The Media & Entertainment affinity group of The Wharton Club of Southern California invites all members and non-members and their guest to join them at City Tavern in Culver City for a happy hour and networking event.
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About City Tavern: This location is both a restaurant and bar with a warm and inviting atmosphere and staff who likes to share their hospitality with you. Their casual, yet refined, menu from Chef Liber Arce has a selection of shared plates, satisfying entrees and delicious desserts. They serve lunch and dinner seven days a week and a weekend brunch well worth the visit. The bar focuses on West Coast craft beers with 22 rotating taps, a curated wine list, and some of the best cocktails on the West Side. Give them a first visit or come back and say hello, they would love to see you.
Who: Media & Entertainment industry professionals. All WhartonSoCal alumni are invited to join for networking.
What: Entertainment (Culver City) Happy Hour
When: Thursday, March 16 2023, 5:30pm - 8pm PDT
Where: City Tavern, 9739 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90232
Why: Meet old and make new friends, connections, and share good times.
Street parking: Metered street parking available. Several pay lots within walking distance.
Valet parking: 6pm to close Thursday, Friday and Saturday only a few yards east of Culver Boulevard entrance.
Cost: Members and their guest, $10/person; Non-members and their guest, $25/person. Both member or non-member and their guest must each have a ticket. Limit ONE guest per member or non-member at the member or non-member price. Tickets are non-refundable but may be transferred or assigned to another member or non-member of the same ticket class.
RSVP required to attend; no walk-ins allowed.
About the Hosts:
Dan Smith W'86
As Vice President, Entertainment, for The Wharton Club of Southern California, Dan Smith W'86 leads the Entertainment affinity group. Dan is an expert creator of profitable online content and retail businesses. He uses creative content, social media and clever branding to connect fans to new products and keep them coming back for more. He has launched successful online businesses within large international companies and as a Kickstarter-funded solo entrepreneur. Dan has substantial expertise as a TV and digital creative executive and can build and grow content studios or web stores from scratch. With his business education (Wharton undergrad ’86, UCLA MBA ’90) and Hollywood executive experience, Dan is a dynamic builder and manager of creative enterprises with strong analytics and financial management expertise. He is the founder of Alt-CMO and the founder and CEO of JIMMYCASE. In 2022, Dan sold his self-funded ecommerce brand JIMMYCASE for 100x invested capital. With innovative products and solid branding, he attracted AT&T, Fred Segal, Beams (Japan), WIRED, Macworld and many stars and launched a winner.
Sambit Patnaik WG23
Sambit Patnaik WG23 is a product leader focused on metrics based results and creating a unique value offering for the most important customers. He has a background in advertising tech, streaming media and ed tech. Some of his later roles have involved applying AI/ML algorithms at scale. He has also worked with systems that process billions of transactions every day and has expertise in large scale data analysis using regression and probability based methods. He has experience in both large organizations and nimble startup environments. To date, Sambit's career highlights include:
- Multiple 0-1 product releases in both B2B and B2C spaces launching products with over 50% YoY growth in revenue
- Leading strategy for key product areas of Canada's first streaming TV product that involved navigating a complex ecosystem of legal, infrastructure, content partner and vendor dependencies
- Building and scaling video/connected TV businesses in a digital advertising marketplace that contributed to over 60% of companies revenues
- Managing large teams to deliver products central to the company's goals - mentoring, retaining and growing careers of team members in product and engineering roles
- Understanding complexities of software product architecture due to hands on engineering experience; expertise in software engineering efforts very efficiently reducing costs and time to market by months