February Growth Hacker Meetup (with Cezary Pietrzak from Appboy)

February's meetup will feature a presentation from Cezary Pietrzak, Director of Marketing at AppBoy. We'll go over Cezary's experiences in startup marketing, and go into depth into AppBoy's product which focuses on driving customer acquisition and engagement for mobile apps.

Join us to network and learn from fellow growth hackers, marketers and technologists in New York City. This is a quickly changing space, and only by sharing our insights can we truly keep up the pace of change with early-stage marketing.

Featured Speaker

Cezary Pietrzak, Director of Marketing, Appboy (http://appboy.com)

http://photos4.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/7/0/b/e/event_193948862.jpegCezary Pietrzak is a tech entrepreneur, creative marketer and growth strategist. He currently runs marketing at Appboy (http://appboy.com), a customer engagement platform for mobile apps. Previously, Cezary co-founded and led business development at Wanderfly, the travel discovery site acquired by TripAdvisor in October 2012, started a digital marketing consultancy and oversaw marketing at tech incubator QLabs.

Cezary’s career began as a brand strategist at Young & Rubicam, where he advised Fortune 500 companies like LG, Bacardi, Campbell's and NHL. A graduate of the Wharton School, Cezary is active in the New York tech community and writes a startup marketing blog at cezary.co (http://www.cezary.co/)

Special Guests

Chuck Stormon, StartFast Venture Accelerator (http://startfast.net)

http://photos4.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/b/3/3/0/event_203565872.jpegChuck Stormon, Managing Director of the StartFast Venture Accelerator (http://startfast.net/), is a serial entrepreneur with $100 million in exits to date, CEO of Attend LLC and an angel investor in 19 startups to date. Chuck holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University and has taught the popular Growth Hacking class at General Assembly in both New York and Boston. He is author of StartFast! - accelerate your software, web or mobile venture (http://www.amazon.com/Start-Fast-accelerate-software-internet/dp/1468050753) and Growth Hacking - a practitioner's guide to lean marketing (to be published in March 2013).

StartFast Venture Accelerator is a mentor driven, private capital backed program modeled after the highly successful TechStars accelerator founded in Boulder, CO. We invest in high-­potential startup teams from around the world and bring them to Syracuse, NY for an intensive 100-day program. Serial entrepreneurs and investors Nasir Ali and Chuck Stormon lead the StartFast program. StartFast investors include members of the Seed Capital Fund of CNY, Cayuga Venture Fund, and other Upstate angel investors. StartFast is a member of theGlobal Accelerator Network, a global consortium of the best mentor-­driven independently owned and operated start-­‐up accelerator programs. More information is available at http://startfast.net (http://startfast.net/).

Bill Gordon, Lean Launch Ventures (http://www.LLVentures.co)

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/b/c/6/8/event_203568232.jpegBill Gordon worked under Nobel Laureate James Watson, and went to work on the buy side for several asset management firms before founding, managing and later selling interest in a broadband business in 4 countries of Europe. That adventure helped fund and run a biotech company where Bill won a Gates Grand Challenge Exploration Grant for work on a novel approach to a creating a malaria vaccine. Currently Bill enjoys being an angel investor and advisor to many tech startups. It was also a great experience to have served on the PopTech Board of Directors; a conference, an accelerator and lab for social innovation.

Andy Moss, Lean Launch Ventures (http://www.LLVentures.co)

http://photos3.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/d/d/6/event_203583542.jpegAndy started his career as a programmer and later launched and managed a diverse variety of businesses within Microsoft including consulting, development tools, and digital media. Early on at MS Andy co-authored a software development methodology and built an international network of training centers. After leaving Microsoft, Andy had the bug to launch my own startup, and have advised and invested in other startups as both an angel and was a limited partner in a large NYC VC fund for many years.

Lean Launch Ventures is looking for startup founders who recognize the benefit of immersion in a Lean program, strong mentoring, guidance defining/building/refining an MVP and a stipend. The deadline to apply is February 15th. The curriculum is based on the Lean LaunchPad created by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf. Bob is also an LLV advisor. The program is run as a flipped-class room in a workshop like format combined with a deep mentoring pool. The explicit goal for the course is to develop a minimum viable product (MVP) ready for customer validation. The program kickoffs early March and runs for 12 weeks, ending with a Demo Day for investors. LLV offers stipends of $20 to $25K for companies that successfully complete defined milestones. For general information about Lean launch Ventures visit: http://www.LLVentures.co (http://www.llventures.co/).

Agenda:

6:45 - 7:00 PM Networking (drinks will be provided)

7:00 - 8:30 PM Growth Presentation and Discussion

8:30 - 9:00 PM Networking and drinks

Location:

NYU Stern School of Business

44 West 4th St. Room 11-75

New York, NY

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Click here (http://clicktotweet.com/UIb1A) to Tweet: "I'm going to the NY Grow Hack Meetup on 2/13: http://goo.gl/qIDra @growhack @appboy" and let us know at hello@growhack.com and we'll refund the cost to attend.

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Twitter: @growhack

Hashtag: #growhack

If you have a cool growth hack or know someone who's been a part of one, send a quick note over to conrad.wadowski@gmail.com or mattan.griffel@gmail.com. Thanks!