1909 Founders Speakers Series

A series of 8 casual and friendly fireside chats curated to inspire and educate early-stage entrepreneurs, agency founders, and small business owners who someday hope to grow and dare we even say it? Retire!

We'll feature entrepreneurs who took their own path, overcame barriers, and succeeded in creating a business that was able to scale. We will highlight founders from different backgrounds, industries and whom hold different views on what success means to them. These are people who have gotten to where they are at through hard work, grit, collaboration, and utilizing the resources around them.

Founders will share how they navigated the startup world and what connections and resources were the most useful along the way.

SPEAKERS –

April 4, 2023 – Rob Jewell: 20+ years experience in founding and building 3 digital marketing agencies. He built his most recent company, Social Method, for 5 years with 50% profit margins, avg of 60% Y/Y growth, and sold to Power Digital Marketing for 8X profit multiple in late 2020.

April 18, 2023 – Yenvy Truong: A trailblazer in health and wellness, Yenvy’s background is in biomedical engineering and chemistry, but her passion has called her to not only innovate, but to scale cutting edge technologies to a mass audience and to those who need it most. In her most recent role as CEO of Upswing Health, whose condition-based musculoskeletal healthcare eliminates systemic waste, she recently closed a $5MM seed round.

April 25, 2023 – Ron Rosenzweig: Ron started his first company at age 31 and IPO’d just 3 years later. He then went on to raise $80 million in venture capital over a 10-year period to scale his second company, Anadigics. He took it public in 1995 and at its market peak it received a $3 billion valuation on $250 million in sales, with 700 employees. Father of famous designer and entrepreneur, Rachel Zoe; he now volunteers his expertise to organizations advancing contemporary art, fashion, technology, and start-ups.

May 2, 2023 – Rodney Mayo: Best known as the Owner of the Subculture Group (17+ restaurants and nightclubs including Subculture Coffee, Hullaballoo, Kapow, and Dada just to name a few...) he owns in the area, he is also a community activist; stepping up to the plate whenever in need. As a solution to the problem that Covid caused hospitality workers who were unable to feed their families, Mayo started a Non-Profit Organization, Hospitality Helping Hands. He is the person who will charter the cruise ship to help our neighbors (both human and animal) in the Bahamas who were hit the hardest by recent Hurricanes, the person who will toss his hat in the ring when nobody else is willing if it's for the greater good of our community.

May 16, 2023 – Mike Savino: Founder of Union Square Technology group that was acquired by Mindshift Technologies 2005 and Principal at Something Digital which was acquired in 2020. He is now the President of Launch, which to date, has invested in over 300 startups, eight of which have gone on to achieve valuations over a billion dollars: Uber, Thumbtack, Calm, Datastax, Wealthfront, Robinhood, Desktop Metal & Density.

May 30, 2023 – Jon Klonsky: Jon was a founder of Something Digital, an award-winning, multi-disciplinary interactive agency. After a decade of running a lifestyle company, Jon and his co-founder brought on their mentor, switched roles, eliminated 3 practice groups, embraced a new way of hiring, and transformed their digital agency into a leading ecommerce systems integrator. Find out how these moves set up their acquisition for a multiple that substantially exceeded everyone’s expectations.

We will be adding more speakers as they are confirmed.

COST –

Free for 1909 Members

$99 for Non-Members (tickets include drinks, light snacks, and access to all of the above event dates!

AGENDA –

5:30 PM - 6:00 PM: Drinks & Mingling

6:00 PM - 6:45 PM: Fireside Chat

6:45 PM - 7:00 PM: Q&A

7:00 PM - 7:30 PM: Wrap Up