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 Video 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.
Baron Davis
Founder of Baron Davis Enterprises
Baron Davis is the Founder at Baron Davis Enterprise.
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About Baron Davis Enterprises, Business Inside the Game (BIG), Business Inside the Game (BIG), Plus Capital, Sports Lifestyle in Culture, The Black Santa Company, UWish: Under BDE and its affiliated or managed entities, Baron Davis invests in operating companies with a focus on SIC sectors.
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Sebastien Borget
Co-Founder and COO of Pixowl
Sebastien Borget is the Co-founder and COO of Pixowl. Passionate for blockchain technology, gaming and education, he is a very active speaker and evangelist who spent the past 8 years focused exclusively on mobile gaming, creating successful games that were downloaded millions of times.
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About Pixowl, The Sandbox: Pixowl is working to build a big entertainment family brand on mobile.
Arthur Madrid
CEO and co-Founder of Pixowl
Arthur Madrid is the 30 years-old founder and CEO of Wixi.com. Wixi is a web-based social media network where users interact by privately sharing media content — including photos, audio and video. His web career began in 2000 as founder of 1-Click Media 1-click.com (acquired by Ipercast in 2007) , a peer-to-peer video delivery software for television networks. Arthur expanded the product’s reach to serve many top European Video On-Demand Web sites. The 1-Click plug-in is used by more than one million people globally to speed downloads and significantly decrease bandwidth cost. Arthur can be found online at http://twitter.com/arthurmadrid and http://facebook.com/arthurmadrid. He currently lives in Buenos Aires where he runs the main Wixi office.
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About Pixowl, The Sandbox: Pixowl is working to build a big entertainment family brand on mobile.
Chad Hurley
Co-Founder and Chairman of GreenPark Sports
Chad Hurley is the Co-Founder & Former CEO of YouTube. In October 2006 he, along with the other founders, sold the company for $1.65 billion to Google. Prior to YouTube he worked in eBay’s PayPal division, where he helped design the original PayPal logo.
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About GreenPark Sports: GreenPark Sports is a social sports gaming developer designed to create a virtual sports environment for sports and eSports fans.
Ken Martin
CEO & Co-Founder of GreenPark Sports
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About GreenPark Sports: GreenPark Sports is a social sports gaming developer designed to create a virtual sports environment for sports and eSports fans.
Kevin Chou
Founder of Rally
Kevin Chou is co-founder and CEO of Kabam, a world leader in AAA mobile free-to-play games. Kevin is an entrepreneur who has guided Kabam’s explosive growth, which started with a handful of people working above a dim sum restaurant and catapulted to $400 million in revenue, sustained profitability, and a valuation of more than $1 billion in 2014. Since co-founding a company in 2006 that became Kabam in 2009, Kevin has led the disruption of the video game industry by revolutionizing the way players access and pay for games. He has secured partnerships with leading game platforms, as well as with Hollywood studio giants such as Disney, Lionsgate, MGM, NBCUniversal, Paramount and Warner Brothers for games based on some of the world’s most beloved movie franchises. Under Kevin’s leadership, Kabam has raised more than $240 million from venture and strategic investors, including some of the world’s largest entertainment and internet companies such as Alibaba, Google, Intel and Warner Brothers. Before co-founding Kabam, Kevin worked at the global venture capital firm Canaan Partners, which is Kabam’s initial investor and where he invested in 14 consumer technology and online media companies. Earlier, Kevin advised public technology companies on M&A and corporate finance as part of Deutsche Bank’s technology investment banking practice. Kevin graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley with a BS in Business Administration. At UC Berkeley, Kevin was admitted to the inaugural class of Gates Millennium Scholars. In 2014 Kevin was named one Fortune magazine’s prestigious “40 Under 40” and, in 2012, was identified by Fortune as one of the “Smartest People in Tech.” The Los Angeles Times called Kevin “absurdly accomplished.”
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About Aftershock, Forte, Gen.G Esports, LUMA Capital Partners, Rally: Rally provides a blockchain platform for the development of video streaming and gaming apps.
Mahesh Vellanki
Co-Founder & VP, Growth of Rally
Mahesh Vellanki is an Associate with Redpoint Ventures where he focuses on early-growth investment opportunities in the internet, digital media, mobile, e-commerce, gaming and online education sectors. Prior to joining Redpoint, Mahesh was an Analyst in the technology investment banking division of Citigroup where he focused on internet, digital media, software, hardware and semiconductor companies. He advised a variety of clients on equity and debt financings, as well as strategic business development, M&A and LBO transactions. At Citigroup, Mahesh worked with companies such as Zillow, Groupon, AutoTrader, Synacor and Equinix. Mahesh earned a bachelor’s degree in Finance with honors from the University of Maryland.
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About Rally: Rally provides a blockchain platform for the development of video streaming and gaming apps.
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.
Kong Pham
CEO & Founder of Jumpcut
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About Jumpcut: Jumpcut creates captivating online courses.
Scooter Braun
Founder of SB Projects
Scooter Braun is one of the entertainment industry’s biggest entrepreneurs and innovators and the founder of SB Projects, a diversified entertainment and media company with ventures at the intersection of music, film, television, technology, brands, culture, and social good. Braun has a roster of the top pop culture icons under his management, record label, and publishing companies that include Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Zac Brown Band, and Karlie Kloss. Braun has broken more new artists than any other music executive in the last decade and has expanded his reach by establishing a fund, which invests in some of the largest management, media, and rights companies in the industry. SB Projects houses a film and television production division and also continues to impact new verticals under its tech incubator, Silent Labs, which holds investments in Uber, Spotify, Songza, Casper, Waze, and Pinterest. Braun also leads Ithaca Holdings LLC., a fully integrated holding company with interests across multiple verticals. The company has built an elite portfolio of acquisitions and partnerships including the acquisition of Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Label Group, Mythos Studios with Marvel Founding Chairman David Maisel, the acquisition of Atlas Publishing, and partnerships with management companies. Braun remains committed to SB Projects’ founding philosophy of giving back by serving on the boards of Pencils of Promise and Fuck Cancer, and he, his clients, and his companies have – together – granted more wishes for Make-A-Wish than any other organization in the history of the foundation.
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About SB Projects, TQ Ventures: SB Projects is a diversified entertainment and media company with ventures integrating music, film, television, technology and philanthropy.
Richard Bernardino
Founder & CEO, Software Architect of Orchidware Studios
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About Orchidware Studios, Project Blue Butterfly, Project Shrub, Project Umami: Fun, exciting, fascinating video games for players of all ages to enjoy.
Sam Yam
Co-Founder , President & CTO of Patreon
Sam Yam is the President, CTO, and Co-Founder of Patreon.
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About Patreon: Patreon is an online platform connecting musicians and other artists with their fan base.
Jack Conte
Co-Founder & CEO of Patreon
Jack Conte is the Co-Founder and CEO of Patreon.
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About Patreon: Patreon is an online platform connecting musicians and other artists with their fan base.
Scott Chacon
Co-Founder and CEO of Chatterbug
Scott Chacon is a Git evangelist and Ruby developer currently as the Cofounder & CEO of Chatterbug. He is the author of the Pro Git book by Apress, the Git Internals Peepcode PDF as well as the maintainer of the Git homepage and the Git Community Book. [Source](http://schacon.github.com/about.html)
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About Chatterbug: Chatterbug building a new way to help you master language skills through adaptive courses.
Russell Belfer
Co-Founder and Engineering of Chatterbug
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About Chatterbug: Chatterbug building a new way to help you master language skills through adaptive courses.
Liz Clinkenbeard
Co-Founder and Chief Communications Officer of Chatterbug
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About Chatterbug: Chatterbug building a new way to help you master language skills through adaptive courses.
Ryan Hoover
Founder of Weekend Fund
Ryan Hoover is the founder of [Product Hunt](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/product-hunt), a community of people sharing, upvoting, and geeking out about new technology products, games, and books. Ryan also invests in early stage startups through [Weekend Fund](https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/29/weekend-fund-is-ryan-hoovers-3m-angel-fund/). As a writer, Hoover has contributed to Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by [Nir Eyal](https://www.crunchbase.com/person/nir-eyal) and written many essays, including features for [TechCrunch](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/techcrunch), [Forbes](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/forbes), Pando, [Fast Company](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/fast-company), and [The Next Web](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/the-next-web). He writes about startup trends, product designs, and production growth on his blog, ryanhoover.me. Hoover graduated from [the University of Oregon](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/university-of-oregon-2). After graduation, he spent time in Portland before permanently relocating to San Francisco, California.
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About Product Hunt, Weekend Fund: Weekend Fund is a venture capital and angel investing firm focused on making early-stage investments.
Mark Weinstein
CEO, Founder of MeWe
Mark Weinstein is the Founder and CEO of MeWe, the Next-Gen Social Network. Mark is a leading privacy advocate, one of the visionary inventors of social networking, and an award-winning author. He founded SuperFamily and SuperFriends, precursors to today’s social and chat networks, at the turn of the millennium. Both became PC Magazine “Top 100” sites for multiple years. Mark sold them and then authored the “Habitually Great” book series endorsed by the late Dr. Stephen Covey, (2x Indie Book awards), and became an influential technology consultant/advisor. A few years ago when Mark Zuckerberg declared, “privacy is a social norm of the past,” that comment angered Weinstein greatly. It sparked him to create the Sgrouples beta project, hiring an engineering team to design and build the world’s first social network with privacy-by- design for its members. The 3-year beta project served as the testing platform for the launch of MeWe. Making its official launch during SXSW 2016 (South by Southwest), MeWe was honored as the 2016 Start-Up of the Year Finalist for “Innovative World Technology.” World renowned thought leaders and executives proudly serve on MeWe’s Advisory Board, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web; Raj Sisodia, the founder of Conscious Capitalism; Professor Sherry Turkle, leading technology expert; Professor Phil Rogaway, award-winning cryptographer; Cullen Hoback, award-winning documentary film-maker on privacy; Colin Sebastion, leading internet analyst; Simon Mainwaring, founder of WeFirst; Marci Shimoff, NYT Best-Selling author; Jack Canfield, co-founder of Chicken Soup for the Soul; and several others. Mark is one of the world’s foremost privacy advocates, and he is listed as one of the “Top 8 Minds in Online Privacy.” He was a Steering Committee Member of National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) – where he strongly argued against any “national identity system,” calling the idea a complete violation of the human right to privacy. The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada has named Mark “Privacy by Design Ambassador.” Mark has written about privacy and the social media industry in well-known publications such as USA Today, InfoSecurity Magazine, Daily Mirror (UK), Dark Reading, HuffPo, and many others. He has been interviewed on many media outlets, including PBS, BBC, FOX, FORBES, CNN, and ABC. Mark is often a featured speaker and social media/privacy expert on the stage at many conferences, including EY’s Strategic Growth Forum, the 16th Annual Privacy and Security Conference, Global Security Conference, GMIC Silicon Valley, and he was a recent keynote speaker at GMIC New York, Security BSides Vancouver, and the Customer Experience Asia. Mark received his BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz; and his MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. He resides in Los Angeles.
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About MeWe: MeWe is the rapidly growing high integrity alternative to Facebook. No Ads, No Targeting, No Newsfeed Manipulation, NO BS!
Ali Moiz
Founder of VULCUN
Founder at Stonks.
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About Stonks, VULCUN: The largest prize pools in Fantasy eSports
Justin Waldron
Co-Founder and President of Playco
Justin Waldron is Co-Founder & President of Playco, and previously Co-Founder / EVP of Product of Zynga, the world’s largest mobile game company. Zynga IPO’d in 2011 with a $10 billion valuation and over $1b in annual revenue. Justin is an angel investor in Lambda School, Substack, and 60+ other companies. He mentors young entrepreneurs at The Thiel Foundation’s Thiel Fellowship program.
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About Playco, Zynga: Playco is a developer of instant-play games across a variety of platforms.
Doron Nir
President & Co-Founder of StreamElements
Doron Nir is a serial entrepreneur, gamer and visionary,driven by a passion for product development and the goal of generating revenue.
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About Happy Sale, StreamElements: StreamElements provides content creators the tools they need to engage, grow, and monetize their audiences.
Gil Hirsch
Co-Founder & CEO of StreamElements
Gil Hirsch is an angel investor. Gil has over ten years of experience in software architecture, product and general management in computer technology. Before co-founding face.com, Gil held multiple R&D, Product and Sales executive roles at Amdocs, Xacct Technologies and Telrad Networks. Gil is also the co-founder of the garage geeks community in Israel to drive non-commercial innovation activities.
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About StreamElements: StreamElements provides content creators the tools they need to engage, grow, and monetize their audiences.
Walter Driver
Co-Founder, Chairman & Co-CEO of Scopely
Walter Driver is the co-founder, Chairman and co-Chief Executive Officer of Scopely, one of the fastest-growing mobile-first video game companies. Scopely creates and publishes a highly-diverse portfolio of top-grossing, immersive game experiences, including: the award-winning ”MARVEL Strike Force,” “Scrabble® GO,” “Star Trek™ Fleet Command” and”Yahtzee® With Buddies,” among others, which are played by hundreds of millions of players worldwide. Fueled by a world-class team, Scopely leverages its proprietary technology platform Playgami to bring directed-by-consumer, interactive experiences to audiences around the globe. Under Walter’s leadership, the company has achieved billions of dollars in lifetime revenue and attracted more than $1 billion in financing from leading venture capital firms, tech luminaries and cultural icons.
Walter has been recognized as one of the “100 Most Influential Young Executives” by The Business Journal, “Visionary of the Year” by C-Suite Quarterly, “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Ernst & Young, a “Young Global Shaper” by the World Economic Forum, one of the “100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs” by Goldman Sachs and a “Dealmaker of the Year” by Variety. Under Walter’s leadership, Scopely has also received many recognitions, including: “Best-led Company” in 2021 by Inc. magazine, “Private Company of the Year” in 2021 by Los Angeles Business Journal, a four time “Best Places to Work” winner by Built In LA, and a two time “World’s Most Innovative Companies” winner by Fast Company. Scopely has also been recognized on top charts such as Deloitte’s “Technology Fast 500,” being named the second fastest-growing technology company in North America and in the Top 10 mobile app charts for consumer spend.
Walter is an investor and advisor to many private technology companies as well as a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization and Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Los Angeles Technology & Innovation Council. Prior to Scopely, Walter founded and served as CEO of O Negative Media where he developed online social games. Before O Negative, he co-founded Ignition Interactive, one of the first developers of third-party applications for Facebook.
Walter holds a B.A. in English Literature from Brown University.
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About Scopely: Scopely is a global leader in interactive entertainment and mobile-first video games.
Ankur Bulsara
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer of Scopely
Ankur Bulsara co-founded Scopely, Inc. in 2011 and serves as its Chief Technical Officer. Ankur Bulsara oversees all aspects of technology and engineering at Scopely. He has experience in building large-scale and robust systems used by millions of people across multiple platforms. Ankur Bulsara has over 10 years of experience in technology, development, and architecture. He was the Founder of Brainwave Software Inc. While consulting, he held several different positions with his clients, including Architect of Revenue and Inventory Optimization at uSamp, Architect/Lead Developer at Internships LLC, and Architect at Freedom Speaks. Since 2007, he was the Lead Software Developer on Myspace’s Developer Platform, where he was responsible for the developer website and the portal dashboard for developers to create and managed Myspace apps. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Cornell University.
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About Scopely: Scopely is a global leader in interactive entertainment and mobile-first video games.
Dennis Zdonov
Co-Founder of Faraway
Dennis Zdonov is the Co-Founder at Faraway and Halo Kitchens. He earned a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
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About Faraway: Faraway makes hyper-social blockchain games with player-driven economies.
Alex Paley
Co-Founder of Faraway
Alex Paley is a Co-Founder at Faraway and Halo Kitchens. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan – Stephen M. Ross School of Business.
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About Faraway: Faraway makes hyper-social blockchain games with player-driven economies.
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.
David Fisch
Co-Founder & President of Turgo
A successful business leader and entrepreneur with 20 years of online, mobile and traditional experience. Expertise in digital media specializing in brand advertising, mobile, business development, marketing and operations. Extensive experiencing in building world-class sales and partnership teams. Strong track record of achievement within both corporate and start-up organizations.
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About Gallo Sales Company, GreenSpring, Mandalay Media, Miller Brewing Company, Miniclip, Shopkick, Turgo: Turgo is a key player in the video advertising and distribution industry.
Anthony Borquez
Founder & CEO of Grab Games
Anthony is experienced in building and scaling creative tech businesses. His first company he co-founded, Spacient Technologies, was an early mobile GPS software platform that was acquired by Trimble Navigation. Anthony’s prior game company, Blue Label Games, built some of the first mobile gaming technology and content. In 2006, Blue Label Games was acquired by Japanese gaming leader Konami. The acquisition helped enable Konami’s mobile gaming division to become a top worldwide mobile game publisher. Anthony is also a Professor at the University of Southern California, where he teaches courses in Entrepreneurship and Gaming.
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About Faceroll Games, Flightly, Grab Games, University of Southern California, University of Southern California Marshall School of Business: Grab is focused on creating high-quality entertainment content across all major interactive platforms.
Uri Raz
Founder & Executive Chairman of Tango
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About Tango: Tango Live is a leading global social media platform connecting influencers and their followers through live mobile video engagement.
Vlad Korolev
CEO & Co-Founder of Gunzilla Games
Vlad Korolev is the CEO and Co-Founder at Gunzilla Games.
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About Gunzilla Games, PLINK: Gunzilla Games is an independent, innovative, and player-focused developer of AAA games.
Jesse Zhang
CEO and Founder of Lowkey
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About Camelot.ai, Lowkey, Lowkey: The home for watching and creating short gaming videos
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.
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.
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.
Susan Brazer
Chief Executive Officer and Founder of LionShare Media
Susan is a commercial visionary with a 2020’s view. She’s led the successful development, launch and scale of consumer-facing platforms, apps and services for world-leading media, tech and telecom companies: Apple, DirecTV, SES Astra, FIFA World Cup, Viacom, Virgin Mobile, and Nokia. Susan is the CEO of LionShare Media, which is launching the THIN/AIR™ Metaverse, a 5G cloud-native, blockchain-enabled distribution platform for premium entertainment and immersive media. Previously, Susan was VP, Strategy and Business Development at Nokia, and VP, Corporate Development and Entertainment Services at Virgin Mobile USA). Prior to this, Susan was EVP, Corporate Development at KirchMedia’s Venture Fund for the FIFA World Cup, where she raised $50M+ for interactive TV, gaming and mobile app ventures. Susan was the SVP, Networks & Marketing for Viacom’s Showtime service in the Middle East and Africa, overseeing a P&L and operations for MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, The Movie Channel, TV Land, Bloomberg, Paramount, Style and Discovery. Susan led the launch of DirecTV as VP, Marketing at Compression Labs and the migration of 85M European TVHH to digital satellite and cable services for SES ASTRA. The genesis of Susan’s product development and UI/UX expertise began at Apple Computer, where she launched its 1st portable computer, the Newton, and Knowledge Navigator (prototype for the iPAD and Siri). She was also served as an M&A analyst at PepsiCo and International Treasury Analyst at Phillip Morris. Susan holds a B.A. in Economics from Brandeis University, an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and attended the London School of Economics. Susan is on the Board of Global Women in Blockchain, a UN Delegate for Media for Social Impact and a mentor at Princeton University’s Keller School of Engineering for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
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About LionShare Media: LionShare Media develops a media distribution platform-as-a-service to harness the power of converging and emerging technologies.
Hao Li
CEO & Co-Founder of Pinscreen
Hao Li is Founder and CEO of Pinscreen, Inc., and Distinguished Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, Director of the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, a visiting professor at Weta Digital and a research lead at Industrial Light & Magic / Lucasfilm. For his contributions in non-rigid shape registration, human digitization, and real-time facial performance capture, Hao received the TR35 Award in 2013, recognizing him as one of the top 35 innovators under the age of 35, from the MIT Technology Review. He was named Andrew and Erna Viterbi Early Career Chair in 2015, and was awarded the Google Faculty Research Award and the Okawa Foundation Research Grant the same year. He won the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award in 2018. He is best known for his work on dynamic geometry processing, facial animation, and data-driven techniques for making 3D human digitization and facial animation accessible to the masses. During his PhD, Hao co-created the first real-time and markerless system for performance-driven facial animation based on depth sensors. The team later commercialized a variant of this technology as the facial animation software Faceshift (acquired by Apple Inc. in 2015 and incorporated into the iPhone X in 2017). He was brought on as visiting professor at Weta Digital to build the high-fidelity facial performance capture pipeline for reenacting the deceased actor Paul Walker in the movie Furious 7 (2015). His recent research focuses on combining techniques in Deep Learning and Computer Graphics to facilitate the creation of 3D avatars and to enable true immersive face-to-face communication and telepresence in Virtual Reality.
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About Pinscreen, University of California Berkeley: Revolutionizing digital communication and online human interactions with user-generated and personalized 3D virtual avatars.
Benjamin Tse
Co-Founder & CPO of Genopets
Award-winning product designer with 15+ years in UI/UX, Business Strategy, SaaS, E-commerce, and Branding. 6 years in blockchain and crypto-asset platforms. Winner of EOS Global Hackathon in 2018.
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About Genopets, Hundredfold Studios: Genopets is a non-fungible token (NFT) “move-to-earn” game where players are rewarded for the steps they take in real life.
Jay Chang
Co-Founder of Genopets
Product Management and Marketing leader with 10+ years experience. 4 years in blockchain, 3 in product marketing leading the go-to-market for EOS at Block.one prior to joining Google’s P&E dev marketing team.
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About Genopets: Genopets is a non-fungible token (NFT) “move-to-earn” game where players are rewarded for the steps they take in real life.
Albert Chen
Co-Founder & CEO of Genopets
10+ years in growth marketing as owner of multiple e-commerce businesses. 10+ years in software development with 4 years focused in blockchain engineering. Winner of EOS Global Hackathon in 2018.
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About Cocoon Worldwide, Genopets, masklab: Genopets is a non-fungible token (NFT) “move-to-earn” game where players are rewarded for the steps they take in real life.
Robert Gabel
Founder & CEO of Tubular Labs
Robert (“Rob”) Gabel is the founder and CEO of Tubular Labs, the leading marketing and analytics platform that helps companies grow and engage their online video audience on YouTube. Building a marketing and analytics platform for online video unites two of Rob’s passions – online video and online marketing. Rob became fascinated with the promise and power of online video while serving as SVP of Advertising Performance at Machinima, YouTube’s 2nd largest network. Rob broadened his online video experience by consulting to YouTube-centric media companies DanceOn and AwesomenessTV. Rob’s online marketing experience includes serving as a SVP of Marketing for LowerMyBills and VP Marketing for both Inadco and Netflix. As one of the first employees at LowerMyBills, Rob helped the company grow from pre-revenue to over $200 million organically before being acquired by Experian in 2005 for nearly $400 million. Robert Gabel earned his M.B.A. from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and graduated Magna Cum Laude from The Honors College at the University of Houston with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering.
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About Tubular Labs: Tubular Labs is the global leader in video intelligence for the cross-platform world.
Doug Barry
Co-Founder, COO and CFO of PORTL Hologram
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About MSMCi, PopJax, PORTL Hologram: PORTL Hologram offers at-home hologram machines.
David Nussbaum
Founder and CEO of PORTL Hologram
David Nussbaum is the Founder and CEO at PORTL Inc.
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About PORTL Hologram: PORTL Hologram offers at-home hologram machines.
Nicholas Woodman
Owner, CEO & Founder of GoPro
While the eight-person staff of GoPro was enjoying the success of their first HD HERO camera in 2009, founder and CEO Nick Woodman realized one thing: to support his vision, he was going to need a bigger staff. But before Woodman could think bigger, he had to start out small. After receiving a degree in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego, Woodman founded an online promotions company, Fun Bug. In 2001, Woodman sold Fun Bug and took off surfing and traveling the world. The decision inspired more than the personal – Woodman’s passion for surfing sparked the idea to create the now-popular wearable and gear mountable camera and in 2002, Woodman founded GoPro. After years of research and planning, the company released its first product, the GoPro HERO, a 35mm film-based camera that was worn on the wrist. Made up of some of Woodman’s friends and family members, the early GoPro team established the company as a true innovator by continually iterating on the product, moving from a film-based camera to a digital still and video camera. A lifetime extreme sports enthusiast, Woodman was learning how to race cars when he was compelled to move the camera from his wrist to the top of his car. This simple idea led to an array of camera mounting devices – for everything from helmets to surfboards, and even dog collars.
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About GoPro: GoPro is a brand of personal cameras used in extreme action video photography.
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.
Matteo Carroll
Co-Founder of Ribbon
Matteo Carroll is a Co-Founder of Ribbon.
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About Ribbon: Ribbon is a one-stop-shop online platform for live and recorded events that provides services such as Zoom integrations and email marketing.
Jonathan Gray
CEO and Co-Founder of Encore Music Technologies
Jonathan Gray, founder and CEO of Cask, is an entrepreneur and software engineer with a background in startups, open source, and all things data. Prior to founding Cask, Jonathan was a software engineer at Facebook where he drove HBase engineering efforts, including Facebook Messages and several other large-scale projects, from inception to production. An open source evangelist, Jonathan was responsible for helping build the Facebook engineering brand through developer outreach and refocusing the open source strategy of the company. Prior to Facebook, Jonathan founded Streamy.com, where he became an early adopter of Hadoop and HBase and is now a core contributor and active committer in the community. Jonathan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University.
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About Encore Music Technologies, Orcada, The Apache Software Foundation: Encore is an interactive live music mobile-based platform aiming to help artists monetize their connections with fans.
Ilya Pozin
Co-Founder (acquired) of Pluto TV
Ilya Pozin is an entrepreneur, writer and investor. He is the founder of Pluto TV, Open Me (acquired), and Coplex. He is a columnist for Forbes and Inc. In 2012, Inc. Magazine recognized Ilya as a ’30 Under 30′ Entrepreneur. In 2013, LinkedIn selected Ilya as one of 100 Top Influencers, along with the likes of Richard Branson, Barack Obama, Tony Robbins and Mark Cuban. An early immigrant from Russia, Ilya founded his first company Coplex (formerly Ciplex) when he was 17-years-old. Coplex is a multi-million dollar interactive agency that has been behind the build of thousands of websites and applications, as well as management of millions of dollars of marketing and media buys. After stepping down from the CEO role at Coplex, Ilya founded Open Me, a consumer-focused social greeting and gifting company. After partnering with Threadless and successfully raising capital for the business, the company quickly grew to millions of users. Open Me was acquired by Rowl in 2015. In 2013, Ilya co-founded Pluto TV, an OTT television platform that combines digital and traditional content into 100+ linear channels. Pluto TV raised $13M led by US Venture Partner, Sky, Universal Music Group, UTA, and other prominent investors. The service is available for free on connected TV devices, PC and Mac, mobile platforms (iOS and Android) as well as on the web at http://pluto.tv Ilya resides in Los Angeles where he works, writes, invests, mentors and on occasion, attempts to golf. Follow Ilya on Twitter (@ilyaNeverSleeps) and LinkedIn.
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About Coplex, Forbes, Inc.com, Pluto TV: Pluto TV is the leading free streaming television service in America.
Tom Ryan
CEO & Co-Founder of Pluto TV
Tom Ryan is CEO and Co-Founder of Pluto TV, the leading free streaming television service in America that is also available in 22 countries across Europe and Latin America. Pluto TV carries and programs more than 250 live channels and thousands of on-demand movies and TV shows in partnership with hundreds of major TV networks, movie studios, publishers, and digital media companies. Each month over 36 million viewers tune in to watch premium news, TV shows, movies, sports, live events, cartoons, and trending digital series on mobile, web, and living room devices. Pluto TV is a top free app on Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Android mobile, and also powers built-in streaming television services on Vizio LG, and Samsung smart TVs. Earlier in his career, Tom served as CEO of Threadless (a popular crowdsourced design and e-commerce company), SVP of Digital Strategy at EMI Music as well as co-founder of Cductive (an early digital music retailer company that he merged with eMusic). He holds an AB from Dartmouth College and an MBA from INSEAD in France.
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About Pluto TV: Pluto TV is the leading free streaming television service in America.
Jernej Barbic
Co-Founder and CTO of Ziva Dynamics
Jernej Barbic is the co-founder and CTO at Ziva Dynamics.
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About Ziva Dynamics: Ziva Dynamics is a software company that specializes in character creation and human simulation.
Jeffrey Tong
CEO & Co-Founder of Zelos Gaming
Jeffrey Tong serves as the CEO and founder of Zelos Gaming.
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About Zelos Gaming: Zelos is a cross-game rewards program that enables gamers to earn points by completing in-game tasks and redeem virtual prizes.
Derek Chiang
Co-Founder & CTO of Zelos Gaming
Derek Chiang serves as a co-founder and CTO at Zelos Gaming.
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About Zelos Gaming: Zelos is a cross-game rewards program that enables gamers to earn points by completing in-game tasks and redeem virtual prizes.
Robert H. Reid
Founder of Rhapsody
Rob Reid is a high technology entrepreneur and bestselling author based in both New York City and San Francisco, California. A former venture capitalist, he was the founder, CEO, and later Chairman of Listen.com, which created & developed Rhapsody – the first online music service to secure full-catalog licenses from all of the major labels. Rob has worked with technology startups as an investor, board member, and formal advisor for over ten years. Companies in his portfolio have included IGN, Surf Air, and Akili Labs. Rob majored in International Relationships at Stanford, later earned an MBA Harvard Business School, and was also a Fulbright Scholar in Cairo, Egypt. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and his books are published by Random House.
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About Rhapsody: Rhapsody is a music subscription service that offers videos, playlists, reviews and radio stations.
Tony Chen
CEO and Founder of Channel Factory
Tony Chen is CEO and Founder of Channel Factory, a social video marketing platform that helps top brands and agencies expand their brand video viewership. Tony is a digital pioneer in the social video space, creating cutting edge solutions to make sure brand videos are safely watched, tracked and shared across multiple platforms by millions of people. Tony founded Channel Factory in 2013 and has quickly scaled the company by partnering with top agencies and Fortune 500 brands. In 2016 alone, Channel Factory spearheaded more than 5,000 campaigns, served over five billion video views and worked with more than three hundred Fortune 500 companies on their campaigns. Prior to Channel Factory, Tony founded Yellow Thunder Media in 2010 while attending Rice University where he double majored in Economics and Piano. Pioneering a scientific method to help videos go viral on YouTube, the company generated more than one billion views within three years for top brands such as Coca Cola, Sony Pictures, and McDonalds among many others. Tony is an avid angel investor with investments in e-commerce companies including, Fab Fit Fun and Trendy Butler, Jumpcut Studio and software start up, Outreach. He has been recognized by Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for his achievements in marketing and advertising.
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About Channel Factory: Channel Factory is the world leader in YouTube brand suitability, content alignment and ad performance.
Stanley Adrianus
CEO & Founder of Gamenauts
Stanley is currently the founder & CEO of Gamenauts, a games developer/publisher in San Francisco Bay Area. The company has remained profitable and 100% self-funded since its founding in 2005. Gamenauts maintains a portfolio of several Top 10 titles in the App Store and over 16 million mobile downloads. Prior to Gamenauts, Stanley was Lead Designer at Yahoo! Games, where he was responsible for the UI/UX when the site grew to be #1 games portal on the web.
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About Gamenauts, Plato: Gaemnauts is a game developer and publisher of applications for mobile devices.
Shan Sinha
Founder, Exec Chairman, Board Member of Highfive
Shan Sinha is the CEO and Co-Founder of Highfive. He co-founded Highfive with the vision of making every conversation at work face-to-face. Prior to Highfive, Shan was the Group Product Manager for Google Apps for Enterprise. Shan joined Google via acquisition in 2010 after Google bought his collaboration company, DocVerse, which later became part of Google Drive. Shan founded DocVerse in 2007 after leaving his role as Product Manager for Microsoft SharePoint and SQL Server. Shan graduated from MIT with a Masters and Bachelors in Computer Science, where he conducted research in network systems and performance. Highfive is Shan’s fourth startup company.
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About : Highfive simplifies business collaboration with a conferencing platform that builds connected cultures.
Jeremy Roy
Co-Founder of Highfive
Jeremy Roy has served as Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Highfive since 2012. He is responsible for the product engineering and customer support teams. Prior to Highfive, Jeremy worked on Enterprise Google+ and Google Drive, after his previous startup DocVerse was acquired by Google in 2010. He has a BS in Electrical Engineering from MIT.
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About DocVerse, Highfive: Highfive simplifies business collaboration with a conferencing platform that builds connected cultures.
Chris M. Willliams
Founder & CEO of pocket.watch
Chris M. Williams is the Founder & CEO at pocket.watch.
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About pocket.watch, pocket.watch: Pocket.watch is a new studio creating global franchises from the YouTube stars and characters loved by Generation Alpha.
Co-Founder, CEO of Samba TV
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About Carrot Capital, i/o Ventures, Samba TV: Samba TV enables the next-generation TV experience powered by its first-party data and helps viewers engage with relevant media.
Crystal Rose
Founder and CEO of Make Sense Labs
Crystal Rose is the CEO and Founder of Sensay Inc, DBA Make Sense Labs. Full biography can be found at http://crystalrose.me
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About DeFiance Media, Make Sense Labs: Make Sense Labs Secure Messaging with Blockchain Technology
Sumit Gupta
Co-Founder & CEO of Boom.tv
Sumit Gupta is an Advisor at Boom Fantasy and Founder & CEO at Boom.tv. He is a 3x Entrepreneur (multiple exits), Angel Investor and Mentor. Founded 3 companies. Invested in 50+ startups including Discord, G2 eSports, BlockChain Capital, Blockstream, Blockcypher, Filecoin, Wag, Classpass, OpenDoor, HoneyBook, Managed-by-Q, Dishcraft Robotics. Mr. Gupta also runs Piazza eSports Ventures with pa articular focus on investments and incubating startups Infusing tech into eSports and Game Streaming. Investments include Discord, Vulcun/StreamLabs, BitKraft, G2 Esports. Startup Portfolio includes DrDisRespect stream team, Boom.tv, Rolocule Games, Boom Fantasy Previously, He served as a Founder & CEO of Bash Gaming, took the mobile gaming company to annual revenue of $75M, profitable and sold it to GSN for $170M. Previously as founder CEO of BitRhymes Apps, top 10 app developers in social space. Before that, I was part of founding team at Business Signatures that was sold to Entrust for $55M
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About afkVR, Boom.tv: BoomTV is an Esports entertainment platform that provides tools to automate score tracking, streaming, and generating event hubs.
Hrish Lotlikar
Co-Founder & CEO of SuperWorld
Hrish is Co-Founder and Chief Business Development Officer of The Rogue Initiative (therogueinitiative.com). The Rogue Initiative is a Los Angeles-based entertainment company composed of award-winning entertainment industry professionals including alumni from Amblin Entertainment, Pixar, Dreamworks Animation, Disney and Activision Entertainment creating new AAA cinematic interactive virtual reality, digital media experiences, feature film, and television content. Hrish is Co-founder of SuperWorld (http://superworldapp.com), a social Augmented Reality app on iPhone. SuperWorld allows users, brands and influencers to tag anything anywhere in AR with photos, videos, texts, and 3D objects, and share their AR world with friends, followers and fans. Hrish is a founding Managing Partner of EastLabs, a seed stage venture capital fund based in Kyiv, Ukraine. He was the Senior Business Developer/Global Evangelist at Toptal (https://www.toptal.com/), backed by Andreessen Horowitz, providing elite talent (software engineers, designers and finance professionals) to companies globally. He is also a Director at Startup Labs, a seed stage venture capital fund based in San Francisco, California, investing in emerging markets around the world. He is also a Mentor at TechPeaks, an information technology accelerator based in Trento, Italy and and Grand Central Tech, an early stage accelerator in New York City.(https://grandcentraltech.com/). He is on the Supervisory Board of TechMinsk (https://techminsk.com/), an international technology entrepreneurship school based in Minsk, Belarus. Previously, he was in venture capital at Spencer Trask Ventures, an investment banker at HSBC Securities in New York, and at UBS Investment Bank in investment banking/M&A and in global business development at management consulting firm Aon Hewitt. Hrish earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science/Pre-Med from Rice University, a Master of Public Health and MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship from the University of Illinois at Chicago. A U.S. Congressional Scholar, Hrish Lotlikar served as a Board Member of the New York Executive Forum, and is a member of the New York City Venture Connection and the New York Private Equity Network.
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About Diarize, Eastlabs, GLG, Growth Engine, Startup Labs, SuperWorld, The Rogue Initiative: Social Augmented Reality Platform
Max Woon
Co-Founder of SuperWorld
Co-founder of SuperWorld (AR real estate + ad marketplace on the blockchain: https://superworldapp.com), SKIT! (animations by kids for kids), Phizzle (mobile sports marketing for Knicks, Cavaliers, HBO, Comcast, etc), Xfire (social gaming, acquired by Viacom/MTV for $102m in 2006).
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About Flowroom, Foundry Six, SuperWorld, Xfire: Social Augmented Reality Platform
Alex (June) Zhu
Co-Founder, Co-CEO of Musical.ly
Alex (June) Zhu is the Co-founder & Co-CEO of musical.ly, a video social network that celebrates daily life with videos recorded in 15 seconds or less. Founded in 2014 with longtime friend, Luyu Yang, musical.ly is a video social network for creating, sharing and discovering short videos. Every day, millions of people use musical.ly as an outlet to express themselves through singing, dancing, comedy, and lip-syncing. The app celebrates creativity with videos that are shared across the musical.ly community. With over 150 million users, musical.ly has hit #1 in the iOS app store for free apps in 20 countries – including the United States. In June of 2016, musical.ly released its breakout livestreaming platform live.ly, which provides the musical.ly community with a broader canvas on which they can express themselves. Immediately following its official launch, live.ly began trending and hit the number one spot in 8 countries in the iOS app store. Designed to connect people all over the world and encourage self-expression, musical.ly delivers instant video experiences to the hands of its users, dubbed “musers,” with special tools and features that bring each moment to life. As an outlet for singing, dancing, comedy, lip-syncing and more – musical.ly offers a fun place for users to create content, showcase interests, and share videos in ways that align with current conversations and trends across social networks. Previous to the international success of musical.ly, Zhu was a product designer and manager at SAP, the world’s largest enterprise software company, and also served as a creative director at Microsoft driving “mobile disruption” initiatives in the consumer space. Zhu currently resides in Shanghai.
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About Musical.ly: Musical.ly is a video social network for creating, sharing, and discovering short videos.
Adrien Dewulf
Co-Founder of Heroes Jobs
Adrien Dewulf is the Co-Founder at Heroes Jobs.
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About Heroes Jobs: GenZ professional social network
Tristan Petit
Co-Founder of Heroes Jobs
Tristan Petit is the Co-Founder at Heroes Jobs.
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About Heroes Jobs: GenZ professional social network
Cyriac Lefort
Co-Founder of Heroes Jobs
Cyriac Lefort is the Co-Founder at Heroes Jobs.
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About Heroes Jobs: GenZ professional social network
Vijay Koduri
Co-Founder of Sizzle
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About HashCut, Sizzle: Sizzle.gg leverages AI to automatically create gaming highlights from Twitch and YouTube livestreams.
Murali Raju
Co-Founder of Sizzle
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About HashCut, Sizzle: Sizzle.gg leverages AI to automatically create gaming highlights from Twitch and YouTube livestreams.
Eran Hammer
Founder & CEO of Sideway, Inc.
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About Sideway, Inc.: Stories told through the lens of social media via our streaming app where every show is told within its own fictional social network.
Jason Sperske
Co-Founder & CTO of Zeality Inc.
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About Grammarly, Zeality Inc.: Zeality Inc. is the leading provider of innovative cloud solutions for delivering immersive media content across all connected devices.
Lorna Borenstein
Founder & CEO of Grokker
Lorna Borenstein is the CEO & Founder ,Author at Grokker.
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About Grokker, Grokker: Netflix for wellbeing with community at its core
Derek Andersen
CEO and Co-Founder of Bevy
Derek Andersen is the founder of Startup Grind, a 50+ cities community designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs. In 2013 Startup Grind will host 20,000 entrepreneurs at 300 events in 20 countries. After founding Vaporware Labs in 2009, he incubated many products (most of which failed spectacularly) including Startup Grind and professional social network Commonred. In 2012 Commonred was sold to Income.com. He is also Ex-Electronic Arts where he worked on games like Burnout, Mirror’s Edge, The Sims, and Need For Speed. Having spent 8-years living outside the United States, he currently lives in Palo Alto California with his wife and two children.
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About Bevy, Startup Grind: Bevy is an enterprise-grade virtual conference and community events platform designed to build, grow, and scale global communities.
Victor Pontis
Co-Founder of Luma
Victor Pontis is a Co-founder at Luma.
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About Luma: Luma provides a platform for people to host virtual classes, record live shows, educate, and find their communities via Zoom.
Toby Zhang
Founder of Shop LIT Live
Toby leads the firms investments in consumer and emerging technologies. At CRCM, Toby co-founded CRCM Frontier Technology Fund, a joint early stage venture fund between CRCM and Youku focused on media, AR/VR, and A.I. Prior to CRCM, Toby was an venture investor at Edison Partners, a growth-stage VC focusing on interactive marketing, e-commerce, and financial technologies. Toby previously worked as a technical program manager in the Windows Division at Microsoft building Windows 8 and 8.1. He has also spent a number of years building and advising tech startups. He co-founded Tradeversity, an online textbook market platform backed by RPM Ventures. He also served as a consultant at the Wharton Small Business Development Center. Toby holds an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a Masters in Engineering from University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
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About Shop LIT Live, Youku Global Media Fund: Shop LIT Live is a live streaming platform that connects brands and merchants to consumers through immersive shopping experiences.
Diaz Nesamoney
Founder, President & CEO of Jivox
Diaz Nesamoney founder of Jivox has had two prior successful ventures. He was previously co-founder, President and Chief Operating Officer at Informatica (NASDAQ:INFA), which he took from a startup to a publicly Diaz Nesamoney is an accomplished technology entrepreneur who founded three successful technology companies, all harnessing the power of data to power enterprise and consumer applications. Currently Diaz is Founder, President, and CEO of Jivox, a company that provides a technology platform for data-driven personalized advertising and marketing. He was previously Co-founder, President, and Chief Operating Officer at Informatica (NASDAQ:INFA), which he took from a startup to a publicly traded company in 1999. Informatica pioneered data integration software as a category and is now the market leader with more than $1 billion in revenue and a $5 billion market capitalization. Before founding Jivox, he founded Celequest and served as its CEO until early 2007, when the company was acquired by Cognos/IBM. Celequest introduced the market’s first business intelligence and analytics appliance, a disruptive innovation that led to its acquisition. Diaz holds a Masters degree in Computer Science from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in India and is the holder of seven technology patents. Diaz is also the author of the first book on using data and technology to personalize digital advertising.
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About Jivox: Jivox offers a cloud-based, data-driven omnichannel platform that personalizes digital advertising and marketing experiences at scale.
Yitao Guan
Co-Founder & CTO of FunPlus
Yitao Guan, Founder and CTO of FunPlus, is a technology enthusiast passionate about social, mobile, cloud and data. Prior to founding FunPlus, he worked as a software architect for more than 15 years with leading technology companies, including IBM and Ask.com, where he was responsible for building worldclass infrastructure accessible from anywhere with the capacity to process hundreds of millions requests every day. Yitao received both a Bachelor and Master of Science degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
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About FunPlus: FunPlus is a leading global developer and publisher of free-to-play mobile games
Angela Antony
Founder and CEO of Scoutible
Angela Antony is the Founder and CEO of Scoutible, the world’s first game-based hiring platform, which uses machine learning to track soft skills through gameplay and uncover the best candidates for a job. Angela spent nine years at Harvard, focusing her psychology, business, and law degrees on labor market issues across society. After Harvard, she worked at the White House under Obama as part of the National Economic Council, during which time she was writing a book about her Harvard research titled Invisible Handcuffs, which ultimately became the primary research underlying Scoutible. Scoutible was recently named one of Inc Magazine’s 8 Most Innovative Startups of the Year and Angela was named to Inc’s Female Founders 100 list.
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About Scoutible: Scoutible is a video game-based hiring platform.
Tyler Law
CPO & Co-Founder of Scoutible
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About Scoutible: Scoutible is a video game-based hiring platform.
Roger Mincheff
Founder & President & Chief Content Officer of Big Boots
Roger Mincheff is the Senior Vice President of Branded Entertainment for Digital Content at Fox Filmed Entertainment, a division of News Corporation.Roger joined Fox after serving as CEO of Spacedog Media, a full-service digital marketing agency he founded in 1998. Under his guidance, Spacedog utilized new media to develop engaging brand experiences across Internet, mobile, digital signage, print and event platforms. The company developed entertainment content opportunities for major brands including Qantas Airways, Carls’ Jr., Hardees, Mazda, Harley-Davidson, Universal Music, HBO, Boost Mobile, McDonalds, and others.
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About Big Boots: Big Boots is a studio dedicated to incubating, building, and launching engagement platforms.
Dave Swartz
Founder, President and CCO of Hang w/
Dave has served as MEDLʼs creative director since its inception. While at MEDL, Dave has overseen the development and design of hundreds of mobile applications for names as diverse as About.com, Encyclopedia Britannica, Medtronic, Taco Bell and Universal Picturesʼ Ted. Prior to MEDL, Dave served as the Creative Director of DGWB Advertising, named by Creativity Magazine as one of the top 20 Creative Agencies in the U.S. Dave has led strategic and creative marketing efforts for regional and national advertising accounts in a variety of industries such as publishing, banking, multi-unit retail, fast food, healthcare and technology.
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About Anonymous Philanthropy LLC, Hang w/, MEDL Mobile: Hang w/ empowers users to stream and broadcast live high-quality video to other phones using their standard wireless service.
Andrew Maltin
Founder & CEO of Hang w/
Andrew co-founded MEDL Mobile in March 2009. Prior to founding MEDL Mobile, Mr. Maltin served as the Chief Executive Officer of Momentum Gaming, Inc., where he led the company’s marketing, business development and technology efforts to build a world class online gaming infrastructure which both operated independently and licensed its technology to several of the world’s leading gaming sites. He has been featured in Entrepreneur, 944, Success, The Wall Street Journal and The LA Times. He is also the CEO of Hang w/ a company that he also co-founded in 2012.
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About Hang w/: Hang w/ empowers users to stream and broadcast live high-quality video to other phones using their standard wireless service.
Sam Shahidi
Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer of Shots Studios
Sam Shahidi is the Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder of Shots Studios, a Los Angeles-based entertainment company specializing in content production, talent management, and data analysis. Since beginning to focus on creating content, Shots Studios has made a splash in the industry for bridging the gap between traditional and digital media. Billboard named him an “Internationalist & Latin Power Players” in 2018 and included him in 2019 “Music’s New Generation: 25 Top Innovators” for his work in growing the dance & latin genre with new media and the success of Shots Studios artists such as Alesso, Anitta, Lele Pons & Rudy Mancuso.
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About Shots Studios: Shots Studios is a Los Angeles-based, data-driven entertainment company that produces online comedy and music videos.
John Shahidi
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Shots Studios
John Shahidi is CEO and Co-Founder of Shots Studios, a global entertainment company at the center of a new age of media and content. Along with his brother, Sam, Shahidi’s leadership guided Shots’ transition from a successful selfie-sharing app to an original comedy and music production studio. In 2018, Billboard called Shahidi an “internationalist” for his role in dance music’s expansion. He was also recognized by Billboard as a part of “music’s new power generation” as an innovator for launching Venezuelan-American digital creator Lele Pons’ music career, introducing Brazilian superstar Anitta to new markets, and propelling Swedish producer Alesso to new heights.
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About Shots Studios: Shots Studios is a Los Angeles-based, data-driven entertainment company that produces online comedy and music videos.
Yangbin Wang
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Vobile
Founder & CEO, Vobile, Inc.
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About Vobile: Vobile offers complete solutions to protect, measure, and monetize the best movies and TV content across the Internet and on all screens.
Aleks Gollu
Founder & CEO of 11Sight
Aleks Gollu is founder, CEO at 11Sight.
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About 11Sight: Inbound Video Call and Customer Engagement Platform For Revenue Teams
Farokh Eskafi
Founder and President and CTO of 11Sight
Farokh Eskafi is founder, president and CTO at 11Sight.
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About 11Sight, Santa Clara University, TagArray: Inbound Video Call and Customer Engagement Platform For Revenue Teams
Valerian Bennett
Founder of POP Network
Valerian Bennett is founder & CEO of PopChest. Mr. Bennett is a veteran television producer/editor having worked on hit TV shows for E!, MTV, A&E, and many more. Valerian is a Silicon Valley native and graduated from the University of Southern California film school.
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About POP Network: The POP Network is a decentralised solution to the delivery of monetised video using micro payments and token rewards.
Jerry Luk
Co-Founder and COO of Firework
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About Firework: Firework is a short video startup that enables short, vertical video technology for everyone.
Jade Charles
CEO, Founder of Fragmob
Jade Charles is the founder of Penumbra Labs, a technology consulting group mainly specializing in mobile, blockchain, and web platforms. Previously, he was responsible for the innovation and architecture of the Fragmob platform along with the mobile and social strategy. He is considered an expert in mobile development technologies and online social psychology. In addition to founding Fragmob in 2007, Jade was previously responsible for various celebrity social networks such as Jessica Beil’s Make the Difference Network and Bode Miller’s SkiSpace.com Prior to FragMob, Jade served as CTO of TextAmerica where he was solely responsible for the development of the first hosted mobile photo sharing service in the world as featured in TIME Magazine and The New York Times. Jade Charles attended the University of Hawaii School of Electrical Engineering where he played Division I Football before starting his first company at age 19.
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About Fragmob: Fragmob is a mobile SaaS commerce, CRM, and training platform developer for Independent Sales Reps
Michael Deng
Founder & CEO of ArcSoft
An unusual entrepreneur – with a finely balanced scientist’s left brain and artist-photographer’s right brain – Michael initially sought out funding from friends and family to start ArcSoft in 1994. His original idea was to build an imaging software title with sophisticated photo editing functionality that was not only effortless to use but could be enjoyed at a nominal cost. Since those early days, Michael’s strategic, customer-focused vision for the future together with his deep industry knowledge has transformed ArcSoft into a global leader in imaging technology and multimedia software, licensing its products and IPs to mainstream digital camera, mobile phone and multimedia PC manufacturers.
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About ArcSoft: ArcSoft is a software developer of multimedia technologies and applications across desktop, mobile and embedded platforms.
Phineas Walton
CSO, Co-Founder & Engineer of Giggl
Phineas Walton is a co-founder of Giggl, redefining the way we collaborate and connect online through multiplayer browsing. Phineas started programming when he was 10 years old, and by the age of 15, he started working for The Nations, until pivoting and building his own companies.
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About Giggl, Hiven, The Nations: Watch and browse together with your friends and teams. Your new portal into the internet.
Steve Heffernan
Co-Founder & Head of Product of Mux
Steve Heffernan is the creator of Video.js, an open source web video player in use on over 1 million websites and with over 1 billion videos played per month. He’s currently leading product at Mux, building video performance monitoring and APIs for video streaming. Steve has been helping run the SF Video Tech Meetup and the Demuxed video engineering conference for the last five years.
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About Mux: Mux is a video platform designed to make video streaming and analytics possible for every development team.
Matt McClure
Co-Founder of Mux
Matt McClure is the Co-Founder of Mux.
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About Mux: Mux is a video platform designed to make video streaming and analytics possible for every development team.
James Bower
Founder of Wikipad
James Bower is the president of MasterImage 3D, LLC.
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About Citizens Reserve, SUKU, Wikipad: Wikipad is an Android-powered gaming tablet that has the features of a high quality tablet and is tough enough to take all.
Milana Lewis
Co-Founder & CEO of Stem Disintermedia
Prior to founding Stem, Milana spent the last five years as a Digital Media Agent at United Talent Agency (UTA). Rabkin represented top digital creators, and sourced investment opportunities for UTA’s VC division. She has been recognized as one of Hollywood’s New Leaders by Variety and was named one of the “30 under 30” most influential young executives by Refinery29 in 2012.
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About Stem Disintermedia: Stem Disintermedia helps creators, artists, and musicians collect digital revenue and enables them to track and share their earnings.
Atul Phadnis
Founder and CEO of Vitrina A.I.
As Chief Content Officer, Atul leads the company’s global content and editorial teams across Video, Music and Sports to develop global content strategies and expand on the company’s existing content and data offerings. Previously, Atul founded and was CEO of What’s-ON, the largest video data provider for India and the Middle East, which was acquired by Gracenote in 2014. In this role, he successfully raised funding from Sequoia Capital and Intel Capital and helped the company achieve market leader status in Electronic Program Guides (EPG) and TV search. Before launching What’s-ON, Atul served as Vice President for Television Audience Measurement (TAM) Media Research, a joint venture between Nielsen India and Kantar Media Research created to quantify TV viewership. Atul currently sits on the TV Ratings Technical Committee for the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) in India.
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About SRI International, Vitrina, Vitrina A.I.: Vitrina A.I. is a SaaS platform for the video content industry to facilitate and enable cross-border transactions.
Alagu Periyannan
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer of BlueJeans Network
Alagu has over 20 years of research, product development, and strategy experience bringing innovative networking and video products to market. Prior to founding Blue Jeans Network, he held the position of Chief Technology Officer at Blue Coat Systems, a leader in network security and WAN optimization appliances. During his tenure at Blue Coat he held various senior R&D management positions and was part of the management team responsible for leading the company through its successful repositioning from CacheFlow, a maker of web and video caching appliances, to Blue Coat. He also led the team that was responsible for the company’s entry into the WAN optimization market. Prior to CacheFlow, Alagu was an early member of the management team at Entera, an Internet content delivery startup. He built an R&D team from the ground up to deliver streaming video caching products for the Content Delivery Network (CDN) market, culminating in a successful sale of the company to CacheFlow in 2000. Before joining Entera, Alagu spent eight years at Apple and held various research and product development roles in networking and video over networks in the Advanced Technology Group (ATG) and then as a founding member of the QuickTime Streaming Group. Alagu holds a Masters in Computer Science from North Carolina State University, Raleigh and a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, India.
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About BlueJeans Network: BlueJeans offers interactive, multi-directional video communication services through a cloud-based platform.
Julia Enthoven
Co-Founder and CEO of Kapwing
Julia Enthoven is the Founder of Kapwing.
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About Kapwing: Online editor for modern videos, GIFs, and images