Expert Panel
Six recognized industry experts. Google. Groupon. OCA Ventures. OpenTable. Redbox. Inkling Markets (a Y-combinator funded company).
Ready to meet our expert panel of judges for midVentures25?
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Andrew Mason
Andrew Mason is the founder/CEO of Groupon as well as The Point, the collective action platform from which Groupon was born. Andrew attended Northwestern University and, excited by the power of technology to change the world, developed Policy Tree, a policy debate visualization tool, subsequently winning a scholarship to attend the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy in 2006. In school for only 3 months, Andrew dropped out after receiving an unexpected offer to fund the idea that would become The Point. The Point, a ground-breaking approach to online collective action and fundraising, launched in November 2007. One year later, Andrew founded Groupon, leveraging the collective buying technology of The Point to make it easier (and cheaper) to experience all the great stuff in Chicago. |
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Ted Souder
Ted Souder is the Head of Regional Industry-Travel at Google. Since joining Google in 2001, Ted has overseen the creation of account management teams in the Chicago, Detroit and Dallas offices. Currently he runs the travel vertical in the Midwest, where his team manages all aspects of the Google experience for several of the world’s largest travel companies, including Hyatt, United, Enterprise and Orbitz. Prior to joining Google, Ted was the Director of Advertising at Echo Networks, an award winning online music company. Earlier he held numerous ground-breaking client service, sales and marketing roles with Excite, AOL and the Denver Business Journal. In 2006, he was named one of the “25 Most Extraordinary Minds in Sales and Marketing” by HSMAI. Ted has a business degree from the University of Denver. |
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Chuck Templeton
Chuck Templeton is the founder of online reservation service OpenTable (NASDAQ: OPEN), one of the most successful venture-backed IPOs of 2009. Chuck launched OpenTable in 1998 and was able to raise $36 million in multiple rounds of funding from venture capitalists. Since OpenTable’s success, Templeton has stepped away from the company and focused on environmental causes. His goal is to make Chicago a sustainable city with a high quality of life by 2025. Chuck is also the Chairman of Chicago-based GrubHub.com, and in 2006, he received his MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. |
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Biju Kulathakal
Biju Kulathakal is a serial entrepreneur and active angel investor. He is currently Chairman and CEO of Trading Block Holdings, Inc., a retail broker-dealer in Chicago. He was an early investor and partner at GetAMovie which was later sold to McDonald’s and is now Redbox. Redbox is one of the largest movie rental companies in the U.S. and the fastest-growing in terms of revenue. Previously, he was a founder of Enterprise Logic Systems, a software development firm specializing in the financial services and trading industry. He is a board member of the Beck Foundation and has previously served on the board of the Chicago Charter School foundation, Civitas Schools, Leap Learning Systems and the Heartland Institute. Biju received his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology. |
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Jason Heltzer
Jason Heltzer is a Principal at OCA Ventures and serves on the boards of portfolio companies Selero, Alert Logic, Univa UD and TradeKing. Before OCA, Jason was a management consultant and technical architect for Deloitte Consulting. He also led engineering and business teams at 1stUp, a CMGI company that provided technology to 130 web properties. Jason holds an MBA in finance and entrepreneurship, with high honors, from Chicago Booth, where he was selected as a Siebel Scholar. As an alumnus, Jason continues his involvement at Chicago Booth as a guest lecturer in the Private Equity Lab, judge in the New Venture Challenge and as a founder and board director of the Chicago Private Equity Network (CPEN). Jason also holds a B.S. in computer science, with highest distinction, from the University of Michigan, where he founded a fraternity, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was selected as the University of Michigan Fraternity President of the Year. |
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Adam Siegel
Adam is the co-founder of Inkling Markets, a leading provider of collective intelligence solutions for business and government. Before founding Inkling, Adam worked at Accenture, a global consulting firm where he served over a dozen clients across multiple industries for over a decade. At Accenture, Adam also directed a research initiative in next generation user experiences and ran a small internal venture fund to seed innovative ideas. Adam holds a B.A. in Political Science from Indiana University. |
