AWNewYork’s Afternoon With VCs, Entrepreneurs, and Innovators

Michael Loeb Delivers Keynote at Startup Summit

Advertising Week’s popular Startup Summit took place at The Foursquare Stage on Tuesday, October 2^nd.  The two plus hour event kicked off with a keynote address from Michael Loeb, founder and CEO of Loeb.NYC, the New York City-based startup firm. Loeb is well known as a serial entrepreneur who has backed, built, or funded over fifty successful companies. Chief among his successes are The Synapse Group and Priceline.com.

Loeb — a Direct Marketing Association Hall of Fame inductee – offered attendees a glimpse how he conceived of The Synapse Group, a direct-to-consumer company that fully disrupted the way magazine subscriptions were executed. He discussed the challenges he faced while building his company – through the late 90s and early aughts – to a stage where it represented all the major publishing houses and more than 700 magazine titles. Loeb ultimately sold Synapse to Time Inc. for hundred of millions of dollars.

The keynote address was followed by a panel discussion that featured investment strategists and venture capitalists. Speakers included Marc Michel of Runway Venture Partners, Hasan Arik of Redmill Solutions, Chris Young of Revel Partners, Angel Mendoza of IPG Media Lab, and Katie Loeb of Loeb NYC.

The afternoon was capped by the startup challenge itself. Advertising Week welcomed nine finalists from startups focused on retail, AI, VR and general tech.  Each of the finalists presented a five-minute pitch to the panel, who acted as judges, and in front of the Advertising Week attendees gathered at the event. Judges selected two overall winners of this year’s contest. They were OmniVirt, a virtual-reality platform for advertisers and publishers, and Narrativ, a company utilizing AI to improve Internet shopping. A third company, Thnks, was also recognized. Thnks is a gifting app that allows businesses to advance relationships through relevant gestures of appreciation sent via email and text.