Kristin Calve

Founder & CEO

After completing the Pipeline Fellowship in 2012, Kristin decided to continue in Angel Investing and founded Topstone Angels. Kristin is a serial entrepreneur with experience in startups, mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, new product development, nonprofits, as well as commercial and residential real estate. She has extensive experience in both traditional and new media, including executive positions at American Lawyer Media, The Deal, and A&E/The History Channel. Kristin’s nonprofit experience includes multiple terms as President of the Board of Directors of the YWCA Darien/Norwalk.

Kristin graduated from Fordham University with a BA in English Literature and an MBA in Finance and Marketing. Kristin resides in Darien, CT with her husband and four children.

John Ason

Advisor

John Ason has been an angel investor for over 16 years specializing in early stage pre-revenue companies. He has made over forty eclectic investments in the areas of e-commerce, technology, advertising, digital social media and entertainment. A few of his investments are: Diapers.com, Soap.com, Bikini.com, HotList.com, Spling.com, Scoople.It, Tips.by, Xlibris.com, LiveLook.com, MotionMathGames.com and Ology.com. He is a founding investor in Digital Entertainment Ventures devny.vc and investor in the Entrepreneurial Roundtable Accelerator eranyc.com and ad hoc mentor at DreamIt, TechLaunch and Worldwide Investor Network accelerators. He is a guest lecturer at the Levin Institute, Iacocca Institute, Wharton, Farleigh Dickinson, Rutgers and NJIT.

Galia Gichon

Advisor

Galia is an independent personal financial expert with more than 19 years in financial services, including nearly 10 years on Wall Street and an MBA in finance. She founded, Down to Earth Finance, which offers individual sessions and seminars without selling any investments. She is the author of, My Money Matters, a boxed set with money affirmations, instant money tips and workbooks.

Galia has been widely quoted as an expert on money and women, including mentions in The New York Times, TODAY Show, Newsweek, Real Simple, NBC Weekend Today Show, Essence and more. She is a frequent speaker at Barnard College and Freelancers Union.

Before starting her own company, Galia was a securities research analyst at Bear Stearns and Nomura Securities, and also worked for Institutional Investor. She is actively involved in Angel Investing for women-owned comapnies and was part of Pipeline Fellowship. You can visit her at www.downtoearthfinance.com.

Adam Quinton

Advisor

Adam Quinton is Founder/CEO of Lucas point Ventures and an active investor in and advisor to early stage companies. Adam is a member of the Global Advisory Board for Astia, a Founding Angel at Astia Angel and a Managing Director at Golden Seeds. He is also an Advisor for Topstone Angels. He serves as a Mentor for 37 Angels, accelfoods and the Women Innovate Mobile accelerator program. He is also a Pipeline Fellowship Ambassador. He supports Women2.0 as a first stage judge for their San Francisco, New York  and Las Vegas pitch competitions.

Adam is a Board member at Thrive Metrics. He serves on the Advisory Boards of leading Board and executive search firm RSR Partners as well as New York based Nopsec and San Francisco based SwoopTalent.

In the not for profit space he is a Trustee of International House New York and a member of their Executive Committee. He is a Board member at the Center for Talent Innovation.

Adam has over 25 years of investing and management experience most recently at Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he was Managing Director and head of Global Macro Research. He was a top ranked sell side investment analyst in the UK, Asia and the US.

Additionally he is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs where he is a Capstone workshop advisor and member of the Management and Gender & Policy faculties.

He holds a MA in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and an MBA from Cass Business School, London.

Andy Moss

Advisor

Andrew Moss is a long time executive in the technology sector: innovating, launching and managing a variety of leading edge technology-based businesses.  He spent 17 years as an internal entrepreneur within Microsoft Corporation developing new products and services.  His skills combine a unique blend of business insight, technical strength and public policy understanding.  He leverages these skills to enable companies to discover clarity from the chaos of innovation.  Specifically, he helps them with product planning, positioning & competitive analysis leading to credible product roadmaps, improved organizational productivity, effective implementation plans, identifying distribution channels and partnering opportunities.  His industry experience includes the corporate, consumer and educational markets.

He has held senior management positions within Fortune 500 companies (The Equitable, Pfizer), start-ups and boutique consulting practices.  He has been an active investor in the tech sector for over 15 years.  Since leaving Microsoft he launched his own startup as well as advised many others personally as well as through Lean Launch Ventures (LLV), an accelerator he founded in 2012 in cooperation with Connecticut Innovations.  LLV utilizes the Lean Methodology and brings together a strong diverse mentor network to guide the entrepreneurs.

While at Microsoft, he led pioneering efforts in digital media, online service delivery, distributed computing, & software development architecture and methodologies.  He also frequently represented Microsoft in Congress, at the FCC and other government and industry forums.

Andy serves on several boards and commissions including, Trustee at Cheshire Academy, Chair Westport Youth Commission, Chair Compo Beach Site Design/Improvement Committee, former Chair Westport Parks & Recreation Commission and others.

Joe Rubin

Advisor

Joe Rubin is a Director and Co-Founder of FundingPost.com. FundingPost has been introducing entrepreneurs to investors nationwide for over 11 years through its Online Venture Exchange, Dealflow Magazine and organizes Venture Capital and Angel Investor Conferences in 20 cities nationwide. Joe has also invested in 11 seed deals over the past 5 years, including Sticky, Inc. (acquired by Splashtop, Inc.), Senscient, Revstor, appMobi, Giftworks, Virtus Sensors, CIMA Systems, was an investor and on the advisory board of Offermobi (acquired by Moko.mobi). Joe is responsible for the FundingPost.com’s operations, and runs the largest online annual business plan competition, Pitching Across America. He spends much of his time coaching and helping early-stage companies, and speaks at events such as the NYC Economic Development Corporation’s Jumpstart and Fast trac Program’s, Early-Stage-East, and Connecticut’s CTech event, and is a speaker at and sponsor of the UCLA Private Equity Club. Joe is also a Founding Partner of ARC Angel Fund, a seed technology fund based in NYC which has invested in, among others: Upnext, Medivo, Sidecar, Careerminds and Human Demand. 

Prior to FundingPost, Joe was instrumental in helping to raise $2.5 Million in angel and venture capital for his dot.com start-up producing a family-friendly network and over 100 flash-based video games which were playable online and sold as a compilation in stores like Comp USA. Joe was also the Webmaster at Knight Securities (NASD: NITE), where he helped to design its online trading platform and website. Prior to working Online, Joe worked in television and graphic design for companies such as NBC and MTV, in addition to doing freelance commercial production. Joe began working in television production, graphic design and 3D animation professionally when he was 15, and graduated from Hofstra University with a Bachelor’s in Communications. He now lives in Connecticut with his wife and 2 children.