Featured Speakers

Drew Houston 

Chief Executive Officer, Dropbox 

Drew Houston is CEO and co-founder of Dropbox, and has led Dropbox’s growth from a simple idea to a service relied upon by millions around the world. Drew leads all of Dropbox’s activities, and is actively involved in its business and product decisions.

Before founding Dropbox, Drew attended MIT’s Course 6 (Computer Science). He took a quick leave from school to form Accolade, an online SAT prep startup, and also worked as a software engineer for Bit9.

After graduating from MIT, Drew recognized that people needed a way to bring their files with them without sending email attachments or carrying USB drives. He began writing a solution to this problem in early 2007 before demo-ing an early version to Arash Ferdowsi in Boston. The two of them then began working on the project that would eventually become Dropbox.

Drew has been named one of the top “Twentysomething Entrepreneurs” by Businessweek, and was a 2010 Crunchies finalist for Top CEO.

Lee Hower 

Co-Founder, LinkedIn 

Lee has been building and investing in early stage Internet businesses his entire career. He is currently co-founder and general partner of NextView Ventures, a seed stage VC fund based in Boston.

Lee began his career as an early employee of PayPal, initially as a product manager and then eventually in a business development role. He remained at PayPal through the company’s IPO in 2002 and then subsequent sale to eBay later that year.

After PayPal, Lee was one of the co-founders of LinkedIn. LinkedIn began at the end of 2002 as a close-knit team working out of CEO Reid Hoffman’s apartment in Mountain View, CA. Lee served as Director of Corporate Development, collaborating with Reid on LinkedIn’s VC fundraising as well as having responsibility for marketing analytics and the general finance & ops functions in the company’s early years.

After two startups in Silicon Valley, Lee moved back to the east coast and jumped onto the investing side of the startup ecosystem. He joined Point Judith Capital in 2005, an early-stage VC firm based in Boston, and helped build the Internet investment practice for the firm. He then co-founded NextView in 2010.

Lee went to the University of Pennsylvania, earning a BAS from the School of Engineering and a BS from the Wharton School. He lives outside of Boston with his wife and is a rabid soccer fan.

Alexa Hirschfeld 

Co-Founder, Paperless Post 

Alexa is a co-founder of Paperless Post, a startup that has delivered nearly 70MM online invitations since it launched in 2009. Paperless Post has revolutionized both the style and substance of its category. It has introduced design as a core value of the medium, removed ads, and changed the way people look at the vertical. The company, which was co-founded by Alexa and her brother James, has raised over $12M in venture financing and has 50 people and in its NY office.

Alexa has been recognized as one of Fortune’s “10 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs” and was one of Fast Company’s “Most Influential Women in Technology” in both 2010 and 2011, and was named a New York Venture Fellow in 2012 by the New York City Economic Development Corporation. She received a A.B. in Classics from Harvard College in 2006.