Alex Cohen, InSITE Founder and GC and CCO for On Deck Capital
Andrew Moss, InSITE Alumni and Founder of BuyWithMe
Ben Lilienthal, InSITE Alumni and Founder of Vapps
Bronson Lingamfelter, InSITE Alumni and Associate at Rose Tech Ventures
Dan Lifton, InSITE Board and COO at Quality of Life Labs
David Pashman, Legal Team Leader at Meetup
Dawn Barber, InSITE Board and Founder of NY Tech Meetup
Josh Spodek, InSITE Alumni and Founder of Submedia
Karl Alomar, InSITE Past President and CEO at China Export Finance
Mac Lipscomb, InSITE Board and Operating Partner at InSITE Sponsor RRE Ventures
Mark Davis, InSITE Alumni and Associate at DJF Gotham Ventures
Matt McCooe, InSITE Alumni and Managing Partner at Chart Venture Partners
Molly Siems, InSITE Alumni and Account Manager at Fly Communications
Pete Karlen, InSITE Board and VP at EarthWater Global
Robyn Soto, InSITE Board and Director at Tishman Speyer
Sacha Ross, Associate at InSITE Sponsor Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Vic Singh, InSITE Alumni and Co-Founder of NearVerse
Vinay Jain, InSITE Board and Associate at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom
Zubin Canteenwalla, InSITE Alumni and Associate at NGEN Partners

InSITE presented several special awards:

Fellow Achievement Award: Shirley Xu
For special service as a first year InSITE Fellow, including leading our first VCAP Special Project Team and volunteering to serve as Special VP for Alumni Companies to survey their funding success, which showed that InSITE Companies had raised more than $215M in venture financing since 2000.

Alumni Achievement Award: Andrew Moss
For extraordinary accomplishments in entrepreneurship since graduating from InSITE (and NYU Law in 2001), particularly founding BuyWithMe in 2009 and raising a $5.5M Series A round.

First Annual Inductee into the InSITE Hall of Fame: Paul Tumpowsky
For guiding InSITE through 10 highly successful years as Chairman of the Board including developing the organization’s core program and relationships with sponsors, startups and supporters throughout the NYC venture community.

A full list of InSITE honors is available here.

Current InSITE Fellows and Board Members elected ten new executives to run the organization in 2010 – 2011 and two out-going Fellows to serve as Young Alumni Board Members:

Lastly, InSITE thanks the outgoing Class of 2010:

Christian DiCarlo, Columbia MBA
Duncan Welstead, Columbia MBA
Geetika Agrawal, NYU MBA
Godfrey Powell, Jr., NYU MBA
Haley Boruszak, NYU MBA
Jane Kang, NYU JD
Jeff Hui, Columbia MBA (who will stay on with InSITE as a Young Alumni Board Member)
Jennifer Gootman, NYU MBA
Justin Heyman, Columbia MBA
Kesha Cash, Columbia MBA
Max Eckstein, Columbia JD
Jane Kang, NYU JD
Ricky Opaterny, NYU MBA
Rob Schneider, Columbia MBA
Roy Simkhay, Columbia MBA
Ryan Orton, Columbia MBA
Shawn Khazzam, NYU MBA
Tony Leotti, NYU JD/MBA
Vinay Ganti, NYU JD/MBA

– Rich Powell, NYU JD ’10, signing off as 2009-2010 President; thanking all the past Execs, Team Leaders, Alumni and Supporters for another great year; and wishing the best of luck to the stellar 2010-2011 Execs

As I’m sure anyone who has met him will quickly attest, Jason is a profoundly nice guy, and was willing to speak with us on a wide range of topics from his time in a law firm to founding a remarkable company to turning down his first exit opportunity.

Jason first discussed his background and how starting out working at a law firm and seeing the inefficiencies there inspired him to write the business plan for Seamlessweb:

Jason next discussed leaving the law and raising his first friends and family, and later institutional, rounds of funding, as well as about the early technical challenges of building a scalable enterprise platform for the ordering system:

Jason then described growing and expanding the business to the consumer side, and its 2006 sale to Aramark, as well as his recent transition from CEO to his new job as E-I-R at Bessemer Venture Partners:

Jason later went onto discuss the process of scoping a business model as an entrepreneur as opposed to as an investor, as well as the sometimes delicate interpersonal issues that arise when a group of friends starts a business together:

The rest of the talk is available at InSITE’s YouTube Channel.

Jason then joined us for drinks at InSITE’s local watering hole, Cassidy’s:

— Rich Powell, President 2009-2010

This semester’s event was held on Tuesday, February 25, at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. We tried a different format this time: in the past we’ve had all of the current companies attend. Alumni would mill around from room to room, listening to pitches and giving on-the-spot feedback. This format gave the entrepreneurs the benefit of a rapid-fire set of reactions from multiple viewpoints and what was essentially a real-time dress rehearsal for their VC pitches. To experiment with a different structure this semester, however, we limited the event to the three Tuesday teams (Bandvest, Klickable, and ProtEquity), and encouraged our guests to narrow their focus to one or two of the teams.

Despite some seriously inclement weather, a few hardy alumni were undeterred, and a number of InSITE execs, senior fellows, and Wednesday team members came out as well.

Mike Kasdan (2001 alum), an intellectual property lawyer at Amster, Rothstein & Ebenstein, joined the Klickable team, along with Wednesday team members Ben Zhuk and Sean Weinstock. Senior fellows and execs sat in as well: Rob Schneider, Katherine Chung, and me (Tim Cohan).

Mike was kind enough to give us his thoughts on the event from the alumni perspective: “It was a great opportunity to reconnect and brainstorm with the team to help refine the Klickable pitch. It was also a great reminder of what I had loved about InSITE as a student participant – working with smart, motivated people, who bring a variety of skill-sets and perspectives to the table, to assist real entrepreneurs to build cutting edge businesses.” Team leader Mike Dibenedetto, who kept the meeting focused and moving along, was pleased to have Mike’s input; he says generally that the alumni feedback was “invaluable…it gave us a chance to hear what was working and what wasn’t from people who had deep experience with pitching entrepreneurial ventures.”

Molly Siems (InSITE 2007) brought her media interests and expertise to Bandvest, a company she sees as “super promising;” according to Kat Chung, Molly’s contributions garnered rave reviews among the team. “We heart Molly” was apparently the consensus. Of course, the benefits of reaching out to alumni clearly run both ways; Molly says that she’s “really grateful to have such an awesome network of people to bounce ideas off of and definitely get as much as I give.” Special thanks also to Marisa Tricarico (a Wednesday team member who just can’t stay away from an InSITE event), who lent her feedback to the Bandvest team as well. Following up with his thoughts on the event, team leader Dan Harman notes that Marisa and Molly’s input and suggestions were “invaluable.”

Along with alum Sam Sagalnik, InSITE Chairman Paul Tumpowsky lent his input to the ProtEquity, which he describes as “a very interesting company… a true financial technology firm, an ideal fit for the New York City venture ecosystem.” Paul adds that he’s confident that with the assistance of the InSITE team he saw in action, “ProtEquity will be able to articulate its unique and valuable solution in a competitive and ever-changing space.”

The happy hour at Cassidy’s afterward was lively as usual, and gave us all a chance to relax and connect with the alumni in a more informal setting. We were pleased to see Vinay Patel and Geoff Reed (both InSITE 2009) made it out to have a drink and meet some of the new fellows as well.

Thanks again to the alumni and senior fellows that braved a cold, wet evening to join us. If any of those reading this have more thoughts on how it went, ideas for future alumni advising events, or people I’ve forgotten to note or thank, please post them here or email me at vp.internal@insiteny.org.

– Tim Cohan, VP Internal 2009-2010

Jon Cooper, NYU MBA

Michael DiBenedetto, Columbia MBA

Seth Goldman, NYU MBA

Sharon Goswami, NYU JD

Daniel Harman, Columbia MBA

Omar Haroun, Columbia JD

Colleen Honigsberg, Columbia JD

Nick Hurley, NYU MBA

Camila Jimenez Villa, NYU MBA/MFA

Christopher Johnson, Columbia MBA

Mike Katz, Columbia MBA

Stephanie Palmeri, Columbia MBA

Greg Pennington, Columbia MBA

Brian Rothenberg, NYU MBA

Alex Shellhammer, NYU MBA

Maria Testani, Columbia MBA

Marisa Tricarico, NYU MBA

Shirley Xu, Columbia MBA

Bios for our new Fellows are available here.