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 San Francisco, California based CEO’ operating in the Apps 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.
Othman Laraki
Co-founder & CEO of Color
Othman Laraki, MS, MBA, is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Color, a health technology company building public health infrastructures such as scaled and efficient testing to contain the COVID-19 pandemic or using genomics for population health. Previously, Othman co-founded Mixer Labs and developed its GeoAPI platform, a powerful location engine for developers. After the company was acquired by Twitter in 2009, he served as the social media network’s Vice President of Product and helped expand its user base from 50 to 200 million unique accounts. Before this, Othman spent several years at Google, where he played an integral role developing front-end products, including the Chrome browser. Othman is a long-time investor and advisor to leading companies such as Pinterest, AngelList, Slack and Instacart, and serves as a board member for ESI Group and Frontier Medicines. He holds degrees in computer science and management from Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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About Color: Color is a population health technology company that enables the delivery of advanced healthcare through clinical genetics.
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James Park
CEO and Co-Founder of Fitbit
James is our Co-founder and has served as our Chairman since May 2015, as a member of our board of directors since March 2007, and as our President and CEO since September 2007. Previously, James served as a Director of Product Development at CNET Networks, as the President and a Co-founder of Wind-Up Labs, Inc. (an online photo-sharing company acquired by CNET Networks in April 2005). He was also CTO and Co-Founder of Epesi Technologies, Inc., a software company. James attended Harvard College where he studied Computer Science. He was selected to serve as a member of our board of directors due to the perspective and experience he brings as our Co-Founder, President, and CEO.
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About Fitbit: Fitbit offers compact, wireless, wearable sensors that track a person’s daily activities in order to promote a healthy lifestyle.
Guillermo Rauch
CEO & Founder of Vercel
Before starting ZEIT in November 2015, Guillermo was the CTO and co-founder of LearnBoost and Cloudup, acquired by Automattic in 2013. He’s the creator of several popular Node.JS open source libraries like socket.io, mongoose and slackin. Prior to Node.JS, he was a core developer of the MooTools frontend toolkit.
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About Vercel: Vercel is a platform that enables users to develop, preview, and ship Jamstack sites.
Mathilde Collin
CEO and Co-Founder of Front
Mathilde Collin is the co-founder and CEO of Front.
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About Front: Front is the leader in customer communication that brings teams together to offer tailor-made service at scale
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.
Wayne Ting
Chief Executive Officer of Lime
Wayne Ting is Lime’s Chief Executive Officer. Wayne joined Lime in October 2018 as Global Head of Operations and Strategy and has been instrumental in the company’s drive towards operational excellence and path to profitability. Before joining Lime, Wayne spent more than four years at Uber, serving in various roles including Chief of Staff to CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, and General Manager of Uber’s Northern California business. Wayne previously served as a Senior Policy Advisor on the White House’s National Economic Council under President Obama where he focused on housing finance reform. Prior to the White House, Wayne worked at Bain Capital and at McKinsey & Company. Before that, he co-founded CampusNetwork.com, the first college-based social networking site (started close to 6 months before Facebook). Wayne is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Business School.
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About Lime: Lime helps people move around their cities in an affordable and convenient way while eliminating their carbon footprint.
Toby Sun
Co-Founder and CEO of Lime
Toby Sun is the CEO and Co-founder of Lime, the leading global micromobility company that has revolutionized the first and last-mile transportation challenge. Lime has raised $777 million and is backed by world-leading investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, GGV, IDG, DCM, Franklin Templeton, Section 32, AME Cloud Ventures, Stanford Start-X, Kevin Durant, etc. Prior to Lime (formerly LimeBike), Toby was an investment director at Fosun Kinzon Capital, a $400M US-China cross-border venture fund backed by Fosun Group, focusing on early and growth-stage investment in consumer internet and IoT space. Toby invested in Tapingo, Grubmarket, Usens, Ding’Ding Smart Lock, and was involved in the board duties. Prior to Fosun, Toby was a Product and Marketing Manager at PepsiCo and managed a large US-China cross-border team, where he launched Gatorade in China and managed 7UP ($300M annual sales). Toby also worked as a management consultant at Monitor Group and Deloitte Consulting’s San Francisco office. Toby holds an MBA from Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley, and is a frequent guest speaker.
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About Lime, Lime: Lime helps people move around their cities in an affordable and convenient way while eliminating their carbon footprint.
Greg Kidd
Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer of GlobaliD
Believer that ones identity credentials should be truly portable and owned by individuals themselves rather than corporations or governments. The trade-off between security and privacy can meet the needs of both traditional institutions worried about compliance and risk, but also consumer protection advocates who care about the underserved and underbanked. Adviser/Investor via hardyaka.com for numerous startups in the exchange space including Shift, Ripple and 3taps, and previously Square and Twitter. Previously a director at Promontory Financial and a senior analyst for payments at The Board of Governor of the Federal Reserve. Senior Associate at Booz Allen. Founded and took Dispatch Management Services Corp public on the NASDAQ. Have worked as an instructor/leader for Outward Bound and the National Outdoor Leadership School. Specialties: Portable identity, digital currencies and exchange markets for goods, services, and information with functional emphasis on messaging, payments, and reputation/trust/risk. Well versed in visualizations for risk reporting and controls.
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About Apto Payments, GlobaliD, Hard Yaka: Create and manage your own portable, digital identity with globaliD.
Phil Libin
CEO of mmhmm
Phil Libin is co-founder and CEO of All Turtles, a mission-driven product studio, and mmhmm, a new app that makes video communication more clear and compelling. Previously he was Managing Director at General Catalyst, and before that he was co-founder and CEO of Evernote, which he grew to become a beloved product for hundreds of millions of users.
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About All Turtles, mmhmm: mmhmm is a virtual camera application used to create virtual rooms, backdrops, and presentations during video conferencing calls.
Phil Libin
CEO of mmhmm
Phil Libin is co-founder and CEO of All Turtles, a mission-driven product studio, and mmhmm, a new app that makes video communication more clear and compelling. Previously he was Managing Director at General Catalyst, and before that he was co-founder and CEO of Evernote, which he grew to become a beloved product for hundreds of millions of users.
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About All Turtles, mmhmm: mmhmm is a virtual camera application used to create virtual rooms, backdrops, and presentations during video conferencing calls.
John Riccitiello
CEO of Unity Technologies
Since joining Unity as CEO in 2014, John Riccitiello has been a driving force in the successful launch of Unity 5 – the company’s next-generation multiplatform engine and development tools. Previously serving as CEO of Electronic Arts, John played a critical role in the company’s transformation into a mobile, online, and digital gaming leader, with subsequent revenue growth exceeding $1.6 billion during that time. John is also an active private investor, serving on Unity’s board since 2013 as well as Syntertainment, Telltale Games, and a few other higher-ed and non-profit boards. In addition, he was an investor and advisor to Oculus.
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About Unity Technologies: Unity provides multiplatform tools and services to developers of interactive content.
David Ko
Co-founder and CEO of Ripple Health Group
David Ko is the Co-founder and CEO of Ripple Health Group (RHG), an early stage healthtech startup focused on helping people experience healthier lives by connecting them to the care, support, and community they need. Prior to RHG, David was the President, COO and Board Member of Rally Health, a digital health company that develops online and mobile solutions that make it easy for consumers to take charge of their health and health care. Rally’s solutions are currently available to nearly 55 million people through health plans, care providers, and more than 200,000 employers. Prior to joining Rally, David oversaw all strategy, planning and operations as COO at Zynga, which he helped take public in December 2011. At the time of its IPO, Zynga was the largest social gaming company in the world with over 100 million daily active users. Prior to his work at Zynga, he spent 10 years at Yahoo! in various senior executive roles, including SVP of Yahoo!’s audience, mobile, and local businesses. David serves on the board of overseers at his alma mater New York University Stern School of Business where in 2016 he established the NYU Stern Venture Fellows program for aspiring entrepreneurs. He also works as an advisor and investor to a number of companies in Silicon Valley including Calm, the number one app for Sleep, Meditation and Relaxation.
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About Audax Health Solutions, Calm, Ripple Health Group: Ripple Health Group is a platform for the world’s most trusted healthcare solutions.
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.
James Yoder
CEO & Founder of Chat Sports
James Yoder is CEO of Chat Sports and founder of Chat Sports Studios. Prior to co-founding Chat Sports, he worked for Verizon Wireless as a Mobile Product Manager. Focusing on Verizon’s Android and iOS products, James has vast experience at the forefront of mobile industry technology. Prior to Verizon, he worked for the college sports giant, Rivals.com. James graduated with a degree in Business Management from the University of Toledo. As an angel investor, James has 4 portfolio exits. All investments to date have been consumer focused.
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About Chat Sports: Chat Sports is a live sports news network for digital platforms
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.
Jesse Pickard
CEO of Elevate Labs
Jesse Pickard is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Elevate.
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About Elevate Labs: Elevate is a cognitive training tool designed to build communication and analytical skills.
Daniel Saks
Founder & Co-CEO & President of AppDirect
Daniel Saks is the Co-CEO of AppDirect, which he founded in 2009 with Nicolas Desmarais. Daniel plays a key role in the growth and development of AppDirect, from attracting a leading team, to nurturing relationships with customers and partners. Daniel’s presentation at the Under the Radar conference in the spring of 2011 resulted in AppDirect winning “Best in Show,” earning coverage in Wall Street Journal. Daniel received a BA in political science from McGill University then studied finance and accounting at Harvard. Prior to AppDirect, Daniel worked at Viant Capital, a boutique tech investment bank. In his free time, Daniel enjoys traveling, attending hockey games, and studying contemporary architecture and impressionist paintings.
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About AppDirect: AppDirect provides an end-to-end cloud commerce platform for both monetizing and managing digital customer relationships.
Nicolas Desmarais
Chairman & Co-CEO of AppDirect
Nicolas founded AppDirect in 2009 with Daniel Saks, and serves as AppDirect’s Chairman and Co-CEO. Nicolas is focused on the evolution of AppDirect’s product, investor relations, and overseeing the implementation of new marketplaces for our channel partners. Before co-founding AppDirect, Nicolas worked at Bain & Company as a management consultant focused on media and business services. Nicolas holds a bachelor’s degree with a double major in economics and political science from Amherst College. In his spare time, Nicolas enjoys outdoor activities and traveling to new countries.
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About AppDirect: AppDirect provides an end-to-end cloud commerce platform for both monetizing and managing digital customer relationships.
André Madeira
Co-Founder & CEO of Meemo
André Madeira is the Co-Founder & CEO at Meemo.
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About Meemo: Meemo is an AI-powered social finance app that lets users receive personal rewards based on recent activity and transfer money to friends.
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.
Allen Chen
CEO & Co-Founder of Fitbod
Allen is the Co-founder & CEO of Fitbod.
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About Fitbod: Fitbod allows users to maximize the use of indoor gym equipment and confidence to train effectively for strength.
Brad Griffith
Chief Executive Officer of Gametime
Brad Griffith After nearly missing a San Francisco Giants NLCS game because he didn’t have access to print his tickets, Brad Griffith reimagined a simpler process for buying tickets on the go. Focusing completely on the mobile experience, Brad wrote v1.0 of the Gametime iOS application in 2012 and now leads a passionate team focused on mobilizing the ticket buying process for fans. He’s fascinated with fan experience – answering the question: How can we make it faster and easier to attend games? Brad is a Santa Cruz native and huge S.F. Giants, Golden State Warriors and 49ers fan. After earning an Engineering degree from Stanford, he followed his dreams to work in sports by helping the Colorado Rockies and Chicago White Sox (2005 World Series Champs!) build statistical infrastructure to analyze player value. In 2010, he helped launch Zappedy, which delivered customer analytics for local businesses (sold to Groupon in 2011). At Gametime, he’s able to combine his love of sports and analytics to help fans attend more games and connect with their communities.
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About Gametime: Gametime sells last-minute tickets to the most popular events in sports, music, and theater.
Sam Chaudhary
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of ClassDojo
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About ClassDojo: ClassDojo is a school communication platform that teachers, students, and families use to build close-knit communities.
Colin Walsh
CEO and Co-Founder of Varo Money
Colin Walsh is the brainchild behind Varo and its mission to revolutionize banking. Colin and his team founded Varo to create a better way of banking that empowers consumers to be more in control of their financial lives. He believes too many people are not well served by the big banks, which have created a significant opportunity for innovators. Varo is building a seamless retail banking solution that addresses big pain points for the ~20 million millennial Americans (ages 22-36) who are creditworthy yet still manage their money on a month-to-month basis. These Americans are often one unexpected event away from running into financial trouble, which can prevent them from building savings and investing their money around longer-term goals. Varo has designed a product that allows its customers to see their full financial picture, understand how they’re spending, and access lending and savings products to smooth cash flow and build wealth over time. Varo’s frictionless, mobile-first banking solution does not charge overdraft fees or punitive interest rates, thereby eliminating the harmful fees traditional banks rely on to make money from this large segment of consumers. As proven in other industries, innovators who introduce products people love at lower cost often create massive disruption. We believe the time for such a change in retail banking has arrived. Understanding banking and how people manage their money is a vital part of developing such a new mobile banking platform. Walsh is perfectly positioned to do this with more than 25 years of retail financial services industry experience. His knowledge and expertise is guiding the Varo team to deliver a platform that allows users to effortlessly cover their expenses and build their wealth, so they can get on with their lives.
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About Varo Money: Varo is a digital bank that offers innovative, premium banking services wrapped in inclusive design.
Bjoern Zinssmeister
CEO & Founder of Templarbit
Bjoern is the Co-Founder and CTO of Design Inc. He is best known for his work with building community platforms like Match and Synack. Bjoern has spent more than a decade as a software engineer and built two venture backed startups from the ground up. Prior to Design Inc. Bjoern worked as a mobile lead for Match Group (Match, Tinder, OKCupid) and was instrumental in helping Match establish their labs office in San Francisco prior to their IPO and acquisition of OK Cupid. Bjoern went on to lead engineering at YCombinator backed Userfox, which was later acquired by Adroll. In September of 2013 Bjoern joined Synack as their Director of Engineering and helped to build up their engineering team from the ground up, helping the company to grow and raise successful A and B rounds. Originally from Germany, Bjoern graduated from the Trier University of Applied Sciences with a degree in Computer Science before moving out to San Francisco to pursue his work with startups.
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About Templarbit: Templarbit protects applications from malicious activity.
Adrian Graham
Co-Founder & CEO of Seesaw
Adrian handles a variety of leadership responsibilities within Seesaw, with much of his time spent overseeing new product development, engineering efforts, and the company’s overall workplace culture.
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About Seesaw, Shadow Puppet: Seesaw is a platform for student engagement.
Derek Collison
Founder & CEO of Synadia Communications
Derek Collison is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Synadia Communications. An industry veteran and pioneer in large-scale distributed systems and enterprise computing, Derek founded Apcera and has held executive positions at VMware, Google and TIBCO Software. Derek created NATS.io and CloudFoundry as well as TIBCO’s messaging systems. As Chief Technology Officer and Chief Architect of Cloud Application Platforms at VMware, he co-founded the cloud computing group and designed and architected Cloud Foundry, the industry’s first open PaaS. During Derek’s time at Google, he co-founded the AJAX APIs group. Prior to Google, Derek spent more than a decade at TIBCO, where he designed and implemented a wide range of messaging products, including Rendezvous and EMS. As TIBCO’s Senior Vice President and Chief Architect, Derek led technical and strategic product direction and delivery. Derek is a sought after speaker and collaborator. Derek holds more than 20 software patents and is a recognized leader in distributed systems design and architecture, as well as emerging cloud platforms. Derek earned a Bachelor’s degree with honors in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.
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About Covaxx, Heavybit, NATS, Savonix, Synadia Communications, Vicarious, Xperiel: Powering the secure connective technologies to drive cloud and edge native
David Siegel
Co-Founder and CEO of Glide
David Siegel is the co-founder and CEO of Glide. He previously worked at Microsoft. He also held positions at Xamarin, Futureproof, and X1 Technologies. David holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and computer science engineering.
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About Glide: Build powerful apps from spreadsheets without code, in minutes.
Oz Alon
Co-Founder and CEO of HoneyBook
Oz Alon is Co-Founder & CEO at HoneyBook.
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About HoneyBook: HoneyBook is a business management platform creating tools to help creative entrepreneurs run their business on their own terms.
Ranj Bath
CEO of Nurosene Health
Ranj is the CEO of Nurosene, a technology-driven wellness company committed to building a generation of healthier brains, publicly traded on the CSE (CNSX: MEND). With over 20 years at the forefront of building brands across technology, entertainment and finance, Ranj is an inspirational leader that has held various senior leadership roles at companies such as Intel and Beats (Apple). As VP Corporate Strategy at Beats Music Ranj was instrumental in driving strategy and partnerships that would lead to both subscriptions and revenue, working with the Beats brand all the way through a $3Bn acquisition by Apple.
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About Nurosene Health: Nurosene Health is a technology-driven wellness company that helps healthy habits improve their brain, mind, and body.
Chase Harmer
Chief Executive Officer of PayCertify
Integrity, honesty, and longevity. Those are the qualities that have shaped Chase Harmer, a successful entrepreneur, leader, speaker, and innovator. For 15 years, Chase has built businesses, led companies, created products, and helped bring the best out of his employees. As a merchant services professional, Chase has launched several companies and products—such as MLS Hotel, Power Payments, Payment Reservations, and Pay Certify—that focus on hotel and e-commerce verticals. His companies process transactions and create software products that help increase cash flow and longevity of merchant accounts in those industries.
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About PayCertify: The PayCertify Companies Inc. is an All-In-One payments co and digital wallet with a family of brands and services in the US, EU and CA.
Sachin Rekhi
Founder & CEO of Notejoy
Sachin Rekhi is Founder and CEO of Notejoy, a collaborative notes app for you and your team. Prior to Notejoy, Sachin founded Connected, a personal relationship manager that brings your contacts and conversations together in one place. Sachin incubated Connected during his Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Trinity Ventures and ultimately sold Connected to LinkedIn in Oct 2011. At LinkedIn, Sachin re-launched Connected as LinkedIn Contacts and then went on to incubate the all-new LinkedIn Sales Navigator product, a premium subscription for sales professionals to enable effective social selling. Before that, Sachin was a Senior Product Manager at imeem, a leading social network that enables users to share, discover and interact with music, videos, and photos. Sachin led emerging monetization efforts, including international monetization, online audio advertising, and imeem VIP, a premium subscription service. In addition, Sachin oversaw the imeem Media Platform, which allows third party developers to build media-centric applications on imeem. Prior to joining imeem in 2008, Sachin co-founded Anywhere.FM, a web music player that allows users to upload, play, and discover music online. Anywhere.FM was acquired by imeem in January 2008. In addition, Sachin held marketing, product management, and engineering roles at Microsoft, Paetec Communications, and Goldman Sachs. Sachin earned a BS in Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in Finance from The Wharton School.
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About Notejoy, Reforge: Notejoy is a fast and focused notes app for you and your team.
Iddo Gino
Founder / CEO of RapidAPI
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About RapidAPI: RapidAPI is an API Hub that enables developers to find, manage, and connect to thousands of APIs.
Vitaly Alexandrov
CEO & Founder of Food Rocket
Currently nominated for Forbes 30 under 30, two-time winner of the Oxford’s Fund scholarship. In 2019, together with partners, Vitaly launched the Foody startup to optimize the restaurant procurement process in the U.S. Three months later, Foody was showing a monthly growth of 20%. In 2021 due to the pandemic, the startup pivoted and launched San Francisco’s first 10-15-minute grocery delivery service called Food Rocket. Previously, Vitaly was the CEO and founder of the international CRM marketing agency Out of Cloud that provides consumer data analysis and helps companies build personalized marketing. The agency’s clients include Puma, Panasonic, Nikon, Alfa Bank and Pfizer. The agency won the Best Use of eCRM category at Tagline Awards in 2017 and Best Use of Analytics in Loyalty Programs at Loyalty Awards in 2018. At 27, Vitaliy wrote the Email Marketing Strategy book that was a bestseller at Ozon.
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About Food Rocket: Food Rocket is an application that provides customers with on-demand 10-15 minute free grocery delivery.
Ham Serunjogi
Co-Founder & CEO of Chipper Cash
Ham Serunjogi is a co-founder and CEO at Chipper Cash.
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About Chipper Cash: Chipper Cash is a fintech platform that offers mobile, cross-border money transfer services.
Zeb Evans
Founder & CEO of ClickUp
Zeb Evans is a billionaire entrepreneur that’s started several software companies worth over $4 billion. He’s founder and CEO at ClickUp, a productivity platform that revolutionizes the way people work.
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About ClickUp: ClickUp offers a customizable workplace productivity platform that serves all departments across an organization.
Charles Prober
CEO, Board of Directors of Tile
Charles “CJ” Prober is CEO of Tile. He is an entrepreneurial leader who has a broad mix of operational, strategic and transactional experience with a strong track record of success over the past 20 years. I have a passion for building and operating consumer experiences that are at the cutting edge of hardware, media and technology.
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About Tile: Tile creates devices connected to a mobile app, helping users locate their personal items.
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
Kartik Chandrayana
CEO / Co-Founder of Twin Prime
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About Twin Prime: Twin Prime, a company that came out of stealth this week
Mike Chen
CEO, Co-Founder of Magic
Mike Chen is the CEO at Magic
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About Bettir, Magic: Magic provides a 24/7 SMS based on-demand personal assistant service.
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.
Deborah Kilpatrick
Chief Executive Officer of Evidation Health
Deborah Kilpatrick is the Chief Executive Officer of Evidation Health.Prior to this role, she served as the Chief Commercial Officer of genomic diagnostics company CardioDx. Earlier in her career, Deborah held multiple leadership roles at Guidant Corporation, including Research Fellow, Director of R&D, and Director of New Ventures in the Vascular Intervention Division. She serves on the Georgia Tech Advisory Board and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. Deborah is a co-founder of the MedtechVision Conference, now held annually in Silicon Valley. She holds BS, MS and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering with a bioengineering focus from Georgia Tech.
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About Evidation Health, MedTech Women: We enable and empower everyone to participate in better health outcomes.
Derrick Ko
CEO & Co-founder of Spin
Derrick Ko is co-founder at Skinny Labs, also known as Spin. Prior to this, he was a product manager at Lyft and the first employee at Kicksend.
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About Spin: Spin is a stationless electric scooter company that provides dockless mobility systems.
Brendan Falk
CEO and Co-Founder of Fig
Brendan Falk is the co-founder and CEO of Fig.
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About Fig: Fig adds visual apps, shortcuts, and autocomplete to your terminal.
Gerard Cunningham
Founder & CEO of Winistry
Gerard is a Blue Chip & Startup CEO, Board Member, Adviser and Investor. He is a former CMO, with expertise in strategy, operations, Big Data, AI, Digital Transformation, Mobile.
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About Winistry: The Intelligent Mobile App Platform: “WordPress for Mobile Apps, plus AI”
Jordan Brown
Founder, CEO of Lugg
Jordan Brown is the Founder, CEO at Lugg
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About Lugg: Lugg provides anything moved with the push of a button. Download Lugg on the App store and instantly get connected to a truck and 2 movers.
Ronjon Nag
Co-Founder, CEO of Cellmania
Dr. Ronjon Nag is CEO/Co-Founder of Cellmania & R42 Group, a leading wireless applications company. Dr. Nag, is an acknowledged authority in the mobile industry, having been featured on the cover of Fortune and involved in the development of, and holding patents in, wireless applications, user interfaces and new m-commerce distribution methods of mobile applications and devices. Previously a Vice President and General Manager at Motorola responsible for smart mobile technologies developed in the Lexicus Division and Motorola Human Interface Laboratories worldwide, hundreds of millions of Motorola devices have shipped with technology developed under his leadership – voice recognition, handwriting recognition and predictive text key systems. Previously Dr. Nag was CEO/founder of Lexicus, a pioneer of speech and handwriting recognition technology, acquired by Motorola in 1993. Dr. Nag holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University (speech recognition research), was a Harkness Fellow at Stanford University (neural network research), has an MBA from MIT, and a 1st class Honours degree of Birmingham University, UK (electrical engineering).
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About Cellmania, MIT Alumni Angels of Northern California, R42 Group: Leading Mobile Application Ecosystems
Sean Li
CEO & Co-founder of Magic
CEO @ Magic
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About Magic: Plug and play auth that grows with you
Serge Faguet
Co-founder and CEO of Mirror Emoji Keyboard
Serge Faguet is the co-founder and CEO of Mirror AI, the company using artificial intelligence and breakthrough algorithms to create the world’s most personalized emoji. Born in Russia, Serge was founder and CEO of TokBox, a leading PaaS communication infrastructure company funded by Sequoia Capital and acquired by Telefonica. After TokBox, Serge founded and served as CEO of Ostrovok/ZenHotels Group, the largest online travel company in Russia that is profitable with more than $500 million in turnover and 450 employees. Serge received his BA from Cornell, pursued an MBA at Stanford, and worked at Google. He is also a popular thought leader in the biohacking and personalized medicine community, and his articles on the subject reach millions of people.
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About Emerging Travel Group, Mirror Emoji Keyboard: Mirror uses a single selfie to instantly create hundreds of emoji that look like you and your friends.
Christopher Keene
CEO of Gigster
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About Gigster: Gigster is the first team intelligence engine, enabling software development teams to achieve 30% higher efficiency.
Jindou Lee
Founder & CEO of HappyCo
Jindou Lee is the CEO & Founder at HappyCo (Happy Inspector).
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About HappyCo: HappyCo is taking traditional paper based processes out of the dark ages.
Jeremy Stoppelman
CEO of Yelp
Jeremy Stoppelman joined Yelp as CEO in 2004.
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About Yelp: Yelp operates an online platform that connects people with local businesses.
Co-Founder, CEO of Samba TV
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About Carrot Capital, i/o Ventures, Samba TV: Samba TV enables the next-generation TV experience powered by its first-party data and helps viewers engage with relevant media.
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
Selcuk Atli
Co-founder and CEO of Bunch
Selcuk Atli is Founder and CEO of Bunch; a group video chat app designed for live mobile games. Selcuk is a graduate of YCombinator (W14), an Endeavor entrepreneur, a Fulbright Scholar. Before Bunch, he was a Venture Partner at 500 Startups. Prior to that that he co-founded Boostable (acquired by Metric Collective) and before that he founded Manifest Commerce (acquired by Rakuten). Mr. Atli is also Co-founder of Nomadic Minds, a non-profit that connects top mentors in silicon valley with founders in emerging tech hubs around the world (acquired by TheFamily). Selcuk was recognized by Endeavor as a global high-impact entrepreneur and was the recipient of an innovation award from the World Bank. He advises several startups including StackShare, Fetcher.ai and Mobile Action. He’s also the lead singer and songwriter for The HMMS, a recording indie rock band based in New York City.
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About Bunch, Z1.VC: Bunch is the first app that allows its users to play their favorite games with friends over video chat.
Simon Biddiscombe
President and CEO of MobileIron
Simon Biddiscombe is the president and CEO of MobileIron. Prior to becoming the CEO, Simon served as the CFO of the company.
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About MobileIron: MobileIron offers a mobile-centric, zero trust security approach that verifies user, device, application, network, and security threat.
Renee Wang
Founder & CEO of Castbox
Renee Wang is the CEO and Founder of Castbox, an award-winning global podcast platform that enables anyone to easily find, access, create and enjoy spoken audio content. Prior to founding Castbox, Renee was a global app monetization expert at Google in user acquisition, optimization, and publisher engagement where she contributed to 42% of Google’s new app revenue. Renee holds a BS degree from Peking University, with a double major in Psychology and Mathematical Statistics.
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About Castbox: Castbox is a global podcast platform that enables anyone to easily find, access, create and enjoy spoken audio content.
Niccolo De Masi
CEO of Dmy Technology Group
Niccolo de Masi joined Glu as its President and Chief Executive Officer in January 2010 and brings to Glu a strong background of senior management and executive experience in the mobile gaming and content sectors. Prior to joining Glu, Niccolo was the Chief Executive Officer and President of Hands-On Mobile, a mobile technology company and developer and publisher of mobile entertainment, since October 2009, and previously served as the President of Hands-On Mobile from March 2008 to October 2009. Niccolo was previously the Chief Executive Officer of the London-listed mobile entertainment company Monstermob Group PLC from June 2006 to February 2007. Mr. de Masi joined Monstermob in 2004 and, prior to becoming its Chief Executive Officer, held positions as its Managing Director and as its Chief Operating Officer where he was responsible for formulating and implementing Monstermob’s growth and product strategy. Prior to joining Monstermob, Mr. de Masi worked in a variety of corporate finance and operational roles within the technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) sector, beginning his career with JP Morgan on both the TMT debt capital markets and mergers and acquisitions teams in London. He has also worked as a physicist with Siemens Solar and within the Strategic Planning and Development divisions of Technicolor. Mr. de Masi holds an M.A. degree in Physics and an MSci. degree in Electronic Engineering—both from Cambridge University.
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About Dmy Technology Group, University of California, Los Angeles: Dmy Technology Group is a special purpose acquisition company focused on the mobile app ecosystem.
Jason Langheier
Founder & CEO of Foodsmart
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About Foodsmart, the Partnership for a Healthier America: Foodsmart is a digital nutrition platform that uses personalized dietary recommendations to improve health outcomes.
AF_initDataCallback({key: \’ds:1\'” alt=”” class=”wp-image-14850″ width=”154″ height=”152″/>Michael Golomb
Founder and CEO of FanVestor
A hands-on company builder, Michael’s background as an entrepreneurial CFO with three exits behind him, is the culmination of twenty years of senior management experience across a broad spectrum of industries. His expertise has been successfully applied across verticals ranging from startups to large public corporations including Blockchain, manufacturing, digital health & medical devices, consumer electronics & hardware, software/SaaS, and real estate. In addition to Michael’s global experience in raising equity though variety of public and private equity/debt instruments, as well as experience in handling complex M&A transactions, he also brings exceptional knowhow of Blockchain technology to DASAN Zhone Solutions. Earlier in 2017, (prior to joining DASAN) together with the other Blockchain industry veterans, Michael co-founded the ICO Governance Foundation, a non-profit decentralized global organization with a protocol-based global community mission that performs a self-regulatory function for ICOs in decentralized capital markets. In Oct 2016, Michael founded EdenCoin – a global cryptocurrency quantitative market-maker start-up with offices in San Francisco and New York: a proprietary liquidity aggregation platform to consolidate trading volume and data from major cryptocurrency market sources to run algorithmic market-making and liquidity provisioning, as well as other, quantitative strategies. From June 2015 to May 2017, while CFO at Breathometer, a hyper-growth digital health and medical device company, he helped take that company from pre-revenue to shipping in the FDA regulated space, forming OEM partnership with Philips, raising capital from venture capital firms and global strategic investors, as well as successfully achieving the ISO13485:2003 Certification milestone. Prior to Breathometer, Michael was the first employee (CFO, Board Member, and Head of SF Office) at BitFury, and helped build the market leading full-service Blockchain technology company, and one of the largest private infrastructure providers in the Blockchain ecosystem, taking it from zero to over $500M valuation and from 3 to over 120 employees in 7 countries between December 2013 through April 2015. Other notable roles include: ” Co-Founder and Co-President at Mayak RE, where he led the formation of JV with Morgan Stanley and MCP Private Equity Fund in Europe. ” CFO of Sistema Hals, he directed a highly successful London/LSE IPO with market capitalization at $2.7B. ” Head of Compliance / Sr. Finance Manager at Trimble, he effectively implemented global Sarbanes-Oxley compliance program, participated in private debt placement, as well as acquired/integrated several international technology companies. Michael received MSc in Management from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2013, his MBA from Santa Clara University in 2000, and his B.A. with double major in Economics and Diplomacy & World Affairs from Occidental College in 1996. He is also a CPA (inactive) in California.
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About FanVestor: FanVestor is a FINRA-regulated crowdfunding platform that enables entertainment and sports celebrities to capitalize on their fanbases.
Eugene Park
CEO & Founder of Honeydue
Eugene Park is the CEO and co-founder of Honeydue. He used to be the VP engineering – applications at Flixster. Eugene earned his bachelor’s degree at University of California at Berkeley.
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About Honeydue: Honeydue is a mobile app for couples that offers tools to share information on respective account balances and spending.
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
Karn Saroya
Co-founder & CEO of Cover
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About Cover, Stylekick: Cover is an Android and iOS mobile application that allows its users to insure anything by taking a picture of what they need to insure.
Denis Mars
Co-founder and CEO of Proxy
Denis Mars, CEO & Co-Founder Before Proxy, Mars was the Director of Admissions at Y Combinator, responsible for initiating programs to help discover and evaluate the most promising founders and ideas that could change the world for the better. Prior to Y Combinator, Mars founded Meetings.io, which was acquired by Jive, founded an automotive startup, and was a chief engineer for the champion winning Formula 3 race team. Mars has a B.S. in Physics and a B.E. Honors in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Sydney. Startup founder, YC alum. Physics, Mech Engineering, Code, Design, UI/UX, Products. Likes to engineer the impossible and disrupt the status quo. Tech Startups: •Y Combinator Alum – Embedster Inc W2010 •Y Combinator Alum – Bitplay Inc (Meetings.io) W2011 •Meetings.io acquired by Jive (NASDAQ:JIVE) in 2012 Other accomplishments: •Modena Inc – Acquired by Auto Group in 2005 •3Jive Inc – Music Platform Technology •Roxentric – Indie Record Label •Formula 3 Racing – Chief Engineer 2x championship wins •Formula SAE – Team Lead 2001 winning team
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About Proxy: Access More, Share Less. Proxy designs and builds privacy-first, human-led, identity technologies. With Proxy ID, your world is now open.
Tobenna Arodiogbu
Co-founder & CEO of CloudTrucks
Tobenna Arodiogbu is Tobenna Arodiogbu at Scotty Labs. He is also the Co-Founder and CEO at CloudTrucks.
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About CloudTrucks, Scotty Labs: CloudTrucks offers a virtual trucking carrier application designed to reduce operating costs for truck drivers.
Trent Bigelow
Cofounder & CEO of Abound
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About Abound: Abound is the independent benefits API for businesses that serve independent workers.
Kevin Lynch
CEO of Volerro
As chief technology officer, Kevin Lynch oversees Adobe’s experience design and core technology across business units.This role includes driving Adobe’s technology platform for designers and developers across desktops and devices, including Adobe® Flash® Player, Portable Document Format (PDF), Adobe Flex® and Adobe AIR™ the cross-operating system application runtime that bridges the computing power and data capabilities of the desktop with the real-time dynamic capabilities of the web. He also oversees Adobe’s developer relations program, including the integration of customers and partners in the development process through Adobe Labs and customer advisory councils.
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About Apple, Maschmeyer Group Ventures, Volerro: Simplifying Content Collaboration
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
Moustafa Mahmoud
Founder & CEO of Camlist
Building a better world.
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About Camlist, Cognitev, MENA Commerce: Camlist is a mobile app that allows user to buy and sell anything related to pets, pet services, and pet accessories.
Jeff Smith
CEO & Co – Founder of Smule
Jeff Smith is the CEO & Co-Founder of Smule. CEO Jeff Smith previously co-founded and ran Tumbleweed, an email security software company which he took public on the Nasdaq and grew to $50M in sales before stepping down as CEO. Jeff is currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Music at Stanford University. He previously received a BS in Computer Science at Stanford University. In between Stanford and Stanford, Jeff co-founded and ran an email security software company which he took public on the Nasdaq and grew to $50M in sales before stepping down as CEO. Jeff is the Co – Author of sixteen patents in the field of email security.
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About MonsterPreps, Ryan Companies, Smule: Smule develops music-making apps that connect people online.
Fahad Jalal
Founder & CEO of SitterFriends
Fahad studied Computer Science at Stanford, and got an MBA from the Wharton school of business. Over the last decade, Fahad has been involved with several startups and established companies in the capacity of founder, executive leader and investor. Fahad is involved with 3 charities that focus on child education, and development. In one word he describes himself as “human”, and his life-long goal is to help make care, and education accessible to all children across the world.
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About SitterFriends: Book your community’s most trusted babysitters, in a second, for free
Sara Mauskopf
Co-Founder and CEO of Winnie
Sara Mauskopf is the CEO and Co-founder of Winnie, a marketplace for daycare and preschool helping over 4M parents across the United States. Sara has a background in consumer technology and product management. Prior to founding Winnie she was the Director of Product at Postmates, and prior to that held product leadership roles at Twitter, YouTube, and Google. She graduated with a Computer Science and Engineering degree from MIT. She’s also a mom of 2, soon to be 3, young children.
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About Winnie: Winnie is a marketplace for child care built on powerful data systems and backed by a trusted community of parents and providers.
Jacob Eiting
CEO and Co-Founder of RevenueCat
Jacob Eiting is the CEO and Co-Founder of RevenueCat.
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About RevenueCat: RevenueCat is a mobile subscription toolkit that makes it easy to build and manage in-app purchases and subscriptions.
Josh Lowy
CEO and Co-Founder of Hugo
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About Hugo: Hugo is a collaborative note-taking app focused on sharing meeting notes across teams within companies.
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.
Mark Straub
CEO of Smile Identity
Mark Straub joined Smile Identity as CEO in 2017.Mark has been passionate about the power of market-based models to fight global poverty since he traded investment banking for micro-lending in 2006. At that time, Mark joined Lok Capital in New Delhi as an early employee and the first American. At Lok, he was instrumental in the firm’s seminal investment in Spandana and initiated a fellows program to support Lok’s portfolio. More recently, Mark was a member of the six person team at the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund, a $300M expansion stage fund investing in category leading technology companies. At DFJ, Mark invested in world-changing entrepreneurs in e-commerce, consumer media, clean technology and aerospace aviation at companies including TrialPay, Gilt Groupe, Admob, betaworks (bit.ly), TremorVideo, Tesla Motors, BrightSource Energy, Silverspring Networks, and SpaceX. In 2011, Mark combined his passions for emerging markets, technology and socioeconomic change by joining Vinod to co-found Khosla Impact. He is honored to have the opportunity to support entrepreneurs and teams who are developing market-based solutions to poverty and believes business must play a leading role in solving the world’s most challenging social problems. Outside of work, Mark is an avid skier and foodie. He has been fortunate enough to visit 18 of India’s 28 states and foolish enough to ski within earshot of Kashmir’s line of control.
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About Khosla Impact, Smile Identity: Smile Identity solve identity for banks, telecoms, financial services and shared economy applications in Africa and beyond.
Heini Zachariassen
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Vivino
Heini is Vivino’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Credited with bringing a technology revolution to the wine industry, Heini founded Vivino because he was frustrated by not knowing which wine to buy. It’s been his passion project ever since. During his tenure, Vivino has grown into a community of 46 million users, raised $72 million in funding, and rolled out a worldwide wine marketplace. Before starting Vivino, Heini co-founded several startups, including global internet and mobile security company BullGuard. Heini leads the team from Vivino’s European headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. Heini and Vivino’s story is featured in an independent documentary, “Disrupting Wine, The Life of an Entrepreneur.” Heini also hosts the YouTube series Raw Startup, which offers candid advice for entrepreneurs and startups.
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About Vivino: Vivino is a wine app and online wine marketplace that provides users tools to buy better wine based on their unique tastes.
Daniel Singer
Founder and CEO of Panda
Daniel Singer is the Founder & CEO of Panda.
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About Panda: Panda is a camera that augments users’ conversations with friends.
Ari Roisman
Co-Founder & CEO of Wristcam
A Mechanical and Energy Engineer by training and passionate entrepreneur at heart, Ari has founded several profitable ventures in a variety of industries. Since founding in 2012, he served as CEO of Glide, the pioneering video messenger for smartphones and smartwatches that supports millions of users and billions of live video exchanges. In 2016, Ari teamed up with an early Apple Watch program manager to develop Wristcam, an ultra-compact Camera System made for Apple Watch. Ari holds a B.S. and M.S. in Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, and was selected by MIT Technology Review as one of 35 global innovators under 35.
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About Wristcam, Wristcam: Computer Vision for Wearables
Jeffrey Chou
CEO & Co-Founder of Sonatus
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About Diamanti, Sonatus: Sonatus builds game-changing vehicle and cloud-based software solutions that create a future-proof foundation for software-defined vehicles.
Oded Pelled
CEO & Co-Founder of MindKick
President & Co-Founder of VidCrunch, an ad-tech company specializing in turning static content into engaging and monetizable videos. CEO & Co-Founder of MindKick, a mobile gaming studio specialized in social and competitive skill-based games.
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About MindKick, NovoRoll, VidCrunch: MindKick is a mobile gaming company that launches and operates a portfolio of theme-based gaming communities.
Joe Martin
Founder and CEO of Snatch
Forensic scientist turned entrepreneur and tech company founder. Joe has used his background in to behavioral psychology to take the unlikely step into brand and mobile marketing to huge effect. His first venture ‘Snatch’ – a mobile marketing platform packaged as augmented reality treasure hunt hit the #1 spot on the UK app stores in 2017 and fast became the #1 customer acquisition platform for the majority of over 200 brand partners thanks to the productization of his deeper level understanding of consumer behaviour that resulted in average offer redemptions of 34% (industry average 2%-5%) across a 9 month test period that accumulated over 1 million active users and resulted in Joe being invited to speak at some of the worlds most prestigious tech and marketing events from SXSW, CES, Founders Forum and Cannes Lion. He now returns with his second venture ‘Tickle’ to once again challenge the stat quo and to once again prove that advertising can and should entertain and reward.
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About Snatch, Tickle Global: Snatch is a computer game development company that provides a radical reinvention of the brand experience.
Dawoon Kang
Chief Executive Officer of Coffee Meets Bagel
Dawoon Kang’s work spans from strategy & business development to marketing, research and investing/finance. She started her career at Avon Products as Analyst for U.S. Strategy & Business Development in New York. In this role, she worked closely with the U.S. senior leadership team to lead & execute strategic initiatives designed to support company’s short- and long-term growth targets. After receiving her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2009, she went on to J. P. Morgan’s Global Special Opportunities Group in Hong Kong. She worked as Vice President of North Asia Investment team, which covered all investments in Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, from distressed debt to growth equity opportunities. In 2012, Dawoon co-founded Coffee Meets Bagel along with her sisters Arum and Soo. As COO & Head of Marketing, Dawoon oversees the company’s overall vision, strategy, branding, and marketing. She has given numerous talks about dating, tech, and entrepreneurship to groups such as Women 2.0, The Commonwealth Club, including a recent TEDx talk with Arum in San Francisco on the theme The Beautiful Truth About Online Dating.
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About Coffee Meets Bagel: Coffee Meets Bagel is an online dating site that connects individuals with a ‘friend-of-a-friend’ match every day.
Arum Kang
Chief Executive Officer of Coffee Meets Bagel
Arum loves being in the consumer space. She has experience working at Avon Products as well as Amazon, leading efforts to understand consumer needs and behavior to deliver superior product experiences. After graduating from Harvard Business School, Arum is excited to start a business that leverages technology to bring something truly valuable to consumers.
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About Coffee Meets Bagel: Coffee Meets Bagel is an online dating site that connects individuals with a ‘friend-of-a-friend’ match every day.
Rahul Dewan
Founder & CEO of Duet Display
Founder at Duet Display
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About Duet Display: Duet allows users to use their iDevice as an extra display for Mac using the Lightning or 30-pin cable.
Han Jin
Cofounder & CEO of Lucid
Han is the founder/CEO of Lucid, an AI startup building a deep learning platform to generate 3D data in images/videos. Their product LucidPix allows consumers to transform photos into multi-dimensional masterpieces and share them anywhere. Jin was named by Business Journal as one of the 40 Under 40 in 2019, he received the global Lumiere and Golden Stevie Award for Best Entrepreneur of the year 2018, and is one of the Forbes 30 Under 30 in consumer electronics. Inc Magazine featured him on its May 2017 cover as one of America’s 30 rising stars.
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About Lucid: AI platform extracting insights out of images and videos to serve the best content to convert users
Jigar Shah
Founder & CEO of Miles
Jigar Shah is the Founder & CEO of Miles. Formerly he was a Senior Product Manager & Technical Leader at Cisco with P&L responsibilities over $750M.
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About Miles: Miles is a startup that offers rewards for traveling, regardless of the mode of transportation.
Arun Saigal
Cofounder and CEO of Thunkable
Arun Saigal is the Co-founder and CEO of Thunkable, a Y Combinator-backed startup where anyone can build their own mobile apps. Thunkable is based on Arun’s work with MIT App Inventor, which he worked on during his SB and MEng at MIT. Recently named to Forbes 30 Under 30, Arun has held a variety of leading roles at technology companies, including Quizlet, Khan Academy, Aspiring Minds, and Google. Outside of the office, Arun conducts orchestras and plays viola and mridangam in several SF-based music groups.
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About PJC, San Francisco Civic Music Association, Thunkable: Thunkable makes a drag-and-drop programming tool to allow anyone to make beautiful, native mobile apps.
Niko Vuori
Founder & CEO of Drivetime
Founder & CEO Drivetime, co-founder & COO of Rocket Games, product at ToyTalk & BranchOut, GM Zynga Poker, founder & CEO Informifi.
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About Drivetime: Drivetime provides an online platform designed to help users play games while they drive.
Peer Richelsen
Co-founder & CEO of Mage App
Peer Richelsen is the co-founder and CEO of Mage.
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About Mage App: Mage Market is an marketplace app built specifically for buying and selling cards from Magic using computer vision.
Esther Crawford
Co-founder/CEO of Squad
Esther is an award-winning pioneer in Millennial marketing who spearheaded groundbreaking digital campaigns in social and video for Fortune 500 companies. She previously led product marketing for Silicon Valley startups including Coach.me and Stride. After finding early success on YouTube, Esther started a social marketing agency whose clients included Weight Watchers, Sears Holdings and more. She was an on-air contributor to CNN, Fox News, and iVillage. Esther holds a Master’s of Arts in International Relations from Durham University in England, an Arabic language certificate from Jordan University and a Bachelors of Science in Philosophy from Oregon State University.
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About Squad: Acquired by Twitter in 2020. Hang out with friends in audio and video rooms.
Daniel Kwak
Co-Founder & CEO of Steady
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About Steady: The simulation platform for design engineers.
Akash Takyar
CEO of LeewayHertz Technologies
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About LeewayHertz Technologies: LeewayHertz is a blockchain development company, providing scalable and robust blockchain solutions to enterprises and startups.
Sam Osman
Founder & CEO of Playas Play
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About Playas Play, SocialVenu: Playas Play is a new mobile app that rewards sports fans for doing what they love — betting and talking trash.
Yi Shi
CEO & Founder of Dotc United Group
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About Avazu, Dotc United Group, Net Impact: DotC United Group creates and architects internet platforms to simplify globalization complexities
Paul Koullick
Co-Founder & CEO of Keeper Tax
Paul Koullick is the Co-Founder and CEO at Keeper Tax.
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About Keeper Tax: Discover the tax write-offs you’ve been missing
Heigo Paartalu
CEO/Founder of Grate
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About Grate: WHERE QUALITY SERVICE GETS RECOGNIZED
Stas Matviyenko
Founder & CEO of Allset
Founder of Allset.
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About Allset: Marketplace for restaurants and local diners. Online ordering and contactless solutions to serve customers commission-free.
Yunha Kim
Founder & CEO of Simple Habit
Simple Habit was founded by Yunha Kim in Spring 2016.A former investment banker on Wall Street, Yunha quit her job to build her first startup, raising over $3M from prominent investors. Yunha was desperate to manage the extreme stress of her startup, so, she turned to meditation. She began to meditate a few minutes a day and saw dramatic improvements in the quality of her work, relationships and life. She decided to build Simple Habit to help busy people, like herself, experience the benefits mindfulness.
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About Simple Habit: Simple Habit is a meditation app designed to drive a healthy lifestyle.
Michael E. Parker
CEO & Founder of MintShow
Michael E. Parker is the President & CEO at Value-Centered Solutions in San Francisco, California. He brings many years of relevant experience that has helped him become known as a well-respected leader. He earned his bachelor and master’s degrees in Business Administration, Operations and Procurement from California State University, Hayward.
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About 2DOLife.com, 2DOLife.com, MintShow, Value-Centered Solutions, You are a CEO: The first social network that uses gamification and habit design to help people maintain an uplifted and inspired state of mind.
Vishal Joshi
Co Founder & CEO of Joy
Vishal Joshi is the Co-Founder and CEO of Joy.
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About Joy: Joy helps users with their wedding, from engagement to honeymoon and everything in-between.
