Sam Rosen’s startup, Speakergram, which attempted to create the best platform for public figures to manage their speaking engagements, announced today that it is shutting down. Mr. Rosen was a graduate of 500 Startups who had secured backing for his project from New York notables like Alexis Ohanian (Reddit), David Tisch (TechStars), Jason Finger (Seamless Web) and Mike Yavonditte (Hashable). Read More
Sam Rosen, former New Yorker, just presented his start-up Speakergram, a platform for organizing and booking speaking engagements, at the 500 Startups Demo Day in Mountain View. He started the hunt for funding a week ago and already has commitments from New York investors including Alexis Ohanian (Reddit), David Tisch (TechStars), Jason Finger (Seamless Web) and Mike Yavonditte (Hashable) totaling $500,000 $250,000–half of what he’s looking for.
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New York expatriate Sam Rosen works on the top floor of the tallest building in Mountain View, California, surrounded by Silicon Valley landmarks. Facebook is up the road, Apple is in the other direction, and the Googleplex is to the east. It’s been more than a month since foul-mouthed superinvestor Dave McClure—a member of the Valley “PayPal mafia”–invited Mr. Rosen to join his incubator, 500Startups, after a serendipitous meeting at General Assembly.
The Valley is beautiful, Mr. Rosen says, and he’s had more exposure and mentoring for his start-up than he ever could back home. But he doesn’t plan to stay. The founder plans to defy convention by moving back to New York after incubating his start-up on the West Coast, and he’s starting to think he might be part of a trend. Read More
A few Fridays ago, Sam Rosen got a call from a friend, tipping him off that a big-time venture capitalist was going to be in town on the coming Monday.
Rosen had been working full-time doing business development for a West coast startup, running around town trying to clinch deals, all so Read More
