Meet The 2020 Startups Q4 Participants
- Eddie Krayz
- Oct 6, 2016
- 6 min read
TWIP CEO, Lauren A. Koenig
Travel activist, company founder and TWIP CEO, Lauren A. Koenig grew up in the Midwest. Educated at Ball State University while holding a 4-year Presidential Scholarship, she left her hometown of Chicago at the invitation of the French Ministry of Education to teach English.
Lauren welcomed the challenge of working abroad; travel became a hallmark of her early and future stage development. Returning to Chicago, she worked for Anita Dee Yacht Charters before joining The International Kitchen, the leading provider of cooking school vacations covering Italy, France and Spain.
These travel related business experiences enabled Lauren to identify and create a unique, distinctive product offering: TWIP - Travel With Interesting People. TWIP is the only travel website that empowers global and domestic travelers to find each other based upon their individual personal desires or what the company coined, ‘Travanality.’
The travel market is becoming increasingly cluttered thereby enabling TWIP's unique competitive advantage to stand out from the pack.
TWIP offers travelers the opportunity to travel to the most interesting countries in the world, discovering global events and exciting, exclusive adventures. While importantly, being compatible with each travelers previously identified needs.
Co-founder of Language Hero, Warren Friesner
Warren Friesner is the Co-founder and President of Clear Light Interactive Corp. and Co-founder of Language Hero. He holds a B.A. from University of California, Berkeley and a J.D. from University of Miami. A former Trial Lawyer, Rock Musician, and Restaurant & Specialty Food business operator, Warren has 18 years of web project development, creative direction, project management, and marketing; clients have included Merk & Co., MSLO, MTV Networks, Columbia & Georgian Court Univ., Schrödinger, LLC.
Warren’s firm, Clear Light launched its own portal that configured and customized up to 21 events services, sold event deals, and is an equity partner, designer and developer of Super Body, Super Brain, a subscription-based customized personal training website. Warren has received Omni (Gold), and MarCom (Silver) Awards, among others.
Founder of Metroki, Roger Flores
Roger Flores is the founder of Metroki, an app development company. Born and raised in New York City, Roger knows the frustrations associated with using the MTA. Along with travel delays, an NYC commuter has to wait in line to refill their Metro-Card at one of the electronic kiosks. After years of enduring this hassle, Roger recognized the opportunity for improvement and decided to build an app that would allow him to refill his Metro-Card by simply using his phone.
Founder of Honeysuckle Magazine, Ronit Pinto
Ronit Pinto is a filmmaker and Founder/Publisher of Honeysuckle Magazine. She has lived in Detroit, Austin, Tel Aviv and is now based New York. Her background in writing and film as well as her diverse experiences in publishing led her to form Honeysuckle in 2013, an online and print publication focusing on arts, spirituality, social justice issues, stories of transformation, food, culture and the underground. honeysucklemag.com
Founder of Ment, Rebecca Lima
Rebecca Lima is originally from Fort Lauderdale, FL. She is a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University with a Mechanical Engineering degree. After graduation, Rebecca went to work for an oil field service company, in California, as a Field Engineer (think hard hat and steal toe boots). She quickly moved up the ladder to Tech Sales Engineer, managing 3 of our largest clients. During that time she traveled all over, from the United Arab Emirates to Alaska and everywhere in between. Rebecca ended up spending a lot of time in and out of airports, probably more time than in her own home. After 3 years, she impulsively quit her job. For the first time, Rebecca had no life direction but knew one thing… she didn’t want to work for another large corporate company. After moving back home, to Florida, and starting working with her father in private aviation sales, she knew she couldn’t work with her father for much longer. So she did what any broke 26 year old would do...travel, of course. During that time, Rebecca came up with the idea for Ment. When she got back from her trip, Rebecca dove straight into this project and never looked back. Ment is an airport based social application that allows you to connect and share information with other travelers… in REAL-TIME. Flash forward a year: Ment has a prototype that was built by Rebecca, a Beta going into production and got into 2020 Startups.
Founder of Nesys, Raquel Hollatz
Raquel Hollatz began her journey in business management after finishing high school at the age of 18. Following graduation, Raquel started a graduate program studying foreign trade. She would go on to work 11 years in the foreign trade area. With years of experience in this industry as a buyer, she acquired some managements projects for importing and exporting in the Brazilian, Chinese and American markets.
Years of experience in project management and negotiating with other buyers helped her develop the skills to be able to recognize market needs. This allowed Raquel to realize her dreams of starting her own tech startup in the USA. Using her skills and ambitions, Raquel wants to help people and businesses, thus making the world a better place to live.
Co-founder and CEO of Outernets, Omer Golan
Omer Golan is an entrepreneur, artist, philomath, father, and husband based in NYC. He is driven by the integration of different disciplines to inspire innovation, while working in new media for over 15 years. He is an expert in innovative DOOH, with extensive experience in multimedia installations, experiential marketing, and design. Omer has established himself as a forerunner in interactive design by producing exhibitions that encourage viewer participation in order to conduct studies regarding human interaction, digital mediation, and social awareness. In partnership with Tal Golan, he has designed interdisciplinary multimedia projects for businesses and art institutions worldwide, including; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Science museums, Google, Serviceplan PR as well as hotels and stores in NYC. He is constantly pushing technological and creative boundaries, by blending interactive and multi-platform media to tell stories and engage an audience.
Founder of Nightly, Michael Maclean
Originally from Boston, Michael Maclean is no stranger to start-ups. Michael previously launched Classy, an app that allows students to sell or trade textbooks in a safe online environment. His new company is called Nightly. This will function as an app that “makes nightlife social again.” Michael describes this project as the marriage between nightlife and dating. By merging his interests in technology, innovation and creativity, Michael is going to revolutionize the way we socialize when we go out.
Founder of Health Chat, Isaac Shteierman
After receiving his Bachelor of Science in 2005 from Fairleigh Dickinson University, Isaac Shteierman would go on to have an eclectic career in finance. He would eventually become a Director at Sterling Asset Management Corp, where he designed financial models to forecast financial growth, developed algorithms, as well as mergers and acquisitions. Isaac is currently developing his own company, Health Chat, which will allow individuals with similar illnesses to communicate with one another and exchange data.
Founder of Properly, George Cen
George Cen graduated from Columbia University in 2008 and worked at JPMorgan for the next six years as a product risk manager covering real estate and private equity funds. George was responsible for the end-to-end risks in business development, operations, and technology.
In late 2014, George left the corporate finance world to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams. While living in New York City, George had moved to three different apartments. He was frustrated by the manual, slow, and paper-based tasks that he was forced to deal with when apartment hunting. Even when working with brokers and property management companies who charged expensive fees, the process was not any different. George took these negative experiences and set out to create a solution that simplifies renting for both landlords and renters. Thus, Properly was born.
Founder of Testimoniacs, Evgeniy Podkovyrov
Evgeniy Podkovyrov is a graduate of Saint Petersburg State University. After acquiring a master's degree in Finance and Economics, Evgeniy has been involved in numerous professional endeavors. From a financial analyst to a managing partner, he was able to utilize his education in finance for close to a decade. Currently, he is a partner in multiple projects-one of which is Testimoniacs. This is a website that will allow individuals to review businesses and get paid while doing so. To avoid collecting reviews of little value, Evgeniy will only allow those individuals that can demonstrate some kind of level of expertise in the industry that they are reviewing.
Founder and CEO of Ekab Labs, Inc.
Dennis Paul is the founder and CEO of Ekam Labs, Inc. Prior to founding Ekam, Dennis bootstrapped and built Cordiant Technologies as a multi-million dollar offshore software services company, primarily as the India Engineering Partner of ISVs with solutions in the enterprise space. He had built Cordiant as the go-to-provider in India for ISVs worldwide. Eventually Dennis had expanded the range of offerings, to work with a large spectrum of ISVs focused on the enterprise, as their preferred India Engineering Partner.
He would go on to work closely with Paisley Consulting as their India Development Partner, which established itself as the leader in the GRC space, with a 30% footprint among the Fortune 500. A leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for GRC since inception and acquired by Thomson Reuters in late 2008, it continues to be the leader in this area through the Thomson Reuters Risk Management Solutions offering.
Comments