B Brian Martin is the founder of AnalysisLAB and leads the firm’s work in restaurant and nightlife economics, capital structuring, and financial command systems for restaurants, nightlife, hotels, and F&B.

His experience spans development underwriting, operating analytics, capital formation, and financial architecture for restaurant groups, nightlife venues, and experiential operators. Through AnalysisLAB, he focuses on translating complex financial and operational data into disciplined decision frameworks that guide capital deployment and performance management.

Experience

Prior to founding AnalysisLAB, his career reflects executive leadership shaped by experience across investment banking, corporate finance, entertainment, and hospitality — beginning with an early immersion in the high-intensity, culturally defining environment of Salomon Brothers, followed by international corporate accounting at Ares-Serono and corporate finance at Universal Studios Hollywood. He went on to hold executive finance roles across a sequence of culturally influential, experience-driven hospitality and entertainment brands — serving as VP of Development Finance at House of Blues Entertainment, then as CFO of Innovative Dining Group during its early growth years, and later as CFO of SBE Restaurant and Nightlife Group — leading finance, capital deployment, and growth strategy across multi-venue hospitality and entertainment concepts.

Select Engagements & Clients

Through AnalysisLAB, he applies institutional-grade financial leadership and transformation across hospitality, restaurant, and location-based entertainment platforms — bringing a methodology built to solve the full spectrum of restaurant-finance and operational challenges, from operating-level rigor to complex, multi-market transformation.

• DIAFA — He serves in an advisory capacity supporting the development of governance, operating frameworks, and cross-market scalability for the global management platform of DIAFA, the Abu Dhabi-based luxury lifestyle group and affiliate of IHC Group, whose portfolio includes notable brands such as Annabel's, Scott's, The Ivy, Zuma, Delilah, and The Nice Guy.
• The h.wood Group — Through AnalysisLAB, he provided transaction and transition advisory in DIAFA's acquisition of a significant ownership interest in The h.wood Group — supporting the deal from initial due diligence through closing as DIAFA capitalized the business for its next phase of growth. In transformation, he served in an Office of the CFO capacity, leading the cross-border integration and operational continuity that carried a founder-built brand into an institutional, multi-market platform.

Dr. Afshin Kateb is a hotel and real estate finance executive with more than 25 years of experience investing in, operating, and financing hotel, multifamily, and mixed-use assets. He has led or co-led over $2 billion in transactions spanning approximately 45 hotels, 60 multifamily properties, five large-scale developments, and 2 million square feet of office and retail.

As Chair, Hotels + F&B on the LAB Council, he brings the owner's and investment committee's lens to AnalysisLAB mandates — connecting property-level operating performance to the capital structure above it. That lens extends into large-format F&B — venues, stadiums, and institutional food service — where the performance economics share more with real estate than with restaurant operations.

JOURNEY

His career reflects a consistent pattern: learn the asset from the operating floor up; build the finance and reporting infrastructure around it; then underwrite, structure, and manage capital at institutional scale across full market cycles.

• Institutional Real Estate Investment | CFO + Head of Hospitality — Oversees finance, accounting, risk management, and asset management for a multi-strategy real estate investment platform; sits on the investment committee and leads hospitality investment across hotel equity and debt.
• Founding CFO | Two Real Estate Platforms — Built the finance, reporting, and investment management functions from inception at Nimes Real Estate and The KOR Group, spanning hotel, multifamily, and mixed-use development.
• SBE | CFO + Principal — Led finance across a portfolio of hotels, restaurants, and nightlife through its expansion into Miami, New York, and Las Vegas — the direct intersection of hotel assets and high-volume F&B.
• Lowe Enterprises Investors | SVP + Fund Portfolio Manager — Managed the Lowe Hospitality Investment Partners hotel fund from acquisition underwriting through asset management and exit.
• Destination Hotels + Resorts | ITT Sheraton | Ernst + Young — Corporate business planning and operations analysis, corporate controllership, real estate management consulting, and early hotel accounting and food and beverage management roles — grounding later investment leadership in how hotels actually operate.

• Operator to Investor — Reads a hotel from both sides of the table: the departmental P+L and the investment committee memo.
• Founding CFO Discipline — Builds best-in-class reporting, finance, and investment management infrastructure rather than inheriting it.
• Full-Cycle Judgment — Has acquired, developed, financed, asset-managed, and exited through multiple market cycles.

Varun Nayak, MBA, brings more than 15 years of experience in gaming analytics, casino economics, and advanced modeling for large-scale gaming and resort operations. A computer scientist by training and a business strategist by trade, he has led analytics and optimization functions at two of the world's largest casino operators, and now invests in and advises casino and hospitality businesses.

His work applies quantitative analytics and modeling frameworks to optimize gaming performance, revenue strategy, and operational decision-making within resort and casino environments — connecting floor-level yield decisions to property-level financial outcomes, and those outcomes to the capital that funds them.

JOURNEY

His career reflects a consistent pattern: build the analytical engine, prove it on the floor at scale, then translate it into strategy and capital decisions across properties, vendors, and markets.

• Investment + Advisory | Partner— Manages a private investment fund and advises casino and hospitality operators; designed and implemented a financial reporting and analytics framework for gaming and F&B operations at a multi-property Las Vegas casino supporting $1.5B in revenue and $750M in EBITDA (LinkedIn).
• Interblock Gaming | SVP, Gaming Operations — Led gaming operations for a global electronic table games manufacturer, having built analytics organizations from the ground up across Fortune 500 gaming operators (LinkedIn).
• The Venetian Resort Las Vegas | Las Vegas Sands | VP, Casino Optimization — Ran marketing and gaming strategy and casino analytics for Venetian and Palazzo, following an Executive Director, Marketing Strategy role (AnalysisLAB).
• Tangam Systems | SVP, Gaming Strategy — Led table games yield management strategy for the global leader in table games optimization software, helping operators turn complex table data into pricing, spread, and game-mix decisions (Tangam Systems).
• Sands China | Caesars Entertainment | GALE Partners — Oversaw gaming optimization for a Macao floor of roughly 1,500 tables and 6,000 slots generating over US$3B in annual EBITDA, established profitability analytics at Caesars, and consulted on gaming and marketing strategy for operators including Melco, Galaxy, Crown, and Genting (AnalysisLAB).
• Video Game Technology | Software Engineering — Built graphics and physics engine tools used in numerous titles across PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo platforms before moving into hospitality (AnalysisLAB).

• Engineer to Strategist — Builds the model himself, then carries it into the operating and investment conversation.
• Augment, Don't Replace, Judgment — Holds that technology's role is to sharpen operator judgment where it adds incremental value, not to override it (Tangam panel).
• Value Investor's Lens — Approaches gaming assets and opportunities the way he approaches securities: buying dollars for cents.
• Investor + Operator Seat — Allocates capital against the same operating dynamics he spent 15 years optimizing on the floor.

David Schnitt, MBA, is a senior fellow and Chair of AnalysisLAB Business Solutions. He contributes expertise in enterprise financial infrastructure, outsourcing strategy, and scalable finance operating models, with more than 30 years of globalization experience across both outsourcing and technology best practices.

His experience centers on designing financial architectures and governance systems that support operational scale, financial reporting integrity, and efficient accounting operations. David is considered an industry expert on outsourcing trends and the evolution of the virtual business — he has spoken at numerous conferences, been quoted extensively in the business and technology press, and is a published author.

JOURNEY

His career reflects a consistent pattern: identify the back-office work that does not need to sit where it sits; rebuild it as an automated, governed process; then scale that model across industries and geographies.

• IQ BackOffice | Founder + CEO — Leads the leading provider of software and services to automate back-office processes for global enterprises, with offices around the globe serving clients across manufacturing and distribution, restaurant and hospitality, energy, entertainment, real estate, and non-profit sectors.
• Resources Global Professionals (NASDAQ: RECN) | Co-Founder + EVP, New Ventures — Co-founded and led new ventures for the Deloitte & Touche spin-off providing outsourced specialists in IT, HR, finance, and accounting.
• Industry Voice | Speaker + Published Author — Recognized authority on outsourcing trends and the evolution of the virtual business; a frequent conference speaker and widely quoted source in the business and technology press.

• Process Before Headcount — Automates and re-engineers the back-office process first, then decides where and by whom it should be run.
• Operator-Built Outsourcing — Designs delivery models from the founder's seat, having built and scaled two outsourced services platforms from inception.
• Reporting Integrity at Scale — Treats financial reporting accuracy and control as the non-negotiable output of any finance operating model.

Devesh Srivastava is an enterprise AI and transformation leader with 20 years of experience converting emerging technology into scalable business outcomes across telecom, healthcare, BFSI, manufacturing, retail, and smart - city ecosystems.

His leadership sits at the intersection of strategy, architecture, commercialization, and execution. He connects CXO ambition to engineering reality - shaping the operating model, technical architecture, partner motion, and field execution required to move AI from experimentation into enterprise adoption.

JOURNEY

Across Cisco and earlier leadership roles, his career reflects a consistent pattern: enter complex, ambiguous environments; create structure around the opportunity; build the technical and commercial system; and scale it through teams, partners, and repeatable execution.

• Cisco | Worldwide Cloud + AI Infrastructure - Leads enterprise AI strategy and customer transformation under a $500M- scale business mandate, advising executives on secure AI adoption, infrastructure strategy, and scalable architecture. Bridges product, engineering, sales, partners, and customers to turn emerging AI capabilities into repeatable growth motions.
• Cisco | AI / GenAI Business & Architecture Leadership — Built and incubated AI motions that created $20M+ pipeline and approximately $40M in opportunity. Developed reusable use cases, playbooks, and solution patterns while leading customer discovery, executive alignment, and production architecture.
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise - Established and managed a 40- person analytics delivery hub and developed an ML- based shopping platform associated with $156.9M in annualized revenue impact - connecting technical systems, organizational scale, and measurable business value.
• McKinsey & Company + American Express - Built analytical foundations for executive decision systems, customer intelligence, risk, collections, and commercial analytics - grounding later AI leadership in disciplined problem framing, economics, and decision quality.

• Vision to Execution - Translates frontier AI into an enterprise agenda with architecture, governance, economics, and an executable path to scale.
• Influence Without Boundaries - Leads across product, engineering, sales, partners, and executives through technical depth, credibility, and shared outcomes.
• Builder’s Mindset - Creates reusable platforms, operating models, communities, and GTM motions rather than one- off solutions.