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 General Partner operating in the Venture Capital space. If you think a General Partner 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.
Rashaun Williams
General Partner of Manhattan Venture Partners
Rashaun Williams is a former investment banker turned venture capitalist focused on tech, consumer products & media companies. With over 100 investments under his belt and over 20 exits, Mr. Williams is currently a general partner in the MVP All-Star Fund which is a late stage tech fund. Previously he founded venture capital fund Queensbridge Venture Partners where he invested in companies like Coinbase, Casper, Ring, PillPack, Lyft & Dropbox. Over the last 15 years he has been primarily responsible for bringing capital to emerging, diverse and alternative markets while working at Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs, Wachovia Securities & Deutsche Bank. In 2007 he founded Dixsville Partners, a private equity fund investing in infrastructure development and mineral companies in West Africa. In 2014 he founded and raised capital for venture capital fund Queensbridge Venture Partners with partners including hip hop icon Nas. Mr. Williams has successfully started, invested in and exited several companies. With a passion for financial literacy and entrepreneurship Mr. Williams founded the Kemet Institute in 2001, a non-profit focused on providing free financial literacy, entrepreneurship and life skills classes to under-served communities and schools. In 2015 he was appointed to the Board of Trustees for Fisk University. He is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi, Inc. and summa cum laude graduate of Morehouse College.
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About Manhattan Venture Partners, Morehouse College, MVP All-Star Fund, Value Investment Group: Principal investor and advisory solution to private venture backed technology companies and their shareholders.
Bill Lee
Co-Founder and General Partner of Craft Ventures
Bill Lee was CEO and co-founder of Remarq, a Benchmark Capital-backed collaboration company. At Remarq, Bill guided the company in its development of a complete end-to-end Internet messaging and collaboration platform. Before its acquisition by Critical Path in March 2000, the company developed high-volume messaging platforms for sites such as eBay, Sun, Novell, and Amazon. The company raised over $43 million in venture and debt financing. Bill has been appointed by the Mayor of San Jose to the Redevelopment Committee of San Jose. Bill also graduated Beta Gamma Sigma from UC Berkeley with a B.S. in accounting/finance and received a JD/MBA from UCLA.
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About Craft Ventures, West Coast Holdings: Craft Ventures is an early-stage venture fund specializing in the craft of building great companies.
Jeff Fluhr
Co-Founder and General Partner of Craft Ventures
Jeff is co-founder and general partner at Craft. He has been a successful tech entrepreneur and investor for two decades. While at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Fluhr entered the annual business plan competition with the idea of creating a trusted and transparent marketplace where fans could buy and sell tickets for sporting events and concerts. Fluhr dropped out of school and co-founded StubHub in March 2000. By 2007, StubHub had over 400 employees, more than $600 million of gross merchandise volume and partnerships with many professional and college sports teams. Fluhr served as CEO of StubHub until it was acquired by eBay for $310 million in 2007.
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About Craft Ventures: Craft Ventures is an early-stage venture fund specializing in the craft of building great companies.
Ashton Kutcher
General Partner of Sound Ventures
Ashton Kutcher is an actor, investor, entrepreneur, producer and philanthropist. Kutcher has been named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World,” as well as being honored by Vanity Fair ‘s “New Establishment List,” which identifies the top 50 of an innovative new breed of buccaneering visionaries, engineering prodigies and entrepreneurs. Twice, Kutcher was named one of Forbes magazine’s “World’s Most Powerful Celebrities,” as well as one of Fast Company magazine’s “Most Creative People.” Kutcher has been investing in technology for over a decade, both as an angel investor and a founding partner of A-Grade Investments and Sound Ventures. His fund portfolio includes Airbnb, Uber, Flexport, Brex, Robinhood, Bird, Airtable and Affirm among others. Kutcher is also the co-founder of Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children (www.thorn.org). Thorn drives technology innovation to fight the sexual exploitation of children. Kutcher currently stars in the Netflix original series, The Ranch. He also serves as Executive Producer. Until 2015, Kutcher starred in the CBS comedy series Two and a Half Men. The show ranked as the second most-watched comedy on all of network television. Kutcher first gained recognition as Michael Kelso on the Fox series That 70’s Show, and went on to star in a variety of box office hits on the big screen – including What Happens In Vegas with Cameron Diaz, The Guardian with Kevin Costner, No Strings Attached with Natalie Portman and the cult hit Dude, Where’s My Car. Kutcher served as co-creator and producer of MTV’s hit series, “Punk’d,” and The CW’s reality series “Beauty and the Geek” and “True Beauty.” He has also produced films such as No Strings Attached, Killers and The Butterfly Effect. Additionally, Kutcher co-founded APlus, a digital media company devoted to spreading the message of positive journalism, a kind of storytelling that focuses on our shared humanity. In 2016, APlus was purchased by Chicken Soup for the Soul.
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About A Plus, A-Grade Investments, RechargeStore, Sound Ventures, Thorn: Sound Ventures is a venture capital firm that seeks to invest in the technology sector.
Alexis Ohanian
Founder & General Partner of Seven Seven Six
Alexis Ohanian, born April 24, 1983, is an entrepreneur and investor in Brooklyn, NY, best known as the co-founder and executive chair of reddit, a platform for online communities to share links and have discussions. While he learned his earliest lessons in leadership and web design from his high school Quake 2 clan and Everquest guild, Alexis continued his official studies at the University of Virginia, where he met his future co-founder Steve Huffman during freshman year move-in day. This would lead to the founding of reddit, which he recounted along with many lessons for entrepreneurs, in his national bestseller, Without Their Permission. At UVA, Alexis majored in business and history with a minor in German. Though he had originally planned to become an immigration lawyer, he experienced an epiphany in his junior year (while sitting in a Waffle House) that led him to the realization that he didn’t want to practice law. Instead he convinced his best friend Steve to start a company with him. The pair traveled to Cambridge, MA during their senior year spring break to hear Paul Graham give a talk titled “How to Start a Startup.” After the lecture, Alexis invited Graham out for a drink so he and Steve could pitch Graham on their business idea. Graham agreed, loved the idea, and suggested they apply to a new seed stage venture firm he’d launched called Y Combinator. Alexis and Steve’s original plan was to build an infrastructure that would allow people to order food from their cell phones. Though the idea was rejected, Alexis and Steve were invited to join the first class of Y Combinator, on the condition that they’d come up with a new concept. The next idea they pitched to Graham would become reddit.com.
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About breadpig, Seven Seven Six: Seven Seven Six is a venture capital firm that primarily seeks to invest in seed rounds.
Justin Kan
General Partner & Co-Founder of Goat Capital
Justin Kan is the CEO and co-founder of Atrium, a technology company and corporate law firm providing fast, transparent, and price-predictable business and legal services to startups. As a founder of multiple companies and an investor in hundreds more, Justin involuntarily became a power user of corporate legal services. Justin’s mixed experiences with traditional law firms and billing practices inspired him to reimagine the delivery of legal services with a better client experience as his guide. At Atrium, Justin is chief visionary and leads a team of talented executives in developing a technology platform for legal professionals to meet client needs responsively, and rethinking and refining how services are packaged and priced so that legal spend is clear, transparent, and predictable for client legal budgets. The Atrium corporate law firm employs experienced startup lawyers who are attuned to the needs of Atrium’s client base of emerging companies. Prior to Atrium, Justin was a partner at Y Combinator, the preeminent startup accelerator. Justin was a co-founder of Justin.tv, which became Twitch, the popular video game streaming platform (acquired by Amazon in 2014); Exec, an on-demand errand service (acquired by Handybook in 2014); Socialcam, a mobile app for sharing video (acquired by Autodesk in 2012); and Kiko, the first Ajax web calendar. Justin is a prolific angel investor and mentor to startup founders. He is a graduate of Yale University.
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About Goat Capital, Zero-F: Goat Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage companies.
Robin Chan
Co-Founder & General Partner of Goat Capital
Robin Chan joined Goat Capital Founder and General Partner in 2020.
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About Bird, Expa, Goat Capital, Operation Masks, Operator, Square: Goat Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage companies.
Beth Turner
General Partner of SV Angel
Beth Turner is a General Partner at SV Angel. Prior to joining, Beth ran operations and invested with a family office focused on seed stage opportunities, investing in companies such as Clover Health, Flatiron Health, LifeLock, and Blue Apron. Prior to this, Beth was managing director of a consulting firm and worked with an international NGO with an operational focus in East Africa. Prior to this, Beth was an early employee at the ad-tech startup Adaptly and worked with one of Israel’s first startups, Netafim. She is a Siemens Westinghouse Scholar, has spoken at TEDx and The World Space Conference, the youngest person to ever record an asteroid occultation, and a musician (performing the national anthem for NBA/NFL, with the Houston Grand Opera, and on an album with Albany records). Beth graduated from MIT with a major in Civil and Environmental Engineering and minors in Physics and Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS).
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About SV Angel: SV Angel is an angel firm that helps startups with business development, financing, M&A, and other strategic advice.
Calvin Broadus
General Partner and Founder of Casa Verde Capital
For more than two decades, multi-platinum entertainment icon Snoop Dogg has raised the bar as a global entertainer and innovator. With more than 35 million albums sold worldwide, Snoop Dogg continues to pave the way in the entertainment industry, serving as a mentor to new and established artists. From his YouTube original series “GGN News,” to his investments in tech companies like Secret, Reddit and Robinhood, to his philanthropic work with the Snoop Youth Football League, Snoop’s successful ventures within music, film, fashion, television and technology set him apart as a cultural icon.
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About Casa Verde Capital, MERRY JANE: Casa Verde Capital is a venture capital firm specialized in seed investments.
Ted Chung
General Partner of Casa Verde Capital
Ted Chung is media entrepreneur and visionary based in Los Angeles, CA. Chung is Snoop Dogg’s business partner and co-investor in technology, media, film and entertainment ventures. An industry veteran, Chung is the Founder of Cashmere Agency, a lifestyle-marketing company specializing in identifying trends in popular culture, with a focus on multicultural millennials, and Founder of Stampede Management, an artist and producer management company. Ted graduated from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania with a specialization in Entertainment Marketing. He is an avid traveler and enjoys collecting music memorabilia and hot sauces from around the world.
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About Casa Verde Capital, Cashmere Agency, MERRY JANE, Stampede Management: Casa Verde Capital is a venture capital firm specialized in seed investments.
Matt Mazzeo
General Partner of Coatue
Matthew Mazzeo is the General Partner at Coatue Management.
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About Coatue: Coatue invests in public and private equity markets focusing on the technology, media, and telecommunications industries.
Michael Gilroy
General Partner of Coatue
Michael invests in entrepreneurs building enterprise software and fintech companies. He is interested in talking to founders building the next generation enterprise tools and fintechs solving the structural issues in finance. Deeply passionate about building the entrepreneurial community in fintech, Michael launched Canaan’s FinTech Central in 2015, a quarterly event series covering trends in fintech. Previously, Michael advised technology companies with GCA Savvian and Matrix Capital. He received a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
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About Coatue: Coatue invests in public and private equity markets focusing on the technology, media, and telecommunications industries.
Luca Schmid
General Partner of Coatue
Luca Schmid is the Partner at Coatue.
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About Coatue: Coatue invests in public and private equity markets focusing on the technology, media, and telecommunications industries.
Caryn Marooney
General Partner of Coatue
Caryn Marooney is General Partner at Coatue Management. She sits on the boards of Zendesk and Elastic. Prior to Coatue, Caryn spent over 8 years in operating roles at Facebook where she oversaw communications for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus. Prior to Facebook, Caryn co-founded The OutCast Agency where she worked with companies of every size, from early stages onward, including Salesforce.com, Amazon, Netflix and VMware. Caryn is originally from New York City and holds a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University.
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About Coatue: Coatue invests in public and private equity markets focusing on the technology, media, and telecommunications industries.
Sebastian Duesterhoeft
General Partner of Coatue
Sebastian Duesterhoeft is working as a General Partner at Coatue.
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About Coatue, Coatue: Coatue invests in public and private equity markets focusing on the technology, media, and telecommunications industries.
David Schneider
General Partner of Coatue
David Schneider has served as ServiceNow’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Services since June 2011. Prior to joining ServiceNow, Schneider served as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales of the backup recovery systems division of EMC from July 2009 to June 2011. From January 2004 to July 2009, Schneider held senior positions at Data Domain, most recently Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales. Prior to joining Data Domain, he served as Vice President of Alliances, Channel and OEM Sales for Borland Software from January 2003 to December 2003. From May 2002 to January 2003, Schneider served as Vice President of Western United States Sales for TogetherSoft Corporation (later acquired by Borland Software). From January 1999 to May 2002, he was Western Regional Manager at Iona Technologies, Inc., an infrastructure software company. Schneider holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine.
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About Coatue: Coatue invests in public and private equity markets focusing on the technology, media, and telecommunications industries.
Lucas Swisher
General Partner of Coatue
Lucas Swisher is the General Partner at Coatue Management.
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About Coatue, UiPath: Coatue invests in public and private equity markets focusing on the technology, media, and telecommunications industries.
Yan-David Erlich
General Partner of Coatue
Yan-David Erlich is the Founder & CEO of Parsable (formerly known as Wearable Intelligence), a Silicon Valley based company transforming the lives, productivity, and safety for the 70% of the global workforce whose jobs aren’t performed at a desk. Parsable is replacing paper & walkie talkies with Sera: a collaboration app for industrial teams. With it, enterprises can digitize their procedures and have their mobile workforce collaboratively execute them for the first time. Parsable is backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, First Round Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Schlumberger Technology Corporation, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, and a handful of angels. Mr. Erlich is also a Managing Partner at Outlier Ventures (a micro seed fund), and a founding Venture Partner at MuckerLab, Los Angeles’ premier startup accelerator. Prior, Mr. Erlich was the Founder & CEO of ChoiceVendor, which was acquired by LinkedIn (LNKD) in 2010. He was also the Founder & CEO of Mogad, which was acquired by iSkoot (now a division of Qualcomm: QCOM) in 2008, and the Founder of Happiness Engines. Yan-David has been an Entrepreneur in Residence at Matrix Partners, Trinity Ventures, and Battery Ventures. He started his career with software engineering and product management roles at both Google and Microsoft and holds Bachelor of Science degrees in both Computer Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering from Rice University and an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (class of ’05). Yan-David enjoys advising other entrepreneurs and counts himself fortunate to have been involved since the early stages with companies including Mixer Labs (acq Twitter), Thumbtack, MasterClass, CircleUp, Twenty20, and Vidme. Mr. Erlich has been featured in Forbes, Fortune, Fox, The Wall Street Journal, among other publications.
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About Coatue, MuckerLab, Outlier Ventures, Weights & Biases: Coatue invests in public and private equity markets focusing on the technology, media, and telecommunications industries.
Alda Leu Dennis
General Partner of Initialized Capital
Alda is a General Partner at Initialized Capital. She brings over a decade of investing and legal experience to both Initialized and our portfolio companies. Prior to joining Initialized, she was a managing partner at 137 Ventures where she led investments in Planet Labs, Wish, Coupang, CourseHero, and Work Market (acquired by ADP). Additionally, she made personal early-stage investments in companies such as Maven, Common Networks, Legalzoom (acquired by Permira), SpaceX, and Osaro. Previously she was COO at Airtime, General Counsel at Founders Fund, Assistant General Counsel at Peter Thiel’s Clarium Capital Management, and practiced as a litigator for IP disputes at WSGR. She graduated from Stanford with BAs in economics and political science, and a JD from UCLA.
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About Initialized Capital: Initialized Capital is an early-stage VC firm focused on helping software engineers and designers with their first seed checks.
Brett Gibson
General Partner of Initialized Capital
Brett brings a career of shipping software to venture. He co-founded the blog platforms Posthaven and Posterous (acquired by Twitter) and later wrote software for Y Combinator, building their essential internal software systems. He was also a founder of the social news platform Slinkset, which was funded by YC in Summer 2008, and DrawHere, a browser drawing startup acquired by DeviantArt in 2006. He graduated with a BA in philosophy from University of California, Santa Barbara.
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About Initialized Capital: Initialized Capital is an early-stage VC firm focused on helping software engineers and designers with their first seed checks.
Ping Li
General Partner of Accel
Ping Li joined Accel in 2004 and focuses on investing in business software applications and cloud native technology platforms. He is the lead investor and board member at Jelly.ai, Split.io, Sysdig, Snyk and Trifacta. Ping is also active in cybersecurity as an investor at Code42, Illumio, Lookout Mobile Security, and Tenable Network Security (NASDAQ). He was responsible for numerous past investments with notable exits, including Arista (NASDAQ), Blue Jeans (acquired by Verizon), Cloudera (NYSE), Demisto (acquired by Palo Alto Networks), Heptio (acquired by VMware), Nimble Storage (NYSE), RelateIQ (acquired by Salesforce), Semmle (acquired by MSFT/GitHub), and Sumo Logic (NASDAQ). Prior to Accel, Ping served as product line manager and director of corporate development at Juniper Networks. He started his technology career in Asia working for Singapore Telecom and Goldman Sachs Asia’s technology practice. Ping advises the Accel Scholars program at Stanford University, where he works with Ph.D. students learning about entrepreneurship. Ping is from New Jersey and graduated from Harvard and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
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About Accel: Accel is an early and growth-stage venture capital firm that helps a global community of entrepreneurs.
Ryan Sweeney
General Partner of Accel
Ryan Sweeney joined Accel in 2009. He is the first outside investor and board member in a number of leading SaaS and enterprise software companies like Atlassian (TEAM), Qualtrics (acquired by SAP), Squarespace, PagerDuty, and Xero (XERO). Ryan is also active with innovative consumer startups like Bevy, GOAT, goPuff, and VSCO. He was also responsible for numerous investments with notable exits, including AirWatch (acquired by VMware), Braintree/Venmo (acquired by PayPal), Groupon (public), Lynda.com (acquired by LinkedIn), Lightspeed (acquired by CPqD), OzForex (public), and Simility (acquired by PayPal). Ryan grew up in South Jersey, trusts the process, and graduated from Notre Dame and Harvard Business School.
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About Accel, Responsory: Accel is an early and growth-stage venture capital firm that helps a global community of entrepreneurs.
Andrew Braccia
General Partner of Accel
Andrew Braccia joined Accel in 2007 and focuses on consumer-oriented mobile and web services companies. He was an early investor and on the boards of Slack (public), lynda.com (acquired by LinkedIn), Squarespace, Vox Media, Cornershop (acquired by Uber), MyFitnessPal (acquired by Under Armour), Hotel Tonight (acquired by Airbnb), Cloudera (public), Anchor.fm (acquired by Spotify), Gametime, and UserTesting. He also works closely with the teams at Braintree (acquired by PayPal), Etsy (public), Xero (public), and PagerDuty (public). Prior to joining Accel, Andrew spent close to a decade in a variety of executive positions at Yahoo!. Andrew is from Santa Rosa, California and graduated from the University of Arizona.
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About Accel, PagerDuty: Accel is an early and growth-stage venture capital firm that helps a global community of entrepreneurs.
Richard Wong
General Partner of Accel
Rich Wong joined Accel as a partner in 2006. Rich led Accel’s investments and currently serves on the Boards of Atlassian (TEAM), Checkr, Instabug, Pyn, Qwilt, ServiceChannel, Tune and UiPath. Rich also serves on the National Venture Capital Association Board of Directors. Rich previously led Accel’s investments in AirWatch (acquired by VMware), Angry Birds/Rovio (ROVIO.HE), MoPub (acquired by Twitter), AdMob (acquired by Google), Dealer.com (acquired by Cox), Osmo (acquired by BYJUs), Parature (acquired by Microsoft), Sunrun (RUN), SwiftKey (acquired by Microsoft), and 3LM (acquired by Motorola). In non-profit and volunteer roles, Rich serves on The MIT Corporation Development Committee, the Corporation Visiting Committee for MIT’s Political Science Department, and the Advisory Board for the MIT Trust Center for Entrepreneurship. Rich previously worked as an operator as EVP/GM of Products for mobile pioneer, Openwave Systems and CMO of Covad Communications. Rich started his career as a brand manager at Procter & Gamble and at McKinsey. Rich grew up in Santa Rosa, California and has a Materials Science & Engineering degree and Masters in Management from MIT.
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About Accel: Accel is an early and growth-stage venture capital firm that helps a global community of entrepreneurs.
Ted Schlein
General Partner of Kleiner Perkins
Ted Schlein currently works as the General Partner for Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers He previously worked at Symantec as the Vice President, Enterprise Solutions.
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About Kleiner Perkins: Kleiner Perkins is a venture capital firm that specializes in investing in early-stage, incubation, and growth companies.
Beth Seidenberg
General Partner of Kleiner Perkins
Beth Seidenberg is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers focused on life science investing. She works with entrepreneurs to develop companies with breakthrough technology for treating patients and improving health. Since joining KPCB in 2005, Beth has incubated five companies and serves on the board of directors of 3-V Biosciences, Armo Biosciences, Atara, Auxogyn, Breathe Technologies, Epizyme, iPierian, Redbrick Health and TESARO. Before joining KPCB, Beth was senior vice president of development and chief medical officer of Amgen, Inc. Earlier in her career, she was a senior executive in research and development at Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Merck & Co., Inc. Under her leadership, 10 innovative products were developed and marketed globally and achieved more than 40 regulatory approvals. Beth received her B.S. degree from Barnard College and her M.D. from the University of Miami. She completed her post-graduate training at Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University and the National Institutes of Health.
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About Kleiner Perkins, Westlake Village BioPartners: Kleiner Perkins is a venture capital firm that specializes in investing in early-stage, incubation, and growth companies.
Jordan Angelos
General Partner of Ribbit Capital
Jordan Angelos is Head of M&A and Investment for Stripe. Previously, Angelos joined Accel in 2013 and focuses on software, security and consumer investments. Jordan helped lead Accel’s investments in BetterCloud, UserTesting, Campaign Monitor, QMC and WorldRemit. Before Accel, Jordan worked at Goldman Sachs in New York, covering technology. Jordan is from Columbus, Ohio and graduated from Brigham Young University.
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About Ribbit Capital, Stripe: Ribbit Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage companies.
Nick Shalek
General Partner of Ribbit Capital
Prior to Ribbit, Nick served as Entrepreneur in Residence at Aspire Public Schools, where he incubated Schoolzilla, a cloud-based educational data management and analytics platform. Earlier in his career, Nick was a Director at Verne Global and a Senior Analyst at Yale Investments, where he contributed to over $800 million in new investment commitments across a diversity of asset classes, including U.S. public equities, venture capital, and natural resources. Extending his energy to service in the public sector, Nick was also elected to New Haven’s Board of Alderman —the city council— where he focused his efforts on the city’s economic development and education policy.
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About Ribbit Capital: Ribbit Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage companies.
Ben Paull
General Partner of Ribbit Capital
Ben Paull is a General Partner at Ribbit Capital.
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About Ribbit Capital: Ribbit Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage companies.
Ted Maidenberg
Co-founder & General Partner of Tribe Capital
Ted Maidenberg joined Tribe Capital as Co-founder and General Partner in 2018.
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About Tribe Capital: Tribe Capital is an early stage venture capital firm focused on recognizing and amplifying early stage product-market fit.
Darian Shirazi
General Partner of Gradient Ventures
Darian is a Partner at Gradient Ventures. At the age of 15, he interned at eBay as a code tester working on the third version of Sell Your Item. In early 2005, he joined Facebook as a Software Engineer reporting to Mark Zuckerberg as one of the company’s first outside hires. At Facebook, he contributed to several components of the social network’s products and the early versions of its mobile products. After Facebook, Darian studied Philosophy and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley for nearly two years before dropping out to work full-time on startups. After leaving Berkeley, Darian began advising and investing in many startups including becoming the first investor in Udemy, the online education marketplace. He then founded Radius, the leading B2B Customer Data Platform, and served as the company’s CEO for more than seven years, growing the company to more than one hundred employees, raising more than $100MM of venture capital from top tier firms, and serving dozens of Fortune 500 customers. In addition to these accomplishments, Darian is an early investor in the following companies: Lyft, Lending Club, Carbon Health, Palantir, Osaro, Casetext, Alloy.ai, Loft, and many others. In 2012, he was recognized as one of Forbes’ top 30 entrepreneurs under 30 at the age of 24 and has been a guest of CNBC’s Squawk Box, Forbes’ Braintech at the Aspen Institute, Web Summit, and several other well-known conferences and events. Darian lives in San Francisco with his wife and two cats and enjoys skiing, kitesurfing, and Civilization VI.
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About Gradient Ventures: Gradient Ventures helps founders build transformational companies.
Karen (Appleton ) Page
General Partner of B Capital Group
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About B Capital Group, Forum Ventures: B Capital Group is a venture capital firm that backs global entrepreneurs in the field of information technology.
Robert Mittendorff
General Partner and Head of Healthcare of B Capital Group
Robert brings to NVP more than a decade of operational and medical experience. Based in NVP’s Palo Alto office, Robert focuses on investing capital in venture and growth opportunities in the healthcare sector. Prior to NVP, Robert was the Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Hansen Medical Inc. (Nasdaq: HNSN). During his tenure, he launched multiple products, including the Magellan and Sensei X robotic systems, and was involved in leading products from concept to first commercial shipment. As a corporate officer, Robert also led the Company’s partnerships with GE, Siemens, Philips and St. Jude Medical and executed transactions totaling over $100M. He created the Scientific Advisory Board and participated in two public financings. Prior to Hansen Medical, Robert worked in the device, pharmaceutical and biotech industries with experience at a number of companies, working in strategic, business development and marketing capacities. Robert is also a board certified emergency physician who completed his residency training at Stanford. Robert received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He received his B.S. in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins University where he played on the soccer team. He has completed fellowships under the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (neuroscience), MIT Sloan School of Management, and Harvard Business School.
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About B Capital Group, Health Catalyst, Kaiser Permanente: B Capital Group is a venture capital firm that backs global entrepreneurs in the field of information technology.
Rashmi Gopinath
General Partner of B Capital Group
Rashmi is a General Partner at B Capital leading growth-stage enterprise investments. Previously, she was a Managing Director at M12, Microsoft’s Venture Fund and led investments for the fund globally in cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, devops, AI/ML, and enterprise SaaS. She brings a combination of strong venture capital and startup operating experience. Previously, Rashmi was an Investment Director at Intel Capital focused on investing in cloud infrastructure, and big data companies. She also led global business development for high-growth startups Couchbase and BlueData. Prior to that, she held product development positions at GE and Oracle. Rashmi has an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Mumbai in India.
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About B Capital Group: B Capital Group is a venture capital firm that backs global entrepreneurs in the field of information technology.
Gabe Greenbaum
General Partner at B Capital of B Capital Group
Gabe Greenbaum is the General Partner at B Capital Group.
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About B Capital Group, Cue, Spring Labs, Storeplacer: B Capital Group is a venture capital firm that backs global entrepreneurs in the field of information technology.
Tim Young
Founding General Partner of Eniac Ventures
Tim Young is a Founding General Partner at Eniac Ventures with two exits as an entrepreneur and over 20 years of experience advising and investing in 100+ early stage startups. Tim has been fascinated by technology since his mother taught him to code in Fortran at the age of 10. He went on to study engineering and become a patent attorney and tech entrepreneur. Prior to founding Eniac in 2009, Tim founded Bridge, an enterprise software company focusing on corporate training in Beijing, China, which he led to an 8-figure exit. Prior to Bridge, Tim led product at Quoteship, a B2B marketplace for logistics, which exited to Logistics.com (NASD: ICGE). Tim also spent time coding at ExxonMobil, managing product at BAE Systems, and advising startups on Patent and other IP issues at MoFo. During downtime, you can find Tim exploring the mountains and oceans. He has surfed on six continents and plans to sail to Hawaii in the upcoming Pacific Cup. Tim is also passionate about combating climate change and sits on the board of the Institute for Energy & Climate Strategies (IECS). Tim received his BSE in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, where he received an award for cancer research from Bristol-Myers Squibb. He also received his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Tim is a member of the State Bar of California and is a US Patent and Trademark Office registered attorney. @timy0ung
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About Airbnb, Alloy, Attentive, Boxed, Brightwheel, Eniac Ventures, Owlet Baby Care, Phil, Raken, Inc., SoundCloud, SpaceX, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Unsupervised, XWING: Eniac Ventures leads seed rounds in bold founders who use code to create transformational companies.
Ullas Naik
Founder & General Partner of Streamlined Ventures
Ullas Naik is the Founder & General Partner at Streamlined Ventures.
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About Streamlined Ventures: Streamlined Ventures is a seed-stage investment firm focusing on Data Science, APIs, Blockchain/Web3, AI, and Software Automation.
Cyril Ebersweiler
General Partner of SOSV
Entrepreneur, venture capitalist. Cyril is a General Partner at SOSV and the founder/MD of HAX. He is a board member/advisor to a few startups including Formlabs, Collaborate (ACQ: CISCO), Hackster (ACQ: AVNET), Adoreme and Breather. He is one of the most experienced investor in the hardware space (260+) and has invested globally. Cyril wrote dozens of articles and publishes regularly on topics such as technology, robotics, health and crowdfunding, and has been featured in The Economist, Popular Mechanics, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Huffington Post, Wired, BBC and more.
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About AYLIEN, HAX, Kindara, SOSV: SOSV is a global VC firm with $1B AUM and 1,000+ investments, that operates HAX, IndieBio, Chinaccelerator, MOX, and dlab.
Howard Lindzon
Founder & General Partner of Social Leverage
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About 140Labs, Knight’s Bridge Capital Partners, Marketbright, Social Leverage: Social Leverage is a Venture Capital firm which specializes in early-stage investments in the Software, Consumer, and Fintech industries.
Gary Benitt
General Partner of Social Leverage
Gary is a seasoned serial entrepreneur, having been a part of four founding teams in both consumer and B2B companies over the past 18 years. Most recently, he spent 3 years as COO of Desk.com after his company, Assistly, was acquired in 2011 by Salesforce.com. Previously, Gary was with AOL after his company, Goowy Media, was acquired in early 2008. Gary has managed various technology and go-to-market teams including business operations, customer service, client implementation and success, engineering, and quality assurance. He brings broad knowledge across all facets of growing a business from startup into a mature organization. Gary has been an active investor in early stage companies since 2011, with over 20 investments including Getaround, Hello Inc, Stitch Labs, and ZenPayroll.
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About Social Leverage: Social Leverage is a Venture Capital firm which specializes in early-stage investments in the Software, Consumer, and Fintech industries.
Jessica Verrilli
General Partner of GV
Jessica is an investor and operator who has built her career partnering with founders building hyper-growth startups. She is on the Board of Digits, Lambda School and The Wing. She is also a co-founder of #ANGELS, an investment collective she started with five other women who built their careers together at Twitter. Previously, Jessica spent nearly a decade at Twitter helping scale the company from 34 employees to several thousand. As the VP of Corporate Development and Strategy, she oversaw dozens of acquisitions and played a critical role in catalyzing Twitter’s new product, technology, and business initiatives. She brought dozens of executives into the company along with products like Vine, Periscope, TweetDeck and many more. Jessica is a Stanford University graduate, where she was a Mayfield Fellow and varsity lacrosse player. She is on the board of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and loves to trail run—including an occasional ultramarathon—in the Marin headlands. Jessica grew up in Seattle and currently lives in the Bay Area but is happy to get on a plane to meet entrepreneurs across the world.
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About #Angels, GV: GV provides venture capital funding to bold new companies.
M.G. Siegler
General Partner of GV
M.G. Siegler is a general partner at Google Ventures, where he primarily focuses on early-stage investments. He has been deeply involved in the startup space since 2005, first as a web developer, then as a writer, and most recently as an investor and advisor. Having spent the past year in London helping to get Google Ventures’ European organization up and running, M.G. is now back in the Bay Area, working mainly out of Google Ventures’ San Francisco office. Before joining Google Ventures, M.G. was a founding partner of CrunchFund, an early-stage investment fund. Prior to that, he reported on the startup world as a writer for both TechCrunch and VentureBeat. M.G. still writes a column for TechCrunch on top of writing on his own sites and from time-to-time doing movie reviews in haiku. Originally from Ohio, M.G. graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor before moving out west to work in Hollywood. One day, he will write that killer screenplay.
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About GV: GV provides venture capital funding to bold new companies.
Tyson Clark
General Partner of GV
Tyson is a general partner at GV. He spent his career in enterprise technology, focusing on companies in the SaaS application and data center infrastructure spaces. Prior to joining GV, Tyson was a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he was on the corporate development team and advised enterprise portfolio companies. He led acquisitions in the enterprise SaaS space for Oracle’s corporate development group, and worked as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, where he oversaw IPO and M&A transactions for a variety of cloud companies. Tyson spent six years in the United States Navy, serving on submarines as both as a nuclear propulsion officer and Navy scuba diver. Tyson holds a B.S. in industrial engineering from Stanford (with honors) and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
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About GV: GV provides venture capital funding to bold new companies.
Andy Wheeler
General Partner of GV
Andy brings over a decade of startup experience to his role, most recently serving as chief technology officer of Adura, where he led the company’s development of energy management systems for commercial buildings. Prior to joining Adura, Andy served as chief technology officer for Tendril Networks, helping consumers better understand and manage their energy usage. He co-founded Ember Corporation, the leading provider of ZigBee network software and system-on-chip devices. Under Andy’s leadership, the company delivered multiple industry firsts, including shipping the first ZigBee system-on-chip, which is now in millions of the smart meters being deployed around the world. He began his startup career at Zipcar. Anyone who has used the car-sharing service has used the embedded wireless in-car technology that Andy developed. Andy got his start in wireless and embedded technologies at the MIT Media Lab where he deployed large scale sensor networks under a DARPA grant. He was selected for the Technology Review 100 Top Innovators Under 35 award in 2003, and has multiple granted and pending patents in the fields of wireless networking and energy management. Andy received a Bachelor of Science and Master of Engineering in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT.
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About GV: GV provides venture capital funding to bold new companies.
Karim Faris
General Partner of GV
Karim is a partner at Google Ventures. He initially joined Google’s corporate development team in 2008, the group responsible for all Mergers & Acquisitions. His primary areas of focus include Internet services, mobile and digital media. Prior to Google, Karim was a venture capitalist at Atlas Venture, where he worked on investments in software and Internet infrastructure. Previously, he was Director of New Ventures at Level 3 Communications, responsible for evaluating new business opportunities and has led product development for the company’s voice services. Earlier in his career, Karim held various product and marketing roles at Intel, initially on the i486â„¢, and later as product manager for the Pentium® Processor. He started his career at Siemens as a software engineer working on the first vehicle navigation system for BMW. Karim holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, and a BS in Computer Engineering from Brown University where he published several papers on Neural Networks.
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About GV: GV provides venture capital funding to bold new companies.
Dave Munichiello
General Partner of GV
Dave is a general partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures) who leads the team’s investments in data, platforms, and infrastructure. His investments include Slack, Segment, GitLab, Jet.com (sold to WMT), CoreOS (sold to RedHat), Lattice.io (sold to Apple), SambaNova Systems, and several others. Dave’s background prior to investing was in building and leading enterprise software sales and operations teams for highly-technical products, under pressure in rapidly-changing markets. As a senior executive at Kiva Systems, he helped grow the enterprise-enabling robotics and software platform to $120 million in annual revenue before it was purchased by Amazon. Dave’s career prior to Kiva included management consulting for The Boston Consulting Group and leading teams as a Captain in the U.S. military’s most elite units. His military leadership roles ranged from running a high-tech organization in Europe; to serving as an Aide de Camp to the Four Star General responsible for U.S. forces in Europe, Africa, and Afghanistan; to deploying with elite special operations teams worldwide, ensuring they were enabled by the world’s most advanced technologies. Dave is a combat veteran and former paratrooper who holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS from Emory University in math and computer science.
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About Cockroach Labs, GV, Segment: GV provides venture capital funding to bold new companies.
Pete Flint
General Partner of NFX
Pete Flint is a Managing Partner of NFX, an early stage Bay Area based Venture Capital fund, focused on Network Effects. Prior to NFX, Pete founded Trulia, a leading online real estate company. He was its CEO and Chairman from inception to acquisition by Zillow for $3.5B. Prior to Trulia, Pete was part of the founding team at lastminute.com, a leading European online travel company that was acquired for over $1Bn. He is a founding Board member of New Story Charity, a technology platform focused on building sustainable communities globally, and also a founding board member of GBx, the leading British technology community in Silicon Valley. He received a Master’s and First Class Degree from the University of Oxford, and MBA from Stanford GSB.
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About NFX: NFX operates as a pre-seed and seed stage VC that is transforming how true innovators are funded.
James Currier
General Partner of NFX
James Currier is one of Silicon Valley’s foremost experts in growth and network effects. James is a four-time CEO of VC backed companies, including Tickle (acq Monster), WonderHill (acq Kabam), Iron Pearl (acq PayPal) and Jiff (acq Castlight). James is a pioneer of user-generated models, viral marketing, A/B testing, crowdsourcing, and myriad other growth techniques that have since been adopted by nearly all technology companies, including LinkedIn and Facebook. In 2015, James co-founded NFX, a $425M early-stage venture capital firm focused on network effect businesses along with Pete Flint and Gigi Levy Weiss. You can read his world-leading analysis of network effects and growth at www.nfx.com/essays
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About Concept.io, NFX, NFX Bio, Ooga Labs: NFX operates as a pre-seed and seed stage VC that is transforming how true innovators are funded.
Morgan Beller
General Partner of NFX
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About NFX: NFX operates as a pre-seed and seed stage VC that is transforming how true innovators are funded.
Jenny Lefcourt
General Partner of Freestyle
Jenny Lefcourt is a General Partner at Freestyle. Jenny earned her B.S. in economics from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and attended the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In 1998 she left Stanford to found Wedding Channel.com (sold: XOXO). In 2003 she co-founded Bella Pictures (sold: CPI). In 2014 Jenny joined Freestyle, and was promoted to GP in 2015. Some of Jenny’s notable investments include BetterUp, Crexi, Daily.co, Embark, Ridwell, Narvar and WELL Health. She is also a founding member and board member of All Raise. Jenny is an angel investor in Discord, MainStreetHub and Minted.
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About All Raise, BetterUp, Crexi, Discord, Freestyle, Narvar, Well Health: Freestyle is a venture capital firm that focuses on early-stage technology companies.
David Samuel
Founding General Partner of Freestyle
David Samuel is an experienced executive, serial entrepreneur, and Internet pioneer in software & media. Today, Dave is co-founder of Freestyle Capital, an early-stage Internet & technology venture capital firm, with investments in over 66 companies. Prior to Freestyle, Dave co-founded Crackle.com in 2004 (acquired by Sony Pictures Entertainment for $65 million in 2006) and founded Spinner.com in 1996 (acquired by AOL for $320 million in 1999). Dave graduated from MIT with a degree in Electrical Engineering, is an SF Giants fan, enjoys both wake boarding and snowboarding, and lives in Marin with his 4 children.
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About Freestyle, Toi Labs: Freestyle is a venture capital firm that focuses on early-stage technology companies.
Byron Alsberg
Founder and General Partner of Prefix Capital
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About 415, Prefix Capital: Prefix Capital is an early-stage, deep-tech VC that invests in foundational technologies.
Tiba Aynechi
General Partner of Norwest Venture Partners
Tiba Aynechi is a General Partner at Norwest. Prior to joining Norwest, Tiba spent over ten years at Novo Holdings A/S, one of the top life sciences investment firms, with offices in the US and Europe. Tiba attended the University of California Irvine where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics with a Biomedical concentration. She also holds a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of California San Francisco, where she also did her Postdoctoral Fellowship.
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About Norwest Venture Partners, Novo Ventures: Norwest is a global venture capital and growth equity investment firm that specializes in venture and growth equity companies.
Dave Zilberman
General Partner of Norwest Venture Partners
Dave joined Comcast Ventures in 2006, and is responsible for identifying, executing and managing new investments while supporting existing portfolio companies. His investment focus is on enterprise IT and digital media. Prior to joining Comcast Ventures, Dave was a business development manager at Flarion Technologies, where he played a pivotal role in the company’s fundraising activities and ultimate acquisition by Qualcomm. Prior to Flarion, Dave was a communications and media investment banking analyst and asset management associate at Lehman Brothers. Dave holds a B.S. in Management with a concentration in Finance from Binghamton University.
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About Norwest Venture Partners: Norwest is a global venture capital and growth equity investment firm that specializes in venture and growth equity companies.
Sonya Brown
General Partner of Norwest Venture Partners
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About Norwest Venture Partners: Norwest is a global venture capital and growth equity investment firm that specializes in venture and growth equity companies.
Casper De Clercq
General Partner of Norwest Venture Partners
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About Norwest Venture Partners: Norwest is a global venture capital and growth equity investment firm that specializes in venture and growth equity companies.
Ryan Harris
General Partner of Norwest Venture Partners
Ryan brings to NVP more than twenty years of healthcare experience, a decade of which was as a growth equity and buyout investor. Combining deep medical knowledge and extensive strategic business experience, Ryan focuses on growth equity investments in the healthcare sector in NVP’s Palo Alto office. Areas in which he invests include healthcare services, healthcare IT, medical devices, and specialty pharma. Ryan’s most recent investment is Capsugel, the world leader in hard capsules and an innovator in drug-delivery systems. Prior to joining NVP, Ryan was a Principal with The Carlyle Group and a Venture Partner with Industry Ventures, where he focused exclusively on healthcare service, pharmaceutical, and medical device investments from large cap buyouts to growth equity and venture. At Carlyle, Ryan’s deals led to realized profitable exits of more than $1.8 billion equity value. He served as a member or observer on the Board of Directors of Align Technologies (NASDAQ: ALGN), AqueSys, Colin Medical, ConnectiCare, MedPointe Pharmaceuticals, Multiplan, NeoVista, Proteus Biomedical and Qualicaps. At Industry Ventures, Ryan executed transactions involving Access Closure, Cardiofocus, Ingenuity, and Intarcia. Prior to joining Carlyle in 2002, Ryan was a consultant in the West Coast Healthcare Practice of McKinsey & Company, where he worked with a variety of biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device companies on corporate, R&D and marketing strategies. Ryan has authored more than 25 peer-reviewed comparative effectiveness articles in publications such as JAMA, Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Journal of Health Economics. Ryan holds an M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. In addition, he earned an M.S. in health research and policy, and a B.A. in psychology from Stanford University. Ryan also attended Oxford University’s Magdalen College.
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About Norwest Venture Partners, RiverMend Health: Norwest is a global venture capital and growth equity investment firm that specializes in venture and growth equity companies.
Richard Ling
General Partner of Rembrandt Venture Partners
Richard Ling is the Co-founder and CEO at Mpact. Richard is also a Founding General Partner of Rembrandt Venture Partners.
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About Amplii, Mpact, Rembrandt Venture Partners: Rembrandt Venture Partners is a team of entrepreneurs, company builders, and investors.
Douglas Schrier
General Partner of Rembrandt Venture Partners
Doug has invested approximately $215 million into 31 startups over the past 18 years with 21 realizations that have produced over a 5X return. After joining Rembrandt in late 2005 he successfully led Rembrandt’s efforts to establish a base of institutional investors to fund Rembrandt’s investments moving forward. Prior to joining Rembrandt Venture Partners, Doug was a Senior Partner at Argo Global Capital in Boston from 2001 to late 2005. Doug has been involved in funding, managing, and developing technology companies for over 20 years. His prior experience includes being SVP for Acquisitions and Strategic Ventures at SAIC, a Fortune 250 company in La Jolla, CA. Doug was Co-Founder, COO & CFO of Multum Information Services and President of Ceon Corporation where collectively he raised over $75 million in Venture Capital. Doug has also held positions at Salomon Brothers Inc., where he was an Associate in Venture Capital and at Prudential-Bache where he worked as an Associate in Corporate Finance. Doug has been a member of private and public boards including; Solect Technology Group (acquired by Amdocs), Multum Information Systems (acquired by Cerner Corporation), VocalData (acquired by Tekelec), Conita (acquired b y Avaya), ODS networks (ODSN/NASDAQ), Ceon, Narad Networks, Digital Bridges, World Wide Packets, Cosmocom, uReach, and Sylantro (acquired by Broadsoft. Doug was also a board observer for investments in Nuance Communications (NUAN/NASDAQ), Nuera Communications (acquired by Audio Codes (AUDC/NASDAQ) and Convio (CNVO/NASDAQ). Doug currently sits on the boards of Allegiance, Appcelerator, Coveroo, Electric Cloud, Netuitive, Needle and SmartRecruiters. Also, Doug currently mentors through Columbia’s Private Equity Mentorship Program. Doug received his MBA from Columbia Business School in 1990 and his undergraduate degree in Economics/Pre-Med from DePauw University in 1987.
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About Rembrandt Venture Partners: Rembrandt Venture Partners is a team of entrepreneurs, company builders, and investors.
Gerald S. Casilli
General Partner of Rembrandt Venture Partners
Jerry’s entrepreneurial and managerial expertise allows him to serve as both an investor and mentor to portfolio companies.
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About Rembrandt Venture Partners: Rembrandt Venture Partners is a team of entrepreneurs, company builders, and investors.
Caterina Fake
General Partner of Yes VC
Caterina Fake is an investor at Yes VC, a pre-seed and seed stage venture capital fund, and is the host of the #1 Tech Podcast Should This Exist? addressing the question of our times: how is technology impacting our humanity? Previously, she worked at Founder Collective as a Founder Partner, served as Chairman of Etsy and was the co-founder of Flickr. Yes VC invests in scalable social systems, brands that embody cultural movements, and founders who recognize the opportunity in the rising power and affluence of women. Caterina sits on the boards of Public Goods, the Sundance Institute and McSweeneys. Caterina is an early creator of online communities and a long time advocate of the responsibility of entrepreneurs for the outcomes of their technologies. In her work she addresses the cultural impact of new technologies, human interactions online, design, good governance, innovation and creativity–and how we can all make the internet a kinder, more human place. Ms. Fake has received Honorary Doctorates from the Rhode Island School of Design and The New School. Time Magazine named her one of the Most Influential People in the world, and she was given the Silicon Valley Visionaries award in 2018.
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About Findery, Yes VC: A San Francisco-based pre-seed and seed-stage firm.
Jyri Engestrom
General Partner of Yes VC
Jyri Engestrom is General Partner of Yes VC, an early-stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco. He was previously a member of the investment team at [True Ventures](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/true-ventures). He is founder of two mobile consumer companies: [Jaiku](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/jaiku), a mobile social network acquired by [Google](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/google); and [Ditto](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ditto), a mobile local recommendations application acquired by [Groupon](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/groupon). As an executive he has run product teams at Google, Groupon, [Boosted](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/boosted-boards) and [Nokia](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/nokia). He is co-founder of Sesat School, a micro-school in San Francisco; and serves on the board of the Rare Cancer Research Foundation. He also co-owns a café in Helsinki.
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About Yes VC: A San Francisco-based pre-seed and seed-stage firm.
Rebecca Kaden
General Partner of Union Square Ventures
Rebecca Kaden is a Partner at Union Square Ventures. She began her career as a journalist and, prior to USV, was a Partner at Maveron, a consumer-focused early stage fund. Rebecca was born in New York City. She studied English and American Literature at Harvard and received her MBA from Stanford.
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About All Raise, Union Square Ventures: Union Square Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage, growth-capital, late stage, and startup financing.
Matthew Jacobson
General Partner of ICONIQ Capital
Matt Jacobson is a General Partner at ICONIQ Capital investing in ecommerce/mobile and enterprise software/SaaS companies. Prior to ICONIQ, Matt held operating roles at Groupon and investing roles at Battery Ventures and Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV). Matt’s investments include kCura, Pluralsight, Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA), Uber, DocuSign, Flipkart, Honest Company, Red Ventures, Groupon (NASDAQ: GRPN), HomeAway (NASDAQ: AWAY), Warby Parker, Koudai, Automattic (WordPress), Campaign Monitor, VMTurbo, Greensky Financial, Apttus, Blackline Systems, Wayfair (NASDAQ: W), Everyday Health (NASDAQ: EVDY), Yesware and Smartling.
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About ICONIQ Capital: ICONIQ Capital is a privately-held investment firm that serves some influential families and organizations.
Doug Pepper
General Partner of ICONIQ Capital
Doug Pepper has been with Shasta Ventures since 2016, investing in SaaS and mobile startups. Previously, Doug was with InterWest Partners for 15 years, rising from associate to General Partner.Doug was the first investor in Marketo (NASDAQ: MKTO) and served on the board of directors for 10 years. He also invested in Optimizely, Flurry, Spredfast, Tapjoy, INVIDI and Appboy. Prior to joining InterWest, Doug worked in business development at Amazon.com. Before Amazon.com, he was a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York focusing primarily on technology and healthcare. In this role, he also spent time in Hong Kong, working with technology clients in China, India and Korea. Doug received his B.A. from Dartmouth College and M.B.A. from Stanford University.
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About ICONIQ Capital: ICONIQ Capital is a privately-held investment firm that serves some influential families and organizations.
Yidrienne Lai
General Partner of ICONIQ Capital
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About ICONIQ Capital: ICONIQ Capital is a privately-held investment firm that serves some influential families and organizations.
Gregory Stanger
General Partner of ICONIQ Capital
Greg Stanger Is The General Partner at ICONIQ.
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About Adyen, BambooHR, Chime, Coupa Software, Epic Games, Fetch Rewards, GoFundMe, GoodRx, Hippo Insurance, ICONIQ Capital, Komodo Health, Netskope, Pluralsight, Procore Technologies, Relativity, Snowlake tech, Sprinklr, The Honest Company, Uber, Unite Us, Wealthsimple, Yosemite Conservancy: ICONIQ Capital is a privately-held investment firm that serves some influential families and organizations.
Arvindh Kumar
General Partner of ICONIQ Capital
EDUCATION MBA, Harvard Business School BS, Economics, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania PRIOR EXPERIENCE Prospect Capital Management, New York, NY BC Partners, New York, NY Morgan Stanley, New York, NY REPRESENTATIVE INVESTMENTS SRS Software LLC (Board Member) Global Healthcare Exchange, Inc. (Board Member) Sparta Systems, Inc. (Board Member)
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About ICONIQ Capital: ICONIQ Capital is a privately-held investment firm that serves some influential families and organizations.
Scott Sandell
Managing General Partner of New Enterprise Associates
Scott Sandell is Managing General Partner at NEA. A General Partner since 2000, and Co-Managing General Partner from 2015 – 2017, Scott served as head of the firm’s technology investing practice for 10 years and has led NEA’s China investing activities for over a decade. Since joining the firm in 1996, he has personally led investments in industry-transforming companies like Bloom Energy, Data Domain, Fusion-io, Salesforce.com, Tableau Software, WebEx, and Workday. Scott is one of only four investors named to the Forbes Midas List every year since 2007, with 24 technology companies in his portfolio having successfully completed public offerings or mergers. Scott is currently a director of Bloom Energy (NYSE: BE) and a number of private companies including Automation Anywhere, Branch, Cloudflare, Coursera, Enigma, Expanse (fka Qadium), Hello Alfred, One Concern, Robinhood, Sentons, Transfix, and WaterBit. Other previous investments include Fusion-io (acquired by SanDisk), Neoteris (acquired by Juniper Networks), NetIQ (acquired by Attachmate Corporation), Playdom (acquired by Disney), and Spreadtrum Communications (acquired by Tsinghua Unigroup).
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About New Enterprise Associates: New Enterprise Associates is a global venture capital firm investing in technology and healthcare.
Paul Walker
General Partner of New Enterprise Associates
Paul Walker joined NEA in 2008. He focuses on later-stage biotechnology and life sciences investments. Prior to joining NEA, Paul worked at MPM Capital as a General Partner with the MPM BioEquities Fund, where he specialized in public, PIPE and mezzanine-stage life sciences investing. Previously, he was a portfolio manager at Franklin Templeton Investments. Paul received a BS in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from the University of California at San Diego, and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. He is a board member of TESARO and a board observer of Sunesis and manages a number of NEA’s other late-stage and public investments.
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About New Enterprise Associates: New Enterprise Associates is a global venture capital firm investing in technology and healthcare.
Forest Baskett
General Partner of New Enterprise Associates
Forest joined NEA in 1999 as a Venture Partner and became a General Partner in 2004. Forest focuses on information and energy technology investments. He is the NEA representative on the boards of AstroWatt, Audience, Chelsio Communications, Serious Energy and SuVolta. He also assists Alta Devices, Azuray Technologies, Bandgap Engineering, Conviva, Firefly Green Technologies, Fusion-io (NYSE: FIO), Illumitex, Luxtera, NovaTorque, Solar Junction, Svaya Nanotechnologies, Tableau Software, Terrajoule and Tintri as either a board member, observer or advisor, usually in conjunction with another member of the NEA investing staff. In the past he has worked with, among others, Aeluros, Arch Rock, Atheros Communications, Data Domain, E2O, Fulcrum Microsystems, Nanochip, Newisys, RingCube Technologies, SiBEAM, Telegent Systems, and T-RAM Semiconductor. Forest also previously held advisory positions with FineGround, PolyServe, ReShape and SMIC. Prior to NEA, Forest was Senior Vice President of R&D and Chief Technology Officer of Silicon Graphics Inc. He founded and directed the Western Research Laboratory of Digital Equipment Corporation before joining SGI. Prior to that, he was a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Forest Baskett received a BA in Mathematics from Rice University, a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
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About New Enterprise Associates: New Enterprise Associates is a global venture capital firm investing in technology and healthcare.
Peter Sonsini
General Partner of New Enterprise Associates
Pete joined NEA in 2005 and focuses on early-stage enterprise software, services, and systems companies. He is the co-head of NEA’s enterprise software practice group, and serves on several boards for NEA portfolio companies. Past investments include Pentaho (acquired by Hitachi), Teracent (acquired by Google) and Xensource (acquired by Citrix Systems). Prior to NEA, Pete was Senior Director of Strategic Alliances at VMware where he struck the company’s initial OEM deals and grew annual sales through OEMs from $0 to $40 million in four years. Pete ran product management at Mirapoint and worked in sales and marketing at Hewlett-Packard, including Worldwide Product Manager for the mid-range server business. Pete began his career at Montgomery Securities in the Technology Corporate Finance group.Pete received his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and his BA in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley.
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About New Enterprise Associates, Stormpath: New Enterprise Associates is a global venture capital firm investing in technology and healthcare.
Rick Yang
General Partner and Head of Consumer Technology Investing of New Enterprise Associates
Rick Yang joined NEA in 2007 and is focused on information technology and energy investments. He is currently on the board of Compass Labs, and was previously a director and is still active with One Block Off the Grid (acquired by Pure Energies Group). Rick also works closely with NEA’s investments in BloomReach, Boku, Boulder Wind Power, Braintree, Euclid, HelioVolt, SolFocus, Surf Air, SmartDrive, and Tabbedout. He was historically involved with Gaikai (acquired by Sony). Prior to joining NEA, Rick advised on and executed a number of strategic financing initiatives for leading public and private tech companies in the Credit Suisse Technology Group. Rick earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University, where he was also a varsity swimmer.
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About New Enterprise Associates: New Enterprise Associates is a global venture capital firm investing in technology and healthcare.
Mohamad Makhzoumi
General Partner of New Enterprise Associates
Mohamad first joined NEA as an associate in 2000 and now co-heads the healthcare services and healthcare information technology investment practice. Mohamad is currently a Director of American Pathology Partners, DaVita NephroLife, DSI Renal, Elements Behavioral Health, Nova Medical Centers, Radiology Partners, SCI Solutions and Simplex Healthcare. He is a Board Observer of BENU, Vantage Oncology and Welltok. Mohamad’s past investments include Bravo Health, CHG Healthcare, Long Term Care Group and ppoNEXT. Previously, Mohamad focused on growth equity investments at Summit Partners prior to which he worked with UBS Investment Bank where he concentrated on leveraged finance and sponsor-led transactions. Mohamad received a bachelor’s degree, with distinction, from the University of Pennsylvania and is an active participant in the cancer community having been a founding board member of Livestrong’s Young Leadership Cancer Council.
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About New Enterprise Associates: New Enterprise Associates is a global venture capital firm investing in technology and healthcare.
Ramtin Naimi
Founder & General Partner of Abstract Ventures
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About Abstract Ventures: Abstract Ventures is a sector agnostic venture investor in pre-seed, seed, and series A startup companies.
Alex Davidov
General Partner of Abstract Ventures
He is a General Partner of Abstract Ventures.
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About Abstract Ventures: Abstract Ventures is a sector agnostic venture investor in pre-seed, seed, and series A startup companies.
Julie Allegro
General Partner of Fyrfly Venture Partners
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About Alpinereplay, Fyrfly Venture Partners, V Foundation Wine Celebration: Fyrfly Venture Partners is a venture capital firm with a focus on data and intelligence.
Karl-Magnus Karlsson
General Partner of Sway Ventures
Karl Karlsson is a Venture Partner at Insight Venture Partners and joined the firm in 2015. Karl works with existing portfolio companies adding strategic and operational skill sets that augments managements ability to manage accelerated growth and optimize success. He provides support with acquisitions, mergers and exits. A serial entrepreneur Karl conceived the idea for his first technology startup Scoop Inc. while still in graduate school. He took this company from idea stage through to NASDAQ listing. He has subsequently been instrumental to the success of a large number of global tech companies’ both as a founding entrepreneur and as an investor. Success highlights include 3721.com sold to Yahoo and rolled in to Alibaba. Philanthropic ventures include conceiving of, co-organizing and participating in Prince Albert II of Monaco’s dog sledding expedition to the North Pole benefitting the World Wildlife Fund, having served as Chairman of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Explorers and as Senior Expedition Advisor to Virgin Oceanic. He is a BP Fellow of the World Scout Foundation, member of Travelers Club and a Fellow of The Explorers Club. Mr. Karlsson holds an Masters of International Management from the American Graduate School of International Management, Glendale Arizona and a BA in communications from California State University, Fullerton California.
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About Sway Ventures, Sway Ventures: Sway Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in early to mid-stage technology companies.
Bill Malloy
Founding General Partner of Sway Ventures
Bill Malloy is an innovative investor and technologist with a track record of successfully investing and building companies. He is currently focused on building and investing in engineering driven software companies as well as helping philanthropies that address the full life cycle of cancer diagnosis and treatment. Bill balances a number of philanthropic positions, currently serving the Malloy Foundation as well as co-founder of the PEERS Network. He previously served as a board member and treasurer for the Equinox Center. He holds a MBA from the University of Southern California and an undergraduate degree in Engineering from Clemson University.
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About Malloy & Company, Nex Cubed, Sway Ventures: Sway Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in early to mid-stage technology companies.
Ken Denman
General Partner of Sway Ventures
Ken Denman, President and CEO of Emotient, is an experienced executive with a range of proven leadership skills. His specific executive roles have spanned large corporations, entrepreneurial startups, emerging markets ventures, turnarounds, and leading IPOs. Responsibilities and experiences have extended across the mobile, broadband, and software industries. Ken led iPass’ successful Initial Public Offering, and led the strategy work for monetizing Openwave’s patent portfolio and spinning off the operating units. He is an engaged angel investor and board member with both public and private board experience. At MediaOne International he drove the successful expansion of the company’s mobile push by leading multi-national JV’s that built the market leading mobile companies in many Central and Eastern European countries. Ken recently accepted an appointment to the Edward V. Fritzky Endowed Chair in Leadership at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, as a visiting professor.
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About Sway Ventures, University of Washington Michael G. Foster School of Business: Sway Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in early to mid-stage technology companies.
Brian Nugent
Founding General Partner of Sway Ventures
Brian Nugent is a founding General Partner of Sway Ventures, as well as a seasoned technology industry executive, entrepreneur, and board director. As an investor, entrepreneur, operator and strategic advisor in over 150 technology ventures, Brian has built domain expertise and deep connections across the IT industry on five continents. Brian has a proven record of driving software, SaaS, hardware and IT Services companies to market leadership positions. As an entrepreneur and operating executive he ran both public and privately-held enterprise software companies. Previously Brian was a senior executive at Teros (acquired by Citrix), Atrica (acquired by Nokia-Siemens) and LuxN (acquired by Sorrento Networks). He currently serves on the Boards of Directors of ThreatSTOP, Liquid Grids, and CyberHive. Brian is a member of the ‘Alliance of CEOs’, the San Diego Venture Group, and is a frequent lecturer at CEO consortium’s such as the ‘CEO Total Access Series’. He is active in a variety of charitable organizations and is a Board Member of PEERS Network and is a member of the 2013 National Champion Sunset Water Polo Club. Brian holds a B.A. degree in Business Administration from California State University, Long Beach.
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About Sway Ventures: Sway Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in early to mid-stage technology companies.
Najib Khouri-Haddad
General Partner of Sway Ventures
Najib Khouri-Haddad is a General Partner at Sway Ventures with over 20 years of experience in business and corporate development, marketing and general management. With more than 30 equity transactions closed in M&A, spin-offs and venture investments valued at multi-billions of dollars, Najib served as Vice President of Business Development for 3Com as well as Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Vice President of Business Development for EFI, Inc., Vice President of Business Development and Product Manager for Systems Planning at ROLM, an IBM and Siemens Company. Najib holds a Masters in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan, a Masters in Business and Engineering Management at Stanford University and a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. He is fluent in English, French, and Arabic.
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About Sway Ventures: Sway Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in early to mid-stage technology companies.
Gene Frantz
General Partner of CapitalG
Gene Frantz is a Partner of Google Capital. Before joining Google Capital, Gene was a partner at TPG Capital, a global private equity fund. During his 13 years at TPG, Gene was responsible for multiple technology and telecom investments and represented TPG on multiple public and private company boards of directors. Prior to TPG Capital, Gene worked at Oracle Corporation leading its venture capital effort and previous to that in corporate development.Gene holds a BS from UC Berkeley and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
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About CapitalG: CapitalG is the growth capital fund financed by Alphabet that invests for profit in growth stage technology companies.
Derek Zanutto
General Partner of CapitalG
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About CapitalG: CapitalG is the growth capital fund financed by Alphabet that invests for profit in growth stage technology companies.
Laela Sturdy
General Partner of CapitalG
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About CapitalG, Stripe: CapitalG is the growth capital fund financed by Alphabet that invests for profit in growth stage technology companies.
Jason Green
Founder & General Partner of Emergence
Jason has been an early investor in leading companies such as ServiceMax (acquired by GE), Box (BOX IPO), Yammer (acquired by MSFT), SteelBrick (acquired by CRM), SuccessFactors (IPO and acquired by SAP), Visual Networks (VNWK), DoubleClick (DLCK/Google), and aQuantive (AQNT/MSFT). Giving back has also been an important value for Jason. He is the founding chairman for the Kauffman Fellows Program, founding board member of Endeavor and served on the board of the National Venture Capital Association. Jason also served as chairman of the West Coast Research Center for Harvard Business School and on the advisory board of the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship. He was named to the Forbes Top 100 Venture Capitalists Midas List 2017. Currently, Jason serves on the Boards of BetterWorks, Drishti, GroundTruth, Lotame, Replicon, SalesLoft, and Zinc, and is a board observer at Gusto. Before founding Emergence, he was a general partner with USVP and an associate and Kauffman Fellow with Venrock. Jason graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Economics from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A. from Harvard with Distinction. He was awarded the Charles Williams Fellowship at Harvard Business School for post-graduate research in Entrepreneurship and Finance. He loves travel, tennis, and time with his family, and enjoys a great pinot noir. Fun fact: he’s a twin married to a twin!
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About Emergence: Emergence is a venture capital firm, investing in early and growth-stage cloud and SaaS visionaries that change the way the world works.
Santi Subotovsky
General Partner of Emergence
Santi is a General Partner at Emergence Capital. Prior to joining Emergence, Santi founded, AXG Tecnonexo, a SaaS e-learning company in Latin America. He expanded the company to 150+ employees with operations across Latin America and the US. Santi is also a founding board member of Puente Labs, an organization that finds and selects the best founders of high potential growth companies from Latin America and helps them scale their businesses globally. Santi currently serves on the Boards of Civitas Learning, CrunchBase, High Alpha, Quasar, Restorando, Tophat, Xapo and Zoom. Santi received an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School and holds a BS in Economics from St. Andrew’s University in Argentina. He is Kauffman Fellow and an Endeavor Entrepreneur. Outside of work Santi is passionate about traveling internationally. He spent 6 months backpacking around the world and continues to work on a personal goal of visiting at least 50% of the world countries. He is an avid opera and classical music follower and, like almost every Argentine, he is passionate about soccer.
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About Emergence, Top Hat: Emergence is a venture capital firm, investing in early and growth-stage cloud and SaaS visionaries that change the way the world works.
Gordon Ritter
Founder & General Partner of Emergence
Gordon Ritter is a Founder and General Partner of Emergence Capital Partners. Prior to founding Emergence, he spent over 15 years founding and building companies which pioneered new markets including embedded web-based interfaces, server appliances, “On Demand” services for the SMB market and web-native application development. In 2003, Gordon led Emergence Capital’s first investment, in Salesforce.com. In 2008, Gordon invested in Industry Cloud pioneer Veeva Systems when the company had 25 employees and less than $2 million in revenue. He has played a key role in the company’s development (now a public company NYSE:VEEV) and he is currently Veeva’s Chairman. Gordon was named to the Forbes’ Midas List of the top venture capital investors in 2007, 2012, 2014 and 2015. Prior to founding Emergence, Gordon was co-Founder and CEO of Software As Service, a web services platform company he created with Marc Benioff, the Chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com. Software As Service is the origin of Salesforce.com’s Salesforce1 platform. Prior to founding Software As Service, he ran the $3 billion IBM Global Small Business division, created as a result of IBM’s acquisition of his company, Whistle Communications in 1999. He was responsible for IBM’s launch partnership with Salesforce.com. Prior to IBM, Gordon was co-Founder and President of Whistle, a pioneering Internet appliance and web services platform. Gordon also co-founded Tribe Communications, a networking infrastructure company, and he was a VP of Capital Markets at Credit Suisse First Boston in New York. Gordon has a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University, where he rowed on the heavyweight crew team. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and four children. He enjoys a range of endurance sports and recently summited both Denali and Aconcagua, and completed a 250-mile trail run across Switzerland.
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About Emergence, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy: Emergence is a venture capital firm, investing in early and growth-stage cloud and SaaS visionaries that change the way the world works.
Kevin Spain
General Partner of Emergence
Kevin is a General Partner at Emergence Capital Partners. His deep knowledge of the enterprise and consumer technology sectors comes from time spent at blue-chip software companies and from his experience as an entrepreneur. Prior to joining Emergence, Kevin was a senior member of Microsoft’s Corporate Development group. In this role, he shared responsibility for sourcing, structuring, and negotiating Microsoft’s acquisitions, strategic investments, and joint ventures. Under his leadership, Kevin’s team participated in transactions spanning all of Microsoft’s business groups. Prior to Microsoft, Kevin was with Electronic Arts, where he was a member of the team that launched EA’s online gaming business. Today, Electronic Arts operates several of the most popular online gaming destinations in the world. Later, Kevin served in Electronic Arts’ Corporate Development group, where he helped manage the Company’s acquisition and strategic investment efforts. Before Electronic Arts, Kevin was Co-Founder and CEO of atMadison.com, a business he started after winning the first annual Wharton Business Plan Competition. atMadison.com provided a hosted marketing management solution for small and medium sized companies.Kevin earned an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BBA from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a graduate of the Kauffman Fellows Program.
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About Blend, Emergence: Emergence is a venture capital firm, investing in early and growth-stage cloud and SaaS visionaries that change the way the world works.
Jake Saper
General Partner of Emergence
Jake still can’t believe he gets to do this for a living. Raised in Austin by parents who were serial co-founders, he got bit by the startup bug early. He thinks of serving entrepreneurs as his highest calling. His first venture focused on selling rocks door to door from his Radio Flyer wagon. Not one to shy away from a tough market, he moved on (20 years later) to help launch and grow a startup developing large solar power plants in India, Africa, and the Middle East. He’s developed a deep well of entrepreneurial empathy from being told no (and occasionally yes!) from investors and bureaucrats across the globe. Jake’s first job for which someone paid him was in management consulting, where he honed his deep, nerdy love of frameworks. He’s brought that passion for entrepreneurship and strategic thinking to venture. He got his start in venture at Kleiner Perkins, after which he joined Emergence, where he became a Kauffman Fellow. He’s passionate about using machine learning to help people do their jobs better and co-developed the firm’s Coaching Networks thesis. He serves on the boards of Textio, Guru, Ironclad, DroneDeploy, and Vymo. Jake earned his B.A., magna cum laude, from Yale and his MBA from Stanford, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar. Jake also earned an MS in Environment and Resources from Stanford. Jake is a singer and very mediocre guitar player, constantly in search of people to jam with. He once starred in a musical parody of tech and VC written by a former TechCrunch editor.
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About Emergence: Emergence is a venture capital firm, investing in early and growth-stage cloud and SaaS visionaries that change the way the world works.
Brian Jacobs
Founder & General Partner of Emergence
Brian Jacobs is a Founder of Emergence Capital and the founder and Managing Partner of Moai Capital. Board Member at AASCEND, Eversight & InsideView.
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About Emergence, Moai Capital, Stanford Graduate School of Business: Emergence is a venture capital firm, investing in early and growth-stage cloud and SaaS visionaries that change the way the world works.
Joseph Floyd
General Partner of Emergence
Joe joins Emergence Capital Partners as a Senior Associate with more than 7 years of technology advisory and investing experience. Prior to joining Emergence, Joe was a Senior Associate in American Capital’s technology group where he focused on investing in fast growing internet and software companies. While at American Capital, Joe was involved with the team’s investments in HomeAway (Nasdaq: AWAY) and PeopleMedia (acquired by IAC). Joe was also an Associate at McKinsey & Co. in their corporate finance practice. Joe earned an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. While at Wharton, Joe won 1st place at the International Venture Capital Investment Competition. He is also a proud Cal Bear with a BA in Economics and BS in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley.
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About Emergence, Kauffman Fellows: Emergence is a venture capital firm, investing in early and growth-stage cloud and SaaS visionaries that change the way the world works.
Dan Avida
General Partner of Opus Capital
A General Partner at Opus Capital, Dan Avida has 16 years experience building successful companies and guiding them through to profitable outcomes. Dan specializes in the developing systems, cloud and enterprise infrastructure and applications, solutions for the post-PC world, security, and next generation collaboration platforms. Most recently, Dan was President and CEO of Decru Inc., a pioneering storage security company that Dan co-founded in 2001. Decru was acquired for $272.5M by Network Appliance (NASDAQ: NTAP) in 2005. In 1989, Dan was a founding member of Electronics for Imaging (NASDAQ: EFII). Under Dan’s leadership, EFI experienced five years of dramatic, consecutive growth, placing the company on Business Week, Fortune and Forbes lists of fastest growing companies, and on the Nasdaq 100 index. Dan holds a B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, where he graduated summa cum laude. Dan has five granted patents.
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About Engageli, Opus Capital: At Opus Capital, they are energized and excited about venture investing. The outlook for early-stage technology companies.
Eric Bahn
General Partner & Co-Founder of Hustle Fund
Eric Bahn is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund, an early-stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco. Hustle Fund invests in software startups at the pre-seed and seed stages, backing founders who exhibit great execution and high velocity (aka, hustle). Previous to Hustle Fund, Eric was an angel investor and partner at 500 Startups. And prior to becoming a professional investor, he spent over a decade as an operator (Facebook, Instagram) and entrepreneur (Beat The GMAT, The Hustle). Eric draws from his product and growth experience to advise his founders in scaling their own enterprises. Eric is a native of Detroit, Michigan and first arrived to Silicon Valley to attend Stanford University (BA, MA), which launched his career into software and startups. Eric is happily married with two kids.
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About Hustle Con, Hustle Fund: Hustle Fund is a seed fund that seeks to invest in early-stage startups.
Elizabeth Yin
Co-Founder & General Partner of Hustle Fund
Elizabeth Yin is co-founder and CEO of LaunchBit. She frequently speaks at conferences and events and has previously spoken at Women 2.0 partner events, Web 2.0, Lean Startup events, TechStars, MIT, Stanford, Yale, and Babson among others. Prior to LaunchBit, she built profitable niche websites and previously worked as a product marketing manager at Google. She holds a BS in electrical engineering from Stanford and an MBA from MIT Sloan.
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About Hustle Fund: Hustle Fund is a seed fund that seeks to invest in early-stage startups.
Jonathan Heiliger
General Partner of Vertex Ventures
I started rebelling against my parents when I was nine years old by staying up all night to game, hack, and program a new computer. A few years later, I taught myself 3D computer graphics and IP networking while working for EPRI and Stanford University, the local hub for the Internet’s precursor, the NSFNET. At 19, I helped start GlobalCenter, one of the first web hosting providers, with initial customers such as CNN, Netscape, Playboy, and Yahoo! More recently, I was a General Partner with North Bridge Venture Partners, from April 2012 to November 2014. During my tenure I started the seed practice and led investments in Lytro, Periscope.io, Quora, and Ravel Law, in addition to co-founding Coolan. Prior to NBVP, I worked at Facebook, where I led global infrastructure, site architecture, and internal systems as VP Infrastructure & Technical Operations, from 2007 until 2012. During that time Facebook grew from 35 million to over 800 million users. Facebook witnessed unprecedented scale and velocity, one of our most impactful decisions was defying the status quo and sharing our lessons learned in infrastructure with the world through 100+ open source projects, consequently, forming the Open Compute Project. Before that, I held executive engineering roles at Wal-Mart and Danger (acquired by Microsoft). I also spent several years as Chief Operating Officer for Loudcloud (which became Opsware and was later acquired by HP). Earlier in my career, I co-founded and was CTO of GlobalCenter, and later founded Global Crossing’s venture capital group. While scaling GlobalCenter, we saw an opportunity to build the world’s first native-optical IP network. When others were adopting ATM, we chose the path less traveled with a novel approach. I currently serve on the board of directors of Webmonsters, in addition to Vertex portfolio companies PerimeterX, CloudAcademy, and SpaceIQ. I have individually invested in and actively help several companies, including Cloudera, Coravin, Diffbot, Dropbox, Square, and ThousandEyes.
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About Coolan, Exploratorium, Vertex US, Vertex Ventures: Vertex Ventures is a global network of operator-investors that manages portfolios.
Eric Benhamou
Founder & General Partner of Benhamou Global Ventures
Eric Benhamou is the CEO and founder of Benhamou Global Ventures, LLC. Benhamou Global Ventures, started in 2003, invests and plays an active role in innovative high tech firms throughout the world. He is an adjunct professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at INSEAD. He is also a visiting professor at IDC Herzliya’s Arison School of Business. He served as chairman of the board of directors of Palm, Inc. from 1999 until 2007 and as chief executive officer of Palm from 2001 until 2003. Benhamou served as chief executive officer of 3Com Corporation from 1990 until 2000 and as chairman of the board of directors until its sale to HP in April 2010. Previously, he held a variety of senior management positions at 3Com. In 1981, Mr. Benhamou co-founded Bridge Communications, an early networking pioneer, and was vice president of engineering until its merger with 3Com in 1987. In 2003, Eric Benhamou was appointed to the Joint High Level Advisory Panel of the U.S.- Israel Science and Technology Commission by U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans. He currently serves as chairman of the board of Cypress Semiconductor and as a member of the board of RealNetworks, Inc and of Silicon Valley Bancshares. He serves on the board of directors of several privately held companies. He is the chairman of the Israel Venture Network, a venture philanthropy organization for a stronger Israeli society. Eric Benhamou received a Masters degree from Stanford University’s School of Engineering. He also holds a Diplome d’Ingénieur and a doctorate from Arts et Metiers ParisTech.
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About Benhamou Global Ventures, IDC Herzliya: Benhamou Global Ventures is a venture capital firm sourcing startups to build them into the next-generation of B2B technology companies.
Eric Buatois
General Partner of Benhamou Global Ventures
Eric joined Sofinnova Ventures as a General Partner in 2001 with more than 20 years of experience in the wireless industry. Prior to becoming a venture capitalist, he held several senior management and operational roles at Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packard and Ericsson, also having negotiated, created and managed a joint venture in Sweden between H-P and Ericsson. In his corporate roles, Eric pioneered and developed several very successful products such as Texas Instruments’ digital signal processors for the cellular market, Hewlett-Packard’s telecommunications products Opencall and Openview, and Ericsson’s operational support systems for telecom networks. Eric has also driven several acquisitions and major partnering activities. At Sofinnova Ventures, Eric specializes in investment in the wireless ecosystem. He is a lead investor who truly enjoys building global companies and has demonstrated experience in executing spin-outs from large companies. He actively serves on the boards of companies in the US and in Europe, including Cortina Systems, Crestatech, Crocus Technology, Hellosoft (acquired by Imagination Technologies, LSE: IMG), Laszlo Systems, Upek (Acquired by AuthenTec, Nasdaq: AUTH) and Volubill. Eric served as Chairman of the Board of Upek from inception until 2009, Chairman of Crocus Technology from inception until Janaury 2010, and is currently Chairman of Laszlo systems. Eric Buatois holds an M.S. in Computer Science and Communications Engineering from Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications in France.
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About Benhamou Global Ventures: Benhamou Global Ventures is a venture capital firm sourcing startups to build them into the next-generation of B2B technology companies.
Anik Bose
General Partner of Benhamou Global Ventures
Anik Bose is a General Partner at BGV. BGV is an early stage venture fund that assists entrepreneurs in building a new generation of high technology companies. Prior to joining BGV, he headed business development at 3Com – in this role he managed a $250MM corporate venture fund, spearheaded dozens of venture capital investments and executed numerous M&A transactions. Key venture investments include – Mesh Networks (acquired by Motorola), Parthus (IPO), Cicada Semiconductor (acquired by Vitesse), Microtune (IPO), ADMTek (acquired by Infineon), Atrica (acquired by Nokia/Siemens), Sheer Networks (acquired by Cisco), Air Prime (Acquired by Sierra Wireless), Healthetec (IPO) and Intransa. Most recently Mr. Bose architected the launch of H3C (3Com’s joint venture with Huawei), which achieved annual revenues of over $700 million and a market valuation of $1.8Bn within 36 months of launch. Prior to joining 3Com, Mr. Bose served as a Partner in the High Technology Practice of Deloitte Management Consulting in San Francisco. Mr. Bose holds a MBA from Boston College and BA in Economics from the University of Delhi, India.
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About Benhamou Global Ventures: Benhamou Global Ventures is a venture capital firm sourcing startups to build them into the next-generation of B2B technology companies.
Charles Moldow
General Partner of Foundation Capital
Charles joined Foundation Capital in 2005, with a background in general management, sales, marketing, product management, and business development. Before coming to Foundation Capital, he was part of two teams that successfully built companies from early start-up through greater than $100 million in sales and exits near or above a billion dollars. Charles has made thirteen investments since joining Foundation, of which four have been acquired: PowerSet to Microsoft; Xoopit to Yahoo!; Adwhirl to Google; and, Weblistic to Spot Runner. Charles works closely with his current portfolio, which includes: AdRoll, Bancbox, CloudOn, Copious, Everyday Health, Fanhood, LendingClub, Motif Investing, Pixazza, Refresh, RevelTouch, and SunRun. Prior to Foundation, Charles spent five years with Tellme Networks and was a member of the founding executive team. While there, he led Tellme in raising one of the largest private financing rounds in the country post-Internet bubble, adding $125 million in cash to the company balance sheet during tough market conditions in August, 2000. Tellme was acquired by Microsoft in 2007 for $760 million. Prior to Tellme, Charles was a member of the founding team of Internet access provider @Home Network. In 1996, he established the @Media division; and over the ensuing three years helped establish @Media as the leading broadband media provider. In 1997 the company went public. A year later, Charles assisted in the $7 billion acquisition of Excite Network. After the merger, he became General Manager of Matchlogic, the $80 million division focused on interactive advertising. Charles’ entrepreneurial penchant dates back to 1989 when he co-founded OnTime Guide which replaced the OAG Pocket Flight Guide as the must-have resource for frequent business travelers and PrimeTime Partners, which attempted to establish a new category of self liquidating promotions on behalf of advertisers and direct marketers. Prior to that, Charles spent three years in the Mergers and Acquisitions practice at Merrill Lynch. Charles holds a BS degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and received his MBA from Harvard University. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife and four children.
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About Foundation Capital: Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm made up of former entrepreneurs and helps companies and businesses grow.
Bill Elmore
General Partner and Founder of Foundation Capital
With a combinationof venture and operating experience that cultivated a deep understanding about the challenges an organization faces on a daily basis, Bill founded Foundation Capital in 1995 with the purpose of helping entrepreneurs build strong organizations from the ground up. He has always operated on the belief that substantial, sustainable companies are the result of matching insight—whether about technology or market opportunity—with the right entrepreneurand management team. Prior to Foundation, Bill spent eight years as a General Partner at Inman & Bowman. Previous roles include president of Visual Engineering, as well as a variety of marketing management positions, at Hewlett-Packard. As former director and past presidentof the Western Association for Venture Capitalists, and past director of the National Venture Capital Association, Bill continues to be actively involved in defining, serving, and representing the interests of the venture capital and private equity industries. Equally passionate about his philanthropy work, Bill serves on the Advisory Council at Stanford Business School and is a board member of the Eastside College Preparatory School. Bill currently sits on the board ofdirectors of Biz360, CloudShield, Helpstream, Quartics, SpringCM, TeaLeaf Technology, Venafi, and XMOS Semiconductor, and was previously on the boards of Atheros Communications and WindRiver Systems. Bill holds a BSEEand MSEE from Purdue University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
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About Foundation Capital: Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm made up of former entrepreneurs and helps companies and businesses grow.
