I was recently invited by my classmate and friend Yoni Argaman (new co-president of the Stern entrepreneurship club) to present my startup SkillSlate at the inaugural Stern Innovates event. I was humbled to have been asked, and am very excited to formally unveil the first iteration of SkillSlate to the NYU community. I’ll be joined by my colleague Bartek Ringwelski who is the co-founder and CEO of SkillSlate.
The idea of Stern Innovates is to provide exciting NYU affiliated startups with a venue to present and receive feedback on their ventures from members of the Stern community as well as from venture capitalists, lawyers and other entrepreneurs that will be in the audience. Each event will also feature a successful entrepreneur that will share his story with the audience. Following the event, we will continue for post-event drinks at a nearby reserved venue (TBD soon). I look forward to the event, more details are below.
4:45 – 6:45PM, Wednesday, April 14th, KMC 5-50
Guest Speaker: Itzik Ben-Bassat, former VP at Blizzard Entertainment (World of Warcraft) and the current Founder and CEO of GameGround, a local venture backed gaming start-up will review current business models in the gaming industry.
Pitching Early Stage Ventures:
1. Brian Rothenberg, SkillSlate
SkillSlate connects consumers with trusted individual service providers who charge a fraction of the price of established companies. SkillSlate empowers the 16mm+ individual service providers in the US to market their services directly to consumers. A SkillSlate profile provides detailed professional and personal information including pictures, fees, and reviews, all with the aim of not only showing what the person does, but who the person is. SkillSlate puts these profiles together into a searchable, sortable directory where consumers can find service providers that fit their specific needs.
2. Dan Leahy and Ben McKean, VillageVines
VillageVines provides a private marketplace where upscale service businesses discount specific hours when they have excess capacity. VillageVines provide businesses with a demand management tool to improve their utilization and enable consumers to book discounted appointments with high-end restaurants, clubs, spas, salons and events. Since discounts on VillageVines are only visible to VillageVines members and cannot be listed by search engines, businesses can discreetly tier their pricing structures to profitably serve more customers without cheapening their brands to the general public.
3. Adi Kalderon, PolySolar
PolySolar is a startup company based on an innovative technology in the solar energy field of Organic Photovoltaics (OPV). Developed at the Organic Electronics Lab at Polytechnic Institute of NYU by Professor Kalle Levon and Eduard Nasibulyn Ph.D., our OPV solar cells are polymer based and manufactured using electrochemistry techniques. This unique combination has enabled PolySolar to drastically reduce the overall cost and offer a solar energy source that is efficient, cost-effective, flexible, transparent and lightweight that can operate in low-light intensity and be applied to any shape or surface. With these competitive advantages, PolySolar’s OPV technology is targeted for the portable electronics market to offer a sustainable energy solution. The company’s OPV solar cells will allow devices, such as cell-phones and laptops, to recharge without electricity from grid power
Please RSVP to this event as seating is limited!
