The Roux Institute Innovation Speaker Series is an event open to the general community. Are you startup curious? Constantly wondering how problems in your daily routine could be improved? Interested in learning what it takes to start a company and grow it from prominent entrepreneurs? The Innovation Speaker Series is for you!

In the first event of this series, David Cohen, Founder and Chairman at Techstars, will chat with Mitch Wainer, DMSB'07, CMO and Co-Founder of Welcome Homes, and former CMO & Co-Founder of DigitalOcean. The event will be hosted by Margaret Angell, Head of Partnerships & Operations at The Roux Institute.

Dunton Family Dean Raj Echambadi and Chris Mallett, Chief Administrative Officer at The Roux Institute, will deliver opening remarks.

Speakers

David Cohen is the Founder and Chairman at Techstars, the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed. David has been an entrepreneur and investor his entire life. He has only had one job interview in his career, successfully got that job but then quit shortly thereafter to start his first company. Since then, he has founded several companies and has invested in hundreds of startups such as Uber, Twilio, SendGrid, DigitalOcean, Pillpack, Classpass, Zipline, Scopely, Outreach, Remitly, SalesLoft, and DataRobot. In total, these investments have gone on to create $185B + in value.

Prior to Techstars, David was a co-founder of Pinpoint Technologies which was acquired by ZOLL Medical Corporation (NASDAQ: ZOLL) in 1999. You can read about it in “No Vision, All Drive.” Later, David was the founder and CEO of earFeeder, a music service that was sold to SonicSwap. 

David is the co-author (with Brad Feld) of “Do More Faster; Techstars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup.” David also enjoys reading non-fiction books and playing tennis. He is married to the coolest girl he's ever met and has three amazing kids who always seem to be teaching him something new.

Mitch Wainer is currently the CMO and Co-Founder of Welcome Homes, a revolutionary home building platform that makes buying and designing new homes simple and more affordable. He is responsible for driving the brand and go-to market strategy for the business.

Previously Mitch was CMO & Co-Founder of DigitalOcean, a leading global cloud computing provider for developers and the most successful Techstars company. At DigitalOcean, Mitch deployed a sophisticated growth marketing engine and strategy to scale revenues from $0 to $100M+ ARR with over one million activated accounts in 195 countries, and established DigitalOcean as a leading brand in the cloud infrastructure space.

Mitch has more than 15 years experience in building brands and companies from the ground up. After DigitalOcean, he was the CMO at Clubhouse, the global project management company, where he successfully positioned the company to secure over $40M in capital for its next phase of growth.

Mitch earned a dual bachelor's degree in Marketing and Entrepreneurship from Northeastern University. Mitch grew up in Hauppauge, NY and has since moved to Miami, FL with his wife Lynne and their two children.