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 based CEO’ operating in the Social space. If you think a CEO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.us.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Edward Lando
Co-Founder & CEO of Goody
Edward Lando is the Managing Partner at Pareto Holdings.
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About Alpha, Catalina Crunch, CodeCombat, Conduit, Goody, Horizons School of Technology, Overtime, Pareto Holdings, Svrf: Goody makes sending gifts as easy as sending a text.
Falon Fatemi
Co-Founder and CEO of Fireside
Falon Fatemi is Founder and CEO of Node and Fireside.
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About Fireside, Forbes Magazine, Node: Fireside is where the world’s greatest creators go to bring the audience into the story through live, interactive, virtual shows.
Paul Davison
Co-Founder and CEO of Clubhouse
Paul Davison is the Co-Founder and CEO of Clubhouse. Davison is a San Diego native who graduated from Stanford and then earned his MBA from Stanford Business School. He had an internship at Google between degrees. Davison worked at consulting firm Bain and Co. before joining database startup Metaweb, which was acquired by Google in 2010. Previously he was an entrepreneur in residence at Benchmark Capital.
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About Clubhouse, Clubhouse: Clubhouse is an audio-based social app that allows users to spontaneously join group chats.
Ketan Shah
CEO of Gameyola
• Past positions include VP engineering, VP product, VP technology, CTO and CEO • A successful entrepreneur and executive with engineering background and experience in local / online advertising, ad networks, digital media, SEM, SEO, lead generation, consumer and enterprise web applications, social networking, social gaming, healthcare and wellness • 17+ years of overall experience in technology, product design and management • 10 + years of experience in online advertising, digital media, social and web applications & enterprise platforms • Founded and sold multiple businesses with 3 successful exits • Co-author of a pending patent in local online advertising technology • Product development using technologies: C, C++, Java, .Net, RoR, SQLServer, MySQL, Oracle, Google AdWords API, Google Analytics, Yahoo SEM API, Facebook API, Kiva, Microsoft AdCenter API, MFC, Html, Javascript, CSS and more.. • B.S.( Electrical Engineering ), M.S.( Computer Engineering) Specialties: • Engineering, Entrepreneurship and general startup management • Complete technology lifecycle (design, development, QA, deployment ) of complex, web based consumer and enterprise software in various industries like retail, online advertising, legal, HR, social gaming • Team setup and development (National & International) • Operations • Business strategies & negotiations
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About Agentz, Inc, Gameyola: Gameyola provides a monetization and distribution platform for casual Flash games on social networks
Shawn Fanning
Chief Executive Officer of Rupture
Shawn Fanning is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and angel investor. He developed Napster, one of the first popular peer-to-peer (“P2P”) file sharing platforms, in 1999. The popularity of Napster was widespread and Fanning was featured on the cover of Time magazine. The site in its initial free P2P incarnation was shut down in 2001 after the company’s unsuccessful appeal of court orders arising from its encouraging the illegal sharing of copyrighted material. A paid subscription version of the site followed, and was purchased by Rhapsody on December 1, 2011. Following his involvement with Napster, he joined, and invested in, a number of early-stage technology startup companies.
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About Airtime, Electronic Arts, Helium, Rupture: Rupture is an online social network that allows gamers to connect and share with one another.
Mark Weinstein
CEO, Founder of MeWe
Mark Weinstein is the Founder and CEO of MeWe, the Next-Gen Social Network. Mark is a leading privacy advocate, one of the visionary inventors of social networking, and an award-winning author. He founded SuperFamily and SuperFriends, precursors to today’s social and chat networks, at the turn of the millennium. Both became PC Magazine “Top 100” sites for multiple years. Mark sold them and then authored the “Habitually Great” book series endorsed by the late Dr. Stephen Covey, (2x Indie Book awards), and became an influential technology consultant/advisor. A few years ago when Mark Zuckerberg declared, “privacy is a social norm of the past,” that comment angered Weinstein greatly. It sparked him to create the Sgrouples beta project, hiring an engineering team to design and build the world’s first social network with privacy-by- design for its members. The 3-year beta project served as the testing platform for the launch of MeWe. Making its official launch during SXSW 2016 (South by Southwest), MeWe was honored as the 2016 Start-Up of the Year Finalist for “Innovative World Technology.” World renowned thought leaders and executives proudly serve on MeWe’s Advisory Board, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web; Raj Sisodia, the founder of Conscious Capitalism; Professor Sherry Turkle, leading technology expert; Professor Phil Rogaway, award-winning cryptographer; Cullen Hoback, award-winning documentary film-maker on privacy; Colin Sebastion, leading internet analyst; Simon Mainwaring, founder of WeFirst; Marci Shimoff, NYT Best-Selling author; Jack Canfield, co-founder of Chicken Soup for the Soul; and several others. Mark is one of the world’s foremost privacy advocates, and he is listed as one of the “Top 8 Minds in Online Privacy.” He was a Steering Committee Member of National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) – where he strongly argued against any “national identity system,” calling the idea a complete violation of the human right to privacy. The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada has named Mark “Privacy by Design Ambassador.” Mark has written about privacy and the social media industry in well-known publications such as USA Today, InfoSecurity Magazine, Daily Mirror (UK), Dark Reading, HuffPo, and many others. He has been interviewed on many media outlets, including PBS, BBC, FOX, FORBES, CNN, and ABC. Mark is often a featured speaker and social media/privacy expert on the stage at many conferences, including EY’s Strategic Growth Forum, the 16th Annual Privacy and Security Conference, Global Security Conference, GMIC Silicon Valley, and he was a recent keynote speaker at GMIC New York, Security BSides Vancouver, and the Customer Experience Asia. Mark received his BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz; and his MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. He resides in Los Angeles.
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About MeWe: MeWe is the rapidly growing high integrity alternative to Facebook. No Ads, No Targeting, No Newsfeed Manipulation, NO BS!
Andrew Gazdecki
Founder and CEO of MicroAcquire
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About Altcoin.io, Bizness Apps, MicroAcquire: MicroAcquire is a startup acquisition marketplace that helps startups find buyers and get acquired.
Ruben Harris
CEO and Co-Founder of Career Karma
CEO of Career Karma Co-Host of the Breaking Into Startups Podcast Previously at: AtlSchool, Honor, and Hustle Prior to Tech: Investment Banker and Professional Cellist
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About Career Karma: Career Karma helps people find career advice and job training to navigate their careers.
Prerna Gupta
Founder & CEO of HOOKED
Prerna Gupta is the Founder & CEO at HOOKED.
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About HOOKED: HOOKED is redefining entertainment for the Snapchat generation.
Tracy Chou
Founder & CEO of Block Party
Tracy Chou is an entrepreneur, software engineer, and diversity advocate. She spent five years at Pinterest as an engineer and tech lead and was an early engineer at Quora prior to that. She is a co-founder of Project Include, a non-profit working with tech startups on diversity and inclusion, and #MovingForward, a movement working with VC firms to establish and publish anti-harassment policies; and an investment scout and advisor for several Bay Area VC firms. In her latest venture she is CEO of Block Party, with a mission to solve online harassment and abuse.
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About Block Party, Pinterest, Project Include: Block Party is a consumer app that tackles online harassment and puts you back in control.
Ben Silbermann
Co-Founder & CEO of Pinterest
Ben (@8en) grew up in Iowa, where he spent a lot of time collecting bugs. Today, he helps millions of people collect and discover the things they love as co-founder and CEO of Pinterest. Before Pinterest, Ben worked at Google on AdSense and studied at Yale. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and two sons. Previously, Silbermann worked at Google in the sales organization; however, after a short time with the company he left and started designing his own iPhone apps with a college friend, Paul Sciarra. After their initial application, Totte, failed to gain significant traction, the cofounders created a pinboard product and Pinterest was born. However, Pinterest saw a low user base and very little engagement in its early stages. Silbermann said the prospect of telling people he failed was too embarrassing so he and Sciarra continued to tinker and improve the site. Today, Pinterest claims over 20 million users.
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About Cold Brew Labs, Pinterest: Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool for saving and discovering creative ideas.
Mike Lu
Chief Executive Officer of Triller
Mike Lu is the CEO at Triller. He has over 16 years of product and technology experience working in mobile/social games and online media.
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About Triller: Triller is an AI-powered music video app that enables anyone to make professional videos, effortlessly.
Chris Lamontagne
CEO of Spring
> An enterprising and ambitious business leader, with proven entrepreneurial talent and innovative way of thinking. Strong experience of founding/working in high growth environments. > Successful track record in defining go to market business strategy, leading user acquisition efforts and driving hyper growth. > Interested marketplaces, e-commerce & mobile environments. With a specific interest in distressed or turnaround situations. Founded first business aged 20 – grew to become nationwide provider – successfully exited three years later.
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About Spring: Spring is the link between creators and commerce. Innovative tools and services empower creators to launch products while selling on social.
Keith Messick
Cofounder & CEO of Origin.al
Keith Messick is Senior Vice President Marketing at LaunchDarkly
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About LaunchDarkly, Origin.al: Origin.al is a new way to represent a user’s work—projects and examples in real time.
Anton Bernstein
Co-founder & CEO of Highrise
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About Highrise, Lux Group, Pocket Worlds: Highrise is a creative mobile community where people create avatars, express themselves, and make friends.
Derek Ting
CEO of TextNow
Derek Ting is the co-founder and CEO of TextNow.Prior to that, Derek served as a software engineer at Qualcomm and Phoenix Interactive Design Inc. Derek founded WoolNet LLC.
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About TextNow: Our mission is to break down the barriers to communication and free the flow of conversation for people everywhere.
Eric Grossberg
Co-CEO & Co-Founder of Brilliant Earth
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About Brilliant Earth: Brilliant Earth is a luxury jewelry company that offers ethically sourced jewelry.
Beth Gerstein
Co-CEO & Co-Founder of Brilliant Earth
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About Brilliant Earth: Brilliant Earth is a luxury jewelry company that offers ethically sourced jewelry.
Akin Jones
CEO & CO-FOUNDER of Aella
Akin Jones is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Aella Credit.
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About Aella: Aella helps africans get credit, invest, get health insurance, and make payments.
Matt Marshall
Founder and CEO of VentureBeat
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded \”Journalist of the Year\” by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
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About VentureBeat: VentureBeat is an online technology news platform that is engaged in technology publication and events business.
Matt Mahan
CEO & Co-Founder of Brigade
Matt is responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of Brigade. He served as CEO of Causes and has previous experience in political campaigning and community organizing. In 2004, Matt ran the first political campaign to leverage Facebook data when he was elected Student Body President at Harvard.
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About Brigade, City of San Jose, University of Southern California: Brigade wants to make civic engagement easy, effective, and enjoyable — and in so doing, restore political power back to the people.
Austin Smith
CEO of Racket.com
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About Coughdrop Capital, LAUNCH, Racket.com: Let’s make a racket.
Jon Fisher
Co-founder & CEO of CrowdOptic
Chief Executive Officer (Co-Founder) / Director Jon is CrowdOptic’s CEO and served as CEO of Bharosa (Oracle NASDAQ: ORCL), NetClerk (NYSE: ROP) and AutoReach (AutoNation NYSE: AN). Jon is a recipient of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year, Award (Emerging Category, 2007) and lives in Marin County, CA with his wife and daughter.
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About CrowdOptic, ViciNFT: CrowdOptic uses algorithms and real-time sensor data from electronic devices to enhance security, social media sharing, and advertising.
Michael Boswell
Co-Founder, CEO of Cue
Co-Founder and CEO of Cue. Previously an Entrepreneur in Residence at Khosla Ventures; Design Lead at Facebook, Google and Coatue. Founding member of several products with successful exits including Jobr, Pagemodo, and ContactMe.
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About Cue: The world’s first social calendar
John R. Adler
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Scribd
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About Scribd: Scribd is an unlimited reading subscription that offers access to books, audiobooks, magazine articles, documents and more.
Jonathan Gray
CEO and Co-Founder of Encore Music Technologies
Jonathan Gray, founder and CEO of Cask, is an entrepreneur and software engineer with a background in startups, open source, and all things data. Prior to founding Cask, Jonathan was a software engineer at Facebook where he drove HBase engineering efforts, including Facebook Messages and several other large-scale projects, from inception to production. An open source evangelist, Jonathan was responsible for helping build the Facebook engineering brand through developer outreach and refocusing the open source strategy of the company. Prior to Facebook, Jonathan founded Streamy.com, where he became an early adopter of Hadoop and HBase and is now a core contributor and active committer in the community. Jonathan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University.
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About Encore Music Technologies, Orcada, The Apache Software Foundation: Encore is an interactive live music mobile-based platform aiming to help artists monetize their connections with fans.
Adam Mosseri
CEO and Head of Instagram
Adam Mosseri is a VP at Facebook and leads the product and engineering teams responsible for News Feed and Sharing. Before this role Adam was the PM director for News Feed and before that the design director for the Mobile product group, where he was responsible for the design of all of Facebook’s mobile apps. Prior to Facebook he worked at TokBox as the company’s first designer. Adam began his career founding a design consultancy in 2003 with offices in New York and San Francisco that focused on graphic design, interaction design and exhibition design. Adam holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Study from the Gallatin School of Interdisciplinary Study at NYU where he studied Information Design and Media. He and his wife Monica are proud parents of sons, Nico and Blaise
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About Instagram, Meta: Instagram is a free photo-sharing application that enables its users to take photos, apply filters, and share them on social networks.
Dmitry Shapiro
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Koji
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About Koji: Koji is the world’s most powerful link in bio platform, building the app store for the Creator Economy.
Alex Beckman
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of GameOn Technology
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About Elastic Holdings, GameOn Technology: Our technology powers intelligent chat applications across multiple platforms for some of the world’s largest brands.
Jerome Ternynck
Founder and CEO of SmartRecruiters
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About SmartRecruiters: SmartRecruiters is an end-to-end recruiting platform that helps companies with talent acquisition.
Justin Davis
Co-Founder & CEO of Spectrum Labs
Currently Spectrum’s Co-Founder & CEO, Justin previously managed and scaled Salesforce’s Data Studio platform as a Product Director. He’s worked for numerous industry stalwarts – including Krux, Adobe, SAS, and Microsoft. Sales: sales@getspectrum.io | Blog: getspectrum.io/blog
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About Spectrum Labs: Spectrum Labs helps consumer brands recognize and respond to toxic behaviors happening within their online communities.
Stanley Adrianus
CEO & Founder of Gamenauts
Stanley is currently the founder & CEO of Gamenauts, a games developer/publisher in San Francisco Bay Area. The company has remained profitable and 100% self-funded since its founding in 2005. Gamenauts maintains a portfolio of several Top 10 titles in the App Store and over 16 million mobile downloads. Prior to Gamenauts, Stanley was Lead Designer at Yahoo! Games, where he was responsible for the UI/UX when the site grew to be #1 games portal on the web.
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About Gamenauts, Plato: Gaemnauts is a game developer and publisher of applications for mobile devices.
Sahil Jain
Co-Founder and CEO of AdStage
Sahil Jain is the CEO and Co-founder of AdStage. Prior to founding AdStage in May 2012, Sahil co-founded his first company, Y-Combinator backed Trigger.io at 20. He dropped out of UC Berkeley, where he studied Philosophy and Econ, to join AOL Corp Devt. at 19, dropped out of High School to join Yahoo! Mobile as an automation engineer at 17 and worked in the professional video game industry before that.
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About AdStage, inresto: AdStage is an advertising technology startup powering paid marketers to understand the business impact of their campaigns.
Zack Onisko
CEO of Dribbble
Zack Onisko is CEO at Dribbble, the global community for designers and creative professionals to showcase, promote, discover, and explore design. Dribbble was founded in 2009 and has grown to become the designer community it is today for tens of millions of people around the world. Dribbble is on a mission to build the world’s best platform for designers to gain inspiration, feedback, education, community, and job opportunities. Before Dribbble, Zack began his career nearly 20 years ago as a web designer before shifting into business and executive roles at Autodesk, Creative Market, Hired.com, BranchOut, Monster.com, and Tickle.com. He is responsible for scaling multiple companies to successful exits over the past decade including the Creative Market acquisition by Autodesk in 2014. Zack is a startup investor and advisor working with Indicator Ventures, Dwell magazine, Reforge, and others.
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About Dribbble: Dribbble is a global community where the world’s top designers share, grow, and get hired.
Matt Ivester
Co-Founder & CEO of Hotshot
Matt Ivester is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, author and speaker. He is currently CEO of Kindr Inc., a company dedicated to making online kindness fun and easy. In 2011, through Serra Knight Publishing, he published lol…OMG!: What Every Student Needs to Know About Online Reputation Management, Digital Citizenship and Cyberbullying. And in 2012, he published the high school edition of the same. Since its release, lol…OMG! has become Amazon’s top-selling book on the topics of digital citizenship and cyberbullying. He has spoken at various institutions around the country on these topics. Prior to writing lol…OMG! he started several companies, including a concert ticket auction site, a multi-million dollar investment fund, and a college gossip site. In 2005, Ivester graduated from Duke University with a Bachelor of Science double majoring in Economics and Computer Science. In 2012, he graduated from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business with an MBA.
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About Hotshot: Screenshot technology
Sepideh Nasiri
Founder & CEO of Persian Women In Tech
Sepideh (“Sepi”) Nasiri is an award winning serial Entrepreneur with 16 years of experience working in the Tech Industry, the Founder of Persian Women In Tech, the former Vice President at Women 2.0 and a life-time advocate for women, diversity and inclusion. Mrs. Nasiri started her career as a Co-founder and Managing Editor of a digital and print Los Angeles Magazine and later joined a number of successful startups in Silicon Valley. In 2014, she was recognized by San Francisco Business Times/Journal “40under40” and Diversity Journal’s 2014 “Women Worth Watching”. Currently, Mrs. Nasiri advises early stage startups including at global initiatives such as WeMENA (a program by the World Bank) and mentors globally many female entrepreneurs and founders in technology serving as an advisor to initiatives such as TechWomen, an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA).
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About Persian Women In Tech: Persian Women In Tech supports Iranian women in Tech/STEM from all across the Globe’s landscape.
Jack Chou
Co-Founder and CEO of Pace
Jack Chou is the Co-founder at Pace. Prior to that, he leads the team of product managers who work with the design and engineering teams to build Pinterest. Before becoming head of product at Pinterest, Jack was product manager of the search and discovery teams. He previously spent time as an entrepreneur, and he led the product team for the marketing solutions business at LinkedIn. He earned a degree in computer systems engineering from Stanford University.
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About Pace: Pace is a fitness and social wellness platform that redefines mental health through groups that are effective, fun, social, and challenging.
Michael Horvath
Co-Founder & CEO of Strava
Michael Horvath is the Co-Founder and CEO of Strava. He earned his degree at Harvard University.
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About Strava: Strava is an online network where runners and cyclists can record their activities, compare performance, and compete with their community.
Matt Schlicht
CEO and Founder of Octane AI
Matt Schlicht is the founder and editor of Chatbots Magazine, the #1 place to learn about chatbots. He is a YC Alum, a Forbes 30 Under 30 winner, and was also previously a product manager at Ustream as well as an advisor to several other startups. Several months ago, Matt decided to launch a community dedicated to messaging and bots. Chatbots Magazine was born and now reaches over 200,000+ people per month. Matt joins us to share his story, how he got into startups and tech, how he created the opportunity to join the team at uStream, how he approaches building products, why he’s so passionate about bots and messaging, what’s next for Chatbots Magazine.
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About Chatbots Magazine, DominateFund, Hamster Pad, Octane AI, ZapChain: Octane AI provides an all-in-one platform for engaging quizzes, data collection, and personalized Facebook Messenger and SMS automation.
Mahi de Silva
Co-founder & CEO of Amplify.ai
Mahi is the Co-founder & CEO at Amplify.ai. Previously, Mahi was responsible for commercial activities for Opera’s consumer mobile products and services. Before joining Opera, Mahi was co-founder and CEO of AdMarvel, Inc., the global leader in mobile advertising platforms, acquired by Opera in 2010. Prior to AdMarvel, Mahi co-founded Frengo Corporation, a mobile social media platform. Mahi also spent 10 years at VeriSign, where he was part of the startup management team. From 2002 to 2006, he served as senior vice president and general manager of Wireless and Digital Content Services at VeriSign, where he built the world’s leading mobile messaging and mobile entertainment business with revenues exceeding $600M per year. Prior to VeriSign, he served in various technology leadership roles at Taligent, Apple and NCR Corporation.
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About Amplify.ai, Opera Mediaworks: Amplify.ai is the developer of the first enterprise-class Conversational AI platform
Yaron Lipshitz
CEO of AllSeated
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About AllSeated: Collaborative event planning network
Lorna Borenstein
Founder & CEO of Grokker
Lorna Borenstein is the CEO & Founder ,Author at Grokker.
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About Grokker, Grokker: Netflix for wellbeing with community at its core
Christof Wittig
Founder and CEO of Hornet
Christof Wittig is a serial software entrepreneur and investor. He is Founder and CEO at Hornet Networks, the world’s queer social network, and Managing Partner at Strive Capital, based in San Francisco, CA. Prior to Hornet, Christof was founder and CEO at LiquidM, the first mobile DSP provided as a SaaS platform, which he formed in 2013 when restructuring Madvertise, Europe’s largest mobile ad network. Previously he was the founder and CEO of Servo Software, the world’s first Android middleware company, which merged with Synclore to form Kii in 2010, today a leading player in the IoT space based in Tokyo. He was also founder and CEO at db4objects, an open source, “no sql” database company, which he sold to Versant in December 2008. Before that he was the founder and CEO of Apsis Software to revolutionize real estate cost management with software and led the company through its sale to Nemetschek in 1999 and its merger with conject in 2002. Christof is an investor and/or board member in various companies, including Enish (TYO:3667), Metago, KeepSafe, VirtaHealth, Cerebral, and App Annie. He has been active in the US, Germany, and throughout Asia. Christof holds a Master of Science in Management from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where he was a Sloan Fellow in the Class of 2004 and author of the case studies on MySQL and Google’s Android. He also holds a Dipl.Ing. from Technical University Munich.
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About GAY GAMES 11 HONG KONG 2022, Hornet: Hornet is the world’s gay social network with 30 million members worldwide
Diaz Nesamoney
Founder, President & CEO of Jivox
Diaz Nesamoney founder of Jivox has had two prior successful ventures. He was previously co-founder, President and Chief Operating Officer at Informatica (NASDAQ:INFA), which he took from a startup to a publicly Diaz Nesamoney is an accomplished technology entrepreneur who founded three successful technology companies, all harnessing the power of data to power enterprise and consumer applications. Currently Diaz is Founder, President, and CEO of Jivox, a company that provides a technology platform for data-driven personalized advertising and marketing. He was previously Co-founder, President, and Chief Operating Officer at Informatica (NASDAQ:INFA), which he took from a startup to a publicly traded company in 1999. Informatica pioneered data integration software as a category and is now the market leader with more than $1 billion in revenue and a $5 billion market capitalization. Before founding Jivox, he founded Celequest and served as its CEO until early 2007, when the company was acquired by Cognos/IBM. Celequest introduced the market’s first business intelligence and analytics appliance, a disruptive innovation that led to its acquisition. Diaz holds a Masters degree in Computer Science from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in India and is the holder of seven technology patents. Diaz is also the author of the first book on using data and technology to personalize digital advertising.
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About Jivox: Jivox offers a cloud-based, data-driven omnichannel platform that personalizes digital advertising and marketing experiences at scale.
Steven Jiang
CEO and Co-founder of HireTeamMate
Co-founder and CEO at HireTeamMate.
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About Forbes Human Resources Council, HireEZ, HireTeamMate: HireTeamMate is an employment agency developing a recommended tool throughout the recruiting community.
Joel Gascoigne
Co-founder & CEO of Buffer
Joel Gascoigne is a co-founder and the chief executive officer of [Buffer](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/buffer), a web-based platform that helps users share social media content. He is also the founder of OnePage. Prior to that, he was a web developer at Priority Research; and a web designer and developer at joelg.co.uk. Gascoigne completed his secondary education at Tapton Secondary School and obtained a bachelor’s degree in computer systems from the University of Warwick. He is fluent in English and Japanese. Born on March 24, 1987, Gascoigne currently lives in San Francisco, California.
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About Buffer: Social Media Management Software for Growing Brands
Keith Zubchevich
Chief Executive Officer of Conviva
Keith Zubchevich was appointed Conviva’s President and CEO in 2021 with more than a decade of driving company success at Conviva, most recently as Chief Strategy Officer. Prior to joining Conviva in 2008, Keith was Vice President of Business Development at Riverbed Technology, where he was instrumental in developing the industry leader’s go-to-market strategy and key partner relationships as the company went public. Previously, as Director of Operations at Cisco, he was responsible for storage-switching and optical solutions for both the Sales and Worldwide Channels groups, and led the launch of Cisco’s MDS storage networking technology effort, which garnered revenues of $244 million in two years. Prior to Cisco, Keith was a Regional Vice President with McDATA, where he was a member of the core team that designed and implemented the company’s sales and channel coverage model. Earlier in his career, Keith held sales management roles in the open systems divisions of Digital Equipment Corporation and StorageTek. Keith brings a wealth of leadership expertise and functional capabilities to the role. He has held a range of executive positions, from sales and marketing to corporate and business development, across a variety of industry-leading technology companies, as well as emerging startups. Keith holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from San Diego State University.
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About Conviva: Conviva is the continuous measurement and engagement platform for streaming media.
Christopher Lien
Founder & CEO of Marin Software
Mr. Lien is Marin’s founder and Chairman of the Board, and rejoined the Company as Chief Executive Officer in August 2016. From September 2015 to August 2016, Mr. Lien has served on boards of private companies as well as Marin Software. From May 2014 until September 2015, Mr. Lien served as executive chairman of Marin Software, and from the founding of the Company in 2006 to May 2014, he served as the Company’s Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Lien has been a member of the Board since 2006. Previously, Mr. Lien served as Chief Operating Officer of Adteractive, Inc., an online performance marketing company, from 2004 to 2005. In 2001, Mr. Lien co-founded and served as Chairman and Chief Financial Officer of Sugar Media, Inc., a broadband services platform, until its acquisition in 2003 by 2Wire, Inc., a leading supplier of DSL equipment and services, which was subsequently acquired by Pace plc in 2010. Prior to that, Mr. Lien served in various capacities at BlueLight.com, LLC, Kmart Corporation’s ecommerce and Internet service provider subsidiary from 2000 to 2001, including as Chief Financial Officer and acting Chief Executive Officer. Prior to BlueLight.com, Mr. Lien spent 10 years at various investment banks, including Morgan Stanley and Evercore Partners, with his last role as Managing Director. Mr. Lien holds an A.B. from Dartmouth College, where he was elected as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Mr. Lien’s presence as a member of the Board brings his thorough knowledge of the Company into the Board’s strategic and policy-making discussions. He brings his extensive experience in finance, digital marketing and executive roles in the information technology industry into deliberations regarding the Company’s strategy and operations.
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About Heron Partners, Marin Software, Marin Software: Marin Software Incorporated (NYSE:MRIN) provides a leading cross-channel performance advertising platform used by advertisers and agencies.
Liron Shapira
Co-Founder & CEO of Relationship Hero
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About Relationship Hero: Relationship Hero connects people with a relationship expert in a private chatroom or over the phone.
Antony Taylor
Founder and CEO of Lyte
Ant Taylor is the founder and CEO of Lyte. Lyte powers mobile ticketing solutions for event owners and fans, providing both a mobile-first alternative to resale websites. Since 2014, Lyte has partnered with over 300 top sports and entertainment brands, including BottleRock Music Festival, Newport Folk Festival, Arkansas Razorbacks Athletics, Mumford & Sons, Stagecoach Music Festival and more. Major ticketing platforms such as Eventbrite, Ticketfly, and Gingerbread Shed, owned by Goldenvoice, have integrated Lyte into their offering. Ant founded Lyte after observing the impact of the secondary ticket market on fans at the London Olympics. Hundreds of thousands of fans have since benefited from the Lyte solution. Before Lyte, Ant was an executive at ad technology pioneer Right Media, acquired by Yahoo in 2007 and ad cofounder of Moat, acquired by Oracle in 2017; two of the top five venture-backed exits in NYC history.
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About Lyte: Lyte is a technology platform that makes it easy for fans to buy, sell, and exchange tickets to live events.
Kyle Wong
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Pixlee
Kyle Wong is the CEO & Co-Founder of Pixlee, a visual marketing platform that helps brands market and sells with customer photos and videos. The company works with more than 150 brands such as Kenneth Cole, Gaiam, Levi Strauss and Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants to develop a more authentic marketing experience and create stronger relationships with their most passionate customers. Apart from that, he is currently working as a contributor with Forbes magazine and as a leadership council with Ad Council. Kyle attended Stanford University where he studied engineering and co-founded Pixlee out of his dorm room in 2012. He is a mentor for the Stanford Accelerator (StartX) program, where he advises several early-stage VC backed tech startups. Kyle has been featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List and is a regular speaker and domain expert on influencer marketing and driving consumer engagement through social media. He is also an active contributor for Forbes and Fortune Magazine where he writes on digital marketing, entrepreneurship, and various leadership and career topics.
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About Ad Council, Forbes Magazine, Pixlee: Pixlee is a user-generated content marketing platform that helps brands to market and sell by using real customer photos and videos.
Neal Jean
Co-founder, CEO of Beacons
Neal Jean is a Co-founder and CEO of Beacons.
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About Beacons: Beacons is a link-in-bio website builder for creators.
Vlada Bortnik
CEO & Co-Founder of Marco Polo
Vlada Bortnik is the Founder at Joya Communications.He is Co-Founder & CPO at Happy Bits Company.
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About Happy Bits Company, Marco Polo, YPO: Marco Polo is a video communication application designed to help foster closeness between friends and family.
Julia Enthoven
Co-Founder and CEO of Kapwing
Julia Enthoven is the Founder of Kapwing.
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About Kapwing: Online editor for modern videos, GIFs, and images
Chaohao Wang
Co-founder & CEO of Timecros
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About Timecros: Digital life sharing
Nader Alizadeh
CEO and Co-founder of Linqia
Nader is CEO and Co-founder for Linqia and is responsible for setting and executing on the strategic footprint of the company. Previously, Nader was Senior Vice President of Sales for Lithium Technologies and responsible for driving and managing the growth of the business. Nader joined Lithium Technologies as a co-founder when it was first incorporated, and carried broad responsibilities in both the sales and operations departments. Prior to Lithium, Nader was the Director of Operations at Ofoto (now Kodak Gallery). An early employee, he was responsible for all fulfillment operations for the company, where he built the largest digital photo finishing facility and online frame store in the world. He was also responsible for all of its organization, processes, and personnel and was primarily responsible for driving Ofoto to the best gross margins in the industry, a key element in Kodak’s subsequent acquisition. Nader has a proven track record identifying strategic partners and cultivating key business relationships. He has demonstrated this ability multiple times, in various management roles at Konica and later at Fuji, where he managed large-scale fulfillment organizations, including the largest film processing facility in the western United States. Nader studied Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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About Linqia: Linqia is the only influencer marketing company that delivers guaranteed influencer ROI for the enterprise.
Daniel Singer
Founder and CEO of Panda
Daniel Singer is the Founder & CEO of Panda.
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About Panda: Panda is a camera that augments users’ conversations with friends.
Ishaan Sutaria
Co-Founder, Co-CEO of Wave Sports + Entertainment
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About Wave Sports + Entertainment: Wave Sports + Entertainment is a media company built for the next generation of digital superfans.
Billy Chasen
Co-founder and CEO of turntable.fm
Billy Chasen is the Co-Founder and CEO at turntable.fm.
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About Accel, turntable.fm: Turntable.fm brings the social value of music to the digital music experience by letting people experience and discover music together.
Thatcher Spring
Founder & CEO of GearLaunch
Thatcher Spring is the CEO & Founder of GearLaunch, which offers a sophisticated platform for E2E commerce, a rapidly emerging category that focuses on the full e-commerce value chain. Thatcher’s experience with merchandising and supply chains began when he founded a nationally distributed wholesale apparel company shortly after graduating Georgetown University. Thatcher then went on to receive his MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler and briefly worked at J.P. Morgan and Mars before his entrepreneurial drive led him to founding GearLaunch. Outside of work, Thatcher is an avid sailor, and helped lead the Georgetown University sailing team to a national championship. He also serves as a Director of the Cape Eleuthera Foundation, Class Ambassador for Georgetown University, and an Associate for the Nantucket Conservation Foundation.
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About GearLaunch: GearLaunch offers a sophisticated platform for E2E commerce, a rapidly emerging category that focuses on the full e-commerce value chain.
Sebastian Dobrincu
Co-Founder & CEO of Storyheap
Sebastian Dobrincu is a serial tech entrepreneur, engineer and music artist living in Los Angeles, CA. He is best known for being named “Silicon Valley’s Youngest Self-Made Millionaire” and one of the “30 Under 30” by Forbes. Dobrincu is also an angel investor, public speaker and songwriter. Dobrincu debuted his musical career in 2019 with the single “On Your Mind”, followed by “Halfway To The Moon”. Sebastian Dobrincu was born in Bucharest, Romania and moved to the US at 17 to scale his business. He dropped out of Stanford University after moving to Silicon Valley where he established his company’s headquarters. He was first introduced to software in 2009. He had worked with clients ranging from individual employers to startups and Fortune 500 corporations. He is currently the founder and CEO of Storyheap and helps startups as an advisor. He actively invest in promising, motivated and hardworking entrepreneurs and their early stage ventures. He is also a public speaker and featured contributor for publications like Entrepreneur Magazine and Mashable.
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About Brandmates, Shop.io, Storyheap: Analytics and marketing suite for the world’s leading brands and influencers. Reach & engage your community and maximize online performance.
David McIntosh
Co-Founder and CEO of Tenor Inc
David McIntosh is the co-founder and CEO of Tenor, which has built the largest mobile GIF sharing audience in the world, with more than 150 million people making billions of searches per month. Along with top-downloaded mobile apps, Tenor powers GIF sharing for leading mobile services like Facebook Messenger, Kik and Google’s Gboard. David was previously Founder and CEO of Redux, a video-discovery company which grew to 100M Connected TVs and consoles and was backed by Peter Thiel, Alsop-Louie, and DFJ. More on Redux (now part of CrunchyRoll): http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/12/crunchyroll-redux/ Forbes named David McIntosh one of the top 30 Entrepreneurs under 30 in 2016 and BusinessWeek named David McIntosh one of the top 25 US Entrepreneurs under 25 in 2007.
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About Tenor Inc: Tenor’s GIF search engine helps you find the perfect GIFs to express your thoughts and feelings in mobile messaging conversations.
Esther Crawford
Co-founder/CEO of Squad
Esther is an award-winning pioneer in Millennial marketing who spearheaded groundbreaking digital campaigns in social and video for Fortune 500 companies. She previously led product marketing for Silicon Valley startups including Coach.me and Stride. After finding early success on YouTube, Esther started a social marketing agency whose clients included Weight Watchers, Sears Holdings and more. She was an on-air contributor to CNN, Fox News, and iVillage. Esther holds a Master’s of Arts in International Relations from Durham University in England, an Arabic language certificate from Jordan University and a Bachelors of Science in Philosophy from Oregon State University.
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About Squad: Acquired by Twitter in 2020. Hang out with friends in audio and video rooms.
Kamal Shah
Founder, CEO and CTO of fotobabble
Kamal Shah has over 20 years of experience building technology products and companies. Kamal was the Founder and President of Invu Technology for seven years. Prior to that he served as Chief Architect at enterprise software companies Wakesoft and Smashcast and started his career as a software engineer in the early ’90s. Kamal has a Master’s in Engineering from the University of Toronto where he was also the captain and nationally ranked member of the University of Toronto Swim Team.
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About fotobabble, FotoNotes, invu technology: Fotobabble is a software company providing photo- and audio-powered social marketing solutions.
Joshua Broggi
CEO & Founder of Woolf
Joshua is the founder of Woolf, a university project that makes it possible for qualified academics and institutions to create accredited courses and teach them. Previously, at Oxford, Joshua was a member of the Faculty of Philosophy, a member of Wolfson College, and a member of the governing Congregation of the University. He also held a Humboldt Fellowship, during which I worked on the definition and measure of human progress.
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About Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Oxford, Woolf: Marketplace, Market Network, EdTech, Higher Education
Balaji Krishnan
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of DabKick
Balaji Krishnan is working as Founder & CEO at DabKick Inc. Balaji Krishnan is Founder of Snapstick Inc. Balaji developed Snapstick’s technology in order to solve the problems he personally experienced with current Internet TV offerings. He has been creating and developing the concepts and architecture behind Snapstick for the past two years. Balaji previously worked in the core technology groups at Sun, HP and Oracle for more than 10 years. At Oracle he worked on database server technologies, with a special focus on the database transaction engine. Before Oracle, he spent three years at Hewlett-Packard where he worked on the HP UX development team, with a focus on file systems, volume management and virtual memory. He also worked in the Virtual Partitions team at HP. Before HP, Balaji spent three years at Sun Microsystems with the Solaris development team. Balaji received a Computer Science engineering degree, with honors, in India.
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About DabKick: DabKick is a real-time social entertainment platform that combines live video experiences with patented media sharing technologies.
Eric Campbell
CEO of Gather
Founder & CEO Gather. Engineering Leader at multiple successful venture backed startups.
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About Gather, New Wave: The best way to plan trips with friends
Michael E. Parker
CEO & Founder of MintShow
Michael E. Parker is the President & CEO at Value-Centered Solutions in San Francisco, California. He brings many years of relevant experience that has helped him become known as a well-respected leader. He earned his bachelor and master’s degrees in Business Administration, Operations and Procurement from California State University, Hayward.
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About 2DOLife.com, 2DOLife.com, MintShow, Value-Centered Solutions, You are a CEO: The first social network that uses gamification and habit design to help people maintain an uplifted and inspired state of mind.
Paul Kellenberger
Chief Executive Officer of zSpace
Paul guides zSpace, Inc.’s vision of “Bringing zSpace to the mainstream.” Prior to zSpace, he was CEO for Chancery Software, the leading provider of Enterprise Student Administrative Systems. Paul built a successful team and profitably grew the business, resulting in the sale of the company to Pearson Inc. Paul has also held senior positions in general management, sales, marketing, and corporate development at Motorola Inc., Digital Equipment Corporation, and Inacom Corporation.
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About Infinite Z, zSpace: zSpace offers a system that enables its users to integrate their normal lives with a desktop-based virtual reality system.
Mike Kofi Okyere
Founder & CEO of Perengo
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About Perengo: Perengo is a programmatic recruitment automation and analytics platform for performance-conscious recruiters.
Lesley Marincola
CEO of Angaza
Lesley Marincola is the Founder and CEO of Angaza Design. A product designer (B.S.) and mechanical engineer (M.S.) from Stanford University, Lesley has also worked at Amazon (Lab126) with the Amazon Kindle design team, and at Bay Area design consultancy, D2M Inc. with clients including DirecTV, Genentech, Qualcomm, and Volkswagen. Lesley is a recipient of the Santa Clara University Global Social Benefit Incubator (GSBI) scholarship and was named a 2012 Tech Awards Laureate, in recognition of Angaza’s pay-as-you-go technology. She was recognized by Businessweek as one of “America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs”, is a World Economic Forum Young Global Shaper, was named a Forbes “30 Under 30” Entrepreneur, and is a 2013 Echoing Green Fellow. Lesley’s vision is to solve the world’s most widespread problems – like energy access – with market-driven technology innovation developed from a human-centered design approach.
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About Angaza: Angaza provides a technology that enables businesses to provide affordable life-changing products to people in emerging markets.
Peter Caswell
Chairman & CEO of NetBase Solutions
Peter Caswell is the CEO at NetBase Solutions
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About Netbase Quid, NetBase Solutions, Xentra Services: NetBase provides social intelligence solutions that enable brands to publish, monitor, analyze and engage with customers in real time.
Nagesh Challa
Founder & CEO of Waagu
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About Waagu: Waagu offers a collaborative customer engagement platform for content, web, and mobile customer interactions.
Tim Lenardo
Co-Founder, CEO of Real Labs
Co-creator of Boomerang from Instagram. Formerly Engineering @ Instagram, Facebook, Amazon. Now working on something new 🙃
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About JetFuel, Real Labs: Building the next big thing in social.
Farzal Dojki
CoFounder & CEO of The DotZero
Known for his innovative ideas and commitment to social responsibility, Farzal Dojki is Founder & CEO of Next Generation Innovations, a software development, IT support and consulting firm specializing in new ventures. The company is working to establish a paradigm that focuses on “doing good for the society in which it operates” and encourages its employees to dedicate 5% of their billable hours to community service projects. Prior to that, Farzal worked at 3 start-ups in Pakistan, as well as 3 years at Merrill Lynch & BearingPoint in the US.
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About The DotZero: DotZero is a space made for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.
Zac Choi
Co-Founder & CEO of String
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About String: String is a software company that offers a cloud-based direct phone line and messaging solution for business texting and calling.
Nick Halavins
Founder & CEO of AntiLand™
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About AntiLand™: AntiLand is a community of likeminded people. Saves people from depressions, boredom, and loneliness by anonymous talk therapy.
Melody McCloskey
CEO & Founder of StyleSeat
Melody McCloskey is co-founder and CEO of StyleSeat, the largest online marketplace for beauty and wellness services. In 2011, after feeling frustrated that there was no easy way to book beauty appointments, Melody founded StyleSeat with Dan Levine. More than 350,000 beauty professionals in nearly 16,000 cities use the platform today and customers more than 30 million appointments each year. Melody was named by Fast Company as one of its Most Creative People in Business 2014.
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About StyleSeat: StyleSeat is an online destination that connects beauty and wellness professionals with clients.
Ron Czerny
Founder & CEO of PlayPhone
Czerny is a veteran entrepreneur who has been at the forefront of games, mobile and social networking for over 18 years. As founder, Chief Executive Officer and board member, Ron Czerny serves as the visionary and driving force behind PlayPhone’s corporate strategy. Czerny’s vast experience in the games industry has allowed him to help establish PlayPhone’s dominance in the mobile social games industry and position the company to compete and thrive on a global scale. In 2000, Czerny founded Atrativa, a online platform and games company with operations based mainly in North and South America. As chief executive officer, Czerny led Atrativa to its current status as the premier Web games provider platform, powering several major ISPs including Earthlink, UOL (South America’s largest ISP), Yahoo!? Brazil, AOL? Brazil, MSN? Brazil, Ibest (Telecom Brazil), Terra Networks (North and South America) and many others. RealNetworks, Inc. acquired Atrativa in 2006. Czerny also played a key role in Latin America’s video game industry between 1992 and 1999 as the co-founder of the Brazilian Video Game Association and Head of Capcom’s video game distribution and strategy in the region.Czerny is currently the Chairman of the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) for North America and a Board Member of MEF Global.Czerny holds a Bachelor’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in international business from San Jose State University.
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About PlayPhone: PlayPhone is a social gaming developer providing solutions to wireless carriers.
Arash Hassibi
CEO & Co-Founder of joinedapp
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About joinedapp: Leader in Conversational Commerce: Sell on Text, Voice and Touch Channels
Arthur Meng
Cofounder & CEO of Lifo
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About Lifo: Lifo builds commerce platform to empower social media creators
Lesley Gold
Founder & CEO of SutherlandGold Group
Lesley is a master storyteller, creating market positioning and messaging innovative startups and top brands like Sony and Comcast Ventures. She has an unmatched talent for taking in a company’s facts and circumstances and crafting a story catalog that puts their key messaging into the hands of consumers via major media outlets like New York Times, Time and USA Today. Since launching SG, Lesley has helped position and market hundreds of brands, products, companies, people and ideas, leading some clients to go public and several to be acquired by major tech and consumer brands. Some of Lesley’s current clients include Birchbox, Comcast Ventures and Brightcove. Prior to founding SG, Lesley served as vice president for Blanc & Otus, the global technology practice of Hill & Knowlton, where she led breakthrough campaigns for TiVo and Sony PlayStation, among other top consumer technology brands. She also worked as a network television producer at CNN, served as the director of radio services at the Democratic National Committee, and has led positions as a campaign strategist and press secretary for former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich. Lesley is mother of two and a proud dog owner. She also lives next door to both Kevin Bacon and Mark Zuckerberg.
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About SutherlandGold Group: SutherlandGold Group is a PR agency that creates stories to motivate customers, potential acquirers, and business development partners.
Kazuki Nakayashiki
Founder and CEO/CTO of Glasp
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About Glasp, Glasp: Social Web Highlighter, Social Annotation, Social Note Taking, Web App, SaaS, Browser Extension, Mobile App, Social Bookmarking
Crystle Vitari
CEO of Sparxo Inc.,
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About Sparxo Inc.,: A better way to discover events is a better way to sell tickets.
Ed Zitron
Founder & CEO of EZPR
Ed Zitron is the founder of EZPR, a West-Coast media relations firm focusing on consumer tech startups. He has been published by Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Eurogamer, PC Gamer and PC Zone. He is the author of ‘This Is How You Pitch: How To Kick Ass In Your First Years In PR’ and was recently named “Top 50 People in Tech PR” by Business Insider.
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About EZPR: EZPR is a results-focused media relations firm in New York and San Francisco.
Peter Sisson
CEO & co-Founder of Yaza
Peter is a product-focused entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in the mobile and Internet industries. He studied computer science at Cornell and earned a master’s degree from Stanford’s pioneering CSAI (Computer Science Artificial Intelligence) graduate program. After school he wrote PBX software for AT&T Bell Labs, then did volunteer work in Micronesia, after which he traveled across Asia, Africa, and South America. Upon return, Peter attended the Tuck School at Dartmouth, where he graduated with an MBA. This led to jobs in management consulting and investment banking covering the mobile and telecom equipment industries. He started his first company, WineShopper.com, in 1998, for which he raised $46M from Kleiner Perkins and Amazon.com. Wine.com acquired WineShopper in 2000. Since then, he has launched three companies. Mixonic, a profitable branded merchandise retailer; Teleo, a desktop VoIP company acquired by Microsoft for 10X the amount invested; and Line2 (aka Toktumi), which he grew from $0.5M to $7M in 18 months. The Line2 app peaked at No.3 overall in the App Store and held its ranking as a top 10 grossing productivity app for more than 4 years. He started working on AreaLive, a social augmented reality company, in 2016. Outside of work, Peter is a passionate world traveler whose adventures have taken him from 150 feet below sea level in Palau to 18,000 feet above in the Nepal Himalaya. He splits his time between San Francisco, New York, and Bahrain.
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About Yaza: See anywhere. This Fall
Josh Dorward
CEO and Co-Founder of Indivio
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About Indivio: Indivio enables brands, and retailers of all sizes to create, test, and optimize Facebook ads using video.
Bambi Francisco
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Vator
Bambi Francisco is founder and CEO of Vator – one of the largest social networks dedicated to high-tech entrepreneurs and investors. Vator properties include VatorX, a platform licensed by organizations to host entrepreneur communities and competitions; VatorNews, which provides news, analysis and editorials about entrepreneurship and innovation, and Vator Events, which runs the popular Splash startup event and competition.
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About Vator: Vator, Inc. is the professional resource marketplace that aims to be the premiere knowledge sharing community for entrepreneurship
Bret Cox
Founder, Chairman & CEO of TRUE
Bret Cox is Founder and CEO at True.
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About TRUE: Private Group Sharing
Douglas Guen
CEO & Founder of Primer
CEO & Founder at PrimerSerial. Entrepreneur & the friend of Startups. Founder & CEO of Primer (2010-now), Founder & CEO of INICIS, INITECH others (1997-2008)
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About MAKEUS, Primer: Startup Accelerator in Korea from Jan 2010
Sercan Isik
CEO & Co-Founder of Scorp
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About Scorp: Viral video machine for brands with a social aspect.
Alexander Torrenegra
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Torre
Alexander Torrenegra is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Torre and a Co-Founder at Tribe Labs.
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About Torre, ZT Labs: The global matching network for work
Milly Toovey
Chief Executive Officer & Cofounder of Boomcast
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About Boomcast: Boomcast is a social media platform dedicated to positive social change.
Milly Toovey
Chief Executive Officer & Cofounder of Boomcast
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About Boomcast: Boomcast is a social media platform dedicated to positive social change.
Bart Myers
CEO and Founder of Countable
Founder, advisor and investor in early stage technology companies in the Bay Area. Current project is Countable, a consumer focused, political site and app. Countable will launch in early 2014. Prior to Countable, Bart founded SideReel.com which was acquired by Rovi in 2011, and later re-acquired under All Media Network. Before SideReel, Bart worked in numerous startups and now advises several.
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About Countable, Guba, Rovi Corporation, SFAdPub: Countable is a community engagement platform that powers virtual communities for large and small organizations.
Richard Price
CEO of Academia.edu
Richard Price is the founder of Academia.edu. He studied philosophy at University of Oxford.
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About Academia.edu: Academia.edu is a platform for academics to share research papers.
Brian Gannon
Founder & CEO of Loop
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About Loop: Private family network
Henrik Scheel
CEO of Startup Experience
Henrik is a Danish serial entrepreneur now living in San Francisco where he focuses on startup projects in entrepreneurship education, nanotechnology and mobile telecom. As an engineering student, Henrik founded two companies in IT recycling and Design Thinking. He then worked with the Global Research team at Vestas Wind Systems where he specialized in strategy development and Innovation Management. In 2010 he moved to Silicon Valley where he founded Startup Experience, Inc. – a company that delivers interactive workshops aimed at solving social problems through entrepreneurship Henrik lives in San Francisco but he spends most of his time traveling around the world to work with entrepreneurs and educators, and inspire young people to become more entrepreneurial. Through his company Startup Experience he has formed partnerships with governments, NGOs and corporate non-profits in 12+ countries and is striving to transform entrepreneurship education in today’s school system.
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About Startup Experience: The Startup Experience is a two-day crash course on high-impact entrepreneurship and social innovation.
Doug Galen
Founder & CEO of RippleWorks
In addition to RippleWorks, Doug is a Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Doug sits on the non-profit Boards of Heifer International, Positive Coaching Alliance, and Jasper Ridge Farm and advises early stage companies. Prior to RippleWorks, Doug served as Chief Revenue Officer at Shopkick, a mobile app startup that was bought by SK Telecom. Prior to Shopkick, he was SVP of business and corporate development at Shutterfly, where he helped grow revenue from $50 million to $500 million. Doug served as VP and GM of new ventures for eBay, and was employee #3 as Vice President of Sales and BD for publicly traded E-LOAN.
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About RippleWorks, Stanford Graduate School of Business: RippleWorks pairs startup and technology experts with social ventures around the world to jointly conquer scaling challenges.
Caleb Ogden
Founder, CEO of Increase
uiFaces provides sample avatars for user interface mockups and production designs. Users can also contribute their avatars to the database. uiFaces was launched by Caleb Ogden.
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About Increase: Increase lets you track, share, and discuss investing with friends.
Tony Deifell
CEO & Co-founder of AwesomeBox
Tony Deifell is CEO & Co-founder of The Muse Factory/AwesomeBox. He was featured in San Francisco’s 7×7 Magazine as one of the “The Bay Area Visionaries Shaping Our Future. Previously, Tony was managing director of Q Media Labs, which explored questions of how media, technology and business shape the world. The Lab’s clients included Google, The Media Consortium, The Democracy Alliance, UCLA and Community Wealth Ventures (Knight Foundation grantees) among others. Recent work includes The Big Thaw: Charting a New Course for Journalism and case studies about Brightcove, Mother Jones, AlterNet, Sierra Club’s online-media business models. Over the past two decades, Tony has been an entrepreneur, organizational builder, strategist and futurist. He founded and led for eight years the Institute for Public Media Arts, a company that promoted “user-generated content” before there was a label for it. His work received recognition by the White House as a national model in diversity education. Tony was a Leadership Fellow in the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s National Leadership Program and has served on national boards including Active Voice and Social Enterprise Alliance where he co-chaired its public policy initiative. Tony was a founding board member of KaBOOM!, a national market leader for children’s play. He also served as KaBOOM!’s Chief Strategist and led a $5 million dollar investment deal from the founders of eBay. As the architect of its growth strategy, he designed the organization’s national advocacy platform “Playful Cities USA” (now in 118 cities) and helped develop its online social-networking community. Harvard Business School published a case study about KaBOOM!’s cutting-edge, performance-measurement system that Tony built. In addition to strategy development, Tony actively makes media. He created wdydwyd?™, an online community that challenges people to answer the question, “why do you do what you do?” WIRED Magazine said, “In Silicon Valley, (it) has become the hottest team-building meme since Outward Bound—and it’s spreading.” In 2007, Chronicle Books published Seeing Beyond Sight, Tony’s award-winning book about blind photographers. It was covered in the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times and other press. As unusual as “blind photography” may sound, Tony retells the book’s inspiring stories to speak about leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship. He challenges people to re-think what they see and don’t see. Tony graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Harvard Business School where he started a national conference about leadership and values. In 2008, UNC-Chapel Hill acknowledged Tony’s work by selecting him for its Distinguished Young Alumnus Award—a distinction he holds in common with former FCC Chairman, Congressman, founder of Hulu and sports star Michael Jordan.
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About AwesomeBox, Harvard Business School: AwesomeBox brings together friends and family to share photos and messages custom printed into a box set of beautiful cards.