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 CEO’ operating in the Social space. If you think a CEO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.us.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Edward Lando
Co-Founder & CEO of Goody
Edward Lando is the Managing Partner at Pareto Holdings.
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About Alpha, Catalina Crunch, CodeCombat, Conduit, Goody, Horizons School of Technology, Overtime, Pareto Holdings, Svrf: Goody makes sending gifts as easy as sending a text.
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Falon Fatemi
Co-Founder and CEO of Fireside
Falon Fatemi is Founder and CEO of Node and Fireside.
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About Fireside, Forbes Magazine, Node: Fireside is where the world’s greatest creators go to bring the audience into the story through live, interactive, virtual shows.
Jeff Weiner
Chief Executive Officer & Executive Chairman of LinkedIn
Jeff Weiner is the executive chairman of LinkedIn, where he continues to help LinkedIn realize its vision of creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. He’ll also continue to mentor and coach the leadership team, advise on key strategic initiatives, and help to represent the company externally. In addition to his ongoing work at LinkedIn, Jeff is focused on investing, coaching and his philanthropic work, including helping to ensure that compassion is taught and practiced in every primary school in the U.S. Prior to becoming executive chairman in June 2020, Jeff was the CEO of LinkedIn. During his 11-year tenure, LinkedIn grew its membership base from 33M to more than 690M, increased its revenue from $78M to over $7.9B and expanded the team from 338 employees to over 16,000. Also, presently resides on the board of directors for Intuit, Donorschoose.org and Everfi, an ed tech company with which he co-founded The Compassion Project, a non-profit whose mission is to ensure compassion is taught in every elementary school in the U.S. Additionally, an active early and growth stage investor through his Next Play Ventures fund and separately, the newly created Concrete Rose Capital fund, focused on investing in diverse founders, start-ups serving underserved communities and/or building diverse teams. Prior to LinkedIn, was an Executive in Residence at Accel Partners and Greylock Partners. Primarily focused on advising the leadership teams of the firm’s existing consumer technology portfolio companies while also working closely with the firm’s partners to evaluate new investment opportunities. Previously served in key leadership roles at Yahoo! for over seven years, most recently as the Executive Vice President of Yahoo!’s Network Division managing Yahoo’s consumer web product portfolio, including Yahoo’s Front Page, Mail, Search, and Media products.
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About LinkedIn, Next Play Ventures: LinkedIn is a professional networking site that allows its members to create business connections, search jobs, and find potential clients.
Steve Gatena
Founder & CEO of Pray.com
Steve is the founder of pray.com, the digital destination for faith. Steve is an American Entrepreneur, Media Producer, and NCAA Champion. In 2019, Steve was honored as a CSQ 40 Under 40 Visionary. Steve has also received an Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the United Nations in a program sponsored by Dell & Intel, and been named #8 on the Forbes list of Famous Multi-Generational Entrepreneurs.
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About Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Pray.com: Pray.com is the #1 app for daily prayer & faith-based audio content
Paul Davison
Co-Founder and CEO of Clubhouse
Paul Davison is the Co-Founder and CEO of Clubhouse. Davison is a San Diego native who graduated from Stanford and then earned his MBA from Stanford Business School. He had an internship at Google between degrees. Davison worked at consulting firm Bain and Co. before joining database startup Metaweb, which was acquired by Google in 2010. Previously he was an entrepreneur in residence at Benchmark Capital.
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About Clubhouse, Clubhouse: Clubhouse is an audio-based social app that allows users to spontaneously join group chats.
Abraham Shafi
Founder and CEO of IRL
Abe attended UC Berkeley and studied the intersection of computer engineering, business, cultural anthropology and sociology before starting his first company, getTalent, a highly acclaimed social recruiting platform, prompting him to leave school. The platform was born of out a personal experience while job hunting and realizing there was improvements to be made with the resume-sorting process. The platform leveraged data science to take away the biases from the hiring process, thus helping organizations hire the best talent. getTalent had global clients including Walmart, JetBlue and Viacom, and was later sold to Dice in 2013. In 2018, Abe founded IRL because he was personally driven to build an app that would bring people together. He found his addiction to social media was related to his own depression and left him close to quitting social media all together. This propelled him to make a social product that could help people feel connected in a way that felt healthier and less addictive. Since inception, the app has brought friends together over 600M times. IRL has eleven employees and is based in San Francisco, California. In Abe’s spare time, he likes playing piano and composing music. Currently, he is most interested in merging electronic music with classical leveraging deep folkloric music from around the world, blending with archeologic tunes of humankind’s musical history.
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About IRL: Groups, Chats, Events
Jake Paul
CEO & Founder of TeamDom
Jake Paul is the Founder and CEO at TeamDom. He dropped out of high school and relocated to Los Angeles at 17, without a single meeting lined up. Jake became a Viner before becoming a Vloger. Also Jake has racked up over 15 million social media followers, and 3.5 billion video views, categorizing him as one of the top 20 social media influencers and a leading brand ambassador. Jake also lends his efforts to the acting world — starring as “Dirk” on Disney Channel’s Bizaardvark, “Lance” in the YouTube Red Original Movie Dance Camp and “Dugan” on Fox Digital’s new movie Mono.#Bloodynosegang
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About TeamDom: TeamDom is a media conglomerate that builds brands, stories, celebrities, and businesses around teen entertainment and media.
Kong Pham
CEO & Founder of Jumpcut
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About Jumpcut: Jumpcut creates captivating online courses.
Ketan Shah
CEO of Gameyola
• Past positions include VP engineering, VP product, VP technology, CTO and CEO • A successful entrepreneur and executive with engineering background and experience in local / online advertising, ad networks, digital media, SEM, SEO, lead generation, consumer and enterprise web applications, social networking, social gaming, healthcare and wellness • 17+ years of overall experience in technology, product design and management • 10 + years of experience in online advertising, digital media, social and web applications & enterprise platforms • Founded and sold multiple businesses with 3 successful exits • Co-author of a pending patent in local online advertising technology • Product development using technologies: C, C++, Java, .Net, RoR, SQLServer, MySQL, Oracle, Google AdWords API, Google Analytics, Yahoo SEM API, Facebook API, Kiva, Microsoft AdCenter API, MFC, Html, Javascript, CSS and more.. • B.S.( Electrical Engineering ), M.S.( Computer Engineering) Specialties: • Engineering, Entrepreneurship and general startup management • Complete technology lifecycle (design, development, QA, deployment ) of complex, web based consumer and enterprise software in various industries like retail, online advertising, legal, HR, social gaming • Team setup and development (National & International) • Operations • Business strategies & negotiations
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About Agentz, Inc, Gameyola: Gameyola provides a monetization and distribution platform for casual Flash games on social networks
Sunmeet Jolly
Founder & CEO of GROTU
Founder and Patent holder – GROTU mobile app @ 101 Islands LLC. Angel investor in 40 pre-IPO technology startups. Frequently invited by accelerators and angel forums to Judge startup competitions and discuss technology innovation. Former IT Consulting industry executive who sold hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting services to Fortune 500 companies working for Cap Gemini, HCL, L&T, NTT data.
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About GROTU: Patented GROTU app provides a much needed “private” collection of productivity and communication tools for friends and family social groups
Shawn Fanning
Chief Executive Officer of Rupture
Shawn Fanning is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and angel investor. He developed Napster, one of the first popular peer-to-peer (“P2P”) file sharing platforms, in 1999. The popularity of Napster was widespread and Fanning was featured on the cover of Time magazine. The site in its initial free P2P incarnation was shut down in 2001 after the company’s unsuccessful appeal of court orders arising from its encouraging the illegal sharing of copyrighted material. A paid subscription version of the site followed, and was purchased by Rhapsody on December 1, 2011. Following his involvement with Napster, he joined, and invested in, a number of early-stage technology startup companies.
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About Airtime, Electronic Arts, Helium, Rupture: Rupture is an online social network that allows gamers to connect and share with one another.
Mark Weinstein
CEO, Founder of MeWe
Mark Weinstein is the Founder and CEO of MeWe, the Next-Gen Social Network. Mark is a leading privacy advocate, one of the visionary inventors of social networking, and an award-winning author. He founded SuperFamily and SuperFriends, precursors to today’s social and chat networks, at the turn of the millennium. Both became PC Magazine “Top 100” sites for multiple years. Mark sold them and then authored the “Habitually Great” book series endorsed by the late Dr. Stephen Covey, (2x Indie Book awards), and became an influential technology consultant/advisor. A few years ago when Mark Zuckerberg declared, “privacy is a social norm of the past,” that comment angered Weinstein greatly. It sparked him to create the Sgrouples beta project, hiring an engineering team to design and build the world’s first social network with privacy-by- design for its members. The 3-year beta project served as the testing platform for the launch of MeWe. Making its official launch during SXSW 2016 (South by Southwest), MeWe was honored as the 2016 Start-Up of the Year Finalist for “Innovative World Technology.” World renowned thought leaders and executives proudly serve on MeWe’s Advisory Board, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web; Raj Sisodia, the founder of Conscious Capitalism; Professor Sherry Turkle, leading technology expert; Professor Phil Rogaway, award-winning cryptographer; Cullen Hoback, award-winning documentary film-maker on privacy; Colin Sebastion, leading internet analyst; Simon Mainwaring, founder of WeFirst; Marci Shimoff, NYT Best-Selling author; Jack Canfield, co-founder of Chicken Soup for the Soul; and several others. Mark is one of the world’s foremost privacy advocates, and he is listed as one of the “Top 8 Minds in Online Privacy.” He was a Steering Committee Member of National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) – where he strongly argued against any “national identity system,” calling the idea a complete violation of the human right to privacy. The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada has named Mark “Privacy by Design Ambassador.” Mark has written about privacy and the social media industry in well-known publications such as USA Today, InfoSecurity Magazine, Daily Mirror (UK), Dark Reading, HuffPo, and many others. He has been interviewed on many media outlets, including PBS, BBC, FOX, FORBES, CNN, and ABC. Mark is often a featured speaker and social media/privacy expert on the stage at many conferences, including EY’s Strategic Growth Forum, the 16th Annual Privacy and Security Conference, Global Security Conference, GMIC Silicon Valley, and he was a recent keynote speaker at GMIC New York, Security BSides Vancouver, and the Customer Experience Asia. Mark received his BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz; and his MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. He resides in Los Angeles.
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About MeWe: MeWe is the rapidly growing high integrity alternative to Facebook. No Ads, No Targeting, No Newsfeed Manipulation, NO BS!
Marcy Boyle
Co Founder, CEO of Hot Bit VR
Marcy Boyle is the CEO and co-founder of Hot Bit VR, a upcoming webVR marketplace of experiential social shopping. Hot Bit VR has been featured on ZDnet, Entrepreneur, Fox News, and listed as one of the “30 Best Virtual Reality Companies to Change Your World Soon.” She and her co-founder’s VR experiences have been featured in art galleries, universities, conferences, and festivals including FIVARS in Toronto and VRUK in London. Hot Bit VR was selected for the first class of the AR/VR/XR accelerator at the Green Screen Institute, and Silicon Valley’s Women’s Startup Lab. Prior to working in VR, she co-directed the feature film, NOBODY CAN COOL, which was released internationally. Marcy is a graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University and is a member of Women in VR, Women in Film, and on the Board of the Alliance of Women Directors.
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About Hot Bit VR, Oculus: An experiential marketplace in virtual reality.
Andrew Gazdecki
Founder and CEO of MicroAcquire
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About Altcoin.io, Bizness Apps, MicroAcquire: MicroAcquire is a startup acquisition marketplace that helps startups find buyers and get acquired.
Ruben Harris
CEO and Co-Founder of Career Karma
CEO of Career Karma Co-Host of the Breaking Into Startups Podcast Previously at: AtlSchool, Honor, and Hustle Prior to Tech: Investment Banker and Professional Cellist
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About Career Karma: Career Karma helps people find career advice and job training to navigate their careers.
Prerna Gupta
Founder & CEO of HOOKED
Prerna Gupta is the Founder & CEO at HOOKED.
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About HOOKED: HOOKED is redefining entertainment for the Snapchat generation.
Tracy Chou
Founder & CEO of Block Party
Tracy Chou is an entrepreneur, software engineer, and diversity advocate. She spent five years at Pinterest as an engineer and tech lead and was an early engineer at Quora prior to that. She is a co-founder of Project Include, a non-profit working with tech startups on diversity and inclusion, and #MovingForward, a movement working with VC firms to establish and publish anti-harassment policies; and an investment scout and advisor for several Bay Area VC firms. In her latest venture she is CEO of Block Party, with a mission to solve online harassment and abuse.
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About Block Party, Pinterest, Project Include: Block Party is a consumer app that tackles online harassment and puts you back in control.
Jorn Lyseggen
Founder & CEO of Meltwater
Jorn Lyseggen, a serial entrepreneur and philanthropist, is the Founder & CEO of Meltwater. Launched in his home country of Norway in 2001 with just a $15,000 investment, Jorn and his team have grown the company to become a global leader in media intelligence. Today, Meltwater has more than 1,500 employees in 55 offices across six continents, with more than 30,000 clients worldwide. Jorn released his first book, Outside Insight: Navigating a World Drowning in Data, in October 2017. The book describes the emergence of a new software category that will leverage insights gleaned from the vast amount of external information available on the web to transform corporate decision-making.
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About Meltwater, Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST): Meltwater is a media Intelligence & social listening tools for measuring, managing and magnifying corporate reputation.
Michael Heyward
CEO of medialab
Serial entrepreneur Michael Heyward co-founded Whisper with Brad Brooks in 2012 with the mission of giving people a place to freely and authentically express themselves. Whisper is one of the fastest-growing media companies, generating over 17 billion content views per month. Prior to Whisper, the LA native worked in different roles related to consumer-based marketing at startup TigerText. As a teenager, Michael was an avid Formula One Racing fan and secured the United States commercial rights for the sport. In 2016, Michael was named one of AdWeek’s “Young Influentials”. In 2014, he was named one of Forbes Magazine’s “30 Under 30” and one of Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business.” Michael is a frequent keynote speaker and has spoken at a number of prominent conferences, including WSJ D, Fortune Tech Brainstorm, TechCrunch Disrupt, and Business Insider Ignition.
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About medialab: medialab is a media & technology company that engages in acquiring and growing internet brands.
Afif Khoury
Founder/CEO of SOCi
Afif Khoury has spent the last decade involved in startups and venture capital investments as an attorney, venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur. Afif is a published geneticist who earned his BS in Neuroscience and Physiology from UCSD in 1998, before attending Law School at Northwestern School of Law (JD 2002) and Business School at Kellogg School of Management. Afif started his legal career as a corporate and securities attorney in Silicon Valley at the premier technology law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR) representing technology companies and venture investors across multiple industries and at all stages. Afif left the Silicon Valley office of WSGR to help start their San Diego office, following which he left to open the San Diego office of Gunderson Dettmer (another Silicon Valley-based premier technology law firm). In 2010 Afif raised a seed and early stage fund named Scatter Ventures, which he continues to manage today. Afif is also the Founder and Managing Partner of Axon Venures, a Biotech focused venture fund in Southern California. Between the two fund, Afif has deployed more than $70 million. Afif is a director of the San Diego Venture Group and also founder and CEO of SOCI, Inc., a social data and intelligence technology startup. He is California Board certified as well as a Registered Attorney with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
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About Aspen Neuroscience, Axon Ventures, Cradle Genomics, Epic Sciences, EvoNexus, EY, Omniome, Oncternal Therapeutics, Singular Genomics, SOCi: SOCi is a centralized platform for multi-location marketers to reach and engage local customers.
Alex Welch
CEO and Co-Founder of Lasso Media
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About Lasso Media, Photobucket: Lasso offers a mobile app that enables its users to share photos with their friends.
Ben Silbermann
Co-Founder & CEO of Pinterest
Ben (@8en) grew up in Iowa, where he spent a lot of time collecting bugs. Today, he helps millions of people collect and discover the things they love as co-founder and CEO of Pinterest. Before Pinterest, Ben worked at Google on AdSense and studied at Yale. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and two sons. Previously, Silbermann worked at Google in the sales organization; however, after a short time with the company he left and started designing his own iPhone apps with a college friend, Paul Sciarra. After their initial application, Totte, failed to gain significant traction, the cofounders created a pinboard product and Pinterest was born. However, Pinterest saw a low user base and very little engagement in its early stages. Silbermann said the prospect of telling people he failed was too embarrassing so he and Sciarra continued to tinker and improve the site. Today, Pinterest claims over 20 million users.
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About Cold Brew Labs, Pinterest: Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool for saving and discovering creative ideas.
Mahi de Silva
Chief Executive Officer of Triller
Mahi is the CEO at Triller.
Previously, Mahi was responsible for commercial activities for Opera’s consumer mobile products and services. Before joining Opera, Mahi was co-founder and CEO of AdMarvel, Inc., the global leader in mobile advertising platforms, acquired by Opera in 2010.
Prior to AdMarvel, Mahi co-founded Frengo
Corporation, a mobile social media platform. Mahi also spent 10 years at VeriSign, where he was part of the startup management team.
From 2002 to 2006, he served as senior vice president and general manager of Wireless and Digital Content Services at VeriSign, where he built the world’s leading mobile messaging and mobile entertainment business with revenues exceeding $600M per year.
Prior to VeriSign, he served in various technology leadership roles at Taligent, Apple and NCR Corporation.
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About Triller: Triller is an AI-powered music video app that enables anyone to make professional videos, effortlessly.
Chris Lamontagne
CEO of Spring
> An enterprising and ambitious business leader, with proven entrepreneurial talent and innovative way of thinking. Strong experience of founding/working in high growth environments. > Successful track record in defining go to market business strategy, leading user acquisition efforts and driving hyper growth. > Interested marketplaces, e-commerce & mobile environments. With a specific interest in distressed or turnaround situations. Founded first business aged 20 – grew to become nationwide provider – successfully exited three years later.
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About Spring: Spring is the link between creators and commerce. Innovative tools and services empower creators to launch products while selling on social.
Nick Hedges
CEO of MomentFeed
A 20-year veteran of the Internet and software as a service (SaaS) industry, Nick comes to MomentFeed having been President and CEO of Velocify, the leading consumer sales acceleration platform. Nick helped orchestrate the successful sale of the company to Velocify partner and leading cloud-based platform provider for the mortgage finance industry, Ellie Mae. A widely recognized thought leader on organization transformation, technologies, and sales strategies, Nick has held senior positions at Bain & Company, Accenture.com, and Ogilvy. He was named one of the 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management. A Fulbright Scholar, Hedges holds an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree with first-class honors from Manchester University.
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About ICE Mortgage Technology, MomentFeed, uberall: MomentFeed is a platform that helps multi-location brands optimize for proximity search in order to connect customers with brands.
Keith Messick
Cofounder & CEO of Origin.al
Keith Messick is Senior Vice President Marketing at LaunchDarkly
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About LaunchDarkly, Origin.al: Origin.al is a new way to represent a user’s work—projects and examples in real time.
Michael Ritter
Founder & CEO of Maple Media
Michael Ritter is the Founder and CEO of Maple Media, a mobile apps and games company backed by private equity firm Shamrock Capital. Maple Media is a mobile media, advertising and technology company that acquires, manages and operates mobile applications focused on the utility, productivity, games and entertainment verticals. Popular titles include Snowboard Party: World Tour, Skateboard Party, Minesweeper Classic, Sudoku 🙂 and CalConvert. Previously he was SVP of Business & Corporate Development for Jam City, a large social and mobile game company based in Los Angeles where he oversaw mergers & acquisition activities, publishing, licensing, distribution, sales, legal and partnerships for social and mobile games. Michael was also the Founder and Publisher of Saturday Night Magazine, which at the time, he built into the largest circulated monthly collegiate lifestyle and entertainment magazine in the country.
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About Fantasy Baseball Arbitration, Maple Media: Maple Media is a mobile media, advertising, and technology company that acquires and operates category-leading, consumer apps.
Anton Bernstein
Co-founder & CEO of Highrise
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About Highrise, Lux Group, Pocket Worlds: Highrise is a creative mobile community where people create avatars, express themselves, and make friends.
Jocelyn Mangan
CEO and Co-Founder of Him For Her
Jocelyn Mangan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Him For Her.
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About Him For Her, Snagajob: Him For Her is a social venture that accelerates the diversity on corporate boards.
Derek Ting
CEO of TextNow
Derek Ting is the co-founder and CEO of TextNow.Prior to that, Derek served as a software engineer at Qualcomm and Phoenix Interactive Design Inc. Derek founded WoolNet LLC.
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About TextNow: Our mission is to break down the barriers to communication and free the flow of conversation for people everywhere.
Eric Grossberg
Co-CEO & Co-Founder of Brilliant Earth
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About Brilliant Earth: Brilliant Earth is a luxury jewelry company that offers ethically sourced jewelry.
Beth Gerstein
Co-CEO & Co-Founder of Brilliant Earth
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About Brilliant Earth: Brilliant Earth is a luxury jewelry company that offers ethically sourced jewelry.
Art Levitt
CEO of 4 JEMS Entertainment
In addition to serving as an active investor and advisor to runtriz, Art is currently a Venture Partner with Jerusalem Venture Partners and CEO of its portfolio company, Animation Lab. Art also operates 4JEMS Entertainment as a consulting practice focused on the improvement of business and industry. Prior to 4JEMS, Art founded, and served as President and CEO of, Fandango, Inc., the premier online movie ticketing and entertainment website. Previously, Art served as President of Disney Regional Entertainment, a division of The Walt Disney Company. Prior to Disney Regional Entertainment, Art served as President and CEO of Hard Rock Cafe, International. Levitt completed the Program for Management Development (P.M.D.) at Harvard University, and graduated Southampton college with a B.A. in Biology.
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About 4 JEMS Entertainment, Animation Lab: 4 Jems Entertainment, Inc.
Jeff Green
CEO of The Trade Desk
Jeff Green is founder and CEO of The Trade Desk, Inc., a demand-side platform that powers the desks of the world’s most advanced buyers in online advertising. Green built The Trade Desk as second-generation demand-side platform, positioning it at the center of online advertising’s trading future by offering efficient, transparent technology. Since its inception in 2009, the company has grown on pace with the now-$3B RTB industry, having been included as an alpha partner in Facebook’s launch of the Facebook Exchange, and having been recently being named one of OnMedia’s “35 [Private Companies] to Watch.” By focusing on the technology of the buy-side, Green has shaped The Trade Desk into one of the fastest growing companies in ad tech. He was a finalist for the Ernst & Young 2013 Entrepreneur of the Year award for Greater Los Angeles. Prior to The Trade Desk, Green founded AdECN, which he built in 2004 as the world’s first online advertising exchange. As COO, he led all strategy, product, and business development. AdECN was acquired by the Microsoft Corporation within three years of launch. At Microsoft, Green not only oversaw the AdECN exchange business, but also all reseller and channel partner business. Additionally, he advised the all-up strategy for the Online Services Division. In 2009, Green left to launch The Trade Desk. Green has also played a leadership role in the ad tech industry, having served on the Networks and Exchanges Quality Assurance Guidelines Committee for the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) from 2011-2012. Green led working groups that established rules and best practices for acquiring inventory, and set data transaction standards.
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About The Trade Desk, Trade Desk Inc.: The Trade Desk is an online demand-side platform that provides buying tools for digital media buyers.
Akin Jones
CEO & CO-FOUNDER of Aella
Akin Jones is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Aella Credit.
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About Aella: Aella helps africans get credit, invest, get health insurance, and make payments.
Matt Marshall
Founder and CEO of VentureBeat
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded \”Journalist of the Year\” by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
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About VentureBeat: VentureBeat is an online technology news platform that is engaged in technology publication and events business.
Eric Dahan
CEO & Co-founder of Open Influence
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About Open Influence, YPO: Open Influence is a marketing company that helps brands and advertisers engage and grow their desired audiences through social media.
Hao Li
CEO & Co-Founder of Pinscreen
Hao Li is Founder and CEO of Pinscreen, Inc., and Distinguished Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, Director of the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, a visiting professor at Weta Digital and a research lead at Industrial Light & Magic / Lucasfilm. For his contributions in non-rigid shape registration, human digitization, and real-time facial performance capture, Hao received the TR35 Award in 2013, recognizing him as one of the top 35 innovators under the age of 35, from the MIT Technology Review. He was named Andrew and Erna Viterbi Early Career Chair in 2015, and was awarded the Google Faculty Research Award and the Okawa Foundation Research Grant the same year. He won the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award in 2018. He is best known for his work on dynamic geometry processing, facial animation, and data-driven techniques for making 3D human digitization and facial animation accessible to the masses. During his PhD, Hao co-created the first real-time and markerless system for performance-driven facial animation based on depth sensors. The team later commercialized a variant of this technology as the facial animation software Faceshift (acquired by Apple Inc. in 2015 and incorporated into the iPhone X in 2017). He was brought on as visiting professor at Weta Digital to build the high-fidelity facial performance capture pipeline for reenacting the deceased actor Paul Walker in the movie Furious 7 (2015). His recent research focuses on combining techniques in Deep Learning and Computer Graphics to facilitate the creation of 3D avatars and to enable true immersive face-to-face communication and telepresence in Virtual Reality.
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About Pinscreen, University of California Berkeley: Revolutionizing digital communication and online human interactions with user-generated and personalized 3D virtual avatars.
Andrei Cherny
CEO and Co-Founder of Aspiration
Andrei Cherny has spent nearly twenty years working to make the financial system more open and fair. He combines a background as an advisor to some of America’s top companies, the co-founder and president of a media start-up, a financial fraud prosecutor, a historian, a White House aide, a Navy reserve officer, and a nationally-recognized economic policy expert. Andrei has provided strategic counsel to companies such as Intel, Qualcomm, and Bank of America. He launched and grew Democracy Journal to one of the most widely read idea journals in America. There, he helped start the successful fight for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A former Clinton White House aide, he was the youngest White House speechwriter in American history. His 2000 book, The Next Deal, showed how business and government would be transformed by people’s demands for more and better choices. He is also the author of the The Candy Bombers. He graduated from Harvard University and from the University of California Berkeley law school. Source: https://www.aspiration.com/team
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About Aspiration: Aspiration offers retail banking and investing services that enable customers to spend and save their money in ways that protect the planet.
Jesse Leimgruber
Co-Founder & CEO of NeoReach
Jesse is a Stanford Alumni, co-founder of NeoReach and Bloom, Thiel Fellow, and angel investor in a dozen startups. Jesse is a partner at the Alchemist Accelerator, mentor at European Innovation Academy. He frequently guest lectures classes at Stanford University and USC.
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About Alchemist Accelerator, Bloom, Bloom, Clash, NeoReach, Rank Executives: Influencer Marketing For Big Brands
Matt Mahan
CEO & Co-Founder of Brigade
Matt is responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of Brigade. He served as CEO of Causes and has previous experience in political campaigning and community organizing. In 2004, Matt ran the first political campaign to leverage Facebook data when he was elected Student Body President at Harvard.
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About Brigade, City of San Jose, University of Southern California: Brigade wants to make civic engagement easy, effective, and enjoyable — and in so doing, restore political power back to the people.
Robert Gabel
Founder & CEO of Tubular Labs
Robert (“Rob”) Gabel is the founder and CEO of Tubular Labs, the leading marketing and analytics platform that helps companies grow and engage their online video audience on YouTube. Building a marketing and analytics platform for online video unites two of Rob’s passions – online video and online marketing. Rob became fascinated with the promise and power of online video while serving as SVP of Advertising Performance at Machinima, YouTube’s 2nd largest network. Rob broadened his online video experience by consulting to YouTube-centric media companies DanceOn and AwesomenessTV. Rob’s online marketing experience includes serving as a SVP of Marketing for LowerMyBills and VP Marketing for both Inadco and Netflix. As one of the first employees at LowerMyBills, Rob helped the company grow from pre-revenue to over $200 million organically before being acquired by Experian in 2005 for nearly $400 million. Robert Gabel earned his M.B.A. from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and graduated Magna Cum Laude from The Honors College at the University of Houston with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering.
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About Tubular Labs: Tubular Labs is the global leader in video intelligence for the cross-platform world.
Austin Smith
CEO of Racket.com
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About Coughdrop Capital, LAUNCH, Racket.com: Let’s make a racket.
Jon Fisher
Co-founder & CEO of CrowdOptic
Chief Executive Officer (Co-Founder) / Director Jon is CrowdOptic’s CEO and served as CEO of Bharosa (Oracle NASDAQ: ORCL), NetClerk (NYSE: ROP) and AutoReach (AutoNation NYSE: AN). Jon is a recipient of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year, Award (Emerging Category, 2007) and lives in Marin County, CA with his wife and daughter.
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About CrowdOptic, ViciNFT: CrowdOptic uses algorithms and real-time sensor data from electronic devices to enhance security, social media sharing, and advertising.
Matt Sunbulli
Co-Founder & CEO of Fishbowl
Matt Sunbulli is Cofounder, CEO and Chief Product officer of Fishbowl, a a social network that connects professionals within companies and industries to have workplace conversations. Fishbowl was acquired by Recruit Holdings Co., which also owns Indeed.com and Glassdoor, in 2021. Previously he was CEO and Cofounder of Social Amp, the first CRM platform optimizing Facebook’s Open Graph for business. Social Amp was acquired by Merkle Inc., a leader in CRM database marketing, in February 2012. Matt’s work has been showcased at the Direct Marketing Association Conference and Exhibition, ad:tech Digital Marketing Conference and Facebook’s F8 Developers Conference. Social Amp’s work with Levi’s, Estee Lauder and 1-800-Flowers.com has been widely showcased in the social commerce industry. Prior to Social Amp, Matt served as a digital product manager at Viacom MTV Networks where he pioneered the release of new digital and social technologies and launched the first video blog. He is a graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.
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About Fishbowl, Fishbowl: Fishbowl is a social network that connects professionals within relevant communities to have candid and relevant conversations.
Michael Boswell
Co-Founder, CEO of Cue
Co-Founder and CEO of Cue. Previously an Entrepreneur in Residence at Khosla Ventures; Design Lead at Facebook, Google and Coatue. Founding member of several products with successful exits including Jobr, Pagemodo, and ContactMe.
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About Cue: The world’s first social calendar
Brian Hamachek
Co-Founder, CEO of Nearby
Brian is the Co-Founder and CEO of Nearby.
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About Nearby, Social Foundry, LLC: Meeting new people is hard. We wanted to create something to help.
John R. Adler
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Scribd
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About Scribd: Scribd is an unlimited reading subscription that offers access to books, audiobooks, magazine articles, documents and more.
Jonathan Wygant
Founder and CEO of BigSpeak Speakers Bureau
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About BigSpeak Speakers Bureau: BigSpeak is a full-spectrum speakers bureau providing business speakers to corporations, non-profits, and associations.
Victor Alston
President and CEO of IXIA
Victor Alston is a professional who’s multi-faceted career has helped him acquire impressive skills in a number of industries, including real estate development – where he’s working as President and CEO at Big Sur Construction and Luxe Living – as well as venture funding, where he identifies and invests in late-stage tech development companies. Previously in his career, Victor Alston assumed Ixia’s chief executive role in May of 2012, where his vision has aggressively moved the company forward into exciting industries such as cyber security, data center visibility, and more. Vic was instrumental in architecting Ixia’s success as it grew from a startup to a 350 million per year, leading enterprise IT solutions provider. Since joining Ixia in 2004, Vic has led Ixia innovation and growth as the head of product and technology development, engineering, and as chief operating officer for the company. Prior to joining Ixia, Victor Alston was senior director of engineering at SAP, a publicly-traded enterprise software company. Vic honed his entrepreneurial skills as a co-founder and vice president of engineering in two successful enterprise software companies – later sold to Computer Associates and Oracle Corporation, respectively. Before starting those two companies, Vic rose through the ranks at Oracle in the RDBMS and PLSQL group. Victor Alston received both his B.S. in Computer Science and M.S. in Computer Science (MSCS) from Stanford University.
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About IXIA: Ixia provides IP network validation and network visibility solutions for equipment manufacturers, service providers and government agencies.
Jonathan Gray
CEO and Co-Founder of Encore Music Technologies
Jonathan Gray, founder and CEO of Cask, is an entrepreneur and software engineer with a background in startups, open source, and all things data. Prior to founding Cask, Jonathan was a software engineer at Facebook where he drove HBase engineering efforts, including Facebook Messages and several other large-scale projects, from inception to production. An open source evangelist, Jonathan was responsible for helping build the Facebook engineering brand through developer outreach and refocusing the open source strategy of the company. Prior to Facebook, Jonathan founded Streamy.com, where he became an early adopter of Hadoop and HBase and is now a core contributor and active committer in the community. Jonathan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University.
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About Encore Music Technologies, Orcada, The Apache Software Foundation: Encore is an interactive live music mobile-based platform aiming to help artists monetize their connections with fans.
Brian Freeman
Founder and CEO of Heartbeat
Brian Freeman is a Entrepreneur, Consultant & Investor At Present he is Founder of Heartbeat Technologies, Inc of Heartbeat (getheartbeat.co). He also founded Wyldfire, where Ladies are the Gatekeepers. He has been featured for his work in entrepreneurism in Forbes, Business Insider, Huffington Post, Techcrunch, etc. He was Director Channel Partners at MOGL Loyalty, Inc & Investor & Consultant for MobilePay USA an early mobile payments provider.
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About Heartbeat: Heartbeat is a platform for millennial women to join, provide feedback to, and promote brands via their personal networks.
Adam Mosseri
CEO and Head of Instagram
Adam Mosseri is a VP at Facebook and leads the product and engineering teams responsible for News Feed and Sharing. Before this role Adam was the PM director for News Feed and before that the design director for the Mobile product group, where he was responsible for the design of all of Facebook’s mobile apps. Prior to Facebook he worked at TokBox as the company’s first designer. Adam began his career founding a design consultancy in 2003 with offices in New York and San Francisco that focused on graphic design, interaction design and exhibition design. Adam holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Study from the Gallatin School of Interdisciplinary Study at NYU where he studied Information Design and Media. He and his wife Monica are proud parents of sons, Nico and Blaise
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About Instagram, Meta: Instagram is a free photo-sharing application that enables its users to take photos, apply filters, and share them on social networks.
Dmitry Shapiro
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Koji
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About Koji: Koji is the world’s most powerful Link in Bio platform. With hundreds of free apps created by Koji and its community of independent developers, the Koji Link in Bio gives leading creators on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms new ways to engage audiences, connect with supporters, and monetize. Koji launched in March 2021 and has raised $36 million in venture capital.
Alex Beckman
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of GameOn Technology
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About Elastic Holdings, GameOn Technology: Our technology powers intelligent chat applications across multiple platforms for some of the world’s largest brands.
Joel Simkhai
Founder and CEO of Blendr
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About Blendr: Blendr is a geo-social networking application and social discovery platform for Android, iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Facebook.
Jon Vlassopulos
Founder & CEO of Tribalist
Jon Vlassopulos is the founder and CEO of Trailerpop, where he leads a mission to revolutionize the way people discover entertainment and engage with advertising. Jon has spent the last 17 years building businesses in and around the mobile, entertainment and advertising industries and as a founder, senior executive, investor and advisor, his work has driven hundreds of millions of dollars worth of innovation and delighted tens of millions of consumers. Prior to founding Trailerpop, Jon has served as CEO of award winning mobile entertainment studio skyrockit, where he managed major US carrier content platforms for companies like Sprint and built innovative branded entertainment products and experiences for companies like GAP, Intel, Coca Cola, Kraft and Zippo. Dubbed a digital media and advertising visionary by The Hollywood Reporter, Jon has created successful industry firsts in the areas of mobile, games, advertising, TV and music. Before skyrockit, Jon was the SVP of digital media and branded entertainment for Endemol, the world’s largest independent production company, where he was responsible for its worldwide digital & advertising business. Jon is credited with launching interactive TV in the US with shows like Deal or no Deal and 1 vs. 100 and with creating some of the first live, multi-platform game formats for networks like BET and TBS. He also produced games that were successful on multiple platforms including Xbox, online, and mobile and sold and produced some of the first online web series. Jon served as senior director of business development & strategic partnerships at AT&T Wireless, establishing the first phase of messaging and mobile data. At AT&T Jon ran the mobile content business and mobile marketing where he established the first mobile marketing campaigns with major brands and led the youth marketing team responsible for tracking and implementing new applications and business models Early in his career Jon was at Bertelsmann, where he helped to create BMG’s global digital strategy and held multiple executive positions with other Bertelsmann divisions in New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Jon has served on the board of NATPE, the Producer’s Guild and was a founding member of the Mobile Marketing Association. He holds a degree from Durham University and is fluent in French, Spanish and Mandarin. Jon got his start as a DJ and radio host, from where he nurtured his love of music & entertainment, building a career that blended interests in original content, emerging platforms and marketing innovation.
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About A-Force Ventures, Fabric, Roblox, Tastemates, Trailerpop, Tribalist: Tribalist is a site that offers the best entertainment & lifestyle lists from top publishers to help people discover new things to do.
Osman Rashid
CEO & Chairman of Convo
Osman is a seasoned entrepreneur in the field of educational technology. He is currently the CEO of Convo Corp. and Founder & CEO of **Galxyz** , an intergalactic science adventure on a mission to ignite the fascination of science and unlock the true potential in every student. Previously he was the co-founder and CEO of online textbook rental leader **Chegg** (NYSE:CHGG) until early 2010, and also co-founder and CEO of **Kno, Inc.** (acquired by Intel in 2013), a digital education platform company. He is also on the Board of Trustees at a health focused non-profit, ChildLife Foundation, which provides urgent care to the poorest in Karachi, Pakistan. CLF runs Karachi’s largest children emergency rooms and is deploying satellite urgent care centers to provide critical care and prevention education. Osman has received several honors, including Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of The Year Award (CA) in 2009, which is the world’s most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs, as well as Forbes Impact 15 for 2012 and Inc.’s Immigrant Edge: 9 Wildly Successful Entrepreneurs. To find out more about Osman, check out his LinkedIn profile. You can also follow him on Twitter @osmanrashid.
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About Convo, Galxyz: Convo provides an enterprise social collaboration platform that enables easy, secure conversations between desk/non-desk workers.
Jerome Ternynck
Founder and CEO of SmartRecruiters
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About SmartRecruiters: SmartRecruiters is an end-to-end recruiting platform that helps companies with talent acquisition.
Johannes Waldstein
Founder & CEO of FanAI
Johannes Waldstein is the Founder & CEO at FanAI Inc.
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About FanAI: FanAI is an AI-driven Audience Monetization platform focusing first on esports.
Justin Davis
Co-Founder & CEO of Spectrum Labs
Currently Spectrum’s Co-Founder & CEO, Justin previously managed and scaled Salesforce’s Data Studio platform as a Product Director. He’s worked for numerous industry stalwarts – including Krux, Adobe, SAS, and Microsoft. Sales: sales@getspectrum.io | Blog: getspectrum.io/blog
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About Spectrum Labs: Spectrum Labs helps consumer brands recognize and respond to toxic behaviors happening within their online communities.
Stanley Adrianus
CEO & Founder of Gamenauts
Stanley is currently the founder & CEO of Gamenauts, a games developer/publisher in San Francisco Bay Area. The company has remained profitable and 100% self-funded since its founding in 2005. Gamenauts maintains a portfolio of several Top 10 titles in the App Store and over 16 million mobile downloads. Prior to Gamenauts, Stanley was Lead Designer at Yahoo! Games, where he was responsible for the UI/UX when the site grew to be #1 games portal on the web.
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About Gamenauts, Plato: Gaemnauts is a game developer and publisher of applications for mobile devices.
Chris DeWolfe
CEO & Co-Founder of Jam City
Chris DeWolfe is co-founder and CEO of Jam City, a global leader in mobile entertainment that provides social gaming experiences for millions of players around the world. Prior to Jam City, Chris co-founded and served as CEO of MySpace, where he popularized social networking and revolutionized the music industry. The site, formed in 2004, became the most visited in the U.S. by 2006 with 90 million members. When Chris left the company in 2009, MySpace had more than 130 million monthly active users around the world. Chris received Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2015 and the Producers Guild of America’s Vanguard award in 2009. TIME included him among its 2006 list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and Barbara Walters named him one of her 10 Most Fascinating People in 2007. He studied finance at the University of Washington and attended the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, which honored him in 2006 with its Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year award. Chris is an advisor at USC’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and a board member of Uproxx Media Group. He lives in Los Angeles with his family and actively participates in animal rescue operations.
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About Jam City: Jam City is a mobile entertainment company, connecting the world through technology, creativity, and play.
Sahil Jain
Co-Founder and CEO of AdStage
Sahil Jain is the CEO and Co-founder of AdStage. Prior to founding AdStage in May 2012, Sahil co-founded his first company, Y-Combinator backed Trigger.io at 20. He dropped out of UC Berkeley, where he studied Philosophy and Econ, to join AOL Corp Devt. at 19, dropped out of High School to join Yahoo! Mobile as an automation engineer at 17 and worked in the professional video game industry before that.
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About AdStage, inresto: AdStage is an advertising technology startup powering paid marketers to understand the business impact of their campaigns.
Zack Onisko
CEO of Dribbble
Zack Onisko is CEO at Dribbble, the global community for designers and creative professionals to showcase, promote, discover, and explore design. Dribbble was founded in 2009 and has grown to become the designer community it is today for tens of millions of people around the world. Dribbble is on a mission to build the world’s best platform for designers to gain inspiration, feedback, education, community, and job opportunities. Before Dribbble, Zack began his career nearly 20 years ago as a web designer before shifting into business and executive roles at Autodesk, Creative Market, Hired.com, BranchOut, Monster.com, and Tickle.com. He is responsible for scaling multiple companies to successful exits over the past decade including the Creative Market acquisition by Autodesk in 2014. Zack is a startup investor and advisor working with Indicator Ventures, Dwell magazine, Reforge, and others.
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About Dribbble: Dribbble is a global community where the world’s top designers share, grow, and get hired.
Matt Ivester
Co-Founder & CEO of Hotshot
Matt Ivester is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, author and speaker. He is currently CEO of Kindr Inc., a company dedicated to making online kindness fun and easy. In 2011, through Serra Knight Publishing, he published lol…OMG!: What Every Student Needs to Know About Online Reputation Management, Digital Citizenship and Cyberbullying. And in 2012, he published the high school edition of the same. Since its release, lol…OMG! has become Amazon’s top-selling book on the topics of digital citizenship and cyberbullying. He has spoken at various institutions around the country on these topics. Prior to writing lol…OMG! he started several companies, including a concert ticket auction site, a multi-million dollar investment fund, and a college gossip site. In 2005, Ivester graduated from Duke University with a Bachelor of Science double majoring in Economics and Computer Science. In 2012, he graduated from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business with an MBA.
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About Hotshot: Screenshot technology
Ryan Horrigan
Co-founder and CEO of Artie
Ryan is the co-founder and CEO of Artie, a platform for next-gen games powered by AI. Artie enables developers to create and distribute hyper-personalized games where players interact with game characters via voice and computer vision. All of the games on our cloud-based platform can be shared and played instantly inside of popular apps, including Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube, with no download needed. For our launch titles, we are partnering with global entertainment studios, superstar athletes, and A-list music artists. We will be opening our platform to third-party developers in early 2020. Our team includes AI scientists, engineers, and technical artists from Disney, DreamWorks Animation, Snap, Facebook, Mozilla, Playtika, WayForward, and Carbonated Games. Early investors include Founders Fund, Warner Music Group, Scooter Braun’s Raised in Space, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s WndrCo, angel investor Cyan Banister, and YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley. Prior to co-founding Artie, Ryan served as Chief Content Officer of the Comcast-backed immersive media startup Felix & Paul Studios, where he oversaw content and business development, strategy and partnerships. At Felix & Paul, Ryan helped forge numerous partnerships with Fortune 500 companies and media conglomerates including Facebook, Google, Samsung, Fox and Comcast, and worked on projects with top brands and A-list talent such as NASA, Cirque du Soleil, President Obama, LeBron James, Wes Anderson, Judd Apatow, and Brie Larson. In 2018, Ryan and the Felix & Paul team won an Emmy for ‘The People’s House,” featuring President Barack Obama, as well as a Peabody for immersive comedy experience “Miyubi.” Prior to Felix & Paul, Ryan was a studio executive at Fox/New Regency, where he oversaw films including Academy Award Best Picture Winner “12 Years A Slave.” He began his career in the Motion Picture department at CAA, and at Paramount. Ryan has spoken at Ted X, Cannes, Facebook, Google, Sundance, SXSW and throughout China. He was a Hollywood Reporter 35 Under 35 honoree. He lives in Los Angeles, California
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About Artie: A Web3 mobile gaming company. Play on social media. No app download needed.
Jon Feltheimer
CEO of Lionsgate
Jon Feltheimer is the Chief Executive Officer at Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. and Lions Gate Entertainment, Inc. Feltheimer serves as the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chairman of Lions Gate UK Limited an affiliate of TV Guide Networks, Inc. Feltheimer serves as Chief Executive Officer of Lions Gate Entertainment, Inc. He serves as Chief Executive Officer of Lionsgate at Lions Gate Films Inc. He serves as an Advisor of ZeniMax Media Inc. He served as Chief Executive Officer of Lions Gate Films Corp. He worked for Sony Pictures Entertainment from 1991 to 1999. He was the Founder and President of TriStar Television from 1991 to 1993. He served as President of Columbia TriStar Television from 1993 to 1995, President of Columbia TriStar Television Group from 1995 to 1999 and Executive Vice President of Sony Pictures Entertainment from 1997 to 1999. He served as Head of Sony Entertainment Television. He served as an Architect of Sony Pictures Entertainment. He served as the Co-Chairman of Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. from June 30, 2005 to February 2, 2012 and has been its Non-Independent Director since January 2000. He serves as a Director of Celestial Tiger Entertainment. He has been a Director of Telltale, Incorporated since February 24, 2015. He has been a Director of Grupo Televisa, S.A.B. since April 2015. He serves as a Member of Advisory Board of Lions Gate Entertainment, Inc. He served as a Director of Lions Gate Films Corp. Feltheimer served as a Director of CinemaNow Corporation. He served as a Member of Advisory Board of JumpTV Inc. He served as a Member of Advisory Board of EastWest VentureGroup. Feltheimer has Bachelor’s Degree in Economics with honors from Washington University.
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About Lionsgate: Lionsgate is a premier next generation global content leader.
Matthew Peltier
Founder, CEO of Community
Matthew Peltier is the Founder, CEO at community.com
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About Community: Community is an app that solves communication and engagement problems.
Sepideh Nasiri
Founder & CEO of Persian Women In Tech
Sepideh (“Sepi”) Nasiri is an award winning serial Entrepreneur with 16 years of experience working in the Tech Industry, the Founder of Persian Women In Tech, the former Vice President at Women 2.0 and a life-time advocate for women, diversity and inclusion. Mrs. Nasiri started her career as a Co-founder and Managing Editor of a digital and print Los Angeles Magazine and later joined a number of successful startups in Silicon Valley. In 2014, she was recognized by San Francisco Business Times/Journal “40under40” and Diversity Journal’s 2014 “Women Worth Watching”. Currently, Mrs. Nasiri advises early stage startups including at global initiatives such as WeMENA (a program by the World Bank) and mentors globally many female entrepreneurs and founders in technology serving as an advisor to initiatives such as TechWomen, an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA).
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About Persian Women In Tech: Persian Women In Tech supports Iranian women in Tech/STEM from all across the Globe’s landscape.
Jack Chou
Co-Founder and CEO of Pace
Jack Chou is the Co-founder at Pace. Prior to that, he leads the team of product managers who work with the design and engineering teams to build Pinterest. Before becoming head of product at Pinterest, Jack was product manager of the search and discovery teams. He previously spent time as an entrepreneur, and he led the product team for the marketing solutions business at LinkedIn. He earned a degree in computer systems engineering from Stanford University.
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About Pace: Pace is a fitness and social wellness platform that redefines mental health through groups that are effective, fun, social, and challenging.
Tim Vanderhook
Co-Founder & CEO of Viant
As the Co-Founder, President and CEO of Viant, Tim sets and drives the overall direction and business strategy for the company and each of its brands. In 1999, Tim, along with brothers Chris and Russ identified the high growth potential of digital advertising and founded the interactive advertising platform Specific Media during those early stages of internet advertising. Tim’s vision led the development of behavioral targeting technology that created ground-breaking interest-based digital advertising practices. He led the company’s evolution from a small family business to an industry-leading multinational corporation.
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About Myspace, Viant, Viant, XUMO: Viant is an advertising software company enabling the execution and measurement of digital advertising through a cloud-based platform.
Alex Ma
CEO & Co-founder of Poparazzi
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About Poparazzi: Poparazzi is a photo sharing app where users can create social profiles of their friends.
Michael Horvath
Co-Founder & CEO of Strava
Michael Horvath is the Co-Founder and CEO of Strava. He earned his degree at Harvard University.
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About Strava: Strava is an online network where runners and cyclists can record their activities, compare performance, and compete with their community.
Matt Schlicht
CEO and Founder of Octane AI
Matt Schlicht is the founder and editor of Chatbots Magazine, the #1 place to learn about chatbots. He is a YC Alum, a Forbes 30 Under 30 winner, and was also previously a product manager at Ustream as well as an advisor to several other startups. Several months ago, Matt decided to launch a community dedicated to messaging and bots. Chatbots Magazine was born and now reaches over 200,000+ people per month. Matt joins us to share his story, how he got into startups and tech, how he created the opportunity to join the team at uStream, how he approaches building products, why he’s so passionate about bots and messaging, what’s next for Chatbots Magazine.
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About Chatbots Magazine, DominateFund, Hamster Pad, Octane AI, ZapChain: Octane AI provides an all-in-one platform for engaging quizzes, data collection, and personalized Facebook Messenger and SMS automation.
Mahi de Silva
Co-founder & CEO of Amplify.ai
Mahi is the Co-founder & CEO at Amplify.ai. Previously, Mahi was responsible for commercial activities for Opera’s consumer mobile products and services. Before joining Opera, Mahi was co-founder and CEO of AdMarvel, Inc., the global leader in mobile advertising platforms, acquired by Opera in 2010. Prior to AdMarvel, Mahi co-founded Frengo Corporation, a mobile social media platform. Mahi also spent 10 years at VeriSign, where he was part of the startup management team. From 2002 to 2006, he served as senior vice president and general manager of Wireless and Digital Content Services at VeriSign, where he built the world’s leading mobile messaging and mobile entertainment business with revenues exceeding $600M per year. Prior to VeriSign, he served in various technology leadership roles at Taligent, Apple and NCR Corporation.
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About Amplify.ai, Opera Mediaworks: Amplify.ai is the developer of the first enterprise-class Conversational AI platform
Yaron Lipshitz
CEO of AllSeated
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About AllSeated: Collaborative event planning network
Eran Hammer
Founder & CEO of Sideway, Inc.
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About Sideway, Inc.: Stories told through the lens of social media via our streaming app where every show is told within its own fictional social network.
Hrachik Adjamian
Co-Founder and CEO of Wakie
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About Wakie, Wakie: Wakie is a social app for phone calls where you set a topic and get to have a phone call with someone interested in your topic.
Lorna Borenstein
Founder & CEO of Grokker
Lorna Borenstein is the CEO & Founder ,Author at Grokker.
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About Grokker, Grokker: Netflix for wellbeing with community at its core
Christof Wittig
Founder and CEO of Hornet
Christof Wittig is a serial software entrepreneur and investor. He is Founder and CEO at Hornet Networks, the world’s queer social network, and Managing Partner at Strive Capital, based in San Francisco, CA. Prior to Hornet, Christof was founder and CEO at LiquidM, the first mobile DSP provided as a SaaS platform, which he formed in 2013 when restructuring Madvertise, Europe’s largest mobile ad network. Previously he was the founder and CEO of Servo Software, the world’s first Android middleware company, which merged with Synclore to form Kii in 2010, today a leading player in the IoT space based in Tokyo. He was also founder and CEO at db4objects, an open source, “no sql” database company, which he sold to Versant in December 2008. Before that he was the founder and CEO of Apsis Software to revolutionize real estate cost management with software and led the company through its sale to Nemetschek in 1999 and its merger with conject in 2002. Christof is an investor and/or board member in various companies, including Enish (TYO:3667), Metago, KeepSafe, VirtaHealth, Cerebral, and App Annie. He has been active in the US, Germany, and throughout Asia. Christof holds a Master of Science in Management from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where he was a Sloan Fellow in the Class of 2004 and author of the case studies on MySQL and Google’s Android. He also holds a Dipl.Ing. from Technical University Munich.
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About GAY GAMES 11 HONG KONG 2022, Hornet: Hornet is the world’s gay social network with 30 million members worldwide
Victor Gajendran
Co-founder and CEO of Ticketmaster
Co-founder and CEO at Gento.
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About Gento, Ticketmaster: Ticketmaster is the world’s largest ticket marketplace and the global market leader in live event ticketing.
Bryan Hertz
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Voxox
Bryan Hertz co-founded Voxox Inc., in 2006 and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Bryan Hertz is Cofounder of Oridean, Inc.
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About Filmio, Voxox: VoxOx mixes VOIP with social networking and instant messaging to create a powerful suite of communications tools.
Diaz Nesamoney
Founder, President & CEO of Jivox
Diaz Nesamoney founder of Jivox has had two prior successful ventures. He was previously co-founder, President and Chief Operating Officer at Informatica (NASDAQ:INFA), which he took from a startup to a publicly Diaz Nesamoney is an accomplished technology entrepreneur who founded three successful technology companies, all harnessing the power of data to power enterprise and consumer applications. Currently Diaz is Founder, President, and CEO of Jivox, a company that provides a technology platform for data-driven personalized advertising and marketing. He was previously Co-founder, President, and Chief Operating Officer at Informatica (NASDAQ:INFA), which he took from a startup to a publicly traded company in 1999. Informatica pioneered data integration software as a category and is now the market leader with more than $1 billion in revenue and a $5 billion market capitalization. Before founding Jivox, he founded Celequest and served as its CEO until early 2007, when the company was acquired by Cognos/IBM. Celequest introduced the market’s first business intelligence and analytics appliance, a disruptive innovation that led to its acquisition. Diaz holds a Masters degree in Computer Science from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in India and is the holder of seven technology patents. Diaz is also the author of the first book on using data and technology to personalize digital advertising.
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About Jivox: Jivox offers a cloud-based, data-driven omnichannel platform that personalizes digital advertising and marketing experiences at scale.
Steven Jiang
CEO and Co-founder of HireTeamMate
Co-founder and CEO at HireTeamMate.
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About Forbes Human Resources Council, HireEZ, HireTeamMate: HireTeamMate is an employment agency developing a recommended tool throughout the recruiting community.
Joel Gascoigne
Co-founder & CEO of Buffer
Joel Gascoigne is a co-founder and the chief executive officer of [Buffer](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/buffer), a web-based platform that helps users share social media content. He is also the founder of OnePage. Prior to that, he was a web developer at Priority Research; and a web designer and developer at joelg.co.uk. Gascoigne completed his secondary education at Tapton Secondary School and obtained a bachelor’s degree in computer systems from the University of Warwick. He is fluent in English and Japanese. Born on March 24, 1987, Gascoigne currently lives in San Francisco, California.
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About Buffer: Social Media Management Software for Growing Brands
Andrew Maltin
Founder & CEO of Hang w/
Andrew co-founded MEDL Mobile in March 2009. Prior to founding MEDL Mobile, Mr. Maltin served as the Chief Executive Officer of Momentum Gaming, Inc., where he led the company’s marketing, business development and technology efforts to build a world class online gaming infrastructure which both operated independently and licensed its technology to several of the world’s leading gaming sites. He has been featured in Entrepreneur, 944, Success, The Wall Street Journal and The LA Times. He is also the CEO of Hang w/ a company that he also co-founded in 2012.
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About Hang w/: Hang w/ empowers users to stream and broadcast live high-quality video to other phones using their standard wireless service.
Keith Zubchevich
Chief Executive Officer of Conviva
Keith Zubchevich was appointed Conviva’s President and CEO in 2021 with more than a decade of driving company success at Conviva, most recently as Chief Strategy Officer. Prior to joining Conviva in 2008, Keith was Vice President of Business Development at Riverbed Technology, where he was instrumental in developing the industry leader’s go-to-market strategy and key partner relationships as the company went public. Previously, as Director of Operations at Cisco, he was responsible for storage-switching and optical solutions for both the Sales and Worldwide Channels groups, and led the launch of Cisco’s MDS storage networking technology effort, which garnered revenues of $244 million in two years. Prior to Cisco, Keith was a Regional Vice President with McDATA, where he was a member of the core team that designed and implemented the company’s sales and channel coverage model. Earlier in his career, Keith held sales management roles in the open systems divisions of Digital Equipment Corporation and StorageTek. Keith brings a wealth of leadership expertise and functional capabilities to the role. He has held a range of executive positions, from sales and marketing to corporate and business development, across a variety of industry-leading technology companies, as well as emerging startups. Keith holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from San Diego State University.
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About Conviva: Conviva is the continuous measurement and engagement platform for streaming media.
Christopher Lien
Founder & CEO of Marin Software
Mr. Lien is Marin’s founder and Chairman of the Board, and rejoined the Company as Chief Executive Officer in August 2016. From September 2015 to August 2016, Mr. Lien has served on boards of private companies as well as Marin Software. From May 2014 until September 2015, Mr. Lien served as executive chairman of Marin Software, and from the founding of the Company in 2006 to May 2014, he served as the Company’s Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Lien has been a member of the Board since 2006. Previously, Mr. Lien served as Chief Operating Officer of Adteractive, Inc., an online performance marketing company, from 2004 to 2005. In 2001, Mr. Lien co-founded and served as Chairman and Chief Financial Officer of Sugar Media, Inc., a broadband services platform, until its acquisition in 2003 by 2Wire, Inc., a leading supplier of DSL equipment and services, which was subsequently acquired by Pace plc in 2010. Prior to that, Mr. Lien served in various capacities at BlueLight.com, LLC, Kmart Corporation’s ecommerce and Internet service provider subsidiary from 2000 to 2001, including as Chief Financial Officer and acting Chief Executive Officer. Prior to BlueLight.com, Mr. Lien spent 10 years at various investment banks, including Morgan Stanley and Evercore Partners, with his last role as Managing Director. Mr. Lien holds an A.B. from Dartmouth College, where he was elected as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Mr. Lien’s presence as a member of the Board brings his thorough knowledge of the Company into the Board’s strategic and policy-making discussions. He brings his extensive experience in finance, digital marketing and executive roles in the information technology industry into deliberations regarding the Company’s strategy and operations.
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About Heron Partners, Marin Software, Marin Software: Marin Software Incorporated (NYSE:MRIN) provides a leading cross-channel performance advertising platform used by advertisers and agencies.
Scott Swanson
CEO & Founder of Bonder, Inc.
Scott Swanson has an extensive background in consultative sales to some of the largest corporations and retail distributors in the world. With over 18 years in Global Infrastructure, Advanced Security and Platfrom Development Scott has become a trusted advisor in the design, development and implementation of cutting edge platforms and technology that engage the masses, consumers and exponentially drive revenue. “We have 90+ variations of this post a picture or video and make a statement platform. It’s boring and isolating. My vision is to evolve our current platform to improve how we Interact with each other, Connect and Socialize through yet beyond the device.” ~ Scott
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About Bonder, Inc.: The Worlds First Location Based Communication Platfrom (LBCP)
Liron Shapira
Co-Founder & CEO of Relationship Hero
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About Relationship Hero: Relationship Hero connects people with a relationship expert in a private chatroom or over the phone.
Antony Taylor
Founder and CEO of Lyte
Ant Taylor is the founder and CEO of Lyte. Lyte powers mobile ticketing solutions for event owners and fans, providing both a mobile-first alternative to resale websites. Since 2014, Lyte has partnered with over 300 top sports and entertainment brands, including BottleRock Music Festival, Newport Folk Festival, Arkansas Razorbacks Athletics, Mumford & Sons, Stagecoach Music Festival and more. Major ticketing platforms such as Eventbrite, Ticketfly, and Gingerbread Shed, owned by Goldenvoice, have integrated Lyte into their offering. Ant founded Lyte after observing the impact of the secondary ticket market on fans at the London Olympics. Hundreds of thousands of fans have since benefited from the Lyte solution. Before Lyte, Ant was an executive at ad technology pioneer Right Media, acquired by Yahoo in 2007 and ad cofounder of Moat, acquired by Oracle in 2017; two of the top five venture-backed exits in NYC history.
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About Lyte: Lyte is a technology platform that makes it easy for fans to buy, sell, and exchange tickets to live events.
Kyle Wong
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Pixlee TurnTo
Kyle Wong is the CEO & Co-Founder of Pixlee, a visual marketing platform that helps brands market and sells with customer photos and videos. The company works with more than 150 brands such as Kenneth Cole, Gaiam, Levi Strauss and Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants to develop a more authentic marketing experience and create stronger relationships with their most passionate customers. Apart from that, he is currently working as a contributor with Forbes magazine and as a leadership council with Ad Council. Kyle attended Stanford University where he studied engineering and co-founded Pixlee out of his dorm room in 2012. He is a mentor for the Stanford Accelerator (StartX) program, where he advises several early-stage VC backed tech startups. Kyle has been featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List and is a regular speaker and domain expert on influencer marketing and driving consumer engagement through social media. He is also an active contributor for Forbes and Fortune Magazine where he writes on digital marketing, entrepreneurship, and various leadership and career topics.
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About Ad Council, Forbes Magazine, Pixlee: Pixlee TurnTo ia a Social UGC, Influencer Marketing, and Ratings & Reviews company.
Iryna Korolenko
Founder and CEO of iSALON Beauty App
The founder of iSALON, a businesswoman and entrepreneur, fashion model and world-traveler, Iryna Korolenko is a portrait of the modern Renaissance woman. Born in Ukraine, she balanced passion and professionalism, ambition and sophistication from an early age, modeling internationally by 16 while prioritizing higher education. After receiving postgraduate degrees both in international economy and psychology, Iryna began a career working for global corporations, negotiating multi-million dollar contracts. By seamlessly navigating between the worlds of business and beauty, from airline to fashion runways, she has gained a worldview unique among her peers. Seeking new opportunities, Iryna packed a single suitcase and moved to the United States in 2014. Despite having no support network, she paved her way in an unfamiliar environment, and continues to trailblaze her singular career workingwith prominent designers and global brands both as a model and businesswoman. In boardrooms and at photo shoots, presentation matters, but it doesn’t have to be inconvenient. It was during a commute in traffic that Iryna realized it was smarter, safer, and simpler to have beauty services delivered directly to her door. Any modern professional will recognize the importance of quickly connecting with services wherever they are, whenever they are – and with iSALON, you can. Iryna is based in California but continues to pursue her passion exploring new places and meeting new people, always looking forward to new challenges and discovering innovative ideas. A consummate Capricorn, culinary dilettante, and classic cinema enthusiast, she most appreciates the simple things in life, especially her French bulldog, Blu.
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About Coleman Research, Fohr, GLG, iSALON Beauty App, Kelly Moore Paints, Look Model Agency, RED HOT MONDE: Delivering Beauty to Your Doorstep
Neal Jean
Co-founder, CEO of Beacons
Neal Jean is a Co-founder and CEO of Beacons.
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About Beacons: Beacons is a link-in-bio website builder for creators.
Camilo Acosta
Co-Founder & CEO of Pay By Group
Camilo Acosta is the Product Team Lead at Facebook.
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About Meta, Pay By Group, Private Angel Investor: Pay By Group is an checkout option on travel and retail e-commerce sites that lets friends and families split the cost and pay together.
Jeff Miller
Co-Founder and CEO of Helping Hands Community
Jeff Miller is the Co-Founder and CEO of Helping Hands Community.
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About Helping Hands Community, Uber: Helping Hands Community is not for profit community that serves COVID-19 vulnerable members with medicine, food and supplies.
Tim Saval
Founder & CEO of Plural.com
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About OnDeck, Plural.com: Plural is reinventing the way the world “works”.
Vlada Bortnik
CEO & Co-Founder of Marco Polo
Vlada Bortnik is the Founder at Joya Communications.He is Co-Founder & CPO at Happy Bits Company.
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About Happy Bits Company, Marco Polo, YPO: Marco Polo is a video communication application designed to help foster closeness between friends and family.
Julia Enthoven
Co-Founder and CEO of Kapwing
Julia Enthoven is the Founder of Kapwing.
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About Kapwing: Online editor for modern videos, GIFs, and images
Toby Gabriner
Chief Executive Officer of Bitly
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About Bitly: Bitly is a link management platform that helps brands deliver and measure their marketing efforts across all channels.