At Best Startup US we track over 1,000,000 US startups and over 3 million people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United States based CEO’ operating in the Software space. If you think a CEO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.us.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Shantanu Narayen
President and Chief Executive Officer of Adobe
Shantanu Narayen currently serves as president and chief executive officer of Adobe. He joined Adobe in January 1998 as Vice President and General Manager of our engineering technology group. In January 1999, he was promoted to Senior Vice President, Worldwide Products, and in March 2001 he was promoted to Executive Vice President, Worldwide Product Marketing and Development. In January 2005, Narayen was promoted to President and Chief Operating Officer, and effective December 2007, he was appointed our Chief Executive Officer and joined our Board of Directors. Narayen serves on the board of directors of Pfizer Inc., a multinational pharmaceutical corporation. He previously served as a director of Dell Inc. from September 2009 to October 2013. Narayen holds a B.S. in Electronics Engineering from Osmania University in India, a M.S. in Computer Science from Bowling Green State University and an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Doug Ludlow
Co-Founder and CEO of MainStreet
Doug is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of MainStreet, a company creating jobs in rural and suburban communities. Previously, Doug was the Founder of Hipster, which was acquired by AOL in March of 2012. Hipster had raised $1M from Google Ventures, BoxGroup, CRV, Lerer Hippeau, Ludlow Ventures, Techstars, 500 Startups, Mitch Kapor, David Tisch, and other distinguished angels. In addition, Doug is a 2007 alumni of TechStars Boulder, having founded madKast (acquired by ShareThis.com in 2008).
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About MainStreet: MainStreet is a financial platform that helps startups and small businesses discover and claim tax credits and government incentives.
Raj Chowdhury
Co-Founder and CEO of HashCash Consultants
Raj Chowdhury is the CEO of HashCash Consultants and a Blockchain pioneer. He is the author of the book The Dark Secret of the Silicon Valley. He is the co-founder of several high tech and web based companies. Chowdhury is an eminent voice in Blockchain and cryptocurrencies globally. He is a contributor to Economic Times, Business World and advises industry leaders in adoption of Blockchain. He is a member of Asha Silicon Valley chapter, a non-profit committed to the spread of education for children in emerging countries.
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About Bitrump, HashCash Consultants, Satoshi Angels: HashCash Consultants is a software company offering Blockchain, AI, Big Data and IoT products, platforms and services.
Guillermo Rauch
CEO & Founder of Vercel
Before starting ZEIT in November 2015, Guillermo was the CTO and co-founder of LearnBoost and Cloudup, acquired by Automattic in 2013. He’s the creator of several popular Node.JS open source libraries like socket.io, mongoose and slackin. Prior to Node.JS, he was a core developer of the MooTools frontend toolkit.
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About Vercel: Vercel is a platform that enables users to develop, preview, and ship Jamstack sites.
Ross Lipson
Co-Founder & CEO of Dutchie
Ross Lipson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Dutchie, a leading cannabis technology platform that powers dispensary operations, provides consumers with safe and easy access to products, and supports the societal change that cannabis is bringing to the world. Founded in 2017, Dutchie works with over 5000 dispensaries across North America, facilitating over $14b in annual sales. Prior to founding Dutchie, Ross was the Co-Founder and CEO of GrubCanada, Canada’s first online food ordering service. GrubCanada was acquired by Just Eat in 2012.
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About Dutchie: Dutchie provides an all-in-one technology platform that powers dispensary operations.
Mathilde Collin
CEO and Co-Founder of Front
Mathilde Collin is the co-founder and CEO of Front.
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About Front: Front is the leader in customer communication that brings teams together to offer tailor-made service at scale
Nitesh Banta
Co-Founder & CEO of B12
Nitesh Banta is the Co-Founder & CEO at B12.
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About B12, Getaround, Rough Draft Ventures, Stellar Capital: B12 offers website building, contact management, online scheduling, payments, invoicing, and SEO services.
Omoju Miller
Technical Advisor to the CEO of GitHub
Omoju Miller is the Technical Advisor to the CEO at GitHub.
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About GitHub: GitHub provides code hosting services that allow developers to build software for open-source and private projects in organizations.
Rahul Vohra
Founder & CEO of Superhuman
Rahul Vohra is the Founder and CEO at Superhuman. He is also the Technical Advisor at BOLDstart Ventures and Investor & Advisor at Partender and Investor of sendwithus and EasyPost. Rahul Vohra is a former CEO and Co-Founder of Rapportive and Game Designer at Jagex. Rahul received a bachelor of arts in Computer Science at the University of Cambrigdge.
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About Clubhouse, LinkedIn, Rapportive, Superhuman, The Todd & Rahul Angel Fund: Superhuman is a software platform that weaves social insights into a workflow.
Neha Singh
Co-Founder & CEO of Tracxn
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About Tracxn: The largest data platform of Startups
Henry Ward
Founder & CEO of Carta
Henry Ward is the CEO and co-founder of Carta (formerly eShares), With a background in finance and technology. Prior to eShares, Henry was the Founder and CEO of Secondsight, a portfolio optimization platform for retail investors. Mr. Ward received a BGS in Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Michigan and an MSC in Market Finance at EDHEC Business School.
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About Carta: Carta is a global ownership management platform that helps companies, investors, and employees manage equity and ownership.
Duke Chung
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of TravelBank
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About TravelBank: TravelBank is the modern all-in-one business travel and expense management platform.
Adam Karp
Co-Founder & CEO of Lively
Prior to Lively, Adam was the Chief Marketing Officer of 1stdibs – the world’s premier destination for unique, luxury design. At 1stdibs, Adam was instrumental in increasing the company’s revenue almost 10x; recruited and led a team of 100 and had full P&L responsibility for 1stdibs’ B2B business. Before 1stdibs Adam worked in senior roles at leading brands such as FreshDirect, Barnes & Noble and Century 21 real estate. At Century 21 he was responsible for developing and launching Century 21’s first website which at the time became the most recognized real estate website in the country and currently generates almost 50 million visits a year. After Century 21, Adam spent almost a decade at Barnes & Noble in increasingly senior roles ultimately becoming VP of Direct Marketing for both the retail stores and online. At Barnes & Noble, Adam managed some of the largest digital marketing programs in the industry, overseeing a budget of $100M. Adam graduated from the The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Economics.
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About Lively: Lively’s mission is to democratize, simplify and de-stigmatize the adoption and use of technically advanced hearing aids.
Dhruvil Sanghvi
Chief Executive Officer of LogiNext
Dhruvil is one of the co-founders LogiNext. He has worked with elite organizations like Deloitte,Ernst & Young and Tata Group and studies at Carnegie Mellon and Nirma University.
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About LogiNext: Enterprise SaaS for Home Delivery and Transportation Businesses to Automate End to End Operational Process
Dustin Moskovitz
CEO & Co-Founder of Asana
Dustin Moskovitz is a Co-Founder and CEO at Asana. He is also the Co-Founder of Open Philanthropy Project and Good Ventures. Mr. Moskovitz is a former Co-Founder of Facebook.
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About Asana, Good Ventures, Open Philanthropy Project: Asana is a computer software company that specializes in the fields of work management and productivity.
Nick Mehta
Chief Executive Officer of Gainsight
Nick Mehta is the CEO of Gainsight, the leading Customer Success company. Since joining in 2013, Nick led the company through multiple funding rounds, raising a total of $156 million, and grew the company from a handful of employees to more than 630 people working in seven offices around the world. He was named one of the Top 50 SaaS CEOs by SaaS report, is an EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist, and holds one of highest Glassdoor approval ratings for CEOs. He is also the co-author of Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue. Prior to Gainsight, Nick was the CEO of LiveOffice, where he led the Inc. 5000 company’s profitable growth to $25 million in revenue and successful sale to Symantec. Nick has held senior operating roles for public and private companies in the enterprise and consumer technology markets, including Veritas Software (acquired by Symantec), Symantec Corporation, and XDegrees (acquired by Microsoft). Mehta also served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Trinity Ventures and Accel Partners. In the mid-1990s, Nick co-founded a venture-funded online golf retailer called Chipshot, one of the top 20 online retailers during the dotcom bubble.
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About Forum Ventures, Gainsight: Gainsight is a technology company that offers a range of software for optimizing the customer experience and improving product analytics.
Sergey Nazarov
Co-Founder and CEO of SmartContract
Sergey Nazarov began his career building peer-to-peer marketplaces, going on to the investment team at FirstMark Capital. He joined the cryptocurrency revolution in 2011, and believes it has the ability to change the way societies distribute wealth, enforce contracts, and share critical information with their citizens.
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About Bring Me That, Chainlink, SmartContract: Smart Contracts verify an execute themselves by monitoring external data sources.
Shawn Farshchi
CEO of Topia
Shawn Farshchi is the Chief Executive Officer at Topia. Shawn brings more than 30 years of experience leading, driving and managing business, technological, organizational, and cultural transformation in highly dynamic environments. Prior to Topia, Shawn was the President and Chief Executive Officer at Saba Software, a leader in the Talent and Learning Management space. In his role as Chief Operating Officer at Coremetrics (an IBM Company), a market leader in Digital Marketing and Web Analytics delivered through a SaaS model, Shawn managed a broad range of responsibilities including product development, service operations, professional services, technical training, and customer service. Prior to Coremetrics, Shawn served as Vice President of Platform Engineering and Operations as well as the General Manager of Voice Applications at WebEx Communications Inc. (now a part of Cisco). In this role, Shawn led engineering and product development for the Voice, Video and Data Switching Platform and was responsible for all aspects of WebEx’s audio conferencing solutions. Prior to WebEx, Shawn was a Regional Vice President at Oracle, Senior Vice President of Development at BroadVision and Chief Information Officer at DHL Airways. Shawn earned his MBA in General Management and M.S. degree in Telecom both from Golden Gate University and B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from San Francisco State University.
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About Topia: Topia is a talent mobility platform that enables employees to work remotely.
Gabriel Weinberg
Founder & CEO of DuckDuckGo
Gabriel Weinberg is the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo, the Internet privacy company that empowers users take control of their personal information online, without any tradeoffs. DuckDuckGo offers online privacy tools including a non-tracking alternative to Google search, and a mobile privacy browser and desktop browser extension that allows you to search and browse the web without being tracked. Since 2008, Weinberg has grown DuckDuckGo from a self-funded operation out of his basement into a business with over $25 million in revenue and 50 employees across multiple continents. He’s the co-author of Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth and a forthcoming book on mental models. Weinberg has been profiled in The Washington Post and Fast Company, and is routinely quoted in publications such as The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He holds a B.S. with honors from MIT in Physics and an M.S. from the MIT Technology and Policy Program. He resides with his wife and kids in Valley Forge, PA and is on twitter @yegg.
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About DuckDuckGo: DuckDuckGo is the Internet privacy company for everyone who’s had enough of hidden online tracking.
Mariano Suarez-Battan
Co-Founder & CEO of MURAL
Mariano Suarez-Battan is a Co-founder and CEO at MURAL, a digital workspace for visual collaboration. He is a three-time co-founder and an inventor by trade, who is on a mission to inspire, enhance, and connect “imagination workers” so they can collaborate and solve hard problems together. Previously, he co-founded Three Melons, a video game studio that designed and published online games for clients like LEGO, Disney, Mattel, Warner Bros. Three Melons created more than 50 games as well as the soccer-based Facebook game Bola!, which had more than 20 million players globally in 2010 (1M daily during the World Cup). The company was acquired in 2010 by Playdom/Disney, where Mariano served as Creative Director following the acquisition. He then co-founded Idea.me, a leading crowdfunding site for the Latin American region. Mariano is an active angel investor and startup advisor at Endeavor.org, a global non-profit leading the high-impact entrepreneurship movement. As an Endeavor entrepreneur, he mentors other founders at various stages of their scaleup journey. He is a graduate of the Endeavor Leadership Program by the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
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About MURAL: MURAL is a digital workspace that provides a visual collaboration platform that enables teams to work remotely and efficiently.
Bret Taylor
Co-CEO & Vice-chair of Salesforce
Bret Taylor is Co-CEO of Salesforce. Bret previously served as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Product Officer of Salesforce. A respected software engineer and executive with an impressive history of building widely used and loved products, Bret was the co-founder and CEO of Quip, the innovative collaboration platform Salesforce acquired in 2016. Prior to founding Quip, Bret served as the Chief Technology Officer of Facebook and saw the company through its successful IPO in 2012. Credited with the invention of the “Like” button, Bret joined Facebook in 2009 after it acquired his social networking company, FriendFeed. Prior to FriendFeed, Bret started his career at Google, where he co-created Google Maps. Bret is the Chair of Twitter’s board of directors. He graduated from Stanford University in 2003 with a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science and now lives in the Bay Area.
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About BOLDforce, CloudCraze, Salesforce, Salesforce, Salesforce: Salesforce is a global cloud computing company that develops CRM solutions and provides business software on a subscription basis.
Dane Atkinson
Founder and CEO of Odeko
Dane Atkinson started his first company, SenseNet Inc., at the age of 18. The company grew explosively through servicing Fortune 500 companies (WPP, Pfizer, Lucent) to hundreds of employees on three continents. Since then, he’s had an extremely successful career as a technology executive and has founded, bought, and sold over a dozen companies including yourday.com, yourstuff.com, estandardsforum.com, iensure.com. His extensive technology and marketing expertise helps us deliver increasingly rich service to our customers. In addition to his position as CEO, Dane also acts as advisor and board member to several leading technology companies.
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About Odeko, SumAll: The operating platform for small businesses.
Anand Agarawala
Co-Founder & CEO of Spatial
Anand Agarawala is the creator of BumpTop, an irresistible new desktop interface with a satisfyingly three-dimensional physicality and a fresh approach to interactivity. Anand completed his Master thesis in 2006 which pioneered a novel physically based desktop interface leveraging expressive power and casual nature of real desks. His Masters of Computer Science was completed at the University of Toronto. He completed his undergraduate thesis in 2004 at the University of Calgary. In his free time, Anand enjoys competitive team sports such as hockey and basketball. He often travels to India and across Europe and North America.
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About BumpTop, Spatial: Spatial allows NFT creators to customize a virtual space and gather for events such as exhibitions, brand experiences, and conferences.
Alcyr Araujo
Founder & CEO of Mosyle
Founder & CEO at Mosyle
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About Mosyle: Mosyle is the leader in modern mobile device managment for Apple enterprise and education customers.
Brad Birnbaum
CEO & Founder of Kustomer
Brad is an innovator and a trailblazer in creating disruptive enterprise technologies. He has spent more than 20 years as a C level executive and a serial entrepreneur, building companies and solutions for customer service and support. Mission driven and passionate, he believes in leading with purpose and building solutions that solve real world problems. As co-founder and CEO of Kustomer, Brad set out together with Jeremy Suriel and the Kustomer team to build something the world desperately needs: a modern, customer-centric platform for building applications while modernizing the customer support tool landscape. Before founding Kustomer, Brad co-founded Assistly which was acquired by Salesforce and rebranded as Desk.com; making it the Salesforce SaaS SMB support solution. Brad began his career by founding eShare Communications while in college. As Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Product Development at eShare Technologies, he took part in revolutionizing community chat and launching the first chat tool used for customer support. eShare was later sold to Melita International where he continued his role as CTO for the larger entity which rebranded as eShare Communications. Brad held executive roles at Divine Interventures, eAssist and Talisma all the while focusing on improving customer support for enterprise companies. Additionally, Brad lead the community chat team at AOL and was CTO for Airtime. Brad contributes regularly to Forbes where he writes about trends that affect the customer service industry today. As a born and raised New Yorker, Brad insists on building the next great NYC based tech startup. Brad serves as Kustomer’s Chairman of the Board. Birnbaum served as a Justice Louis Brandeis Scholar at Brandeis University and a Simon’s fellow at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he conducted advanced organo-metallic research in chemistry. Birnbaum has been published in a variety of publications and has also served as a technical editor for some of Macmillan’s best-selling Java and Internet books. Birnbaum holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Systems from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
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About CRMXchange, Kustomer: Kustomer is an omnichannel Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) CRM platform specializing in customer service.
Christopher Kirchner
Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Slync.io
Christopher S. Kirchner is the co-founder, chairman, and CEO at Slync.io. Prior to this, Christopher has worked as a senior vice president of sales and marketing and a director of marketing and sales at Turner Labels. Christopher holds a degree in communications, minor marketing from the University of Kentucky.
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About Slync.io: Slync.io is a provider of process automation for enterprise supply chains and the global logistics industry.
Richard Bernardino
Founder & CEO, Software Architect of Orchidware Studios
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About Orchidware Studios, Project Blue Butterfly, Project Shrub, Project Umami: Fun, exciting, fascinating video games for players of all ages to enjoy.
Christopher Bergh
Founder, CEO & Head Chef of DataKitchen
Christopher Bergh is a Founder, CEO, and Head Chef of DataKitchen. As CEO, he oversees the Product, Engineering, Implementation, Services, Sales, and Marketing teams. DataKitchen’s mission is to provide the software, service, and knowledge that enables every data analytics team to successfully implement DataOps. Chris and his fellow co-founders started DataKitchen because they envisioned a world where every data professional and his or her data team no longer felt powerless or frustrated by failed and painfully slow projects, but instead were excited and energized by their ability to deliver high-quality, on-demand insight. In 2013, the trio of founders launched DataKitchen and built their own end-to-end DataOps software platform to do just that. Chris is an industry-recognized expert on DataOps. He is the co-author of The DataOps Cookbook and The DataOps Manifesto as well as a speaker on DataOps at many industry conferences and with media outlets. Chris has more than 30 years of research, software engineering, data analytics, and executive management experience. At various points in his career, he has been a COO, CTO, VP, and Director of Engineering at various tech startups, which were acquired by IBM Unica or Model N. Chris holds an M.S. from Columbia University and a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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About DataKitchen, DataKitchen: DataKitchen is a DataOps software company that helps organizations deliver more data products faster with lower errors that customers trust.
Sanjit Biswas
CEO of Samsara
Sanjit Biswas is the Founder and CEO at Samsara. He is a former CEO and a co-founder of Meraki, where he managed day-to-day operations from inception through the $1.2 billion acquisition by Cisco in 2012. He now serves as the Vice President and General Manager of the Cisco Cloud Networking Group, headquartered in San Francisco. Sanjit has been recognized as a TR35 honoree by MIT Technology Review, Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, and has received awards for academic research in computer networking.
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About Samsara: Samsara helps businesses in harnessing IoT data to develop actionable business insights and improve their operations.
Spencer Kimball
Co-Founder and CEO of Cockroach Labs
Spencer Kimball is the co-founder and CEO of Cockroach Labs, where he maintains a delicate balance between a love for programming distributed systems and the excitement of helping the company grow smoothly. While in university, he was one of the original authors of the GIMP. He cut his teeth on databases during the dot com heyday, and had a front row seat at Google for a decade’s worth of their evolution.
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About Cockroach Labs: Cockroach Labs is a software company that develops a cloud-native SQL database for modern cloud applications.
Evan Cummack
CEO of Fin.com
CEO @ Fin.com.
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About Fin.com: Fin.com is a work insights platform that provides cross-applications and enterprises data insights for CX and operations teams.
Sabeer Nelli
Chief Executive Officer of Online Check Writer
Sabeer Nelliparamban is the founder of OnlineCheckWriter.Com, Tyler Petroleum, and Official member of Forbes Business Council. As well as being a successful East Texas businessman. Having 200+ employees using all the technology and software in the business. Always building better software solutions not only from our own experience but also in partnership with 40+ dedicated developers and teams. He wanted to build a better check management experience for small businesses and consumers that leaves no stone unturned. He is a technology orientated, with 15 years of experience in many different industries, from Oil and Fuel, retail to real estate. This software was initially made for Tyler Petroleum itself and later released to the public. Tyler Petroleum is an Inc.5000 fastest growing private companies of America. It is more than a check printing software includes preventing fake/forged/unauthorized checks automatically, automated reconciliation of cleared and uncleared checks, print deposit slips for any banks, checks for every scenario, including management control. It features access levels for users/employees who issue checks on behalf of the company. His team blends cutting edge technology with objective financial service. He believes that this is the best way to empower both individuals and businesses. With a client-centric business model, OnlineCheckWriter.Com is fundamentally altering the traditional check writing landscape.
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About Online Check Writer, Tyler Petroleum Inc, Zil Banking, Zil Money: Online Check Writer is an all-in-one financial service provider with all kinds of payment options to pay and get paid.
Nathaniel Fick
CEO of Endgame
Nate Fick is CEO of Endgame. He has more than a decade of experience in the security community, and is an operating partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he focuses on defense and intelligence technologies. Before joining Endgame, Nate was CEO of the Center for a New American Security, a national security research organization. He served as a Marine Corps infantry officer, including combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. His book about that experience, One Bullet Away, was a New York Times bestseller, a Washington Post “Best Book of the Year,” and one of the Military Times’ “Best Military Books of the Decade.” He graduated with high honors in Classics from Dartmouth College and holds an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School and MBA from the Harvard Business School. Nate serves as a Trustee of Dartmouth and a Director of the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation, and he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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About Bessemer Venture Partners, Endgame, Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation: Endgame’s endpoint protection platform protects the world’s data from advanced attacks.
Jay Meattle
CEO & Founder of Shareaholic
Jay started [Shareaholic, Inc.](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/shareaholic), a company fanatical about making sharing on the web better, faster, easier, and more measurable. Over 2 million people have used the award winning tools created by Shareaholic. Jay was Vice President of Products at Lookery, an online user-targeting network that offered lightweight, economical targeting data for over 200 million users. Before Lookery, Jay was the Product Manager and founding member of the small team that was responsible for creating and launching [Compete.com](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/compete), now part of the WPP Group [Nasdaq: WPPGY]. In addition, as co-founder of PopSignal, one of Boston’s largest professional networking organizations, Jay is actively contributing to the growth of Boston’s technology startup community. Jay earned a B.S. cum laude in Computer Science from Tufts University. He also minored in Entrepreneurial Leadership and Multimedia Arts. At Tufts he was awarded the MacJannet scholarship. Jay is also a TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) Leadership Fellow and in 2012 was named to the TR35 India — MIT Technology Review magazine’s annual list of the world’s top innovators under the age of 35. He loves creating, lives for technology and innovation, and likes making things happen. You can follow Jay on Twitter @meattle or his blog http://www.meattle.com/jay/
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About Shareaholic: Shareaholic is an Audience Engagement platform that helps over 300,000 businesses grow audience engagement, loyalty & conversions.
Willy Schlacks
CEO & Co-Founder of EquipmentShare
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About EquipmentShare, Scale: EquipmentShare is an equipment and digital solutions provider serving the construction industry to help contractors accelerate productivity.
Blake Murray
Co-Founder and CEO of Divvy
Blake Murray is the founder and CEO of Divvy.He was the owner and CEO of MRC and VP of Business Development at Weave Communications.
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About Divvy: Divvy is a platform that helps businesses manage payments and subscriptions, build strategic budgets, and eliminate expense reports.
Kishore Ganji
Founder and CEO of Astir It Solutions Inc
Kishore Ganji is the Angel Investor & Mentor at Astir Ventures.
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About Addepar, Astir Analytics, Astir It Solutions Inc, Astir Ventures, Hyderabad Angels, Sysnet Technologies: Astir is an information technology company that assists businesses with all of their technology needs to help them gain productivity.
Jager McConnell
Chief Executive Officer of Crunchbase
Jager is the CEO of Crunchbase. He joined the company as it became a venture-backed startup in enterprise data. Prior to joining Crunchbase, Jager spent 11 years at Salesforce in various roles across sales, marketing, and product development.
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About Crunchbase: Crunchbase provides intelligent prospecting software powered by live company data.
Courtney Puckett
Executive Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer of Crunchbase
Courtney served as Office Manager at Crunchbase from September 2017 to February 2019, from which she served as Executive Assistant until August 2019, since which she has been serving as Executive Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer.
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About Crunchbase: Crunchbase provides intelligent prospecting software powered by live company data.
Barak Kaufman
CEO/Co-Founder of Intello
Barak Kaufman was CEO & Co-Founder of Intello (acquired by SailPoint) and was an investor at Insight Venture Partners.
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About Intello: Intello’s SaaS operations platform enables companies to discover, manage, secure & optimize their SaaS applications
Issa Asad
CEO & Founder of Q Link Wireless
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About Q Link Wireless, Quadrant Holdings: Q Link Wireless is a leading provider of Lifeline and will give you a Free Cell phone plus Free monthly calling & texting.
Abraham King
Chairman and CEO of Immortal Machines
Abraham King is a co-Founder and CEO of Immortal Machines, a stealth mode startup headquartered in Palo Alto. Immortal Machines is building the next generation Cloud platform for Fortune 500 enterprises. Earlier, he was an entrepreneur in Aerospace and Defense working in partnership with Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Raytheon. King’s prior work is used by the U.S. Navy to build mission critical integrity verification platforms in Submarine Combat Systems, and by the U.S. Air Force to build Situational Awareness Systems to autonomously manage real time complex networks of Space based assets and Ground Control Systems. King was one of the creators of CERN’s Planet scale Cloud platforms — the pioneering Cloud fabric behind Large Hadron Collider, spanning across forty nations — usage of which has resulted in multiple Nobel Prizes. He led the international group which created the original technology blueprint in the United States, and later held multiple leadership and executive roles. King began his career with U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratories, Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, and European Organization for Nuclear Research — working on Artificial Intelligence, Planet scale Distributed Computing, Cryptography, and Supercomputing.
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About Immortal Machines: Immortal Machines is building the next generation Cloud platform for large enterprises and Fortune 500 corporations.
Michael Gronager
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Chainalysis
Michael Gronager PhD in Quantum Mechanics, MSc in Chemical Engineering is CEO and Co-Founder of Chainalysis Inc., the leading company in investigation and compliance services for distributed value transfer, with customers from international banks, leading law enforcement agencies and fintech companies. Prior to founding Chainalysis Michael was the COO of Payward Inc., the leading euro to bitcoin exchange where he was in charge of banking relations, overseeing the global engineering team, and crypto currency expert. Before entering the bitcoin scene in 2011 Michael was running international research infrastructure projects, latest as CEO for the Nordic DataGrid Facility at that time the biggest distributed storage installation world wide. Michael has served as member of the research infrastructure EGI Project Management Board, the EGI Technical Collaboration Board and at present he is member of the Board of the Swedish National Supercomputer Center, NSC. Michael is also Co-Founder of Kraken in San Francisco.
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About Chainalysis: Chainalysis provides blockchain data and analysis to governments, banks, and businesses worldwide.
Phil Libin
CEO of mmhmm
Phil Libin is co-founder and CEO of All Turtles, a mission-driven product studio, and mmhmm, a new app that makes video communication more clear and compelling. Previously he was Managing Director at General Catalyst, and before that he was co-founder and CEO of Evernote, which he grew to become a beloved product for hundreds of millions of users.
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About All Turtles, mmhmm: mmhmm is a virtual camera application used to create virtual rooms, backdrops, and presentations during video conferencing calls.
Phil Libin
CEO of mmhmm
Phil Libin is co-founder and CEO of All Turtles, a mission-driven product studio, and mmhmm, a new app that makes video communication more clear and compelling. Previously he was Managing Director at General Catalyst, and before that he was co-founder and CEO of Evernote, which he grew to become a beloved product for hundreds of millions of users.
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About All Turtles, mmhmm: mmhmm is a virtual camera application used to create virtual rooms, backdrops, and presentations during video conferencing calls.
David and Daniil Liberman
CEO of Product Science
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About Brothers Ventures, Product Science: Performance management platform for mobile
Prashant Fuloria
Chief Executive Officer of Fundbox
A seasoned internet technology executive, Prashant was most recently SVP of Advertising Products at Yahoo, joining the Yahoo team through their acquisition of Flurry, where he was the Chief Product Officer. Prior to Yahoo, Prashant was Senior Director of Product Management at Facebook and Product Director at Google. Prashant received a B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He also holds an MA in Business research; an MS in Statistics; a PhD minor in Engineering Economic Systems & Operations Research; and a PhD in Business, all from Stanford University.
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About Fundbox: Fundbox is an AI-powered financial platform for small businesses.
Leemon Baird
Founder & CEO of Swirlds
Leemon is the inventor of the hashgraph distributed consensus algorithm, and is the Co-founder and Chief Scientist of Hedera. With over 20 years of technology and startup experience, he has held positions as a Professor of Computer Science at the US Air Force Academy and as a senior scientist in several labs. He has been the Co-Founder of several startups, including two identity-related startups, both of which were acquired. Leemon received his PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University and has multiple patents and publications in peer-reviewed journals and conferences in computer security, machine learning, and mathematics.
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About Hedera Hashgraph, Swirlds: Swirlds enables developers to build applications that rapidly achieve consensus, resulting in fair.
Clark Valberg
Co-Founder & CEO of InVision
Clark Valberg is the CEO and Co-Founder of InVision, the digital product design platform used to make the world’s best customer experiences. InVision is the cornerstone of the product design process for more than 3 million people at tens of thousands of companies, including eighty percent of the Fortune 100 and brands like Airbnb, Amazon, HBO, Netflix, Slack, Starbucks and Uber. He is a former Co-Founder of Epicenter Consulting.
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About InVision: InVision is the visual collaboration platform powering the world’s smartest companies.
Stephen Olmstead
VP, Chief of Staff, Office of the CEO of InVision
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About InVision: InVision is the visual collaboration platform powering the world’s smartest companies.
Fatima Dicko
Founder & CEO of Sugar
Prior to founding Jetpack at Stanford University, Fatima worked as the youngest senior engineer on a product innovation team at Procter & Gamble focusing on products 3-10 years away from market. Having been awarded several corporate innovation awards such as ‘Most Transformative Product Design’ and the ‘P&G Global Innovation Seed Fund’, her key competencies include designing simple solutions to complex problems. Fatima holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Columbia University, where she received a Gold King’s Crown Leadership Award and an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
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About Sugar: Sugar builds community and transforms the residential experience by integrating with technology stacks that power modern buildings.
Jay Kreps
Co-founder & CEO of Confluent
Jay Kreps is the CEO of Confluent, Inc., a company backing the popular Apache Kafka messaging system. Prior to founding Confluent, he was formerly the lead architect for data infrastructure at LinkedIn. He is among the original authors of several open source projects including Project Voldemort (a key-value store). Apache Kafka (a distributed messaging system) and Apache Samza (a stream processing system).
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About Confluent: Confluent offers a streaming platform based on Apache Kafka that enables companies to easily access data as real-time streams.
Anshu Sharma
Co-founder & CEO of Skyflow
Co-founder & CEO at Skyflow. Previously co-founded Clearedin and Suki. Partner at Storm Ventures. VP of Product & Strategy at Salesforce. Failed to build cloud at Oracle in 2007.
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About ClearedIn, Skyflow: Skyflow builds a secure data privacy platform fronted by an API so all this data is secure and used as promised.
Avishai Abrahami
Co-Founder & CEO of Wix
Avishai Abrahami is our Co-Founder, has served as our Chief Executive Officer since September 2010 and was our Co-Chief Executive Officer and a director since October 2006. From 2004 to 2006, Avishai was the Vice President of Strategic Alliances at Arel Communications & Software Ltd., a private Israeli company specializing in communication technology. In 1998 he co-founded Sphera Corporation, a private company which develops software for managing data centers, and he served as its Chief Technology Officer from 1998 until 2000 and its Vice President of Product Marketing from 2000 until 2003. In 1993, he co-founded AIT Ltd., a private Israeli software company, and served as its Chief Technology Officer until the company’s sale in 1997. Avishai served in the Israeli Defense Forces’ elite computer intelligence unit from 1990 until 1992.
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About Utsav Kraft, Wix: Wix provides a platform for the development of cloud data services for millions of registered users worldwide.
Mark Weinstein
CEO, Founder of MeWe
Mark Weinstein is the Founder and CEO of MeWe, the Next-Gen Social Network. Mark is a leading privacy advocate, one of the visionary inventors of social networking, and an award-winning author. He founded SuperFamily and SuperFriends, precursors to today’s social and chat networks, at the turn of the millennium. Both became PC Magazine “Top 100” sites for multiple years. Mark sold them and then authored the “Habitually Great” book series endorsed by the late Dr. Stephen Covey, (2x Indie Book awards), and became an influential technology consultant/advisor. A few years ago when Mark Zuckerberg declared, “privacy is a social norm of the past,” that comment angered Weinstein greatly. It sparked him to create the Sgrouples beta project, hiring an engineering team to design and build the world’s first social network with privacy-by- design for its members. The 3-year beta project served as the testing platform for the launch of MeWe. Making its official launch during SXSW 2016 (South by Southwest), MeWe was honored as the 2016 Start-Up of the Year Finalist for “Innovative World Technology.” World renowned thought leaders and executives proudly serve on MeWe’s Advisory Board, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web; Raj Sisodia, the founder of Conscious Capitalism; Professor Sherry Turkle, leading technology expert; Professor Phil Rogaway, award-winning cryptographer; Cullen Hoback, award-winning documentary film-maker on privacy; Colin Sebastion, leading internet analyst; Simon Mainwaring, founder of WeFirst; Marci Shimoff, NYT Best-Selling author; Jack Canfield, co-founder of Chicken Soup for the Soul; and several others. Mark is one of the world’s foremost privacy advocates, and he is listed as one of the “Top 8 Minds in Online Privacy.” He was a Steering Committee Member of National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) – where he strongly argued against any “national identity system,” calling the idea a complete violation of the human right to privacy. The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada has named Mark “Privacy by Design Ambassador.” Mark has written about privacy and the social media industry in well-known publications such as USA Today, InfoSecurity Magazine, Daily Mirror (UK), Dark Reading, HuffPo, and many others. He has been interviewed on many media outlets, including PBS, BBC, FOX, FORBES, CNN, and ABC. Mark is often a featured speaker and social media/privacy expert on the stage at many conferences, including EY’s Strategic Growth Forum, the 16th Annual Privacy and Security Conference, Global Security Conference, GMIC Silicon Valley, and he was a recent keynote speaker at GMIC New York, Security BSides Vancouver, and the Customer Experience Asia. Mark received his BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz; and his MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. He resides in Los Angeles.
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About MeWe: MeWe is the rapidly growing high integrity alternative to Facebook. No Ads, No Targeting, No Newsfeed Manipulation, NO BS!
Charles Besson
Chief Executive Officer of Questel
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About Questel: Questel specializes in intellectual property and innovation management solutions.
Arie Trouw
CEO & CTO & Founder of XYO
Ten years before Elon Musk wrote his first line of computer code, another young prodigy from South Africa was busy writing software on his TRS-80 Model I. In 1978, at the age of 10, Arie Trouw started developing software on the TRS-80 Model I, moving on to Atari, Apple, and PC. He then ran a series of bulletin boards centering on game-theory modification. Arie is an accomplished serial entrepreneur with a rich history of technological breakthroughs and business successes involving multiple 8-figure exit events. He is a strong believer in decentralization and the creation of the integrated owner/user model. Arie founded XY in 2012 (incorporated as Ength Degree, LLC before it was converted to a C Corporation in 2016). He currently serves as Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors. Prior to starting XY-The Findables Company, Arie was CEO and Chairman of Pike Holdings Inc and Chief Technology Officer of Tight Line Technologies LLC. He received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the New York Institute of Technology. Fun Fact: He is a member of one of the first Afrikaans speaking families to emigrate to the US from South Africa in 1976.
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About XY Labs, XY – The Persistent Company, XYO: XYO is a decentralized crypto-location oracle network aiming to provide accurate location data from cars to smartphones.
Kristopher B. Jones
Founder & Co-CEO of Special Guest App
Kristopher Jones is the Founder at LSEO .
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About Forbes Agency Council, French Girls, iFartMobile.com, KBJ Capital, LavCup, LSEO, ReferLocal.com, ReferLocal.com, Special Guest App, The Accelerator at Wilkes Barre, WVIA: Special Guest App makes it dead simple for anyone, anywhere to discover and book live entertainers.
Damon Wayans, Jr
Founder and Co-CEO of Special Guest App
Damon Kyle Wayans Jr. is an American actor, writer, and stand-up comedian, most widely known for starring as Brad Williams in the ABC comedy series Happy Endings and as Coach in the Fox comedy series New Girl. In 2014, he starred in the comedy film Let’s Be Cops and provided the voice of Wasabi in Big Hero 6. In October 2018 Damon will star in his own sitcom “Happy Together” on CBS.
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About Special Guest App: Special Guest App makes it dead simple for anyone, anywhere to discover and book live entertainers.
Chris Wang
CEO & Co-Founder of ThunderCore
Chris spent two years as a Google engineer before founding Playdom. Before officially joining Google, Chris received his PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon—completed in a record-breaking two years and ten months—and interned at, you guessed it, Google. Chris also holds a BA in computer science from Berkeley. However, his knack for programming and obsession with gaming goes much further back: As a high schooler, Chris took 14th place in the USA Computing Olympiad and spent countless days trying to program his first 3D RPG.
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About Playdom, Sentri, ThunderCore: Thunder Token is a new crypto token that is high throughput and confirms transactions in seconds.
Randy Jacops
Chief Executive Officer of IDERA
Randy Jacops joined Valhalla as a Venture Partner in 2012. He assists Valhalla with evaluating investment opportunities and advising Valhalla portfolio companies on performance improvement. Randy has 20 years of experience in enterprise technology and has focused his professional career on driving profitability and shareholder returns. Prior to joining Valhalla, Randy was the President and Chief Executive Officer of Versata Enterprises, Inc., one of the largest privately held enterprise software firms in the world, where he championed both customer success and exceptional profitability. During his tenure with Versata, the company acquired and turned around nearly 20 troubled software companies, integrating them seamlessly into Versata’s high-profit global operations. Prior to Versata, Randy worked at Deloitte Consulting, leaving as a partner in 2000. Randy started his career in Finance at Ford Motor Company, where he served in a variety of capacities from the plant floor to finance staff.
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About IDERA: Idera delivers B2B software productivity tools that enable technical users to do more with less, faster.
Robert Nishihara
Co-Founder and CEO of Anyscale
Robert Nishihara is a fourth-year PhD student working in the UC Berkeley RISELab with Michael Jordan. He works on machine learning, optimization, and artificial intelligence.
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About Anyscale, UC Berkeley College of Engineering: Anyscale accelerates the development and productionization of any AI app, on any cloud, at any scale — with Ray.
Shishir Mehrotra
Co-Founder & CEO of Coda
Mr. Shishir Mehrotra is a Co-Founder/CEO of Coda since June 2014 and served as Strategic Advisor to the Chief Executive Officer from December 2015 to May 2017. Mr. Mehrotra is the CEO and Co-Founder of Coda, Inc. He served as Vice President of Product and Engineering, Youtube/Video at Google Inc. Mr. Mehrotra served as a Director of Product Management for Google TV Ads and YouTube Ads at Google Inc. He served as Director of Program Management at Microsoft. He served as the Chief Executive Officer of Centrata, Inc. Prior to working with Centrata, he was part of the team that brought the Microsoft Office email client to the market. He was Director of Program Management at Microsoft. He held positions at the W3C, Taurus Telysys and the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is accurately regarded as one of the most knowledgeable people in digital content and technology. He has been a Director of Victorious, Inc. since July 23, 2015. He served as a Director of INVIDI Technologies Corporation. Mr. Mehrotra holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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About Coda: Coda is a document collaboration platform that brings data and teams together.
Jason Chicola
Founder, CEO of Rev.com
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About Rev.com: Rev’s speech-to-text services are powered by artificial intelligence and perfected by a community of skilled freelancers.
Gaurav Sharma
Founder & CEO of Saas Labs
Gaurav is a product guy (and a techie) who loves working on disruptive ideas related to consumer internet and big data. He is passionate about building new marketplace based businesses and viral user acquisition.
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About Helpwise, JustCall, Saas Labs, Vinnex, Zuvvu: Saas Labs develops software products that revolve around productivity and business process automation.
Tope Awotona
CEO & Founder of Calendly
Tope spent the last seven years growing strategic accounts and territories for some of the most successful software companies including IBM, Perceptive Software, ImageRight/Vertafore and EMC. During that time, he managed $2m+ territories, won numerous awards, influenced others to achieve results and succeeded in high-pressure environments. When not fine-tuning and perfecting Calendly, he’s probably LOLing at a standup comedy club, occasionally showing up for CrossFit or dreaming about a tropical vacation. And oh yeah, Go Dawgs!
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About Calendly: Calendly is a modern scheduling platform that helps individuals, teams, and organizations automate meeting by removing the back and forth.
Srikrishna Ramakarthikeyan
CEO of Hexaware Technologies
R Srikrishna, a Director at Xurmo Technologies, is also the CEO of Hexaware Technologies. He was previously President at HCL Technologies. An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (Chennai) and Indian Institute of Management (Kolkata), Srikrishna is an accomplished business leader who has conceptualized and pioneered many hi-tech offerings in network infrastructure management. He is credited at HCL with having broken new ground for the company many times over, in introducing new technology products and services and in opening new billion-dollar markets. R Srikrishna was honoured as a Young Global Leader for 2011 at World Economic Forum at Davos.
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About Hexaware Technologies: Hexaware Technologies Limited is an information technology and business process outsourcing service provider company based in India.
P R Chandrasekar
CEO and Vice Chairman of Hexaware Technologies
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About Hexaware Technologies: Hexaware Technologies Limited is an information technology and business process outsourcing service provider company based in India.
Domm Holland
Co-Founder & CEO of Fast
Domm Holland is the co-founder and CEO of Fast, the world’s fastest online login and checkout platform. An entrepreneur and self-taught engineer, Domm has founded and scaled companies in the logistics, transportation and technology sectors. He previously founded and served as CEO of Tow, an on-demand vehicle towing platform in Australia that processed more than $50M in transactions. During his tenure there, Domm was awarded the top spot on the Deloitte Tech Fast 50 and recognized as the Brisbane Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Domm has worked across Australia and the U.S., working in national and multinational telecommunications and technology companies, including Dell, with deep cross-function experience. Domm’s background provides him with a unique perspective that spans R&D, sales and operations, all of which have contributed to his vision for Fast.
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About Fast, FAST Group: Fast provides an online login and checkout solutions designed to provide users with a secure shopping experience.
MacLane Wilkison
Co-Founder & CEO of NuCypher
MacLane Wilkison is the cofounder and CEO of NuCypher, a Y Combinator and Polychain Capital-backed company that provides decentralized key management and cryptographic access controls for decentralized applications. He is a software engineer and former investment banker at Morgan Stanley, where he provided M&A and financing services to enterprises in technology, media, and telecommunications. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), and certified Financial Risk Manager.
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About NuCypher: NuCypher is a cryptography company that builds privacy-preserving infrastructure and protocols.
Ryan Rafols
Founder & CEO of Newchip
Engineer, army veteran, and founder of 3 startups. Ryan graduated at 15, founded his first startup at 17 and has 10+ years experience building international teams, 7+ years in public and private sector fundraising, corporate boards, working with regulators and lobbying.
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About Astralabs, Newchip: Newchip is a global Remote Startup Accelerator.
Roman Mikailov
Founder, CEO of Hyperverse
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About Hyperverse: Hyperverse is a software company that develops VR experience distribution platforms for its clients.
Michał Borkowski
Co-founder & CEO of Brainly
Michał is the CEO and co-founder of Brainly and is responsible for product strategy, company strategy and culture. He and his co-founders established Brainly in 2009 in Kraków, driven by the conviction that collaborative online communities can empower students from around the world with knowledge and information. In a little more than a decade, Brainly has become the world’s largest online learning community for students, parents and teachers. After moving to New York City and living there for 4 years to open and build Brainly’s US office, Michał was only 16 when he started his first company, and he’s been shaking up the internet ever since. He grew up in a small town in Poland before heading to Warsaw to study corporate finance at the acclaimed Warsaw School of Economics. Michał now lives in Kraków with his wife, Kasia.
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About Brainly: Brainly is an online learning platform where students and parents get homework and study help from peers and experts.
Emmanuel Straschnov
Co-CEO & Founder of Bubble
Emmanuel Straschnov is the co-founder and co-CEO at Bubble. Prior to that, Emmanuel served as a special assistant to the CEO at Prada.
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About Bubble: Bubble provides a point-and-click programming tool for web and mobile applications in which no prior coding experience is needed.
Josh Haas
Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Bubble
Josh started Bubble in 2012 after seeing the importance of empowering people through technology while working as the co-founder and CTO of his prior startup, KeywordSmart. At Bubble, Josh oversees technology and infrastructure. Before that, he was a manager at Bridgewater and a philosophy major at Harvard.
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About Bubble: Bubble provides a point-and-click programming tool for web and mobile applications in which no prior coding experience is needed.
Drew Houston
Co-founder & CEO of Dropbox
Drew Houston is co-founder and CEO of Dropbox. Since founding the company in 2007 with Arash Ferdowsi, Drew has led the company’s growth from a simple idea to a service used by over 600 million people around the world. Drew received his bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2006. After graduating, he turned his frustration with carrying USB drives and emailing files to himself into a demo for what became Dropbox. Today, Dropbox is one of the world’s leading business collaboration platforms, with 15 million paying subscribers and nearly 3000 employees across 12 global offices.
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About Dropbox, FWD.us: Dropbox is a smart workspace company that provides secure file sharing, collaboration, and storage solutions.
Daniel Street
CEO of Scorpion
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About Scorpion: Scorpion exists to better local small businesses and the communities they serve.
Tom Davidson
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of EVERFI
Tom Davidson picked the “CEO” slip out of the hat at a recent EverFi staff party and has yet to be fired by the Board of Directors. Davidson ran for the Maine State Legislature while a senior at Bowdoin College in 1994 and spent the better part of three terms working to bring education technology to students in the Pine Tree State. As Chairman of the Utilities and Energy Committee, Davidson led a successful effort with Governor Angus King to provide laptops to every Maine seventh grader as well as to create a major expansion of the wiring of schools and libraries across the State. After deciding that he needed to tell his children one day that he actually once earned a paycheck, Davidson left the Legislature in 2000 and began investing in early-stage technology companies in the education and social media spaces. He was a Venture Partner with Village Ventures, a network of venture capital firms across the U.S. Davidson graduated from Bowdoin College devoid of any academic honors of any consequence.
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About EVERFI, GrowthSpur: EVERFI is an education technology company that provides learners of all ages education for the real world.
Howard Katzenberg
Founder & CEO of Glean analytics
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About Glean analytics: Glean unlocks the powerful data detailed in vendor invoices/receipts to surface relevant spend insights and drive spend accountability
Dustin DeVan
CEO of AWAIR
Dustin D. is a Board Member / Investor and CEO for Awair since Mar-2021.
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About AWAIR: Awair’s mission is to empower people worldwide to breathe safely through cutting-edge indoor air quaity monitoring.
Aaron Kaufman
CEO & Chairman of OpenMed
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About : OpenMed is a digital innovator in closing care gaps, enabling access to care, and supporting real-time collaboration.
Rodney Sampson
Founder, Executive Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of OHUB
Rodney Sampson is heralded as the leading inclusive innovation, entrepreneurship and investment ecosystem builder in the world, particularly given his mission to ensure that everyone, everywhere, particularly socially disadvantaged communities, have equitable access to the new multi-generational wealth creation opportunities afforded in the future of work and fourth industrial revolution as definitive paths to reducing poverty and the racial wealth gap everywhere. Throughout his twenty-year entrepreneurial career, Sampson has co-founded startup companies that have overcome the odds by collectively raising more than $20 million in angel and venture capital, created hundreds of new jobs, and generated tens of millions in revenue before the acquisition or going public. At the beginning of the 21st century, Sampson co-founded, built, and sold Multicast Media Technologies (Streamingfaith.com) and EFactor (EFCT). He was one of three Black co-founders during this era whose high growth technology startups raised over $1 million in angel and venture capital and were subsequently acquired for eight-figures. During this time, Sampson also built Intellectual Currency, a world-class integrated go-to-market, publishing, and advisory firm with clients ranging from major Hollywood film studios, cable networks, tech companies, global corporates, publishers, the United States government, African heads of state and leading Black church denominations. Since 2007, Sampson has worked closely with high growth startups and seed-stage venture funds as a selective advisor, investor, and limited partner. His current investment and advisory portfolio include Cross Culture Ventures, TechSquare Capital, Digit, York Exponential, Plum.io, Patientory, The Mentor Method, and Momentum Learning. In 2013, Sampson co-founded Opportunity Hub as a follow up to the highly successful Kingonomics’ book release and large-scale conferences in Atlanta, GA, and Washington, DC. OHUB scaled quickly to become the leading multi-campus coworking space, entrepreneurship center, and tech hub featuring over 300 events a year, a startup pre-accelerator, coding boot-camp, and scholarship initiative and angel investing platform for founders from underestimated and under-tapped communities. Over 15,000 people walked through OHUB’s doors each year. From 2015-17, Sampson was a Partner at TechSquare Labs, a tech hub, seed-stage venture fund, and creator of the $100,000 Atlanta Startup Battle. Today, TechSquare Labs’ portfolio companies have raised follow on the capital of nearly $300 million, are valued at over $1.5 billion, generate over $100 million in annual recurring revenue, and employ over 1000 people and growing. He remains the largest minority limited partner in the fund. Today, as Executive Chairman & CEO of Opportunity Hub and OHUB Foundation, Sampson is focused on scaling OHUB as the definitive global future of work, opportunity, and wealth-creating platform by ensuring that everyone, everywhere has early exposure to tech, startup, and venture; in-demand technology education, training, and talent placement; inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem building; and capital formation. This is driven by the thousands of college and young professional members and growing from hundreds of colleges and universities across America and beyond. OHUB is a supplier, vendor, and partner to over 50 tech companies, major corporations, high growth startups, venture funds, municipalities, foundations, associations, colleges and universities and growing. Current national initiatives include OHUB@Cities, OHUB@Campus, OHUB@SXSW, 100 Black Angels Fund I and DEIS, a new strategy, service, and future software platform to operationalize diversity, equity, and inclusion across the major divisions of growing enterprises. Sampson is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brooking Institution in Washington, DC, and a Professor of Entrepreneurship at Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA. Sampson previously served as the 1st Head of Diversity at Mark Burnett Productions, executive producers of the hit ABC show, ABC’s Sharktank. A strong believer in philanthropy and its role in social impact and advocacy, Sampson supports and serves on the boards of Artificial Intelligence for All (AI4All), Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC), International Bishops Conference, and GA Technology for All Policy Summit. Sampson was educated at Tulane University, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, and Keller Graduate School of Management. Sampson resides in Atlanta, GA with his wife and six children.
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About Huddle Ventures, OHUB, Plum.io, ROHO: OHUB is an ecosystem building platform to ensure authentic diversity, equity, and inclusion in the fourth industrial revolution and beyond.
Lloyd Armbrust
Chief Executive Officer of OwnLocal
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About Armbrust American, OwnLocal: OwnLocal offers a platform that automatically transforms data and offline advertisements into multichannel online marketing campaigns.
Joe Liemandt
CEO of Trilogy
Joe Liemandt is the founder of ESW Capital.
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About ESW Capital, Trilogy: Trilogy offers enterprise-class software and service solutions targeted to the automotive industry.
John Van Siclen
CEO of Dynatrace
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About Dynatrace, NetMechanic: Software intelligence to help DevSecOps teams across every industry tame cloud complexity and accelerate digital transformation
Christopher Klaus
Co-Founder & CEO of Kaneva
Christopher Klaus is the CEO of Kaneva.
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About CyberLaunch, Kaneva, NeuroLaunch: Kaneva is an online 3D virtual world that supports 2D social networking, shared media, web browsing and online community interaction.
Waseem Daher
Founder & CEO of Pilot
Waseem Daher is a Founder and CEO at Pilot.
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About Pilot: Pilot is a platform that offers bookkeeping, tax, and CFO services for growing businesses.
Gerard Williams III
Chief Executive Officer of Nuvia
Gerard Williams III is the CEO of NUVIA. Prior to co-founding NUVIA, he was a Senior Director at Apple and Chief CPU Architect for nearly a decade with responsibilities for a range of leading-edge CPUs and SoCs across a broad array of devices. Before joining Apple, Gerard spent over 10 years at ARM, as an ARM Fellow, and serving on the ARM Architectural Review and Technical Advisory Boards. While at ARM, he served as a technical advisor for the ARM architecture and CPU development to many key ARM partners. Gerard began his career with tenures at Intel and Texas Instruments. He holds 38 patents to date with multiple pending and holds an MSEE from the University of Missouri Rolla and a BSE from Arkansas State University.
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About Nuvia: Nuvia develops processors intended to create high-performance silicon design for a compute-intensive world.
Walter Driver
Co-Founder, Chairman & Co-CEO of Scopely
Walter Driver is the co-founder, Chairman and co-Chief Executive Officer of Scopely, one of the fastest-growing mobile-first video game companies. Scopely creates and publishes a highly-diverse portfolio of top-grossing, immersive game experiences, including: the award-winning ”MARVEL Strike Force,” “Scrabble® GO,” “Star Trek™ Fleet Command” and”Yahtzee® With Buddies,” among others, which are played by hundreds of millions of players worldwide. Fueled by a world-class team, Scopely leverages its proprietary technology platform Playgami to bring directed-by-consumer, interactive experiences to audiences around the globe. Under Walter’s leadership, the company has achieved billions of dollars in lifetime revenue and attracted more than $1 billion in financing from leading venture capital firms, tech luminaries and cultural icons.
Walter has been recognized as one of the “100 Most Influential Young Executives” by The Business Journal, “Visionary of the Year” by C-Suite Quarterly, “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Ernst & Young, a “Young Global Shaper” by the World Economic Forum, one of the “100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs” by Goldman Sachs and a “Dealmaker of the Year” by Variety. Under Walter’s leadership, Scopely has also received many recognitions, including: “Best-led Company” in 2021 by Inc. magazine, “Private Company of the Year” in 2021 by Los Angeles Business Journal, a four time “Best Places to Work” winner by Built In LA, and a two time “World’s Most Innovative Companies” winner by Fast Company. Scopely has also been recognized on top charts such as Deloitte’s “Technology Fast 500,” being named the second fastest-growing technology company in North America and in the Top 10 mobile app charts for consumer spend.
Walter is an investor and advisor to many private technology companies as well as a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization and Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Los Angeles Technology & Innovation Council. Prior to Scopely, Walter founded and served as CEO of O Negative Media where he developed online social games. Before O Negative, he co-founded Ignition Interactive, one of the first developers of third-party applications for Facebook.
Walter holds a B.A. in English Literature from Brown University.
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About Scopely: Scopely is a global leader in interactive entertainment and mobile-first video games.
Javier Ferreira
Co-CEO & Board Member of Scopely
Javier Ferreira is the co-CEO of Scopely, one of the fastest-growing mobile games companies in the West. A longtime digital media and technology executive with 15+ years of experience in gaming, Javier joined Scopely in 2014 as Chief Operating Officer to expand its business operations, strategy, slate and partnerships. In 2016, he became President, overseeing all aspects of day-to-day operations and joined the Scopely Board. In 2019, he became co-CEO with co-founder Walter Driver. Since Javier joined the business in 2014, Scopely has scaled 35x with a highly-diverse, top-grossing games slate, including the award-winning MARVEL Strike Force, Scrabble® GO, Star Trek™ Fleet Command and YAHTZEE® With Buddies, among many others. Javier’s leadership has helped Scopely achieve accolades such as recognition in Fast Company’s “World’s Most Innovative Companies” and Entrepreneur’s “30 Startups to Watch” as well as ranking #2 on Deloitte’s “Technology Fast 500” and #9 on Inc. magazine’s “Inc. 5000” as one of the fastest-growing companies in North America. In 2019, Javier was also recognized by Variety as a “Dealmaker of the Year.” Prior to Scopely, Javier served as Senior Vice President of Games Publishing at Disney Interactive, where he oversaw a large slate of mobile, console and online digital properties—helping establish the brand as a world-class publisher with over 500 million downloads and $1 billion in revenue during his tenure. Earlier in his career, Javier served as Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Europe at JAMDAT Mobile, which was acquired by Electronic Arts during his tenure for $680 million. Javier helped build the JAMDAT business into a top mobile games publisher in Europe. Following the company’s exit, Javier served as Vice President of Publishing at EA where he drove the brand’s global strategy and technology investments across the EMEA region, as well as expanded international distribution and closed a wide range of strategic partnerships with major IP holders. Javier began his career in gaming at Telefónica Mobile as Head of Product, Games. Javier holds a B.S. in Economics from the University of Warwick and a M.S. in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford.
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About Scopely: Scopely is a global leader in interactive entertainment and mobile-first video games.
Alan Gould
Founder & Co-CEO of MutualMarkets
Alan founded IAG Research, which became the leading provider of engagement metrics in the television industry, and served as co-CEO until the company was acquired by Nielsen. Alan then served as the CEO of Advertising Solutions for Nielsen, and is currently a venture partner for Greycroft Partners. Alan is a graduate of the New York University School of Law (J.D.), Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (M.P.P.), and the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service (B.S.F.S.).
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About Embark, MutualMarkets, Peak Opportunity Partners: We are an AI powered marketplace that boosts ad performance by making co-marketing brand alliances easy.
Eric Gould
Founder & Co-CEO of MutualMarkets
Co-Managing Partner@Peak Opportunity Partners (“POP”). Pop is an early-stage venture fund that focuses on seed and early stage companies. POP makes opportunistic investments that can typically be a company’s first outside capital. Investments include: Blue Apron, Work Fusion(Crowd Computing), Stella Service, Great Bridge ( Earnest Research ), EBTH ( Everything But The House ).
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About Canvs, GoSpotCheck, MutualMarkets, Peak Opportunity Partners: We are an AI powered marketplace that boosts ad performance by making co-marketing brand alliances easy.
Vlad Shmunis
Founder, CEO, Chairman of RingCentral
Vlad Shmunis founded RingCentral in 1999 and launched RingCentral’s cloud business phone service in 2003. He developed the service based on the need he saw among businesses for an alternative to inflexible and expensive hardware-based phone systems. Since founding RingCentral, Shmunis has led the company in reimagining business communications. Today, the company empowers hundreds of thousands of businesses and their employees to work with unparalleled freedom and in imaginative new ways, via a wide variety of mobile and fixed line devices in traditional as well as dispersed work environments. Shmunis has more than 25 years of industry and management experience. Prior to launching RingCentral, he founded and served as the CEO of Ring Zero Systems, a desktop software communications company. After shipping more than 25 million copies of its Windows software through partnerships with leading PC manufacturers, Ring Zero Systems was acquired by Motorola. Shmunis was named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2011 Northern California Award finalist. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from San Francisco State University, and is a named inventor in a number of U.S. patents.
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About RingCentral: RingCentral, a global distributor of cloud-unified communications and collaboration solutions, offers its users with technology services.
Sahil Gupta
CEO & Co-Founder of Onera
Sahil joined Bain Capital Ventures in 2010. In the summer of 2011, he moved to Silicon Valley to help start Bain Capital Ventures’ Palo Alto office. Sahil is a strong advocate of social content discovery and data-intensive platform services; therefore, he spends most of his energy with early-stage companies in consumer, mobile and social. Prior to joining Bain Capital Ventures, Sahil started Zodah, an Internet startup focused on improving consumer bill management. Zodah was a DogPatch Labs and First Growth Venture Network portfolio company and exited to Hearst Corporation in 2010. Prior to Zodah, Sahil worked as an Associate Consultant at Bain & Company.
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About Onera: Onera is building the Onera Decision Engine—the cognitive operating system that harnesses AI to power the modern commerce supply chain.
Neel Popat
CEO of Donut
Neel Popat is the CEO and Founder of Donut.
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About Donut: Donut is the easiest way to save and earn a high yield with DeFi.
Yuval Brisker
Co-founder, President, CEO of TOA Technologies
Yuval is the co-founder of Alviere, a serial entrepreneur and technology visionary. Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of TOA Technologies, the leading global provider of cloud-based field service management software. He successfully lead the company its acquisition by Oracle in 2014.
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About Alviere, TOA Technologies: TOA Technologies provides field service management software for businesses that operate in the field.
Greg Mercer
Founder and CEO of Jungle Scout
Greg Mercer is the Founder and CEO of Jungle Scout.
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About Downstream, Jungle Scout: Jungle Scout is a platform for finding, launching, and selling products on Amazon.
Adrian Sanders
Chief Executive Officer of Chargehound
Adrian works on Backspaces.
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About Chargehound: Chargehound is a comprehensive chargeback solution that makes handling disputes easy.
Nathan Resnick
CEO and Founder of Sourcify
Nathan Resnick is the CEO of Sourcify, a platform that makes manufacturing easy. In the past, Nathan has brought dozens of products to market, ran three ecommerce companies (sold one), and been a part of projects on Kickstarter raising over seven figures. He writes for media outlets like Entrepreneur, The Next Web, Business.com, and more. Nathan also used to live in China and speaks Mandarin.
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About Bubble Hotels, Business 2 Community, Entrepreneur Media, HuffPost, Social Media Today, Sourcify: Sourcify is a manufacturing platform that directly connects customers with factories overseas.
Grant Miller
Founder & CEO of Replicated
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About Replicated: Replicated provides a platform for delivering and managing Kubernetes applications in any environment.
Ian Heidt
CEO & Co-founder of Housecall Pro
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About Housecall Pro: Housecall Pro is a developer of a mobile software platform used to connect back-end business operations and homeowners.