Advisors

Co-chair of Venture Capital & Emerging Companies Practice, Mintz Levin

In addition to his active legal practice, he is an adjunct professor of law at the NYU Law School and he has a wealth of experience in private equity and venture capital, having co-founded Dawntreader Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm based in New York.

Daniel's practice focuses on representing emerging technology companies, venture capital, private equity, sports and entertainment, corporate governance, and general corporate law.

Before joining Mintz Levin, Daniel was head of venture capital funds and a managing director of SoundView Technology Group, Inc. (formerly Wit Capital), a technology-focused investment bank. Prior to joining SoundView, he was head of the corporate and new media and e-law practice groups at one of the leading New York firms representing early stage and technology companies.

Daniel has more than 30 years of corporate transactional experience, both as a lawyer and as a businessman, and has been an advisor to many emerging and developmental stage companies. He is a board member of several technology companies and a managing director of Dawntreader Ventures.

Additionally, Daniel is an author of a leading treatise on venture capital called Venture Capital: Forms and Analysis (Law Journal Press, 2007).

Managing Director, Digital Solutions Group, RR Donnelley Inc.

Mark Ranalli is an experienced executive and entrepreneur with a successful track record of building content and communications based businesses.

Mark is currently serving as the Managing Director of RR Donnelley’s Digital Solutions Group, where he is responsible for the strategic direction of RR Donnelley’s digital business strategy.  Mark became a part of RR Donnelley after selling Helium Inc. to RRD in June, 2011.

Mark founded Helium Inc. (www.helium.com) in 2006 with the vision of creating the first publishing meritocracy by applying a crowd sourcing filtering system to community-generated content. Today, Helium’s community exceeds 200,000 writers and editors and is considered the largest editorial community in the world.  

Soon after launching Helium, Mark co-founded and launched OurStage Inc. (www.ourstage.com), an indie music discovery platform, based on the same underlying crowd-sourcing principals and relative ranking that are leveraged by Helium.

Prior to Helium, Mark served as President of Fax International, a 700-person, global IP communications company that helped lead the telecommunications shift from the PSTN to IP-based networks.  Mark also founded and served as CEO of BaseSix Inc., a marketing strategy firm that specialized in servicing Fortune 100 communications and media companies.

Mark currently serves as Vice Chairman for the Center for Responsive Politics, the premier nonpartisan, independent nonprofit research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy and works with entrepreneurial students at the Tuck School at Dartmouth, as part of the Entrepreneur in Residence program at the school.

Mark has been a frequent guest on Fox Business News, and has spoken at numerous industry events and forums, including the AAP, SIPA, NCTA, and VMA.  Mark earned an MBA from Tuck at Dartmouth and a BSEE from Stanford University. He is married with two children.

Chairman & CEO, MokaFive

Currently Dave is the Chairman and CEO at Moka5.  Moka5 provides IT infrastructure management software and tools for desktops, laptops and mobile devices for enterprises of all sizes. Moka5 serves customers all over the world and its products are used by many of the largest corporations in the world.

Prior to Moka5, Dave was at Quantivo helping focus market defining technology on analytics for businesses of all sizes.  Whether small data sets or massive web scale data, Quantivo provided marketers the opportunity to probe their data in real-time while providing specific and targeted business results.

Prior to that, Dave was Chairman, President and CEO of BigFix, Inc. BigFix is a leader in Systems and Security Management market space.  Founded in 1997, BigFix has, since Dave took over leadership of the company, attracted 900 new customers including many Fortune 1000 companies. IBM acquired BigFix in August 2010.  

Dave's past company leadership experience was as CEO of Quippe Technologies, a Procurement Services Provider for the Equipment Manufacturing industry.  Before that Dave was CEO of Lucidity, Inc a start-up focused on an Internet workspace for software development professionals. Prior to Lucidity, Dave was Chief Operating Officer of what is now Citadon, Inc., a leading B2B play in the construction and engineering industry; and VP Product Management and Services at ULTRADATA, Inc. a publicly-traded developer of enterprise software for financial institutions where he was part of the team that created superior investor returns for the company's shareholders.

Before taking on these varied challenges, Dave was Director, Product Development and Customer Services at Automatic Data Processing, where he led the effort to instill repeatable customer and software practices at this market leading company. 

Dave also served in a variety of general management positions at Progressive Insurance Companies where he helped build the company's infrastructure in California during a time of explosive growth.

Founder, High Speed Analytics

Richard A. Ross is the founder of several software startups; his most recent venture is High Speed Analytics, a developer of nanosecond-speed technologies for financial services. He also founded Telemedia Devices, the inventor of "FreezeDry" space-optimizing Java system (acquired by HP), and Notable Technologies, a Kleiner, Perkins-backed developer of software for pen-based computing. He started his career as the second engineer on Lotus 1-2-3, for which he developed several core technologies. 

Recently, Rick has been consulting to diverse organization, including Bridgewater Associates, where he worked in Research Technology, developing systems to support macroeconomic research; Six Telekurs, on behalf of Gartner, where he performed "technical deep dive" on STK's new market data system in advance of management sign-off; and Experian/Cheetahmail, where he worked on next generation messaging/email system, and performed technical due diligence on potential acquisitions. Rick was also involved with "Committee to Establish the National Institute of Finance," which became Office of Financial Research under Dodd-Frank, and has publicly commented on SEC proposals at the SEC's request.

Rick has a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and an MS in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and participated in MIT's Technology and Policy Program; as well, he received a Certificat de Cuisine from Cordon Bleu in Paris.