LDV Community Meets Again in Person to Help Each Other Succeed: September NYC Edition
/Visual technologies leveraging computer vision, machine learning and artificial intelligence are revolutionizing how humans communicate and do business. Evan Nisselson founded LDV Capital in 2012 with a thesis of investing in people building businesses powered by visual technologies. 10 years ago, some said such a thesis for a venture fund was “cute, niche, and science fiction” but now it’s clear to everyone: AI-powered innovations are analyzing visual data across all sectors and our visual technology market continues to exponentially grow.
Our unique LDV Capital platform includes LDV Community events, our annual LDV Vision Summit, LDV Insights reports and an extensive expert network. We host our LDV Community Dinners & Happy Hours to bring together our community. At these events, you can meet the world’s brightest technology innovators, serial entrepreneurs and deep tech technologists, researchers and investors to discuss what's happening today, and what, most importantly, will happen tomorrow.
After two years of virtual meetings, we are thrilled to start hosting invite-only LDV Community events in person again! Check out a few photographs from our latest “Happy Hour” in NYC. The photographs are by Robert Wright.
Greg Hochmuth, an artist and engineer whose latest projects you can find on the website, “art plus/minus data”. He was the 2nd Engineer at Instagram. Prior to that, he worked at Microsoft and Google. Most recently, he built Friends, an iPhone app for sharing with close friends, and Jukebox, an iPhone app for discovering music. In 2016, he gave a keynote speech at our annual LDV Vision Summit, “Early engineer at Instagram thrives on mixing data and art to visually communicate”.
Hilary Mason, Co-Founder at Hidden Door, a game technology studio building the first narrative AI — a platform that transforms any work of fiction into an infinite social roleplaying experience, bringing together players, authors and other creators. Hilary is also a co-founder of hackNY, a non-profit organization that mentors and federates the next generation of engineering talent for New York's creative technology community.
Brian Cohen, Chairman Of The Science Literacy Foundation, an angel investor, mentor, and author of “What Every Angel Investor Wants You to Know: An Insider Reveals How to Get Smart Funding for Your Billion Dollar Idea”. He has invested over $100 million into more than 100 early-stage startups. Brian was the first investor in Pinterest and numerous other industry-leading technology companies. He has made significant contributions in helping to grow our NYC tech ecosystem.
Lauren Whitehead, VP of Finance & Growth at Ezra, a cancer screening company that offers full body MRI scans designed to find cancer earlier, making it easier to beat. Their scans are for healthy, asymptomatic individuals looking to be proactive about their health with a look inside their body.
(L-R) Dawn Barber, co-founder at NY Tech Meetup, speaking with Alex Tryon, founder and principal at Extra Yarn, a growth & strategy consulting firm. Alex is currently exploring ideas for her next company and spending time with early-stage founders who are building world-changing ideas.
(L-R) Seth Haberman, CEO at Sense Education, speaking with Brian Cohen. Seth has previously built and sold three companies – most recently Visible World, a developer of viewer-customized television advertising, which was acquired by Comcast in 2015. Seth left his position as senior vice president at Comcast to join Sense.
(L-R) Kat Kolambet-Lopez, Director of Content & Marketing at LDV Capital, speaking with Hannah Waldman, an Associate at Goodwin law firm which is a long-time supporter of the LDV platform initiatives.
Don Buckley, Co-Head of Lullaboo Studios – a company dedicated to the development of AI-based products designed to support families in fostering healthy habits through magical experiences. Previously, Don was a CMO at Showtime and Warner Bros. Don is an award-winning creative executive specializing in innovative and breakthrough marketing, working in the Entertainment and Digital industries with some of the most iconic brands in entertainment.
(L-R) Miruna Macri, Partner & Creative Director at Lateral Inc., and Ash Cleary, Investment analyst with us at LDV Capital.
Giulia Imperatrice, Partner at WEVE Acceleration, a startup accelerator connecting international startups with US corporations.
(L-R) Olya Evanitsky, Director of Product at Syndio Solutions, a company that develops the world's best, and socially conscious technological solutions for today's biggest workplace challenges; Tom Phillips is a serial entrepreneur and presently advising many startups; Evan Nisselson, Founder and General Partner at LDV Capital, the only venture capital firm with a thesis of investing early in deep technical people building businesses powered by visual technology.
(L-R) Silvio Galea, COO at Norbert Health – an LDV portfolio company that builds the world’s first ambient health scanner that can measure vital signs for anyone within a 6 ft range, with Ralph Quintero, Head of Community & Marketing at CryptoLeague, Founder of Daily Ralpha newsletter about NFTs and the future of web3.
Scott Carleton, Founder at Extra Yarn. Previously, he was Site Lead of Asana’s NYC office, and the VP of Technology at Andela, empowering engineering talent across Africa. Scott co-founded Artsicle, a global community of visual artists now featuring over 6000 creators in 100 countries.
Andy Parsons, Sr. Director of Content Authenticity Initiative at Adobe, Co-Organizer of The New York CTO Club, LDV Expert and advisor to entrepreneurs and startups. We had the privilege to have Andy speak at our Annual LDV Vision Summit back in 2015. Last year, Andy was one of the experts we spoke to while conducting our annual research – download our 2021 LDV Insights report, “Content & the Metaverse are Powered by Visual Tech” to learn more about the process of authentication of visual content, automated content moderation and so much more!
(L-R) Lauren Whitehead, COO at Ezra, Sasha Bernier, Managing Director at Cheltenham Enterprises and Managing Partner at Hestia Holdings LLC, and Jennifer Iuliano, Business Development Manager at Ezra.
Gagan Narula, Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Earkick, an LDV portfolio company building the world’s first data-driven real-time mental health tracker. Read more details in this article.
(L-R) Emily Becher, recently was SVP Managing Director Head of Samsung Next Global, speaking with Sim Blaustein, Partner at BDMI (Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments).
Avi Muchnick, Founder at BurnerPage. Previously, he co-founded Aviary which he sold to Adobe, then he became Chief Product Officer at Shapeways and then Chief Product Officer at Shutterstock.
(L-R) Rob Spectre, a technologist, Founder of childsafe.ai, the artificial intelligence platform protecting kids from predators online and previously VP Developer Evangelist at Twilio. At our 4th Annual LDV Vision Summit, he shared wins and failures as a servant leader building developer go-to-market strategies from the ground up for companies like Twilio and Boxee. Andres Glusman, Cofounder and CEO at DoWhatWorks, a startup helping growth, marketing, and product teams accelerate their conversion rates. Previously, Andres helped launch Meetup and grow it to a successful exit to WeWork. Ryan Benmalek, co-founder & CEO at a stealth startup. In 2018, Ryan took part in the Entrepreneurial Computer Vision Challenge [ECVC] at our Annual LDV Vision Summit, where he presented Neural Painter, a method to design & prototype things by describing them.
(L-R) Nadia Eslami, Global VP of Sales at Synthesia, an LDV portfolio company that builds an AI-driven video production platform; Maddie Kroll, Director of Sales & Strategic Accounts, North America at Synthesia. Learn more about Synthesia in our article, “Synthesia exponentially scales video production globally” – Synthesia is one of the top 10 Europe’s next unicorns.
(L-R) Lauren Whitehead, Head of Finance & Growth at Ezra; Kevin Cuartas, Customer Success Lead at Ezra; Jennifer Iuliano, Business Development Manager at Ezra; Ana Krsmanovic, SEO Content Manager at Ezra. Ezra is an LDV Capital portfolio company and you can read more in this article.
Early detection is cancer’s greatest weakness. For attendees of our Happy Hour event and for you reading this post, we are happy to share the promo code that grants $150 OFF your Ezra scan: LDV150. Book your scan in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, or Las Vegas.
Wendy Foo, Senior Director of Capital Formation at Newlab, a unique community of over 800 engineers, entrepreneurs, and inventors applying transformative technology to solve the world’s biggest challenges. With New Lab, we at LDV Capital are co-investors in Norbert Health, a visual tech startup developing contactless vital sign scanning technology. New Lab became one of the first facilities to test Norbert Health’s devices back in 2020, amid the pandemic – see more details in the article, “Making Newlab safe to work”.
(L-R) Andrew Cohen, a serial entrepreneur, SVP and Head of Product Development at AT&T. Previously, he led product IoT product and engineering group at Samsung, was Director and General Manager of Kindle Direct Publishing at Amazon, SVP/GM at bit.ly, and Director of Search & Navigation at AOL. Peter Stern, CEO of LDV portfolio company Voyant Photonics. Peter has spent the last 25 years creating and growing companies in a wide variety of sectors spanning from financial services to social media, and now LiDar chips. He built and served as CTO for Datek Online until its multi-billion dollar merger with another brokerage firm, founded and sold Zenbe to Facebook, and was the first CEO of bit.ly. Andrew Cleland, Enterprise software and data investor, currently transitioning from his role of Managing Director at Comcast Ventures. In his portfolio, he has such companies as Enigma, FortressIQ, Data + Math, Hive, Juganu, Lytics, Fanduel, and SundaySky.
(L-R) Tristan Louis, a serial entrepreneur, is now the President and CEO of Casebook PBC, creators of the patented award-winning Casebook Human Services platform. Esther Dyson, executive founder of Wellville, an investor, journalist, author, businesswoman, commentator, and philanthropist. Evan Nisselson, Founder and General Partner at LDV Capital.
Emi Gal, Co-founder & CEO at Ezra, a startup transforming early cancer screening using full-body MRI scans. Previously, Emi co-founded Brainient, a startup increasing the engagement and performance of online video adverts by making them more personalized and interactive. Branient was acquired by Teads and rebranded as Teads Studio.
(L-R) Nadia Eslami, Global VP of Sales at Synthesia, Andrew Cleland, Enterprise software and data investor, Brian Cohen, Chairman Of The Science Literacy Foundation, an angel investor and mentor.
(L-R) Lauren Whitehead, VP of Finance & Growth at Ezra, Connor Fraser, Enterprise Risk Lead at Parametrix, Neta Rozy, Co-founder & CTO at Parametrix, Emy Gal, Co-founder & CEO at Ezra.
