About

WEB SUMMITS, LLC – The Producer

Web Summits creates tools for companies to build their own crowd and sell products or raise funds from that crowd. We believe success is measured by the triple bottom line: People – Planet – Profit. 

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THE CROWDFUNDING WORLD SUMMIT HAS COMPLETED

  • Its purpose was to educate the public about investment options and give small business actionable information for new methods of funding
  • It was completely free and online
  • The Summit ran December 3 through December 17, 2013
  • Each day 5 interviews of the more than 65 CrowdFunding experts was broadcast
  • Links were emailed daily to all registrants with that day’s speakers
  • Tens of thousands of early adopters participated
  • We have produced past Summits with 20,000 attendees

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ADVISORS AND FRIENDS OF THE SUMMIT

Alisa Gravitz – President & CEO of Green America, author, and leading expert on how businesses can save money and resources by “going green.”

Amy Cortese - NY Times writer on CrowdFunding authored LocaInvesting.

Andrew Bellak - sold his trading firm to Goldman Sachs to start StakeHolders Capital Social Fund.

Barry James - serial entrepreneur, patent holder, columnist and advocate of broader UK CrowdFunding law.

Dara Albright – CSO of CrowdNetic, leading provider of funding portal platform technology to the private equity and crowdfunded securities industry.

Geoff Ossias - former SEC regulator, now practicing corporate securities law.

Greg Wendt - wealth manager from Smith Barney, UBS, Prudential, who balances returns with sustainability.

Hazel Henderson – founder of Ethical Markets Media, futurist, evolutionary economist and author.

Humphrey Polanen – Managing Director of I-Bankers Direct, a Web-based platform for accredited investors, and former venture capital manager.

Jason Best - one of three citizen lobbyists recognized by the WhiteHouse for getting Congress to pass the bill.

Joel Arberman - expert in direct public offerings.

John Perkins - ex-state securities commissioner and President of the North American Securities Administrators Association (which predates the SEC).

Karen Kerrigan – president & CEO of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, and is the group’s chief advocate for its members.

Korstiaan Zandvliet - operates the largest European Equity CrowdFunding platform: Symbid.

Marlon Paz – expert securities attorney, former SEC senior attorney who worked on over 100 enforcement matters involving complex securities issues, member of faculty of Georgetown University Law Center.

Michael Crosson - supports direct public offerings, owns the 3rd largest LinkedIN group in the world: SocialMediopolis.

Michael Shuman - author, attorney, 20 year advocate of local investing, a recognized expert on community economics.

Michael Dinan - aggregated 200 broker dealers for a FINRA approvedcrowdfunding portal.

Nick Warshaw - social cause portal funded by Reid Hoffman; Mike Maples, Michael Birch, Tim Ferriss and Google.

Randy Williams - founded Keiretsu Angel Forum worldwide with 30 chapters open and counting.

Rodney Sampson – serial entrepreneur, investor, author,  consecrated bishop and the Founder of Kingonomics, the nation’s leading access to capital certification platform for minorities and under-served communities.

Paul Niederer - oversaw $60 million in CrowdFunding on Australian platform ASSOB.

Paul Spinrad - original petitioner of the SEC in 2010, that sparked the grass roots movement for this revolutionary bill.

Rinaldo Brutucco - media lawyer entrepreneur who did California’s first direct public offering for a catalog company.

Sara Hanks – experienced securities attorney who co-founded CrowdCheck to help entrepreneurs  through the  due diligence process and to help investors make good investments.

Shahab Kaviani – co-founded CoFoundersLab, an online co-founder matching service.

Stuart Valentine - leads the nation’s largest green investment broker dealer: Progressive Assets Management.

Terry Mollner - co-founded the world’s first socially responsible mutual fund in 1982: Calvert Social Funds.

US Representative Patrick McHenry - authored the original CrowdFunding bill in the House Of Representatives.

US Representative David Schweikert – Chairman of the Subcommittee On Investigations, Oversight and Regulations

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OUR FOUNDER & CEO

mark with schweikert

Mark visits Rep. Schweikert’s office in Washington, D.C.

SourceURL:file://localhost/%20DATA/MSP%20Bus%20+%20Pers/Msp%20Bios%20Pics%20NmTg/Bio%20Mark%2011.13.doc

Mark Perlmutter is an accomplished entrepreneur, previously a licensed investment professional and real estate broker. He founded Web Summits to develop systems and tools to make it easy for small companies to build their own crowd then grow sales or use CrowdFunding to raise expansion money. Mark’s hybrid system applies if-then-response marketing software which only recently became affordable for small enterprises. This automated marketing enables small companies to become big companies through online marketing efficiencies.

Mark is hosting the CrowdFunding World Summit, a virtual online conference which features interviews with more than 65 CrowdFund leaders including U.S. Congress. Mark’s knowledge of affinity-investing and direct public offerings frequently draws invitations to speak at business conferences around the U.S. and abroad.

A sought-after speaker on alternative funding methods, Mark presented at the Deal Flow Media Conference in San Francisco, CrowdConf  in San Francisco, Global Trade Expo in Los Angeles, and others. Mark has spoken to thousands of small investors and eco-entrepreneurs in the U.S., Europe and Asia about direct community offerings and affinity-funding. He has been cited in top-tier media including the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Financial Times, Barron’s, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Business Journal, the Phoenix Business Journal, WebWeek and others.

Mark helped start CrowdFunding 4 CA, a citizen and business group soliciting California to adopt a state CrowdFunding rule, as Georgia, and Kansas have, to stimulate the state’s economy. He is also a member of the CrowdFund Intermediary Regulatory Advocates (CfIRA), an industry group that liaises with the Security and Exchange Commission and other regulatory bodies to create workable rules for the federal JOBS Act.

Mark has established a reputation as an innovative entrepreneur, filmmaker and authority on a variety of sectors and subject matters, from social media and online marketing to high-level investment strategies and real estate. Always on top of cutting-edge, disruptive technologies, Mark co-founded Switch Electric Vehicles to manufacture kit cars for consumers to build at home; previous to that he developed a direct online marketing method using a summit for his documentary film company which returned investor’s original investment and produced long-term profits.

Mark began his career practicing real estate sales and management in Denver, CO, eventually moving on to assist high net-worth individuals invest in private and public offerings in real estate, energy, cellular and cable systems, and more. In 1995 Mark identified a need in the capital markets and founded Direct IPO to use the Internet to help companies raise funds from their customers online through direct public offerings (sold in 1998). Always utilizing his forward-thinking expertise, the following year, he founded Wall Street Direct, a venture capital-backed broker dealer platform where accredited investors could compare private offerings from different investment banks anonymously.

As a prominent advocate for affinity crowd investing, Mark is developing a fund and a global investment network linking CrowdFunding platforms in many countries. This fund will syndicate registered direct public offerings of growing companies to take them to the next stage. This structure permits non-accredited fans worldwide to invest in early growth companies they know and love before these companies are taken public through a specialized low-cost approach pioneered by Doug Ellenoff, a securities lawyer in New York. This fund and global network leverages Mark’s expertise of forging three diverse elements into a disruptive finance strategy. They are social media platforms, affordable-scalable marketing SaaS and seasoned security laws.

Mark graduated with a business degree from the University of Denver in 1975. While a student, he started a city-wide solar energy conference to stimulate public adoption of renewable energy. He bought and refurbished homes in downtown Denver while he founded his first company, Applied Solar Systems. He resides near San Francisco with his life partner Susanne and her adult children, where they eat from their backyard garden, enjoy hiking, and ponder the meaning of life.

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Attention Vendors! Are you in need of a financial service, credit card processor solutions or new crowd funding source? Stop by the seminar at the crowd funding summit and see our presentations today.