Mike is currently CEO of Ataccama, a leading Data Quality and Data Management helping organizations make better decisions, faster by leveraging all the data and AI at their disposal. Mike has been fortunate enough to work with great business leaders around the world over the past 20+ years in a variety of positions - CEO, President, General Manager, SVP of International Services, VP of Operations, Finance Director, Territory Sales Account Manager… - in companies ranging in size from 100 to 10,000 employees. While working at Dotmatics, Proofpoint, ObserveIT, Rapid7, and PTC, Mike has experienced the excitement, challenge, learning, fulfillment, heartache, and joy that comes from taking a company onwards and upwards from point A to point B and he sincerely hopes that these First Principles help others do the same.

Cybele is a content strategist based in New York. In the startup space, she’s helping innovative new companies tell their stories online. She studied Culture and Media at The New School, where she Mastered the cross-section of social impact and technology. She enjoys covering the digital zeitgeist and writing to educate on emerging media.

John is a versatile CEO and serial entrepreneur who has successfully founded, scaled multiple technology companies over a 20-year career. He is currently the CEO of Soluna, a company helping to shape the future of renewable energy and computing. Before Soluna, John was the founder and CEO of FirstBest, a transformative insurance software company acquired by Guidewire Software and Theory Center, an e-commerce software company acquired by BEA Systems. Before becoming an entrepreneur, John was the lead architect for Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group.

John is on the advisory board of several software-as-a-service, data analytics, and insurtech startups. He is the Managing Editor of CEOPLAYBOOK Media LLC, an online publication full of sage advice for first-time founder CEOs. John is also a trustee of Harlem Academy, an independent school in New York.

John Belizaire is a serial entrepreneur, advisor, and investor. He is also the founder and managing editor of CEOPLAYBOOK — an online publication dedicated to exploring what it means to be a startup CEO. Connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter. Subscribe to his popular newsletter — Mental Candy — read by over 500 CEOs.