Speaker's Profile

William (Bill) Barhydt (born in New York City) is a serial entrepreneur and the Co-Founder and CEO of Abra, a new type of digital cash payments app and network enabling the transfer of cash between any two smartphones.

Barhydt attended The Stevens Institute of Technology (BS, Computer Science, 1990) and has done graduate work (non-degree) at

Stanford (Mathematics) and NYU (Finance.)

After working for the CIA, NASA and Goldman Sachs, Barhydt decided to join Netscape working on telecom and Internet banking deals, mostly in Europe. After the AOL acquisition of Netscape Barhydt founded WebSentric. The technology for WebSentric exists today in SAP's online portal service.

Barhydt was CEO of KnowNow, VP Market Development for Plaxo and has been a Director or adviser to numerous start-ups including Meeting Maker, Ignite Racing, Particle Code, Sennari, Plaxo, Kopo Kopo and others.

Barhydt co-founded m-Via, a mobile banking start-up in 2008, now part of Digicel.

As a recognized expert in Internet and Mobile technologies Barhydt has presented at The World Economic Forum, The US State Department, The Mobile World Congress, TED, and many Internet and mobile technology conferences.