The Leader in Automated Marketing Compliance

Alex Baydin

Founder and CEO, PerformLine

Alex is a seasoned executive and a recognized leader in the compliance and digital media industries. Alex founded PerformLine as he saw the growing need for compliance and verification in the marketing space. Using his deep experience in media and compliance, he developed the PerformLine™ SaaS platform to bring automation and scale to companies looking to mitigate risk and ensure brand safety. PerformLine empowers leaders with a first-line of defense solution to mitigate risk across major consumer touchpoints: digital, voice, chat, email and social. By combining scalable tools and intelligent automation into one integrated platform, PerformLine creates a clear path to discover, monitor, act on, and mitigate regulatory risk and ensure brand safety. Prior to founding PerformLine, Alex held leadership roles at Epic Media Group, Inc., a performance-based affiliate network and lead aggregator, Quigo Technologies, a pioneer in contextual CPC technology and SEM firm eventually acquired by AOL, and at United Online (NASD:UNTD) an internet service provider. Alex holds a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University.

LaSalle Vaughn

Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer, Bestow

LaSalle has over 20 years of financial services executive experience in highly regulated industries leading large global operations and compliance teams for Fortune 500 & fast-growing startups. He has deep expertise in operations, risk management, compliance, contact centers and transformation scaling for high growth organizations. LaSalle is a former US Naval Officer, published thought leader and accomplished public speaker.

LaSalle is the Chief Compliance, Risk & Ethics Officer for Bestow – a leading insurtech company offering insurance online. His teams provide comprehensive solutions for Bestow, third parties and customers in Compliance, Risk, Ethics and Regulatory Affairs.  Before Bestow, LaSalle was an Ethics & Compliance executive for Robinhood leading teams in Global Communications Compliance and monitoring for domestic and international entities including investments and crypto currencies.  At Robinhood, LaSalle served on numerous steering committees including Product Oversight and the Diversity & Inclusion.

Prior to joining Robinhood, LaSalle was the Executive & Marketing Compliance Officer for the United Services Automobile Association (USAA) – a Fortune 100, diversified financial services firm that provides insurance, banking, investments, and advice to over 13 million active duty and retired military members and their families. In this role, he led the Compliance oversight of all advice, approval of marketing and new product creation for USAA, its affiliates, and third parties. Before USAA, LaSalle served as a Wealth Manager for Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo, managing half a billion dollars for high profile senior executives and professional athletes.

LaSalle serves as an Independent Director for the Board of PerformLine, a leading provider of compliance technology empowering firms with solutions to mitigate risk across a multitude of channels. He serves as an Executive Committee member for the University of Texas at Austin Longhorn Foundation (T-Association). He also served as a Board member on the Investment Committee for the University of Texas at Austin (TEXAS EXES).

He earned his BBA from The Red McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin and his MBA from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He is a Certified Wealth Strategist (CWS), a Certified Compliance & Ethics Professional (CCEP) and is registered to hold FINRA registrations 7, 24, 66 and the Group 1 life, annuity and health license. He is married to Nikole and they have two children, Sydney and LaSalle IV and they currently reside in Sunnyvale, California.

Brian Shortsleeve

Founder, M33 Growth

Brian Shortsleeve is passionate about helping founders and CEOs win in their markets by applying his experience driving operational excellence and executing strategic acquisitions.

Prior to founding M33, Brian served as the Chief Administrator and Acting General Manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA). He was handpicked by Governor Charlie Baker in 2015 to develop a plan to put the MBTA on the path to long-term fiscal sustainability. During his tenure, Brian led efforts to reduce the operating deficit, leverage technology and industry partnerships to modernize business processes and accelerate the pace of state-of-good- repair capital investment.

Before the MBTA, Brian spent 14 years in strategy consulting and investing at Bain & Company, H.I.G. Capital, and most recently, General Catalyst, where he served as a managing director and led investments in software and technology-enabled services companies. Brian served on the boards of Axium Software (acquired by Deltek), CLEAResult (acquired by General Atlantic), Envoy Global, Oceans Healthcare, and OGSystems (acquired by Parsons).

Brian is a Massachusetts native, graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School, and served as a Marine officer in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Persian Gulf. He has been named one the 50 Most Influential People in Boston by the Boston Business Journal and The Boston Globe named him to the “2016 Game Changers” list, which recognizes leaders doing extraordinary things to reshape life and work in the greater Boston area.

Mike Anello

Founder, M33 Growth

Mike Anello is dedicated to helping growth-oriented businesses maximize their operations by applying his extensive sales and marketing expertise to portfolio companies.

Prior to founding M33, Mike was a member of the ops team at Valor Equity Partners, where he focused on implementing sales and marketing best practices across the firm’s portfolio. Before this, Mike led business development for Axium Software (acquired by Deltek), where he led acquisitions and helped double the size of Axium’s sales and marketing engine in less than two years. Mike has worked with several companies to optimize and streamline their sales and marketing efforts, including Illumio Software, Tesla Motors, Manduka, Porch, and Project44. He was also a cofounder of Cleverlayover. Mike, Gabe and Brian first worked together at General Catalyst. There Mike built the sourcing team and focused on software and healthcare opportunities.

Mike graduated from the University of Notre Dame summa cum laude. He walked on to the Notre Dame Football Team, eventually earning a scholarship and two-time Academic All-American Honors. Mike received his MBA from Harvard Business School. While there, he partnered with Shikhar Ghosh and Mark Roberge to build a playbook around best practices for scaling sales teams from $10 million to $100 million in revenue.

Mike’s passion for giving back led to the launch of Boston’s inaugural St. Baldrick’s Event, a pediatric oncology research foundation. Since then he has led more than 10 events in four cities.

Laz Vekiarides

Entrepreneur and Technology Executive

For over 20 years Laz Vekiarides has served as a founder and executive, taking key technical and leadership roles in startups and established market leaders, and delivering breakthrough technologies to market. Most recently, he has been working in product leadership roles building new cloud storage services, currently at Google where he is driving strategy and new initiatives, and previously for Amazon Web Services where he led the launch of the Amazon FSx File Gateway. In 2013, he co-founded ClearSky Data, a data storage and management startup which was acquired by AWS in 2019. Prior to that, he served as the Executive Director of Software Engineering for Dell’s EqualLogic Storage Engineering group, where he led the development of numerous storage innovations and established the EqualLogic product line as a SAN technology leader.  Laz joined Dell as a part of the acquisition of EqualLogic, where, as a member of the core leadership team, he established and scaled software teams from the company’s early stages.

Laz is an active member of the Boston-area tech community. In recent years, he been an advisor and mentor to numerous startups and entrepreneurs, helping them to organize, scale, and lead effectively. He works with local venture funds to help identify product opportunities and entrepreneurs for investment, and occasionally lectures at local engineering schools about entrepreneurship.