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ALLIANCES & PARTNERING FOR
SUCCESS
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| Throughout the season this forum has
focused on the many business aspects entrepreneurs must address in starting and
building successful companies. On Tuesday, April 3rd we will offer insight into
Alliances and Partnering for Success. This activity continually represents a
greater criteria for getting funded. Start-ups need to include outside
participants in order to grow and scale their businesses. Otherwise they must
grow the business internally, often slowing the pace and extending the time
horizon for investors return. Our panel will address viewpoints from the
entrepreneur and the investor, provide legal perspective and close with a vital
marketing partner to several technology startups. The intent is to offer solid
advice on how to seek, establish and foster alliances and partnerships that are
key to achieving your goals. |
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| Speakers: |
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Victor Colantonio,
Founder, President
and Vice Chairman, NEON Communications, Inc. |
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Greg Baletsa,
Business Advisor, Stata
Venture Partners |
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Richard Lucash,
Partner, Lucash, Gesmer
& Updegrove, LL |
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P Frank Chiaravalloti,
President, Public
Image Corporation |
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| Moderator: |
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Speakers:
Victor Colantonio is Founder,
President and Vice Chairman of NEON Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOPT). Built
upon utilizing electric utility infrastructure assets, NEON's mission is to be
the preferred provider of fiber-optic capacity in the Northeast and
Mid-Atlantic regions. Since NEON's inception in 1989, Colantonio has helped
guide the Nation's electric utilities into telecom. He performs business
development, strategic alliances, government affairs and represents the company
to institutional investors and analysts.
Since 1998, Victor has led
NEON's 7/98 IPO raising $230M of equity and debt and the 5/00 secondary
offering of $70M equity; acquired electric utility infrastructure from Nstar,
NEES, CMP, ConEd, Philadelphia Electric and NU; negotiated and closed equity
and asset deals with Exelon & ConEd (9/00) and CMP & NU (9/97); secured
strategic relationships with Sprint, WorldCom/MCI, AT&T, Verizon, Level 3,
Qwest, SBC, Nortel, Lucent and several others.
As an entrepreneur and
visionary, Victor has 30 years experience creating businesses that leverage
"technology rich" media inventions and advanced telecommunications. Since 1976,
he has founded several businesses. They include Perceptive Network
Technologies, Inc., Facia Reco (led to the IPO of Viisage), FiveCom, Inc.,
FiveCom Associates, ICSC, Bay Cable TV, and Brewster Green
Gregory S. Baletsa
currently holds an operational position with Stata Venture Partners.
Stata Venture Partners is a local high technology venture capital fund
investing in exciting, new and emerging companies across a variety of
technologies. In his role as Business Advisor, Mr. Baletsa offers a broad range
of consultation services covering areas such as strategic planning, business
development, rapid product development and high performance teams. Mr. Baletsa
is also a part-time adjunct professor at Bentley College School of Management.
He holds board seats at Horizon Technology and Acelex.
Mr. Baletsa's
experience includes general management in the field of medical instrumentation,
as well as, management positions in product development. These positions span
governmental research at Tufts New England Medical Center to high volume
consumer electronics at Parker Brothers. Mr. Baletsa was awarded a patent for
the first water-sand proof printer, setting an industry standard for medical
chart recording.
Greg received his BS degree from Boston University
with a double major in Biomedical Engineering and Control Theory, an MS from
Tufts University in Engineering Design, and an MBA from Northeastern
University, majoring in finance and organizational behavior. |
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Richard M.
Lucash is a partner in the Boston law firm of Lucash, Gesmer &
Updegrove, LLP, where he concentrates in the representation of high technology
companies, with an emphasis on Internet-based, electronic commerce and
interactive media businesses and computer software companies. In addition to
maintaining a broad general corporate practice, he dedicates a significant
portion of his time to negotiating domestic and international licensing,
publishing and technology transfer agreements. Within his firm, he co-chairs
the E-commerce Practice Group. Recently, Richard and others established
LaunchPad, a new seed-stage angel group.
Richard has served as a
member of the Board of Directors of the Cambridge Business Development Center
(http://www.cbdc.org). He is the former chair of the High Technology Law
Committee of the Massachusetts Bar Association, and is a member of the Bar
Association's Business Law Section Council. He has served on the Executive
Committee of the New England Chapter of the American Electronics Association,
the Board of Editors of the International Computer Law Adviser, the Board of
Governors of the Research Management Association, and as President of the
Boston Business Club. He has established and taught computer law courses at the
New England School of Law. Richard is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and the Cornell University Law School.
Frank Chiaravalloti
is President of Public Image Corporation. Frank has 24 years
experience in all phases of communications and public relations, including
radio news, video production, fund raising, charitable foundation management,
marketing communications, research and PR agency management.
Frank has
managed technology accounts for Summit Autonomous, Inc. of Waltham, SNR, Inc.
(India), Venture Technologies of Billerica, and several dot com's, including
Everymile.com, BetterVisionVillage.com and FurnitureFan.com. Frank also managed
multi-national PR accounts for The Gillette Company and Reebok International.
For Columbia Gas Systems, he served as a personal PR consultant to Chairman
Oliver "Rick" Richard, and for Equitable Resources, Incorporated of Pittsburgh,
he designed a grassroots strategy to win consumer support for a competitive
pilot for both electricity and natural gas.
Frank's management of
corporate communications for Central Maine Power (CMP) and Boston Edison (BECO)
is still considered visionary. At BECO, he developed an empirical approach to
measuring communications performance, including a cost/benefit formula,
assessment of staff competencies, strategic planning and development of
programs to meet corporate goals. As a result, several of BECO's communications
programs were recognized as "best practices" in a national communications
benchmarking survey.
Frank earned his BA in Communications from the
University of Hartford and a Certificate in Business Management from MIT.
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Moderator:
Peter Thier,Venture
Technologies, Inc. Peter received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from
Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Peter currently serves as Director of Business
Development for Venture Technologies. Venture Technologies is a leading
electronic product development group, offering complete "design to delivery"
services to technology clients throughout New England. Providing teams
consisting of hardware, software, mechanical and industrial design engineers,
their work spans a wide range of industries and products. Venture's efforts are
focused on delivering an integrated and balanced approach to product
development, designing products that command market attention and accelerating
time-to-market for its clients. www.venturetechnologies.com
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