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 California based Founder operating in the Internet 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.
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.
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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.
Joshua Browder
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of DoNotPay
Joshua Browder is the Founder and CEO of DoNotPay.
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About DoNotPay: DoNotPay is an online robot lawyer that allows anyone to automatically claim asylum in the U.S, U.K, and Canada for free.
Kevin Hartz
Co-Founder & Chairman of Eventbrite
Kevin is the Co-Founder & Chairman of Eventbrite and an EIR & Venture Partner at Founders Fund. Prior to joining the firm, Kevin was Co-Founder and CEO of Eventbrite. Kevin was previously Co-Founder and CEO of Xoom Corporation, an international money transfer company servicing more than 30 countries worldwide. Xoom went public in 2012 and was acquired by PayPal in 2015. Kevin has served as an early-stage investor and advisor to successful start-ups including Airbnb, Lookout, PayPal, Pinterest, Skybox Imaging, Trulia, Uber, and Yammer.
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About Eventbrite, Y Ventures: Eventbrite develops an online platform that lets users find and create events.
Julia Hartz
Co-Founder & President of Eventbrite
Julia Hartz hopes to inspire people to live more by building the world’s largest marketplace of live experiences. Since founding Eventbrite in 2006 with Kevin Hartz and Renaud Visage, the company has generated over $3 billion in gross ticket sales, with more than $200 million tickets processed to events and experiences around the globe. A key to this growth and success is the people of Eventbrite (fondly referred to as The Britelings), which has grown to nearly 400 employees in six offices around the world. Julia cultivates and advocates for Eventbrite’s award-winning culture (voted Best Places to Work in the San Francisco Bay Area five years running). She has been honored as one of Inc.’s 35 under 35 in 2014 and Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs in 2013. Julia is also a frequent speaker on live experiences, consumer trends and entrepreneurship, and has been recently featured in Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg and Inc. Magazine. Previous to Eventbrite, Julia was a TV development executive at MTV and FX Networks.
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About Eventbrite, Eventbrite, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, The Aspen Institute: Eventbrite develops an online platform that lets users find and create events.
Daniel Curran
Founder & CEO of CustEx
57%+ / yr. liquid returns >>> https://danielcurran.substack.com/ Forbes #7 rank: bit.ly/2Oh7XhF **Only interested in start ups OVER $40k MRR w/o competition! Eqvista #5 rank: https://eqvista.com/top-100-active-angel-investors-list-for-startups/ Media/PR: https://billionairechronicle.com/daniel-curran-super-angel/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvAUJzDCa3Q&t=2s https://angelconnect.libsyn.com/investor-connect-episode-122-daniel-curran-of-silicon-valley https://thesyndicate.vc/angel-investor-hit-4-unicorn-companies-using-simple-investment-framework-super-angel-daniel-curran/ https://borsen.dk/soeg/daniel%20curran Bad Ass x-Rocket Scientist Rock Star! Read my 110+ Founder recommendations below. We share deal flow with billionaire Family Offices, Midas List VC’s, and other Forbes superangels. Passions: stopping/reversing human aging/immortality/parabiosis, bci, brain emulation/download, quantum teleportation, & cryonics. CustEx launches website/app soon to help Biden Admin get voters’ demands right. Benefits corp innovation, BLM, prevents civil unrest, as THE place for ads and co-creation. 2020 EBRD-led B round: https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/31/allset-series-b/ 2017 Greycroft deal: bit.ly/2ylWbLB 2016 A16Z deal: bit.ly/2d67xJc Fortune 500 $16B WDC pivot from $2.20 to $114/share! Relentless, visionary Tech entrepreneur builds $B companies that improve world. Founded 14 startups, invested cash in 178+, created 1k+ jobs, personally netted investors $170M in exits. Startups I endorse get oversubscribed by top vc’s fast! As Angel Investor: $1B+ cash exits < 1 year @decacorn Cruise @DollarShaveClub: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/daniel-curran https://angel.co/dcurran-custex-com https://fundersclub.com/danielcurran/ Claims to Fame: -Founder/CEO, USLab NASDAQ IPO in 1998: raised $130M -VP & acting COO@Western Digital Silicon Valley sub [$40M sale to Brocade/PMCS/Snap, 2001], -Founder/CEO of 1st company [AlaStor, 2003] to converge IP+FC SAN, adopted by Cisco Systems [Andiamo], -Founder/CEO of CustEx Internet Platform [2012] Experienced ramping up companies using innate ability to quickly size up a company’s position & execute pro-customer action + cash-flow results. Began career at large companies as a software engineer and morphed into a business entrepreneur/CXO at startups with responsibility for up to 250 teammates Made sales ramp from $2M to $100M in 8 months as VP & acting COO of Western Digital’s Silicon Valley Connex Unit. Earned multiple top eng. school master's degrees (Illinois-PhD dropout, USC-cert, Penn State)
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About CustEx: If Google’s a nice-to-have, CustEx is a must-have. Try living without a voice.
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.
Sam Parr
Co-Founder & CEO of The Hustle
Sam is the founder & CEO of The Hustle – one of America’s fastest-growing media companies with a focus on millennials, tech, and culture. He also runs Hustle Con, an annual conference in San Francisco that showcases non-technical startup founders.
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About Hustle Con, The Hustle: The Hustle is helping young professionals make better decisions throughout their day starting with business news.
Ali Partovi
Founder & CEO of Neo
Ali Partovi heads Neo, a mentorship community and VC fund that brings together tech veterans to invest in the diverse leaders of tomorrow. Ali invests in people smarter than himself and has backed Airbnb, Dropbox, Facebook, & Uber. He co-founded Code.org (Hour of Code) to bring Computer Science to classrooms. Ali grew up in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war, attended Harvard, and sold his first startup, LinkExchange, in 1998. He’s passionate about sustainable food and loves climbing, guitar, puzzles, and family.
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About Code.org, Neo: Neo is a mentorship community and VC fund that brings together a diverse group of tech veterans to accelerate tomorrow’s leaders.
Kong Pham
CEO & Founder of Jumpcut
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About Jumpcut: Jumpcut creates captivating online courses.
Matthew Gould
Co-Founder & CEO of Unstoppable Domains
Matthew is a co-founder of an Ethereum startup working to put domain names on the blockchain. Matthew is a serial entrepreneur building among other things the first consumer rating system on Bitcoin (Forum) and Verified News, an ethereum app to validate the truthfulness of news stories on the blockchain. Matthew is also a alumni from YC startup Talkable, helping grow the company from 5 to 50 people. Recently his company was awarded a grant from the Ethereum Foundation to build a batteries included front end library for ethereum development (Browseth). Additionally Matthew is a mentor with the ENS foundation annual hackathon which is building the protocol layer for blockchain based domain names on Ethereum.
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About BuyETHdomain, Unstoppable Domains: Unstoppable Domains launches domains secured by blockchains and builds uncensorable websites.
Jason Lemkin
Trusted Advisor, Founder of SaaStr
Jason M. Lemkin runs SaaStr, the world’s largest community for B2B/SaaS founders, and is the managing director of SaaStr Fund, a $90m venture capital firm focused on early-stage enterprise investments. Prior to that, Lemkin was the vice president of [Adobe Systems](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/adobe-systems); a co-founder and the chief executive officer of [EchoSign](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/echosign); a co-founder and the president of [NanoGram Devices Corp](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/nanogram-devices-corporation); vice president of [NeoPhotonics](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/neophotonics); and a senior director at [BabyCenter](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/babycenter). Lemkin has studied at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley.
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About SaaStr, SaaStr Fund: SaaStr is a blog about web services.
Sunmeet Jolly
Founder & CEO of GROTU
Founder and Patent holder – GROTU mobile app @ 101 Islands LLC. Angel investor in 40 pre-IPO technology startups. Frequently invited by accelerators and angel forums to Judge startup competitions and discuss technology innovation. Former IT Consulting industry executive who sold hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting services to Fortune 500 companies working for Cap Gemini, HCL, L&T, NTT data.
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About GROTU: Patented GROTU app provides a much needed “private” collection of productivity and communication tools for friends and family social groups
Garrett Camp
Founder and CEO of Expa
Garrett Camp is the Founder of Aero.
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About Aero, Eco, Expa, Operator, Uber, Uber Eats, Uber India: Expa supports early-stage startups through expertise, access, and funding.
Tim Chen
Founder and CEO of NerdWallet
Tim Chen is the founder and CEO of NerdWallet. A former hedge fund equity analyst specializing in payment processing companies, credit card networks, and technology companies, Tim also worked as an equity research analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston. He is a graduate of Stanford University with a degree in economics. In addition to writing for NerdWallet, Tim regularly contributes to several major personal finance publications.
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About NerdWallet: NerdWallet develops a financial platform to help people find the right credit cards and mortgage rates.
Marcy Boyle
Co Founder, CEO of Hot Bit VR
Marcy Boyle is the CEO and co-founder of Hot Bit VR, a upcoming webVR marketplace of experiential social shopping. Hot Bit VR has been featured on ZDnet, Entrepreneur, Fox News, and listed as one of the “30 Best Virtual Reality Companies to Change Your World Soon.” She and her co-founder’s VR experiences have been featured in art galleries, universities, conferences, and festivals including FIVARS in Toronto and VRUK in London. Hot Bit VR was selected for the first class of the AR/VR/XR accelerator at the Green Screen Institute, and Silicon Valley’s Women’s Startup Lab. Prior to working in VR, she co-directed the feature film, NOBODY CAN COOL, which was released internationally. Marcy is a graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University and is a member of Women in VR, Women in Film, and on the Board of the Alliance of Women Directors.
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About Hot Bit VR, Oculus: An experiential marketplace in virtual reality.
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.
Rob Fan
Founder & CTO/COO of Sharethrough USA
Rob leads all product and technology strategy for the company. He is a practitioner, student and teacher of the “lean startup” methodology. In his spare time, Rob, hacks and plays with new technology and advises early-stage startups about the successes and pitfalls he has learned thus far. Prior to Sharethrough, Rob worked as a technology consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton advising various three-letter government agencies. As an early adopter of the Facebook platform, Rob was one of the teaching assistants for the first-ever “Facebook Class” while at Stanford. Rob holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and a MS in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.
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About Sharethrough USA: Sharethrough is one of the top global independent omnichannel ad exchanges
Dan Greenberg
Founder & President of Sharethrough USA
Dan Greenberg is the founder and CEO of Sharethrough, a 150+ person SF-based software company that powers in-feed, native ads for premium publishers like Time Inc, Hearst, People and brand marketers like Pepsi and P&G. Dan also acts as the co-chair of the IAB Native Advertising Committee. Dan comes from a research background at Stanford in persuasive technology, and regularly teaches classes in brand content, modern monetization, and viral engineering. Dan was recently named to the Inc “35 Under 35” list, the Forbes “30 Under 30″ list and has been honored as an Ad Age Media Maven. He organizes and hosts the Sharethrough Native Ad Summits, is a regular speaker at advertising and technology conferences, and contributes to industry publications including Forbes, AdAge, and TechCrunch.
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About Sharethrough USA: Sharethrough is one of the top global independent omnichannel ad exchanges
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.
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.
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.
Christopher Rudy
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Cut.com, Inc.
Christopher Rudy is the CEO, Co-Founder at Cut.com.
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About Cut.com, Inc.: Cut makes little stories of some interest.
Parag Chordia
Founder & Chief Technology Officer of HOOKED
Parag Chordia is the director of the Georgia Tech Music Intelligence Lab, and CTO of Khush. Parag is Chief Scientist at Smule. He is the former director of the Georgia Tech Music Intelligence Lab, a research institute funded by the National Science Foundation to build intelligent systems that are musically creative. Parag was recently the recipient of the competitive NSF CAREER Award for his research in music prediction. He received a PhD in artificial intelligence and music at Stanford University and a BS in Mathematics from Yale. He has extensive experience managing commercial software development, and is also the founder of BolRecords, an Indian classical music record label. Parag is an actively performing Indian classical musician and electronic music composer.
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About HOOKED, Telepathic: HOOKED is redefining entertainment for the Snapchat generation.
Prerna Gupta
Founder & CEO of HOOKED
Prerna Gupta is the Founder & CEO at HOOKED.
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About HOOKED: HOOKED is redefining entertainment for the Snapchat generation.
David Filo
Co-Founder & Chief Yahoo of Yahoo
David Filo, a founder of Yahoo and Chief Yahoo, has served as an officer of Yahoo since March 1995, and as a member of our Board since June 2014. David also served as a Director of Yahoo from its founding through February 1996. David is involved in guiding Yahoo’s vision and in many key aspects of the business at a strategic and operational level, and is a stalwart of the company’s employee culture and morale. David co-developed Yahoo in 1994 while working towards his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford University, and co-founded Yahoo in 1995.
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About Yahoo: Yahoo is a technology and media company that serves users through its portfolio of digital platforms, products, and services.
Aakash Kumar
Founder & CEO of Shiftsmart
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About Shiftsmart: Shiftsmart is a labor-management marketplace connecting part-time workers with open shifts across multiple platforms.
Tammy Camp
Founder & CEO of Stronghold
Tammy is the CEO of Stronghold, an API platform that creates virtual payment networks that enable instant settlement and interoperability between legacy and new payment networks. Tammy served as the first Head of Growth at Stellar, helping the network grow to 4 million users in its first two months. A former partner at accelerator 500 Startups, she invested in portfolio companies and ran the growth and marketing curriculum for its flagship Silicon Valley location. She is a graduate of Singularity University’s GSP11 in Exponential Technologies at NASA Ames where she first learned about Bitcoin from legendary cryptographer Ralph Merkle.
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About Action Factory, Stronghold: Stronghold creates virtual payment networks that give developers access legacy and next-generation payment networks through a simple API.
Richard Bronson
CEO and Founder of 70 Million Jobs
Richard’s story begins on Wall Street, where he worked at several large investment banks. He became a partner at the infamous Wolf of Wall Street firm, Stratton Oakmont, then went on to found his own financial services firm, which he grew to 500 people, generating $100 million in annual revenue. Unfortunately, some of his business practices were outside the law, and despite having paid everyone back, he was convicted of securities fraud, and served two years in a federal prison. Upon release, he was destitute and homeless, but got back on his feet, and became Director of Defy Ventures, a prominent non-profit in the reentry space. In 2016, he left Defy to launch 70MillionJobs, where he serves as CEO.
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About 70 Million Jobs, Commissary Club, The Yard: 70MillionJobs is the first national, for-profit employment platform for people with criminal records.
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
Ross Hinkle
Founder + Chief Fan of Liveset
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About Liveset: Liveset is a digital platform that provides live concert events for web and mobile devices.
Shreesha Ramdas
CEO & Co-Founder of Strikedeck
Shreesha’s an entrepreneurial executive with a track record of launching and growing products in competitive markets. He has demonstrated experience as a GM in the areas of product conception and development, growth hacking, go-to-market strategy and execution. Shreesha is currently VP of Corp Dev & Partnerships at CallidusCloud. Shreesha Ramdas was the co-founder & COO at LeadFormix, a marketing automation platform, where he raised the initial funding, built the company and contributed to a successful acquisition by CallidusCloud in January 2012. Prior to LeadFormix, Shreesha was a co-founder of OuterJoin, an online marketing services company and an early member at Yodlee, where he held the role of General Manager of Yodlee’s offshore development center in Bangalore, India.
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About Aavenir, AccuKnox, BuyerAssist.io, Cultivate, Enact Systems, Forbes Communications Council, Fullcast.io, Medallia, Metadata, Promethium, Revv, Rocketlane, Strikedeck: Strikedeck is building a revolutionary Customer Success automation solution to deliver an outstanding customer experience.
Shabd Vaid
Co-Founder, CTO of Strikedeck
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About Strikedeck: Strikedeck is building a revolutionary Customer Success automation solution to deliver an outstanding customer experience.
Jonathan Matus
Founder & CEO of Zendrive
Jonathan Matus Prior to Redpoint, Jonathan Matus spent 6 years at Facebook and Google, where he’s been focused on various mobile and speech-recognition projects. At Google, one of the early Android team members, Jonathan managed product marketing for the platform’s software releases and device launches globally. During his tenure, the OS grew from zero to global best-selling mobile platform. In his role as Head of Product Marketing in Asia Pacific Jonathan lived in Tokyo and jumpstarted regional device launches and relationships all over Asia. Jonathan received the Google Founders Award and Android Founders Award in recognition for his contributions.
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About Zendrive: Zendrive leverages mobile sensor data to provide actionable insights that improve safety for passengers and drivers worldwide.
Soul Htite
Founder & Executive Chairman of Dianrong
Soul Htite is the founder and CEO of Dianrong. Prior to co-founding Dianrong in 2012, Soul co-founded Lending Club, the world’s largest and benchmarking financial technology company. He served as the Head of Technology until 2011. Soul led all the design and development efforts of Lending Club’s award winning online lending platform. Soul spent the earlier part of his career building enterprise software at Oracle Corporation. His focus was in real-time online services and system design for high availability and fault tolerance. Soul holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the Université de Montréal. Specialties: entrepreneurship, internet, software, product design, innovation, creativity, product development, startups, investment
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About Dianrong, Upgrade: Dianrong is an online marketplace lending company that uses technology to transform the way China is financed to help enrich people’s lives.
Ben Silbermann
Co-Founder & CEO of Pinterest
Ben (@8en) grew up in Iowa, where he spent a lot of time collecting bugs. Today, he helps millions of people collect and discover the things they love as co-founder and CEO of Pinterest. Before Pinterest, Ben worked at Google on AdSense and studied at Yale. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and two sons. Previously, Silbermann worked at Google in the sales organization; however, after a short time with the company he left and started designing his own iPhone apps with a college friend, Paul Sciarra. After their initial application, Totte, failed to gain significant traction, the cofounders created a pinboard product and Pinterest was born. However, Pinterest saw a low user base and very little engagement in its early stages. Silbermann said the prospect of telling people he failed was too embarrassing so he and Sciarra continued to tinker and improve the site. Today, Pinterest claims over 20 million users.
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About Cold Brew Labs, Pinterest: Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool for saving and discovering creative ideas.
Evan Sharp
Founder of Pinterest
Evan Sharp is the co-founder of Pinterest, where he leads all design efforts. A former architect, Evan finds inspiration from pinning interesting maps, science facts, architecture, vacation plans, and fonts for his design projects. Before Pinterest,Evan worked at Facebook as a product designer. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Chicago and studied architecture at Columbia University. Evan hails from York, Pennsylvania, and currently resides in San Francisco, California.
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About Pinterest: Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool for saving and discovering creative ideas.
Ruzwana Bashir
Founder & CEO of Peek
Ruzwana Bashir is Co-founder & CEO of Peek.com. She is a travel junkie, having navigated her way through 40 countries. She previously worked at Gilt Groupe, Art.sy, the Blackstone Group and Goldman Sachs. Ruzwana has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was a Fulbright Scholar, and a BA in Economics from Oxford University, where she was President of the Oxford Union.
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About Peek: Peek is a booking software and marketplace for delightful things to do such as wine tours, watersports, skydiving, and art classes.
Jai Pradeesh
Founder of DeepSource
Founder of DeepSource. Interested in building tools to improve developer productivity.
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About DeepSource: Deepsource is an enterprise tech startup that provides an automated tool to review codes.
Sanket Saurav
Founder of DeepSource
Co-founder of DeepSource: Helping developers ship fewer bugs.
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About DeepSource: Deepsource is an enterprise tech startup that provides an automated tool to review codes.
Rajeev Shah
Founder and CEO of Celona
Rajeev Shah is the Founder/CEO of Celona.
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About Celona: Celona accelerates adoption of digital automation and critical apps on enterprise wireless.
Ravi Mulam
Co-Founder of Celona
Ravi Mulam is the Co-founder of Celona.
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About Celona: Celona accelerates adoption of digital automation and critical apps on enterprise wireless.
Vinay Anneboina
Co-Founder of Celona
Vinay Anneboina is the Co-Founder of Celona.
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About Celona: Celona accelerates adoption of digital automation and critical apps on enterprise wireless.
Mehmet Yavuz
Co-Founder and CTO of Celona
Mehmet Yavuz is the Co-Founder and CTO of Celona.
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About Celona: Celona accelerates adoption of digital automation and critical apps on enterprise wireless.
Jaxon Klein
CEO, Co-Founder of Keyo
Jaxon Klein is an American businessman, entrepreneur, investor and startup advisor. Klein is currently CEO of Keyo, Inc., where he is a co-founder and former CTO. Prior to his role at Keyo, Klein founded two companies in hosting technology and web services.
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About Keyo: We place people’s identities in the palm of their hands.
Cayetana Polanco
Co-Founder and Chief Brand Officer of Keyo
Cayetana Polanco is the co-founder and chief brand officer at Keyo. Prior to co-founding Keyo, Cayetana was the co-founder and COO of Invento Media. She was also the co-founder and COO of Reneweb Hosting Services. Cayetana holds a bachelor of applied science (B.A.Sc.) in public health from Beloit College.
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About Keyo: We place people’s identities in the palm of their hands.
Nicola Munarini
CEO and Co-Founder of PKRS.AI
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About PKRS.AI: The future of personal coaching. AI powered, human enhanced.
Raullen Chai
CEO, Co-Founder of IoTeX
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About IoTeX: IoTeX is the leading decentralized network to power billions of machines at scale, drive the machine economy (machinefi) applications.
Scott Painter
Founder of Fair
Scott Painter is the founder and former CEO of Fair and TrueCar. He is a serial entrepreneur having incorporated 37 companies and having raised over $1.25 billion in debt and equity capital for those businesses over the last 20 years. His primary focus and passion is auto-retail and he was founder and CEO of CarsDirect.com and Build-To-Order as well as having been an early advisor to numerous automotive businesses including Tesla. He was an Army interrogator and then attended West Point where he studied political science and systems engineering. While at West Point he served as class president before transferring to UC Berkeley where he studied political economics. Prior to graduation he dropped out to sell his first auto-related start-up, AUTOAccess, an electronic database of used cars for sale. Mr. Painter was an IdeaLab CEO and an eCompanies CEO.His other ventures include Advertise.com, SharesPost, PriceLock, CarsDirect.com, US Digital Gaming, Zag.com and Brighthouse. Mr. Painter is married and lives in Los Angeles with his four children.
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About BrightHouse, BrightHouse, Fair: Fair is a car leasing company that is revolutionizing the car-as-a-service concept.
Jennifer Parke
Co-Founder of Fair
For over fifteen years Jennifer has used her background in art direction and design to create advertising platforms and help set the vision for global brands like Apple,Cisco, Old Navy and HBO to name a few. And she’s worked at agencies across the country, including Chiat, Deutsch, BBDO and Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Her entrepreneurial smarts and innovative spirit have also led to the creation of several companies including: Sugar Shots, an organic liquid sugar alternative, SubGiant, a motion graphics company that served as a creative collective helping usher students into the business and Boombang Inc., an innovative think tank where Jen partnered to help with product development and branding. Her creativity and leadership have helped her break barriers in the business; and she’s honored to be part of the 3% of women ECDs in the world of advertising.
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About Fair: Fair is a car leasing company that is revolutionizing the car-as-a-service concept.
Craig Nehamen
Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer of Fair
Craig has a BSBA from Washington University in St. Louis and an MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University. He has a passion for creating new financial technology products. Previously Craig was head of strategy and corporate development at Westlake Financial Services, a national auto finance company.
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About Fair: Fair is a car leasing company that is revolutionizing the car-as-a-service concept.
Boone Park
Co-Founder, General Counsel & Board Memb of Fair
Boone Park is one of the nation͛s most knowledgeable experts on auto regulatory compliance.He comes to Fair from TrueCar, where he played an integral role in all aspects of legal operations. Prior to TrueCar, Boone practiced at the law firm of Alston & Bird. He graduated as a member of the Order of the Coif from the University of Kentucky College of Law.
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About Fair, TrueCar: Fair is a car leasing company that is revolutionizing the car-as-a-service concept.
Anurag Goel
Founder and CEO of Render
Founder and CEO at Render.
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About Render: Render provides a cloud for developers and startups to host all their apps and sites.
David Kolodny
Co-Founder of Wilbur Labs
David Kolodny is a Co-Founder at Wilbur Labs, a San Francisco-based startup studio turning bold ideas into market-leading companies.
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About Wilbur Labs: Wilbur Labs is a startup studio that builds companies and helps teams to accelerate their growth.
Phil Santoro
Co-Founder of Wilbur Labs
Phil Santoro is a Co-Founder at Wilbur Labs, a San Francisco-based startup studio turning bold ideas into market-leading companies. Previously, Phil was a Growth Strategist at Google and founder of FreeForums.org, a service allowing anyone to create a free forum. FreeForums.org became one of the top online destinations, receiving over 125 million monthly pageviews and was acquired in March 2010 by Crowdgather. Phil is also a Private Pilot and Guinness World Record holder.
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About Wilbur Labs: Wilbur Labs is a startup studio that builds companies and helps teams to accelerate their growth.
Dan Siroker
Co-Founder & Chairman of Optimizely
Dan Siroker is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Optimizely. The inspiration for Optimizely came from Dan’s work as the Director of Analytics for the Obama Presidential Campaign and Deputy New Media Director for the Presidential Transition. Before Optimizely, Dan co-founded an online math game for kids called CarrotSticks. Formerly, he was also a Product Manager for Google Chrome and AdWords. Dan graduated with Honors from Stanford University with a B.S. in Computer Science.
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About Optimizely: Optimizely is a platform that provides digital experience solutions.
Matt Marshall
Founder and CEO of VentureBeat
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded \”Journalist of the Year\” by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
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About VentureBeat: VentureBeat is an online technology news platform that is engaged in technology publication and events business.
Vlad Kachur
Co-Founder, Director of Promolta
Vlad Kachur create strong marketing directions to help musicians be seen and establish new fans. Promolta’s co-founder believes every musician deserves to be recognized for his or her talent and hardwork.
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About Promolta: A self service advertising platform to promote videos in targeted blogs, websites, mobile apps, games and social networks.
Anjit Anand
Founder of Promolta
Anjit Anand is eager and passionate about helping musicians get discovered through social media and deep publisher network. Promolta’s co-founder takes her mission seriously in helping people reach their dream.
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About Promolta: A self service advertising platform to promote videos in targeted blogs, websites, mobile apps, games and social networks.
Randy Chou
Founder and CEO of Nubeva
Randy Chou is the Founder and CEO of Nubeva. Randy’s experience spans 15 years of technical and management leadership in the security, networking, and application acceleration fields. Prior to co-founding Panzura, Randy was a member of the founding software team at Aruba Networks, where he managed the architecture and development of the company’s security software. The combination of his technical expertise and business acumen helped Aruba become the leader in the enterprise Wi-Fi security market. Prior to Aruba Networks, Randy led the development of SSL security and load balancing software at Alteon WebSystems. Randy holds a degree in computer science from UC Berkeley.
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About Nubeva: Nubeva is a cloud security software company that provides decryption solution for real-time, historical or on-demand decryption.
Ryan Chan
Founder and CEO of UpKeep
Founder @CEO at UpKeep. Angel Investor
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About UpKeep: UpKeep is a platform developed for technicians and maintenance workers that provides them with a computerized maintenance management system.
Kevin Leland
Founder & CEO of Halo
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About Halo, Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Village Global: Halo is a market network that moves science forward by connecting companies directly with scientists for research collaborations
Alex Alpert
Founder & CEO of Shyft
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About NFX, Shyft: Shyft transforms the moving and relocation industry by introducing technology, customer service, and lead management solutions.
Daniela Alpert
Co-Founder & VP of Corp Relocation of Shyft
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About Shyft: Shyft transforms the moving and relocation industry by introducing technology, customer service, and lead management solutions.
Konrad Feldman
Co-Founder & CEO of Quantcast
Konrad Feldman, CEO, co-founded and launched Quantcast in 2006 along with Paul Sutter to transform the effectiveness of online advertising through the use of science and scalable computing. Prior to co-founding Quantcast, Feldman co-founded Searchspace (now Fortent) the leading provider of terrorist financing detection and anti-money laundering software for the world’s financial services industry. As CEO of Searchspace’s North American business, he established the business in the US and directed its rapid growth to become a market leader. Prior to Searchspace, Feldman was a Research Fellow in the Intelligent Systems Laboratory at University College London. Feldman holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from University College, London.
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About Quantcast: Quantcast helps create a more personalized digital world.
Weiting Liu
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Codementor
Weiting Liu is the founder & CEO of Codementor, a live help marketplace for developers. Weiting is a serial entrepreneur and an alumnus of both Y Combinator (YC ’07 SocialPicks, ’12) and Techstars (Seattle ’13 Codementor).
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About Arc.Dev, Codementor, Global Social, Peeridea: Codementor is an online marketplace connecting developers with experts for on-demand 1:1 help via screen sharing, video, and text chat.
Ronak Trivedi
Founder & CEO of Pietra
Ronak Trivedi is the founder and CEO of Pietra.
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About Pietra: Pietra is a business-in-a-box platform that provides Creators all the tools they need to build a business.
Pan Pan
Co-Founder, CTO of Pietra
Pan Pan is a co-founder and the CTO of Pietra.
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About Pietra: Pietra is a business-in-a-box platform that provides Creators all the tools they need to build a business.
Natalie Gordon
Founder and CEO of Babylist
Natalie Gordon is the founder and CEO of Babylist.
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About Babylist: Babylist is an online universal baby registry that enables parents discover, request and buy products for newborns.
Carson Kahn
Co-Founder & Board Director of Spindle (www.spindle.app)
Named a Goldman Sachs 100 Entrepreneur for his innovations across AI and Natural Language Processing, Carson Kahn is currently the co-founder of Spindle (www.spindle.app), a no-code AI startup backed by Accel Partners (Slack/Dropbox/Facebook), Caffeinated Capital (IFTTT/Notion/Airtable), and diverse Fortune 100 executives. Previously, he served as President of Brainspace AI (acquired by Reveal with $200 million from K1 Capital), the world’s leading natural language analytics engine, originally backed by the CIA. Mr. Kahn is also a Member of the Board of Advisors for Computer Science at the University of Colorado; Stanford University AII; UC Santa Cruz Center for Excellence in Data Science Research; and Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC); and advises venture-backed startups in AI/ML, PaaS, FinTech & InfoSec as a Techstars Mentor and angel investor. Mr. Kahn also invests with the $100 million Pandemic Impact Fund (PIF), Thiel-backed VC firm SI Capital, and Transpire Ventures. His work has been covered in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg, and elsewhere; and he has been tapped for expertise in AI, cybersecurity, and Future of Work by members of the Congressional Caucus on AI & National Economic Council. Previously, Mr. Kahn served as CEO (promoted from CTO) of JPMorgan In–Residence business Volley ML, saving Fortune 500 firms >$52 million in real labor annually with the first fully autonomous training & sales enablement platform for financial & health services. Named a Goldman Sachs 100 Entrepreneur for Volley’s innovations, Mr. Kahn designed, built, and sold Volley’s machine learning platform alongside an NLP team from Google, the NSA/CIA, Carnagie Mellon, and Goldman Sachs, seeded by $10 million from JPMorgan, Silicon Valley Bank, Zuckerberg Ventures, and execs from Goldman, Apple, and Facebook; before being recruited to lead Brainspace AI prior to its acquisition. Formerly, as Head of Product and co-founder at Keystone Learning Systems (KLS), the first LMS to offer cloud-native analytics and ML features for U.S. secondaries supporting >355,000 accounts, Mr. Kahn helped pioneer its now widely-imitated “extended enterprise” deployment model, before co-leading the entity sale to SPPEF Stirup Partners. On the heels of an externship at Google (via the ATLAS Institute), he formerly spanned product & technical marketing on the founding team at Vetica.com, whose real-time collaboration product Draftboard garnered users like Adobe & AOL while generating revenue from day 1. When the product was acquired by UK investors, Vetica launched Chalk.com, today the one of the 10 most popular learning analytics platforms in North America. A Black Belt in Karate and avid sportsman, Mr. Kahn can frequently be found training in a racquetball court or behind the wheel of an ATV. In his spare time, Mr. Kahn also moonlights behind a jazz piano near his home in the East Cut, San Francisco. Media Contact: Stacey Murray (stacey.murray.consulting@gmail.com) Press Kit: carsonkahn.com/press-kit
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About Spindle (www.spindle.app), Stanford University, Techstars, University of Colorado: An intelligent Decision Analytics platform for generating apps that simulate the ROI of business decisions without statistics or code.
Ryan Atallah
Co-Founder & CEO of Spindle (www.spindle.app)
As co-founder and CTO, entrepreneur and engineer Ryan Atallah sold his natural language analytics startup Cleargraph to Tableau for $30 million in 2017; after which Tableau was acquired by Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), where Ryan served as a senior Software Engineer Manager overseeing the NLP-powered Ask Data product now featured in Tableau’s offerings. He departed to co-found intelligent No-Code enterprise data applications platform Spindle (www.spindle.app) with his twice-cofounder Carson Kahn. Spindle is now backed by Accel Partners (Slack, Dropbox, Atlassian, Facebook), Caffeinated Capital (IFTTT, Notion, Airtable, Vercel), and diverse Fortune 100 executives who share in its mission to give teams data superpowers.
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About Spindle (www.spindle.app), Tableau: An intelligent Decision Analytics platform for generating apps that simulate the ROI of business decisions without statistics or code.
Vishnu Prasath Devarajan
Founder & CEO of Bright Bridge Info-tech Pvt Ltd
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About Bright Bridge Info-tech Pvt Ltd, Pulse Pharmacy: Bright Bridge Info-tech Pvt Ltd is a digital marketing company specializing in delivering Internet advertising solutions.
Matt Mahan
CEO & Co-Founder of Brigade
Matt is responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of Brigade. He served as CEO of Causes and has previous experience in political campaigning and community organizing. In 2004, Matt ran the first political campaign to leverage Facebook data when he was elected Student Body President at Harvard.
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About Brigade, City of San Jose, University of Southern California: Brigade wants to make civic engagement easy, effective, and enjoyable — and in so doing, restore political power back to the people.
Amee Devani
Co-Founder and CEO of WellBeam
Amee Devani is the Co-Founder and CEO at WellBeam.
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About WellBeam: WellBeam is an operator of a connected care platform intended to help hospitals connect with third-party clients.
Drew Perkins
Co-Founder and CEO of Mojo Vision
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About Mojo Vision: Mojo Vision is developing Mojo Lens, the world’s first AR smart contact lens with a built-in display that delivers Invisible Computing
Michael Wiemer
VP Eng / Co-Founder and CTO of Mojo Vision
Michael Wiemer is the Co-Founder and CTO at Mojo Vision.
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About Mojo Vision: Mojo Vision is developing Mojo Lens, the world’s first AR smart contact lens with a built-in display that delivers Invisible Computing
Isaac Silverman
CEO & Founder of Daydream
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About Daydream: Democratizing the financial model. Stealth.
Chris Clark
Co-Founder & CTO of Grove Collaborative
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About Grove Collaborative: Grove creates and curates high-performing, planet-first home and personal care products and is the leader in zero-plastic CPG.
Stuart Landesberg
Co-Founder & CEO of Grove Collaborative
Stuart Landesberg is the Co-Founder & CEO of Grove Collaborative, the leading digital-first brand & ecommerce platform for natural home and personal care. Stu has long been passionate about sustainability. He founded Grove, which has been a Certified B Corp since its founding, after learning that offline distribution meant that just a small percentage of families were choosing healthy, sustainable home care products. Grove now serves hundreds of thousands of households in the U.S. every month and has raised over $100 million in total capital. Stu was previously an investor at TPG Growth, where he was involved in over $400 million in consumer and technology investments. Stu and his wife Caitlin live in San Francisco with their daughter and dog, and spend as much time outside as possible.
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About Grove Collaborative: Grove creates and curates high-performing, planet-first home and personal care products and is the leader in zero-plastic CPG.
Jordan Savage
Co-Founder & VP, Creative of Grove Collaborative
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About Grove Collaborative: Grove creates and curates high-performing, planet-first home and personal care products and is the leader in zero-plastic CPG.
Silas Hundt
Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer of Alltuition
Silas Hundt is the Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer at Brilliant.
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About Alltuition, Brilliant.org: Alltuition is an online search engine that enables collage students to find sources for financial aid.
Matt Sunbulli
Co-Founder & CEO of Fishbowl
Matt Sunbulli is Cofounder, CEO and Chief Product officer of Fishbowl, a a social network that connects professionals within companies and industries to have workplace conversations. Fishbowl was acquired by Recruit Holdings Co., which also owns Indeed.com and Glassdoor, in 2021. Previously he was CEO and Cofounder of Social Amp, the first CRM platform optimizing Facebook’s Open Graph for business. Social Amp was acquired by Merkle Inc., a leader in CRM database marketing, in February 2012. Matt’s work has been showcased at the Direct Marketing Association Conference and Exhibition, ad:tech Digital Marketing Conference and Facebook’s F8 Developers Conference. Social Amp’s work with Levi’s, Estee Lauder and 1-800-Flowers.com has been widely showcased in the social commerce industry. Prior to Social Amp, Matt served as a digital product manager at Viacom MTV Networks where he pioneered the release of new digital and social technologies and launched the first video blog. He is a graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.
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About Fishbowl, Fishbowl: Fishbowl is a social network that connects professionals within relevant communities to have candid and relevant conversations.
Loren Appin
Co-Founder & COO of Fishbowl
Cofounder & COO of Fishbowl, a social network that connects professionals within companies and industries. Every day employees come to Fishbowl to stay informed about workplace topics, share professional advice, and learn from both peers and senior leadership. Fishbowl has captured more than 25% of the professionals in the select industries the platform is open to, with almost half of users engaging the app daily.
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About Fishbowl: Fishbowl is a social network that connects professionals within relevant communities to have candid and relevant conversations.
Filip Victor
Founder, CEO of MetaMap
Filip Victor is the Founder and CEO at Mati.
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About MetaMap: MetaMap is a digital trust management platform that empower service providers to reach more customers through customizable trust workflows.
Will Jessup
Founder, Head of Services of TheoremOne
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About TheoremOne: We are an engineering and innovation firm. We solve complex business problems through optimization of process, technology, and culture.
Tomer Schwartz
Co-Founder of Armis Security
Tomer Schwartz Co-Founder and CTO at Dazz
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About Armis Security, Dazz: Armis Security offers an agentless IoT security solution that lets enterprises see and control any device or network.
Nadir Izrael
Co-Founder and CTO of Armis Security
As co-founder and CTO, Nadir Izrael guides the technology vision behind Armis to protect the new connected or IoT devices in and around the workplace. He co-founded the company in 2015 with its CEO, Yevgeny Dibrov. Prior to Armis, worked at Google as senior software engineer. Before Google, Nadir spent six years in the Israeli army, specifically in unit 8200, where he designed and programmed software projects and systems, serving as team leader and attaining the rank of captain.
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About Armis Security, Cyberstarts: Armis Security offers an agentless IoT security solution that lets enterprises see and control any device or network.
Rui Maranhao
Co-Founder of Rows
Rui Maranhao is Co-founder and Head of Engineering at dashdash.
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About Rows: Rows is a platform that allows users to create applications using only spreadsheet skills.
Shola Akinlade
Co-Founder and CEO of Paystack
Shola Akinlade is the Co-founder and CEO at Paystack.
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About Paystack: Paystack lets businesses accept payments via credit card, debit card, money transfer and mobile money on their websites or mobile apps.
Ezra Olubi
Co-Founder, CTO of Paystack
Ezra Olubi is the CTO and Co-Founder at Paystack.
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About Paystack: Paystack lets businesses accept payments via credit card, debit card, money transfer and mobile money on their websites or mobile apps.
Rafael Ortiz
Founder of Project YX
Rafael Ortiz co-founded NexTag, the leading comparison shopping website, where he served as vice president of marketing and business development. The company sold a majority stake in 2007 at a $1.2 Billion valuation. He previously worked in marketing and sales roles at Apple and ROLM, and is the co-author of In Company of Giants (McGraw-Hill 1997). Rafael currently serves as a director of USA Cycling’s Development Foundation and holds an MBA from Stanford University and a BA in economics from UC Santa Cruz.
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About Project YX: The Digital Closet
Alex Hofmann
CEO and Co-Founder of 9 Count
Hofmann most recently held the role of musical.ly’s President in North America, where he led expansion efforts to build the world’s fastest growing entertainment social network. Within three months of Hofmann joining the team, app downloads increased from 200 to 400,000 per day. musical.ly hit the top of the app chats in 21 countries and has grown to over 200 million users globally. During his time at musical.ly, Hofmann helmed the company’s global content, brand, entertainment, and talent partnerships, in addition to heading all corporate functions for North and South America. He oversaw the closure of deals with all three major music labels and publishers. Under his leadership, the company closed its largest product partnership with Apple Music, as well as original content partnerships with Viacom, NBCU, and Hearst Digital. Hofmann also orchestrated partnerships with top artists like Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez, Jason Derulo and 250+ other artists worldwide. In early 2018, Hofmann announced he was moving on from musical.ly to pursue new ventures following the company’s successful merger with Chinese tech giant, Bytedance. He is currently investing in and advising new startups. He remains an ally and advisor to musical.ly. In 2017, Hofmann was chosen by Variety as one of “30 Execs to Watch” for its Digital Entertainment Impact Report and featured by Billboard on its Digital Power Players List: Guiding the Future in Music and Tech. Most recently, he accepted the WSJ Technology Innovator Award. A German native, Hofmann currently resides in Los Angeles.
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About 9 Count: 9count exists to create products that help and connect people
Nick Weaver
Co-Founder and CEO of eero
Nick Weaver is Co-founder of eero inc. and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Nick Weaver is an Associate at Menlo Ventures. Nick Weaver joined Menlo in 2012 and focuses on investments in mobile, consumer internet, digital media, and enterprise software. Prior to this, Nick Weaver worked at McKinsey & Company and advised technology and private equity clients on ecommerce, go-to-market strategy, and acquisitions. While at Stanford, he was involved Stanford Student Enterprises and helped found StartX (formerly, SSE Labs).
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About eero: Eero offers a Wi-Fi system for household use.
Nate Hardison
Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of eero
Nate is a Preceptor in Computer Science at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He received his B.S. in Symbolic Systems from Stanford in 2010 and his M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford in 2011.
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About eero: Eero offers a Wi-Fi system for household use.
Bradley Deyo
Co-Founder, Co-Chairman & COO of Mars Reel
Bradley Deyo is a Co-founder and COO at Mars Reel.
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About Mars Reel: Mars Reel is a content and consumer products company focused on high school sports and youth culture.
Arvind Patel
CEO and Co-Founder of Rowzzy
Seasoned Silicon Valley executive and CEO with direct experience in managing multi-million dollar companies. Wide range of experience in tech management, raising capital, revenue growth and M&A. Tenure in technology has spread across many verticals to include Hardware, Contract Manufacturing and Software. His multilingual skills leverage his wide network. Current activity is to lead a next-gen AI platform to funding, product launch and rapid growth.
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About Rowzzy: Innovators of NVU™ a PaaS /A.I. Voice-to-Display solutions for eCommerce and beyond.
Gabriel Luna-Ostaseski
Co-Founder of Braintrust
As a founder, operator, advisor and angel investor, Gabe has helped numerous companies launch, navigate growth and scale. Before starting Upshift, Gabe led Co-Founded CalFinder Group and bootstrapped sales to $20m in sales. Calfinder continues to be one of the fastest growing marketplaces in home services. Prior to Calfinder Gabe sold his first company at 21 years old. Gabe serves on the boards of Calfinder and Metta Institute. In addition to investing and helping founders scale sales he is also actively involved in incubating additional businesses.
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About Braintrust, Upshift Partners: Braintrust is a blockchain-powered freelancer marketplace that connects skilled tech experts with clients.
