FFL Panel Discussion: Lessons Learned From Building A Startup

 Agenda

Dinner 6:30-7pm
Panel Discussion 7-8pm
Networking 8-8:30pm

Moderator

Mendel Chuang is the Co-Founder and CEO of Smoopa, a Palo Alto-based start-up with a free price comparison app for your smartphone that lets you join forces with other shoppers to find and share good prices. He graduated from MIT with two degrees and joined Google pre-IPO. During his 5 years at Google, he worked on a variety of projects including Google Desktop, Toolbar, Blogger, AdWords, and AdSense, where he won the prestigious Google Founders Award. 

Panelists

Jake Quist is the Co-Founder and CEO of Zillabyte.  Zillabyte is a YCombinator backed startup that identifies sales & marketing opportunities for B2B SAAS companies.  Jake is a software engineer by training and an evangelist by nature.  Jake began his career in high performance computing as a team leader in the DARPA Urban Challenge, making vehicles drive autonomously.  Jake is also the recipient of Google's prestigious EMG Award, as well as the "Most Googley Person Award."   When Jake is not working on his startup, you might find him painting, sleeping, or trying to convince people to run a triathlon with him. 

Ankur Pansari is the Co-Founder and CEO of Artillery, a leading HTML5 gaming technology startup founded by early Google and Facebook engineers.  They have raised $2.5m in funding from First Round Capital, Signia Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and others.

Paul Montoy-Wilson is the Co-Founder of ThumbsUp Labs.  We are transforming the way people use their smartphones by detecting the user's context (e.g. @ the Gym) and showing the user what the phone can do for them (e.g Running Coach - Nike +, Play Music - Pandora).  Previously, Paul was the Product Manager for Android Market where he launched the Android Market Website and the new Phone App.  Paul graduated from Stanford EE BS / MS&E MS.

Ainsley Braun is the Co-Founder of Tinfoil Security, a FFL company trying to make security simpler. Braun serves as the company’s CEO. Previously, she did UI/UX design for the U.S. Army while working as a security and defense consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton. She earned a B.S. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a B.S. in Writing from MIT in 2010. She likes rowing, animals, and breaking websites.

Michael Borohovski serves as Chief Technology Officer for Tinfoil Security and is a pure hacker at heart. He formerly worked in offensive software security for the intelligence community. His security career began when he helped a financial firm with their own security issues and ended up working for them. He graduated in 2009 from MIT with a B.S. in Computer Science. He likes singing, beatboxing, juggling, and setting things on fire.

Note: This event is restricted to AOL Employees and members of First Floor Labs.