Triphammer Ventures Team

Bio: Ian Bednowitz is currently Senior Director of Asia-Pacific Business Development for eBay, where he is primarily responsible for growing eBay’s presence in Greater China and in India. Previously he led the Corporate Development team for eBay Marketplaces (before the spin-off of PayPal) for five years. His team deployed over $1B in capital across over 20 global M&A and investment transactions during that time. Before joining eBay, Ian spent almost seven years at Bain & Company where he worked with executive teams of Fortune 500 companies and private equity firms across a variety of mostly consumer-oriented sectors to address critical issues in strategy, operations and execution. Ian has also created multiple online courses on Udemy, an online learning platform, to help entrepreneurs raise capital, grow their business and sell their companies. Ian graduated from Cornell with a B.A. in Economics and earned his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management.

Bio: Dr. Philip Farese serves as the Chief of Staff to Matthew Granade, the Head of Market Intelligence at Point72 Asset Management. Phil served as the Chief Strategy Officer at Enphase Energy, a leader in the Solar market, and as CTO for Advantix Systems, a global leader in energy efficient humidity and climate control. Dr. Farese began his corporate career at McKinsey & Company where he served high-tech, non-profit, and energy sector clients. Dr. Farese coauthored the McKinsey report Unlocking Efficiency in the U.S. Economy before joining the National Renewable Energy Laboratory where he continued his study and support of energy efficiency by developing a tool to prioritize energy efficiency investments with findings published by the journal Nature. He was fellow at Princeton University for three years. Dr. Farese holds his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara where he studied Cosmology and made observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background.

Bio: David Braunstein has a distinguished career spanning two decades in entrepreneurial business development. He is known for breaking new ground using “connected” analytics solutions driven by emerging technologies, including adtech, blockchain and the Internet of Things. Braunstein has been an Industry Innovation Lead at IBM where his work spanned five continents. He also held senior roles in strategy, analytics, and innovation within eBay’s marketing services organization. His ability to quarterback complex, cross-functional collaboration to drive business value has helped him succeed across many global industries. He has mentored many startups throughout his career and is an expert in Design Thinking, product-market fit and go- to-market strategy. Braunstein is currently serving as President of Together for Safer Roads. His leadership is helping scale and sustain the global coalition’s efforts to improve road safety and save lives. He is responsible for overseeing the organization’s strategic direction on behalf of Together for Safer Roads’ Governing Board and membership, implementing Together for Safer Roads-supported local demonstration projects, advancing TSR’s thought leadership, building key partnerships, and increasing the coalition’s connections to the international road safety community.

Bio: Gautam Chandra is a private investor and entrepreneur through his company, CHANDRA VENTURES, LLC, investing and working with emerging growth companies focused on disrupting traditional industries through the application of leading edge technologies. Gautam brings skills in Strategy, Operations, and Strategic Finance acquired through 30 years of experience both as a senior executive in large publicly traded companies and as an entrepreneur taking companies from inception to successful exits. He has been the principal deal maker in over 50 buy or sell transactions valued over $9 billion in aggregate. Prior to his current position Gautam was responsible for all of WGL Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: WGL) competitive businesses with annual revenue approaching $2 billion and also all strategy and business development activities for WGL. He led the $6.4 billion merger of WGL into AltaGas. He was founder and CEO of SmartEnergy, Inc., an energy technology company, until its sale to Alliant Energy (NYSE: LNT) in 2001. Gautam holds a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech and a Master’s in Business Administration from the Johnson School at Cornell University.

Bio: Mr. Hubbard has over 25 years of experience in the wireless and communications sectors. He founded RTO Wireless with Rob Reagan. RTO Wireless is a Microsoft Airband partner and is building out fixed wireless networks to deliver broadband to rural markets. Prior to co-founding RTO Wireless, he serves as the Director, CFO and EVP of Corporate Development and was responsible for all financial, tax, audit and financing matters. Additionally, Mr. Hubbard directly negotiated all roaming and spectrum contracts with AT&T and is the primary contact for AT&T for all non-engineering activities. In July 2018, AT&T agreed to acquire the Northeast Wireless network. Prior to joining Northeast Wireless in July 2012, Mr. Hubbard was a partner at Daniels & Associates, a premier investment bank in the wireless and cable sectors. Daniels was acquired by Royal Bank of Canada in January 2007, after which he became a Director at RBC. Mr. Hubbard advised on more than $1 billion of wireless transactions during his time at Daniels and RBC. Prior to Daniels, he was responsible for managing a $500 million portfolio of equity investments in the Communications and Technology sectors for Bethlehem Steel Pension Trust. Mr. Hubbard was a financial analyst for AT&T in Bedminster, NJ and Basking Ridge, NJ. Mr. Hubbard earned an MBA at Cornell University’s Johnson School and a B.A. in Economics at Hobart College.

Bio: Kamal Mehta has over thirty years of experience in global capital markets. As a private investor he invests in multiple asset classes with a view to analysis and integration of the macro environment, portfolio construction and trade design. He also allocates capital to specialized managers in in longer lead time investments like Private Equity, Real Estate and Venture Capital. As the founding partner of Acies Capital Management, he formulated and implemented the investment strategies for the firm’s credit arbitrage and relative value funds and successfully raised funds from the US institutional investors. He served as the firm’s chief investment officer and was responsible for the portfolio construction and risk management of portfolios entailing debt, equity, structured credit portfolio instruments and related derivative products. Prior to Acies Capital, Mr. Mehta worked at Natixis (formerly CDC IXIS) as Head of Interest Rate Derivatives and also Managing Director of Credit Markets where he structured and originated investments for the firm’s asset-backed special purpose vehicles. Previously Mr. Mehta was Executive Director at Union Bank of Switzerland, in New York and London, where he was responsible for market making and proprietary trading of the bank’s fixed income derivative products. Before joining UBS, Mr. Mehta worked at Lehman Brothers as Vice President of Interest Rates where he was responsible for developing mathematical models for market making and risk management of fixed income derivative and exotic products. He pioneered Lehman’s efforts in synthetic mortgage swaps, Bermuda and US treasury index linked options. Prior to that assignment, he advised the firm’s institutional clients on portfolio strategies designed to replicate the Lehman Bond Indices. Mr. Mehta received a Bachelor of Science degree from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Columbia University and received a Masters of Science degree from the School of Operations and Research at Cornell University. He is the co-owner of a U.S. patent for a semiconductor technology design that he developed during his tenure at National Semiconductor Corporation.

Bio: Tony is part of the Financial Markets practice at PwC, based in New York City, where he services private equity and venture capital firms in regards to portfolio company valuation, governance, and technology. Prior to joining PwC, Tony was at Ronin Capital, where he specialized in identifying undervalued companies who could create shareholder value through special situations. Tony has an M.B.A. from Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management, a Private Equity & Venture Capital program from Harvard Business School, a Graduate Diploma in Finance from McGill University, and a B.A. degree in Economics from Concordia University.

Bio: A maverick, systems thinker, and champion for growth. Adam Simons is a Bay Area based investor, adviser, and business operator. Adam regularly works with emerging companies at all phases of growth. Adam sits on several advisory boards and regularly counsels founding teams on a variety of business issues. Throughout his career, Adam has had a number of interesting “day jobs” as well – currently he’s the Head of Emerging Brands at Clorox. He has responsibility for leading the strategy, operations, and P&L of a high growth part of the company’s portfolio. Adam has an MBA from NYU-Stern and an undergrad degree from Cornell University. He lives in Oakland, CA with his wife (an M&A partner at Goodwin), two precocious kids, and a giant St. Bernard.

Bio: Jordan is a founding partner of South Ave Capital, a boutique investment firm based out of New York. He focuses on asset-backed lending and opportunistic equity investments across numerous industries and asset classes. Prior to founding South Ave Capital, he was an investment professional at Aristeia Capital, a multi-billion dollar multi-strategy investment fund. While there, he focused on credit and special situation investments, between $10 and $200M in size, across a wide range of industries. Before that, Jordan worked as a research analyst on the Special Situations Desk at the Royal Bank of Scotland. He graduated cum laude from Cornell University with a BS in Finance, and from Columbia Business School with an MBA. He currently is a member of the Advisory Council for Entrepreneurship at Cornell.

Bio: Josh is a UX / UI designer at DealCloud. He has experience applying different research techniques to uncover opportunities that drive product and business growth, with a history of translating research insights into tangible prototypes and designs. Josh graduated in 2017 and holds a B.S. in Design & Environmental Analysis (User Experience Design focus) and a minor in Computer Science from Cornell University.

Bio: Hitesh is an innovator with 14+ years experience in various industries including semiconductor, additive manufacturing, clean-tech and data storage. He has a PhD in engineering from Cornell and a bachelors degree from IIT-Bombay. He is an expert in technology development, manufacturing and scale-up. He has 14+ patents in diverse areas and 10+ peer reviewed articles in reputed journals. He is interested in breakthrough technologies, venture funding, due diligence and technical feasibility.

Bio: Iyore N. Olaye (BS ChE ‘16) creates product and technology solutions at top consumer technology startups, spanning from personal care, e-commerce, to transportation. Currently at Bird Rides, Inc. Iyore is a software product manager working on the reliability of its IoT ecosystem. Prior to joining Bird, Iyore headed up Research & Development at Walker & Co. Brands (acq. Procter & Gamble). As a product leader, Iyore’s engineering talent, business acumen, and a strong sense for metric-driven product strategy allow her to quickly determine product feasibility, evaluate the opportunity, and solve complex problems. Iyore holds a BS ‘16 in chemical engineering from Cornell University and is a 2018 Forbes 30 under 30 list maker.

Bio: Adrian is currently the Head of Strategic Partnerships for Carneros Bay focused heavily in the Fintech space. Prior to Carneros Bay, Adrian was a senior executive with HSBC Bank USA for twenty four years managing a host of consumer and small business products and services. He also served on active duty in the U.S. Army as a Cavalry Officer. He has a Master’s Degree in Soviet & East European Studies from Carleton University and holds an MBA from Cornell.

Bio: Prior to joining AVG, Chris was a Customer Advocate at Graphic Packaging and in Sales & Marketing at Putnam Investments, where he created materials for reps and investors. He’s a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Manning School of Business, where he studied Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Studies.

Bio: Previously, Anne was an Applied Behavioral Analysis Counselor for Melmark and a medical biller for Physicians Resources. She is also a certified Certifiied Personal Trainer and Group Fitness Instructor, with her own clientele. Anne has a Bachelor’s in Psychology from the University of New Hampshire.

Bio: Prior to joining AVG, Hilary was a Staffing Executive and Program Manager at Robert Half. Previous positions include Retirement Planning & Guidance Consultant for Fidelity and an Investor Assistant for an independent investor. She has a Bachelor of Science, Business Management & Marketing from Fisher College.