Announcing the 2010 Silicon Valley Investor Forum

It's another big week here at Astia with our 8th annual Investor Forum this Thursday, January 14th in San Francisco. This exciting event gives 33 life science, clean tech, consumer and enterprise companies from the Astia Doing It Right program the opportunity to present to the investor community. We are proud of this year’s group and know that the investors who will be in attendance are anticipating the event - already three of the companies have secured funding and another three are in due diligence as a results of participating in the Astia program.

In addition to the presentations by our high-growth companies, there will also be a presentation by the Non Profit Global Health Research Foundation which was selected as a pro bono client by the Astia community for its innovative approach to health care in poor countries.

The Investor Forum is scheduled from 12pm-8pm - continuing into the evening to allow for the Angel community to fully engage. Tickets are still available here: http://www.astia.org/content/view/1439/1156/

As always, the Forum will be an exceptional opportunity to network with entrepreneurs, VCs, angel investors, Corporate VCs and senior execs of emerging companies.

Here are this year’s presenting companies:

Consumer Products:
18Rabbits
Samara Innovations

Retail:
Marbles the Brainstore

Clean Tech:
BioVantage Resources
Ennovationz
Exergy Systems
Renewable Fuel Technologies

Life Sciences:
AdhereTx Corporation
AgilityBio
Arriva Pharmaceuticals
ChiroSolve
ConcentRX
DesignMedix
Eragen Biosciences
GangaGen
Global Health Research Foundation
Kemeta
PROFUSA

Business to Consumer Technology:
Carat Exchange
CareerApple
Coveted List
ecouture
GenGreen Digital Media
givezooks!
GoldMail
HarQen
Kiboo
PRIVO
ReferQuest
Qlubb
RumbaFish
w2wLink

Gaming:
Real Life Plus

Due to the overwhelming response from the investor community, the location has been changed to accommodate the nearly 300 registrants.

Note the new location:

Microsoft Conference Center - San Francisco
Westfield Center
835 Market Street, 7th Floor
(between 4th and 5th Streets)
San Francisco, CA 94103

And Purchase tickets here: http://www.astia.org/content/view/1439/1156/

Cheers and we look forward to seeing many of you tomorrow!

Happy New Year! We got interns for Christmas, what did you get?

Welcome to 2010! We like it better than 2009 already.

Why?

Already this year, three Astia clients secured funding in the last two weeks, two more are in due diligence, we have an Investor Forum on January 14 with over 100 investors confirmed, Moss Adams renewed its sponsorship of Astia for a 4th Year, and the Astia Advisor community continues to deliver on the promise of working with our clients to shortcut their pathways to success (if you are an Astia client, add your comments to this post about your team of Advisors).

And there is more happening inside of Astia...

Astia NYC welcomes four new interns (3 MBAs + 1 Ph.D.) this semester from Columbia and NYU Stern. We look forward to everyone getting to know them throughout the year.

Carolyn Simnett Branco (Columbia Business School ’11): Carolyn joins us for the Spring Semester to focus on Astia’s business development efforts and new client services. Formerly with Google in California and Buenos Aires and UBS Investment Bank, Carolyn brings a passion for entrepreneurship and deep digital media and technology experience.

Eileen Puklin Faucher, PhD: Eileen will serve as our resident Life Sciences expert moving forward our Life Science initiatives on the East Coast. Eileen has worked with Columbia University's Office of Technology Ventures and with Lux Capital Management and has held a variety of scientific research roles, including with the ËTH in Zürich, Switzerland. In addition to her work with Astia, Eileen currently conducts experiments as a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia.

Stephanie Palmeri (Columbia Business School ’11): With deep strategic consulting and web marketing experience at Sitaro Consulting, Accenture and Estee Lauder Companies, Stephanie brings a hands-on digital media integration and strategic campaign perspective to the team. She mentors entrepreneurs through the InSITE program and is organizing the first ever Entrepreneurial Panel for Columbia’s Women in Business conference: “Redefining Business, Reinventing Yourself” on February 19, 2010.

Avanti Paranjpye (NYU Stern ’11): Avanti is focusing her applied mathematics and publishing background on finance, entrepreneurship and innovation at NYU Stern. She has received several academic and research awards and looks forward to a career in strategic business development upon graduation.

Together, Stephanie and Avanti will be focused on client management. Their work will be to ensure Astia companies derive measurable impact from our community.

We are thrilled to have such talent available to us and delighted to have them on board. Please join us as we welcome them to Astia!

Oh, and do let us know what you got for Christmas and how your 2010 is shaping up.