Meet with purpose. Network for meaningful connections. Accomplish your goals.

Networking is broken - the awkward conversations, the unwanted outreach from "linking in" and the wasted time spent on meetings that go nowhere. At The Upside, we want to make goal-driven networking easy and interesting.

We've identified six key goals for an exciting, impactful business life that we can help you achieve. Our proprietary, curated matching process and diverse community of purpose-driven leaders—executives, investors, entrepreneurs, innovators, and creators—combine for a brand-new networking experience.

The Six Impact Goals

Boards

Receive introductions to board opportunities with public, private, & non-profit organizations.

Careers

Most executive opportunities are not advertised. Get introduced to executive search firms, VC/PE investors, and in-house executive recruiters.

Investments

Connect with entrepreneurs from early-stage, high-growth ventures, looking for capital from angel and venture capital investors.

Mentorship

Provide practical, day-to-day professional advice and coaching to peers, aspiring individuals, and startups.

Advisory

Through one-on-one meetings and office hours, share your insight, experience, and advice.

Causes

Get others involved in your existing work around a cause or get involved in causes important to you.

How The Upside Works

1. Create Private Profile

Describe your expertise, background, and interests. You can complete a questionnaire online or speak live with one of our specialists.

2. Review Matches

See a detailed profile of other members with complementary goals or interests. Accept, decline, or request more information about your match.

3. Meet Member

Get introduced to your match. The Upside can schedule the meeting after you both agree to connect—via phone, video, or in person.

The Upside Member Benefits

Platform Tools

Research and explore opportunities, review matches, schedule meetings, and privately interact with the community.

Exclusive Programming

Exclusive programming from inspired thinkers that challenges you to reflect, re-energize and refocus.

Concierge Support

Get concierge support from a real person who can assist you in navigating The Upside and uncovering opportunities.

Featured Professional Members

Jessica is an accomplished Senior Executive and Board Member, with demonstrated success across the beauty, fashion, consumer goods, art, retail, and business to consumer industries. Leveraging extensive experience in strategy for internet companies, she is a valuable asset for small to established consumer-facing and retail companies, seeking assistance with growth, strategic thinking, and branding/rebranding. Her broad areas of expertise include marketing, driving innovation, and product development.

Throughout her executive career, Jessica has held leadership positions with Depict Inc., Argosight, Bow & Drape, and Procter & Gamble. In her current role as President and Chief Marketing Officer with Depict Inc., she has been responsible for fundraising a $6M seed round, for the company, researching target customers and developing a to to market strategy. She has also proved instrumental in orchestrating all operations, including vetting and identifying distribution partners, setting up operations, as well as customs and logistics. She has played an integral part in defining the look of the brand, including the logo, product and online presence, helping in the creation of a functional website, app, and customer experience. In a prior role as Founder and CEO of Global Art Compass Ltd., she oversaw the launch of an international art consultancy assisting clients with investment art collections ranging from $10M to $100M in value. She also led 14 specialists serving various clients across the globe, and created financial models to identify the investment potential of individual works of art. Additionally, as Marketing Director of Innovation and New Business Development for Procter & Gamble, she helped in defining the future direction and growth opportunities for the $3B global business unit. Furthermore, she navigated development of business strategy to achieve financial targets, and directed a 40-person multi-functional organization.

Jessica holds a Masters Degree in Fine Art from the University of Cambridge, as well as an MBA from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. She has held board positions with Depict Inc., and advisory board positions with Bow & Drape.

Jessica Knopp-Gwynne

Board Member, Investor, Innovation Fellow @ Harvard I-Lab

Bob has been involved supporting high growth companies for more than twenty years as an investor, advisor, board member or founder. He was an early General Partner at Spectrum Equity, helping the firm grow to over $4B of capital across five funds. He has served as a board member/observer for over a dozen companies, and gained extensive operational experience working alongside portfolio executives while leading their acquisition and capital markets activity. His notable investments include Patriot Media Holdings (sold to Comcast for $493 million), Classic Media (sold to Entertainment Rights, plc for $305 million), Jazztel (IPO) and ITXC (IPO).

After Spectrum, he became an entrepreneur, building an alternative asset manager from “white board” to a successful exit via a strategic deal with BNY Mellon. Since leaving BNY Mellon, he has been active as an investor and advisor to both early and growth stage private companies, including Hometap Equity Partners (a General Catalyst-seeded fintech). His areas of interest are Internet, software, fintech and technology-enabled services companies.

Earlier in his career, he worked a consultant at Bain & Company in Boston and was a member of the Charter class of Kauffman Fellows.

Bob is a proud Pittsburgh native, but has lived in the Boston area since graduating from Williams College with Honors in Economics. He received his MBA with High Distinction from Harvard Business School and was a Baker Scholar.

Robert Nicholson

Investor, Advisor

For over 20 years, Michael Schreck has built and led pioneering companies whose innovative technologies enable the world’s leading brands to better engage with their customers. Prior to his CEO role at Cloudvirga, Michael served as the Managing Director of Altisource Labs, an innovation center within mortgage software provider Altisource Portfolio Solutions. In that role, he was responsible for overseeing more than 1,000 employees across four next-generation software and analytics companies, including leading software-as-a-service providers Equator and Mortgage Builder.

Michael previously held CEO positions at digital publishing firm Zmags and government service provider Corrective Solutions. He also co-founded General Catalyst Partners, a multi-billion-dollar venture capital firm where Michael helped develop successful startups including Upromise, SmartBargains, m-Qube and CoreMetrics. Collectively, these companies were acquired for over $1 billion by SLM, GSI Commerce, VeriSign and IBM, respectively.

Michael started his career as a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company and Monitor Company. He holds an MBA degree from Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University.

Michael Schreck

CEO, Investor, Board Member, Advisor