On Monday, April 8, the NY Tech Meetup in partnership with Blockchain NYC will feature 6 companies leveraging blockchain technology to combat issues related to fakes and forgeries while simultaneously generating positive social or civic impacts.

Don't miss out—click below to buy tickets and register!

When: Monday, April 8, 2024 at 5:30pm ET (Doors Open) 
Where: Civic Hall Union Square, 124 E 14th Street (@Irving Place by Union Square)

Program:
5:30 PM - Doors Open
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM Welcome and Tech Demos
8:00 PM - 9:30 PM - After Party & Networking

Event Partner:

Blockchain NYC is New York City’s largest blockchain & crypto community, with over 40,000 members.

Special Remarks 

Stuart Haber - Co-Founder, Blockchain 

As a young cryptographer at Bellcore (Bell Communications Research), in 1990 Stuart Haber co-invented the blockchain technique for ensuring the integrity of digital records. He was co-founder with Scott Stornetta of Surety, spun off from Bellcore to offer digital time-stamping services -- the first commercial deployment of a blockchain, beginning in 1995.

Haber's work has bridged pure research and practical cybersecurity over the course of a 30-year career spent both at large established companies such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP Labs and Bellcore, as well as at startups such as InterTrust and Surety. Haber served on the Board of Directors of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) from 2004 through 2011.

Haber received his B.A. from Harvard University and his M.S. from Stanford University, both in mathematics, and his Ph.D. in computer science from Columbia University. In addition to his continued work on blockchain techniques, Haber's research has included multi-party computation, redactable digital signatures, and CAPTCHA-based authentication techniques. His Erdös number is 2.

Demoers

Modelex is an LLM-based oracle that provides on-chain data, such as sentiment scores derived from text sources, bridging the value proposition of AI and blockchain in real meaningful ways.

Jamiel Sheikh, Founder & CEO, Scifin

Jamiel is founder & CEO of Scifn (formerly Chainhaus), a company focused on AI, blockchain and finance, bestselling author, professor & educator, community builder, board member, event organizer, and Forbes contributor. He is currently authoring a book on generative AI and finance for Columbia University Press and runs media assets like Blockchain101.com, Currency Insider and products like Disburse, Instamint and Modelex AI. He founded the Digital Currency Think Tank which works with central banks and governments and runs AI NYC and Blockchain NYC, one of the largest communities in the world hosting events like DARC, DEFICON, AI+FIN, DC Summit and more. Jamiel is adjunct professor at Zicklin Business School, SPS and Zhejiang International Business School where he teaches business and technical courses on blockchain & AI. Jamiel is Innovation Fellow at Columbia Business School’s Lang Center for Entrepreneurship, holds an MBA from Columbia University’s Business School and BBA from Baruch College and is completing his second Masters in Artificial Intelligence from Georgia Institute of Technology.

nCent is building a privacy-first data market where consumers control and monetize their data while providing companies with uniquely precise data and customer acquisition opportunities.

Jim Hunter, Founder & CEO, nCent

Jim is a successful startup founder and technologist driven by harmonizing the relationship between humans and technology. He's successfully founded and exited two 8 figure IoT startups into Fortune 500 companies, and helped shape the smart home sector. Now, as the founder and CEO of nCent, he's driven by a passion to create a fair and equitable relationship between all consumers, their data, and enterprises. It is time to change the game for good, and empower consumers to be part of the revenue their data generates every day.

Throughout his career, Jim has provided oversight in technology, architecture and innovation.  He has done this across a variety of sectors including, Wellness, IoT and Smart Home, in a variety of roles including Delos’s CTO, Greenwave’s Chief Scientist, Fellow at Motorola/Google and Founder and Chief Architect 4Home and Premise Systems. He is a named inventor on 12 issued patents, and has 8 patents pending, thus far, on his innovations as he is building nCent.

Starting his career as a decorated nuclear engineer with the US Navy, Jim's trajectory has been very unique. He's a global thought leader and inventor, speaking at events like CES and WebSummit. His insights grace tech publications like TechCrunch and VentureBeat. Inc. acknowledged him as a Top 20 IoT Leader in 2017. On a personal note, Jim has authored a SciFi series, "ReCollection," his first book, "Recalling your future" is available on Amazon.

Lendvest, a member of the Chainlink BUILD program, provides verifiable math to make financial markets on blockchain more efficient.

Josh Gottlieb, Co-Founder & Technical Product Manager, Lendvest

Starting at Agenus in 2018, Josh was integral to the development of one of the first tokenized stocks, a project recognized by MIT Technology Review and which laid the groundwork for compliant tokenization settings. At State Street Bank, he expanded his work to include ETF tokenization and blockchain-based settlements. In 2021, he founded K Level 1 to provide cutting-edge cybersecurity and smart contract development services. He also co-founded Lendvest in 2022 with the mission of improving the capital efficiency of blockchain-based lending. Additionally, Josh is an advisor to the NYC Node Project (NYCnode.org), which provides a compliant, direct connection to blockchains, serving as a public good for NYC.

Folks Finance is a non-custodial DeFi protocol providing financial tools for managing digital assets. Smart-contract technology empowers Folks Finance to offer advanced strategies while eliminating risks of centralized interference.

Ibu Karel, Head of Partnerships, Folks Finance

Ibu Karel is the Head of Partnerships at Folks Finance. He is a multimedia creator passionate about the intersection of art and technology. For Folks Finance, Ibu facilitates go-to-market strategy, media content, community, and collaborations. His telegram is @ibukarel. 

BlockBar is a trusted global marketplace offering the highest quality wines and spirits directly from producers to consumers, authenticated via blockchain.

Essence Slomianski, Luxury Marketing Executive, BlockBar

Originally from Miami, Essence is a marketing and PR strategist with over two years of impactful work at BlockBar. She has been instrumental in sculpting the company's marketing, PR strategies, and events, alongside streamlining operational processes. A Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) alumna, her academic foundation in Advertising and Marketing compliments her innate creativity and strategic acumen. Notably, she has shared her expertise as a speaker at institutions such as Harvard and Yale Law School, further solidifying her commitment to professional excellence.

Arsh Arora, CTO, BlockBar

Originally from India, Arora is a software engineer with over 10 years of experience in the blockchain industry. He has previously worked at Chainalysis where he led efforts and built the foundation for Ethereum analytics and clustering. At BlockBar, Arora has implemented partnerships with FireBlocks’ digital asset custody infrastructure and Chainalysis’ compliance technology, so buyers can be assured that their accounts won’t be compromised and their NFT’s won’t be stolen. Arora has also built a scalable infrastructure for the BlockBar platform including bottle drop mechanisms, credit card payment integration and smart contracts.

K3 Labs allows users to easily design and deploy applications and business workflows that utilize the power of decentralized compute, storage, and execution.

William Herkelrath, Founder & CEO, K-3 Labs

William is currently the CEO of K3 Labs. With more than 20 years in both product and sales roles in the FinTech industry he has been fortunate enough to be an early executive at 3 separate start-ups that were acquired by Fortune 500 firms. Since 2017, William has been exclusively focused on helping blockchain firms recognize and capitalize on mainstream uses-cases for the technology. He was the Chief Revenue Officer for Curv, which was acquired by PayPal in early 2021, and the Head of Business Development for Chainlink, one of the largest middleware tech companies in the Web3 space.

Rabble is a rewards platform on web3 where young people and the brands they love drive social change at scale.

Becky Wang, Co-founder & CEO, Rabble

Becky Wang is a two-time venture-backed CMO, two-time venture-backed CPO, and an innovation consultant, brand strategist, interaction designer, and technology entrepreneur with 20+ years of experience across established and emerging categories. She has been a key player in the evolving dialogue around the future of media and the application of new formats of technology including AI, web3, and XR on the next generation of digital and live experiences.  

Rabble is a rewards platform that helps young people and the brands they love drive social impact at scale.  With our network of vetted cultural and community organizers, we are engaging and rewarding Gen Z for the ways they create change by gamifying participation in community and cultural experiences. Our token-gated access technology allows us to create authentic, verifable customer connections with businesses and consumers to solve for greenwashing to drive loyalty. Think GroupOn x Sweatcoin that helps businesses and culture give back in ways that pay back.  

Previously, she ran Crossbeat New York, a strategy design + innovation studio that leverages data + insights of all kinds to help brands and start-ups navigate category disruption.  Previous to that, she ran strategy groups for SaatchiNY, Droga5, and a creative executive at Sony Pictures.  Previous to that, she was GM at a social analytics platform that created the first influencer score and led product at a fintech that created the first ETF based on supply chain relationships.  

About NY Tech Meetup

NYTM is our signature event that has been a staple for the NYC tech ecosystem since 2004. It's the world’s largest meetup group of its kind with members who have a common interest in learning from and helping one another. At each event, entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, and their teams demo cutting edge and transformative tech, answer questions from attendees and network with all in a welcoming, fun-filled space. Since its creation, over 1,000 companies have participated and have been a driving force of innovation and job creation in NYC and the greater NY area.

This event is a perfect place to start if you are new to tech, to New York City, or to the New York tech ecosystem.  It’s all about meeting people and having a "front row seat" to learn of the latest innovations that address market opportunities.