Mark Suster, GRP: ‘The Cocktail Party Pitch’

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Mark Suster is a partner at GRP Partners. Mark was Vice President, Product Management at Salesforce.com following its acquisition of Koral, where Mark was Founder and CEO. Prior to Koral, Mark was Founder and CEO of BuildOnline, the largest independent global content collaboration company focused on the engineering and construction sectors, which was acquired by SWORD Group. Earlier in his career, Mark spent nearly ten years working for Accenture in Europe, Japan and the U.S. Mark received a BA in Economics from the University of California, San Diego, and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Mark led the investment in Factual and currently sits on the Boards of the following companies in GRP’s portfolio: Ad.ly, Awe.sm, Burstly, Factual, GumGum, Pose and Ring Revenue.

Mark gave some fabulous advice to entrepreneurs about pitching to venture capitalists. ‘Don’t mouse around!’

Tagged asEntrepreneur entrepreneurs Funding GRP GRP Partners GumGum Investment Mark Mark Suster pitch San Diego startups University of Chicago venture capital

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Pemo Theodore

Pemo Theodore is a Media Publisher & Event Producer and a great people connector.. She is Founder/CEO Silicon Valley TV which has served the San Francisco Bay Area for 11 years! She has produced Silicon Valley Events for Investors & Startups for 9 years. Pemo loves to video interview venture capitalists & founders to engage the human behind the success stories.. She has been Executive Producer of FinTech Silicon Valley for 5 years, organizing twice monthly FinTech talks & panels in San Francisco & Palo Alto. She believes in learning through a great discussion with experts in the domains. Pemo has a talent to bring the right people together and is an incredible networker. Pemo's events have been seen as supporting Venture Capitalists & Angels in sourcing great deal flow from startups who attend her events. Many founders have received funding through meeting investors at her events. Her favored medium is audio & visual media and she has built up a great body of work of podcasts & videos of panels & interviews in Silicon Valley.startup ecosystem.

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FinTech Silicon Valley

FinTech Silicon Valley podcasts are focused on educating and highlighting FinTech in Silicon Valley to the global community both through video and audio. These podcasts are short and fun, one on one interviews by FinTech Silicon Valley journalists with experts and investors on how they are contributing to the community and what their perspective is on the future of FinTech.

Alex Marquez launched Experian Ventures in 2016 and is currently the Global Managing Director and a member of Experian’s Investment Committee. As a leading global information services company, providing data and analytical tools to our clients around the world, we invest in data/analytics, information security, healthcare, automotive and the broader financial services ecosystem. We have invested more than $225m across the globe since inception. Alex was Managing Director with USAA’s Corporate Development Group and a member of USAA’s Executive Management team where he built USAA Ventures into one of the most active FinTech CVC after his first year. Alex created USAA’s Blockchain Working Group and investment thesis in blockchain [according to CBInsights, USAA was recognized as the first bank/insurance company to invest in blockchain technologies] and was responsible for the group investment in Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN), Saffron (acq by Intel), and CafeX, ExpectLabs (acq by Cisco), while establishing USAA’s venture brand in Silicon Valley. Alex was a Director with Intel Capital, the world’s largest corporate venture group having invested over $14B globally. In addition, Alex was co-founder and CEO of AppScotch, which brought transparency to paid mobile advertising. AppScotch was acquired by AppAnnie in 2016. Alex received his BS Electrical Engineering with emphasis in Semi-Conductor Physics from UNLV and received his MBA from Purdue University.