Direct to Consumer - Building B2C success

John Pennett is the Partner-in-Charge of the Life Sciences Group and Technology Group. He has 30 years of public accounting experience, with a strong emphasis on public and private life science and technology companies. John is a frequent writer and speaker on topics related to issues impacting businesses in the life sciences and technology space. He is the publisher of Catalyst, a magazine focused solely on issues related to life sciences and pharmaceutical companies. John supports entrepreneurial organizations around the country with content and program development, and serves as a mentor to several early-stage companies. John has led the accounting, auditing and strategic advisory work for more than a hundred IPOs, private financing and mergers and acquisitions with an aggregate valuation in excess of $2 billion. In addition, he has served as the interim lead of the firm’s Risk Advisory Practice, leading internal audit, contract compliance and Sarbanes-Oxley implementation and testing. He is deeply involved in the firm’s Outsourced Accounting Services practice and the International Services Group. John previously worked as an Audit Partner for an international accounting and consulting firm.

Betsy Bluestone is the Commercial Discovery Leader for P&G Ventures, an internal startup studio that works with entrepreneurs to create brands in new business categories for P&G. She has over 20+ years of sales and brand management experience within P&G. Betsy is an experienced business leader who has a track record of success across channels, geographies, billion-dollar brands, start-ups, and acquisitions. Within P&G Ventures she works with some of the world's most innovative thinkers, scientists, digital marketers, and entrepreneurs.

Arpeeta Oberai is the founder of Beauteani, an indie beauty-wellness brand that combines the innate vitality of self-care with super-potent beautyTM products — ingestible herbal teas and topical facial masks — that invite self-love rituals and create a more holistic lifestyle. She combined her years of experience in merchandise operations for Sephora with her roots in India to harness the superpowers of ancient herbal remedies and the undeniable power of taking care of yourself holistically for a completely new beauty — and life — experience. Her mission is to give you the fuel to ignite your best self, inside and out, because she believes nothing is more beautiful or powerful than authenticity. Arpeeta earned her B.S. in economics from Santa Clara University.

Ben Parr is President and Co-Founder of Octane AI, a platform to fuel brand growth and personalization. Octane AI powers engaging quizzes, data collection, and personalized Messenger and SMS automation. Ben is the author of "Captivology: The Science of Capturing People's Attention" and a board director of the non-profit Samasource. Previously, Ben was the Co-Editor of Mashable, a columnist for CNET, and a venture capitalist. He has sat on the advisor boards of Lufthansa Airlines and various startups. He is a member of Forbes 30 Under 30.

Manu brings deep experience building digital consumer and enterprise software businesses. As a General Partner at Inventus, Manu has worked with the founders at Poshmark (IPO), Vivu (ACQ: Polycom), Dhingana (ACQ: rd.io), Genwi (ACQ: Persistent), Credit Sesame, Talview, Stepfunction and many more. Manu is also on the board of Excelerate.it, an organization dedicated to helping growth ready enterprise startups scale by connecting Founders with customers and strategic partners across the globe Prior to joining Inventus, Manu built several successful digital consumer businesses for Google shortly after its IPO, then joined the founders at LoLapps to build a successful social gaming company, and was VP of Products at NewsCorp’s Digital Division. He started his career in the product group at AHWY (IPO). Manu holds a B.S. from Boston University and a joint MBA from Columbia Business School & The Walter Haas School of Business, Berkeley. He is a regular guest lecturer at Berkeley on the topic of entrepreneurship and Startup growth scaling.

Chetan Pungaliya is the co-founder and Senior Vice President of Engineering at Poshmark, where he brings more than 15 years experience building and leading engineering teams from the ground up, as well as hands-on platform development. Prior to Poshmark, Chetan was co-founder and Vice President of Engineering at Kaboodle, where he oversaw product delivery, operations and strategy, and also recruited and scaled the engineering and operations teams in the U.S. and India. Prior to Kaboodle, Chetan was the Director of Engineering at OnVantage, Inc. where he managed a distributed engineering team of 50+ employees across the U.S. and China. Chetan holds a B.A. in Engineering from the University of Pune, India.