It's The People: Investing Early for the Long-Term TIA Ventures

Sean Grundy is Co-Founder and CEO of Bevi, one of the fastest growing beverage companies in the country which has raised $70M in venture capital. Prior to founding Bevi in 2013, he worked in water conservation at an environmental non-profit organization in the US and China. He has an MBA from MIT and a BA in Philosophy from Princeton University.

Fred Krupp has guided the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) for three decades. A leading voice on climate change, energy, and sustainability, he is a champion for harnessing the power of the marketplace to protect our environment. Under Krupp's leadership, EDF has become one of the world’s most influential environmental organizations. He has focused international attention on the problem of methane emissions from the oil-and-gas system and led EDF's innovative corporate partnerships with FedEx, KKR, McDonald’s, Walmart and others. Since he took the helm in 1984, EDF’s annual operating budget has grown from $3 million to over $225 million, staff has increased from 50 to more than 1,000 in 19 countries, and membership has expanded from 40,000 to over 3 million. Krupp was named one of America’s Best Leaders by the U.S. News and World Report and is a recipient of the 2015 William K. Reilly Environmental Leadership Award.

Before EDF, Krupp helped found the Connecticut Fund for the Environment (now called Save the Sound), an advocacy group for environmental protection — the first organization of its kind in the state. Krupp’s ability to create coalitions has been recognized widely. He served on President George H.W. Bush’s Commission on Environmental Quality and President Bill Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development. 

He has been influential in developing several market-based solutions, including the acid rain reduction plan in the 1990 Clean Air Act.] He has been described as the environmentalist who "has been the most successful in persuading the corporate world—and those who support its interests—to embrace the green cause". Examples including convincing McDonald's to forgo styrofoam for paper, Wal-Mart to stock energy-efficient light bulbs, and Duke Energy to invest in wind power.

Sid Khattri is the founder of Vertoe, an online marketplace connecting travelers, city-dwellers and gig-economy workers with a network of on-demand short-term storage options...like cloud storage for the physical world. Sid studied mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and then worked at Google as a product manager. In this interview Sid talks about the great rise and challenging fall of Vertoe.

Charlie is a serial-entrepreneur and most recently founder of ScrumLaunch, which designs and builds scalable software products for high growth startups and enterprise brands. ScrumLaunch transforms ideas into market-leading digital platforms to drive high ROI business outcomes

Somak Chattopadhyay has been operating and investing in early-stage startups in New York State and other emerging venture regions since 1999. Before launching ASV in 2014, he was a partner at Tribeca Venture Partners (formerly Greenhill SAVP, “Tribeca”), where he was instrumental in nearly every investment of its first fund and helped launch its second fund. As a venture capitalist at Edison Ventures, Somak sourced and evaluated investments in the tech-enabled service sectors, managed deal flow referral networks and identified emerging growth companies in under-venture-invested regions across the Northeast. Somak has also held senior marketing/business development roles at Medtower, a pharmaceutical IT software company; and DealTime, a comparison shopping company that went public (NASDAQ: SHOP) and was later acquired by eBay for $620M. He has served on the boards of numerous companies, and is currently a board member of the Upstate Capital Association of New York.

“I work in VC because I am inspired by entrepreneurs and find their optimism infectious. I like engaging with them to imagine how to transform an industry, and I love helping create the next market-leading companies. I believe our firm elevates teams that are not represented in traditional tech/VC circles. I am otherwise a classical musician and enjoy travel, reading, binging on podcasts, and exploring new places and cuisines.”  — Somak Chattopadhyay

James Nelson is Principal and Head of Avison Young’s Tri-State Investment Sales group where he leads a group of three dozen professionals in the sale of multi-family, office, development and retail properties. Avison Young is a full service global real estate firm with 5,000 real estate professionals located in 120 offices in 20 countries.

Since its inception in 2018, James’ sales team has closed over 150 sales valued at well above $2.5 billion dollars, resulting in his being named one of Avison Young’s Top Sales Professionals, a Commercial Observer’s Power 100, and a CoStar Power Broker. James has also been a recipient of REBNY’s prestigious Edward S. Gordan Deal of the Year award. Some noteworthy clients include The Archdiocese of New York, Breaking Ground, The Carlyle Group, JP Morgan Chase, Salvation Army and Vornado among others.

James has built a unique sales platform at Avison Young consisting of a unified, client first, sales group that is broken out by asset class, rather than territory, and where brokers share information and commissions in order to provide the best client experience. This is very much in line with his principally-owned firm, meaning that principals are personally invested in the long-term success of their clients.

Throughout his close to 25-year career, James has been involved in the sale of approximately 500 property and loan sales for an aggregate value of over $5 billion dollars. Prior to joining Avison Young, James served as Vice Chairman of Cushman & Wakefield, where his team was ranked the number one Investment Sales broker nationwide in 2016. Previously, James was a partner and top producer for Massey Knakal for six of their last eight years and was named the company’s youngest partner in 2004.

James is passionate about real estate and helping others achieve success. Whether through his podcast or upcoming book entitled The Insider’s Edge To Real Estate Investing, videos, or blog, he advises on how to navigate and stay on top of this ever-changing market. He enjoys guest lecturing at Columbia, Fordham, NYU, Wharton, and of course his alma mater Colgate. He is a regular source for the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, and the NY Post among other.

James is on the boards of REBNY, Counselors of Real Estate, SparkYouth NYC and formerly YM/WREA. He is also a co-founder of the Real Estate Services Alliance (RESA) and the Colgate Real Estate Council. His greatest joy is spending time with his wife Allison and three sons Luke, Austin, and TJ either at home in Connecticut, up on the Cape, or traveling to their water polo tournaments on the West Coast.