Best Startup
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 Founder operating in the Information Technology space. If you think a Founder 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.
Jeffrey Zirlin
Co-Founder and Growth Lead of Sky Mavis
Jeffrey Zirlin is the Co-Founder and Growth Lead at Sky Mavis.
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About Axie Infinity, ResumeGem, Sky Mavis: Sky Mavis is a video game developer that brings the benefits of blockchain through fun and practical applications.
Neha Singh
Co-Founder & CEO of Tracxn
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About Tracxn: The largest data platform of Startups
Immad Akhund
CEO & Founder of Mercury Technologies
Immad Akhund is the CEO and Founder of Mercury.
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About Mercury Technologies: Mercury is the banking stack for startups.* FDIC-insured accounts, debit cards, currency exchange, APIs, 3rd party integrations & more.
Leonardo DiCaprio
Founder of Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation
Leonardo DiCaprio is an American actor and film producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and nine Golden Globe Awards. He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Aviator (2004), and has been nominated by the Screen Actors Guild, Satellite Awards, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. A committed environmentalist, DiCaprio has received praise from environmental groups for his activism. At the 2007 Oscar ceremony, DiCaprio and former Vice President Al Gore announced that the Academy Awards had incorporated environmentally intelligent practices throughout the planning and production processes, and on July 7, 2007, DiCaprio presented at the American leg of Live Earth.
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About Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation: Leonard DiCaprio Foundation’s mission is to protect the world’s last wild places.
Kun Gao
Co-Founder, President & COO of GGWP
Kun Gao joined GGWP as Co-Founder, President & COO.
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About Crunchyroll, GGWP: GGWP provides a gaming tool to help reduce toxic and disruptive in the game.
GEORGE NG
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer of GGWP
George Ng joined GGWP as Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer.
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About GGWP: GGWP provides a gaming tool to help reduce toxic and disruptive in the game.
David Moss
Co-Founder and CEO of StrongBlock
David Moss is a blockchain expert, keynote speaker and strategic advisor. He has the distinction of holding two prominent roles in the creation of EOS, the decentralized blockchain operating system: as SVP of Technology Operations at Block.One leading EOS technology development; and directing the EOS mainnet launch with the worldwide Block Producer community. Previously David was the founder of a technology and management consultancy for Fortune 100 companies, the founder of a predictive crowd analytics platform, the founding CIO of Edmunds.com, and President of an entertainment production company working with top international artists for major label and television networks.
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About StrongBlock: StrongBlock is a team of highly experienced blockchain, governance, security, and database technology experts.
Bryan McCann
CTO and Co-Founder of you.com
Bryan McCann is a Co-Founder and CTO of You.com.
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About you.com: You.com is a search engine that helps users find what they’re looking for by prioritizing real results.
Brien Colwell
CTO & Co-Founder of HeadSpin
Brien previously founded YC-backed Nextop. He worked on mobile architecture at Quora and started and led the Android team through many international launches. He was also an early engineer at Palantir and a lead engineer at a number of data and mobile startups.
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About HeadSpin: HeadSpin is a developer of a digital experience intelligence platform used to provide flawless digital experiences.
Shlomo Zalman Bregman
Founder & CEO of Alpha Tribe Media
Shlomo Zalman Bregman (born June 27, 1977), is an American rabbi, attorney, media personality, and digital marketing expert. He is the CEO of Alpha Tribe Media and the Founder of the Jewish Executive Learning Network. Also know as “Sam,” he is a regular Commentator on Fox News and Fox News Radio. Today, he is best known for building massive social media followings and communities that accelerate his clients’ influence. Sam has been labeled a “social media star” by outlets such as the Huffington Post and his work has been featured hundreds of times in major media publications such as Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Inc., Fast Company, BuzzFeed, Yahoo, Bloomberg Radio, Reader’s Digest, MSN, Medium, and by American Express, Microsoft, the United States Air Force Academy, and on some of the top-ranked Entrepreneur and Business podcasts in iTunes.
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About Alpha Tribe Media: A full-service digital agency specializing in building massive social media followings & communities that accelerate our clients’ influence.
Eric Yuan
Founder & CEO of Zoom
Eric Yuan founded Zoom in 2011 to deliver happiness and bring teams together in a frictionless video environment. Zoom’s video-first unified communications platform continues to dramatically transform the way leading global enterprises communicate. Under Eric’s leadership, Zoom was one of the highest-performing tech IPOs of 2019. Prior to founding Zoom, Eric was corporate vice president of engineering at Cisco, where he was responsible for Cisco’s collaboration software development. Eric was one of the founding engineers and vice president of engineering at Webex. Between 1997 and 2011, he grew his team from 10 engineers to more than 800 worldwide and contributed to revenue growth from $0 to more than $800M. Eric has been named one of the Most Powerful People in Enterprise Tech by Business Insider. In 2018, he was named the #1 CEO of a large US company by Glassdoor and EY Entrepreneur of the Year in Northern California (software category). In 2019, he was added to the Bloomberg 50 as a leader who changed the game in global business. Eric is a named inventor on 11 issued and 20 pending patents in real-time collaboration.
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About Zoom: Zoom is a software company that offers a communications platform that connects people through video, voice, chat, and content sharing.
Steven Galanis
Co-Founder & CEO of Cameo
Steven Galanis is the CEO of Cameo, the world’s leading marketplace for personalized video shoutouts. He launched the company in 2016 with co-founders Martin Blencowe & Devon Townsend after seeing a personalized video message taped by a prominent NFL player congratulating a friend on the birth of his son. To date the company has sold over 75,000 Cameos and seen over 4,500 athletes, actors, and influencers join the platform. He was named to Chicago Inno’s 2018 “50 on Fire” list. He is LinkedIn alum who previously worked as a trader on the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange, and founder of two film investment companies where he produced movies featuring stars such as Bruce Willis and Robert De Niro. Outside of work he is an avid Chicago sports fan and serves on the Board of Directors for Habitat for Humanity Chicago. Steven is a 2010 graduate of Duke University where he majored in History.
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About Cameo: Cameo is a marketplace where fans can book personalized video shoutouts from their favorite people.
Devon Townsend
Co-Founder & CTO of Cameo
Devon Townsend is a co-founder and CTO at Cameo.
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About Cameo: Cameo is a marketplace where fans can book personalized video shoutouts from their favorite people.
Martin Blencowe
Co-Founder of Cameo
Martin Blencowe is a co-founder and EVP at Cameo.
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About Cameo: Cameo is a marketplace where fans can book personalized video shoutouts from their favorite people.
Tom Noonan
General Partner and Co-Founder of TechOperators
Tom Noonan is a General Partner at TechOperators. Tom is the former chairman, president and chief executive officer of Internet Security Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: ISSX), which was acquired in 2007 by IBM for $1.3B. Tom Noonan and Chris Klaus launched ISS in 1994 to commercialize and develop a premier network security management company. Under Tom’s leadership, ISS revenue soared from startup in 1995 to nearly $400 million dollars in its first decade. The company grew to more than 2,000 employees, with operations in more than 36 countries. Prior to co-founding ISS, Tom held senior management positions at Dun and Bradstreet Software, where he was vice president, worldwide marketing. Before joining D&B Software, he specialized in real-time, automated control systems for computer-integrated manufacturing. Earlier, Tom founded two successful technology companies while residing in Boston: Actuation Electronics, a precision motion-control company and Leapfrog Technologies, a software development company designed for networked applications. Tom’s management style and vision has been widely recognized by industry-leading publications including Forbes, Business Week and Fortune. In 1999, Ernst and Young recognized him as “Entrepreneur of the Year.” Tom was recognized with the “Lifetime Achievement Award” at the RSA Security conference, the world’s largest conference dedicated to information security. Tom was also elected to the National Board of Directors for the American Electronics Association (AeA), whose mission is to serve as “the voice of the American high-tech community.” In 2002, President Bush appointed Tom to serve on the National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC), a White House homeland defense initiative that protects information systems critical to the nation’s infrastructure. He currently chairs the NIAC Evaluation and Enhancement of Information Sharing and Analysis Working Group. Tom is a frequent speaker at leading industry events and has delivered keynote addresses at such venues as the G8 Summits in Kyoto, Japan and Sea Island, Georgia, Interop Las Vegas, the RSA Conference, SUMAQ Summit, CSIA Town Hall, Japan External Trade Organization, Atlanta Rotary Club, and Forbes CEO events in the United States, Singapore and Mexico. Tom holds a mechanical engineering degree from Georgia Tech and a business degree from Harvard University. He is an active participant and speaker in numerous professional societies, and serves on the board of directors for Woodruff Arts Center, Georgia Tech Foundation, Georgia Tech’s College of Computing, the Carter Center’s Board of Counselors, Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and Young President’s Organization. He serves on the boards of Manhattan Associates (NASDAQ: MANH) and a number of privately held technology companies. He is also an active philanthropist through the work of the Thomas E. Noonan Family foundation which supports education, environmental and healthcare causes locally and nationally. Most recently, Tom was named a “Most Admired CEO” in Atlanta in 2015 by the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Tom is currently Chairman of Ionic Security, a TechOperators investment and a leading innovator in data security for enterprise customers.
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About TechOperators: TechOperators is a venture capital firm which focuses on solutions in software, internet, cloud computing, security, and infrastructure.
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.
Manmohan Gupta
Co-Founder, Head of Engineering of Nagarro
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About Coding Blocks, Nagarro, Vidyamandir Classes: Nagarro (Frankfurt: NA9) is a leader in digital product engineering & drives technology-led business breakthroughs.
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.
Jiajun Zhu
Co-Founder and CEO of Nuro
Jiajun Zhu is a co-founder of Nuro. he used to be the principal software engineer of Google. He eraned his master’s degree ta University of Virginia and his bachelor’s degree at Fudan University.
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About Nuro: Nuro develops and operates a fleet of electric self-driving vehicles that are built to deliver assorted local goods.
Josh Felser
Co-Founder of Freestyle
Josh Felser is the Co-Founder of Freestyle.
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About climate, Freestyle: Freestyle is a venture capital firm that focuses on early-stage technology companies.
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.
Markus Levin
Co-Founder of XYO
Markus mined his first Bitcoin in 2013 and has been captivated by blockchain technologies ever since. Markus has over 15 years experience in building, managing and growing companies around the globe. Markus is originally from Germany (with English as his second language), and specializes in getting the most out of companies by implementing data-driven systems and utilizing the key talents of each employee to get the best out of his team. After dropping out of his Ph.D. studies at Bocconi University, Markus began working with companies in hyper-growth industries around the globe. Markus has led cutting-edge technology ventures such as Novacore, “sterkly”, Hive Media and Koiyo.
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About XYO: XYO is a decentralized crypto-location oracle network aiming to provide accurate location data from cars to smartphones.
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.
Scott Scheper
Founder, Vice Chairman & CMO of XYO
Scott has worked on many exciting ventures with exceptionally talented people, including the Co-founder of Uber. Scott’s first “real boss” was Arie Trouw, who hired Scott in 2009 during an economic recession, when very few companies were hiring, and even fewer were starting companies. What began as a Facebook app startup with four guys and a ping pong table, grew to over 200 employees and 9-figures in revenue in less than two years. In 2013 Scott took a break from corporate life to pursue the dream of working remotely on a laptop while sipping tropical drinks on the beaches of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands (U.S.). During this period, Scott launched Greenlamp, a programmatic advertising agency specializing in direct-response media buying. The agency was fully automated; built entirely using algorithms to manage the campaigns. The team was built with project-basis software engineers, and had only one full-time employee: that being Scott. The advertising campaigns were managed by an automated system, nicknamed “Stewie” (Family Guy). 24-hours a day, Stewie managed everything, making automated tweaks to the advertising campaigns. He even emailed Scott to chat about the changes made (Stewie’s emails included signature Stewie lines). In its first year of operation, Greenlamp generated over $12M in revenue. When not working, Scott can be found reading books by his idols, Gary C. Halbert and Charlie Munger, or sometimes even outside with friends and family in San Diego, California.
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About XYO: XYO is a decentralized crypto-location oracle network aiming to provide accurate location data from cars to smartphones.
Ion Stoica
Co-Founder of Anyscale
Ion Stoica is a Co-Founder at Anyscale. he is also the Executive Chairman and co-founder of Databricks. Ion also serves as a professor in the EECS Department at UC Berkeley, and as a co-director of the AMPLab. At AMPLab Ion has been leading the software systems effort, which included the development of Apache Spark, as well as two other high profile open source projects: Apache Mesos and Tachyon. In 2006, he co-founded Conviva, a startup to commercialize technologies for large scale video distribution, where he is serving as a CTO. Ion is an ACM Fellow and has received numerous awards, including the SIGCOMM Test of Time Award (2011), and the ACM doctoral dissertation award (2001). Ion holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.S. in Computer Science and Control Engineering from Polytechnic University Bucharest.
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About Anyscale, Conviva, Databricks, Databricks, Opaque: Anyscale accelerates the development and productionization of any AI app, on any cloud, at any scale — with Ray.
Michael I. Jordan
Founder of Anyscale
Michael I. Jordan is the Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his Masters in Mathematics from Arizona State University, and earned his PhD in Cognitive Science in 1985 from the University of California, San Diego. He was a professor at MIT from 1988 to 1998. His research interests bridge the computational, statistical, cognitive and biological sciences, and have focused in recent years on Bayesian nonparametric analysis, probabilistic graphical models, spectral methods, kernel machines and applications to problems in distributed computing systems, natural language processing, signal processing and statistical genetics. Prof. Jordan is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been named a Neyman Lecturer and a Medallion Lecturer by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He received the IJCAI Research Excellence Award in 2016, the David E. Rumelhart Prize in 2015 and the ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award in 2009. He is a Fellow of the AAAI, ACM, ASA, CSS, IEEE, IMS, ISBA and SIAM.
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About Anyscale: Anyscale accelerates the development and productionization of any AI app, on any cloud, at any scale — with Ray.
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.
Shawn Carpenter
Founder & Managing Partner of Three Tree Ventures
Shawn Carpenter is the Founder and Chairman of the Board at Three Tree Ventures, an early-stage technology startup investment fund that backs exceptional entrepreneurs that are applying technology to market segments with high caps that have had a historically incorrect, ineffective and/or insufficient level of technology application. Three Tree Ventures prefers to invest in startups as early as possible, has historically only invested in product companies, and prefers to invest in organizations with one or more U.S. military veteran founder(s). Since early 2014, Shawn has also been an LP and Advisor to CrossCut Ventures (https://www.crosscut.vc) in Los Angeles, CA. Mr. Carpenter is a globally respected cyber security expert with a broad range of successful early-stage investments, including Compass (IPO on NYSE #COMP 4.1.2021 @ $8.22B valuation), Privateer Holdings (acquired by Tilray), Awake Security (acquired by Arista Networks), Left Coast Ventures (acquired by Subversive Capital), GroupSense, White Ops (now known as “HUMAN” acquired by Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking) ThreatGRID (acquired by Cisco), RideScout (acquired by Daimler AG), InAuth (acquired by American Express) and Efflux Systems (acquired by NETSCOUT Systems). Mr. Carpenter is known for his acumen in advising early stage innovators. He has successfully helped Three Tree Ventures portfolio entrepreneurs and their companies raise capital for pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A investment rounds, navigate rough waters, acquire key talent and customers, and help develop short and long-term business strategies. He currently advises CrossCut Ventures, Trinity Cyber, TruSTAR Technology (acquired by Splunk 5-2021), AgentHero, GroupSense, uStadium and Netswitch Technology Management. He has held key positions at startups where he was an early employee — Principal Forensics Analyst at NetWitness, Chief Technical Analyst at iSIGHT Partners, Chief Strategy Officer at Invotas, and Senior Vice President of Cyber at Cybraics. One of his passions is being the Technical Advisor for a non-profit 501(c)3 founded by his wife, Dr. Jennifer Jacobs, and a close friend, Jessica Stern — Connect Our Kids (https://www.connectourkids.org). The organization is applying modern technologies like artificial intelligence and data science to the United States foster care system to improve outcomes. His experience and successful entrepreneurial background are coupled with deep technical skills honed while pioneering cyber security protocols for the federal government and working at NetWitness and iSIGHT Partners over the past two decades. Shawn is also a veteran of the US Navy, and qualified as a nuclear operator and chemist during his six years of service in the US Navy’s Nuclear Propulsion Program (NNPS Class 9203). Shawn also worked as a senior cyber security analyst for almost six years as a Member of the Technical Staff (MTS) at Sandia National Laboratories. After joining NetWitness as one of the first employees, he helped architect, implement and stand up the Justice Security Operations Center (JSOC) — at that time the largest deployment of NetWitness gear for a federal client. Mr. Carpenter also worked as a principal senior analyst at the US Department of State’s Cyber Threat Analysis Team (CTAD) from 2004-2007; he was a key member of the 2005 CTAD team that was awarded the prestigious Frank B. Rowlett Trophy For Organizational Achievement by the National Security Agency. Shawn has been tinkering with computers since he bought his first computer, a TRS-80 Model I, in late 1978 at the age of 10. He has been curious about almost everything since he was born, and enjoys playing slide guitar, banjo and trumpet, metal detecting with his kids, climbing tall trees, building forts, lucid dreaming, experimenting with brain/machine interfaces, building robotic banshees, and hacking all of the things. Mr. Carpenter has a particular affection for blues and jazz, and is an investor and minor partner in a John Coltrane biography — “Chasing Trane” (https://www.coltranefilm.com). His investments span everything from technology-enabled real estate, to being the first money in at Rumi Spice (https://www.rumispice.com), a sustainable saffron growing enterprise founded by three West Point graduates that served in Herat, Afghanistan, that three years later is the largest private employer of Afghan women in the world, with over 2000 women employees. In May 2017, Mark Cuban became an investor in Rumi Spice. In September of 2018, Rumi Spice’s saffron became available nationwide in all Whole Food Markets. Shawn is a native of Sioux Falls, SD, and credits his very patient wife — Dr. Jennifer Jacobs, his Mother, Jan, his brother, Shane, his South Dakota roots, and mentors and friends like Aaron Walters, Amit Yoran, Paul Garrett, Fraser Verrusio, Jeff Cesnik, Mischel Kwon, Kendall Millard, Gary Golomb, Paul Kurtz, Dave Haugen (his high school band director) and many, many others for his scrappiness, successes and ability to recover from failures.
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About CityVest, Crosscut Ventures, Crosscut Ventures, Global Foundry, InAuth, Left Coast Ventures, PeerNova, Privateer Holdings, Rumi Spice, StealthWorker, ThreatGRID, Three Tree Ventures, Tilray: Three Tree Ventures is an early stage VC firm that invests in startups that are applying technology to disrupt the market status quo.
Joshua Motta
Co-Founder & CEO of Coalition
Joshua Motta is the CEO and co-founder of Coalition.
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About Coalition: Coalition operates as a cyber insurance and security company that helps businesses manage and mitigate cyber risks.
Georgii Kesaev
Founder of Firld
Georgii Kesaev is a Russian sports agent specializing in athlete consulting, performance analysis, football scouting and player valuation. He is the founder of Firld, a sports company based in New York.
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About Firld: Fusing powerful data-driven processes, Firld is a sports company that specializes in helping athletes and teams maximize their potential
Zack Kanter
Founder & CEO of Stedi
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About Stedi: A platform of developer-focused building blocks for business integrations.
Miriam Rivera
CEO, Co-Founder & Managing Director of Ulu Ventures
Miriam co-founded Ulu Ventures, where she is the Managing Partner. Ulu is an early stage angel fund focused on IT investments and has made 30 investments in the last three years. She is also the co-founder and co-president of Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs.
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About Stanford Angels and Entrepreneurs, Ulu Ventures: Ulu Ventures provides early-stage investments to enterprise cloud and smart data companies.
Clint Korver
Co-Founder & Managing Director of Ulu Ventures
Clint is a co-founding partner at Ulu Ventures where his investment interests include technology-enabled services, educational technology, and companies that turn data into actionable information. Along with Miriam, Clint is the co-founder and co-president of Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs a Stanford University alumni organization helping to build and connect Stanford’s entrepreneurial community. Prior to becoming a full-time investor, he co-founded and led four companies including Outcome Software, where he raised $10 million in venture capital to build web-based decision tools for large enterprises and was granted multiple patents in web-based decision analytics. He also co-founded Decision Quality International which trained over 1000 Fortune 500 executives in the principles of decision quality, licensed decision training programs to over 10,000 end users, and consulted to six of the largest financial institutions in the US. He also co-founded and led the consumer internet company, DecisionStreet and the analytics consulting firm, The Decision Company. Clint has a passion for teaching and regularly guest lectures at Stanford on entrepreneurship, decision-making, and ethics. He has taught courses in ethical decision-making at both Stanford and Grinnell College, and co-authored Ethics for the Real World (Harvard Business Press 2008) with Stanford professor Ron Howard. Clint is a Kauffman Fellow and Venture Partner at Crescendo Ventures and an advisory board member at the Decision Education Foundation. He holds a PhD and MS degree from Stanford University in Management Science and Engineering with an emphasis in decision analysis and a BA with honors in mathematics from Grinnell College where he currently serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees.
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About Ulu Ventures: Ulu Ventures provides early-stage investments to enterprise cloud and smart data companies.
J.M Sawkat Akbar
Founder and Chairman of BJIT Group
Jem Akbar Shukat is the founder and Chairman of BJIT.
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About BJIT Group: BJIT Group is an information, communications, and ICT company that provides software development and information technology service.
Jeff Flowers
Co-Founder, CTO of Wasabi Technologies
Jeff Flowers is the Board Member at Carbonite. Jeff Flowers (Co – Founder and former CTO and Chief Architect at Carbonite) is a seasoned technology executive with deep IT and technical expertise. Jeff has worked with David Friend (CEO) since 1982 and co-founded Sonexis, FaxNet and Pilot Software. At Sonexis and FaxNet, he also served as CTO. In 2009, he was named CTO of the Year by the Mass Technology Leadership Council. In addition to the three companies he co-founded with David, Jeff served as VP of Engineering for Computer Pictures. He also served as VP of Development at ON Technology Corporation, a software vendor that provided groupware and utility products for Apple and Novell Netware operating environments. During Jeff’s tenure, ON Technology completed its IPO. Jeff holds a B.S. and M.S. in Information and Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He attended the Northeastern University School of Business.
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About Wasabi Technologies: Wasabi is a hot cloud storage company delivering cost effective and secure cloud storage solutions.
Ashutosh Garg
CEO & Co-Founder of Eightfold
Ashutosh Garg is the CEO and co-founder of eightfold.ai and a true guru of all things AI, with 10 years of information retrieval, machine learning and search experience. Previously, he was Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of BloomReach. Prior to that, he was at IBM research. He is also a prolific publisher/inventor, with a book on machine learning, 30+ papers, and 50+ patents. Ashutosh holds a BTech from IIT-Delhi and a PhD from U of Illinois UC. Ashutosh has numerous awards, including best thesis award at IIT Delhi, IBM Fellowship and outstanding researcher award at UIUC.
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About Eightfold: Eightfold is a developer of a talent intelligence platform used to help companies find, recruit, and retain workers.
Varun Kacholia
CTO and Co-Founder of Eightfold
Varun Kacholia is the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Eightfold.
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About Eightfold: Eightfold is a developer of a talent intelligence platform used to help companies find, recruit, and retain workers.
Arthur F. Muldoon
CEO & Co-Founder of ArcSpan Technologies
Arthur Muldoon is CEO and Co-founder of ArcSpan Technologies. Previously, he was co-CEO of Amnet US and the CEO and Co-founder of Accordant Media, a leading technology-driven programmatic media specialist company. Accordant Media was acquired by Dentsu Aegis Network in 2016. Over the past 20 years, Art has carved out a digital media career launching innovative solutions to help marketers achieve better audience engagement. Earlier, Art was SVP, Global Data Platforms at Aegis Media; SVP of Client Services and Analytics at BzzAgent; and General Manager, Client Services, Avenue A | Razorfish. Art also led the launch of an e-commerce business at Corbis Images in Seattle and was a corporate strategy consultant in the Media, Entertainment and Telecoms group at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Los Angeles. Earlier, Art was a Corporate Finance Analyst at Lehman Brothers in NYC, focused on high tech. Art holds a BA from Trinity College (CT) and an MBA from the Kellogg School, Northwestern University. He resides in New York City with his wife and two young daughters.
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About ArcSpan Technologies: ArcSpan Technologies is a B2B audience data technology company building an enterprise-class addressable audience data monetization platform.
Garret Vreeland
CCO & Co-Founder of ArcSpan Technologies
After spending many years at advertising agencies, Garret moved into ad sales at about the time the internet was coming of age. He sold his first banner in 1996 on moneymagazine.com (part of Time Inc’s Pathfinder initiative), and has since led sales teams at some great companies. These include premium publishers (Time Inc), portals (Lycos, Yahoo!), search (Looksmart), and performance networks (24/7 Real Media, Right Media and most recently Akamai/Acerno).
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About ArcSpan Technologies: ArcSpan Technologies is a B2B audience data technology company building an enterprise-class addressable audience data monetization platform.
Patrick Nagle
Founder and CEO of Rehab.com
Patrick Nagle is a leading expert on digital strategy and has been featured in major media including Time Magazine, Wall Street Journal, CBS News, Forbes, New York Times, and Fox News. Nagle was the first investor and CEO of RateMyProfessors.com, an review site for college students. RateMyProfessors.com was acquired by Viacom’s MTV Networks on January 17, 2007 for an undisclosed sum. In addition to RateMyProfessors.com, Nagle purchased RateMyTeachers.com from California-based Mister Message, LLC on April 2, 2008. RateMyTeachers.com was acquired by an undisclosed private equity group in 2018. At the time of its sale, RateMyTeachers.com reached 20,000,000 annual users. Patrick Nagle is currently the Founder and CEO of Rehab.com, LLC.
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About Rehab.com: Rehab.com connects patients with providers who care.
Jenny Just
Co-Founder, Managing Partner of PEAK6 Investments
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About PEAK6 Investments: Peak6 Investments operates as an investment management firm.
Aditya Singh
Co-Founder and Managing Director of Neotribe Ventures
Adit is a hands-on early stage company builder having helped build three startups with an operating career spanning 15 years before entering venture capital. From 2013 to 2017, he led the b2b/enterprise practice at Foundation Capital as a Partner investing across the stack from enterprise applications, cloud infrastructure, analytics and cybersecurity. Adit graduated from University of Illinois (BS/MS in Computer Engineering) and from the University of Chicago (MBA). He started his career as an engineer at Growth Networks (a NEA/Lightspeed company) which was acquired by Cisco for $355m. At Cisco, he led the datacenter infrastructure team as a senior technical leader and delivered several products (converged servers, switches and edge routers) for data center infrastructure. He co-founded a networking appliance company, Bitsplay Systems that streamed video from data centers, out of the EIR program at Foundation Capital. In 2008, he joined Enphase Energy (networked solar microinverters), a Series A startup as their first product manager through IPO on the NASDAQ in 2012. When Enphase went public, Adit was Senior Director of Product Management and responsible for the main microinverter business. He is extremely connected in the the deeply technical circles of silicon valley and has the reputation of building companies from the bottom up by working hand in hand with founders.
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About Bloomreach, Cockroach Labs, Neotribe Ventures, Phantom: Neotribe Ventures is an early stage-venture capital firm which invests in breakthrough technologies that stretch the imagination.
Steven Bragonier
CFO and Co-Founder of Neotribe Ventures
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About Gainspeed, Neotribe Ventures: Neotribe Ventures is an early stage-venture capital firm which invests in breakthrough technologies that stretch the imagination.
Daniel Demetri
Founder & CEO of Trellis Technologies
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About Trellis Technologies: P&C insurance data services
Lan Macalinao
Co-Founder of Saber Labs
Ian Macalinao is a Co-Founder at Saber Labs.
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About Saber Labs: Saber Labs is the cross-chain stablecoin and wrapped assets exchange on Solana.
Michael Perone
EVP, Co-Founder of Opensense
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About 345 Partners, Opensense, Switch9, Inc.: Everyday email, evolved.
Amit Gupta
CEO & Founder of Opensense
Amit spent most of his career in high technology, media, and infrastructure. He co-founded SenderGen in 2013, and spearheaded development on the company’s industry-leading enterprise email signature marketing platform. In 2018, SenderGen became Opensense, where Amit serves as co-founder and CEO. Prior to SenderGen, he co-founded Affle Limited which is a mobile media company with extensive operations in the Asia Pacific. While there, he was responsible for driving new product initiatives and helped to source and complete Microsoft’s strategic investment in Affle. Affle’s flagship product and campaigns later won a top global award by the Mobile Marketing Association. Prior to Affle, Amit worked at Bloomberg New York, and subsequently at Bloomberg London helping to plan and implement major new projects such as “Bloomberg Anywhere” that helped to drive $500M+ in new revenues annually. While there, he also designed and implemented highly scalable system architectures that were used to support millions of users. Systems integration is his specialty. He is a technology enthusiast and likes to get his hands dirty with new projects. He also has spent time at various high technology companies developing virtual reality applications, medical imaging algorithms, neural networks and financial trading systems. Amit holds a B.S. in Computer Science (Honors) from the Johns Hopkins University (USA).
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About Opensense: Everyday email, evolved.
Bobby Narang
EVP, Co-Founder of Opensense
Bobby co-founded SenderGen in 2013, where he led sales and marketing for the company’s industry-leading enterprise email signature marketing platform. In 2018, SenderGen became Opensense, where he serves as co-founder and VP, Sales. Prior to SenderGen, Bobby was sales lead at Intralinks (NYSE: IL), where he was responsible for sales to the largest firms in the financial services industry, as well as selling directly into the C-Suite at firms within the Fortune 1000. As a highlight, In 2013, Bobby secured Intralinks first full enterprise agreement at a major investment bank in New York, marking a significant win for the organization. Prior to Intralinks, was in sales at Yext, where he was responsible for generating new business within a dozen different SMB verticals. Additionally, he served in a Business Development role where he successfully spearheaded the launch of six new vertical-focused product lines. Bobby has a passion for evangelizing cutting-edge technology solutions that disrupt “the old way of doing things.” Bobby holds a BSBA with a concentration in Finance from Boston University.
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About Opensense: Everyday email, evolved.
Vinny Smith
Founder of Toba Capital
Vinny Smith is responsible for leading the strategic direction of Quest Software. A major trade magazine dubbed him the “archetypal athlete of the business game,” because of his drive, team spirit, enthusiasm and motivation. Prior to his appointment as President and Chief Executive Officer in 2012, Smith was Executive Chairman from 2008 and was Chief Executive Officer from 1998 to 2008. Under his direction, Quest became a leading enterprise systems management company. When Smith joined Quest as an investor and director in 1995, the company had just 25 employees and $4 million in revenue; today, the company has more than 3,400 employees worldwide and $695 million in revenue. Prior to joining Quest, Smith cofounded Patrol Software. He financed the company, ran North American operations, and directed worldwide sales and marketing. In 1994, BMC Software bought Patrol. After the acquisition, Smith remained at the company for a year to help BMC transition from a mainframe-oriented company to an open systems-solution provider.
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About BMC Software, Toba Capital: Toba Capital is an investment firm committed to helping create incredible technology companies.
Jeffrey Byun
CEO, Co-Founder of BLADE
Jeffrey Byun is the CEO of BLADE – a new cryptocurrency derivatives exchange. Previously, he was the CEO of OrderAhead – a mobile ordering/payments startup that was acquired by Square. Prior to that, Jeffrey was a fixed income trader at Morgan Stanley and BofA Merrill Lynch. Jeffrey is a graduate of MIT and Penn.
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About BLADE: BLADE is a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange
Valery Vavilov
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Bitfury Group
Seasoned entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in information technology and business management. Original founding member of BitFury. Assumed the role of BitFury CEO in 2011. Prior to that, held numerous technology and business leadership positions. MS in Computer Science, Riga Transport & Telecommunication University.
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About Bitfury Group: Bitfury is the leading full service bitcoin and blockchain technology company.
Valery Nebesny
Founder and CTO of Bitfury Group
Founder and CTO of BitFury Group.
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About Bitfury Group: Bitfury is the leading full service bitcoin and blockchain technology company.
Roland Ligtenberg
Co-Founder and SVP Growth & Innovation 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.
Reza Olfat
Co-Founder, VP of Engineering 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.
Sam Strasser
Founder of Treasure Financial
Sam Strasser is the CEO and founder of Treasure Financial.
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About Treasure Financial: Using automation and machine learning to help companies identify, manage and monetize their idle cash
Kevin Chan
Co-Founder of Headway
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About Headway, Maderight: Headway is a mental healthcare system provider that helps patients connect with therapists and submit insurance claims online.
J. Todd Morley
Co-Founder of Y2X
Prior to founding Y2x and DIATOMS, J. Todd Morley co-founded investment firm Guggenheim Partners LLC, which now has over $310 billion in assets under management. Todd also co-founded G2 Investment Group and i(X) Investments, the first investment platform dedicated to social impact. Previously, Todd was CEO of Links Holdings LLC, founded Mortgages PLC, a London-based sub-prime mortgage lender, managing Director in mortgage sales at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, and Vice President in Lehman Brothers’ Taxable Fixed-Income Department. Todd is a lead investor and sits on the Advisory Board of a variety of e-commerce, blockchain, AI, infrastructure, biotech and media companies. He is a Board member and architect of Delaware Life, Rising Holdings, Forbes Private Capital Group, and the Newport Development Company, an organization focused in resilient infrastructure. He is also the author of several Op-Ed articles and academic white papers focused on structured finance, technology and “Peopleism,” and is publishing his first book, to be released in 2019, based on his new theory of financial return.
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About Y2X: Bridging the gap between the emerging digital economy and the regulated global financial markets.
Vivek Kumar
Co-Founder and President of ProKarma
Vivek Kumar serves as the President of Prokarma, Inc. Mr. Kumar has more than 15 years of IT industry experience. He has provided leadership in the management, and delivery of e-Business technology, and services. He is involved with building e-procurement solutions since the last 7 years, and has tremendous knowledge of procurement functions. Mr. Kumar is responsible for leading the growth of the organization through revenue improvement with existing customers, increased market penetration, and development of new products and markets. He is ultimately responsible for corporate profitability and establishing policies, procedures and strategies consistent with the values and integrity of the organization.
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About PK Global, ProKarma: ProKarma is a provider of IT services, business consulting, and enterprise applications harnessing emerging technologies.
Jeff Miller
Co-Founder of ProKarma
Jeff has held senior positions in IT marketing and sales for over 25 years. He has vast experience in managing, mentoring and building sales and marketing teams. He has ably managed 50+ person sales teams generating over $110 million in revenue for a large private IT consulting firm. He has an extensive background in generating new business, securing customer loyalty and forging strong relationships with business partners. Jeff is responsible for developing the company’s sales plans including objectives, strategy, resources and budget. He ensures that plans match corporate guidelines for target markets, client relevance and ROI. His direct responsibilities include sales management; planning and execution of client specific sales strategies; building of the customer base; managing customer relations, business planning, demand creation and fulfillment.
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About ProKarma: ProKarma is a provider of IT services, business consulting, and enterprise applications harnessing emerging technologies.
Vinayak Ramesh
Co-Founder and CEO of Ikigai Labs
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About Ikigai Labs, Stealth: Ikigai helps analysts and operations teams automate data-intensive business, finance, analytics and supplychain operations within clicks.
Chris Bevilacqua
Co-Founder & CEO of Simplebet
Chris is the Co-Founder of Bevilacqua Helfant Ventures and is a sports, media, and tech investor with investments in companies such as StubHub, ActionX, Viagogo, Lyft, Airbnb, SpaceX, Unscriptd, and ThePostGame. He was previously the Chairman & CEO of CAA Sports Media Ventures, a joint venture between CAA and Evolution Media Capital. Prior to that, he was the Founder of CSTV, which was acquired by CBS in 2006 and is now CBS Sports Network.
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About Simplebet: Simplebet turns every moment of every sporting event into a betting opportunity.
Joey Levy
Co-Founder of Simplebet
Joey was a Co-Founder and CEO of Draftpot, a daily fantasy sports platform that was acquired in 2017. Joey was a Thiel Fellow and previously studied at Columbia University.
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About Simplebet: Simplebet turns every moment of every sporting event into a betting opportunity.
Sumant Mandal
Co-Founder and Managing Partner of March Capital
Sumant is Managing Director and cofounder of LA-based March Capital Partners, in addition to being cofounder of two leading technology incubators in the San Francisco Bay Area, The Hive, which focuses on AI and Blockchain driven companies, and The Fabric, which focuses on cloud, IoT and network infrastructure companies. Sumant invests in Cloud Computing, IoT, AI/ML, and Network Infrastructure as well as companies focused on the Indian market. Sumant currently serves on the boards of numerous market leading companies, including BillDesk, The Rubicon Project, CarTrade, IoTium, and Xage Security. In his nearly two decades of venture capital, Sumant has generated multiple meaningful exits in companies he has either incubated or been the first institutional investor. Most recently, Sumant played an integral role in VMWare’s acquisition of cloud networking startup VeloCloud, as well as Cisco’s acquisition of machine-learning startup Perspica, both in late 2017. As an active board member, and investor in both companies, Sumant fostered their development and growth since their formations at The Fabric and The Hive, respectively. Other companies that he has incubated and helped lead to a successful exit include The Rubicon Project (NYSE:RUBI), Kosei (acquired by Pinterest), Appcito (acquired by A10 Networks), Deep Forest Media (acquired by Rakuten), Kazeon Systems (acquired by EMC), Mimosa Systems (acquired by Iron Mountain), Ankeena Networks (acquired by Juniper), Cetas (acquired by VMware), and Apture (acquired by Google). In 2000, Sumant joined Clearstone Venture Partners where he went on to become a Managing Director four years later. In 2014, he cofounded March Capital Partners, which has since grown to $500M under management. Prior to Clearstone, Sumant spent more than eight years as an entrepreneur, starting companies in both India and the United States. Sumant has an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University. He is a Charter Member of TiE.
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About Clearstone Venture Partners, March Capital, The Fabric, The Hive: March is committed to partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs to build great tech companies and scale them globally.
Gregory Milken
Co-Founder and Managing Partner of March Capital
Gregory Milken is Managing Director at March Capital Partners, where he focuses on investments in digital media, gaming and esports. Gregory has led March Capital’s investments in broadcasting solution Genvid Technologies, game mastery platform Dojo Madness, and game developers nWay and Wavedash. Gregory has over 15 years of entrepreneurial and operational experience. He was the co-founder and COO of AltEgo, a cloud-based technology and gaming company. Prior to his work in technology, he worked in strategy and operations for Knowledge Universe Education, new business development at Warner Bros. in Hong Kong and London, and at Twentieth Century Fox. Gregory received his M.B.A. from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and a M.A. in international policy studies from Stanford University. He also received a B.A. in international relations and Asian studies from the University of Pennsylvania.
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About AltEgo, March Capital: March is committed to partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs to build great tech companies and scale them globally.
Jamie Montgomery
Co-Founder and Managing Partner of March Capital
Jamie Montgomery is a Founder and Managing Director of March Capital Partners. Prior he was the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Montgomery & Co, a leading Los Angeles-based investment bank where he advised and financed over 1000 leading technology companies over a 25 year period. He is the founder of The Montgomery Summit, an annual conference that attracts over 1,000 leading entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate executives for a celebration of entrepreneurship and innovation to Santa Monica. Jamie received his M.A. in Economics from the University of Cambridge, and a B.A. from the University of California, San Diego.
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About March Capital: March is committed to partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs to build great tech companies and scale them globally.
Pepper Rutland
Founder and CEO of MMR Group
Pepper Rutland utilizes his adroit leadership in construction management and technology to oversee some of the most innovative industrial projects in North and South America. He founded MMR Group in order to provide a wide variety of services, including but not limited to electrical construction, instrumentation installation and technical services, power distribution, and communications networking. Pepper Rutland founded the company in 1991 and it has led to massive success ever since, earning numerous nods from Engineering News-Record, one of the most elite publications of the construction industry. In 2017, MMR Group was awarded numerous honors within their industry. Recent awards and special recognition include being named 6th on ENR’s Prestigious Top Specialty Contractors List for the second consecutive year, being recognized as the 7th largest Electrical Contractor in the nation by EC&M Magazine, being given the Greater Baton Rouge Industry Alliance 2017 Craft Workforce Development Award, and also being named an “Accredited Assessment Center” and “Accredited Training Sponsor” by The National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER). MMR Group has enjoyed having a prestigious reputation within their industry, and these awards only serve to show their great commitment to customer satisfaction and excellence in the field. A believer in giving back to his community, Pepper Rutland supports his alma mater Louisiana State University by advising its construction management program and donating over a million dollars to the school’s engineering program through MMR Group. As a result of his contributions and continued support of the university, Pepper Rutland received an honor from LSU, which named a football stadium gate after his family. Pepper also serves as a board member of one of LSU’s scholarship foundations. Pepper’s donations have allowed LSU to update engineering and computer laboratories throughout the College of Engineering. The donations give students access to more advanced technology, 3-D building simulation and information modeling studios to arm students with the tools necessary to have successful careers in the construction industry. Pepper always looks for ways to help people who need extra support or guidance, and he founded the nonprofit Miracle League at Cypress Mounds to help children with disabilities be able to play baseball. In addition to these successes, Pepper is also a published author, and has penned both a scholarly piece on construction and a book on the changing energy industry. Adding to his successes, some of Pepper’s published pieces include the aforementioned co-authored construction book, “Construction Defaults: Rights, Duties and Liabilities – Role of the Completing Contractor”, which was published in the Wiley Law Library in 1989. Aspatore Books has also published one of Pepper’s pieces; a book called “Refining your Tactics Weathering A Turbulent Economy in the Energy Industry.” Pepper is an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal as well as the New York Times. Today, Pepper Rutland stays connected to his community and his peers at LSU through his blog. Pepper utilizes content marketing to offer information to his readers. Contact Pepper to learn more about his impact on his community, his philanthropic efforts and LSU. In 2017, MMR Group was awarded numerous honors within their industry. Recent awards and special recognition include being named 6th on ENR’s Prestigious Top Specialty Contractors List for the second consecutive year, being recognized as the 7th largest Electrical Contractor in the nation by EC&M Magazine, being given the Greater Baton Rouge Industry Alliance 2017 Craft Workforce Development Award, and also being named an “Accredited Assessment Center” and “Accredited Training Sponsor” by The National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER). MMR Group has enjoyed having a prestigious reputation within their industry, and these awards only serve to show their great commitment to customer satisfaction and excellence in the field. A believer in giving back to his community, Pepper Rutland supports his alma mater Louisiana State University by advising its construction management program and donating over a million dollars to the school’s engineering program through MMR Group. As a result of his contributions and continued support of the university, Pepper Rutland received an honor from LSU, which named a football stadium gate after his family. Pepper also serves as a board member of one of LSU’s scholarship foundations. Pepper’s donations have allowed LSU to update engineering and computer laboratories throughout the College of Engineering. The donations give students access to more advanced technology, 3-D building simulation and information modeling studios to arm students with the tools necessary to have successful careers in the construction industry. Pepper always looks for ways to help people who need extra support or guidance, and he founded the nonprofit Miracle League at Cypress Mounds to help children with disabilities be able to play baseball. Everyone is always a winner and the founding members of the league believe that just because a child has a disability does not mean that they are not able to do the activities they love. The Miracle League hosts a new league each spring and fall and has seen rapid growth in the number of players as well as the number of volunteers each season. In addition to these successes, Pepper is also a published author, and has penned both a scholarly piece on construction and a book on the changing energy industry. Adding to his successes, some of Pepper’s published pieces include the aforementioned co-authored construction book, “Construction Defaults: Rights, Duties and Liabilities – Role of the Completing Contractor”, which was published in the Wiley Law Library in 1989. Aspatore Books has also published one of Pepper’s pieces; a book called “Refining your Tactics Weathering A Turbulent Economy in the Energy Industry.” Pepper is an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal as well as the New York Times. Today, Pepper Rutland stays connected to his community and his peers at LSU through his blog. Pepper utilizes content marketing to offer information to his readers. Contact Pepper to learn more about his impact on his community, his philanthropic efforts and LSU.
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About Miracle League at Cypress Mounds, MMR Group: A world leader in Electrical & Instrumentation Construction, Maintenance, Management, and Technical Services.
Saket Modi
Founder & CEO of Safe Security
Saket Modi is the Co-founder and CEO of Lucideus, an enterprise cybersecurity platforms company. A computer science engineer by education, he founded Lucideus in 2012 while in his final year of engineering. Incubated from IIT Bombay and backed by Cisco’s former Chairman and CEO John Chambers, Lucideus today protects the digital infrastructure of multiple Fortune 500 companies around the world with its cyber risk measurement and mitigation platform called SAFE. Saket is a part of Fortune Magazine’s 40under40, Entrepreneur Magazine’s 35under35, Forbes Magazine’s 30under30 lists among others. The Government of India awarded him with the title of “Champion of Change” in 2017.
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About : Safe Security is a cyber risk management startup that helps organizations mitigate cyber risk in real-time.
Jonathan Hirsch
Founder of Syapse
Jonathan Hirsch is the Founder and President of Syapse, a software company transforming healthcare by bringing omics into routine medical use. At Syapse, Jonathan works closely with diagnostic and healthcare providers, helping translate customer problems into software solutions. Jonathan is an Advisory Board member of the SXSW Accelerator, a mentor for UCSF Lean Launchpad for Healthcare course, and a member of the Steering Committee of Free the Data!, an effort started by Genetic Alliance and UCSF to crowdsource the interpretation of cancer genes. Earlier in his career, Jonathan worked in Neuroscience Commercial Development at Abbott Laboratories, where he developed strategies to fund drug development through partnerships and private equity financing. His research at the Center for Molecular Neurobiology at the University of Chicago helped establish the effect of exercise on promoting hippocampal neurogenesis and combating Alzheimer’s disease. Jonathan received an M.Sci. in Neuroscience from Stanford University, and an A.B. in Biology and Political Philosophy from the University of Chicago.
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About Syapse: Syapse is a real-world evidence company dedicated to extinguishing the fear and burden of serious disease by advancing real-world care
Lily Xu
Underrepresented Founder Startups of Amazon Web Services
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About Amazon Web Services: Amazon Web Services provides information technology infrastructure services to businesses in the form of web services.
Caithrin Rintoul
Co-Founder/CEO of Provender
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About Provender: Provender is an online platform that enables farmers to create direct-trade associations with buyers.
Michael Wuehler
Co-Founder of Infura
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About ConsenSys, Infura: We strive to deliver the best infrastructure and tools for developers to build amazing Web 3.0 applications.
E.G. Galano
Co-Founder of Infura
E.G. Galano is the Co-Founder and Chief Infrastructure Engineer of INFURA, a service providing scalable Ethereum infrastructure and developer APIs. He previously was the Director of Site Reliability at Los Angeles based hotel software start-up KEYPR, and an early employee of cloud gaming company Gaikai which was acquired by Sony in 2012.
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About ConsenSys, Infura: We strive to deliver the best infrastructure and tools for developers to build amazing Web 3.0 applications.
Michael Blanche
Co-Founder of Surfside
Michael Blanche is the Co-Founder at Surfside.
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About Surfside: An end-to-end marketing platform turning first party customer data into personalized advertising campaigns.
Jon Lowen
Co-Founder of Surfside
Jon Lowen is the Co-Founder at Surfside.
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About Surfside: An end-to-end marketing platform turning first party customer data into personalized advertising campaigns.
Tolonda Michele Tolbert
Co-Founder and Head of Strategy and Culture of Eskalera
Tolonda M. Tolbert, Ph.D., is the Co-Founder, and Head of Strategy and Culture at Eskalera, Inc. She comes to the role with almost two decades of hands-on experience in Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) and culture change. Prior to that, she served as Senior Director of the Inclusive Leadership Initiative and Consultant for Catalyst, partnering with global organizations to build their capacity to create and sustain inclusive workplaces, specializing in D&I strategy, curriculum design, and implementation. She also led the Employee Resource Leadership Initiative (ERLI) with a mission to engage and connect affinity group leaders to share ideas and best practices while learning how to amplify inclusion. Previously she led special anti-bias projects at the Anti-Defamation League’s A World of Difference Institute and GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network). She was also a staff developer at Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility and a faculty member at NYU’s Silver School of Social Work teaching graduate and faculty courses on Inclusive Pedagogy. She holds a BA from the University of Colorado, Boulder and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Rutgers University, she is a published writer, independent scholar, and community activist.
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About Eskalera: Eskalera improves employee engagement, productivity, and growth to help large and medium-sized companies transform their HR operations.
Jacob Orrin
Co-Founder and COO of Merit
Jacob Orrin is the COO and Co-founder of Merit. Merit’s verified identity platform brings visibility, liquidity, and trust to people-data, giving organizations the clarity to make better-informed decisions, engage with individuals effectively, and pursue their mission efficiently. Merit works with trusted private, state, and municipal organizations to solve critical real-world problems in sectors such as workforce development, emergency services, licensing, education, and defense readiness.
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About Merit, Merit: Merit develops a verified identity platform to help organizations in managing personnel data.
Derek Belch
Co-Founder and CEO of STRIVR
Derek Belch is a Co-Founder and the Chief Executive Officer of STRIVR.
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About STRIVR: STRIVR is an information technology company that specializes in virtual reality, customer experience, and athlete performance.
Jeremy Bailenson
Co-Founder of STRIVR
Professor at Stanford University, head of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, and VR expert. Jeremy Bailenson is a Co-founder and the Chief Visionary at STRIVR. He is the founding director of Stanford University’s world-renowned Virtual Human Interaction Lab and a Professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford. He is one of the world’s leading experts in virtual reality. His findings have been published in over 100 academic papers in several fields including communication, computer science, education, law, medicine, and psychology. Bailenson is an author of the book Infinite Reality which was recently quoted by the Supreme Court outlining the effects of immersive media.
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About Cognitive Leap Solutions Inc., Stanford University, STRIVR: STRIVR is an information technology company that specializes in virtual reality, customer experience, and athlete performance.
Trent Edwards
Co-Founder & Sports Training of STRIVR
Trent Edwards is a Co-Founder at STRIVR. He was a Former Stanford and NFL Quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, Jacksonville Jaguars and Philadelphia Eagles. Trent is a former Stanford and NFL quarterback. He was drafted in the third round by the Buffalo Bills in 2007 and spent three seasons as the team’s starting quarterback. Following his stint with the Bills, Edwards spent a season each with the Jacksonville Jaguars and Philadelphia Eagles and two training camps with the Oakland Raiders. Edwards brings his experience as a quarterback at the professional, collegiate, and high school levels to the development of STRIVR’s products and services.
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About STRIVR: STRIVR is an information technology company that specializes in virtual reality, customer experience, and athlete performance.
Ankur Singla
Founder & CEO of Volterra
Ankur is the founder and CEO of Volterra. Previously, he was the founder and CEO of Contrail Systems, which pioneered telco NFV and SDN technologies and was acquired by Juniper Networks in 2012. Contrail is the most widely deployed networking platform in Tier 1 telco mobile networks (AT&T, DT, Orange, NTT and Reliance JIO), and is used in many SaaS providers’ cloud deployments (Workday, Volkswagen, DirecTV). Prior to Contrail, Ankur was the CTO and VP Engineering at Aruba Networks, a global leader in wireless solutions. He holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California.
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About Volterra: Volterra is a distributed cloud services company.
Anthony Tassone
CEO and Founder of Green Key Technologies
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About Green Key Technologies: GreenKey is the voice-driven collaboration platform for financial markets: enhancing compliance and enabling sophisticated data analytics.
Kenneth Duda
Founder, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President, Software Engineering of Arista Networks
Kenneth Duda is a pioneer in high-performance networking software and lead architect of Arista Networks EOS, a stateful modular operating system for all Arista Networks products. He is also the co-author of network virtualization specifications including VXLAN with VMware and NVGRE with Microsoft. From 2005 to 2008, Ken was also the Acting President of Arista Networks. Prior to joining Arista Networks, Ken was the CTO at There.com, where he played a lead role in designing a real-time 3-D distributed system that scaled to thousands of simultaneous users. Ken was also the first employee of Granite Systems and led the software development effort for the Catalyst 4000 product line after the acquisition by Cisco. Ken has 3 simultaneous engineering degrees from MIT and holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University.
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About Arista Networks: Arista Networks is a computer networking firm delivering cloud networking solutions for large data center and computer environments.
Faraz Sayyed
Founder of VIVID Technologies
Omer Khan is one of the co-founders for Vivid technologies. He has over 10 years of experience working with several blue chip telecom companies and banks, including AT&T, Barclays, Telenor, Apple and BNYM. He has been project managing and leading the telephony infrastructure that runs a business of more than $200 M. His last engagement was for Barclays UK where he was leading the Contact Center infrastructure engineering team responsible for implementing speech recognition IVRs. In recent past, Vivid technologies has been incubated by Microsoft Ventures, UK and now a part of acceleration program in Silicon valley (Blackbox). Omer has also published research papers on SIPs weaknesses and how to mitigate them. He has also been a speaker at Black Hat, Chase and HITB Malaysia. Interestingly Omer is not only a techy/co-founder but also a part-time musician who has played with mainstream bands (Noori, MHB, EP) in Pakistan and a half baked writer. He has assisted in scripts for 2 feature films in Pakistan (Khuda key liye, Bol).
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About Living Amsterdam, Living Amsterdam, Notion Technologies, systemini internet technologies, VIVID Technologies: VIVID Technologies are transforming the traditional customer service experience.
Tony Velleca
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of CyberProof
Tony is CyberProof’s CEO and is CISO at UST Global. Tony previously co-founded and was CTO at huddle247.com, rated by PC Magazine as one of the top virtual workspace solutions in 2000. He previously worked for Boeing and Rolls-Royce, Inc. focusing on conceptual design and optimized propulsion systems for next generation aircraft. He holds a BS degree in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and an MBA from University of California, Irvine.
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About CyberProof, UST: CyberProof is a security services company that intelligently manages your incident detection and response requirements.
Andrew Ninh
Co-Founder and CSO of Docbot
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About Docbot: Docbot is an AI technology company that offers AI-assisted image analysis solutions to revolutionize gastrointestinal care.
William Karnes
Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Docbot
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About Docbot, UC Irvine Health: Docbot is an AI technology company that offers AI-assisted image analysis solutions to revolutionize gastrointestinal care.
Ross Bundy
Co-Founder, Chief Entrepreneur, Chief Production Office of Cardea Bio
A founding member of Nanomed and the company’s CEO, Ross is a graduate of UCSD with an MBA from SDSU. Ross’s passion is precision execution, and he applies this to driving company direction and operations, developing strategic collaborations and partnerships, and raising capital funding. Ross brings business development, supply chain, finance, and operations expertise from 13 years of experience in industries ranging from consumer goods to defense manufacturing to financial services. At Bumble Bee Foods, Ross created and implemented cross-functional supply chain procedures that reduced processing hours while improving scheduling accuracy and decreasing cost. Prior to Bumble Bee at General Dynamics, Ross identified and negotiated business development projects that gained the company new opportunities in alternative energy, commercial construction, and heavy tool manufacturing. At UBS Financial Services, Ross created financial models to estimate future growth rates. Ross brings a demonstrated track record of successful implementation and a well-rounded background to his role as CEO of Nanomed.
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About Cardea Bio: Cardea is developing a new generation of (bio)technology infrastructure based on proprietary biology-gated transistors.
Kiana Aran
Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer of Cardea Bio
Kiana Aran is a Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Cardea Bio.
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About Cardea Bio: Cardea is developing a new generation of (bio)technology infrastructure based on proprietary biology-gated transistors.
James Johnson
Founder and Partner of Apex Venture Partners
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About Apex Venture Partners, Knightsbridge Solutions: Apex Venture Partners, established in 1987, has six funds and more than $600 million under management.
Herman DeBoard
CEO & Founder of Huvr Inc.
Successful Entrepreneur, built major technology projects working with Sony, Universal, Warner, EMI and more. Products have been distributed in Target, Best Buy, Fry’s Electronics and many more.
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About Huvr Inc.: Huvr is a global virtual marketplace that helps to connect human walkers to virtual travelers to explore the world in real-time.
Roy Malkin
President & Founder of Venture Aviator
Roy Malkin have Fortune 500 experience in Developing and Managing Global Business across 20 markets – including USA, Europe, Japan, Russia, Ukraine. He’s currently concentrating on global IT Development and company strategy. He’s also involved in launching multiple startups in big data, e-commerce, new media / internet markets.
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About OffrBox, Venture Aviator: Venture Aviator is a Custom Software Development Company based in New York and California, and specializes in web and app development.
Stephen DeAngelis
Founder, President & Chief Executive Officer of Enterra Solutions
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About Enterra Solutions, Massive Dynamics, Princeton University: Enterra Solutions is a developer of enterprise management software to solve complex challenges for industry, government, and science.
Sunil Dhaliwal
Founder & General Partner of Amplify Partners
Sunil Dhaliwal is a General Partner of Amplify Partners. He has 18 years of experience as an early-stage investor and mentor to entrepreneurs. Sunil backs founders with unique insights into distributed systems, data infrastructure, or information security. He has helped founders build companies from concept to IPO, and his passion lies in defining and positioning winning products. Prior to founding Amplify Partners, Sunil was a General Partner at Battery Ventures where he spent 14 years investing in category-defining IT infrastructure companies such as Chef, Netezza (acquired by IBM), Splunk (NASDAQ: SPLK), CipherTrust (acquired by Secure Computing), and @stake (acquired by Symantec). He has been named to both the Forbes Midas List, which ranks the top 100 venture capitalists around the world, and the AlwaysOn Top 100 list of VCs. Prior to his work as an investor, he was a member of the technology investment banking team at Alex. Brown & Sons, Inc. Sunil graduated from Georgetown University with a B.S. in Finance and International Business.
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About ActionIQ, Amplify Partners, Datadog, Enlitic, InterVenn, mabl, PicnicHealth: Amplify Partners invests in technical founders solving technical problems for the enterprise.
Joseph E. Davis
Co-Founder & Emeritus Board Member of Capella
The 30-year career of Joe Davis is one of combining imaginative technical innovation with sound business practices to set new industry standards. His areas of specialization have included wavelength selective switches, tunable lasers, magnetic and optical disk drives, as well as such related technologies as optical switches, micro-optics, and micro-machining. Prior to his retirement, Joe served as the company’s CEO from 2000-2004, and subsequently as the Chairman. He co-founded Capella in 2000. Preceding that, he was co-founder and interim COO of Iolon, a Seagate spinoff that focused on tunable lasers for telecommunications. In 1996, he co-founded Quinta Corporation and served as its CTO, where he co-invented a multi-disk data-storage architecture that combined the best features of magnetic and optical technologies. Quinta was sold to Seagate in 1997. Joe has also held senior executive positions with several successful public companies including Maxtor, Seagate, and SyQuest. Joe received his MS and Ph.D. degrees in aeronautics, with a Ph.D. minor in business economics, from the California Institute of Technology. He holds 26 patents in the fields of optical subsystems, MEMS devices, and magneto-optical data storage and is the author of publications in several fields.
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About Capella: Capella is a provider of wavelength selective switch technologies for use in ROADM’s and optical cross connects.
Edward Wang
Co-Founder of VMware
Dr. Edward Wang, Co-Founder and serves as Principal Engineer of Vmware, Inc. Dr. Wang has 10+ years of high tech industry experience. Prior to joining VMware, he worked as a principal engineer at VXtreme and Mindcraft and has consulted extensively on UNIX software projects. In 1993, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Usenix for his contributions to the development of Berkeley UNIX. He also helped to neutralize the infamous Internet Worm virus by discovering and describing one of its key mechanisms. He holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in computer science and a B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California at Berkeley.
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About VMware: VMware is a software company providing cloud and virtualization services that powers complex digital infrastructure.
Manoj Ramnani
Founder and CEO of SalesIntel
Manoj Ramnani is the founder and CEO of SalesIntel.io and CircleBack, Inc. He was formerly the CEO of Dub Labs. Manoj holds a master’s degree from The George Washington University – School of Business.
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About CircleBack, SalesIntel: SalesIntel is the top provider of accurate and affordable sales and marketing contact data.
Avrum Elmakis
Founder and CEO of CLMBR
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About CLMBR, TDBBS: CLMBR offers a vertical climbing machine, featuring a large-format touch display with on-demand classes.
Hope McDonald
Co-Founder, Bosch mLab of Bosch
Hope is the director and founder of the Bosch mLab at the Chicago Connectory. She and her team support strategic projects and provide consulting services for startups from the Connectory and 1871 and the various brands and divisions in the Bosch family. She identifies and consults on potential investments and partnerships and is the innovator behind both the Bosch Next and connectiCity platforms. A 20 year veteran at Bosch, Hope leverages her network to align creative, strategic and financial opportunities to build best-in-class experiences. Her recent portfolio spans various mobile, internet of things, virtual and augmented reality experiences. She is a techy at heart, UX evangelist, and known for driving innovation in various roles throughout her career.
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About Bosch: The Bosch Group is a global supplier of technology and services.
Dhaval Chadha
Co-Founder & CEO of Justos
CEO at @Justos • Formerly CEO @Vivo (acquired) • Head of Latam @ClassPass • @Harvard University
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About Justos, NFX, Pipa, Stealth Startup: Justos is disrupting the insurance market in Latin America.
Antonio Molins
Co-Founder & Chief Scientist of Justos
Antonio Molins is the Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Justos.
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About Justos: Justos is disrupting the insurance market in Latin America.
Masha Drokova
Founder and General Partner of Day One Ventures
Masha is the Founder and General Partner at Day One Ventures. Before launching Day One, she was an angel investor and founder of a PR studio that worked with companies like Houzz, HotelTonight, Gett, and Toptal. She was named to the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 List, and as a Top 50 PR Pro in Tech by Business Insider. Masha has a deep love for our earth and serves as an advisor to Oceanic, a non-profit using VR to bring attention to issues impacting our oceans
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About Day One Ventures: Day One Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm that backs customer-obsessed companies and spearheads their communications.
