Mentors
Amit JotwaniBio: Amit is a developer advocate/UI Designer at Mashery, driven by a constant urge to design and build awesome things for the web. A serial Startup Weekender (Washington DC, New York, Delhi), he is passionate about beautiful design, elegant code, and everything Apple. Before joining Mashery, Amit ran Random Loops, a small design studio, specializing in User Interface Design of Websites, iPhone and iPad applications. He is also the co-founder of http://rootein.com By day you can find him at his desk cooking up beautiful code. By night, he loves catching up on the re-runs of Seinfeld.
Michael DirolfBio: Mike is the founder and CEO of Fiesta Technology, where he works on fiesta.cc (the easiest way to create mailing lists / email groups). Before Fiesta, he was a Software Engineer at 10gen, where he worked on the MongoDB project. He is the author of O\'Reilly\'s MongoDB: The Definitive Guide. Mike received a B.S.E. in Computer Science from Princeton University. Originally from Albany NY, Mike currently resides in New York City.
I mainly do python now but have written large systems in ruby, java, c as well. I wrote oreillys MongoDB book so I have pretty good knowledge of databases. Lastly, if anyone is doing anything with email or the fiesta api I know that stuff well.
Jeff SherlockBio: Jeff Sherlock is a New York City based Partner Engineer at Facebook, where he focuses on helping developers at media companies and startups with platform integrations. Prior to joining Facebook, Jeff was Director of Engineering at Neutron Interactive where he worked on marketing analytics solutions. Jeff holds a BS in Sociology from the University of Utah.
Specialties: PHP, Python, Django, SQL, Nginx, Redis, Memcache, Application Architecture, Analytics
Ankur OberoiBio: Ankur is a Developer Evangelist at TokBox, Inc. where he works to bring exciting and useful resources to the community of OpenTok developers. Prior to TokBox, Ankur attended University of Maryland as an Electrical and Computer Engineering student. His first Startup Weekend was as a participant in NYC where he and his awesome team collaborated to make Animotion (getanimotion.com) and has now been to 6 more Startup Weekend events around the country. Ankur is a full stack developer with areas of expertise in Javascript, PHP, HTML/CSS, Node.js, Objective-C.
Sajid MehmoodBio: Sajid Mehmood \'10 is a Software Engineer at Google, where he works on the next-generation of highly-available, cost-efficient network modeling and control systems. Previously, Sajid has worked on distributed storage for Microsoft, published a paper on, Graphle, a visualization tool for interactive exploration of large, dense graphs, and developed tools to thwart CSRF attacks, a type of web application security vulnerability.
Jennifer ChenBio: Jennifer Chen graduated from Princeton University in 2010. She received several awards for her undergraduate work including an honorable mention from the Computing Research Association. Upon graduation, she moved to Washington DC to work in technology policy and spent a year at the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI). She currently works for Google in the Associate Product Manager program and is responsible for publisher inventory on Google TV Ads. In her spare time, Jen enjoys exploring San Francisco and pictures of cute animals.
Marc Bastien Bio: Marc is a Software Engineer at 10gen, based in the New York office. Before joining 10gen, he was a member of the QA team at ShopWiki.com where he built and maintained an automated testing suite in Python using Selenium, drastically reducing hand-testing time. Previously, Marc was the Data Acquisition Engineer for Brooks Associates Racing, winner of the 2008 Formula Atlantic Championship. Marc is a 2006 graduate of Brown University in Mechanical Engineering.
Specialties: MongoDB (of course), Python, and Java
Jason KesslerBio: Jason is co-founder of Tussle Inc., a social competition network that provides a home for all of your competitions, bets, dares, and challenges (www.tussle.com). Before starting Tussle, Jason was an attorney at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, PC, advising major ad agencies and brands on national campaigns and social media projects. Jason previously worked in the legal department of HBO, providing support in connection with development and production of HBO original programming. Before his legal career, Jason was at the ground-floor of AirClic, Inc., a fast-growing software start-up, leading projects in marketing, product planning/development, research, and operational strategy. Jason graduated from Princeton University (2003) with a major in psychology and a certificate of proficiency in computer science, and he received his law degree from Columbia Law School (2006) where he was recognized as a James Kent Scholar.
Specialties: Intellectual Property Law
Bert NavarreteBio: Co-Founder at Connected Sports Ventures, Inc., Startup Advisor and Angel Investor at Forte Ventures LLC, Mentor/Advisor at Dreamit Ventures, Harvard University
Been a VC for 10 years, most recently a Venture Partner at ICG. Focus on Consumer Internet, Digital Media, and Software investments
Jeremy KahnBio: Jeremy is co-founder of Tussle Inc., a social competition network thatprovides a home for all of your competitions, bets, dares, and challenges(www.tussle.com). Before starting Tussle, Jeremy was a Sr. Manager at OTFGroup, Inc (www.otfgroup.com), a seasoned post-conflict and fragile statestrategist with almost decade of on-the-ground experience in Africa, theCaribbean and Asia, working with the highest levels of business andgovernment. Prior to joining OTF, Mr. Kahn owned and managed a US based luxuryconsumables company focused on developing high end, innovative consumableaccessories for the lifestyle market. With over 5 years ofentrepreneurship and management experience, he was able to achieve vastinternational distribution in over 30 countries, build a widely recognizedbrand, manage and train 21 employees and increase profitability throughrefined manufacturing methods. Before running his own company, Jeremy attended Princeton University andreceived a BA in History. Jeremy is a native English and French speaker.
Joseph PerlaBio: Joseph studied computer science and artificial intelligence at Princeton University. He founded Labmeeting, a social network and search engine for scientists and researchers at top universities. He was CTO and on the founding team of Turntable.fm, a popular social music discovery application.
Benjamin GleitzmanBio: Benjamin Gleitzman is Senior Software Engineer at Hunch.com, a collective intelligence decision making system based in NYC. Gleitzman graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he created App Inventor for Android, a graphical programming language that is at the core of the MIT Center for Mobile Learning. He was a visiting researcher at Google Research and is co-founder of NextStep Tech, an organization teaching software engineering and entrepreneurship to junior and high school students. In his spare time he enjoys creating electronic music, discussing programming concepts, and rock climbing.
Skillz: Mobile development, HTML5, Javascript, Python, Scheme, Django, Node.js, network and graph theory
Sumit ShuklaBio: Sumit Shukla is currently a Startup Evangelist for Microsoft in New York. In this role he works with the growing startup ecosystem in New York—including startups, accelerators and incubators, and investors—to identify opportunities where Microsoft can add value and grow this ecosystem. Prior to this role, Sumit worked in online advertising sales, product management and software development for startups and large corporations. Sumit holds a Bachelor in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo in Canada.
Jon GottfriedBio: Jon Gottfried is a Developer Evangelist at Twilio and one of the organizers of the Hacker Union/nyhacker. He is a die-hard hacker and loves to help people build amazing apps and learn something new in the process. Before joining Twilio, Jon worked as a developer for various startups and Big Co\'s and even founded his own small startup Lemonade Stand, which was a Semi-Finalist in the StartupBus competition at SXSW
Marc WeilBio: Marc is a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology with a degree in Software Engineering. He comes to CloudMine after a year at Oracle doing enterprise-level iOS application development and brief stint at RJMetrics working on their business intelligence and analytics platform. He was also an engineer at Apple in the Mac OS X Platform Experience group prior to Oracle, has worked on many freelance iOS projects, and ran a profitable company at the venerable age of 14. Marc is obsessed with functional programming and system architecture and enjoys world travel and delicious exotic coffee.
Technical specialties include the following: Ruby (Rails, Sinatra, and non-web Ruby dev), Objective-C/Cocoa Touch/iOS, Javascript/jQuery, CSS, HTML, MySQL, MongoDB, CouchDB, Java, Scala, PHP, and everything Linux.
Anthony PipkinBio: Anthony Pipkin is a YUI evangelist and a front-end engineer at Meebo Inc. He started with web development in 1999 with an HTML book and notepad on Windows 98. Since then, he has learned many languages including CSS, ActionScript, PHP and JavaScript. He has also worked on many projects from small company startups to large corporate names such as Coca-Cola and Georgia Pacific. He has a passion for business development and strategy and developing applications and tools that help businesses focus less on what their computer is doing and more on what their business is doing.
Full stack developer: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ActionScript, PHP, Python, Node.js, MySQL, MongoDb Web application developer and strategist UX strategist (not a UX expert, or whatever that is haha) Frameworks: YUI3, Zend Framework, Express, Jinja
Geoffrey WeberBio: Geoffrey Weber is an entrepreneur and a lawyer, often working as an outside general counsel for other entrepreneurs as they grow their businesses. Before launching his own practice, Geoff worked for some of the Philadelphia area\'s larger law firms, concentrating his practice on mergers & acquisitions and venture capital transactions. Geoff serves on the Board of Directors of the Entrepreneurs Forum of Greater Philadelphia, is a member of Philly Startup Leaders and often serves as a judge or a mentor for business plan competitions. He also serves as Chairman of The Drenk Foundation, which supports the activities of the Lester A. Drenk Behavioral Health Center, volunteers his time with the United Way of Burlington County, and can often be found out with his children at soccer, baseball or gymnastics practice.
Christina IlventoBio: Christina Ilvento \'10 currently works for Google as an Associate Product Manager for Google App Engine and previously worked on YouTube Discovery. While at Princeton, Christina won the Calvin Dodd MacCracken Senior Thesis Prize and the Computer Science Thesis Award for her work on cryptographic hash functions. She also won accolades for being an outstanding Computer Science Lab TA and somehow found time to be the principal violist in Sinfonia. Christina knows all the lyrics to the Nyan Cat song.
Matthew SoltBio: Matt is an entrepreneur and renewable energy developer working on solving energy efficiency and corporate sustainability problems with web-based technologies. Previously, Matt was CEO of MetroTek, where he built one of Pennsylvania\'s largest renewable energy companies, and was Director of Sales and Marketing for Space Adventures, the only company to have put private citizens into space. He enjoys programming with Ruby and its related ecosystem including Rails, Sinatra, Chef, and MongoDB.
Jesse BentertBio: Jesse just graduated from Columbia University with a B.S. in computer science. He previously interned with the New York Yankees and with MLB.com. He likes baseball, frisbee, running, biking, eating, technology, and working on really cool projects.
Suresh KumarBio: Dr. Suresh Kumar is a successful corporate executive and serial entrepreneur. Duringthe past 12 years Suresh founded three successful new businesses and also completedhis Doctoral Degree in the field of organizational leadership and entrepreneurship withthe University of Phoenix. Due to these efforts, Suresh has developed deep insightsand expertise in the field of entrepreneurial leadership. Along with his teams, Sureshis the recipient of multiple industry and community recognition for leadership andentrepreneurial excellence including the Ronald Reagan Gold Medal (2005) by theCongressional Business Advisory Council, the INC 500/5000 Award (2008, 2009, 2010,2011), the US Pan-Asian American Chamber Fast 50 Firm Award (2008, 2009, 2010),the Indo-American Center of NY Award (2007), The Indian American Cultural SocietyAward (2009), the US Chamber of Commerce Blue Ribbon Award (2009, 2011) andAsian MBA Award (2009). Suresh is the Founder and CEO of NexAge Technologies USA Inc.(www.nexageusa.com) and Green Earth LLC, (www.greenearthaction.com). Both thefirms are winners of the US Chamber of Commerce Blue Ribbon and listed among theINC 500/5000 fastest growing private firms in the U.S. Suresh is a passionate student ofthe theory and practice of leadership and entrepreneurship. In April 2011 he completedof his Doctor of Management degree in Organizational Leadership with the University ofPhoenix, AZ. His doctoral dissertation titled “The linkages between cognition, behavior,culture and opportunity among high growth Asian American immigrant entrepreneurs”has been selected for presentation at various international conferences in 2011 includingthe International Council for Small Business, the US Association for Small Businessand Entrepreneurship, and European Conference on Management, Leadership, andGovernance (ECMLG).
Lindsay LindstromBio: Lindsay Lindstrom is an Academic Developer Evangelist with Microsoft based in Pennsylvania. In 2005, she graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California. During her time at USC, she worked with ABC and Wells Fargo supporting their web properties. In her current role she educates, excites and empowers students and faculty about technology and its career possibilities, and she loves her job!
Derek LidowBio: Derek is founder, president and CEO of iSuppli Corporation, which was recently acquired by IHS. Derek founded iSuppli in order to serve the critical need for data and analysis that can improve the performance of the global electronics industry value chain. iSuppli accomplishes this by gathering and disseminating unique value-chain data, and by collaborating with its clients to use this information to make smarter business decisions. In addition to leading iSuppli as its President and CEO, Derek is also acknowledged to be one of the world\'s experts on the global electronics industry. His analysis of the electronics value chain is coveted by top executives and key government officials across the globe. Derek\'s comments on the electronics industry have received extensive media coverage and have influenced decisions by key corporations. Prior to founding iSuppli, Derek was CEO of International Rectifier (IR), a leading power semiconductor company. Derek earned a Bachelor of Science degree summa cum laude in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University as a Hertz Foundation Fellow. He is a member of Princeton\'s Engineering School Leadership Council. He is currently the 2011-2012 James Wei Visiting Professor in Entrepreneurship at Princeton University.
Hagos MehreteabBio: Entrepreneur and technologist, Hagos Mehreteab, is the currently the Director of Talent Acquisition at AppNexus, one of today\'s fastest growing and most successful advertising technology companies. Prior to joining AppNexus, he co-founded and ran yOOnew, a derivatives exchange for sports playoff tickets. Hagos holds an MBA from MIT\'s Sloan School of Management, a BSE in Computer Science from Princeton, and loves talking about business, technology, innovation, and scale.
