Our Mentors
Next Unicorn mentors are all industry leaders, pioneers, and experienced entrepreneurs themselves who are passionate about fostering the next generation young entrepreneurs through our training platform.
Meet our mentors!
Feb 24~25th 2018
Howard Marks is the co-founder and CEO at StartEngine Crowdfunding/Capital, the leader in Online Public Offerings. Marks founded StartEngine with the mission to help entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. Marks was the founder and CEO of Acclaim Games, a publisher of online games now part of The Walt Disney Company. Before Acclaim, Marks was the co-founder of Activision Blizzard and Chairman of Activision Studios from 1991 until 1997. As co-founder, former Board Member, and Executive Vice-President of video game giant Activision, he and a partner took control in 1991 and turned the ailing company into the $30B market cap video game industry leader. As a games industry expert, Marks built one of the largest and most successful games studios in the industry selling millions of games.
Marks is the 2015 "Treasure of Los Angeles" recipient awarded for his work to transform Los Angeles into a leading technology city. Marks is also named one of the 500 most influential people in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Business Journal. Marks is a member of Mayor Eric Garcetti's technology council. Marks has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan. He is bilingual and is a triple national of the U.S., United Kingdom, and France.
Howard Marks
Co-Founder & CEO
StartEngine, Inc.
Kurt Ash
Founder & President
LifeTech, Inc.
Kurt Ash is a trailblazing serial entrepreneur who has been involved with the Internet community since its inception in the 1990s. He is currently the Founder/President of LifeTech, a startup that uniquely combines tech, mobile and social justice by providing free phones to people in poverty via 211's national health and human services network. Recently, the White House Office of Technology invited Kurt to participate in its first-ever Hackathon to pioneer and create software that improves the quality of life for foster youth nationwide.
After earning a bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University, Kurt began his career on Wall Street as a financial analyst at the First Boston Corporation, then one of the world's top three investment banks. While there, he raised capital from institutional markets for public companies such as American Airlines and British Telecom. Later, after earning an MBA from Harvard Business School, he was a strategic consultant for a broad range of entertainment companies, consumer products and energy companies such as Revelations Entertainment, Kinko's International and China Digital. More recently, he sold technology consulting services at NTTData to enterprise customers such as Disney, Lexus and Jib Jab.
John Rhoads currently oversees operations for Timbuktu Labs - the creator, publisher, and distributor of the New York Times Bestselling Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls. Timbuktu Labs raised over $2 million dollars on Kickstarter and has the first and second most crowdfunded books in history. Prior to Timbuktu Labs, he worked at Epoxy (acquired by Vemba), Buffalo Studios (acquired by Ceasars Interactive Entertainment), and at Apple. He studied at Virginia Tech as a First State Scholar and at UCLA's Anderson School of Management as a John Anderson fellow.
John Rhoads
Chief Operation Officer
Timbuktu Labs
Luke Li is the CEO of Beijing Wealth&Wisdom Elite Education Technology Co. Ltd. Luke is an experienced adolescent self-development mentor, with 6 years working experience in counseling and 7 years working experience at Elite Chinese Family Adolescent Education. Luke has designed an adolescent education system for elite Chinese families based on a series of in-depth researches regarding characteristics, life experience and intimate relationship of Chinese successful entrepreneurs. In addition to serving more than 5,000 teenagers from different entrepreneur families, Luke has led his students to study aboard in America, France, Italy, Britain, Australia, Israel and other countries. By using global resources, Luke and his team are devoting themselves to the integrated solution of raising next generation of Chinese entrepreneurial leaders.
Luke Li
CEO
Beijing WWEE Tech co. LTD
