Tech in Motion: Startup to Success

Welcome to our first Tech in Motion meetup of 2014! Tech in Motion San Francisco will be hosting our first ever panel discussion where we will be joined by a range of experts in the tech industry. Our panelists will share their secrets to success, including the ups and downs of all aspects of the business.

We are very happy welcome Perri Blake Gorman (http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=3441233&locale=en_US&trk=tyah&trkInfo=tas%3Aperr%2Cidx%3A2-1-2) back to Tech in Motion SF as our moderator for this panel. Founder & CEO of @archively. Passionate about all things people, process & productivity. Former Wall St Headhunter. #ProudMama of @unroll.me.

Meet our Panelists:

Poornima Vijayashanker (http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=5560343&authType=OUT_OF_NETWORK&authToken=0vKz&locale=en_US&srchid=1474091911389310164215&srchindex=7&srchtotal=6980&trk=vsrp_people_res_name&trkInfo=VSRPsearchId%3A1474091911389310164215%2CVSRPtargetId%3A5560343%2CVSRPcmpt%3Aprimary) is a software engineer, entrepreneur, speaker, blogger, and lecturer. After graduating from Duke University with degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer science she moved out to Silicon Valley to begin her career as an R&D Engineer. After a couple years she was lured into startup land. Her first startup was Mint.com (http://mint.com/), where she was the founding engineer. After Mint's acquisition by Intuit for $170M, at the end of 2009, she transitioned from being a founding engineer to a founder in 2010.

Currently she is the Founder of two startups: BizeeBee (http://bizeebee.com/) and Femgineer (http://femgineer.com/). BizeeBee offers an online membership management solution for fitness businesses. While Femgineer provides education services to tech professionals and tech entrepreneurs. Poornima was most recently invited to lecture at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering. When she's not running companies, building products, and speaking she enjoys practicing Bikram yoga, cooking, and traveling around the world.

Scott Bedard (http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=4159007&locale=en_US&trk=tyah&trkInfo=tas%3Ascott%20bed%2Cidx%3A1-1-1)

After several startups, Scott joined CNET in 2003 to become the VP of engineering for the Games and Entertainment group which later led him to Yahoo! to do more of the same. In 2008 along with Vince Broady and Ankarino Lara they formed thisMoment, Inc. (https://www.thismoment.com/) where Scott has held the CTO role. Scott has reviewed thousands of resumes and interviewed hundreds of engineers over the years.

Thismoment provides a social content management platform that helps companies manage their digital presence across all channels. Companies such as Coca Cola, AT&T, and Sony Pictures can use Thismoment’s platform to create digital campaigns with a consistent message across brand sites, YouTube, Facebook, and mobile devices. Because traffic fluctuates with customer campaigns, Thismoment has to be able scale to meet unexpected traffic demand. By relying on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Thismoment can scale in seconds to handle spikes in traffic while taking advantage of Reserve and Spot Instances to control costs.

Jakob Storm (http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=4724595&locale=en_US&trk=tyah&trkInfo=tas%3Ajakob%2Cidx%3A3-1-7)

Jakob is currently the COO at CrowdCurity (https://www.crowdcurity.com/). Jakob has a diverse background in Masterdata managment, Supply chain management and Business. In 2013 Jakob took the leap and started CrowdCurity together with three other Danish guys. CrowdCurity is a company doing crowdsourced security testing.

The four partners started bootstrapping in Buenos Aires, building the platform and starting the business. After three months in Argentina, having built a solid MVP and on boarded the first paying customers, the team joined San Mateo based accelerator Boost.vc. Jakob has a bachelor’s degree in Engineering and masters in Business. In his scarce free time he is passionate about soccer, mountain biking and outdoors life.

We will be hosting this meetup at StartupHouse in SoMa SF. StartupHouse offers a coworking space for entrepreneurs and their teams and are located at 934 Howard St. in San Francisco (intersection of Mary Street shared with TechShop and Tempest Bar). They have 50 workstations that you can work from on the ground floor. On the upper levels you'll be able to use the open-plan workspace for more industrial creative uses,which don't make sense in a traditional office environment. They also partner with incubators and accelerators bringing entrepreneurs to San Francisco.

Kieran Farr (http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=8411147&locale=en_US&trk=tyah2&trkInfo=tas%3Akieran%20farr%2Cidx%3A1-1-1)

Kieran is the CEO and Founder of Vidcaster (http://www.vidcaster.com/), the market-leading video training and marketing platform with global clients such as VMware, MIT and Dell. Since its launch in 2011, the Vidcaster platform has driven measurable training, sales, marketing and compliance objectives for hundreds of clients.

Kieran's background and work merges video and technology to reach as many people as possible. His career began before he even graduated from high school as a daily producer of a live sports TV program for his high school’s top ranked basketball team. Kieran went on to raise $500k while an undergrad at Indiana University to create a completely student-run television station that still thrives today. After graduation he moved to San Francisco to work at Omnicom’s OMD Group as a media buyer, sharpening his analytical and business skills to help him found VidSF, a partnership with SF Chronicle and other SF-based media groups to create a local online video destination property. The core technology for this product evolved to become Vidcaster. Kieran is active in the startup community serving as a mentor to media startups through 500 Startups and Matter VC.

If you would like to get involved in sponsoring a Tech in Motion event feel free to reach out to Ciara or Nicole!