BDL Accelerate 2015 Ecosystem Partners
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Tag Archives: Circular 331
Karim Atiyeh – Paribus – USA
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Karim is the Founder and CTO of Paribus, a startup that saves shoppers money by automatically claiming price drop and price match guarantees on their behalf.
Karim launched Paribus at TechCrunch Disrupt in May 2015, went through YCombinator this past summer and recently raised a $2.1M seed round from top Silicon Valley VCs including General Catalyst and Greylock.
Prior to launching Paribus, Karim worked on broad are of technical topics from natural language processing to computer vision, advanced hardware design and machine learning. He received his Bachelor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and MS in Computer Science from Harvard University where he was a Siebel Scholar.
Hadi Farnoud – Camva – Tehran
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Hadi studied MSc Information and Business Systems in University of Surrey, UK. He started his first startup, Acamedium, after graduation. Upon slow growth of Acamedium, he started a second startup, Any1 Ltd, an app for airport parking.
Hadi moved back to Iran two years ago. The opportunity in Iran made him decide to stay in Iran. He started a popular weekly meetup for entrepreneurs, Hamfekr. Hamfekr is in 15 cities of Iran and had more than 4000 people attened so far.
In September 2014, Hadi started his Iranian startup, Camva. Camva is a website builder that allows average joe to design a beautiful mobile-ready website without any technical knowledge. It’s an integrated A to Z solution that makes this process very easy to do.
Web & Mobile Hackathon Organizers
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BDL Accelerate 2015 is hosting a Web & Mobile hackathon organized by MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab & WDS.
The participants will be provided with a brief that will consist of a specific theme and the contestants will have to collaboratively brainstorm and work extensively to find a web or mobile solution to a specific issue that is shared with them at the start of the hackathon.
The BDL Accelerate 2015 Web & Mobile Hackathon will gather developers/programmers, designers, and businesspersons, who will be grouped in teams and each team will have 36 hours to develop a working website or app.
The teams will pitch their solutions to a panel of international judges on stage at BDL Accelerate 2015. The winning team will win a $3,000 cash prize, the 1st runner-up team will win a $2,000 cash prize, and the 2nd runner-up team will win a $1,000 cash prize.
Meet the WDS team who will be running the hackathon:
Christophe Tallec
Founder
Christophe is WDS founder and specializes in service design & innovation management. He teaches at ENST Paristech the French Telecommunication National Engineering School and is the author of Customer Experience, a transformation framework for organizations.
Arnaud De La Tour
Partner & Board Member
Arnaud is WDS partner and board member and VP at Hello Tomorrow VP, major competition and community for disruptive technologies. He holds a Phd in Economics and previously spent 2 years transforming organizations in BCG.
Sarah Pedroza
Partner
Sarah is a WDS Partner. She specializes in Entrepreneurship, fin tech and social innovation with change management skills as a former BCG and Bearing Point consultant.
Romain Schalck
Lead Service Design & Service Innovation
Romains is WDS lead service design and service innovation. He currently leads fin tech strategy for WDS banking clients after spending time within the Insurance sector at AXA.
Jovana Kovacevic
Chief Scientific Officer
Jovana is WDS Chief Scientific Officer and holds a PhD in management science with a focus on open innovation. As a system engineer, teacher and researcher, Jovana explores and practice a wide range of innovation methodologies.
Rani Aliahmed – VenVest Capital – Los Angeles
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Rani is currently the managing Partner of VenVest Capital, a secondary market opportunity fund. Through its unique sourcing process, VenVest provides liquidity to founders/insiders while promoting employee retention for private and venture-backed companies.
Rani recently served as CEO of Trend Media, an innovator in the new media and television space, incubating TV shows through an innovative and disruptive development process. Prior to Trend Media, he was director of Craftsman Capital Advisors, providing venture structure, financing and merchant banking services for both entrepreneurs and venture investors in the technology, biotechnology, hospitality, entertainment and fashion industries.
While President of USA Link, a provider of end-to-end mobile solutions and services for the marketing arena, his team launched the first text messaging marketing campaign in the US for P&G. Rani was co-founder and Chief Strategic Officer of Enverta, a B2B platform for the US confectionery industry, where he led the corporate strategy and business development of its e-business software activities.
He received his BA in Economics from Yale University and his MBA in Information Technology and Entrepreneurship from MIT.While at MIT, he worked on some of the first Internet commercial applications and on IT healthcare startups. He is still closely affiliated with the MIT Entrepreneurship Center and part of the the E-Lab founding team.
He has also helped raise over $250 million for different ventures and investment funds and is a seed and angel investor in several tech companies in the US and serves on the boards of Total Beauty Media, Telnic and Blue Marble Materials among others.
He will be speaking at BDL Accelerate 2015 next week!