Speakers Include NYU Alumni Entrepreneurs John Johnson of Buzzfeed, Jeff Dachis of Razorfish, and Glen de Vries of Medidata Solutions
New York University hosts the third annual NYU Entrepreneurs Festival on the weekend of February 28 and March 1 to celebrate the vibrant and growing startup culture at the University. The event enables startup founders, investors, and prospective entrepreneurs from the NYU entrepreneurial community to share their experiences, exchange valuable insights, and provide advice on creating new ventures with students, faculty, and alumni.
“The success of the Entrepreneurs Festival demonstrates the growth of the entrepreneurial culture at NYU and its increasingly close relationship with New York City’s startup community,” said Frank Rimalovski, executive director of the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute. “We are creating an ecosystem that spans the University and encourages students, entrepreneurs, and investors to feed off each other’s talent, support, and resources. The third annual Festival will celebrate NYU’s rich entrepreneurial history and growing startup community.”
This year’s Festival will feature more than 50 student startups and 70 entrepreneur panelists, speakers, and exhibitors—all NYU students, faculty, trustees, or alumni startup founders. The keynote speakers include:
- John Johnson, co-founder of Buzzfeed and director of the Harmony Institute;
- Jeff Dachis, co-founder of Razorfish and founder of the Dachis Group; and
- Glen de Vries, co-founder and president of Medidata Solutions.
Past Festivals have featured NYU alumni startup stars as Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square; Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare; Don Katz, co-founder of Audible.com; Herb Kelleher, co-founder of Southwest Airlines; and Fred Wilson, managing partner of Union Square Ventures and an NYU trustee.
The Festival demonstrates the University’s commitment to expanding access to resources, including entrepreneurship education, funding, mentorship, and collaborative spaces. The event will build on the enthusiasm and momentum generated at the first two Entrepreneurs Festivals, which each attracted more than 500 attendees.
Festival details:
- When: Friday, February 28, 12:30 p.m.-7 p.m., and Saturday, March 1, 9:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.
- Where: Tisch Hall, 40 West Fourth Street, New York City (at Greene St.)
- Subways: N, R (8th Street); 6 (Astor Place); A, B, C, D, E, F & M (W. 4th St.).
For more details about the NYU Entrepreneurs Festival, go to http://nyuef.com.
A limited number of tickets to the Festival are available to the public on a first-come, first-serve basis and may be purchased at http://nyuef.com/tickets ($20-$100). Seating is limited. For more information, email greetings@nyuef.com. Reporters interested in attending should email press@nyuef.com.
This year’s Festival will be supported by leading companies in the NYC startup economy, including EisnerAmper, SorinRand, Wiggin and Dana, Flybridge Capital Partners, and Silicon Valley Bank, among others.
This year, NYU Entrepreneurs Festival is also featuring a social media campaign called Launch Your Story that highlights the stories of NYU alumni and student entrepreneurs to an audience of more than 10,000 from the NYU community on Facebook and Twitter. To learn more, visit the Twitter page and the Facebook page.
The Entrepreneurs Festival draws on NYU’s rich history of entrepreneurship, beginning in 1831 when Samuel F.B. Morse, a professor at the university, perfected his invention of the telegraph. Since then, NYU students, faculty, and alumni have built such innovative companies as Arista Records, Audible.com, Bloomberg, Etsy, Fairchild Semiconductor, Foursquare, MTV, Pinterest, Southwest Airlines, Seamless, Sugen, Symbol Technologies, and Veritas, among countless others. These groundbreaking companies have helped NYU build a name as an entrepreneurial university—a hub of talent, technology and innovation.
The Festival is a joint effort of the student leaders of the NYU Entrepreneurs Network, the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute and the NYU Stern Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, collectively bringing together NYU’s more than 20 schools, colleges, and institutes.
About the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute
The NYU Entrepreneurial Institute leads a campus-wide initiative to inspire, educate, connect, accelerate, and fund aspiring NYU entrepreneurs and help the university community translate great ideas and inventions into successful commercial ventures. The Institute offers a series of programs, events and resources, including the NYU Innovation Venture Fund, a $20 million investment fund that provides seed capital to help launch startups founded by and/or commercializing technologies and intellectual property developed by NYU students, faculty, and researchers.
About the NYU Entrepreneurs Network
The NYU Entrepreneurs Network is a multi‐disciplinary collaborative of more than 20 entrepreneurship, technology, and innovation-related graduate and undergraduate student organizations representing 10 schools across NYU.
About the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation
The Berkley Center provides NYU students with real‐world, hands‐on startup experiences through co‐curricular programs that complement the rigorous instruction received in the classroom.
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