Brand New Matter

Thomas Sparico is Chief Executive Officer of Futurestay and Founder and Managing Partner of BNM Capital Companies. He is a named inventor on over 100 U.S. patents and was part of the team that built and launched Priceline.com. Through BNM Capital Management, he invests in early-stage companies including Leaflink, Bizly, Trym, Breeze Airways, and others, and serves as President of the Curetivity Foundation.

Ben Werdmuller is an incoming John S. Knight fellow focused on open web, open source, and open communities. He previously served as Senior Director of Technology at ProPublica overseeing product engineering and enterprise technology, and held leadership roles including first CTO at The 19th, Head of Engineering at ForUsAll, and Director of Investments at Matter Ventures. Werdmuller co-founded Elgg, an open source social platform used globally by governments and organizations, as well as Known, an open source publishing platform later acquired by Medium, and built Latakoo, a media transfer system for newsrooms. He serves on the boards of A New Social and Tiny News Collective and holds two patents related to media transfer systems.

Erik Endress is CEO and co-founder of OnScene Technologies, which develops Share911, emergency notification and mass communication software used by schools, hospitals, workplaces, venues, and government agencies. Endress began his career as a volunteer firefighter and EMT in Ramsey, New Jersey, experiences that informed his founding of the company in 2013 to address communication gaps during emergency response. He has led the company for over 13 years.