Dave Helmreich

Techstars helps founders scale their startups into world-changing businesses. Founded in 2006, Techstars is on a mission to invest in startups to enable more capital to flow to more entrepreneurs around the world in order to deliver exceptional returns to our investors. We do this by operating accelerator programs and venture capital funds, as well as by connecting startups, investors, corporations, and cities to help build thriving startup communities. Our results show why Techstars is Better for Founders than any other global accelerator: On average, 74.5% of Techstars companies will raise money within 3 years of their program; 18.5% of Techstars portfolio companies have exited 5 years after their program and 31.1% after eight years. (PitchBook June 2023)

MessageGears is the only warehouse-native customer engagement platform built for enterprise brands that market to millions of customers. By utilizing a direct connection to your internal customer data warehouse, MessageGears enables you to build more profitable and loyal customer relationships through personalized, real-time interactions across every channel and makes it easy to adjust to ever-changing consumer needs and expectations. Unlike inefficient marketing clouds and other traditional tools, MessageGears eliminates friction by leveraging your existing data investments without mapping, moving, or storing any information inside our platform. MessageGears is a necessary component to your modern data stack. It’s easy to use, has unmatched time to value, and scales to meet the needs of the biggest brands in the world. Join leading organizations like Expedia, Rakuten, T-Mobile, and OpenTable in the next wave of customer marketing. Learn more and get started at messagegears.com. Recognized as a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™: Email Service Providers, Q1 2022 report, achieving the highest possible scores in the Performance and Product Vision categories.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) empowers the media and marketing industries to thrive in the digital economy. Its membership comprises more than 700 leading media companies, brands, agencies, and the technology firms responsible for selling, delivering, and optimizing digital ad marketing campaigns. The trade group fields critical research on interactive advertising, while also educating brands, agencies, and the wider business community on the importance of digital marketing. In affiliation with the IAB Tech Lab, IAB develops technical standards and solutions. IAB is committed to professional development and elevating the knowledge, skills, expertise, and diversity of the workforce across the industry. Through the work of its public policy office in Washington, D.C., the trade association advocates for its members and promotes the value of the interactive advertising industry to legislators and policymakers. Founded in 1996, IAB is headquartered in New York City.

Contrail Advisors provides consulting and advisory services to data, software and technology companies with a focus on GTM, revenue operations, data commercialization and product strategy. Specialties: Revenue Operations | Sales Operations | SaaS | Data | Analytics | Advertising Technology | Measurement Clients: VCs, Private Equity, Early Stage Companies Digital Marketers, Publishers, CTV, Retail Media, Commerce Media, Information Services and Analytics Current Areas of Focus: M&A Advisory services, sales metrics and revenue operations.

Audience Partners is an Enterprise Advertising Management company that operates an addressable advertising platform leveraging data science, programmatic ad buying and unique first party data assets to target individuals across screens on PCs, mobile phones, tablets, and addressable TVs. Focused on politics/advocacy, higher education and healthcare, Audience Partners’ success has been its ability to accurately reach high value audiences on their digital devices at scale by connecting offline databases with online devices. The company’s philosophy has been to use “first party, mailing address data” as the linchpin of its online targeting. Advertisers, agencies and media companies have purchased 6 billion ad impressions for 2,100 clients via 10,000 campaigns since 2008. Audience Partners’ clients consist of Presidents, Senators, Members of Congress, Governors, powerful advocacy groups, U.S. Government agencies and a growing number of the nations largest hospitals, health insurers and universities. Founded in 2008, the firm has offices in Pennsylvania and DC.