Reinventing the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
As active entrepreneurs, who had worked through the startup, growth, and success or failure of numerous early stage companies, we learned the hard way that every startup faces the same challenges and makes the same mistakes.
We knew also of the value of business networking, that the answers we needed were to be found in the knowledge and experience of the people we met in our networking. We also knew how difficult it was to find the right events -- search engines do a poor job of finding events -- and if we had a problem finding the events that mattered then other people had the same problem.
Mel Baiada
Mel Baiada is the founder of Basecamp Business and serves as managing partner of BaseCamp Ventures, an early-stage venture capital investment company founded by Baiada in 2000. An entrepreneur at heart, Mr. Baiada founded Bluestone, Inc. in 1989 to provide technology expertise to Fortune 1000 companies and government organizations. Under his direction, Bluestone rapidly grew to a multi-million dollar company, earning its inclusion in the Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the U.S. for three straight years, from 1994 to 1996. The software arm underwent a successful IPO in 1999 and was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2000. Through his generous contributions, Drexel University was able to add the Laurence A. Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship in Technology to its campus. Mr. Baiada currently serves on the Boards of Drexel University, Moorestown Friends School, Innovation Philadelphia, New Jersey Technology Council, MAC Alliance and several private companies.
Mr. Baiada currently resides in Moorestown, New Jersey with his wife and two children.
Oliver Picher
Oliver Picher heads product management, strategy, and marketing for the Basecamp Business Calendar Network. Oliver is also founder and president of Visible Influence, LLC, a network of professionals dedicated to helping businesses, executives, and professionals make themselves more visible and attract more business.
Oliver has an extensive background in public relations, marketing, and publishing. Before joining Basecamp Business, Oliver served as marketing director for Synygy Inc., an Inc 500 Hall of Fame professional services company. Oliver has also held positions with Unisys, Datapro/McGraw-Hill, The Thomson Corporation, and the National Diabetes Research Interchange (NDRI). He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania.
Bruce Kramer
Bruce Kramer is a Drexel University engineer with over 25 years experience in the software and technology industry. He spent many years in the corporate world traveling as a technology implementation expert and then started his own consulting firm in 1995. In 2001, Bruce formed a technology support business that he successfully sold in 2009 in order to focus full time on embracing the fast growing mobile technology business. As a founder of Invictus Mobile Media in 2009, Bruce has focused on business implementation and usage of mobile technology. Bruce is a mobile technology expert, who can build software for the iPhone, as well as, quote market statistics & demographics, so he can focus his clients on how they can get the best ROI for their mobile investment.
Sally Donatiello
Sally Donatiello joined Basecamp Business in May 2010 and is currently Director, Business Development, where she leads all aspects of sales, engaging potential sponsors and members of the turn-key Basecamp Business Calendar Network (BCN) to connect and grow their community using the startup, tech, biotech, and professional networking events in the BCN.
Sally is an accomplished business-to-business (B2B) Sales and Business Development professional with more than 15 years of sales management experience in various industries with companies such as Mitchell International and American Mobile. She recently relocated to her native New Jersey after 10 successful years in the software industry in Southern California.