With the support of these Co-Chairs, Early Stage East seek to re-energize the venture community with opportunities to generate deal flow and network with investors, venture capitalists, dignitaries, entrepreneurs and professional service providers.

Mr. Grotstein is Partner and Co-Founder of SAS Investors, a venture capital firm created to grow the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast’s most promising pre-seed and early stage high technology ventures. Prior to SAS Investors, Mr. Grotstein served as a division executive for global ecommerce at Citigroup, led the content and commerce efforts at Prodigy, where he was a member of the senior executive team leading the spin-out (from IBM and Sears) and was the founding general manager of NBC’s Online Ventures, where he was part of the team that formed the initial relationship between NBC and Microsoft which led to the creation of MSNBC. . He has also had a significant Marketing and Business Development experience across various technology and communication sectors working at CNBC and J. Walter Thompson. He sits on the boards of Multispectral Imaging and Backfence.

Mr. Sebastian is responsible for sourcing and evaluating venture capital opportunities primarily in the technology sector. He is actively involved in the development and growth of numerous area businesses, serving as a past or current director/observer of CyOptics, FreeMarkets (sold to Ariba), Precision Therapeutics, Eximias Pharmaceuticals, MediaSite (sold to Sonic Foundry), NeoLinear (sold to Cadence Design Systems), and Safeguard Interactive (sold to Storage Technologies). Mr. Sebastian has over 20 years of experience in technology commercialization, management consulting, systems integration, and financial services.  Prior to founding Birchmere Ventures, he directed artificial intelligence commercialization activities at General Electric Information Services; he was previously an applied artificial intelligence systems consultant with American Management Systems. Mr. Sebastian also serves on the Pittsburgh Technology Council’s executive committee and is past president of the Pittsburgh Venture Capital Association.