Generation Startup: The Global Reality

Mr. Lee is the Partner and Head of Greater China Corporate Practice of Cadwalader. With a broad practice in general corporate, commercial, finance, private equity, mergers and acquisitions, complex securitization, complex regulations, venture capital and securities law, Rocky is widely recognized as one of the top Asian legal advisors to founders, CEOs and boards of directors on business and legal issues. His clients include Western, Chinese and multinational public companies, emerging growth companies, venture backed start-ups, and financial institutions, investment banks, private equity and venture funds, limited partners and fund of funds.

In addition, Mr. Lee is widely recognized as the leading expert on China cross-border transactional matters involving equity or asset acquisitions, direct investments in MOFCOM Catalogue restricted industries, Renminbi denominated fund formation, and specialized and/or complex legal structures.  He has a vast knowledge of China's rules and regulations and approval procedures concerning antitrust, financial institutions and funds, foreign exchange, MOFCOM cross-border M&A, "Red Chip" structures, "round-trip" investments and telecommunications matters.

Mr. Lee graduated from the University of California Berkeley, with high honors and academic distinction, and received his law degree, specializing in business law, from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. He is admitted to practice in California.  Mr. Lee is fluent in English and Mandarin.

Prior to joining Cadwalader, Mr. Lee was a partner with DLA Piper where he was the Head of its Asia Private Equity and Venture Capital Practice Group.

Eric L. Schmidt is the CEO and Founder of EventBank, an event and event data management SaaS technology platform. Founded in 2012, EventBank’s product was built out of the experience and pain of managing over 500 professional events in the US, Hong Kong and China. Eric is also the Founder of China Entrepreneurs (CE). He started CE in 2003 as an informal resource for entrepreneurs in China. From 2005 until 2009, he worked with Chinese venture capital and private equity technology investments and incubated start-up technology companies successfully raising over $50m in Series A and B financing. Mr. Schmidt also co-founded 1 Lacrosse (a sports equipment ecommerce company) and exited in 2009.

Eric has traveled to over 50 countries and in 2004, sponsored by Nike and Phillips, he organized and traced Marco Polo’s route, cycling 100 days from Beijing, China to Venice, Italy. Eric holds both a M.S. with a focus in Technological Entrepreneurship and a B.S. in Management & Environmental Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York. Mr. Schmidt has been featured on media such as the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, Baron’s, CCTV, China Daily and numerous other outlets. He is also a frequent guest lecturer for EMBA and MBA schools from the US and Europe. He has lived in China since 2002, but is a proud Virginian.

Bertrand leads the charge at AppAnnie. He is a technology entrepreneur with 14 years of executive experience in the mobile, internet and analytics space across Europe, US and Asia. Previously, he was VP Mobile for Gomez (web analytics) acquired in 2009 by Compuware for $295M, and before that he was COO and VP Marketing at Zandan (mobile analytics) acquired by Keynote Systems. Bertrand also held management / founder roles at Neocom Multimedia and Arkadia Netsystems. Bertrand holds an MBA from The Wharton School and a Master in Computer Science from ISEP, France. Outside of running tech companies, Bertrand is usually found trying out the latest gadgets and reading on his tablet.