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Historically the dream of many entrepreneurs has been to go public.  However, the process of entering the public markets and the overhead of being a public company have become more and more onerous, and as a result a range of other liquidity options have emerged.  We will discuss research showing a secular decline in IPO issuance rates; secular decline in post-IPO success rates; and a secular decline in numbers of listed companies.

Successful private companies such as Facebook and Zynga now have active secondary markets in their stock, blurring the meaning of their 'private' status.  We will discuss liquidity options appropriate for a wide range of people with private company stock, including private equity funds, venture capitalists, angels, founders, and employees with options. 

Confirmed Panelists
David Weild, formerly Vice Chairman of The NASDAQ Stock Market (moderator)
Barry Silbert, CEO, Secondmarket.
Peter Lehrman, CEO, AxialMarket
Daniel Confino, Founder, MergerID ( a Financial Times business)
Dan Burstein, Managing Partner, Millennium Technology Value Partners

Peter Lehrman, CEO, AxialMarkets
Peter is Founder and CEO of AxialMarket, an online M&A marketplace connecting qualified privately held companies. Prior to AxialMarket, Peter held positions in private equity at SFW Capital Partners and was part of the founding team at Gerson Lehrman Group, where he helped build the firm's dominant global marketplace for on-demand business expertise. 
 
He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and received his MBA from Stanford Business School.  His professional career has been substantially dedicated to building high-value technology-powered B2B marketplaces where many thought they couldn't exist.  His passions and hobbies include entrepreneurship, America Economic History, writing, motorcycles, skiing, tennis and golf.  

Daniel Confino, Founder, MergerID
Is a qualified lawyer who has 30 years of experience in mergers and acquisitions with a strong international element.  He was responsible for international M&A at Hill Samuel Bank, Close Bros. and Goldsmith Agio Helms in the US (now Lazard MM). 

Daniel has built the international alliances for all these firms and worked on improving collaboration and originating large international transactions, most recently through Execution-Noble (part of Espirito Santo) the UK member of Global M&A.

He is the founder of MergerID, now a Financial Times business, which provides a secure online environment, for principals and professionals, to post and view M&A opportunities, globally. "

Barry Silbert, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, SecondMarket
As the Founder and CEO, Barry Silbert is responsible for overseeing the strategic direction and operation of all its markets. He is a frequent speaker at conferences on the topic of trading illiquid assets and has appeared in many leading publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, USA Today, BusinessWeek and Forbes. Barry has been featured on CNBC, CNN Money, Bloomberg News and Fox Business News.

SecondMarket was recently honored by the World Economic Forum as a 2011 Technology Pioneer. In 2009, Barry was a category winner of Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award, a winner of Crain's Entrepreneur of the Year Award and was included on Treasury & Risk's list of the 100 Most Influential People in Finance. Barry was also recognized by Fortune as "One to Watch" in the publication's annual 40 Under 40 issue. In addition, SecondMarket was named one of the Top Fifty Tech Startups You Should Know by BusinessWeek and recognized by Fast Company as one of eight startups "brimming with hope" for the financial industry. Earlier this year, the company was recognized by AlwaysOn Media as the overall winner of the "Global 250" list of the top private companies in the world.

Barry is also an active angel investor with investments in a number of exciting start-ups, including Behind the Burner, ProFounder, RealDirect, Send-the-Trend, Slated, TapAd and Vator.tv.

David Weild IV, formerly Vice Chairman of The NASDAQ Stock Market
Mr. Weild is the founder of Capital Markets Advisory Partners. He was formerly Vice Chairman of The NASDAQ Stock Market in charge of theCorporate Client Division with line responsibility for NASDAQ's 4,000 listed companies. Mr. Weild was behind NASDAQ's Market Intelligence DeskSM, Corporate Services NetworkSM, Dual Listings and Research Initiatives.
Prior to NASDAQ, Mr. Weild spent 14 years at Prudential Securities in a number of senior management roles, including President of eCommerce, Head of Corporate Finance, Head of Technology Investment Bankingand Head of Equity Capital Markets in New York, London and Tokyo. Mr. Weild worked on over 500 IPO's, Follow-on offerings and convertible transactions and was an innovator of new issue systems and securities underwriting structures, including the use of Form S-3's to mitigate risk for small capitalization companies raising equity and convertible debt capital.

Mr. Weild holds an MBA from the Stern School of Business and a BA from Wesleyan University. He has studied on exchange at The Sorbonne, Ecole des Haute Etudes Commerciales and The Stockholm School of Economics. Mr. Weild is a member of The Economic Club of New York and a member and former Treasurer of The Bond Club of New York. He serves on the board of Tuesday's Children, a charity providing support to children who lost parents on September 11. He currently holds NASD Series 7, Series 24, and Series 63 licenses.

Dan Burstein, Managing Partner, Millennium Technology Value Partners
Dan Burstein founded Millennium Technology Ventures in 2000 and co-founded Millennium Technology Value Partners in 2004. He serves as a Managing Partner of both funds.

Dan began making institutional venture capital investments as the Chief Investment Officer for the PS Capital funds in the second half of the 1990s. Before founding Millennium, Dan was Senior Advisor at The Blackstone Group, where he worked for 12 years during the period when Blackstone defined the contemporary private equity business. Over the course of his career, he has served as a consultant to the CEOs and senior executives of major global corporations including Sony, Toyota, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems.

Over the last decade, Dan has served on more than a dozen public and private company boards. He is currently a director of Applied Minds, Inc. a leading-edge research and development lab in the Millennium Technology Ventures portfolio. Dan has also been a forum fellow at the World Economic Forum in Davos and has been honored many times for his books and journalistic work, including awards from the Overseas Press Club and Sigma Delta Chi. He is an expert on PIPE transactions for venture capital investors, has spoken at many conferences on this subject, and contributed a chapter to a Bloomberg Press-published book on PIPEs.

Dan is the bestselling author of more than a dozen books on new technology trends, global economic issues, and popular culture. Among his pathbreaking books are Yen! a 1988 global bestseller about the rise of Japanese financial power; Road Warriors, a 1995 book about the birth of digital media and the Internet; Big Dragon, a 1998 book about China's future; Secrets of the Code; a 2004 guidebook to the Da Vinci Code that was on the New York Times bestseller list for six months; Blog! a 2005 book about new developments in Web 2.0 businesses and social media; and Secrets of 24, about the political, moral, and technological issues in the TV series "24." His books have been published in more than 32 languages and several have been turned into documentary films.

Monday, April 4th, 2011

Location:  KPMG, 345 Park Avenue at 51st Street, New York, NY 10154
Time: 6:00 Registration and Reception, 7:00pm Program
Cost: $15/Members; $40/Non-members & Guests
Organizers:  David Teten, Josh Hix 
Sponsor:  KPMG 

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