Adam Bain is the co-founder and managing partner at 01 Advisors, a venture firm targeting companies who have found product-market fit and are looking for operating expertise as they scale. He also serves on the Board of Directors at Opendoor (NASDAQ: OPEN). Adam is the former Chief Operating Officer of Twitter, where he was responsible for the company's business lines, including the go-to-market, product and operations teams for the advertising and data businesses. Previously, Adam was the President of the Audience Network at News Corp and ran Product teams at Fox Sports and The Los Angeles Times. In 2012, Adam ranked #1 in Ad Week's annual listing of the top 50 indispensable talent. In 2013, Adam was inducted into The American Advertising Federation Hall of Achievement. In 2015, Adam was named one of the 30 United Nations Women "He for She" Impact Champions to help advance gender equality.
Aileen is the founder of Cowboy Ventures, a leading seed-stage focused venture firm investing in enterprise and consumer software including companies like Dollar Shave Club, Drata Security, Guild and Ironclad Software. Prior to Cowboy, Aileen was a partner at Kleiner Perkins for over a decade, founding CEO of digital media company RMG Networks and worked at Gap Inc in operating roles. Aileen is also known for coining the business term “unicorn” and is a co-founder of All-Raise, a non-profit to accelerate success for women in the tech ecosystem. She has been included on the Forbes Midas List, Fortune's Most Powerful Women, Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people. She has degrees from MIT and HBS, is a mom of 3 and wife to a startup founder.
Amy is a General Partner at Uncork Capital, where she leads seed stage investments in B2B companies, with a particular focus on AI-enabled applications and APIs for engineering, product, and design teams. Previously, she led seed and Series A investments in B2B companies like Gamma, Complete, and Beam as an early stage partner at Accel. She started her career with close to a decade at Stripe, Uber, and Twitter launching products, business lines and new markets, in product marketing, product management, sales management, business development and international expansion roles. She received her BS and MBA from Stanford University, and lives in San Francisco.
Andy is a General Partner of S32, a venture capital firm investing at the frontiers of technology. Prior to joining S32, Andy founded and served as the CEO and Executive Chairman of Verily (previously Google Life Sciences), the healthcare arm of Alphabet. He also held positions at GV (previously Google Ventures) and X (previously GoogleX) and worked with DeepMind, Google Cloud, Google AI and other technical and business teams in the Google ecosystem. Andy continues to serve as an advisor at Google. Before joining Google, Andy was the Chief Scientific Officer of Laboratory Corporation of America (LabCorp). He previously co-founded the National Genetics Institute which grew rapidly before being acquired by LabCorp. He graduated with a B.S. in neurobiology and a Ph.D. in cell biology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Anna is an Investing Partner at M13, where she invests in applied AI and marketplaces. Prior to M13, Anna was the managing director of Techstars LA and a partner at The Fund LA. Anna has invested in over 100 early stage companies and is a former retail and commerce founder and operator herself. She's a mom and stepmom to four members of Gen Z, and is a certified executive coach.
For nearly a dozen years, Ariel has been Managing Partner of Brainstorm Ventures, a generalist venture capital firm that invests at the earliest stages in some of the most exciting tech startups in the Americas. Past and present unicorns include OpenTable, Zappos, KIO Networks and Turing. Ariel serves on the board of Defy Ventures, a nonprofit that provides entrepreneurship training to incarcerated people. Ariel is a Kauffman Fellow and has been a Mentor to three more recent Fellows. Ariel also serves as Mentor for Techstars Miami, Unreasonable Mexico, and SomosVC. Ariel is the co-owner of Palau Moxó, an 18th century palace in Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. Ariel began his career as an investor at Pacific Community Ventures, one of the pioneering growth equity impact investment firms, and has served on the boards of several of its portfolio companies. Previously, he worked as a consultant at the Bridgespan Group, an affiliate of Bain & Company. He advised clients, such as the Gates Foundation and Hispanic Scholarship Fund, on their investment and growth strategies. Ariel briefly led the United Nations Development Programme’s Growing Sustainable Business Initiative in Venezuela. Prior to business school, Ariel worked in various capacities at Intel Corporation. Ariel received his MBA from Wharton and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in industrial engineering from UC Berkeley and Georgia Tech, respectively. Ariel is a native Spanish speaker and New Yorker.
"Arteen's career path has been untraditional. The son of Iranian immigrants, he grew up in Arizona planning to be a surgeon and stumbled through medicine and finance before finding his passion in entrepreneurship and technology. He got his first job in the tech industry at Techstars Chicago by cold emailing 150 people, then moved to LA to launch BuiltinLA.com, and spent nearly a decade as a venture capitalist (including as a founding member of Fika) before returning to the operating side when he joined Route.com as SVP of Strategy just after their Series A. After 3+ years on the executive team at Route and helping grow the business to $100M+ annual revenue, raise over $200M, and navigate a market correction, Arteen decided to return to investing and is now a Partner with Fika Ventures as well as an advisor to Route. He focuses on marketplaces and commerce enablement investments. Arteen has been selected for Forbes 30 Under 30, Business Insider 30 and Under, and CSQ NextGen 10. His TEDx talk has nearly 100k views. He sits as a regional board member for Accion Opportunity Fund, the nation’s largest SMB non-profit lender, and cares deeply about mental health awareness, equal access to opportunity, performing arts, and the natural world."
Ashmeet is the Founder and Chief Engineer of Engineering Capital. Investing before traditional venture firms, Engineering Capital specializes in leading seed rounds in software companies with a technical insight. Ashmeet’s experience includes running venture capital funds and leadership positions helping build the industry leading products VMware ESX Server and Silicon Graphics WebFORCE. Ashmeet came to venture from VMware, where he ran product management for their flagship product - ESX Server. His successful investments include Azure (IPO AZRE), Rubrik (IPO RBRK), SignalFx, acquired by Splunk for $1 billion, Tubi.tv, acquired by FOX, AirGap, acquired by ZScaler etc. He serves on the Board of Directors of Evinced, Inigo, Nexla and WideField. His other investments include Asimily, CtrlStack, Kentik, Kognitos, Menlo Security, Robust Intelligence, vFunction, and Xano – in all of which he was the seed investor. Ashmeet received an MBA from Wharton with Honors, MS in Computer Science from Stanford University, and a BS in Computer Science summa cum laude from the University of Southern California. In his spare-time he can be found planning his second trip to Mt. Everest.
Mr. Ahluwalia is the Founder and General Partner at Island Green Capital Management LLC. He brings over 17 years of experience within the venture capital and proprietary trading and risk management industries. Mr. Ahluwalia helped scale CoVenture and Bracket Capital to a combined ~$3bn in AUM investing across venture debt and equity transactions globally. As a General Partner and Owner, he was responsible for all aspects of the business from deal sourcing and due diligence, to founder/c-suite aid and fundraising. Prior to CoVenture and Bracket Capital, Mr. Ahluwalia was an Advisor to digital asset liquidity aggregator Tradedash.io for 3 years, during which he helped design, scale, and ultimately sell to Bittrex at the height of the first crypto bull market in 2017. At that point in time, Tradedash had over thirty thousand clients and $7bn in order flow. Earlier in his career, he was a Portfolio Manager at Bluecrest Capital in London, where he ran macro and arbitrage strategies globally. While in London, Mr. Ahluwalia worked at Goldman Sachs, where he was Head of Credit Index in Europe, generating record profits for the firm from 2008-2012 while running Credit Arbitrage, Credit Options, Credit Market Making and Cross Asset Credit/Equity Proprietary Trading. Mr. Ahluwalia graduated from Northwestern University, where he was one of twenty students accepted to the prestigious applied math program MMSS (Mathematical Methods in Social Sciences). He double majored in Applied Math and Economics. He also studied at the London School of Economics where he specialized in the Economics of the European Union and History. Mr. Ahluwalia mentors military veterans transitioning into the work force through ACP’s mentorship program. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.
An original super angel turned multi-stage investor, Aydin has been named on the Forbes Midas List for the past eleven years (2014-2024) as well as the New York Times Top 20 Venture Capitalists list for four consecutive years (2016-2019). Before starting Felicis, he was the first product manager at Google and helped launch their first ten international sites. He received a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with Honors from Boston University, an MBA in Marketing from the Wharton School, and a master’s degree in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Aydin currently sits on the Graduate Board of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Ben Casnocha is a Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur, author, and investor. He is Co-Founder and General Partner at Village Global, a $500 million early stage venture capital firm backed by some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates. Village Global, chaired by Reid Hoffman, pioneered a network-native approach to sourcing and supporting early stage founders. Ben is also coauthor of the New York Times bestselling management books The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age and The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career. He has appeared on the The CBS Early Show, CNN, CNBC, and many other media outlets.
Ben is an engineer-turned-investor who is passionate about guiding frontier technology businesses towards massive commercial success and impact in collaboration with equally driven entrepreneurs.While a generalist at heart, Ben particularly loves businesses that utilize AI to enable innovation in the physical world, such as Bison’s investments inCobot, Juvena Therapeutics and Cadstrom. Prior to co-founding Bison Ventures, Ben worked at Cascade Asset Management Company, which manages the assets of the Gates Foundation and Gates family members. There he focused on venture capital investments across a variety of frontier technologies, including surgical and manufacturing robotics, terrestrial and satellite communications,AI-enabled drug discovery, and alternative proteins. Ben started his investing career over a decade ago at Braemar Energy Ventures, an early pioneer n climate and sustainability venture capital, where he led investments in category-creating climate tech companies such as ChargePoint (CHPT). When not debating the merits of the latest innovations in robotics, Ben loves to shuck oysters and boil lobsters — like any good New Englander. His favorite place in the world is New Hampshire. Ben received a B.E.and a Master of Engineering Management from Dartmouth. He also serves on the Dean’s Council at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering.
Ben Lerer is a Managing Partner at Lerer Hippeau, an early stage venture capital fund founded and operated in New York City. The firm invests in leading enterprise and consumer companies, including ZenBusiness, MIRROR, Zipline, Palmetto, Blockdaemon, K Health, Guideline, and Warby Parker, among 400 others. Ben is also the former CEO and Founder of Group Nine Media. He chairs the Board of Directors for Urban Upbound, is a member of Robin Hood’s Leadership Council, serves as a Director at Vox Media, and co-founded the Equity Alliance. Ben attended the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Ben Mahdavi is a Co-Founder and serves as Managing Partner at Quiet Capital. He Founded Sivia Capital Partners. He also served as a Board Member at Hair Cuttery. Over the last 10 years, he has established himself as a trusted advisor to founders and investors, leveraging his experience and professional network to unlock value for Quiet's diverse portfolio companies. In addition to investing across strategies at Quiet, he has also partnered with a number of entrepreneurs and investors to build three companies. He launched Tacit Salon Holdings, the largest independently owned salon operator in the US. As a founding board member and investor, he successfully built and sold the Veterinary Care Group, a fast-growing tech-enabled veterinary services roll-up. In addition to his work with Tacit companies, he is a founding board director and investor of Veterinary Care Group, a fast-growing tech-enabled veterinary services platform. In the early days of Quiet's Build program, he co-founded Flow, a SaaS platform for alternative investments. Before Quiet, he founded Sivia Capital, a multi-family office, and spent several years between Lehman Brothers and Barclays Capital, after playing two years in the NFL. He received his BA and MBA from the University of Washington.
Ben manages Clocktower Ventures and is responsible for all of Clocktower Group’s private market activities. Ben was previously Director, Investment Associate Program for Bridgewater Associates, where he worked with the firm’s CIOs on strategic priorities, talent development and research. Ben began his career as a VC and private equity investor with Wasserstein Perella. Ben also co-founded Artivest fka Resonance Funds, an online issuer of actively-managed exchange traded vehicles, as well as Waterfall Mobile. Ben holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA in philosophy from Yale University.
Prior to joining Lux, Bilal was a VC at General Catalyst. Before that he was a technical founder/entrepreneur. Earlier in his career, Bilal was a strategy consultant at BCG.
Brett spent his career prior to Initialized writing software and invests across a variety of domains including crypto, dev tools, AI/ML, and cloud infrastructure. He cofounded the blog platforms Posthaven and Posterous (acquired by Twitter) and later wrote software for Y Combinator, building its essential internal software systems. He was also a founder of the social news platform Slinkset, which was funded by YC in 2008, and DrawHere, a browser drawing startup acquired by DeviantArt in 2006.
Brian Garrett is the Co-Founder of Crosscut, having now built a 20+ year career in LA building and investing in the SoCal entrepreneurial community. He is now singularly focused on solving some of humanity's biggest problems with his focus on FrontierTech - space, defense, energy, climate, advanced manufacturing, robotics and the near-shoring of our supply chains. Brian is very active in the Los Angeles start-up community and works actively with the founders of these amazing SoCal Tech companies: Umbra Space, WelcomeTech, Hivewatch, Pearl, BuildOps, Intro.co, Compa, The BlackTux and Omaze. He has also invested in and worked with entrepreneurs across the country including the founders of SoloPulse, Heliux, Monarx, Nostra.ai, Sutro and Symbl.ai With over 20 years of both investing and operating/entrepreneurial experience, Brian tries to bring humility and empathy to the lonely plight of starting and scaling start-up companies and works tirelessly to help his entrepreneurs succeed.
Mr. Laibow is the Founding Partner and CEO of Pinegrove Capital Partners. Since 2006, Brian worked for Oaktree Capital Management's flagship Global Opportunities strategy, most recently as the Co-Head of North America and Managing Director of $16B Opportunities Fund XI. Brian graduated from Harvard Business School, where he received his M.B.A. Before attending Harvard, Mr. Laibow worked at Caltius Private Equity, a middle market LBO firm in Los Angeles and a senior business analyst at McKinsey & Company. Mr. Laibow graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. degree in economics from Dartmouth College and studied economics at Oxford University (Keble College). He served for six years on the Dartmouth College endowment Investment Committee, the board of the Independent School Alliance for Minority Affairs, a member of the Bel-Air chapter of Young Presidents Organization (YPO), and a member of the Brentwood School Finance Committee.
Camilo is an exited AI founder turned Big Tech AI operator (Meta) and then AI investor.
Carter Reum is an innovative entrepreneur with a background in building and marketing consumer products brands and understanding the use of technology in doing so. At the age of 25, he left his job at Goldman Sachs to create an alcohol company around the idea of a better way to drink™ and from that VEEV has become one of the pioneering alcohol companies in the spirits industry and one of the 3 fastest growing independent spirit brands in the country. Carter has been honored by several entrepreneurial groups such as the “30 Under 30” list, the Inc “500 fastest growing private companies in America,” Richard Branson’s best-selling book “Screw Business as Usual” and most recently the Goldman Sachs Builders + Innovators 100 “Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs” in the country. Carter also is a contributing writer for INC Magazine. Carter has also become an active angel investor investing in brands that include Pinterest, Lyft, Munchery, Birchbox, Bonobos, Surf Air, Matterport, Blue Bottle Coffee, Suja and also acts as a venture partner for Otter Rock Capital and Plus Ventures. Carter grew up in Chicago and holds a B.A. with distinction from Columbia University in New York, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude with a 4.0 GPA (#2 in his class) and is the subject of a Harvard Business School case study entitled “VEEV on the Rocks” which is currently part of the first year curriculum.
Chad Byers is a Co-founder & General Partner at Susa Ventures. Chad led Susa's seed investments in unicorns such as Robinhood, Stord, Viz, Newfront Insurance, Human Interest, Andela and more. He was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 for VC in 2015, Forbes Midas Seed List in 2022, 2023 and 2024, and Business Insider's Seed 100 list. Prior to Susa Ventures, Chad worked at a venture-backed IT company from Series B through the IPO. Raised in Silicon Valley, Chad spent his childhood building small businesses — from newspaper routes to websites. He attended the University of Colorado where he mostly skied and worked for local startups.
Charles Hudson is the Managing Partner and Founder of Precursor Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm focused on investing in the first institutional round of investment for the most promising software and hardware companies. Under his leadership, Precursor Ventures has raised four funds and has over $250 million under management. He has invested in more than 400 companies and has supported more than 450 founders, including the teams behind Bobbie Baby, Carrot, Incredible Health, Juniper Square, Modern Health, Pair Eyewear, Rad AI, and The Athletic (sold to the NY Times for $525 million in 2022). Prior to founding Precursor Ventures, Charles was a Partner at Uncork Capital and Co-founder and CEO of Bionic Panda Games. He holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.A. in Economics and Spanish from Stanford University. Charles maintains close connections with his alma mater through volunteer service and teaching at GSB. He is an active member of the VC community, serving on several advisory boards and as a mentor to a number of emerging managers. Charles was the 2023-2024 Chair of the NVCA Board of Directors and also serves on the San Francisco Opera Advisory Board.
Clara is co-founder and Managing Partner of the Urban Innovation Fund, a venture capital firm that invests in the future of cities. The firm provides seed capital and regulatory support to entrepreneurs solving tough urban challenges – helping them grow into tomorrow’s most valued companies. The Urban Innovation Fund manages over $200M in assets and has invested in over 60 seed startups since 2016. Previously, she co-founded Tumml, a startup hub for urban tech. Clara’s work supporting the urban entrepreneurship ecosystem has been featured in numerous press outlets, such as MSNBC and TechCrunch. She began her career working in real estate development. Clara earned her MBA from MIT Sloan and BA from NYU.
Connor Diamond joined Vista Equity Partners in 2024. Mr. Diamond focuses on client development and engagement for Vista’s RIA and multi-family office partners. Prior to joining Vista, Mr. Diamond was a Director at Select Equity Group, where he helped manage and grow the firm’s relationships with private wealth intermediaries and institutional investors. Previously, Mr. Diamond was an Executive at Betterment LLC, and earlier began his career as an Analyst at Credit Agricole.
Work with a single-family office with an emphasis on real estate, healthcare, and technology
Before joining WTI in 2008, Dave held senior positions at Silicon Valley Bank, Fortress Investment Group and Meier Mitchell/GATX Ventures in the US, as well as at GATX’s London-based venture lending business, GATX/ETV. He holds a B.A. from Duke University.
Dom is a Partner at Ripple Ventures, the leading pre-seed venture fund in Canada backing founders transforming legacy industries and technology stacks. Dom is also the founder of the RippleX Fellowship, one of Canada's largest young founder network partnered with the top universities and colleges.
Dustin Rosen is an investor in technology companies and the founder of Wonder Ventures. Since he began his career, he’s been on every side of the business, from running and selling his own technology start-up to investing in dozens of others, as well as using this expertise to advise numerous entrepreneurs. In 2010, Dustin founded Pose, and as CEO, led the company through development, growth and three rounds of venture capital funding. In 2012, Apple named it one of the best apps of the year, and at the end of 2013, Dustin guided Pose through an acquisition before beginning Wonder Ventures. Prior to Pose, Dustin worked at the Mailroom Fund, an LA-based venture capital group comprised of the William Morris Agency, Accel Partners, Venrock, and AT&T. There, Dustin focused on discovering and funding high-impact and innovative companies in the internet consumer arena. Before this, he worked at the William Morris Agency, getting his start in the infamous Mail Room. He received a B.S. in Economics from The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania.
Elizabeth believes that passion and pushing boundaries drive success, whether investing in founders with world-changing ideas, transforming a startup into a Fortune 500 company, or running ultramarathons. She is a super-connector, and her infectious enthusiasm leaves everyone more energetic and inspired. An early twitter executive with more than two decades in venture capital and technology companies, Elizabeth is an investor, advisor, and entrepreneur. At Scribble, she works closely with Whatnot, Certn, Titan, Luminai, and Checkmate, among many others. Her unmatched network gives her portfolio companies access to tech's most sought-after operators, executives, and investors. In addition, she partners with Scribble founders on hiring, fundraising construction, GTM, product, and company culture. Elizabeth believes that passion and pushing boundaries drive success, whether investing in founders with world-changing ideas, transforming a startup into a Fortune 500 company, or running ultramarathons. She is a super-connector, and her infectious enthusiasm leaves everyone more energetic and inspired. Prior to founding Scribble Ventures, Elizabeth spent four years as a Managing Director at 137 Ventures focused on late-stage secondary opportunities. She was a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz as the firm was scaling, and had the fortune of being at Twitter as it grew from 50 to 3,000 people. She has also worked as an investor at IVP, Menlo Ventures, and Radar Partners. Through this time she’s made over 100 angel investments across all stages, including Slack, SpaceX, Figma, Coinbase, Superplastic, Gusto, Tipalti, Envoy, Daily.co, Carta and more. Elizabeth graduated from Stanford University with a BA in Economics and a Masters in Engineering. In the years since, she has taught classes at Stanford in the engineering department, Graduate School of Business, and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. She is the founder of Paperwheel, a design and letterpress company. There are no cars in her garage; just a 5,000 lb 1923 Chandler & Price letterpress! Staying true to her philosophy of living a life full of passion and pushing limits, Elizabeth is also a competitive ultra-marathon runner, and has run more than 60 marathons. She’s a mom to three LEGO-obsessed kids, and is happily married to Kevin Weil who is Chief Product Officer at OpenAI.
Post-Seed VC. Former founder, lawyer, white house intern, amateur musical theater producer.
Eurie Kim is a Managing Partner at Forerunner. Since 2012, she has invested in companies spanning health and wellness, travel, personal care and beauty, supply chain automation, edtech, and sustainable foods. She sits on the Boards of ŌURA, The Farmer’s Dog, Curology, Attabotics, Eclipse, and Juni, and was featured on the Forbes Midas Brink List in 2020. Eurie is a founding member of the female mentorship collective, All Raise, and champions women in the technology industry. Prior to Forerunner, Eurie developed strategies for Fortune 100 companies at Bain & Company. She earned an MBA with honors at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and holds a B.S. with honors in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley.
Co-founder of Afore Capital, world's largest pre-seed only fund!
Gautam is an accomplished business leader with 10+ years of experience in Banking, Operations and Technology. He was born in India and studied Computer Engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and got his M.B.A. from MIT Sloan School of Management. He has worked in Venture Capital, Real Estate, Transportation, and Banking over the last two decades. In 2021, Gautam co-founded A*, an early-stage focused venture firm that manages $600m across two funds. Previously, he served as the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Business Officer of Opendoor. Gautam helped Opendoor scale from $300M to $4.5B in revenue in less than three years. Prior to Opendoor, Gautam was the Chief Financial Officer at Uber. During his four-year tenure there, he helped raise $18B, started business units for Ridesharing Insurance and Vehicle Financing while helping the company scale ~70x. Gautam started his Bay Area career in 2007 at Goldman Sachs, where he worked on numerous financial transactions for companies like Intuit, Yelp, Google, Disney, Qualcomm, Facebook, and Workday.
Geoff is a Partner at Juxtapose, leading the firm's platform build strategy, driving the firm’s investments in platform-style, inorganic growth builds. Geoff leads investments across Juxtapose's target industries of healthcare, software, and tech-enabled services. Prior to joining Juxtapose, Geoff was an investor at Genstar Capital, where for over a decade he partnered with talented operators to identify and execute thematic, growth-oriented investment opportunities in technology-enabled markets. He started his career in investment banking. Geoff has a BA in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences and Economics from Northwestern University, where he graduated with honors, and has an MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.
Glenn Solomon is Managing Partner at Notable Capital, where he leads the Cloud Infrastructure & AI practice. With over 25 years of venture capital experience, Glenn has a long history of identifying category-creating founders and helping shape some of tech's most influential companies as a key advisor. He has helped several companies scale from idea to public exit and guided 11 Notable Capital portfolio companies through the IPO process. Glenn hosts the podcast Founder Real Talk, where founders and executives discuss the challenges and stories behind building tech's leading companies. He is a former NCAA champion tennis player and, earlier in his career, co-founded The Spotlight Foundation, which supports social entrepreneurs focused on the educational needs of at-risk youth. Glenn graduated with Distinction from Stanford University and also earned an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar. Glenn's investment portfolio includes several category-creating technology companies such as Airbnb, Slack, Streamlit (Snowflake), Square, and Zendesk. He currently serves on the boards of BitSight, Cacheflow, Coder, Crosschq, HashiCorp ($HCP), Jam, Neon, Netbox Labs, Nozomi Networks, Opendoor ($OPEN), Patronus AI, StarTree, Synack, Torq, Tray.ai, and Unravel Data, and works as a board observer for Vercel, Drata, Kong, Monte Carlo Data, Tonic.ai and other early stage companies.
Ishan is involved with the full spectrum of fund activities at Deciens. He has worked across financial services & fintech as an investor and operator, and is passionate about finding the next generation of transformative fintech companies. Before joining Deciens, Ishan was a growth equity investor & early member of the portfolio operations team at PSG Equity. He was previously a venture capital investor at Bain Capital Ventures, a proprietary trader at Goldman Sachs, and a co-founder of MIT Alumni Angels, the only angel group affiliated with MIT. He was also an executive at iPay Technologies, a Bain Capital Ventures and Spectrum Equity-backed payments company, playing a key role in its acquisition by Jack Henry & Associates. Ishan received his MBA from Harvard Business School, where he graduated with distinction. While at Harvard, he spent time as a policy advisor in the Office of Capital Markets at the US Department of the Treasury, focusing on topics related to the global financial crisis. Ishan also holds M.Eng. and S.B. degrees from MIT, both in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Outside of his work at Deciens, Ishan enjoys cooking, squash, and skiing. He lives in Boston, MA.
James is a serial entrepreneur and operator. Prior to co-founding Obvious, James was a Partner at Catamount Ventures. He previously served as President & CEO of Xmarks (acquired by LastPass), was a venture partner at Bridgescale Partners, and served as President and CEO of Xoom Corporation (IPO in 2013) and Ofoto (sold to Kodak). Previously, James co-founded When.com (acquired by AOL), and Clearview Software (acquired by Apple). James graduated from Brown University with a degree in computer science.
Jamin Ball is a Partner at Altimeter, a technology-focused investment firm that invests across public and private markets. During Jamin’s nearly 5 year term at Altimeter, he has played a critical leading role in the Firm’s Venture Capital business, having led some of the Firm’s most important investments, across AI and data infrastructure software including Tabular (acquired by Databricks), Deel, dbt Labs, Clickhouse, LiveKit, Airbyte, and others. Prior to joining Altimeter, Jamin spent four years at Redpoint Ventures on the growth team, focused on investments at Series B and late stages. Jamin has become a household name in software investing with his weekly substack Clouded Judgement which has over 78,000 subscribers. Jamin has spent nearly his entire life and career in Silicon Valley, having moved to Menlo Park as a young child. He graduated with a B.S. in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford where he was captain of the men’s tennis team.
Jason is the Co-founder and General Partner at Patron, an early-stage venture firm investing in the next generation of consumer. Prior to Patron, Jason was an early employee and long-time executive at Riot Games where he helped to build out the Publishing and Esports businesses over a 9-year period. Jason started his career as a venture investor at FirstMark Capital where he helped to lead the Series A investment into Riot Games.
Jeff began investing in 2016 as an angel and scout for Index Ventures. He was a seed investor in Mercury, Dapper Labs, Compound Finance, The Graph, Dharma Labs (acq. OpenSea). Jeff was previously the VP of Product, Revenue at Tinder. In the role, he led the revenue team to become the #1 top-grossing app in the App Store & Play Store and grew the business from the early days of monetization through IPO ($20M to $1.2B ARR). Jeff holds a BA from University of California, Los Angeles and an MBA from The Anderson School of Management at University of California, Los Angeles."
Mr. Evans is lauded entrepreneur with successes in the Venture Capital, technology, music & entertainment, finance and human capital industries. In 2020 he co-founded and is currently the Managing Partner in Mantis Venture Capital, a Venture Capital firm in partnership with Alex Pall & Drew Taggart better known as The Chainsmokers. Mantis is currently investing out of its third fund with focus on AI/ML, Cloud & Data infrastructure, HealthTech and Gaming. Jeffrey is a seasoned operator and serial entrepreneur who has started five companies (three brick and mortar and two technology firms). Having built several companies from the ground up, Jeffrey has a multitude of experiences to share with early-stage founders to help them properly accelerate their growth and avoid some natural pitfalls that he has experienced himself. Mr. Evans was also the President of Buskin Records, an independent record label he launched in 2011 and Bassline Management an artist management firm. Evans label and management firm launched the careers of multiple artists including the international star Andra Day. In 2011 Evans took his brick-and-mortar entrepreneurial skills into the technology space as he co-founded TigerText the first controlled and impermanent mobile communication company. TigerText (rebranded TigerConnect) is currently the leading secure mobile communication application in the healthcare industry.
Jeff Weinstein is a Partner at FJ Labs, a New York-based venture capital firm that invests in online marketplace startups and network effect businesses. He co-heads the FJ Labs investment team that has backed in over 1,000 startups globally including Alibaba, Betterment, Coupang, Delivery Hero, Fanduel, Flexport and Rappi, and manages FJ’s external fundraising efforts. Prior to FJ, Jeff spent four years at at the venture firm Lux Capital and previously worked at a fund of hedge funds. He received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, is a Kauffman Fellow and member of the Milken Institute's Young Leaders Circle. Outside of his professional pursuits, Jeff is a husband and father of two, and a competitive distance runner with personal bests of 4:05 in the mile and 2:30 in the marathon.
John Cowgill is a general partner at Costanoa. He focuses on cybersecurity, national security, and applied AI investments. Since joining the firm in 2016, John has led early stage investments in companies like AppOmni, Cyberhaven, Kepler Communications, Muon Space, and RunReveal. Before joining Costanoa, John was a consultant at McKinsey & Co., advising consumer and technology companies on strategy and operations projects. Prior to McKinsey, John worked as a Business Development Associate for Techweek, a nationwide technology conference company. He holds a B.S. from Northwestern.
Jordan Nof is a Co-founder and Managing Partner at Tusk Venture Partners, an early stage venture capital firm focused on investing in technology companies operating in highly regulated markets. Jordan has led many of the firm’s investments including Lemonade, FanDuel, and Coinbase. Jordan currently serves on the board of directors of Alma, Wheel, Sunday, Dub, and RxRedefined. He is also an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. Prior to co-founding Tusk Venture Partners, Jordan spent six years as a Director at Blackstone, where he focused on the development of the firm’s corporate venture capital portfolio. During that time, Jordan focused on investing in early-stage technology companies that could accelerate operations across Blackstone and the firm’s underlying portfolio companies. Before joining Blackstone, Jordan spent four years in the institutional investment management division at AllianceBernstein. During that time, he worked with many of the firm’s largest global institutional sub-advisory relationships. Jordan received an M.B.A. from Rollins Graduate School of Business and is a graduate of Florida State University where he received a B.S. in Finance.
Kate Beardsley is a Founding Partner of Hannah Grey and has a proven track record of identifying emerging trends and building successful investment portfolios. A venture capitalist since 2008, Kate was a Founding Member of Lerer Hippeau. Her investment portfolio boasts successful exits, iconic brands, and Billion dollar businesses like Casper (IPO), Warby Parker (IPO), JumpCloud ($2.5B), Self Financial ($1.5B), Genies ($1B), Billie (acq. Edgewell), Venmo (acq. Braintree), Food52 (acq. Cherin Group), Eight Sleep, Glossier, Hipcamp, Paperless Post and several more. She strives to identify trends early and often is the first institutional investor to the cap table (Venmo, Billie, Food52, Paperless Post). She is a Founding Partner of Upslope Ventures (FKA Galvanize Ventures), the fund associated with Galvanize, the national data-science and engineering education company. Kate began her entrepreneurial and operational career in New York managing business strategy and operations for industry titans Martha Stewart, Founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and Ken Lerer, Founder and Chairman of The Huffington Post. As Martha Stewart's Chief of Staff, Kate managed special projects for the design-driven media corporation. The company’s focus on educating its audience, creating sought-after products, and establishing deep brand loyalty contributes to Kate’s unique lens on venture investing. Kate gained invaluable insights into creating delightful customer experiences and building brand loyalty. Kate was Chief of Staff to Ken Lerer at The Huffington Post, the first technology newspaper. While at HuffPo, she managed Ken’s angel investments from 2008 to 2010. She actively participated in the emergence of the NYC tech ecosystem, working with founders scaling their businesses and becoming a trusted ally of the inner circle of early NYC entrepreneurs. Kate worked in lockstep with Ken and Ben Lerer to build Lerer Ventures (now Lerer Hippeau) as Director of Operations, where she sourced, evaluated, and managed investments, supported the portfolio, and oversaw fund formation, fund audits, LP reporting, and employee hires. She helped raise three funds at Lerer Hippeau and invested in over 200 startups. Her contributions were instrumental in establishing Lerer Hippeau as one of the most recognized and active funds in New York. Major media outlets have recognized Kate’s expertise, including appearances on CNBC, Fox Business, and CNN, and features in Techcrunch, Forbes, Business Insider, and The Denver Business Journal. She has also been a guest on leading technology podcasts such as Twenty Minute VC, Venture Unlocked, Carta, and Upside.fm. Kate served as the Board Chair of Rocky Mountain Venture Capital and has dedicated her time as a mentor to Techstars. An honors graduate of Middlebury College with a BA in English, Kate resides in Denver, Colorado, with her husband and two daughters, Gunnison Grey and Olive Indiana. With her exceptional track record, diverse experience, and strategic vision, Kate Beardsley stands out as a formidable force in the venture capital landscape, making her an invaluable partner for entrepreneurs and investors.
Kathleen is an investing partner at Pear. Prior to Pear, she was the co-founder at MKT1 & MKT1 Capital where she invested in and advised early-stage B2B startups. MKT1 Capital invested in pre-seed thru Series A startups and helped them build their marketing team and strategy. Prior to founding MKT1, she built and led marketing and operations teams at several high-growth startups including Intercom, Box, Facebook, and Scalyr (acq by SentinelOne). Kathleen holds a BA in Political Science & History from Brown University. She lives in the Bay Area with her 2 young kids and enjoys taking advantage of the amazing running trails on the peninsula.
Katie is a Managing Director and GP of Fund of Funds Investing at Felicis. Katie leads Investor Relations for the firm and has been part of the LP community since 2002. She was one of Felicis' first investors through her role at SVB Capital, and brings more than 20 years of venture fund investment experience to her role. She started her career at Cambridge Associates, helping a wide range of institutional clients build and evaluate their private equity programs. Katie earned her BA in Economics at Colby College and her MBA at Wharton. She is a member of several organizations supporting women in private equity and is on the Executive Committee and Board of Safe & Sound, an organization working to prevent child abuse and reduce its devastating impact. Katie has been featured in the WSJ and Nasdaq.
Kellan Carter is a founding partner of FUSE where he focuses on early-stage investments in intelligent software in both horizontal and vertical categories. He currently sits on the Boards of Zuper, Pictory, Avante, Owl, Xemelgo and PDM Automotive. In addition to the board roles, Kellan manages FUSE investments in Griptape, Gone, Solo, Trustle, and Aerial. Previously, Kellan spent seven years at Ignition Partners, a leading early-stage venture capital firm. At Ignition, Kellan led investments in Icertis, Botkeeper, Symend, KenSci (acquired by Providence), and Azuqua (acquired by Okta), and served on the boards of both Botkeeper and Symend. Prior to Ignition, Kellan spent two years in investment banking at Mooreland Partners in San Francisco. There, he helped execute M&A transactions for technology companies in a variety of sectors, including mobile, enterprise software, systems, and infrastructure. Prior to Mooreland Partners, Kellan was an associate in KPMG’s advisory practice in Orange County, CA, where he helped structure asset-backed securities collateralized by student loans, auto loans, and residential and commercial mortgages. Kellan currently sits on the Board of the Bellevue Boys and Girls Club. After college, Kellan founded an online, business-networking platform to connect current students and faculty to UM alumni.
Before Chemistry, Kristina was a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz for four years, where she led the B2B software investing practice. Prior to a16z, Kristina was a Partner at Bessemer for seven years. When not working, Kristina is trying to keep up with her three spunky kiddos - Ari, Leo and Lily! She loves a great cup of coffee, celebrating Halloween all year long (thanks to her kids!), and a lazy day at the beach.
Lauren is the co-founder and GP at Mischief, an early stage venture fund based in San Francisco. Mischief is investing out of its Fund 2, an $80M fund focused on software businesses across sectors. Before Mischief, Lauren was the cofounder and CEO of Dote Shopping, a mobile shopping app for Gen Z.
Logan is the Managing Partner and Founder of Fin Capital, a global investment firm specializing in B2B Fintech Software, where he is focused on firm management, investment activities, board duties, and portfolio support. Logan brings a wealth of experience to the portfolio having held a long career in startup and corporate operational roles at the intersection of Financial Services and Technology. He holds BA degrees in public policy and political science from Duke University, and an M.S. in Management from Stanford's Graduate School of Business where he was a Sloan Fellow.
Lynne Chou O’Keefe is the Founder and Managing Partner of Define Ventures, one of the largest firms focused on early-stage health tech companies. With $800 million in assets under management. Define Ventures is a high-conviction team with a proven track record in scaling category-defining companies driving $23 billion in exit value including Hims & Hers (HIMS); Livongo (LVGO); and Evolent (EVH). Prior to Define, Lynne’s experience includes both healthcare operating, investing, and finance roles. Previously, she was a Senior Partner at Kleiner Perkins focused on digital health and connected devices early stage investing. Before joining Kleiner Perkins, Lynne worked at Abbott Vascular and Guidant in multiple roles launching over ten product families in the U.S. and internationally. Earlier in her career, Lynne worked at Apax Partners with a focus on software venture capital investing. In addition, Lynne worked at Goldman Sachs in the Mergers and Acquisitions group and worked on multiple multi-billion dollar acquisitions and sell side transactions in various industries. Lynne has been named WSJ’s Women in Venture Capital to Watch, Fierce Healthcare’s Women of Influence, and Rock Health’s Top 50 ICON honoree. Lynne earned a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Mamoon Hamid is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins. He has been an early investor in and served on the boards of some of the most innovative software companies of recent times including Slack, Figma, Box, Rippling and Netskope. Prior to joining Kleiner Perkins, Mamoon was a Co-Founder of Social Capital, and prior to that a Partner at U.S. Venture Partners (USVP). He started his Silicon Valley career at Xilinx where he held various engineering and business roles. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, an MS from Stanford University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Manan Mehta is the Founding Partner of Unshackled Ventures, a pre-seed fund designed to support immigrant founders in the U.S. Since launching in 2014, Unshackled has backed 100+ companies, helped create over 1,000 jobs, and supported teams that have raised more than $1B. Born and raised in Silicon Valley to immigrant parents, Manan’s own encounters with bias—from the baseball field at UCLA to startup boardrooms—inspired his mission to invest in overlooked and underestimated talent. His journey includes leading marketing at edtech startup Kno through its acquisition, and earlier, a stint as an investment banker at RBC Capital Markets. He holds dual degrees in Materials Science and Economics from UCLA. Manan currently serves on the Board of the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, where he contributes to initiatives that broaden access to entrepreneurship. He is also the creator and host of “Believe in Aliens,” a podcast exploring the resilience, creativity, and self-belief of immigrant founders redefining the American Dream. A husband to a nurse and father of two, Manan is a collegiate national dance champion, mindfulness practitioner, coach, and lifelong sports enthusiast. He believes betting against pattern bias is where the outliers lie—and that immigrants are America’s national advantage.
Mark Suster is a Partner at Upfront. He previously was the founder & CEO of two successful enterprise software companies, the most recent of which was sold to Salesforce.com where Mark became VP, Products. Prior to being a founder, Mark was a software developer at Accenture where he lived and worked in Europe, Japan and the U.S. Mark is a graduate of UCSD and has an MBA from the University of Chicago.
Since 2018, Maya Bakhai has backed over 100 founders and 6 unicorns. Prior to Spice, she ran venture investments for NBA Player Kevin Durant where she invested in Hugging Face, Mercury, Whoop, Dapper Labs, and Opensea. She has a B.S. in Finance and Data Science from NYU. In 2023, she was recognized for her investing in Forbes 30 under 30.
Founder: Audacious Ventures. Previously: GP at Lightspeed.
Paul Bricault is an active investor and advisor to startups. He is the founder and Managing Partner of Amplify - an early stage venture capital fund which launched in December 2011 and has funded 125 companies since its inception. Amplify has been one of the leading early stage venture firms in SoCal for over a decade and has seen exits to Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and others. He also served as a Board Partner at Greycroft for the past 13 years. As a member of the Greycroft team, he oversaw Greycroft’s investments in DataScience (acquired by Oracle), Dots (acquired by Take Two Interactive), Livefyre (acquired by Adobe) and Klout (acquired by Lithium/Vista Equity) as well as ongoing concerns in ZenBusiness, Dropoff and Inventables. Previously, Paul was the founder of The Mailroom Fund - a venture fund in partnership with Accel Partners, Venrock and AT&T that focused on early stage investments in Southern California-based digital media firms. He founded MRF during his 15 year tenure at the William Morris Agency where he served as a member of the Board of Directors in his role as Executive Vice President and head of both the Global Marketing Practice and the Digital Media Group. Paul has been a member of the Board of Councillors at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California (USC) for the last decade. Also at USC, he is currently an Expert-In_Residence at the Graduate Business School and previously he served as an Adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of Cinema-Television where he taught an annual course for the last 25 years on the Impact of Technology on Media. For each of the past 9 years, Paul has been named to the list of the 500 Most Influential People in Los Angeles by the LA Business Journal.
Peter co-founded Lux Capital with the idea that in order to have the biggest impact on the future, one should support the most scientifically and technologically ambitious ventures. His goal: to seek out founders developing things most people thought would not work, yet if they did, would become so intrinsic to our way of life that we would someday take them for granted. Today Lux supports a wide range of once-impossible-sounding advancements, including 3D printing and imaging, nuclear waste cleanup, machine learning and robots that fly or conduct microsurgery.
Ravi Viswanathan is the Founder and Managing Partner of NewView Capital (NVC), a venture growth firm invested in high-potential companies in enterprise software and fintech. With over $3B under management, NewView pairs flexible primary and secondary capital with the operational impact needed to realize scale. Prior to founding NewView Capital, Ravi was a General Partner at NEA, where he oversaw investment in enterprise software and fintech companies. Ravi’s investments of note include Braintree (acquired by PayPal), MuleSoft (acquired by Salesforce), GlobalLogic (acquired by Apax Partners), TeleAtlas (Euronext: TA, acquired by TomTom), Cyence (acquired by Guidewire), Acquia (acquired by Vista Equity Partners), Scout (acquired by Workday), Plaid, and Forter. Ravi holds an MBA from Wharton, a PhD in Chemical Engineering from UC Santa Barbara, and a BS in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the Chair of the Wharton Entrepreneurship Advisory Board.
Renata Quintini is a venture capitalist, futurist, and co-founder of Renegade Partners. With 15 years of experience, she specializes in backing technical founders finding early traction in AI & ML, Fintech, Vertical SaaS, Infrastructure, and Consumer Technology. Her recent investments include consumer payments innovator Ansa and industrial devops platform Copia. Previously a Partner at Lux Capital and General Partner at Felicis Ventures, Renata has a proven track record of investing in transformative companies like Air Space Intelligence, Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker, Planet, and Cruise Automation. Before becoming a venture capitalist, Renata helped manage Stanford University’s endowment, investing in both private equity and venture capital funds. She serves as a Board Member of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), a Trustee at both the Stanford Athletics Department Venture Fund and the Stanford Law School Venture Fund, and a Founding Member of All Raise. She earned her MBA and LL.M (Master of Law in Law, Science, and Technology) degrees from Stanford University, and her JD law degree from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. She is a CFA charterholder. Renata is also a three-time state karate champion, Jazz guitar player, and Brazilian immigrant.
Richard is the Founder and Managing Partner of Field Ventures. Prior to founding Field Ventures, Richard was Co-Founder and Co-Managing Partner at Equal Ventures, where he led seed-stage investments in Bikky, Suppli, Upwards, and Wrapbook. Prior to Equal, Richard was an investor at Venrock, where he led seed-stage and Series A stage investments in 6Sense, Amino Apps, Beckon, Burner, Luxe Valet, and Salsify. Before Venrock, Richard was an investor at Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), where he focused on identifying and evaluating later-stage investments. While at IVP, Richard worked with IVP portfolio companies such as Dropbox, FleetMatics, PopSugar, Shazam, and Yext.
Samara is Founding Partner of an institutionally-backed pre-seed stage fund, Chingona Ventures, focusing on investing in technology and technology-enabled companies all over the U.S. Prior to this she was an early stage investor at MATH Venture Partners, an early-stage venture fund investing in technology start-ups with differentiated approaches to customer acquisition. In this capacity, she led new investment review, diligence and execution. Prior to venture capital, Samara worked at Goldman Sachs, where she was continually ranked top 5 in selling financial products, providing market insights, advising on portfolio construction, and consulting on business practices. She started her career in the Fixed Income, Currency and Commodity (FICC) group where she led multiple technology enhancing projects across global exchanges. Samara is actively involved in the Chicago tech community and passionate about helping underrepresented groups get into STEM education, venture capital and entrepreneurship. Samara earned an Industrial and Operations Engineering degree from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in Business Administration from Northwestern University.
Santi Subotovsky is a General Partner at Emergence Capital, where he has been a driving force behind some of the firm’s most successful investments since joining in 2010 including Chorus and Openpath. He led Emergence’s investment in Zoom (NASDAQ: ZM) when it was a little-known startup and remains on its board as the company stands as a $24 billion market cap giant. He also serves on the boards of leading companies like Crunchbase, Logik.io, Zipline, Tundra, and Class, and works closely with startup studio and accelerator High Alpha, and Quasar Ventures, which helps Latin American entrepreneurs bring disruptive ideas to life. For Santi, venture capital is deeply personal. His investment philosophy centers on building genuine partnerships with founders, rooted in trust and respect. When Zoom’s Eric Yuan faced the challenge of balancing business demands with travel to meet investors, Santi told him he’d go wherever Eric was, no matter the time or place—a small gesture that reflected his people-first approach and helped forge a bond of mutual respect. It’s this mindset that defines every investment Santi makes. Santi’s path to venture capital is a story of resilience and self-reliance. Growing up in Argentina, he thought he’d follow in his father’s footsteps as a mechanic. But when no jobs were available, he decided to create his own. With little more than his wits and a knack for problem-solving, Santi co-founded AXG Tecnonexo, a SaaS e-learning platform that grew operations across Latin America and the U.S. His entrepreneurial journey, from navigating the challenges of scaling a business to exiting successfully, shaped his approach to supporting founders today. After moving to the U.S., Santi discovered venture capital and the pivotal role it could play in helping startups scale globally. He channeled this experience into co-founding Puente Labs, which supports high-growth Latin American entrepreneurs as they expand internationally. A Kauffman Fellow and Endeavor Entrepreneur, Santi is passionate about helping founders from underrepresented markets access the resources and networks they need to succeed. Santi holds a BS in economics from Universidad de San Andrés in Argentina and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Santi is a three-time member of the Midas List and one of the first three Latin American VCs to achieve this distinction. Outside of work, Santi is a father of four, an avid opera and classical music enthusiast, and, like every Argentine, a devoted soccer fan. His passion for building relationships, empowering entrepreneurs and creating lasting impact continues to define his legacy in venture capital.
Sara Deshpande is a General Partner at Maven Ventures, a Seed stage venture firm investing in tech companies addressing emerging consumer behavior and trends. Sara joined Maven as the first employee and has been a VC for ten years. She invests in emerging trends across consumer software from digital health to consumer applications of AI. Sara received her MBA from Stanford where she now teaches a popular course on startups and entrepreneurship.
Sergio is the Founding Partner of Roble Ventures, a future-of-work focused fund investing in technologies that enable people, teams, and organizations to achieve their most ambitious work. He is a successful investor and entrepreneur who has founded, invested in, and served on the board of several global tech businesses in Silicon Valley and abroad. During his decade-long career as a partner at Norwest Venture Partners, he invested early in successful companies such as Udemy and Adaptive Insights. More recently, he invested in Kahoot! at the Series A alongside several other promising startups. Before becoming a venture investor, Sergio was a venture-funded founder and an operator in high-growth tech companies like eBay, PayPal, and Portal Software (IPO). Sergio co-founded the Entrepreneur-In-Residence Program at Stanford, where he also lectures on entrepreneurship and venture capital. Sergio earned a B.S. from Stanford University in Management Science and Engineering and an MBA from Harvard University.
Shuly Galili is a Founding Partner at UpWest, a Silicon Valley-based early-stage venture firm with over $130M AUM, dedicated to backing exceptional Israeli founders building for global markets. She spearheads the firm’s first-check investment strategy, focused on B2B, Vertical AI, Cybersecurity, SaaS, and Fintech. Under her leadership, UpWest has become a launchpad for high-performing startups, with a portfolio that includes SentinelOne (NYSE: S), Honeybook, Stampli, Zenity, BeeHero, and CyberX (acquired by MSFT). Shuly brings a powerful combination of operator experience, cross-border insight, and a high-impact network to drive outsized value creation for founders and investors alike. Prior to founding UpWest, Shuly served over a decade as Executive Director of the California Israel Chamber of Commerce (CICC), where she built the premier bridge between Israeli innovation and the U.S. tech ecosystem. She continues to advise global organizations on scaling entrepreneurship and promoting diversity in tech.
Spencer Punter is a Partner at DCVC. Spencer’s venture capital career dates to 1996, when he joined Integral Capital Partners, a sister firm to Kleiner Perkins, as an Associate. He became a General Partner at Bowman Capital, co-managing the firm’s $1 billion venture program, and was a Partner and the manager of the growth stage fund at Bay Partners. He was the Managing Director of the venture capital fund of funds program at Capital Dynamics, a Swiss-based private equity advisor. Spencer gained operational experience as CFO/COO at SnapLogic and Appcelerator, two VC-backed software companies. Spencer received a bachelor’s degree with honors in physical sciences from Harvard University.
Founder & Managing Partner at Worldbuild. Previously at a16z and Nyca.
Sungjoon Cho is the Founder & Managing Partner of Silicon Valley-based Fortitude Ventures, a newly formed venture capital firm focused on the AI and Robotic enablement of automation. An engineer by training, Sungjoon was deeply involved in the last computing paradigm shift as a technical product manager of Samsung's mobile System-on-Chip processors in the late 2000's. After a stint as a consultant at McKinsey, Sungjoon has spent the last 10 years as an early stage VC at firms like Formation 8, Amasia, and D20 Capital, where he backed entrepreneurs building B2B automation leveraging computer vision, multimodal machine learning, and robotics. Sungjoon has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University, and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Sungjoon is also a Kauffman Fellow.
Sunil Nagaraj is the Founder and Managing Partner of Ubiquity Ventures, a nerdy and early venture capital firm that invests software beyond the screen startups. This includes backing pre-seed and seed stage entrepreneurs using smart hardware or machine learning to solve business problems outside the reach of computers and smartphones. With almost $200 million under management, Ubiquity now has a portfolio of 40 startups that brings software to cows, space, cars, medical devices, farms, and more places in the real world. Prior to founding Ubiquity Ventures, Sunil spent the better part of a decade with Bessemer Venture Partners where his work included leading the seed rounds of Auth0 (acquired by Okta for $6.5 billion) and Zapier as well as investments in Rocket Lab (NASDAQ: RKLB), and Twitch (acquired by Amazon for $1 billion). Prior to being an investor, Sunil was founder/CEO of Triangulate, a VC-backed online dating startup using machine learning and behavioral data to improve matching accuracy.
TJ is a co-founder and Managing Partner at Base10 Partners. Before Base10, TJ had a successful career as an entrepreneur and investor. As an entrepreneur, TJ was the founder and CEO of Jobr, a mobile job platform that grew profitably. Jobr was acquired by Monster in 2016, where TJ became VP of Product & Head of Mobile globally. Prior to founding Jobr, TJ was an investor at Coatue Management, a $10B tech focused hedge fund and venture investment firm. TJ joined to start Coatue’s private investing practice and helped to establish Coatue as a leading venture investor leading investments in Anaplan, HotelTonight, Snap, Lyft and Wish among others. Prior to Coatue, TJ spent several years at Accel partners, a $9B venture investment firm based in Palo Alto where he helped to invest in Qualtrics, Airwatch, Despegar, and Nimble Storage. He started his career at Summit Partners, a $12B venture capital and private equity firm. TJ graduated from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business with a focus on finance.
Taylor Griffin is the co-founder and managing partner of XLIV Capital, an emerging venture capital firm that invests in resilient management teams focused on enhancing consumer lives through innovative technologies, products and services. After a seven-year professional basketball career playing all over the world, Taylor transitioned into the sports and entertainment industry, driven by curiosity and a commitment to learning finance and investing. With a decade of experience advising prominent professional athletes on their business and investment decisions, Griffin has gained exceptional insights and access to Private Equity and Venture Capital investment opportunities. Griffin spent three years at New York-based Private Equity firm Patricof Co, working at the intersection of athletes, sports, venture capital, and private equity. Taylor's unique background helps him bridge the gap between professional sports, entertainment, and finance. His growing network in the broader investment community, paired with his deal-making experience in early-to-mid-stage companies, has positioned him favorably to gain access to coveted deal flow.
Thomas Jueng is a Sr. Managing Director at Samsung Ventures America. He joined Samsung Ventures in 2012 and focuses on investments in mobile platform, AI, IoT, digital media & content, and enterprise solution. Prior to joining Samsung Ventures, Thomas worked in Benex investment, a private equity in Korea. Before Benex investment, he worked at SK Telecom in global strategy planning team and investment team. Thomas led deals in the US, China, Vietnam, and Korea mainly focusing on mobile and internet. Before SK Telecom, Thomas worked at a RF repeater system company, MTI Co., Ltd. as a RF, S/W engineer. Thomas also co-founded two start-ups, a social network service website, win520.com in Beijing, China, and an outdoor digital signage company, Intercity Networks in Korea and he was an early member of Chinese mobile device company, Xiaomi. Thomas earned his M.B.A. at the Wharton School and received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University.
Tomasz Tunguz is a general partner at Theory Ventures, an early stage software & infrastructure firm investing $1-25m in early stage companies. Tomasz writes a blog at tomtunguz.com & has worked with companies like Looker, MotherDuck, Monte Carlo, Hex, Omni, Lilt, Chorus, & Dremio. He co-authored the book Winning with Data.
I am a General Partner at Uncork Capital and invest broadly in information technology companies, with a particular focus on consumer, marketplace (b2c & b2b), and fintech companies. I love beautiful business models and companies that exhibit strong network effects. I also lead Uncork's later stage efforts. Previously, I was a General Partner at August Capital, a Senior Associate at Spectrum Equity, and started my career in the meat grinder as a fintech Analyst in investment banking. At Uncork, I'm our lead on GPTZero, Hallow (Board Observer), Sunnyside (Board), Syro, The Lobby, Ubiquitous (Board), and a number of other unannounced investments. At August Capital, I led investments in ADARA (Board), BARK (NYSE: BARK)(Board), CommonBond (Board), Compology (Board), Hipcamp (Board), Paperless Post (Board), Quandl (Board), Revel (Observer), Rocketmiles (Board), SendBird (Observer), Spacious (Board), Sun Basket (Board), Wattpad (Observer), and Yumi (Board), and was involved in investments in Amount, Avant, Ebates, Fastly (NYSE: FSLY), GitLab (NASDAQ: GTLB), Integral Ad Science (NASDAQ: IAS) (Observer), PubMatic (NASDAQ: PUBM), RJMetrics, Rockets of Awesome, Stitch Data, ThreatMetrix, and Zulily. My first job out of college was as a coach on the Squaw Valley Ski Team, where I helped found the Big Mountain Ski Teams. I went to Princeton University and I'm originally from the San Francisco Bay Area.
Ullas Naik founded Streamlined Ventures with a vision of building a thought-leading investment platform rooted in the philosophical belief that founders of companies are the true heroes of entrepreneurial value creation in our society. Ullas is a seasoned venture capitalist, angel investor, and entrepreneur with over 25 years of entrepreneurial and early-stage investment experience across more than 500 companies. At Streamlined, Ullas has led seed investments in almost 20 companies valued at over $1Bn including Doordash (IPO), Applovin (IPO), Rappi, Forge (IPO), EasyPost, OpenGov (acquisition), FLYR Labs, Rescale, Flip, Speechify, Medable, Bolt, TubiTV (acquisition), etc. Over the last 25 years, he has seed/angel invested in nearly 150 companies. He is also an investor in numerous venture capital funds. In addition, he helped co-found the full lifecycle investment firm, Cota Capital. Prior to founding Streamlined, Ullas was a senior member of the investment team for 12 years at Globespan Capital and helped build the firm. They had invested in early stage rounds of numerous iconic companies including Palo Alto Networks (IPO), Roku (IPO), Redfin (IPO), UpWork (IPO), BladeLogic (IPO), Virident (acquisition), Q1 Labs (acquisition), Virtusa (IPO), etc.. Before his institutional venture capital investment career, Ullas was a top-ranked Wall Street research analyst at FAC Equities/First Albany. Ullas received an MBA degree after starting a chemical trading business in India.
Villi brings two decades of operating and institutional investing experience. Before founding Category, Villi was a Managing Director at Two Sigma Ventures. At TSV, Villi managed the San Francisco office and invested in startups across SaaS, infrastructure, and developer tools. Villi started his career in venture as a General Partner at August Capital. Prior to joining August, he was a member of the leadership teams at Box and Lifelock, where he held various operating roles with broad responsibilities for strategy, product, alliances, investments, and acquisitions. Previously, Villi was a Vice President at Salesforce, where he led the investments and acquisitions teams, investing in over 30+ leading software companies including Hubspot, Box, Gusto, Anaplan, Mulesoft, Adaptive Insights, Zapier, and many others. Prior to Salesforce, Villi held roles at Hewlett-Packard and Merrill Lynch. Villi earned an MBA from Darden (UVA), a Masters degree from Clemson University, and a BS from Erskine College. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children. When he is not working, Villi enjoys coaching his kids on the tennis courts, running, cycling, skiing, and any activity that gets him outdoors.
Will Coffield is co-founder and General Partner at Riot Ventures. Will is a career institutional venture investor with over a decade of experience working with companies from ideation to IPO. At Riot, Will focuses on the firm's investment practice in defense and aerospace as well as logistics and advanced manufacturing. Will has led investments in True Anomaly (orbital defense prime), Parallel Systems (autonomy for rail freight), Oxide Computer Company (hyperscale datacenter infrastructure), Alloy Enterprises (Carnegie Steel 2.0), Elementary ML (artificially intelligent QA/QC for manufacturing), Rugged Robotics (construction robots), Open Envoy (freight AP automation), Azimuth (telemetry data infrastructure) and Route (ecommerce logistics and insurance). Will is an avid surfer, chef and dog trainer. He is proficient at two of those things.
