NYC Data Business Meetup #9

What does the smart money think about trends, opportunities and challenges for big data and data-driven startups? This month we are very fortunate to have a "dream panel" with some of the very best venture capitalists in the field, from both coasts.

In alphabetical order:

Roger Ehrenberg, Founder and Managing Partner, IA Ventures. Roger currently sits on the boards of Datasift, Kinetic Global Markets, Metamarkets, Recorded Future, Simple, and The Trade Desk, and is a Board observer of SavingStar. Formerly, he served on the boards of Alphacet, Buddy Media, Global Bay Mobile Technologies, Magnetic, Selerity andStocktwits. Prior to forming IA Ventures, Roger was an active angel investor through IA Capital Partners, a seed-stage investment firm focused on digital media and financial technology. From 2004 to 2009, Roger seeded 40 companies, including bitly, Buddy Media, Clickable, Invite Media (sold to Google), Magnetic, MyTrade (sold to TD Ameritrade), Solve Media, Stocktwits, TheLadders, TweetDeck (sold to Twitter) and Wallstrip (sold to CBS Interactive). Earlier in his career, Roger served as President and CEO of DB Advisors, Deutsche Bank’s internal hedge fund trading platform, where his 130-person team managed $6 billion in capital across multiple strategies with offices in New York, London and Hong Kong. Before DB Advisors, Roger was Global Co-head of Deutsche Bank’s Strategic Equity Transactions Group. In 2000, Roger’s team wonInstitutional Investor magazine’s “Derivatives Deal of the Year” award. As an Investment Banker and Managing Director at Citibank, Roger held a variety of roles in the Global Derivatives, Capital Markets, Mergers & Acquisitions and Capital Structuring groups.

Ping Li, General Partner, Accel Partners: Ping has been with Accel Partners since 2004. He focuses on early stage and growth software and digital media investments, with specific interest in cloud computing, big data, storage, mobile, and gaming. He is also responsible for Accel's Big Data Fund. Within software, Ping is currently a board member ofCloudera, Code 42, Lookout, Nimble Storage, Nimbula, and ScaleXtreme. Within digital media, he currently serves on the boards of BitTorrent, Blue Jeans Network, Raptr, and YuMe. Ping was also responsible for several Accel investments which have had successful exits including Fusion-io (NASDAQ: FIO),Renren (NASDAQ: RENN), Ludic Labs (Groupon),Mochi Media (Shanda), Reactivity (Cisco), and Versly(Cisco). Ping has over 16 years of experience as a technology investor and operating executive in helping build market leading technology companies and product lines. Prior to Accel, Ping worked at Juniper Networks as a Senior Product Line Manager for their flagship M-series router products, as well as Director of Corporate Development. He also served as a strategy consultant for McKinsey & Company, advising technology clients in their growth strategies. In 2012, Ping was named to the Forbes Midas List of Top Tech Investors and Business Insider’s 50 Most Powerful People In Enterprise Tech. Ping has appeared on CNBC’s Investing in the Cloud and Tech Titans vs. Start-ups, as well as Bloomberg TV.

Matt Ocko, Co-Founder and Partner, Data Collective. Matt has nearly three decades of experience as a technology entrepreneur, operating executive and venture capitalist, with over 20 patents granted or pending in areas as diverse as hardware systems and social games. He still reads C++ code but admits to occasional struggles with Erlang. During his venture capital tenure, he has invested in and/or helped grow a variety of companies including XenSource (CTRX), Zynga (ZNGA), Impermium, Verisign (VRSN), Facebook (FB), Virtuata (CSCO), Akimbi Systems (VMW), Cotendo (AKAM), Tango.me, MetaWeb (GOOG), FlashSoft (SNDK), DataMirror (IBM), UltraDNS (NSR), Kenshoo, Metamarkets, Fortinet (FTNT), SupportSoft (SPRT), Alantro (TXN), CouchBase, Spool (FB), BranchOut, On-Ramp Wireless, and many others.

UPDATE:

1. Unfortunately, Mike Abbott, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers had a family health issue and will no longer participate in this panel.

2. Before the VC panel, we will have two great "spotlight" company presentations:

Jeff Carr, COO, Precog

Max Yankelevich, co-founder, Crowd Computing Systems