About

The StartNow series is made possible by a generous gift from Peter and Gabriela Hébert and produced by the Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University.

Peter Hébert

Peter Hébert graduated from Syracuse University in 1999 with a bachelor’s of science in public relations from the Newhouse School. While still an undergraduate, he founded Future Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs, a group that included students from a variety of colleges and majors who were interested in entrepreneurship. After graduation, he worked at investment bank Lehman Brothers in New York, getting hands-on experience in the business world.

“I lasted about a year before being bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, leaving Lehman to co-found a new firm, Lux Capital,” he says. “We were passionate, ambitious and full of healthy naiveté, but our persistence paid off.” The firm now has 30 professionals with offices in New York and Menlo Park, where Hebert is based and manages $4 billion in assets. The company has also founded and spun off a research group, Lux Research, with nearly 100 employees and offices around the world. For Syracuse University, he is a member of the San Francisco Regional Council. He also hosts SU students visiting Silicon Valley during spring break, giving them the opportunity to spend a day in his offices, experiencing the life of a venture capitalist.

Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship

Several students posing with Nils Hoegsdal — Vice Rector of Innovation at Stuttgart Media University, Nils Hoegsdal (second from right), visits the Newhouse Center of Digital Media Entrepreneurship flanked by student startup founders who represented Newhouse at the international Entrepreneurship Bootcamp in Stuttgart, Germany, May 2019. (l to r) Taylor Connors, Marielle Brunelle, Stuttgart exchange student Sophie Stintzing, Mylz Blake and Eric Jackson.

The StartNow College Entrepreneurship Series is a production of the Newhouse School’s Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship and created by Sean Branagan, director of the center and executive producer of the StartNow Show.

The Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship was established in 2011 as the first comprehensive media entrepreneurship program to span news, entertainment and brand positioning. Today, the center is one of the preeminent media entrepreneurship programs in the country and delivers courses, coaching, connections and co-op internships to help students launch new ventures, learn about new media companies and prepare to shape the future of media and entertainment.

This center is part of a network of centers, programs and departments across the Syracuse University campus that help and encourage students to start ventures of all kinds.

StartNow Production Team

Executive Producer

Sean Branagan, director of the Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship

Moderator/Host

Lindsey Briggs ’09, G’10, founder and host, Social U Digital

FALL 2022/SPRING 2023 TEAM

Director

Mylz Blake, G’22 Black Cub Productions

Producer

Ames Ward

Production

MAPdigital

Post-Production

Mike Rainey

FALL 2021/SPRING 2022 TEAM

Associate & Line Producers
Gabriel Acosta Romero ’20
Aorui Pi ’20
Jenna Rose Schmitt ’21