Lou Kerner knew the times were changing. He knew the days of the old Internet were going to be rapidly shifting, and he knew he needed to help the world of Wall Street adapt to this major transformation.
So Lou became Wall Street’s first social media analyst. He worked for Wedbush Securities where he was the managing director of the private shares group.
Now the angel investor spends his time investing. His company, The Social Internet Fund, is a venture capital firm that invests in the primary and secondary shares of rapidly growing private technology companies.
Lou will be a speaker at the upcoming TEDxNavesink 2015: Accelerators conference. During his talk, “Rise and Fall of Corporate Accelerator,” Lou will discuss how many corporations, when facing the risk of disruption, seek to accelerate their innovation by taking cues from the start-up world. His talk will focus on how and why only a small number of these corporations succeed in this model.
Lou believes that as every corporation wakes up to the risk of disruption, they will seek to enhance their ability to innovate, and many will aim to become an accelerator.
“Each corporation will bring a unique set of capabilities to the table, each will have their own strategy,” said Lou. “But most will find the results lacking, and most will end the efforts when the current state of start up fever recedes. Yet some will be successful.”
Lou will focus on why these efforts matter to anyone involved in the start up ecosystem, and the key ingredients that will lead to success for a small subset of those corporations that make the effort.
From 2003-2006 Lou was the president and owner of Bolt.com, a leading social network that grew from 500,000 monthly unique views to over 20 million unique views in three years.
Prior to Bolt, Lou was the CEO of The .tv Corporation, an idealab! company that licensed the top level domain (.tv) from the tiny island nation of Tuvalu.
Lou had a distinguished career as an equity analyst following media companies for Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch.
The last time Lou was at a TED conference was in 2001, and he is excited to be returning.
Don’t miss your opportunity to hear Lou speak at TEDxNavesink! You still have a few days to reserve your seat! Click here for tickets.
Stephanie Eichmeyer is a content production and marketing specialist for the TEDxNavesink team. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in communication from Monmouth University. Stephanie has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia and has worked in journalism and PR for many years.