leadership position. With such leadership comes a halo-effect that benefits the company across the board and for the long term. (PDF)

Paul A. Santinelli: How do you REALLY attract venture capital !!! (PDF)

WHO

What They Say About Us

"The wonderful thing about entrepreneurs is that their passion for starting new companies transcends languages and geographic boundaries."

Ron Conway, Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds, early stage investor in Google and PayPal

"Networking is very important for start-ups. The challenge for them is often not money: it is mentoring and finding people who can give good advice from experience."

Esther Dyson, Founder, EDventure Holdings

"This conference is clearly a labor of love for a group of dedicated professionals who care deeply about the Eastern European entrepreneurs. From the value-packed educational panels, to the star-studded key note speakers' line up, to an amazing quantity of venture capitalists – this is a not to be missed event for any high tech entrepreneur,"

Richard Guha, President of the Marketing Executives Network and Managing Partner at MaxBrandEquity

"As Stanford MBA students, we were exposed to a lot of VC firms both from the Valley and abroad. It is at Stanford that we met Anna Dvornikova, an absolutely amazing business leader and (by our big luck) our friend, who was the center of the Russian Silicon Valley professional community, and was doing a huge work to connect Russia and the Valley. Anna helped us a lot with kick-starting Wikimart, put us to our first-ever conference, introduced us to most of Russian VCs. And all that happened in a very short time span! It was the beginning of a six-month journey that despite the particularly tough times resulted in an extraordinarily group of investors backing our start-up."

Maxim Faldin and Kamil Kurmakayev,
co-CEOs, Wikimart