On October 13th of 2014 Columbia Entrepreneurship
Kicked Off a Series of Conversations With
Accomplished Global Entrepreneurs
This was the inaugural panel discussion
entitled “Going Global: Announcing the End of the Local Startup”.
We featured three entrepreneurs who between them
have founded multinational brands worth a combined $5B.
See the videos below:
- VIDEO: Full Length: Going Global: Announcing the End of the Local Startup [video] 58:17
- VIDEO: Excerpt: Introductions by Professor David Lerner [video] 3:49
- VIDEO: Excerpt: “It’s not the idea, it’s the execution” [video] 6:00
- VIDEO: Excerpt: “Nine criteria for selecting a business [video] 3:27
Dr. Amol Sarva ‘98CC, Martin Varsavsky ‘84SIPA, and Fabrice Grinda
At their peril, young American entrepreneurs tend to focus exclusively on American markets. Our panelists offer a broader perspective and compelling reasons why international markets and international competitors should be top of mind.
Register for Announcing the End of the Local Startup today.
Moderator Dr. Amol Sarva ‘98CC, is an American technology entrepreneur with international aims. Starting his first company while still a student at Columbia College, Dr. Sarva was co-founder of Virgin Mobile USA (IPO, acquired by Sprint for $1B) and Peek, Time’s gadget of the year (acquired by SoftBank 2012) where he served as CEO through Peek’s worldwide product launches and raised over $25 million from top venture capital firms. More recently Dr. Sarva is co-founder of Halo Neuroscience (backed by Andreessen Horowitz), and Knotable (with investments from Bloomberg and 500 Startups).
Martin Varsavsky ‘84SIPA, ‘85BUS, an Argentine/Spanish entrepreneur, has founded seven companies over the course of his career including Jazztel Telecomunicaciones, Spain’s second largest publicly traded telecom operator and Ya.com, Spain’s third largest Internet web site/DSL provider that includes the second largest Spanish language web agency. Mr. Varsavsky’s current venture, Fon, founded in 2005 is a community-empowered company dedicated to building the world’s largest global Wifi network bottom up, spreading the power of Wifi around the world. Fon attracted British Telecom, Coral Group, Skype, Atomico, Google, and Index Ventures as partners and quickly became the largest Wifi community with over 13 million hotpots worldwide.
Fabrice Grinda is among Europe’s leading Internet entrepreneurs and investors. In 2006, Mr. Grinda co-founded OLX, Inc. in the hopes of building the world’s largest local classified site in the world. OLX now has over 300 employees and is present in over 90 countries and 50 languages with over 150 million unique visitors per month. Mr. Grinda has served as CEO for five multinational brands and has an impressive track record as an early investor in Airbnb, Alibaba, Facebook, Palantir, and Spotify.
Join us at the beautiful Midtown Loft and Terrace on Fifth Avenue and 29th Street. Enjoy international wines, a sampling of foods from around the globe, and spectacular views of midtown Manhattan. This speakers series is meant for Columbia University alumni but guests without Columbia affiliation are welcome.
Single tickets are $20, a pair of tickets is only $30
Register today