1st Annual NYU Stern FinTech Conference
On November 9, NYU Stern is hosting its inaugural FinTech conference. This day-long forum will convene researchers, business practitioners, alumni and students to debate and discuss the future of FinTech, the latest research in this dynamic field and how technology is reshaping the finance industry.
Stern offered one of the first courses on digital currencies in 2014 and this fall was the first top business school to establish a FinTech specialization in its MBA curriculum.
Expert conference participants and panelists include:
-NYU Stern Professors of Finance David Yermack and Thomas Philippon
-Ken Kroner, Retired Senior Managing Director, BlackRock
-Dan Schulman, NYU Stern MBA '86, CEO, PayPal
-Moderated industry panels on online investing vs. venture capital, and beyond blockchain, by NYU Stern Professors Anindya Ghose and Arun Sundararajan
As FinTech gains momentum both inside and beyond the classroom, it demonstrates how powerful the intersection of disciplines can be to drive innovation. Please join esteemed faculty members, scholars, and business executives in this exciting day of discussion on what the future holds.
Special thanks to these NYU Stern faculty members: Arun Sundararajan, Vasant Dhar, Anindya Ghose, David Yermack, Alex Tuzhilin, Sabrina Howell, Thomas Philippon, and Kathleen Derose.
Follow the conversation: #SternFinTech
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
NYU Stern
44 West 4th Street
New York, NY 10012
9:30am - 7:00 p.m
Event Schedule
9:30 a.m. - 10:15 a.m. Registration
10:15 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. Welcome remarks
Dean Peter Henry and Vice Dean Raghu Sundaram
10:30 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. Academic presentations
Professor Thomas Philippon, Professor David Yermack, and Ken Kroner
12:30 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. lunch
2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. Panel: marketplace investing vs. venture
capital
Moderator: Professor Anindya Ghose
3:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. Networking coffee break
3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. Panel: Beyond Blockchain and the DAo
Moderator: Professor Arun Sundararajan
5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. Keynote speaker
Dan Schulman, NYU Stern MBA '86
6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Networking reception
Meet Our Speakers:
Keynotes and moderators
Ken Kroner
Retired Senior Managing Director, BlackRock
Ken Kroner, PhD, Senior Managing Director, is global head of Multi-Asset Strategies as well as head and Chief Investment Officer of Scientific Active Equity. He serves as a member of the Global Executive Committee and the Global Operating Committee.
Dr. Kroner's service with the firm dates back to 1994, including his years with Barclays Global Investors (BGI), which merged with BlackRock in 2009. At BGI, he served as head of the Global Market Strategies Group, head of the Hedge Fund Management Group and co-head of the Client Solutions Group. These teams were responsible for BGI's asset allocation, global macro, currency, active commodity, fund of hedge funds and client solutions businesses. Prior to joining BGI in 1994, Dr. Kroner was an associate professor of economics and finance at the University of Arizona.
Dr. Kroner serves or has served on various academic boards, foundation boards and academic journal editorial boards. His research on forecasting volatility and asset returns has been widely published in both academic and practitioner journals. Dr. Kroner earned a BA degree in mathematics and economics from the University of Alberta in 1983 and a PhD in economics from the University of California at San Diego in 1988.
dan schulman, Nyu stern mba '86
President and CEO, PayPal
President and CEO Dan Schulman joined PayPal in 2014 to lead the company into its next phase as an independent business, following the announcement of its separation from eBay. PayPal is listed on the NASDAQ (PYPL) and is a member of the S&P 100, with annual revenues of over $9B, and has 17,000 employees across the globe. A former collegiate athlete, and practitioner of martial arts, Dan was attracted to PayPal’s competitive edge. With his deep experience in payments and mobile technology, Dan will lead PayPal in exploring unique growth opportunities on a global scale and provide both consumers and merchants with superior value.
Dan previously served as Group President of Enterprise Growth at American Express where he led global strategy to expand the company’s alternative mobile and online payment services. Under his leadership, American Express successfully launched its next-generation digital payments platform, developed non-traditional sources of revenue and introduced a suite of payment products to expand the company’s demographic and geographic reach.
Prior to joining American Express, Dan was President of the Prepaid Group at Sprint Nextel Corporation following its acquisition of Virgin Mobile USA, Inc., where he led the company as its founding CEO. During his eight years at Virgin Mobile USA, he developed the company from its earliest stages as one of the first U.S. prepaid cell phone providers to a dynamic public company, listed on the NYSE, when it was eventually acquired by Sprint Nextel in 2009 at a total value of $688 million. Earlier in his career, Dan was President and CEO of Priceline Group, Inc., where he led the company through a period of rapid growth and expansion. He also spent 18 years at AT&T, where he held a series of positions, including President of the Consumer Markets Division.
In addition to his professional accomplishments, Dan is most proud of his achievements in helping underserved populations. While at Virgin Mobile, the company won the private sector award for bringing focus to the plight of homeless youth. During his time at American Express, he drove attention and introduced new products to the 70 million U.S. adults underserved by traditional consumer financial institutions.
Dan has been named as one of the world’s top 10 FinTech leaders, one of the top 20 most powerful people in the wireless industry and as one of the “top 25 people to watch” in the media industry. While at Virgin Mobile, he was named as entrepreneur of the year in NJ by Ernst and Young. And Fast Company named Dan as one of the hundred most creative people in business.
Dan earned a Bachelor’s degree from Middlebury College and a Master of Business from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. In his commitment to help those in need, Dan is a board member of Autism Speaks. He also serves on the boards of Flextronics, International Ltd. and Symantec Corporation, where he is the Non-Executive Chairman of the Board.
equity crowdfunding/marketplace investing vs. venture capital
The JOBS Act has enabled a new instrument for financial inclusion through equity crowdfunding (ECF) and marketplace investing (MI) platforms. ECF and MI are growing, and fast becoming real alternatives to raising money via venture capital (VC). This panel will draw on the collective expertise of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and crowdfunding experts to examine the current and future trade-offs involved in raising money from ECF and MI platforms vs traditional routes like VCs.
james murphy
CEO, EquityNet
James Murphy
James Murphy has the privilege of helping empower entrepreneurs everyday through the power of technology and human connections. His work at EquityNet focuses on providing services to SMB’s that are underserved by the current suite of traditional financial resources.
James is a partner with the Venture Development firm, Proton Enterprises, focused on SMB private equity investing and startup operations. Before that, James spent several years in Haiti & Mexico bringing a private equity approach to working with developing market entrepreneurs. He is a graduate of Yale University and holds series 7 and 63 FINRA licenses.
michael graver
Principal, CircleUp
Michael Graver
Michael Graver is a Principal on the Capital Markets team at CircleUp, the online marketplace for investing growth equity into early-stage consumer businesses. Mike brings to CircleUp nearly a decade of experience in the Equities division at JPMorgan, most recently as an Executive Director of Institutional Sales. In this role, Mike delivered daily stock insights and market themes to a wide range of asset managers as well as coordinated interest and investor feedback in JPMorgan's leading capital markets franchise. In the consumer space specifically, Mike has worked on some of the largest IPOs of recent years, such as GNC, Dunkin' Brands, Michael Kors, The Fresh Market, Annie's Foods and Blue Buffalo. Mike graduated magna cum laude from Saint Anselm College with a BA in International Business, and holds Series 7 and 63 licenses.
Mike Kwatinetz, NYU stern MBA '79
Founding General Partner, Azure Capital
Mike Kwatinetz is a founding General Partner with Azure Capital Partners where he specializes in software and related infrastructure technologies. His current board memberships are Chairish, Education.com, Julep, JumpStart, Le Tote, Medsphere, Open Road and Silkroad and he led Azure's investment in FilterEasy, Maker Media, Coffee Meets Bagel, Sprinklr and Tripping. He also served on the boards of Bill Me Later (acquired by eBay), BlogHer (acquired by SheKnows), Cooking.com (acquired by Target), Rooftop Media (acquired by Amazon.com), TripIt (acquired by Concur), TopTier (acquired by SAP), Wildseed (acquired by AOL), Prospect Park, and Woodbury Computer Associates (acquired by JWP). Other representative investments include VMware (acquired by EMC). Mike’s blog, SoundBytes II, is a continuation of his widely read technology investment strategy newsletter.
Prior to Azure, Mike was Group Head of Technology Research, a Managing Director and the senior software and hardware analyst at several major investment banks, including Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Bank Securities and PaineWebber. Mike was also a senior research analyst at Sanford Bernstein & Co.
Prior to his career in technology research, Mike was CEO of Woodbury Computer Associates, a software products and consulting firm, which resulted in a 160x cash-on-cash return.
Mike, prior to Azure, has provided research coverage and strategic advice to numerous technology companies and has consistently been viewed as a top resource on many, including Microsoft, Compaq, Dell, Apple, Hewlett Packard, VA Linux and Gateway. His coverage universe also included e-business software and internet devices and infrastructure. His theories on the shift of industry control to Microsoft and Intel, "The 4th Wave of the Web," the advantages of Linux, and the need for PC vendors to go "Beyond the Box" were considered agenda setting for the investment community and contributed to his upgrade of Apple to a "Buy" in 1999. He was top-ranked by Institutional Investor in PC Hardware and ranked second in PC Software and was the only sell-side analyst to ever be top three rated in both software and hardware, doing so for six straight years before leaving to form Azure in early 2000. In 1997 and 1998, Mike was rated Institutional Investor's No.1 Large-Cap "Home-Run Hitter" for stock selection among all Wall Street analysts and remained among the Top 5 in 1999. Furthermore, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal have selected him as the No.1 PC analyst.
Mike received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Mathematical Modeling from the University of California Berkeley and his M.B.A. in Finance & Accounting from New York University. He sat on the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) advisory committee for a number of years. He is also author of "The Big Tech Score," published by John Wiley & Sons.
neil h. rothenberg
CEO, Paygevity
Neil H. Rothenberg is the CEO and Founder of Paygevity, Inc., an innovative, disruptive and scalable, Supply-Chain, FinTech payment company. Paygevity has a “win-win” business model. It contracts with many of the Fortune 1000 corporations and offers them increased flexibility in their working capital management. At the same time, Paygevity “promptly” pays the selected suppliers to these Fortune 1000 corporations. No longer does a supplier to a Fortune 1000 corporation have to wait 45, 60, or 90 days to get paid on their approved invoices.
During the mid-1990’s Mr. Rothenberg was an investment banker at Dillon, Read & Co., Inc. and Prudential Securities Inc. He provided M&A advisory as well as debt and equity underwritings for institutions operating in the financial services sector.
In the late-1990’s Mr. Rothenberg was recruited by CIT Group’s Merchant Banking Division. At CIT Mr. Rothenberg provided factoring loans, bank loans, mezzanine loans with warrants, and equity investments to small and mid-size corporations.
Starting in 2002 Mr. Rothenberg joined the hedge fund industry as a portfolio manager of Corporate Credit, Fixed Income and Distressed Debt. He managed funds for Ramius Capital Group, an affiliate of Paloma Partners, and M.D. Sass.
Mr. Rothenberg holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School and a BA in Political Science from Emory University.
Beyond blockchain and the dao panelists
Blockchain technologies, smart contracts, and other crowd-based digital decentralized systems promise to radically disrupt marketplaces for financial and digital assets, creating a new basis for trust in economic exchange, and reshaping the broader social, economic and political order. However, the early excitement about these systems has been muted by a range of technological, design, and regulatory challenges, as illustrated by the recent DAO hack, and the range of issues that have beleaguered Bitcoin since its inception. This session will bring panelists with deep scientific and technological expertise together with senior executives from large financial institutions who are both pioneering mainstream adopters of blockchain systems as well as skeptics about its eventual impact, for a discussion that will separate the hype from the reality, providing a sound basis for assessing the eventual effects of these potentially revolutionary developments in FinTech.
Dr. jutta steiner
COO, Ethcore; Co-founder, Provenance
Dr. Steiner is the COO and co-founder of Ethcore. She previously oversaw the IT security audit for the Ethereum foundation before the launch of the public blockchain in 2015. She also is a co-founder of Project Provenance Ltd., a London-based start-up that employs blockchain technology to make supply chains more transparent. She holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics and used to work for management consultancy McKinsey where she supported clients in the banking and telecommunications sector with their IT strategy.
Michael Casey
Senior Advisor, MIT Media Lab; Author of "The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money are Challenging the Global Economic Order"
Michael Casey is a Senior Advisor for the Digital Currency Initiative at MIT's Media Lab. A writer and researcher in the fields of economics, finance and digital-currency technology, most of Casey's career was spent as a journalist. That includes 18 years at The Wall Street Journal, where he was a senior columnist covering global economics and markets and where he and colleague Paul Vigna launched the influential BitBeat column on digital currency trends. In the summer of 2015, Casey left the Journal to join MIT. He is the author of three books, including The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money are Challenging the Global Economic Order, which he co-authored with Vigna.
Teddy cho
Head of Markets and Corporate Treasury Technology, BNY Mellon
Teddy Cho is the head of Markets and Corporate Treasury Technology at BNY Mellon. In this role, Teddy is responsible for the IT management of businesses including Foreign Exchange, Securities Finance, Capital Markets, and Derivatives. Teddy has over 20 years of experience in technology roles at major banks in London and New York. Previous roles include Head of Rates & Credit Trading Technology and Head of Markets Electronic Trading Technology at Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, and Salomon Brothers. Teddy has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Duke University.
jalak jobanputra
Founder/Managing Partner, Future Perfect Ventures
Jalak Jobanputra is Founding Partner of Future\Perfect Ventures, a venture capital fund in NYC focused on early stage investments in next generation technology including blockchain and machine learning. Before founding Future\Perfect Ventures in 2013, Jobanputra was the Director of Mobile Investments in Emerging Markets at Omidyar Network. She has 20 years experience in venture capital, impact investing, media and technology. She was previously Senior Vice President at the New York City Investment Fund (NYCIF), a private economic development fund, where she managed the fund’s technology and digital media venture investments. While there, Jobanputra spearheaded the formation NYCSeed in 2008, and helped launch the FinTech Innovation Lab, which has since been replicated in London and Hong Kong. Jobanputra worked closely with the Bloomberg administration and NYCEDC to implement initiatives to help diversify the NYC economy through NYC’s growing tech/digital sectors. Prior to NYCIF, she was a Principal at New Venture Partners, a $300 million early stage venture fund that commercialized technology out of corporate labs. At NVP, Jobanputra incubated a range of technologies, including speech recognition/NLP, 3D displays, video surveillance, 4G wireless broadband, and music recommendation software. From 1999- 2003, Jobanputra was at Intel Capital in Silicon Valley, where she invested in enterprise software, internet and digital media startups. In 1997 in NYC, in the early days of Silicon Alley, she launched and managed product development for online financial information startup Horsesmouth, where she also learned to code and help build a content recommendation engine. She began her career in media, telecom and tech investment banking at Lehman Brothers and Broadview in NYC and London. Jobanputra currently sits on the Board of Directors for the Center for an Urban Future, Advisory Board of Loreal’s Women in Digital Initiative, is a member of Mayor DeBlasio’s Broadband Taskforce, and served on Secretary Clinton’s Women’s Leadership Council. Jobanputra spent four months setting up microfinance programs and training women entrepreneurs in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania after receiving her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management in 1999. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Communications from the Annenberg School and a BSE in Finance from the Wharton School. Her blog The Barefoot VC has repeatedly been cited as a Top 10 investor blog in several publications and she is a frequent guest on Bloomberg TV, CBNC and Fox Business news.
Companies: Interested in Sponsoring the Conference?
Please email Kate Gregory at kgregory@stern.nyu or Christine Staffon at cstaffon@stern.nyu.edu.
FAQ
Where will the conference take place?
The conference will be held at NYU Stern located at 44 West 4th Street in the Kaufman Management Center (KMC), off of Tisch Plaza. The morning session will take place in KMC 2-60, followed by afternoon panels in KMC 5-50. The conference will conclude with the keynote address in Paulson Auditorium and networking reception in Patron's Lobby, right outside of the auditorium. The simulcast viewing space will be in KMC 11-75 for the morning session and afternoon panels.
Where should I check-in?
Check-in will take place in the Lobby of the KMC. Please bring a photo ID.
I'm a Student, can I attend?
Of course! We'd love for you to join us at conference to learn more about FinTech. Please use this link to purchase simulcast tickets. If you are interested in attending both NYU Stern's Tech Week and FinTech conference, buy your Tech Week ticket here, which includes complimentary access to the conference.
How much do tickets costs?
We have a number of different ticket options. Please use this link to review all of the tickets and their pricing.
Directions:
The KMC (44 West 4th Street) is easily accessible by public transportation (A,B,C,D, E, F or M at West 4th Street; N or R at 8th St-NYU or the 6 at Astor Place). If you are traveling by car, public parking is available on West 3rd Street and on Thompson Street.
Videos and articles from our speakers
Questions?
Please fill out the form below or email kmalenga@stern.nyu.edu with any questions or concerns.
