Astra Global/The Startup Station

Elena Gusakova is the Founder of Astra Global, a global business development company. She has close to ten years of business development experience, helping leading consulting companies and UBS, Zurich to find new clients among investors, business owners and high net worth individuals. Throughout her career, she conducted over 100 top tier client events, focused on increasing business revenues. She initiated a project at UBS aimed at converting events into revenue generating activities, which was approved and implemented by the bank. She regularly advises other companies and her recent consulting client grew their revenues 3x in 4 years. At Astra Global, Elena focuses on facilitating collaboration between startups, investors, and corporations. Elena also advises startups on how to approach investors and make the first contact.

Prior to career in business development, Elena spent eight years working as a M&A lawyer at private equity funds, leading cross border deals with the total deal amount exceeding $600M. She has a deep understanding on investment processes, investors main concerns, and is an experienced negotiator. Elena has graduated from Academy of Labour and Social Relations, Law faculty, Moscow, with highest honours, and holds EMBA from Columbia and London Business Schools.

Victoria Yampolsky, CFA is the Founder and President of The Startup Station, an educational and consulting company committed to help startups be successful and get funded faster. She focuses on creating detailed strategic roadmaps and converting them into credible financials and valuations. Specifically, she helps entrepreneurs correctly translate their business plan into a financial plan, evaluate the financial feasibility of different initiatives, credibly present their company to investors, and use their financial model to drive the business forward.

To-date, she has worked with more than 100 startups one-on-one and more than 1,000 founders have taken The Startup Station's finance courses and learned the basics of accounting, valuation, financial modeling, and startup financing.

Previously, Victoria worked for Deutsche Bank and was a technology consultant with CapGemini's Financial Services Division. Victoria holds a Bachelor's Degree, Cum Laude, in Computer Science, with a minor in Mathematics, from Cornell University and an MBA, with honors, from Columbia Business School. Victoria is also on the Advisory Board of the Computing and Information Science (CIS) Department of Cornell University.