Events
Spring 2023 Events
All events will be held during common hour.
Monthly Lecture: PES Community Launching Event With Reed Switzer
Wednesday, January 25, 2023
12:10 p.m.–1:10 p.m.
Central Corridor Lounge, One Pace Plaza, 4th floor, New York City Campus
Reed Switzer is an entrepreneur and rising product leader in the financial technology space who has appeared in Business Insider, Fast Company, and Tech Crunch, among others. Born and raised in New York, Reed got his start bussing tables at a local diner. In his early professional career, he developed a passion for apparel and launched his own brand in partnership with a couple of friends. He later served as Operations Lead for a music streaming startup led by the former CFO of Combs Enterprises.
In 2021, studying finance and technology at Wharton, Reed decided to drop out of school to pursue his entrepreneurial spirit. He founded and currently leads Hopscotch, a venture-backed FinTech startup with $10M in funding.
Hopscotch
As former small business owners ourselves, we know the headaches that come with getting paid and making payments to service providers. Hopscotch is building the all-in-one payments platform that enables businesses to pay and get paid in real-time without any fees or complexity—the result? An unmatched payments experience for your business. Think Venmo, for business, on steroids.
Today, hundreds small businesses in the business services space use Hopscotch to more easily manage their invoicing and bill pay processes.
Workshop: How To Transform Your Idea Into Milestones
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
3:25 p.m.–4:25 p.m.
Room W405A, 4th floor, New York City Campus
Join us for a hands-on workshop with PES manager Nofar Nistani. Pace community members will explore their entrepreneurial spirit and learn how to transform an idea into a company's first steps.
Workshop: Market Research
Tuesday, February 21, 2023
3:25 p.m.–4:25 p.m.
Room W405A, 4th floor, New York City Campus
Join us for a workshop with PES manager Nofar Nistani. Learn what is market research, why it's so important, how to conduct it well, and why investors love it so much.
Monthly Lecture: Robert LoCascio, Founder and CEO of LivePerson
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
12:10 p.m.–1:10 p.m.
Central Corridor Lounge, One Pace Plaza, 4th floor, New York City Campus
Robert LoCascio is the founder of LivePerson, Inc. and has been its chief executive officer since its inception in 1995. His mission is to make life easier by transforming how people communicate with brands. LivePerson has come a long way since its early years, having survived the dot-com crash and grown to become the leader in intelligent engagement solutions, currently serving over 18,000 clients, with 1,300 employees and offices across the globe. Robert is one of the longest-standing founding CEOs of a tech company today.
Robert's interests extend beyond his business and reflect his close ties to New York City. He is a founding member of the NYC Entrepreneurs Council of the Partnership for New York City. In 2001, he started the Dream Big Foundation with its first program FeedingNYC, which gives families in need a Thanksgiving dinner.
To date, FeedingNYC has donated more than 70,000 meals. Its second program, the Dream Big Entrepreneurship Initiative, launched in 2014 to fund, mentor, coach, and empower local entrepreneurs in underserved communities.
LivePerson
LivePerson makes life easier for people and brands everywhere through trusted Conversational AI. We empower brands to give customers better experiences through AI-powered messaging instead of forcing them to waste time on hold or crawling through websites. For consumers, AI-powered conversations make it natural and easy to buy products and resolve questions in the messaging channels they use every day, including Apple Business Chat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, SMS. For brands, this means happier customers, higher efficiency, and lower costs. Most importantly for both, conversational relationships run deep. Over 18,000 customers—including leading brands like HSBC, Orange, and GM Financial—have deployed our conversational platform to orchestrate how AI and human agents serve customers at scale. Together, we help millions of people shop and get customer service through the world's most popular messaging channels, brand websites and apps, and even voice assistants.
LivePerson was named the Fast Company's World's Most Innovative Companies list for 2022. Fast Company ranked LivePerson at #1 on its World's Most Innovative Companies in Artificial Intelligence list, as well as #21 on its overall World's Most Innovative Companies list.
How to Build a Startup - For Pace Students and Alumnni
Monday, February 27, 2023
12:10 p.m. - 1:10 p.m.
Room W405A, 4th floor, New York City Campus and Zoom
Dean Singleton is hosting a special session about opportunities for Pace students and alumni to become entrepreneurs. The Pace Entrepreneurship Studio (PES) manager, Nofar Nistani, will share additional information about the Studio program and answer questions about how to launch a startup at Pace. RSVP required - spots are limited.
Workshop: Target Audience
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
3:25 p.m.–4:25 p.m.
Room W405A, 4th floor, New York City Campus
Join us for a hands-on workshop with PES manager Nofar Nistani about who is your audience and why you need to know it from your very first steps. Get hands-on practice on identifying your potential clients.
Register for the Target Audience Workshop
Monthly Lecture: Sara Garson of 25madison
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
12:10 p.m.–1:10 p.m.
Central Corridor Lounge, One Pace Plaza, 4th floor, New York City Campus
Sara Garson builds and invests in early-stage start-ups at 25madison, a venture studio and fund. Prior to 25madison, Sara spent six years building consumer startups. She was the fifth employee at Daily Harvest, one of the fastest growing e-commerce brands, where she was responsible for launching and scaling their end-to-end supply chain as Director of Operations. She then founded a venture-backed party supplies company called Coterie. Sara started her career as a CPA at PwC, and received her MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and her BSBA from Georgetown University.
Workshop: Pitch Deck
Tuesday, April 25, 2023
3:25 p.m.–4:25 p.m.
Room W405A, 4th floor, New York City Campus
Join us for a workshop with PES manager Nofar Nistani. Learn about the grand finale—what is the best structure of a pitching deck, what needs to be explained on each slide, why you should know to pitch it in 10 minutes, and the secrets the VCs will never tell you about.
Register for the Pitch Deck Workshop
Monthly Lecture: David Olk, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Junction
Wednesday, April 26, 2023
12:10 p.m.–1:10 p.m.
Central Corridor Lounge, One Pace Plaza, 4th floor, New York City Campus
Prior to co-founding Junction, David co-founded ShopKeep and ran the business day to day while raising close to $200m before it was acquired by Lightspeed. Before ShopKeep, he was Director of Mergers and Acquisitions at IAC and also co-founded Voray, a platform to help people build more authentic networks and grow their careers. He spent the first many years of his career with PwC's Mergers and Acquisitions team. He was also an early board member of Kickstarter, which he helped finance and advise from the earliest stages. David is an active allocator to numerous venture funds and sits on the advisory board of a $4B asset manager. He's an adjunct professor at Columbia University, a TechStars mentor, Innovator in Residence at Tulane's University's AB Freeman School of Business, and a member of the Board of Directors for Columbia University's Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center. A certified public accountant, David has an undergraduate degree in accounting from Tulane University and an MBA from Columbia University. Born in Brooklyn, he still consumes large amounts of corner squares at L&Bs Spumoni Gardens.