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 Founder operating in the Finance space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.us.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
David Sacks
Co-Founder of Craft Ventures
David O. Sacks Is The Co-Founder At Craft Ventures.
Follow David Sacks:
About Callin, Craft Ventures, Harbor: Craft Ventures is an early-stage venture fund specializing in the craft of building great companies.
_______
Bill Lee
Co-Founder and General Partner of Craft Ventures
Bill Lee was CEO and co-founder of Remarq, a Benchmark Capital-backed collaboration company. At Remarq, Bill guided the company in its development of a complete end-to-end Internet messaging and collaboration platform. Before its acquisition by Critical Path in March 2000, the company developed high-volume messaging platforms for sites such as eBay, Sun, Novell, and Amazon. The company raised over $43 million in venture and debt financing. Bill has been appointed by the Mayor of San Jose to the Redevelopment Committee of San Jose. Bill also graduated Beta Gamma Sigma from UC Berkeley with a B.S. in accounting/finance and received a JD/MBA from UCLA.
Follow Bill Lee:
About Craft Ventures, West Coast Holdings: Craft Ventures is an early-stage venture fund specializing in the craft of building great companies.
Jeff Fluhr
Co-Founder and General Partner of Craft Ventures
Jeff is co-founder and general partner at Craft. He has been a successful tech entrepreneur and investor for two decades. While at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Fluhr entered the annual business plan competition with the idea of creating a trusted and transparent marketplace where fans could buy and sell tickets for sporting events and concerts. Fluhr dropped out of school and co-founded StubHub in March 2000. By 2007, StubHub had over 400 employees, more than $600 million of gross merchandise volume and partnerships with many professional and college sports teams. Fluhr served as CEO of StubHub until it was acquired by eBay for $310 million in 2007.
Follow Jeff Fluhr:
About Craft Ventures: Craft Ventures is an early-stage venture fund specializing in the craft of building great companies.
Alexis Ohanian
Founder & General Partner of Seven Seven Six
Alexis Ohanian, born April 24, 1983, is an entrepreneur and investor in Brooklyn, NY, best known as the co-founder and executive chair of reddit, a platform for online communities to share links and have discussions. While he learned his earliest lessons in leadership and web design from his high school Quake 2 clan and Everquest guild, Alexis continued his official studies at the University of Virginia, where he met his future co-founder Steve Huffman during freshman year move-in day. This would lead to the founding of reddit, which he recounted along with many lessons for entrepreneurs, in his national bestseller, Without Their Permission. At UVA, Alexis majored in business and history with a minor in German. Though he had originally planned to become an immigration lawyer, he experienced an epiphany in his junior year (while sitting in a Waffle House) that led him to the realization that he didn’t want to practice law. Instead he convinced his best friend Steve to start a company with him. The pair traveled to Cambridge, MA during their senior year spring break to hear Paul Graham give a talk titled “How to Start a Startup.” After the lecture, Alexis invited Graham out for a drink so he and Steve could pitch Graham on their business idea. Graham agreed, loved the idea, and suggested they apply to a new seed stage venture firm he’d launched called Y Combinator. Alexis and Steve’s original plan was to build an infrastructure that would allow people to order food from their cell phones. Though the idea was rejected, Alexis and Steve were invited to join the first class of Y Combinator, on the condition that they’d come up with a new concept. The next idea they pitched to Graham would become reddit.com.
Follow Alexis Ohanian:
About breadpig, Seven Seven Six: Seven Seven Six is a venture capital firm that primarily seeks to invest in seed rounds.
Ronald Conway
Founder & Co-Managing Partner of SV Angel
Ronald Conway has been an active angel investor for over 15 years. He was the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds (1998-2005) whose investments included: Google, Ask Jeeves, Paypal, Good Technology, Opsware, and Brightmail. Ronald was previously with National Semiconductor Corporation in marketing positions from 1973-1979, and Altos Computer Systems as a co-founder, President and CEO from 1979-1990. He eventually took Altos public in 1982 and served as CEO of Personal Training Systems (PTS) from 1991-1995. PTS went on to be acquired by SmartForce/SkillSoft. Ronald has served/serves on Boards/Advisory Boards including: Twitter, Digg, Brightmail, Ask Jeeves, Rupture (acquired by EA), Associated Content (acquired by Yahoo!), Facebook, RockYou, ScanScout, Zappos, Trulia, StumbleUpon, Plaxo (acquired by Comcast), Photobucket (acquired by Fox), and Anchor Intelligence (co-founder). Ronald was recently named #6 in Forbes Magazine Midas list of top deal-makers in 2008 and is actively involved in numerous philanthropic endeavors. Ronald is Vice Chairman of the UCSF Medical Foundation in SF, Board Member of The Tiger Woods Foundation, and SF Homeless Connect, and on the Benefit Committee of Ronald McDonald House, College Track, and the Blacked Eyed Peas-PeaPod Academy Foundation. Ronald is also featured in Gary Rivlin’s book _The Godfather of Silicon Valley: Ronald Conway and the Fall of the Dot-coms, described as ‘the man who has placed more bets on Internet start-ups than anyone else in Silicon Valley.
Follow Ronald Conway:
About Applied Intuition, FWD.us, Personal Training Systems, Smart Tech Foundation, SV Angel: SV Angel is an angel firm that helps startups with business development, financing, M&A, and other strategic advice.
Benjamin Forman
Founder and Chief Investment Officer of ParaFi Capital
Benjamin Forman (San Francisco) joined KKR in 2015 as a Principal. Mr. Forman is responsible for covering the industrials and automotive sectors for KKR Credit across various strategies, including liquid credit, direct lending, special situations and long-short credit. Previously, Mr. Forman was a vice president at TPG on its Special Situations platform. Mr. Forman graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania.
Follow Benjamin Forman:
About ParaFi Capital: ParaFi Capital is an alternative investment firm focused on blockchain and decentralized finance markets.
Siqi Chen
Co-Founder of Runway Financial
Siqi Chen is the Co-Founder of Runway and a Member Board Of Directors at Sandbox VR. Siqi holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics from the University of California, San Diego.
Follow Siqi Chen:
About Newco, Runway Financial: Runway is a ground up rethink of the role of financial data inside modern businesses.
Fred Ehrsam
Co-Founder of Paradigm
Fred Ehrsam is co-founder of Coinbase. He’s been named to both Forbes 30 Under 30 and TIME Magazine’s 30 Under 30 Who Are Changing the World. Previously, he was a foreign exchange trader at Goldman Sachs in New York where he traded and managed Goldman’s electronic market making platform. Fred has also analyzed portfolios at BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world and worked in nanostructures research. He holds a BS in Computer Science and Economics with honors and distinction from Duke University.
Follow Fred Ehrsam:
About Paradigm: Paradigm primarily invests in crypto-assets and businesses from the earliest stages of idea formation through to maturity.
Matt Huang
Co-Founder of Paradigm
The former founding CEO of Hotspots, a Y Combinator company acquired by Twitter in 2012, Huang spent time in Twitter’s ad analytics team before joining Sequoia Capital. The MIT grad works on investments like Reddit and Yik Yak for the firm. He’s an angel investor in companies including Instacart and Teespring. He is fascinated by new platforms: the internet, mobile devices, and whatever’s next. Matt holds a B.S. in Mathematics from MIT.
Follow Matt Huang:
About Paradigm: Paradigm primarily invests in crypto-assets and businesses from the earliest stages of idea formation through to maturity.
Duke Chung
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of TravelBank
Follow Duke Chung:
About TravelBank: TravelBank is the modern all-in-one business travel and expense management platform.
Reid Williams
Co-Founder & CTO of TravelBank
Reid Williams is CTO at TravelBank. He is an entrepreneur and full stack technologist. Prior to joining TravelBank, Reid worked at Parature as senior software engineer. Reid Williams holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems specializing in systems integration from DeVry University and a master’s degree in Information Systems Technology from The George Washington University – School of Business.
Follow Reid Williams:
About TravelBank: TravelBank is the modern all-in-one business travel and expense management platform.
Robert Leshner
Founder and CEO of Compound
Follow Robert Leshner:
About Citywide Special, Compound, Robot Ventures, Safe Shepherd: Compound is an open-source interest rate protocol that unlocks new financial applications.
Geoffrey Hayes
CTO and Founder of Compound
Maintainer of Exthereum, technology founder of two startups, led Core Services at Postmates
Follow Geoffrey Hayes:
About Compound: Compound is an open-source interest rate protocol that unlocks new financial applications.
Brook Byers
Co-Founder of Kleiner Perkins
Brook Byers is the Board Director of Foundation Medicine Inc. He has been a venture capital investor since 1972. He has been closely involved with more than fifty new technology based ventures, over half of which have already become public companies. He formed the first Life Sciences practice group in the venture capital profession in 1984 and led KPCB to become a premier venture capital firm in the medical, healthcare, and biotechnology sectors. KPCB has invested in and helped build over 110 Life Sciences companies which have already developed hundreds of products to treat major underserved medical needs for millions of patients. Brook was the founding President and then Chairman, of four biotechnology companies which were incubated in KPCB’s offices and went on to become public companies with an aggregate market value over $8 Billion. He is currently on the Board of Directors of nine companies, most recently joining CardioDX, Genomic Health Incorporated, Five Prime Therapeutics, OptiMedica, Pacific Biosciences, Inc., Tethys, XDx, Inc He was formerly a Director of Idec Pharmaceuticals (Chairman), Athena Neurosciences (Chairman), Signal Pharmaceuticals, Arris Pharmaceuticals, Pharmacopeia, Hybritech (Chairman), Genprobe and others. These companies have pioneered the medical use of molecular biology, monoclonal antibodies, molecular diagnostics and genomics. Brook was President and a Director of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists. He is a currently a Board member of the University of California at San Francisco Medical Foundation, the New Schools Foundation, Stanford Bio-X Advisory Council and the Stanford Eye Council. He was Co – Chair of the five year, $1.4 billion, UCSF Capital Campaign. In 2007, he was awarded the UCSF Medal as their honorary degree equivalent. He was formerly a Director of the Entrepreneurs Foundation, the California Healthcare Institute, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Stanford Graduate School of Business Advisory Council, That Many May See (UCSF) Vision Research Foundation (Chairman) and the Georgia Tech Advisory Board. Raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Brook graduated in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech. He received an MBA from Stanford.
Follow Brook Byers:
About Aces Four Construction, Kleiner Perkins, Ligand Pharmaceuticals, Mission Bay Capital: Kleiner Perkins is a venture capital firm that specializes in investing in early-stage, incubation, and growth companies.
Arjun Sethi
Co-Founder & Partner of Tribe Capital
Follow Arjun Sethi:
About Applied Intuition, Instabase, Social Capital, Tribe Capital: Tribe Capital is an early stage venture capital firm focused on recognizing and amplifying early stage product-market fit.
Anna Patterson
Founder & Managing Partner of Gradient Ventures
Anna Patterson is the Founder and Managing Partner at Gradient Ventures.
Follow Anna Patterson:
About Google, Google, Gradient Ventures, Washington University in St. Louis: Gradient Ventures helps founders build transformational companies.
Adam Bain
Co-Founder & Managing Partner of 01 Advisors
Follow Adam Bain:
About 01 Advisors, Goat Group: 01A is a venture firm founded by a team of operators to help entrepreneurs build great companies.
Dick Costolo
Managing Partner & Co-Founder of 01 Advisors
Since October 2010, Dick has been the Chief Executive Officer of Twitter, where he was responsible for the growth and management of the overall business. Previously, as Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer, he oversaw monetization and day to day operations. Before joining Twitter, Dick was co-founder and CEO of FeedBurner, a digital content syndication platform that was acquired by Google in 2007. While at Google, Dick was Group Product Manager on the Ads team responsible for social media ads. Previously, Dick lived and worked in Chicago, where he founded and ran two digital media companies: SpyOnIt, a web page monitoring service, and Burning Door Networked Media, a web design and development consulting company. Dick was also an improv performer with the acclaimed Annoyance Theater. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.S. in Computer Science.
Follow Dick Costolo:
About 01 Advisors: 01A is a venture firm founded by a team of operators to help entrepreneurs build great companies.
Yahya Mokhtarzada
Co-Founder & CRO of Truebill
Prior to cofounding Truebill Yahya served as VP of Business Development at Nanigans, an advertising technology platform focused on social and mobile channels. At Nanigans, Yahya executed platform licencing agreements with enterprise advertisers including Ebay, Zappos, EA, Zynga, Amazon and Wayfair. Prior to Nanigans, Yahya held business development roles at SGN and Webs.com. Yahya is also a mentor at 500 Startups and has instructed at the Startup Institute.
Follow Yahya Mokhtarzada:
About Truebill: Truebill is a personal finance app that utilizes AI to enable users to manage their personal finances and improve their financial health.
Idris Mokhtarzada
Founder, CTO of Truebill
He is the Founder & CTO at Truebill.
Follow Idris Mokhtarzada:
About Truebill: Truebill is a personal finance app that utilizes AI to enable users to manage their personal finances and improve their financial health.
Ali Partovi
Founder & CEO of Neo
Ali Partovi heads Neo, a mentorship community and VC fund that brings together tech veterans to invest in the diverse leaders of tomorrow. Ali invests in people smarter than himself and has backed Airbnb, Dropbox, Facebook, & Uber. He co-founded Code.org (Hour of Code) to bring Computer Science to classrooms. Ali grew up in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war, attended Harvard, and sold his first startup, LinkExchange, in 1998. He’s passionate about sustainable food and loves climbing, guitar, puzzles, and family.
Follow Ali Partovi:
About Code.org, Neo: Neo is a mentorship community and VC fund that brings together a diverse group of tech veterans to accelerate tomorrow’s leaders.
Neil Mehta
Founder, Managing Partner of Greenoaks
Neil Mehta is the founder and a managing partner of Greenoaks Capital. Greenoaks is a leading investment firm focused on internet and technology businesses. Greenoaks makes concentrated, long-term investments in enduring businesses globally.
Follow Neil Mehta:
About Greenoaks: Greenoaks is a global investment firm specializing in technology companies.
Peter Nieh
Partner and Co-Founder of Lightspeed Venture Partners
Peter is a Partner and Co-Founder of Lightspeed, and covers software, mobile and cleantech. He has been working in the venture capital industry since 1995. Peter’s current investments include 99Bill, BloomReach, CoalTek, Five Stars, Leyden Energy, LS9, MyBuys, Nest, QuantumScape, Skyfire and Stion. He was also responsible for several investments which have had successful exits including Blue Nile (NILE), Celequest (acquired by Cognos), DoubleClick (acquired by Google, post IPO), Extensity (acquired by Infor, post IPO), Informatica (INFA), Kiva Software (acquired by Netscape), Phone.com (OPWV), PSS System (acquired by IBM) and TimesTen (acquired by Oracle). Prior to Lightspeed, Peter worked in business development and product marketing at General Magic, a startup that before the emergence of the Web, pioneered the development of e-commerce and electronic media services by partnering with the world’s largest telecommunications service providers and consumer electronics companies. He also managed Acer’s portable PC business in North America, where he launched the company’s first laptop PCs. Before Acer, Peter was a strategy consultant at Bain & Company and worked predominately with high-technology clients on product, sales and distribution strategies. While an undergraduate at Stanford University, he worked at Apple Computer, where he helped to develop the power management system for Apple’s first portable computer. Peter holds a BS in Electrical Engineering, an AB in Economics from Stanford University and an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Follow Peter Nieh:
About Lightspeed Venture Partners: Lightspeed Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that engages in consumer, enterprise, technology, and cleantech markets.
Barry Eggers
Founder and Partner of Lightspeed Venture Partners
Barry is a Founder and Partner of Lightspeed and focuses primarily on information technology infrastructure, with a specific interest in cloud computing, big data, storage, consumerization of IT, and networking. He has 15 years of venture capital experience, 10 years of operating experience and has been named to the Forbes Midas List of top 100 investors multiple times. Barry works closely with Avi Networks, MapR Technologies, Nimble Storage, Pertino, and youwho. His past investments include Pliant Technology (acquired by Sandisk), Calista Technologies (acquired by MSFT), Arbor Networks (acquired by DHR), Growth Networks (acquired by CSCO), Maker Communications (acquired post-IPO by CNXT), Metasolv Software (acquired post-IPO by ORCL), Sirocco Systems (acquired by SCMR), and Telogy Networks (acquired by TI). Prior to joining Lightspeed, Barry held executive roles in business development and general management at Cisco Systems from 1991-1997. While at Cisco, Barry established many of the company’s largest distribution channels across OEMs, Service Providers, Distributors, and VARs. He also developed Cisco’s initial M&A process and directed the first wave of acquisitions and integrations for the company.Barry holds a BA in Economics and Business from the University of California, Los Angeles and an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Barry is a member of the UCLA Economics Board of Visitors.
Follow Barry Eggers:
About Lightspeed India Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Origami Logic, Snap: Lightspeed Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that engages in consumer, enterprise, technology, and cleantech markets.
Jack Dorsey
Co-Founder & CEO of Square
Jack Dorsey is the Co-Founder & CEO of Twitter Ventures
Follow Jack Dorsey:
About Cash App, Square, Twitter Ventures: Block is a merchant services aggregator and mobile payment company that aims to simplify commerce through technology.
Ullas Naik
Founder & General Partner of Streamlined Ventures
Ullas Naik is the Founder & General Partner at Streamlined Ventures.
Follow Ullas Naik:
About Streamlined Ventures: Streamlined Ventures is a seed-stage investment firm focusing on Data Science, APIs, Blockchain/Web3, AI, and Software Automation.
Steve Jang
Founder & Managing Partner of Kindred Ventures
Steve Jang is a venture capital investor and technology entrepreneur. Based in San Francisco, Steve serves as founder and a managing partner of Kindred Ventures. As a generalist early stage venture fund, Kindred’s mission is to invest in brilliant and dedicated founders at the earliest stages of building their startup and, ultimately, our collective future. Over the past 12 years, Steve has backed over 100 companies across different theme areas, including Uber, Coinbase, Postmates, Tonal, Color Health, Zymergen, and Blue Bottle Coffee. Since 2009 and up until IPO, Steve has also served as an Advisor to Uber since the founding of the company, up through initial product launch, global expansion, and then IPO. Steve also serves as an Advisor at Expa, a startup studio based in SF and NY, mentoring startup teams on product development, team building, and company growth. Most recently as an entrepreneur, Steve served as co-founder of Bitski, a digital wallet and storefront service for NFTs. Previously, he was co-founder/CEO of SoundTracking, a popular mobile music service that was Apple’s Best iPhone Music App of 2011 and was acquired by Rhapsody in 2014. Prior to these startups, in 2005, he was the co-creator and founding team member of the world’s first and largest on-demand music streaming service which reached over 100 million monthly unique users before its eventual acquisition by MySpace. //Investment Theme Areas of Interest// * Online Marketplaces * Decentralized Systems and Crypto * ClimateTech & Sustainable Systems * Digital Health and Wellness * FinTech * Social Consumer Media * Developer/Creator Tools * Future of Work * Software-enabled Hardware //Representative Portfolio Companies Include// Marketplaces/Market Networks: Uber (IPO), Postmates (acq. by Uber), Poshmark (IPO), StyleSeat, Italic, Reserve (acq. by Resy), Drip (acq. Kickstarter), GrandSt (acq. by Etsy), RangeMe (acq. by ECRM) Decentralized Systems & Crypto: Coinbase, dYdX, Zora, CoinTracker, Mina Protocol, Bitski, Computable, Nervos Network, Origin Protocol, Harbor, Radar Relay, Set Protocol, Messari, Rarebits Health & Wellness: Tonal, Color Health, Heartbeat Health, Forward, Enso, Breathometer Sustainable Systems/Climate Tech: Zymergen, Linear Labs, Replenysh, Mootral, Connora Systems FinTech & LegalTech: Atrium, Bloom Credit, Coinbase, Catch Benefits Developer/Creator Tools: Red Planet Labs, Northflank, Optic, Anjuna Future of Work: Bravado, Torch, Braintrust, Fountain, Catch Food Innovation & CPG: Taika, Blue Bottle Coffee, Fort Point Beer Consumer/Social Media: Clubhouse Frontier Tech: Humane
Follow Steve Jang:
About Bitski, Kindred Ventures: Kindred Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital fund that supports startup companies.
Garrett Camp
Founder and CEO of Expa
Garrett Camp is the Founder of Aero.
Follow Garrett Camp:
About Aero, Eco, Expa, Operator, Uber, Uber Eats, Uber India: Expa supports early-stage startups through expertise, access, and funding.
Tim Chen
Founder and CEO of NerdWallet
Tim Chen is the founder and CEO of NerdWallet. A former hedge fund equity analyst specializing in payment processing companies, credit card networks, and technology companies, Tim also worked as an equity research analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston. He is a graduate of Stanford University with a degree in economics. In addition to writing for NerdWallet, Tim regularly contributes to several major personal finance publications.
Follow Tim Chen:
About NerdWallet: NerdWallet develops a financial platform to help people find the right credit cards and mortgage rates.
Ryan Hoover
Founder of Weekend Fund
Ryan Hoover is the founder of [Product Hunt](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/product-hunt), a community of people sharing, upvoting, and geeking out about new technology products, games, and books. Ryan also invests in early stage startups through [Weekend Fund](https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/29/weekend-fund-is-ryan-hoovers-3m-angel-fund/). As a writer, Hoover has contributed to Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by [Nir Eyal](https://www.crunchbase.com/person/nir-eyal) and written many essays, including features for [TechCrunch](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/techcrunch), [Forbes](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/forbes), Pando, [Fast Company](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/fast-company), and [The Next Web](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/the-next-web). He writes about startup trends, product designs, and production growth on his blog, ryanhoover.me. Hoover graduated from [the University of Oregon](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/university-of-oregon-2). After graduation, he spent time in Portland before permanently relocating to San Francisco, California.
Follow Ryan Hoover:
About Product Hunt, Weekend Fund: Weekend Fund is a venture capital and angel investing firm focused on making early-stage investments.
Josh Felser
Co-Founder of Freestyle
Josh Felser is the Co-Founder of Freestyle.
Follow Josh Felser:
About climate, Freestyle: Freestyle is a venture capital firm that focuses on early-stage technology companies.
Owen Van Natta
Founder and Managing Partner of Prefix Capital
Owen Van Natta is currently Founder and Managing Partner of Prefix Capital, an early stage investment fund founded in 2019. Owen is also a Founder and Managing Partner at 415 Investments. Previously, Owen was the Executive Vice President of Business at Zynga. He was responsible for the company’s revenue strategy, corporate development, international expansion, and brand. Owen was also a member of Zynga’s Board of Directors. Before Zynga, Owen served as Chief Executive Officer of MySpace, where he was responsible for all aspects of the company’s strategic vision and the execution of its global business initiatives. Owen joined the MySpace team after serving as the Chief Executive Officer of Project Playlist, a music sharing website allowing users to search for music, create custom playlists, and share the content with friends. Prior to Project Playlist, Van Natta was the Chief Operating Officer at Facebook, where he focused on revenue operations, business development, and strategic partnerships. Earlier in his career, Owen was Vice President of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development at Amazon.com, where he managed global marketing programs and strategic partnerships. He was part of the founding team of A9.com, the Amazon.com search company, and was responsible for site operations and sponsored-link advertising. Owen holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Follow Owen Van Natta:
About 415, Prefix Capital: Prefix Capital is an early-stage, deep-tech VC that invests in foundational technologies.
Byron Alsberg
Founder and General Partner of Prefix Capital
Follow Byron Alsberg:
About 415, Prefix Capital: Prefix Capital is an early-stage, deep-tech VC that invests in foundational technologies.
Calvin Ling
Founder and Principal of Prefix Capital
Follow Calvin Ling:
About 415, Prefix Capital: Prefix Capital is an early-stage, deep-tech VC that invests in foundational technologies.
Daniel Friedland
Co-Founder and Managing Director of Goldcrest Capital
Daniel Friedland is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Goldcrest Capital.
Follow Daniel Friedland:
About Goldcrest Capital: Goldcrest is a venture capital fund that invests in private technology companies.
Bobby Yazdani
Founder & Partner of Cota Capital
Bobby Yazdani is a Founder and Managing Partner at Cota Capital. Bobby works full-time on the development and support of entrepreneurs through Cota Capital and was ranked #1 out of 2000 angel investors for successful follow-on funding by CB Insights in 2014. Bobby founded Saba in 1997, taking the company public in 2000. Saba was the pioneer in learning management and talent management systems addressing all aspects of acquiring, developing, and retaining talent serving over 30 million users within 2,000 enterprise customers across 195 countries and in 37 languages worldwide. Prior to Saba, Bobby served in various R&D roles at Oracle. Since making his first investment in Masimo Corporation (NASDAQ: MASI) in 1989, Bobby has successfully mentored entrepreneurs and invested in more than 100 early-stage companies, including: Aardvark (acquired by Google), AddThis (acquired by Oracle), Addepar, Atheer Labs, Baarzo (acquired by Google), Berkeley Lights, Bina Technologies (acquired by Roche), Bioniz, Blueprint Genetics (acquired by Quest Diagnostics), Bonobos (acquired by Walmart), Bossa Nova, Clear Labs, CleverSense (acquired by Google), CloudLending (acquired by Q2 Holdings), Dropbox (NASDAQ: DBX), FundersClub, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Greensmith Energy (acquired by Wartsila (HEL: WRT1V)), Guardant Health (NASDAQ: GH), Gusto (formerly ZenPayroll), InstaEdu (acquired by Chegg), Klout (acquired by Lithium Technologies), Mission Bio, Movandi, NextBio (acquired by Illumina), OpenGov, PassBan (acquired by EMC/RSA), Purigen Biosystems, Qwiki (acquired by Yahoo!), RecVue, Rollbar, Roostify, Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), Smartfrog Canary Group, SoundHound, SweetGreen, ThinkBig Analytics (acquired by Teradata), Tubi (acquired by Fox Corp), Uber (NYSE: UBER), Webs.com (acquired by VistaPrint), Zymergen, and more. Bobby has a B.A. in Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Follow Bobby Yazdani:
About Compliance.ai, Cota Capital, Signatures Capital, Signatures Capital: Cota Capital is an SEC-registered multi-stage investment firm focused on private and public enterprise technology companies.
Babak Poushanchi
Founder & Managing Partner of Cota Capital
Babak Poushanchi is a Founder and Managing Partner at Cota Capital. Babak is responsible for leading public investing activities across the Firm’s funds. As Portfolio Manager of the Cota Growth Fund, he is directly responsible for the management of the investment team covering sourcing, evaluation, and portfolio/risk management of the Firm’s public investments. Babak also serves on the Firm’s Investment Committee, overseeing investments across its private and public portfolios. Babak and Bobby Yazdani founded Cota Capital in 2015. Leveraging Bobby’s early stage investing and operational expertise, and Babak’s late stage and public investing expertise, Cota was designed to invest across all the stages of the lifecycle of a company. Their investment platform is built around the desire to create a research and knowledge platform, and to deploy their own capital into the multi-decade theme of the digital transformation of the enterprise technology stack. Prior to Cota, Babak served as Co-Founder and Co-Portfolio Manager of Newbrook Capital, a global equity long/short fund focused on public investments across the technology, media, consumer, and industrial sectors. Babak was also a Venture Partner at Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, a leading technology accelerator based in New York. Previously, Babak was on the investment teams at Karsch Capital, a global equity long/short fund focused on public investments across all sectors, and Indosuez Capital, a leading middle market merchant banking group focused on equity and debt private investments across the capital structure and a broad range of sectors. Babak has a B.A. in Economics from Northwestern University.
Follow Babak Poushanchi:
About Cota Capital, Fanatic Sports Corp.: Cota Capital is an SEC-registered multi-stage investment firm focused on private and public enterprise technology companies.
Chi-Hua Chien
Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Goodwater Capital
Chi-Hua Chien is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Goodwater Capital.Prior to co-founding Goodwater, Chi-Hua was a General Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Chi-Hua serves on the Board of Directors of Path, Lithium (fka Klout), Zaarly, Chill, Level Money, and Zumper. He also invested in Chegg, Inspirato, Karma Science (acquired by FB), Spotify, and Twitter. Previously, Chi-Hua was an Associate at Accel Partners, where he originated Accel’s investment in Facebook. Chi-Hua was an early employee or co-founder of four startups including Coremetrics (acquired by IBM), where he led the marketing and inside sales teams, served as interim CFO, and was appointed to the Office of the President. Chi-Hua fell in love with startups at Stanford University where he earned a BS in Industrial Engineering, a BA in Economics, an MS in Industrial Engineering, and an MBA. At Stanford he was named a Mayfield Fellow, President’s Scholar, and Arjay Miller Scholar. Chi-Hua also serves on the board of charity: water, a non-profit organization bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations.
Follow Chi-Hua Chien:
About Citizen, Goodwater Capital: Goodwater Capital is a venture capital firm that focuses on consumer tech startups.
Eric J. Kim
Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Goodwater Capital
Eric Kim was a Managing Director with Maverick Capital where he focused on the Firm’s private investments globally and led a number of investments in technology-based companies. Prior to joining Maverick, Eric co-founded Biomimedia and also worked in the US and Asia as a member of McKinsey & Company’s global strategy practice focusing on M&A, technology licensing, turnaround strategies and new product launches. Eric received his MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and his Bachelors Degree in Cognitive Science from Yale University (Magna Cum Laude), where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was a recipient of the Richard U. Light Fellowship.
Follow Eric J. Kim:
About Goodwater Capital, Musical.ly: Goodwater Capital is a venture capital firm that focuses on consumer tech startups.
Tim Connors
Founder of PivotNorth Capital
Tim Connors is Founder and General Partner at [PivotNorth Capital](http://www.crunchbase.com/financial-organization/pivotnorth-capital), an early-stage software-focused venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, CA. Prior to founding PivotNorth, Tim apprenticed for twelve years at [Sequoia Capital](http://www.crunchbase.com/financial-organization/sequoia-capital) and USVP. During Tim’s operating career, he helped build C-Cube from a startup into a publicly-traded leader in digital video, and at Tandem was the youngest member of an elite design team that built Tandem’s flagship Everest server line. Tim conceived of and co-founded Spoke.com. He has worked closely with entrepreneurs at Guidewire Software (NASDAQ: GWRE), SupplierMarket.com (acquired by Ariba), Adify (acquired by Cox Enterprises), ClickShift.com(acquired by WebTrends), Redline Communications (TSE: REDL), StorePerform (acquired by Red Prairie), Trovix.com (acquired by Monster.com), RevolutionMoney (acquired by American Express), , Blekko.com, Media6Degrees.com, and Readyforce.com. Tim serves on the Board of Advisors of the Gigot Center for Entrepreneurship at Notre Dame and as a Director on the Stanford University Daper Venture Investment Fund. Tim received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Stanford University, and an M.B.A from Harvard Business School.
Follow Tim Connors:
About PivotNorth Capital, Platform Studio: PivotNorth Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in software companies.
Ramtin Naimi
Founder & General Partner of Abstract Ventures
Follow Ramtin Naimi:
About Abstract Ventures: Abstract Ventures is a sector agnostic venture investor in pre-seed, seed, and series A startup companies.
Philipp Stauffer
Co-Founder and Managing Director of Fyrfly Venture Partners
Philipp Stauffer is a co-founder and managing director at Fyrfly Venture Partners.
Follow Philipp Stauffer:
About Containn, Fyrfly Venture Partners, Gmelius, rready: Fyrfly Venture Partners is a venture capital firm with a focus on data and intelligence.
Mitchell Kapor
Founder & Partner of Kapor Capital
Mitchell David Kapor is the founder of [Lotus Development Corporation](/organization/lotus-development-corporation) and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3, the “killer application” often credited with making the personal computer ubiquitous in the business world in the 1980s. He is known as an entrepreneur, investor, social activist, and philanthropist. Kapor has been the Chair of the [Mozilla](/organization/mozilla) Foundation since its inception in 2003. He founded the Mitchell Kapor Foundation to support his philanthropic interests in environmental health. He also co-founded, and is on the board of, the Level Playing Field Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to fairness in education and workplaces. Kapor is also Chair of the Board of Directors of [Linden Lab](/organization/secondlife), a [San Francisco-based](/maps/city/San%2520Francisco) company which created the popular virtual world [Second Life](/product/second-life), and a member of the Advisory Board for the [Wikimedia Foundation](/organization/wikimedia-foundation). In 1990 Kapor’s new company On Technology introduced their new product On Location, an application designed for the Macintosh that contained an indexing system that permit quick retrieval and display of text on the Mac’s hard disk. “We think we’re being cagey by bringing it out on the Mac first,” Kapor said. “It’s a richer medium than MS-DOS, and if we have a hot product in the Mac market, it will be easier to get into the PC market.” In 2001, Kapor founded the Open Source Applications Foundation, where he is now working on Chandler, a modern personal information manager built using open source tools and methods. In 2006, Kapor founded his latest startup, [Foxmarks](/organization/foxmarks), based in San Francisco.
Follow Mitchell Kapor:
About Kapor Capital, Kapor Center for Social Impact, Kapor Center for Social Impact, Linden Lab, Lotus, Mitchell Kapor Foundation, Mitchell Kapor Foundation, SMASH | Level Playing Field Institute: Kapor Capital is an investment firm that invests in early-stage tech-enabled startups.
Freada Kapor Klein
Founder & Partner of Kapor Capital
As a Founding Partner at Kapor Capital, Freada invests in seed stage tech startups that create positive social impact by closing gaps of access, opportunity or outcome for low income communities and communities of color.
Follow Freada Kapor Klein:
About Kapor Capital, Project Include, SMASH | Level Playing Field Institute: Kapor Capital is an investment firm that invests in early-stage tech-enabled startups.
Gordon Ritter
Founder & General Partner of Emergence
Gordon Ritter is a Founder and General Partner of Emergence Capital Partners. Prior to founding Emergence, he spent over 15 years founding and building companies which pioneered new markets including embedded web-based interfaces, server appliances, “On Demand” services for the SMB market and web-native application development. In 2003, Gordon led Emergence Capital’s first investment, in Salesforce.com. In 2008, Gordon invested in Industry Cloud pioneer Veeva Systems when the company had 25 employees and less than $2 million in revenue. He has played a key role in the company’s development (now a public company NYSE:VEEV) and he is currently Veeva’s Chairman. Gordon was named to the Forbes’ Midas List of the top venture capital investors in 2007, 2012, 2014 and 2015. Prior to founding Emergence, Gordon was co-Founder and CEO of Software As Service, a web services platform company he created with Marc Benioff, the Chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com. Software As Service is the origin of Salesforce.com’s Salesforce1 platform. Prior to founding Software As Service, he ran the $3 billion IBM Global Small Business division, created as a result of IBM’s acquisition of his company, Whistle Communications in 1999. He was responsible for IBM’s launch partnership with Salesforce.com. Prior to IBM, Gordon was co-Founder and President of Whistle, a pioneering Internet appliance and web services platform. Gordon also co-founded Tribe Communications, a networking infrastructure company, and he was a VP of Capital Markets at Credit Suisse First Boston in New York. Gordon has a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University, where he rowed on the heavyweight crew team. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and four children. He enjoys a range of endurance sports and recently summited both Denali and Aconcagua, and completed a 250-mile trail run across Switzerland.
Follow Gordon Ritter:
About Emergence, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy: Emergence is a venture capital firm, investing in early and growth-stage cloud and SaaS visionaries that change the way the world works.
Vincent Diallo
Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Interlace Ventures
Vincent Diallo serves as the Managing Partner at Interlace Ventures and Bleu Capital. Diallo served as the Chief Financial Officer at Sinodis (Shanghai) from 2011 to 2015. He worked for 7 years at Deloitte. Diallo has cross industry exposure from manufacturing to distribution.
Follow Vincent Diallo:
About Bleu Capital, Interlace Ventures: Interlace Ventures is an early-stage and seed-stage fund investing in the Future of Commerce.
Kenneth Lin
Founder and CEO of Credit Karma
Kenneth started Credit Karma in 2007 to offer free credit scores and bring transparency and simplicity to the credit industry – an industry that was built around and had long prioritized banks above consumers. He has guided the company from a small team of three to a team of several hundred employees who are disrupting consumer finance, serving millions of people. Kenneth spent his early career working with mission-driven businesses like Upromise and Eloan, and he was inspired to build Credit Karma – a platform where consumers can manage their full financial lives with more certainty, supported by a unique business model that creates genuine, organic value by reducing marketing inefficiency for banks and empowering consumers with information. Like LinkedIn has done for professional identity and Facebook for social lives, Kenneth’s vision is that one day Credit Karma can create a simple way for Americans to manage their financial identities. Kenneth also founded Multilytics Marketing in 2006 and has a B.A. in mathematics and economics from Boston University.
Follow Kenneth Lin:
About Credit Karma: Credit Karma offers a range of tools and personalized recommendations designed to help customers make the most of their money.
Philip O’Connor
Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Blackhorn Ventures
Phil is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Blackhorn Ventures, an early stage venture fund investing in technology that increases the resource efficiency of essential industries. Prior to Blackhorn, Phil was co-founder and CEO of PAX Pure, an industrial water treatment company. For the past five years Philip has been an investor and advisor focusing on improving natural resource use.
Follow Philip O’Connor:
About Blackhorn Ventures, Conservation International: Blackhorn Ventures is an early stage venture firm that invests in companies using cutting edge engineering to improve resource productivity.
Bill Elmore
General Partner and Founder of Foundation Capital
With a combinationof venture and operating experience that cultivated a deep understanding about the challenges an organization faces on a daily basis, Bill founded Foundation Capital in 1995 with the purpose of helping entrepreneurs build strong organizations from the ground up. He has always operated on the belief that substantial, sustainable companies are the result of matching insight—whether about technology or market opportunity—with the right entrepreneurand management team. Prior to Foundation, Bill spent eight years as a General Partner at Inman & Bowman. Previous roles include president of Visual Engineering, as well as a variety of marketing management positions, at Hewlett-Packard. As former director and past presidentof the Western Association for Venture Capitalists, and past director of the National Venture Capital Association, Bill continues to be actively involved in defining, serving, and representing the interests of the venture capital and private equity industries. Equally passionate about his philanthropy work, Bill serves on the Advisory Council at Stanford Business School and is a board member of the Eastside College Preparatory School. Bill currently sits on the board ofdirectors of Biz360, CloudShield, Helpstream, Quartics, SpringCM, TeaLeaf Technology, Venafi, and XMOS Semiconductor, and was previously on the boards of Atheros Communications and WindRiver Systems. Bill holds a BSEEand MSEE from Purdue University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Follow Bill Elmore:
About Foundation Capital: Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm made up of former entrepreneurs and helps companies and businesses grow.
June Ou
COO, Co-Founder of Figure
Founder and CEO of CCO Solutions, a firm that provided outsourced middle and back office solutions to the hedge fund industry. Co-founder, VP of Product Management and Engineering at Finaplex, a leader in wealth management solutions (sold to Broadridge NYSE: BR), responsible for both enterprise and cloud solutions. MS from UC Santa Cruz; MS from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Follow June Ou:
About Figure, Provenance Blockchain: Figure is a financial services company leveraging blockchain technology.
Michael Cagney
Co-Founder & CEO of Figure
As the CEO, Chairman and co-founder of SoFi, Mike Cagney leads corporate strategy and development at SoFi—bringing decades of experience in the financial industry to his leadership of the company. He’s held a Senior Vice President role at Wells Fargo, where he was head trader for the proprietary trading and financial products group. Mike is also co-founder and a managing member of Cabezon Investment Group, a global macro hedge fund, in addition to serving as a non-executive Chairman of ReFlow. Before Cabezon, Mike founded, was CEO and then Vice Chairman and Chief Architect, of Finaplex, a leader in wealth management software that was sold to Broadridge (NYSE: BR). While overseeing SoFi’s overall direction, Mike makes a daily point to interact with SoFi’s member base, now more than 260,000 members. In addition to reading and responding to member feedback, he hosts SoFi member dinners at his San Francisco home to better know our customers and understand their financial goals. Mike holds an M.S., Management degree from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was a Sloan Fellow. He also holds a MS in applied economics from UC Santa Cruz.
Follow Michael Cagney:
About Figure, Provenance Blockchain: Figure is a financial services company leveraging blockchain technology.
Soul Htite
Founder & Executive Chairman of Dianrong
Soul Htite is the founder and CEO of Dianrong. Prior to co-founding Dianrong in 2012, Soul co-founded Lending Club, the world’s largest and benchmarking financial technology company. He served as the Head of Technology until 2011. Soul led all the design and development efforts of Lending Club’s award winning online lending platform. Soul spent the earlier part of his career building enterprise software at Oracle Corporation. His focus was in real-time online services and system design for high availability and fault tolerance. Soul holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the Université de Montréal. Specialties: entrepreneurship, internet, software, product design, innovation, creativity, product development, startups, investment
Follow Soul Htite:
About Dianrong, Upgrade: Dianrong is an online marketplace lending company that uses technology to transform the way China is financed to help enrich people’s lives.
Paul Hsiao
Co-Founder & General Partner of Canvas Ventures
Paul joined forces with Rebecca Lynn and Gary Little as a founding member of Canvas Ventures in 2014, with the purpose of creating the type of boutique firm he would have liked to work with as an entrepreneur himself, one where every investment is meaningful and where he can spend his time working with his founders to scale their business. At Canvas, Paul’s investments include eporta, Fluxx Labs, Kidbox, MasonHub, Flowspace, Roofstock, Shoreline Software, Skyflow, Thrive Global, Transfix, and Zola. He has also pioneered the firm’s work in co-creation— helping start new companies by match-making domain experts with market opportunity in areas ripe for disruption. A former partner at NEA, Paul spent ten years helping companies scale from garage-scale startups to IPO and acquisition. Paul found that he loved the venture business, and he had an innate curiosity to learn about how others built meaningful companies. While at NEA, he worked alongside companies including Salesforce (CRM), Tableau Software, Coursera, Spreadtrum Communications, Workday (WDAY), Upwork, Gaikai (SNE), Boingo Wireless (WIFI), SMIC, and many others. Paul is an entrepreneur at heart. He immigrated with his parents from Taipei in junior high. Contrary to his parent’s wishes for him to become a doctor, he leveraged his mechanical and biomedical engineering degrees from MIT, where he launched startup in the medical device space tackling open-heart surgery, and his MBA from HBS, where he launched a startup in the network security space called Mazu Networks. Paul financed the early days of Mazu on credit cards, camped outside of customer prospects and venture firms in minivan rentals, and got his break when he attracted financing support from Greylock, Matrix and Benchmark Capital. Mazu was a pioneer in network security built from technology developed at MIT. Early adopters of Mazu’s proprietary DDoS-security platform, which was eventually acquired by Riverbed Technology, included Yahoo, eBay and CNN, and Paul is proud to say that the engineering team and underlying software paved the foundation later for Meraki
Follow Paul Hsiao:
About Canvas Ventures, Roofstock, Zola: Canvas Ventures is an early-stage investment firm that specializes on fintech, healthtech, marketplaces, and data infrastructure.
Doug Higgins
Co-Founder & Partner of Sapphire
Doug is a co-founder of Sapphire Ventures and a lead investor for Sapphire Sport. He currently manages the firm’s investments in Convercent, Jibe, Localytics, Phoenix Labs, Return Path, Tonal, and Spring Mobile Solutions. Previously, he worked on investments including LinkedIn (acquired by Microsoft), Paytm, DocuSign (NASDAQ: DOCU) Fitbit (NYSE: FIT), Square (NYSE: SQ), and Ticketfly (acquired by Pandora). He is focused on investing in early-stage technology companies at the intersection of sports, media and disruptive technologies. Doug has worked for a venture-backed startup as well as for one of his entrepreneurial heroes, George Lucas. He launched the business development group for Lucasfilm, creating strategic partnerships for Star Wars prequels. Doug started his career in investment banking, with a focus on technology, at Robertson Stephens. More recently, he managed the Intel 64 fund at Intel Capital. Doug has lived in Madrid, Spain; Santiago, Chile; and Walker, Minnesota. He graduated with a bachelor’s from Duke University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, both with high honors.
Follow Doug Higgins:
About Sapphire: Sapphire is a venture capital firm that partners with visionary teams and venture funds to build companies.
David Hartwig
Co-Founder & Partner of Sapphire
Dave is a co-founder and managing director of Sapphire Ventures. He has been working in venture capital since 1997 where he started in inside sales. Dave’s excitement for venture investing springs from getting to work with people that are smarter than him and getting a preview on new technologies and businesses changing the shape of just about everything. His interests are wide ranging and his experiences include: analytics, digital health and wellness, enterprise SaaS, FinTech/FinServices, infrastructure, IoT and security. Dave is currently a member of the board (director or observer) at Kaltura, LeanData, Livongo, Phoenix Labs and Reonomy. Dave’s previous investments at Sapphire include: 23andMe, Alfresco (acquired by THL Partners), Datria (acquired by Intelligrated), FitBit (NYSE: FIT), Lithium Technologies (acquired by Vista Equity Partners), PayScale (acquired by Warburg Pincus), Ping Identity (acquired by Vista Equity Partners), Qumu (NASDAQ: QUMU), Ticketfly (acquired by Pandora), Tradewind Markets, Tremor Video (NYSE: TLRA). Prior to joining Sapphire Ventures in 2006, Dave helped start the tech venture capital team within American Capital and was a member of the communications investing team at Battery Ventures from 1997-2004. He began his career at Deloitte Consulting where he worked on large-scale software rollouts and the supporting network and process redesigns within technology and healthcare focused clients. Dave has a BSE in operations research from Princeton and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. He’s interested in hearing about the best book you’ve read recently.
Follow David Hartwig:
About Sapphire: Sapphire is a venture capital firm that partners with visionary teams and venture funds to build companies.
Scott Stanford
Co-Founder and Partner of ACME Capital
Scott Stanford is a Co-Founder and Partner at ACME Capital. He has been focused on the internet/technology sector for over 25 years as an advisor, operator, and investor. Prior to founding ACME in 2018, he was a co-founder of Sherpa Capital. Scott co-headed Goldman Sachs’s Global Internet Investment Banking business in San Francisco for 12 years where he advised clients on $80 billion of equity and debt financings and strategic transactions and was deeply involved in investments in technology-enabled companies such as Facebook, Uber, DST/Mail.ru, Demand Media, LinkedIn, Palantir, iCrossing, and Square. His client coverage responsibility included Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Groupon, Zillow, Airbnb, Uber, and many other established and emerging technology-enabled companies. Prior to rejoining Goldman in 2004, Scott was an early employee of LookSmart, helping build the company from a start-up in 1999 to a publicly-traded NASDAQ company. From 1996 to 1998, while earning his MBA, Scott coded prototype applications for two startup ideas, one focusing on community service and the other focusing on automating and prototyping core financial analyses. He spent a summer during business school as an Associate at General Atlantic Partners focused on technology venture capital. Prior to business school, Scott was a Financial Analyst with Goldman Sachs’s Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Investment Banking Group. He began his Goldman career in the Fixed Income Group from 1993 to 1995 in New York. During this time, he developed software applications as well as structured and marketed Interest Rate Swaps and Options for the firm’s municipal clients. Scott grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. As an early adopter of technology, he taught himself to code at age 13, built and ran a dial-up BBS, taught computer courses, started a personal computer consulting business, and developed a robotics exhibit for the Indianapolis Children’s Museum. Scott also earned his Pilot’s License at the age of 17. Scott received his A.B. with Honors from Harvard College (Social Studies) and M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Follow Scott Stanford:
About ACME Capital: ACME Capital invests in breakthrough technologies that fuel platform shifts and disruptive business models that capitalize on new platforms.
Hany Nada
Co-Founder and Partner of ACME Capital
Hany Nada is a Co-Founder and Partner at ACME Capital. He is a trusted resource to the public and private company CEOs and management teams and has served as a long-term partner to more than 150 companies over the past two decades, advising them on the global market and business development, customer introductions, and M&A/IPO guidance across US, European, and Asian markets. Prior to founding ACME in 2018, Hany was a Co-Founder and Partner at GGV Capital in 2000 where he pioneered a one-team approach to create a cohesive culture across the firm’s US and China offices. Hany made GGV’s first investment in China and served as a Managing Director at the firm from 2000 to October 2016. He remained a Venture Partner from November 2016 to 2018. Over the course of his career, Hany has made a significant number of successful investments, including Athenahealth (NASDAQ: ATHN), Endeca (acquired by Oracle), Kintana (acquired by Mercury Interactive), and Xfire (acquired by Viacom), Tudou (NASDAQ- TUDO later acquired by Youku/Alibaba), Vocera Communications (NASDAQ- VCRA), and Heptagon (acquired by AMS). Hany currently serves on the board of directors of DraftKings, Glu Mobile (NASDAQ: GLUU), Phoenix Labs, and Houzz. Before founding GGV Capital, Hany spent ten years on Wall Street as a Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co., specializing in internet software and infrastructure. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota where he earned a B.S. in economics and a B.A. in political science. Board Member: DraftKings, Glu, Houzz, Phoenix Labs, Wild Tangent Former Board Member: Account, BandPage, Endeca, Heptagon, Kintana, OneWave, Tudou, Turbine, Vocera, Xfire
Follow Hany Nada:
About ACME Capital: ACME Capital invests in breakthrough technologies that fuel platform shifts and disruptive business models that capitalize on new platforms.
Asha Jadeja
Founder of Motwani Jadeja Foundation
Asha founded Dot Edu Ventures in March 2000 to fund innovative technologies emerging from top US universities. Among her many investments are Bytemobile, Kaltix (now Google), Jareva (now Veritas), and Mimosa Systems. Alongside her career in venture capital Asha founded and ran as CEO iScale Inc, a peered networking company for distributing large file content across the internet using proprietary technology. Before iScale Asha was an angel investor and advisor in various silicon valley startups. Asha studied civil engineering for undergrad in India and transitioned into urban planning and policy studies for graduate studies at USC, UC Berkeley, and Stanford. She held several research and analyst positions at multinational agencies such as the United Nations’ Transnationals Corporation and the World Bank while pursuing graduate studies. Her civil engineering and urban planning work included projects such as the Los Angeles Metro Rail.
Follow Asha Jadeja:
About Dot Edu Ventures, Motwani Jadeja Foundation, Various: Motwani Jadeja Foundation is a not-for-profit global venture fund that supports and empowers entrepreneurs to enable exponential change.
Danae Ringelmann
Founder & Board Member of Indiegogo
Danae Ringelmann co-founded Indiegogo in 2007 with a mission to democratize fundraising and has since helped to propel the company into the world’s largest crowdfunding platform. Today, Danae leads Indiegogo’s industry development efforts, while steering the company’s employee culture and values initiatives. Danae was listed as a Young Global Leader in 2016 by the World Economic Forum, one of Fortune Magazine’s 40 under 40, as well as SF Business Times’ 40 under 40 in 2014. ELLE Magazine named Danae to its Woman in Tech Power List in 2014; while Fast Company included her in its Top 50 Women Innovators in Technology in 2011. Awards include Watermark’s “Woman Who’s Made Her Mark” in 2014, and AWNY’s No Apologies” Changemaker award in 2013. Danae frequently speaks at conferences around the world, including Web Summit, The Next Web, TEDx, SXSW and CeBIT. Danae also testified before the House Small Business Subcommittee on Investigations, Oversight and Regulations on “Financing America’s Small Businesses: Innovative Ideas for Raising Capital” in June 2013. Prior to Indiegogo, Danae was a Securities Analyst at Cowen & Co. where she covered entertainment companies including Pixar, Lions Gate, Disney, and Electronic Arts. Danae also focused on cable network, NFL, newspaper and hedge fund clientele while at JPMorgan’s Investment Bank and Private Bank. In the wake of 9/11, Danae co-produced a concert reading of Incident at Vichy, an Arthur Miller play addressing the politically charged topic of racial profiling. Danae is a CFA charterholder and holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Danae graduated with a B.A. in Humanities from UNC-Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead Scholar and varsity rower.
Follow Danae Ringelmann:
About Indiegogo: Indiegogo is a crowdfunding platform empowering people around the world to fund projects that matter to them.
Paul Madera
Co-Founder & MD of Meritech Capital Partners
Paul Madera is a graduate of the USAF Academy and is currently Managing Director at Meritech Capital Partners, a $3.1 billion venture capital fund he co-founded in 1999. He currently invests in private technology companies in the SaaS, storage, e-commerce, financial, and medical device sectors. Over the past 12 years, he has led Meritech’s investments into several of the most successful tech companies of the era including 2Wire, BlueArc, Dealer Socket, Facebook, Force10 Networks, Glaukos, IntraLase, Riverbed Technology, and Salesforce.com. He is consistently listed in the top tier of the annual Forbes “Midas List” of venture capital investors. Prior to Meritech, Paul was Managing Director of Private Equity at Montgomery Securities/Banc of America where he and his group advised technology and consumer-based startups in raising capital. He began his career in finance as an investment banker with Morgan Stanley & Co. in New York. Before entering the private sector, he served in the United States Air Force as an F-16 Instructor Pilot based in South Korea, Spain, and Utah. He also spent a tour at the Pentagon as a member of the Air Force Liaison Office where he interfaced with Senate and House Armed Services Committees. Paul holds an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and B.S. in Political Science from United States Air Force Academy.
Follow Paul Madera:
About Meritech Capital Partners: Meritech Capital provides late-stage venture capital to technology companies.
Mike Gordon
Co-Founder & MD of Meritech Capital Partners
Mike Gordon was a founder of Meritech in 1999. He currently focuses on the communications infrastructure and applications, mobile, datacenter and clean technology sectors. Mike has been directly involved with BigBand Networks (ARRS), Broadsoft (BSFT), Calix Networks (CALX), Corvis (CORV), Cyan (CYNI), FiberTower (FTWR), Good Technology, NextG Networks (CCI acquisition-pending), Presidio Solutions (acquired by American Securities), Omneon Networks (HLIT), Sourcefire (FIRE), Tele Atlas (acquired by TomTom), Tremor Video (TRMR) and Vonage (VG). Mike joined Meritech Capital Partners from Deutsche Banc Alex Brown where he was a Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst focusing on communications infrastructure. Mike was the research analyst during the equity financings of Ciena, Broadcom, and JDS Uniphase, among others, and was recognized as a two-time Wall Street Journal All Star Analyst. Prior to joining Deutsche Banc Alex Brown, Mike worked at Montgomery Securities in research and Salomon Brothers in investment banking.
Follow Mike Gordon:
About Meritech Capital Partners: Meritech Capital provides late-stage venture capital to technology companies.
Rob Ward
Co-Founder & Managing Director of Meritech Capital Partners
Rob co-founded Meritech in 1999. His current areas of investment interest include Big Data, cloud computing, Saas, security and online consumer services. Rob led Meritech’s successful investments in Acclarent (JNJ), BigFix (IBM), Cornerstone OnDemand (CSOD), Counterpane (BT), Fortinet (FTNT), Greenplum (EMC), Imperva (IMPV), Netezza (IBM), NetSuite (N), PopCap Games (ERTS), Quigo (AOL), Reliant (SLTM) and Zipcar (ZIP). Prior to Meritech, Rob was a principal in the Private Equity Group at Montgomery Securities, and worked in the New York and San Francisco Corporate Finance Departments at Smith Barney.
Follow Rob Ward:
About Eastside College Preparatory School, Meritech Capital Partners: Meritech Capital provides late-stage venture capital to technology companies.
David Fisher
Co-Founder & Managing Partner of 9Yards Capital
David focuses on investments in the enterprise and consumer segments. Previously, David worked at the private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners and the investment bank JP Morgan & Chase. He is an alum of Stanford GSB, and graduated summa cum laude from The University of Pennsylvania.
Follow David Fisher:
About 9Yards Capital: 9YC is a global investment firm that invests in tech enabled consumer and enterprise fintech and logistics companies at the growth stage.
Theo Osborne
Co-Founder & Managing Partner of 9Yards Capital
Follow Theo Osborne:
About 9Yards Capital: 9YC is a global investment firm that invests in tech enabled consumer and enterprise fintech and logistics companies at the growth stage.
Vishal Vasishth
Co-Founder and Managing Director of Obvious Ventures
Vishal is the Managing Director of Obvious Ventures. Board Observer at Tomorrow Health, Galileo & Corvus Insurance.
Follow Vishal Vasishth:
About Devoted Health, Good Eggs, Myro, Obvious Ventures, The Aspen Institute: Obvious Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in the early and growth stages.
James Joaquin
Co-Founder and Managing Director of Obvious Ventures
James has over twenty-five years of experience building and leading technology companies from early stage company ideation to global market leadership. He helped create entirely new categories such as online photography, web-based calendaring and the Personal Digital Assistant. James is the former CEO of Ofoto, Xoom, and Xmarks. James is the co-founder of Obvious Ventures, investing in #worldpositive startups that combine profit and purpose.
Follow James Joaquin:
About Breezeworks, Obvious Ventures: Obvious Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in the early and growth stages.
John Cadeddu
Co-Founder, General Partner of Corner Ventures
Prior to joining DAG in 1999, John was a Managing Director at Amsterdam Pacific, an investment bank specializing in media and telecommunications. While at Amsterdam Pacific Corporation, John worked with BBU Mezzanine Fund I and BBU Mezzanine Fund II, where he sourced, supported and exited mezzanine investments across a number of industries. Previously, John worked at Octel Communications (now Lucent Technologies) and Tandem Computers (now H-P) in marketing and strategic planning roles He also worked at JP Morgan in both capital markets and corporate finance. John received a B.A. from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. John led DAG II’s investments into Raza Microelectronics, Agami, Tropos Networks, Qlusters, Centrata, Kovio, Pedestal Networks, Trapeze Networks, Topspin Communications and Entrisphere. He also serves on the board at Trapeze Networks, Qlusters, Pedestal Networks and Entrisphere.
Follow John Cadeddu:
About Corner Ventures, DAG Ventures, Duff, Ackerman and Goodrich: Corner Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in the B and C rounds of promising startups.
Benjamin Black
Co-Founder and Managing Director of Akkadian Ventures
Benjamin Black is the Co-founder & Chief Investment Officer of Akkadian Ventures, LLC. An eleven-year veteran of the private equity space, Ben co-founded Akkadian with Peter Smith, to specialize in offering early liquidity to entrepreneurs, early employees, and investors in successful private companies. In 2011, Ben co-founded, with Chris Tarr, the Momentum Index (www.momentumindex.com) which tracks the top performing private venture-backed companies. With the understanding that it often takes more than ten years for entrepreneurs to achieve liquidity, Akkadian Ventures created unique deal structures for entrepreneurs and employees to generate liquidity and diversify their risk by selling or leveraging private stock. Focusing exclusively on purchasing small stakes in successful growing companies, Akkadian helps innovators manage risk and reap financial reward during that hard climb to the top. Among many, Ben has managed notable investments in RocketFuel, Splunk, DocuSign, Lithium Technologies, Cloudmark, Ooyala, Citizenhawk, The Villa, Automattic and Telephia. Ben co-founded New Cycle Capital with Josh Becker to bring socially responsible investing to sectors like clean energy and social finance with angel investments in Renewable Funding and Opower. He spent nearly four years at Seattle venture capital firm Maveron, focusing on consumer businesses such as Allconnect (Inc. 500 winner). Prior to Maveron, he spent 3 years at private equity firm Rosewood Capital where he focused on branded consumer products and services, including Under Armour. As an entrepreneur, Ben was part of the founding team at Harris Interactive, which was a pioneer in Internet-based market research. During Ben’s tenure, the company completed a successful IPO and generated $200M in revenue. Ben received his undergraduate degree at Cornell University and his JD at the Cornell School of Law. He is the author of a book on American Politics titled ‘The Politics of American Discontent’ which can be bought on Amazon for $0.12.
Follow Benjamin Black:
About Akkadian Ventures: Akkadian Ventures is a direct secondary investment firm that offers liquidity to early employees and investors of venture-backed businesses.
Alexey Kalinichenko
Co-Founder and CTO of Step
Follow Alexey Kalinichenko:
About Step: Step is a financial services company that builds mobile-based banking for teenagers.
CJ MacDonald
Founder & CEO of Step
CJ is a serial entrepreneur and has over 15 years experience launching early stage startups across multiple industries. He has demonstrated an exceptional ability throughout his career to bring innovative products to market, attract large clients and deliver rapid sales expansion in emerging technology verticals. Currently CJ is the Founder and CEO Step, a next generation banking platform. Prior to Step, CJ was the co-founder of Gyft (Acquired by First Data), led Sales and Business Development initiatives at Luminate (Acquired by Yahoo) and was an early executive at Liveops. CJ is a graduate from Wesleyan University and lives in the Bay Area.
Follow CJ MacDonald:
About Step: Step is a financial services company that builds mobile-based banking for teenagers.
Geoff Yang
Co-Founder & Partner of Redpoint
Geoff Yang is a Founding Partner of Redpoint Ventures. Prior to founding Redpoint, Geoff was a general partner with IVP, a firm he joined in 1987.Geoff emphasizes investments in consumer media and infrastructure. His media and advertising investments include Ask Jeeves, Clicker, Efficient Frontier, Excite, Machinima, MySpace and TiVo. His networking investments include Calix, Foundry Networks, Juniper Networks, MMC Networks and Wellfleet. He currently serves on the Board of Bluefin, BranchOut, Formspring, Gaia Online, Gravity, Machinima, Oodle, Pinwheel and Scribd.In addition, Geoff was founding director or previously led investments in Agile Networks, Applied Digital Access, Centillion, Collabra, Crescendo, Golfweb, JotSpot, Netcore Systems, Netlink, Promatory, Rapid City, Shasta Networks and Whitetree. Geoff is currently on the Advisory Council for the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and previously served on the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) as well as a Director of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and President of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists (WAVC). Prior to joining IVP, Geoff was an Associate with First Century Partners and a Marketing Representative at IBM Corp.Geoff holds a B.S.E. in Engineering from Princeton University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Follow Geoff Yang:
About Franklin Templeton Investments, Performance Health Sciences, Redpoint, Rock The Bells, Tastemade, United States Olympic Committee: Redpoint Ventures partners with visionary founders to create new markets or redefine existing ones at the seed, early, and growth stages.
Travis Bryant
Partner and Head of Founder Experience of Redpoint
Travis is an EiR focused on Enterprise companies. Prior to joining Redpoint, Travis was head of Customer Growth at Front, after spending 5 years building the global Sales organization at Optimizely, the world’s most popular experimentation platform. During his time at Optimizely, the company grew from from $7 to >$90M in ARR, 40 to 400 colleagues, and from 1 to 6 offices. Travis spent his formative years at Salesforce from 2006-2012 in a number of sales roles including building the first Platform Sales team. His path to sales leadership was not an obvious one, having started as an Oracle DBA at Chevron before recognizing he was a mediocre developer and moving to more customer-facing roles. Travis also runs Saleshuman Consulting Group, an organization focused on helping technology companies build the principles and frameworks that generate scalable growth and high-performance culture. He has invested personally in YipYap, Starcity, Kettle & Fire, and Cloz.io. Travis lives in San Francisco with his wife, eagerly awaiting the hurricane of their first child arriving in the new year. He is super excited, and kinda panicked.
Follow Travis Bryant:
About Redpoint: Redpoint Ventures partners with visionary founders to create new markets or redefine existing ones at the seed, early, and growth stages.
Peter Svennilson
Managing Partner and Founder of The Column Group
Peter Svennilson is the Managing Partner and Founder of The Column Group, a biotech VC fund based in San Francisco. He has 23 years of experience in corporate finance, investment banking, and venture capital. He was the founder and a partner of Three Crowns Capital, a leading backer of a new generation of US biotechnology companies. He helped found companies such as Rosetta, PTC, Tercica, and Somalogic. Over the past 12 years he has helped finance and develop biotech companies, including Tularik, Sunesis, Chemocentryx, Infinity, AVEO, Rinat, and FivePrime. He is currently a Board Director of NGM Biopharmaceuticals, Aragon Pharmaceuticals and PTC Therapeutics and has served on the Boards of Directors of several other biotechnology companies, including Rosetta, Somalogic, and ChemoCentryx. Before founding Three Crowns Capital, he was the Associate Managing Director of European Investment Banking Origination at Nomura Securities in London. He is currently a trustee for the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Follow Peter Svennilson:
About Nomura Holdings, The Column Group, Three Crowns Capital: The Column Group is a venture capital firm dedicated to developing biotechnology companies.
Tory Patterson
Co-Founder and Managing Director of Owl Ventures
Tory is the co-founder and Managing Director of Owl Ventures where he is actively involved with all facets of the firm and serves on the board of directors for Accelerate Learning (acquired by Carlyle Group), BetterLesson, Degreed, DreamBox Learning (acquired by TPG), Gather, Hazel Health, Kiddom, Labster, Newsela, Noodle Partners, Quizlet, Remind and uLesson. As one of the early pioneers in the next generation of leading EdTech companies, Tory has led investments in some of the most successful companies in the sector. As a lead investor and board member he has played a hands-on role helping leading edtech companies across all facets of development including core definition and measurement of value proposition, sales & distribution, hiring, funding and eventual paths to successful exit. Prior to Owl Ventures, Tory was a Partner at Catamount Ventures where he founded and ran one of the venture industry’s first education investment practices. There he led investments in education companies TenMarks (acquired by Amazon), MasteryConnect (acquired by Instructure), PresenceLearning and EdSurge (acquired by ISTE). Tory is a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow and holds a B.A. in Economics from Williams College and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Follow Tory Patterson:
About Catamount Ventures, Owl Ventures: Owl Ventures is a venture capital fund that invests in education technology companies.
Jed Smith
Co-Founder of Owl Ventures
Jed is a Partner of Catamount Ventures. He has dedicated his business career to the art of entrepreneurship and to making a difference. Prior to launching Catamount, Jed founded drugstore.com (NASDAQ: DSCM) in 1997, serving on its board of directors with John Doerr, Brook Byers, Peter Neupert, Howard Schultz and Jeff Bezos. Before that, he co-founded and spent four years at Cybersmith, a retail store chain that showcased the latest advances in information technology and multimedia software. Jed was also Vice President of Sales at Tribe Computer Works, a networking hardware and software company that was successfully sold. Jed began his career in technology working for Tom Siebel and, later, Marc Benioff at Oracle Corporation, ultimately serving as District Manager for the Eastern Region. Jed has no doubt that world-class mentors have been important to his career. Jed has advised many private companies and currently serves on the boards of Linden Lab, Numi Organic Tea, Banyan Water, Plum Organics, and Revolution Foods. He has also served on the boards of several education and non-profit institutions, including the Board of Trustees of Middlebury College, the Monterey Institute for International Studies, Shackleton Schools and the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. Jed earned a BA from Middlebury College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Follow Jed Smith:
About Catamount Ventures, drugstore.com, Owl Ventures: Owl Ventures is a venture capital fund that invests in education technology companies.
Greg Shenkman
Founder of EIS Group
Greg Shenkman is the founder of EIS Group.
Follow Greg Shenkman:
About EIS Group, Exigen Capital: EIS Group is focused on providing IT solutions that enable companies to convert their technology into strategic assets.
Kristy Kim
Founder & CEO of TomoCredit
Kristy Kim serves as the CEO and co-founder of TomoCredit.
Follow Kristy Kim:
About DearMissJ, TomoCredit: TomoCredit helps millennials get the credit cards they deserve by analyzing alternative data sets.
Dmitry Kashlev
Founder & CTO of TomoCredit
Dmitry Kashlev is a Chief Technology Officer and Founder of TomoCredit.
Follow Dmitry Kashlev:
About DearMissJ, Qventus, TomoCredit: TomoCredit helps millennials get the credit cards they deserve by analyzing alternative data sets.
Jai An
CEO & Co-Founder of TrustToken
Jai is the CEO and co-founder of TrustToken
Follow Jai An:
About TrustToken: TrustToken is a platform to create asset-backed tokens that can be used for buying and selling around the world.
Rafael Cosman
Co-Founder & Head of Engineering and Product of TrustToken
Rafael graduated from Stanford where his focus was on artificial intelligence and cryptography. He got interested in cryptocurrency after studying with Professor Dan Boneh, one of the world’s leading experts in applied cryptography. Rafael went on to work at Palantir and Google Brain before leaving Google to found TrustToken. TrustToken is creating a platform that bridges blockchains and the $256 trillion of real-world assets. Rafael holds multiple patents in machine learning.
Follow Rafael Cosman:
About TrueFi, TrustToken: TrustToken is a platform to create asset-backed tokens that can be used for buying and selling around the world.
Aleesha John
Co-Founder & CTO of Buy Me a Coffee
Follow Aleesha John:
About Buy Me a Coffee: Buy Me a Coffee makes it easy for creators to accept donations and membership from their fans.
Ashmeet Sidana
Founder, Chief Engineer and Managing Partner of Engineering Capital
Ashmeet is the Founder and Managing Partner of Engineering Capital. His experience includes managing venture capital funds, serving on multiple Boards of Directors, and helping build the industry leading products VMware ESX Server and Silicon Graphics WebFORCE. Before this last decade as a venture capitalist Ashmeet was an operating executive with hands-on operating experience as a CEO and Entrepreneur. Realized exits include Freewheel (acquired by Comcast), InQuira (acquired by Oracle), Altor (acquired by Juniper), Appurify (acquired by Google) and PrivateCore (acquired by Facebook). Previous investments and Boards of Directors (not yet realized) include Zetta.net, SimplyHired and Azure Power. Ashmeet came to venture from VMware, where he ran product management for their flagship product – ESX Server. Before VMware, Ashmeet was the Founder and CEO of Sidana Systems, Inc. He started his career at Hewlett Packard and Silicon Graphics as an engineer. Ashmeet received an MBA from Wharton, MS in Computer Science from Stanford University and a BS in Computer Science from USC. In his spare time he can be found planning his second trip to Mt. Everest.
Follow Ashmeet Sidana:
About Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), Engineering Capital: Engineering Capital partners with great entrepreneurs driven by technical insights—before traditional venture firms are willing.
Ravi Viswanathan
Founder & Managing Partner of NewView Capital
Ravi joined NEA in 2004 and co-heads the firm’s Technology Venture Growth Equity investment practice. Ravi’s investments in the software and technology sectors include Acquia, Bloomreach, Boku, Captora, Desire2Learn, Mulesoft and Stitcher. Ravi’s investments in other sectors include Availink, Boulder Wind Power, Goji, Imergy Power, PURE Energies, and Suniva. Prior investments include Arcot (acquired by CA), Braintree (acquired by eBay), GlobalLogic (acquired by Apax Partners), IM Logic (acquired by Symantec), Sanera (acquired by McData), Tele Atlas (Euronext: TA, acquired by TomTom), and ViXs (TXS: VXS). Prior to NEA, Ravi worked at Goldman, Sachs & Co. as co-head of the technology practice in their private equity group. Ravi has also worked for McKinsey & Company and Raychem Corporation focusing on R&D in various materials systems. Ravi received an MBA from Wharton and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from UCSB where he focused his search on materials science applications. Ravi also earned a BS in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He currently serves on the Wharton Entrepreneurship Advisory Board.
Follow Ravi Viswanathan:
About MindTickle, NewView Capital: NewView Capital has developed a new model in venture capital to drive sustainable growth for entrepreneurs.
Boris Silver
Co-Founder & President of FundersClub
Boris Silver is the Co-Founder & President at FundersClub.
Follow Boris Silver:
About FundersClub: FundersClub is an online venture capital firm that focuses on Seed and early stage investments.
Alex Mittal
Co-Founder & CEO of FundersClub
Co-Founder and CEO at FundersClub. He is also the Co-Founder of Crederity Info Services.
Follow Alex Mittal:
About Crederity Info Services, FundersClub: FundersClub is an online venture capital firm that focuses on Seed and early stage investments.
Isaac Silverman
CEO & Founder of Daydream
Follow Isaac Silverman:
About Daydream: Democratizing the financial model. Stealth.
Abe Yokell
Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Congruent Ventures
Abe Yokell is Managing Partner and co-founder of Congruent Ventures, an early stage venture firm that backs companies in the sustainable technology ecosystem. Prior to co-founding Congruent Ventures, Abe spent 13 years at RockPort Capital, helping the RockPort team build nearly half of its portfolio, with a primary focus on business models and software solutions that address climate change challenges. While at RockPort, he was responsible for opening the West Coast office in 2007, where he helped lead investments in energy fintech, residential solar, companies focused on blending software and hardware, data analytics platforms, urban transportation solutions, and energy storage companies. His RockPort board seats included Renovate America, RePower, Qnovo, Flywheel, and EcoFactor, and he was previously involved with Enphase Energy (NASDAQ: ENPH), Streetline Networks (acquired by Kapsch), Recurve (acquired by Tendril), and Eka Systems (acquired by Cooper Power), among others. Abe graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Economics, with minors in Chemistry and Biology.
Follow Abe Yokell:
About Congruent Ventures, RockPort Capital: Congruent Ventures is an early-stage venture fund focused on sustainable technologies.
Joshua Posamentier
Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Congruent Ventures
Joshua Posamentier is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Congruent Ventures. Joshua oversees Congruent’s investments in PolySpectra, Sense Photonics, Energetic Insurance, TeleSense, Bellwether Coffee, Xtelligent, ArcByt, Fox Robotics, and Emergy Labs.
Follow Joshua Posamentier:
About Congruent Ventures, Elan Management, Ripple Foods, Yerdle: Congruent Ventures is an early-stage venture fund focused on sustainable technologies.
Andrew Ogawa
Managing Partner & Founder of Quest Venture Partners
Andrew Ogawa is a Managing Partner and founder of Quest Venture Partners since its inception in late 2007. Andrew is responsible for evaluating investment opportunities and closing seed and A rounds. Andrew’s expertise are in automotive transportation, procurement, corporate strategy and implementation of turnaround activities. Andrew has 11 years experience as an employee and Manager at Daimler AG, within the divisions of Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler and Global Procurement & Supply and has been responsible in various capacities for Corporate Strategy, Controlling and Procurement. Andrew was also part of Daimler AG’s selected management team sent to former alliance partner Mitsubishi Motors Corp. to implement corporate turnaround activities, especially within the International Sales & Marketing Office. He holds BAs in Economics and East Asian Studies from University of California at Santa Barbara, as well as a MBA in International Management from Thunderbird, American Graduate School of International Management. He currently serves as a Member of the Board of Directors for Highlightcam and Tripping.
Follow Andrew Ogawa:
About Quest Venture Partners: Early stage venture capital firm based in Palo Alto California
Marcus Ogawa
Managing Partner & Founder of Quest Venture Partners
Marcus Ogawa is responsible for finding new investment opportunities, closing investment rounds and working closely with the management teams of Quest Venture Partners portfolio companies. His investment expertise are in mobile, consumer internet and video. He was a Board Member working very closely with Qik, Inc for 1 year and 9 months until the company was sold to Skype. Prior to joining Quest Venture Partners, he worked with a number of startups and established companies ranging from Internet, distributed computing, real estate, and news media.He is an active member of angel communities and the early stage ecosystem. He holds a BS in Computer Information Systems from Bentley University.
Follow Marcus Ogawa:
About Fididel, Quest Venture Partners: Early stage venture capital firm based in Palo Alto California
Stuart Peterson
Founder, President & General Partner of Artis Ventures (AV)
A 2017 Forbes Midas List honoree, TechCrunch VC of the Year Finalist, and NY Times/CB Insights Top 100 VC honoree, Stuart Peterson is a partner at ARTIS Ventures, a San Francisco-based VC firm that partners with entrepreneurs driven to positively impact their world through disruptive technological innovation. ARTIS led early-stage investments in media giant YouTube and cancer-curing Stemcentrx, which in 2016 became the largest-ever venture backed life sciences acquisition. Stuart currently serves on the Board of Directors for IDbyDNA, an end-to-end and universal metagenomics platform, Versa Networks, the leading vendor in the SD-WAN and SD-Security markets, and Locus BioSciences, a next generation CRISPR genetic editing platform for precision antimicrobials. He is a Board Advisor for Fabric Genomics, a genomic interpretation platform, Cohesity, an infinitely scalable, intelligent enterprise data storage platform, and Excision BioTherapeutics, a gene editing company focused on curing deadly viruses like HIV. Stuart also currently serves on the Board of Trustees for the SFMOMA. Stuart received his B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles and his M.B.A. in Analytic Finance from The University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business.
Follow Stuart Peterson:
About Artis Ventures (AV): ARTIS Ventures is a financial services firm that finances early-to-late stage venture investments.
Roseanne Wincek
Co-Founder & Managing Director of Renegade Partners
Roseanne holds an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and served as co-president of the VC club. Previously, she earned an M.A. in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley, where her research focused on applying single molecule techniques to the unfolded state of proteins. She also earned a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. Her work has been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Follow Roseanne Wincek:
About Compass, Nextgen Partners, Qubole, Renegade Partners: Renegade Partners is a venture capital firm that helps founders navigate a pivotal phase of development.
Shola Akinlade
Co-Founder and CEO of Paystack
Shola Akinlade is the Co-founder and CEO at Paystack.
Follow Shola Akinlade:
About Paystack: Paystack lets businesses accept payments via credit card, debit card, money transfer and mobile money on their websites or mobile apps.
Ezra Olubi
Co-Founder, CTO of Paystack
Ezra Olubi is the CTO and Co-Founder at Paystack.
Follow Ezra Olubi:
About Paystack: Paystack lets businesses accept payments via credit card, debit card, money transfer and mobile money on their websites or mobile apps.
Chris Howard
Founder and General Partner of Fuel Capital
Chris is the founder of Fuel Capital, an early stage venture fund based in San Francisco, CA. Fuel focuses on consumer and cloud/ infrastructure companies. Fuel Capital has invested in CoreOS, FrontBack, Hightower, Homejoy, Julep, Layer, Mesosphere, Mindie, Secret, Swapbox, Teespring, URX, WilCall, and others. Previously at Ignition Partners, Chris created and ran the seed program and invested in Hipmunk, Mashape, Orderahead, Parse, Pagerduty, Swiftype, WePay and Zencoder. Prior to joining Ignition, Chris spent 10 years in advertising and marketing roles. At Heckler Associates, he launched Aravon, New Balance’s entrance in the comfort shoe segment, and Procare, New Balance’s partner program. He also worked on campaigns for PF Flyers, Suncadia, and Colgate. At Pivot + Levy, a design firm, he worked with clients like Microsoft, Attachmate, and WCI Telecom. Chris was marketing manager at the closeout sporting goods retailer Gear.com, prior to its sale to Overstock, where he ran offline and online marketing, including online advertising and sponsorships, search engine marketing, email marketing, as well as traditional ad campaigns. Chris began his career at Team One Advertising as an account executive, managing the national brand campaigns for Lexus and the American Cancer Society. Chris earned his bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Occidental College and an M.B.A. from the University of Washington where he was a McGowan Scholar.
Follow Chris Howard:
About Fuel Capital: Fuel Capital is an early-stage venture firm investing in consumer, business software and cloud/ infrastructure companies.
Rick Kimball
Co-Founder & General Partner of TCV
Rick is a Co-Founder of TCV, has been a venture capitalist and technology investor for 30 years. Rick has been involved in TCV investments in Actifio, AllBusiness.com (sold to NBCI), Alteon WebSystems (sold to Nortel), Claremont Technology Group (sold to Complete Business Solutions), Clarus, Copper Mountain Networks, Corsair Communications, Eladian, Extrahop, Go Daddy, kgb, Liquidnet, LHS Group (sold to Sema), Metapath Software (sold to Marconi), Redback Systems (sold to Ericsson), RiskMetrics Group, Saville Systems (sold to ADC Telecommunications), Solect Technology Group (sold to Amdocs), Techwell, Trading Screen, Vastera (sold to JP Morgan), XIOtech (sold to Seagate) and Xylan (sold to Alcatel), among others. Rick has been recognized numerous times by Forbes on it Midas List as one of the industry’s top technology investors. Preceding TCV, Rick was a Managing Director at Montgomery Securities, where he spent over 10 years focusing on telecommunications and data communications as both a venture capitalist and senior equity research analyst. Rick’s research received number one Institutional rankings from Greenwich Associates and “Home Run Hitter” accolades from Institutional Investor Magazine. Rick graduated Cum Laude from Dartmouth College with an A.B. degree in History and received his M.B.A. with an emphasis in Finance from the University of Chicago. Rick is currently on the Board of Directors of Actifio, Go Daddy, KGB.com, and TradingScreen. Rick is a member of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees. Rick Chairs its Audit and Finance Committees and is a member of its Executive Committee.
Follow Rick Kimball:
About TCV: TCV provides investment capital to growth-stage private and public companies in the technology industry.
Jay Hoag
Founder & General Partner of TCV
Jay Hoag has been a venture capitalist and technology investor for over 30 years. He and Rick Kimball co-founded TCV over 20 years ago in 1995. Since that time TCV has raised over $12 billion in capital and emerged a leading provider of growth capital to technology companies. In addition to Jay’s investment activity, he is also a member of TCV’s Executive Committee which has oversight for the general management of the Firm and its funds. Prior to TCV, Jay was a Managing Director at Chancellor Capital Management where he spent over 12 years as a technology focused venture capitalist and fund manager. He has been involved in a large number of technology investments including Actuate Software, Ariba Technologies, Altiris (sold to Symantec), BlueCoat Systems (formerly CacheFlow), C|Net, Encompass (sold to Yahoo!), EXE Technologies, Expedia, Fandango, Facebook, Groupon, Netflix, ONYX Software, RealNetworks, SpringStreet (sold toHomestore.com), TechTarget, Vacationspot.com (sold to Expedia), Viant, and Zillow among others. Jay has been recognized numerous times by Forbes on its Midas List as one of the industry’s top technology investors. Jay received a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Northwestern University and an M.B.A. from the University of Michigan. He is currently on the Board of Directors of Electronic Arts, Netflix, Prodege, TechTarget, VICE Media, and Zillow. Jay is on the Investment Advisory Committee at the University of Michigan, the Board of Trustees of Northwestern University, and the Board of Trust at the Vanderbilt University.
Follow Jay Hoag:
About TCV: TCV provides investment capital to growth-stage private and public companies in the technology industry.
Ajay Gopal Royan
Founder & Managing General Partner of Mithril Capital Management
Ajay Royan co-founded and leads Mithril Capital, a firm that makes long-term investments in transformative and durable enterprises. At Mithril, Ajay has led investments in innovative companies across multiple industries, such as robotics, healthcare, enterprise software, bio- technology, nuclear energy, and finance. He serves on the boards of many of Mithril’s portfolio companies, including Auris, Adimab, C2FO, GreyOrange, Fractyl, and AppDirect, helping them to navigate the rocky road of growth by working with founders on competitive and organizational strategies as well as addressing macro trends. Before forming Mithril, Ajay was a managing director at Clarium Capital Management, where he focused on unlevered growth investments. Ajay began his career at Braxton Associates, formerly Deloitte Consulting. Ajay serves on the Science Advisory Board of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and was elected to the Presidents’ Circle of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. He is a charter member and board director of C100 and serves on the board of directors of Fulbright Canada. Ajay grew up in India, Abu Dhabi, and Canada. He is a graduate of Yale University.
Follow Ajay Gopal Royan:
About Mithril Capital Management: Mithril is a global technology investment firm investing in the technology, macroeconomics and finance sectors.
Jeffrey Ubben
Founder and Chief Investment Officer of ValueAct Capital
Jeffrey W. Ubben is a Founder, Chief Executive Officer and the Chief Investment Officer of ValueAct Capital. Mr. Ubben is a director of Willis Group Holdings plc, a former chairman and director of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc., and a former director of Catalina Marketing Corp., Gartner Group, Inc., Mentor Corporation, Misys, plc, Sara Lee Corp., Valeant Pharmaceuticals International and several other public and private companies. In addition, Mr. Ubben serves as chairman of the national board of the Posse Foundation, is on the board of trustees of Duke University, and is also on the board of trustees of Northwestern University. He has a B.A. from Duke University and an M.B.A. from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. Mr. Ubben has been a Director of 21st Century Fox since November 2015.
Follow Jeffrey Ubben:
About ValueAct Capital: When ValueAct Capital Partners sees untapped value, it acts. The firm, known for its activist slant, buys large stakes in undervalued
David Schwab
Founder & Managing Director of Vertical Venture Partners
Dave joined Sierra in 1996. Prior to joining the venture capital community, Dave’s professional career began at Lockheed Corporation in the software engineering department. Following his tenure there, he joined Sun Microsystems in sales and sales management. In 1991 Schwab co-founded Scopus Technology with a fellow Sun sales manager and two other executives. While at Scopus, he served as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Scopus was taken public and subsequently acquired by Siebel Systems. Dave holds a Masters in aerospace engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard University. Lockheed Corporation, 1979-1984, Engineering , Sun Microsystems, 1986-1991, Sales Management , Scopus Technology, Inc., 1991-1996, Co-founder & Vice President of Sales , Sierra Ventures, 1996-Present Directorships of Public and Acquired Companies : 360Commerce, Inc. (Acquired by Oracle) , CrossLogix (Acquired by BEA Systems, Inc.) , Interact Commerce Corp. (IACT-NASD) , Knova (Merger of Kanisa and Service Ware) , Micromuse (MUSE-NASD) , Motiva (Acquired by Siebel Systems) , Onlink Technologies (Acquired by Siebel Systems) Directorships of Private Companies : Accruent , ClearApp (formerly Acsera) , Corrigo , CSS SlashSupport , DBS Communications , Infoton , Opalis , SeeCommerce,Vykor,ZillionTV, Zoom Systems
Follow David Schwab:
About Stanford University, UC San Diego Health, Vertical Venture Partners: Vertical Venture Partners is a venture capital firm investing in enterprise technology companies that target specific vertical markets.
Eghosa Omoigui
Founder & Managing General Partner of EchoVC Partners
Eghosa Omoigui is the founder and Managing General Partner of EchoVC Partners (a seed & early-stage technology venture capital firm bridging Silicon Valley & underserved emerging markets), EchoVC Pan-Africa Fund, a seed-stage tech VC fund focused on sub-Saharan Africa & EchoVC+, an early-growth-stage VC vehicle focused on emerging markets including Africa. Before this, Eghosa was with Intel for nearly 10 years and his last role was as Intel Capital Director, Consumer Internet & Semantic Technologies, where he acted as a senior investment professional focused on platform-agnostic consumer, web services and digital media-based investment opportunities in the US, EU & Asia. Omoigui also drove ICap’s stage-agnostic investment focus on next generation semantic technologies, smart data and the realtime web. Eghosa was personally responsible for (developing supporting theses for and) sourcing investment opportunities in various companies including AdMob, Jaiku, Powerset, Facebook, LinkedIn, Teracent, Qik and Pandora. Eghosa has advised SWIFT (the inter-bank consortium) on technology innovation for financial services (InnoTribe), is a member of the ASTIA Venture Advisory Board (an organization focused on mentoring and supporting women entrepreneurs), was a winner of the Moss-Adams/ASTIA Women Entrepreneur Mentor of the Year award, and is a Kauffman Fellowship and Pipeline Angel Fellowship Mentor. Representative investments include Lifebank, Migo, Frontier Car Group, SystemOne, Gro Intelligence and KBox.
Follow Eghosa Omoigui:
About CIC Group, Dekko, EchoVC Partners, Intel, Technology Investment Company: EchoVC Partners is a seed and early stage venture capital firm focused on financing and cross-pollinating leading technologies, teams,
