Piotr Czublun | CMS Cameron McKenna

Piotr Czublun is a qualified legal advisor who graduated in 1998 from the Faculty of Law and Administration at Warsaw University with an MA degree. At CMS Cameron McKenna’s Commercial Department, Piotr Czublun is mainly responsible for the IT practice development and for life and nonlife insurance sectors. His experience includes negotiating and implementing outsourcing agreements in IT companies, e-commerce as well as representing entities in negotiating contacts in IT matters. Piotr is frequently invited to hold lectures on outsourcing and IT at branch conferences. Before joining CMS Cameron McKenna, Piotr spent close to 10 years working as an in-house lawyer for leading financial institutions, and almost 3 years as the manager of a legal team. His professional experience includes all aspects of activity conducted by a financial institution on the regulatory market. He has been a member of the Legal Committee and IT Committee of the Polish Insurance Chamber for almost 6 years. Since 2006 part-time lecturer at Warsaw Polytechnic covering Postgraduate studies in IT project management, especially the associated legal aspects.

Sebastian Kwiecień | Venture Incubator

Sebastian has been working with internet projects since 2000, starting as a programmer, then working as systems analyst (an MCI portfolio company, then Internet Designers SA, Janmedia Interactive Sp. z o.o.), project manager and executive in interactive agency. Blogging since 2005 under www.web20.pl address - blog covers new trends in internet applications an compares polish and international web applications. Since 2006 co-organizing Wroclaw entrepreneurs meetings called GrillIT and helping organizing similar events in Katowice (Spodek 2.0) and Krakow (GrillIT Krakow edition). In 2007 and 2008 working as CTO in polish social lending project Monetto.pl. Since 2008 - CEO of early stage investing company Venture Incubator S.A.

Michał Lisiecki | Point Group

He is 32. He belongs to the generation of young, dynamic managers. He set up his first business when he was less than 20 years old. He decided to connect his career with the media market. He openly admits that the source of his inspirations were biographies of Rupert Murdoch (founder of NewsCorp.) and Richard Branson (founder of Virgin brand). He built Platforma Mediowa Point Group – a holding operating in the field of media and marketing communications - from scratch. He began his career from publishing student magazines with less than PLN 20,000 in his pocket. Today, PMPG SA is listed on the main trading floor of the Warsaw Stock Exchange and its value is estimated at PLN 200,000,000. This means that each invested 1 PLN has been multiplied by ten thousand. Member of Klub Polskiej Rady Biznesu (The Polish Business Roundtable Club), a prestigious international Young Presidents Organization and the Polish Economic Society. In 2002, he was awarded the Manager of the Year by Home&Market magazine. In 2007, he was awarded a certificate of Polska Przedsiębiorcza (Enterprising Poland) and appointed as a member of Polska Przedsiębiorcza Programme Board. As a businessman and an expert on media and marketing communications market, he participates in numerous conferences and serves on juries and associations. Among others, he organized the first public debate during the presidential campaign in 2005.

He has a university degree in economics. He is an individualist, that’s how he speaks about himself; also, since secondary school until the end of his university education, he participated in an individualized program of study combining it with work and improving his skills in the US, Malta and in Great Britain. His hobbies include water sports and running. In order to develop his passion for water and business, together with Wojtek Brzozowski he set up a boat production plant, Navia, in 2007. He also likes riding a motorcycle and watching good comedies.

Archangel investor, serial entrepreuneur, startup ideologist and visionary. He has founded and/or co-invested in more than 40 high-tech start ups including Skype, the Internet phone startup bought by eBay. At 36 years of age, his current portfolio includes over 80 companies, from internet technology, through telecommunications, to health and energy. Lund has additionally established a category of investments in his portfolio entitled WILD – Worldwide Investments/Involvement in Life Development which is currently investing in companies within the areas of water purification technology, water turbine energy, landmine detection and hunger/obesity. He is one of the most active seed investors in Europe. Lund is a special member of Clinton’s Global Initiative (www.clintonglobalinitiative.org), he is a professor at Reykjavik University and frequent speaker at international conferences. His blog has more readers than a local newspaper, 40,000.

Whilst venture capitalist Tim Draper (the investor behind Hotmail) calls him “brilliant” and VC Bill Tai describes as “a cross between Wile E. Coyote and Yosemite Sam”, Lund was recently well captured by an article which described him as “what you’d get if you took Ron Conway’s Web 2.0 savvy, mixed in the European sensibilities of Index Ventures, added a dollop of Tim Draper’s pioneering wackiness and marinated it all in RedBull.”

Lund’s investment model merges angel and venture capital with incubator support catapaulting start-ups into existence. He believes: “Startups need help from smart people – not takeovers from smart asses”. To Lund, being an investor is all about adding value. He doesn’t over-think and he doesn’t let himself get bogged down by institutional processes. He just does. Quickly. He falls in love with companies, and does what it takes to help them grow.

Tenacious, instinctive and viciously self-promoting, one of Morten’s secrets to success lies in his network activity which extends from honing the raw brilliance of young programmers to masterminding a sit-down with former President Clinton. He is not afraid to take risks and dedicates funds for high risk early stage investments. He is known for acting on the moment, focusing on people, timing, network and…luck hence the title of his blog: ‘Its all about Luck’.

Recent activities include, co-founding Denmarks now largest newspaper, Nyhedsavisen, a free newspaper, where he intends to transform the nature of printed press today, merging this offline distribution with an attractive online presence. He also recently started 40+ companies under his boutique firm LundKenner and ignited international communications agency Hello Group founded 2006 and now employing 65 people, and currently the fastest growing add and media agency in Scandinavia. On top of all that Morten has started 3 funds – Chinese Property, Indian Tech Ventures and Middle East GreenTech Private Equity Fund.

Recent exits include:
VOIP star Skype (recently sold to eBay for $2.6 billion), Anti-virus consumer brand Bullguard,
Web Agency NeoIdeo (sold to Leo Burnett),
Chinese browser Maxthon with 72 million downloads,
Orolix the fastest growing on-line company in Brazil, Commisions free stocktrading Zecco.com (75.000+ clients in 12months)
PokerOffice the world leader in poker training.

Within his WILD investment portfolio, he is currently involved with WaterStillar, a company for water purification techniques; IJoule, a startup working to fight obesity and Aresa, a company that uses genetically modified plants to detect landmines.

At the heart of Morten Lund there’s something that drives him to go big. To Lund, big money means big power. It means Carl Icahn-style clout and activism. Something makes people listen to Lund, he has the clout, vision and disruptive ideas to fascinate and inspire. He will influence how we live, communicate, work and play tomorrow.

Zbigniew Łapiński | 3TS Capital Partners

Marcin Malinowski | Onet.pl

Michał Olszewski | business angel seedfund

Ludwik Sobolewski | Warsaw Stock Exchange

Rafał Styczeń | IIF

Rafal Styczeń is the main founder and the biggest shareholder of IIF. IIF (Internet Investment Fund) founded by Styczeń in 1999 was one of the first venture capital funds in Poland. Rafał Styczeń operated on the IT market as early as during his studies at the University of Science and Technology in Krakow. He is behind the success of Comarch, BillBird (Moje Rachunki), Inteligo and other companies. His knowledge and experience is the source of inspiration for IIF portfolio companies. Since January 2000, Rafal Styczeń is the President and CEO of IIF. From 2002 to 2004, Rafal Styczeń was the Managing Director of BillBird, a company which set up and operated an innovative network MojeRachunki, sold to Gtech in 2004. The MojeRachunki was an innovative technology for electronic payment of bills. The project was fully created by the Internet Investment Fund. In 1994, prior to founding IIF, Rafal Styczeń was among co-founders of Comarch and co- authors of the company’s success, as Comarch now ranks among the largest IT companies in Poland. Working in the capacity of Vice President of Comarch, he prepared the company for IPO and run R&D for Telecommunication Department and was the company’s President of the Board for two years before the Company’s IPO. Rafał Styczeń has a master degree in the Computer Science from the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow. In 1996, he graduated from the Post-Graduate Studies in Managing Enterprise Finance at the Warsaw School of Economics.

Piotr Surmacki | Point Group

In his career, involved in the activity on the telecommunications and media market for 11 years. During this period, he worked for companies such as: Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa (Era), Andersen Consulting (Accenture) France over the project of launching a mobile telephone network operator in Jordan for France Telecom, Hewlett-Packard Polska where he was responsible for implementing solutions on the telecommunications and media market; also, as an independent businessman he carried out projects for companies such as Heinz Polska Sp. z o.o., or AsterCity Sp. z o.o. He is the founder of Telecom Media Sp. z o.o. and for two years acted as the President of the Management Board thereof; currently, the company is one of the major players on the market of mobile multimedia content distribution and its current shareholders include, among others, BBI Capital NFI S.A. and MCI Management S.A.

In May 2005, he was appointed for the position of New Media Department Director in Telewizja Polsat S.A., where he was responsible for development and implementation of the strategy for Polsat, TV4 and other thematic channels in the field of New Media. In March 2007, after finishing his work for Telewizja Polsat S.A., he took up the position of the V-ce President of the Management Board of TV Point Group Sp. z o.o. and the President of the Management Board of 3P Inwestycje Internetowe. Currently, since July 2007, he has acted as the V-ce President of the Management Board of Platforma Mediowa Point Group S.A. listed on WSE, and since November 2007, he has been a member of the Supervisory Board of Zachodni Fundusz Inwestycyjny NFI S.A.

Konstantin Urban | Holtzbrinck Ventures

In May 1998, Konstantin joined the Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, when he became the head of the New Media division. In 2000, all internet investments were hived off from the Verlagsgruppe von Holtzbrinck and consolidated to form the holtzbrinck networXs AG and Konstantin was appointed CEO. Since 2000 he and CFO Martin Weber developed holtzbrinck networXs to one of the leading German internet investment companies. Now that holtzbrinck networXs was split up into Holtzbrinck Networks GmbH and Holtzbrinck Ventures GmbH, Konstantin Urban - as well as Martin Weber - is General Manager of both companies. His operating focus is on building up Holtzbrinck Networks. At holtzbrinck networXs, Konstantin was not only CEO but also founder of the Parship GmbH, Europe's leading high-quality online partnership service. Before he joined the Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, Konstantin was Senior Consultant at Gemini Consulting, Munich, and Trainee at Blackwell Scientific Publications in Oxford and Boston. Education: management studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich. He holds a MBA degree of the Babson College, Wellesley.

Dariusz Żuk | AIP Seed Capital

Dariusz Żuk is the co-founder and president of AIP Group, which includes foundations: Academic Business Incubators and Enterprise Poland, and also AIP Seed Capital. He graduated the Leon Kozminski Academy of Enterpreneurship and Management and Mercuria Business School in Helsinki. Żuk is vice-chairman of the Business Centre Clubs Strategic Committee, member of the Monitoring Committee PO KL, member of the Polish Business and Innovation Centres Association, member of Free (Economic Education Development Forum), member of Soliobtempero Soli, member of the Supervisory Board Business Centre Club Students Forum. Additionally, Keep Walking Award Prize winner, Entrepreneurship Spokesman in the Enterprise Poland Program. Previously: founder and president of Business Centre Club Students Forum, creator of first student bills.