LDV Community is Finally Back in Person and Helping Each Other Succeed in NYC!

Evan Nisselson is Founder & General Partner of LDV Capital, and Esther Dyson, an investor, journalist, author, businesswoman, commentator, and philanthropist. She is an angel investor focused on healthcare, open government, digital technology, biotechnology, logistics, and outer space. Currently, she is a full-time executive founder of Wellville. Check out our interview with Esther in the Women Leading Visual Tech series.

LDV Capital is a thesis-driven fund founded in 2012 to invest in people building businesses powered by visual technologies. A core value-add to the founders of our portfolio companies, investors, community and fund is delivering valuable network effects via unique LDV platform initiatives.

Our unique LDV platform started when there were only a couple of other venture funds with “platforms” over 10 years ago. These differentiated initiatives include the annual LDV Vision Summit since 2014, LDV Community Dinners & Happy Hours that started as early as 2011, LDV Interview Series “Women Leading Visual Tech”, LDV Insights (in-depth sector research), and LDV proprietary tools.

In the past two years, we hosted a range of virtual events but nothing can replace being in person at our LDV Community gatherings of deep tech entrepreneurs, serial entrepreneurs, researchers and investors! A key aspect of our LDV Community is asking how we can help each other. Then we take the 30 asks from each dinner along with photos and email our whole community to help each other. The more helpful people will be invited back more often. Hopefully we can continue building a fantastic and collaborative NYC tech community where people help each other as much as possible.

Our community member Kelly Hoey (Speaker, Writer, Advisor & Coach) wrote an article for Inc. Magazine about our LDV Community, titled “Knife, Fork, Investment: How Monthly Dinner Gatherings Feed An Entrepreneurial Network”. She says, “It takes a community to get a new idea off the ground – but not just any community. Finding and being invited into a well-connected community is critical to increase odds of your success.”

We are thrilled to share a few photographs from our latest invite-only “Happy Hour” event, hosted recently in NYC. Photographs are by Robert Wright.

(L-R) Shai Goldman, Head of XIR program at Brex, Evan Nisselson, and Seth Haberman, CEO at Sense Education. Seth has previously built and sold three companies – most recently Visible World, a developer of viewer-customized television advertising, which was acquired by Comcast in 2015. Seth left his position as senior vice president at Comcast to join Sense.

Adam Berenzweig, Research Scientist at Facebook Reality Labs. He was a part of CTRL-Labs. Facebook acquired this company for ~$1 billion. Adam and the team were building non-invasive neural interface technology with single-neuron resolution. Read more or watch Thomas Reardon’s keynote from our 2019 LDV Vision Summit. Prior to his work at CTRL-Labs, he was a part of the early team at LDV Company Clarifai.

(L-R) Tristan Louis, a serial entrepreneur, now the President and CEO of Casebook PBC, creators of the patented award-winning Casebook Human Services platform, and Robert Levitan, also a serial entrepreneur who has launched six companies, has had four successful exits and has raised more than $150 million in venture capital financing.

(L-R) Amir Tasbihi and Dareen Salama – co-founders of Gryps; Brian Derickson, an LDV Analyst, and Dawn Barber, co-founder at NY Tech Meetup.

Kat Kolambet-Lopez is Director of Content & Marketing at LDV Capital. She was a part of Looksery (acquired by Snap), JetSmarter (acquired by Vista Global), and Kwambio (a startup in 3D printing, 2x TechStars alum).

Dareen Salama, co-founder of Gryps – a platform that delivers enterprise robotic process automation (RPA) leveraging computer vision and machine learning to the construction industry. Gryps is an LDV Capital portfolio company and you can read more in this article.

(L-R) Adam Berenzweig is a Research Scientist at Facebook Reality Labs and formerly an early employee at Clarifai. Andrew Cohen, a serial entrepreneur, SVP and Head of Product Development at AT&T, Evan Nisselson, and Mark Uhrmacher, also a serial entrepreneur who is now Head of Digital Transformation and CTO at GrowthCurve Capital.

(L-R) Jonas Schluter, Assistant Professor of Microbiology at New York University School of Medicine, and Elizabeth Lindsey, Executive Director at New York Angels.

(L-R) Claudia Perlich, Data Scientist at Two Sigma and Sebastian Acevedo, Co-Founder & CEO of Memorable. Claudia and Sebastian have a clear intersection of interests: the efficiency of ads. Back in 2015, Claudia gave a keynote speech at our 2nd Annual LDV Vision Summit, titled “How Can Data Science Evaluate Why Some Advertising Creative Content Resonates More Than Others?”. Sebastian and his team at Memorable are building a cutting-edge technology to optimize visual content for a higher impact on branding and conversion.

(L-R) Brian Derickson, Adam Berenzweig, Leo Grady, CEO in Residence at Breyer Capital, Sebastian Acevedo and Dareen Salama.

Josh Cotton is currently transitioning from an entrepreneurial technology leader to an entrepreneur in the Craft Beer Industry. Previously, he was Vice President of Engineering at Ollie Pets and the President of the New York City Homebrewers Guild.

(L-R) Adam Berenzweig (back), Emmanuel Dumont, the founder of Shade, startup developing a wearable UV sensor, and Leo Grady.

(L-R) Shai Goldman, Head of XIR program at Brex, and Dawn Barber, co-founder at NY Tech Meetup.

Leo Shklovskii, VP of Engineering at Anomalo, a complete data quality platform that automatically detects and explains issues in your enterprise data. Leo is former founder & CTO of EnergySavvy, the company he grew from scratch to 60+ FTE’s and millions in revenue.

Samantha Lee, Co-Founder and CEO at Meili Technologies, a deep learning software layer utilizing in-cabin sensors to detect from body pose, facial expression, and vital signs when an emergency is occurring.

Dan Cohen is SVP & Executive Creative Director at Saatchi New York and Adjunct Professor in Advertising at NYU Stern. Dan’s advertising campaigns were awarded with Cannes Lions, Webby, One Show, Effies, Clios and CA. He worked on one of Procter & Gamble's biggest and most profitable brands with sales of over $3 Billion.

(L-R) Kathryn Minshew, Co-Founder & CEO of The Muse which was recently named as one of Fast Company's 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World, and author of the best-selling playbook to the ever-changing workplace “The New Rules of Work”. Nicole Lynch, Summer Associate and Hannah Waldman, an Associate at Goodwin along with David Concannon who is Partner at Goodwin law firm which is a long-time supporter of the LDV platform initiatives.