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 United States based CEO’ operating in the SaaS 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.
Shantanu Narayen
President and Chief Executive Officer of Adobe
Shantanu Narayen currently serves as president and chief executive officer of Adobe. He joined Adobe in January 1998 as Vice President and General Manager of our engineering technology group. In January 1999, he was promoted to Senior Vice President, Worldwide Products, and in March 2001 he was promoted to Executive Vice President, Worldwide Product Marketing and Development. In January 2005, Narayen was promoted to President and Chief Operating Officer, and effective December 2007, he was appointed our Chief Executive Officer and joined our Board of Directors. Narayen serves on the board of directors of Pfizer Inc., a multinational pharmaceutical corporation. He previously served as a director of Dell Inc. from September 2009 to October 2013. Narayen holds a B.S. in Electronics Engineering from Osmania University in India, a M.S. in Computer Science from Bowling Green State University and an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
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Mathilde Collin
CEO and Co-Founder of Front
Mathilde Collin is the co-founder and CEO of Front.
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About Front: Front is the leader in customer communication that brings teams together to offer tailor-made service at scale
Brian Long
Co-Founder and CEO of Attentive
Brian Long is the co-founder and CEO of Attentive. He previously was the CEO of TapCommerce. Prior to TapCommerce, Brian led mobile products at Pontiflex, a mobile advertising company. At Pontiflex, Brian conceived of the mobile ad product, brought it to market, and scaled it across thousands of mobile apps. Prior to Pontiflex, Brian held various sales management roles at CNET.com (acquired by CBS Interactive), where he worked closely with large advertisers like Dell, Samsung, and AT&T to build performance-based interactive advertising programs.Brian has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently on-leave from NYU, with half of an MBA in Finance & Entrepreneurship.
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About Attentive: Attentive is a personalized mobile messaging platform for innovative brands and organizations.
Rahul Vohra
Founder & CEO of Superhuman
Rahul Vohra is the Founder and CEO at Superhuman. He is also the Technical Advisor at BOLDstart Ventures and Investor & Advisor at Partender and Investor of sendwithus and EasyPost. Rahul Vohra is a former CEO and Co-Founder of Rapportive and Game Designer at Jagex. Rahul received a bachelor of arts in Computer Science at the University of Cambrigdge.
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About Clubhouse, LinkedIn, Rapportive, Superhuman, The Todd & Rahul Angel Fund: Superhuman is a software platform that weaves social insights into a workflow.
Henry Ward
Founder & CEO of Carta
Henry Ward is the CEO and co-founder of Carta (formerly eShares), With a background in finance and technology. Prior to eShares, Henry was the Founder and CEO of Secondsight, a portfolio optimization platform for retail investors. Mr. Ward received a BGS in Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Michigan and an MSC in Market Finance at EDHEC Business School.
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About Carta: Carta is a global ownership management platform that helps companies, investors, and employees manage equity and ownership.
Dhruvil Sanghvi
Chief Executive Officer of LogiNext
Dhruvil is one of the co-founders LogiNext. He has worked with elite organizations like Deloitte,Ernst & Young and Tata Group and studies at Carnegie Mellon and Nirma University.
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About LogiNext: Enterprise SaaS for Home Delivery and Transportation Businesses to Automate End to End Operational Process
Nick Mehta
Chief Executive Officer of Gainsight
Nick Mehta is the CEO of Gainsight, the leading Customer Success company. Since joining in 2013, Nick led the company through multiple funding rounds, raising a total of $156 million, and grew the company from a handful of employees to more than 630 people working in seven offices around the world. He was named one of the Top 50 SaaS CEOs by SaaS report, is an EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist, and holds one of highest Glassdoor approval ratings for CEOs. He is also the co-author of Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue. Prior to Gainsight, Nick was the CEO of LiveOffice, where he led the Inc. 5000 company’s profitable growth to $25 million in revenue and successful sale to Symantec. Nick has held senior operating roles for public and private companies in the enterprise and consumer technology markets, including Veritas Software (acquired by Symantec), Symantec Corporation, and XDegrees (acquired by Microsoft). Mehta also served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Trinity Ventures and Accel Partners. In the mid-1990s, Nick co-founded a venture-funded online golf retailer called Chipshot, one of the top 20 online retailers during the dotcom bubble.
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About Forum Ventures, Gainsight: Gainsight is a technology company that offers a range of software for optimizing the customer experience and improving product analytics.
Bret Taylor
Co-CEO & Vice-chair of Salesforce
Bret Taylor is Co-CEO of Salesforce. Bret previously served as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Product Officer of Salesforce. A respected software engineer and executive with an impressive history of building widely used and loved products, Bret was the co-founder and CEO of Quip, the innovative collaboration platform Salesforce acquired in 2016. Prior to founding Quip, Bret served as the Chief Technology Officer of Facebook and saw the company through its successful IPO in 2012. Credited with the invention of the “Like” button, Bret joined Facebook in 2009 after it acquired his social networking company, FriendFeed. Prior to FriendFeed, Bret started his career at Google, where he co-created Google Maps. Bret is the Chair of Twitter’s board of directors. He graduated from Stanford University in 2003 with a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science and now lives in the Bay Area.
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About BOLDforce, CloudCraze, Salesforce, Salesforce, Salesforce: Salesforce is a global cloud computing company that develops CRM solutions and provides business software on a subscription basis.
Brad Birnbaum
CEO & Founder of Kustomer
Brad is an innovator and a trailblazer in creating disruptive enterprise technologies. He has spent more than 20 years as a C level executive and a serial entrepreneur, building companies and solutions for customer service and support. Mission driven and passionate, he believes in leading with purpose and building solutions that solve real world problems. As co-founder and CEO of Kustomer, Brad set out together with Jeremy Suriel and the Kustomer team to build something the world desperately needs: a modern, customer-centric platform for building applications while modernizing the customer support tool landscape. Before founding Kustomer, Brad co-founded Assistly which was acquired by Salesforce and rebranded as Desk.com; making it the Salesforce SaaS SMB support solution. Brad began his career by founding eShare Communications while in college. As Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Product Development at eShare Technologies, he took part in revolutionizing community chat and launching the first chat tool used for customer support. eShare was later sold to Melita International where he continued his role as CTO for the larger entity which rebranded as eShare Communications. Brad held executive roles at Divine Interventures, eAssist and Talisma all the while focusing on improving customer support for enterprise companies. Additionally, Brad lead the community chat team at AOL and was CTO for Airtime. Brad contributes regularly to Forbes where he writes about trends that affect the customer service industry today. As a born and raised New Yorker, Brad insists on building the next great NYC based tech startup. Brad serves as Kustomer’s Chairman of the Board. Birnbaum served as a Justice Louis Brandeis Scholar at Brandeis University and a Simon’s fellow at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he conducted advanced organo-metallic research in chemistry. Birnbaum has been published in a variety of publications and has also served as a technical editor for some of Macmillan’s best-selling Java and Internet books. Birnbaum holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Systems from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
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About CRMXchange, Kustomer: Kustomer is an omnichannel Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) CRM platform specializing in customer service.
Christopher Kirchner
Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Slync.io
Christopher S. Kirchner is the co-founder, chairman, and CEO at Slync.io. Prior to this, Christopher has worked as a senior vice president of sales and marketing and a director of marketing and sales at Turner Labels. Christopher holds a degree in communications, minor marketing from the University of Kentucky.
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About Slync.io: Slync.io is a provider of process automation for enterprise supply chains and the global logistics industry.
Christopher Bergh
Founder, CEO & Head Chef of DataKitchen
Christopher Bergh is a Founder, CEO, and Head Chef of DataKitchen. As CEO, he oversees the Product, Engineering, Implementation, Services, Sales, and Marketing teams. DataKitchen’s mission is to provide the software, service, and knowledge that enables every data analytics team to successfully implement DataOps. Chris and his fellow co-founders started DataKitchen because they envisioned a world where every data professional and his or her data team no longer felt powerless or frustrated by failed and painfully slow projects, but instead were excited and energized by their ability to deliver high-quality, on-demand insight. In 2013, the trio of founders launched DataKitchen and built their own end-to-end DataOps software platform to do just that. Chris is an industry-recognized expert on DataOps. He is the co-author of The DataOps Cookbook and The DataOps Manifesto as well as a speaker on DataOps at many industry conferences and with media outlets. Chris has more than 30 years of research, software engineering, data analytics, and executive management experience. At various points in his career, he has been a COO, CTO, VP, and Director of Engineering at various tech startups, which were acquired by IBM Unica or Model N. Chris holds an M.S. from Columbia University and a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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About DataKitchen, DataKitchen: DataKitchen is a DataOps software company that helps organizations deliver more data products faster with lower errors that customers trust.
Sanjit Biswas
CEO of Samsara
Sanjit Biswas is the Founder and CEO at Samsara. He is a former CEO and a co-founder of Meraki, where he managed day-to-day operations from inception through the $1.2 billion acquisition by Cisco in 2012. He now serves as the Vice President and General Manager of the Cisco Cloud Networking Group, headquartered in San Francisco. Sanjit has been recognized as a TR35 honoree by MIT Technology Review, Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, and has received awards for academic research in computer networking.
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About Samsara: Samsara helps businesses in harnessing IoT data to develop actionable business insights and improve their operations.
Blake Murray
Co-Founder and CEO of Divvy
Blake Murray is the founder and CEO of Divvy.He was the owner and CEO of MRC and VP of Business Development at Weave Communications.
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About Divvy: Divvy is a platform that helps businesses manage payments and subscriptions, build strategic budgets, and eliminate expense reports.
Igor Jablokov
Founder & CEO of Pryon
Igor is the founder and CEO of Pryon, an artificial intelligence (AI) company delivering an enterprise knowledge management platform. Pryon’s natural language processing (NLP) engine ingests and transforms data into experiences that solve critical business challenges. Previously at IBM, Igor grew impatient with the gap between the invention and commercialization of AI, and departed to establish cloud computing pioneer Yap. Five years later, Amazon acquired the company for its AI expertise and machine learning (ML) technology, now embedded in billions of Alexa-powered devices. Igor was subsequently awarded Eisenhower and Truman National Security fellowships to leverage entrepreneurial ecosystems in addressing geopolitical concerns. Igor passionately supports STEM career and educational opportunities. As such, he is a TechStars’ Alexa Accelerator mentor, was a Blackstone NC Entrepreneur-In-Residence (EIR), and founded a chapter of Global Shapers, a program of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Igor holds a BS degree in Computer Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University, where he was named an Outstanding Engineering Alumnus, and an MBA from The University of North Carolina.
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About Pryon: Pryon is an AI company focused on enterprise knowledge management.
Jager McConnell
Chief Executive Officer of Crunchbase
Jager is the CEO of Crunchbase. He joined the company as it became a venture-backed startup in enterprise data. Prior to joining Crunchbase, Jager spent 11 years at Salesforce in various roles across sales, marketing, and product development.
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About Crunchbase: Crunchbase provides intelligent prospecting software powered by live company data.
Courtney Puckett
Executive Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer of Crunchbase
Courtney served as Office Manager at Crunchbase from September 2017 to February 2019, from which she served as Executive Assistant until August 2019, since which she has been serving as Executive Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer.
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About Crunchbase: Crunchbase provides intelligent prospecting software powered by live company data.
Barak Kaufman
CEO/Co-Founder of Intello
Barak Kaufman was CEO & Co-Founder of Intello (acquired by SailPoint) and was an investor at Insight Venture Partners.
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About Intello: Intello’s SaaS operations platform enables companies to discover, manage, secure & optimize their SaaS applications
Jyoti Bansal
Co-Founder & CEO of Harness
Jyoti Bansal is the CEO and Co-Founder of Harness.
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About BIG Labs, Harness, Traceable, Unusual Ventures: Harness is a Continuous Delivery as-a-Service platform for engineering and DevOps teams to release applications into production.
Clark Valberg
Co-Founder & CEO of InVision
Clark Valberg is the CEO and Co-Founder of InVision, the digital product design platform used to make the world’s best customer experiences. InVision is the cornerstone of the product design process for more than 3 million people at tens of thousands of companies, including eighty percent of the Fortune 100 and brands like Airbnb, Amazon, HBO, Netflix, Slack, Starbucks and Uber. He is a former Co-Founder of Epicenter Consulting.
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About InVision: InVision is the visual collaboration platform powering the world’s smartest companies.
Stephen Olmstead
VP, Chief of Staff, Office of the CEO of InVision
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About InVision: InVision is the visual collaboration platform powering the world’s smartest companies.
Gaurav Sharma
Founder & CEO of Saas Labs
Gaurav is a product guy (and a techie) who loves working on disruptive ideas related to consumer internet and big data. He is passionate about building new marketplace based businesses and viral user acquisition.
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About Helpwise, JustCall, Saas Labs, Vinnex, Zuvvu: Saas Labs develops software products that revolve around productivity and business process automation.
Richard Smullen
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Pypestream
Richard is the CEO and founder of Pypestream, a secure mobile messaging platform that uses real-time chat to transform the way brands and businesses connect with customers. Through ‘Pypes’ listed in a searchable catalogue, businesses are provided with a direct connection to their customers for increased engagement, automated customer service, and in-message payment processing. The ultimate customer engagement tool, further loyalty is derived by using proprietary AI and chatbot technology to allow conversations at scale. A serial entrepreneur, Richard previously co-founded Genesis Media LLC, a real-time video advertising platform, and is a board member of SouthWinston LLC, a New York-based, global private equity and VC fund.
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About dhomain llc, Pypestream, SouthWinston: Pypestream is conversational artificial intelligence built for scale.
Ashutosh Garg
CEO & Co-Founder of Eightfold
Ashutosh Garg is the CEO and co-founder of eightfold.ai and a true guru of all things AI, with 10 years of information retrieval, machine learning and search experience. Previously, he was Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of BloomReach. Prior to that, he was at IBM research. He is also a prolific publisher/inventor, with a book on machine learning, 30+ papers, and 50+ patents. Ashutosh holds a BTech from IIT-Delhi and a PhD from U of Illinois UC. Ashutosh has numerous awards, including best thesis award at IIT Delhi, IBM Fellowship and outstanding researcher award at UIUC.
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About Eightfold: Eightfold is a developer of a talent intelligence platform used to help companies find, recruit, and retain workers.
Scott Wolfe
Founder & CEO of Levelset
Scott is a husband, dad, and entrepreneur in New Orleans. Bothered as a lawyer at the unfairness for the little guys, Scott founded zlien to even the $1 trillion construction playing field. He’s on a mission to kill liens, fix slow payment, and eliminate bad outcomes in construction payment. Headquartered in New Orleans, zlien now has more than 90 employees and is used by thousands of contractors and suppliers nationwide to make payments easier on billions in contract value each year. Scott has led zlien through two rounds of venture capital financing, raising over $16 million in outside investment from national venture capital firms like S3 Ventures, Altos Ventures and Brick & Mortar Ventures. Recognized by New Orleans City Business as an “Innovator of the Year” and part of their “Leadership in Law Hall of Fame,” Scott has been on the Silicon Bayou 100 list every year since 2014, is a winner of Idea Village & Jim Coulter’s IDEAPitch, is the ACG’s reigning Emerging Growth Company, and is a Junior Achievement Rising Star. Scott is a graduate of Brother Martin High School, Southern Methodist University (B.A.), and Loyola University New Orleans College of Law (J.D.).
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About Levelset: Levelset is a platform that helps contractors get paid faster and more efficiently.
Eric Poirier
CEO of Addepar
As Addepar’s CEO, Eric continues his career trajectory of solving intractable data and scale challenges in the financial sector with innovative technology. Prior to joining Addepar, Eric spent nearly 7 years at Palantir Technologies, a multi-billion dollar software company that allows organizations to make sense of large, disparate datasets. He joined the company in 2006 as one of its first 20 employees, and continually shaped the core technology there while building the finance business, which now represents half of the company’s revenue base. Before Palantir, Eric worked in Lehman Brothers’ Fixed Income Analytics group where he focused on modeling, simulating and visualizing data across a broad range of debt and credit instruments. It was here that Eric first became passionate about solving the industry’s massive data integration challenges by re-imagining large-scale technology and infrastructure solutions. Eric co-founded his first technology business when he was 15, scaling mission-critical websites with high performance requirements, winning eBay, Priceline and Novartis as customers. Eric graduated from Columbia University with a B.S. in Computer Science.
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About Addepar: Addepar is a wealth management platform that provides tools for data analytics and portfolio visuals.
Todd Dipaola
CEO and Cofounder of InMarket
Veteran entrepreneur Todd Dipaola co-founded inMarket in 2010 to bring the performance and accountability of digital marketing to the realm of retail . inMarket’s platform, including apps such as CheckPoints, List Bliss, and Extra Extra, reach consumers on their smartphones as they made critical purchase decisions. In 2011, inMarket announced the world’s largest mobile shopper network reaching over 20 million consumers. Under Todd’s leadership inMarket has partnered with brands including Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever, among others. Todd previously co-founded and bootstrapped digital marketing agency Vantage Media at the inception of search advertising. Vantage ranked 31 on the Inc 500 and earned “The Fastest Growing Technology Company in Los Angeles” honors by Deloitte’s Fast50. In 2007, Todd exited the company at a valuation north of $100MM. Todd is also the CEO of Forefund Capital. Todd’s entrepreneurial experience is also rooted in philanthropy. In 2007, he created the Dipaola Foundation, which was featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, to work on environmental and systemic societal issues. He sits on several boards including UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and California Common Cause. As Chairman of Common Cause, the organization succeeded in reforming redistricting to eliminate gerrymandering and activating online voter registration for the first time in history. Todd graduated as a Regents Scholar from UC Berkeley in Molecular and Cell Biology with emphasis in Immunology.
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About ForeFund Capital, InMarket, The Dipaola Foundation: InMarket offers a self-service location-based platform that captures accurate consumer location data, which drives campaign performance.
Howard Katzenberg
Founder & CEO of Glean analytics
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About Glean analytics: Glean unlocks the powerful data detailed in vendor invoices/receipts to surface relevant spend insights and drive spend accountability
Michael Reitblat
CEO & Co-Founder of Forter
Michael is the Co-Founder and CEO of Forter, the leading payment fraud prevention solution. Prior to founding Forter, Michael was the VP Product & International Operations at Pango Parking where he was in charge of the deployment and adoption of Mobile Wallet technologies worldwide. In 2008, before its acquisition by PayPal, Michael led Product at Fraud Sciences, where he faced some of the most challenging questions in the cyber security ecosystem. Michael’s fascination with online fraudsters began following a successful “self experimentation with the Internet” phase as a teenager and an even more successful period of service as an intelligence officer in the early days of the Israeli Cyber Command.
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About Forter: Forter offers a fraud solution that helps retailers grow sales, lower costs, and improve customer experience via its Decision as Service.
Lloyd Armbrust
Chief Executive Officer of OwnLocal
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About Armbrust American, OwnLocal: OwnLocal offers a platform that automatically transforms data and offline advertisements into multichannel online marketing campaigns.
Pavel Golubev
Chief Executive Officer of Stack (by Appodeal)
Pavel Golubev is the Chief Executive Officer at Appodeal Stack.
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About MaritimeAI, Stack (by Appodeal): Stack is the natural progression of a vision that emerged back in 2014.
Vlad Shmunis
Founder, CEO, Chairman of RingCentral
Vlad Shmunis founded RingCentral in 1999 and launched RingCentral’s cloud business phone service in 2003. He developed the service based on the need he saw among businesses for an alternative to inflexible and expensive hardware-based phone systems. Since founding RingCentral, Shmunis has led the company in reimagining business communications. Today, the company empowers hundreds of thousands of businesses and their employees to work with unparalleled freedom and in imaginative new ways, via a wide variety of mobile and fixed line devices in traditional as well as dispersed work environments. Shmunis has more than 25 years of industry and management experience. Prior to launching RingCentral, he founded and served as the CEO of Ring Zero Systems, a desktop software communications company. After shipping more than 25 million copies of its Windows software through partnerships with leading PC manufacturers, Ring Zero Systems was acquired by Motorola. Shmunis was named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2011 Northern California Award finalist. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from San Francisco State University, and is a named inventor in a number of U.S. patents.
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About RingCentral: RingCentral, a global distributor of cloud-unified communications and collaboration solutions, offers its users with technology services.
Sahil Gupta
CEO & Co-Founder of Onera
Sahil joined Bain Capital Ventures in 2010. In the summer of 2011, he moved to Silicon Valley to help start Bain Capital Ventures’ Palo Alto office. Sahil is a strong advocate of social content discovery and data-intensive platform services; therefore, he spends most of his energy with early-stage companies in consumer, mobile and social. Prior to joining Bain Capital Ventures, Sahil started Zodah, an Internet startup focused on improving consumer bill management. Zodah was a DogPatch Labs and First Growth Venture Network portfolio company and exited to Hearst Corporation in 2010. Prior to Zodah, Sahil worked as an Associate Consultant at Bain & Company.
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About Onera: Onera is building the Onera Decision Engine—the cognitive operating system that harnesses AI to power the modern commerce supply chain.
Yuval Brisker
Co-founder, President, CEO of TOA Technologies
Yuval is the co-founder of Alviere, a serial entrepreneur and technology visionary. Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of TOA Technologies, the leading global provider of cloud-based field service management software. He successfully lead the company its acquisition by Oracle in 2014.
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About Alviere, TOA Technologies: TOA Technologies provides field service management software for businesses that operate in the field.
Ian Heidt
CEO & Co-founder of Housecall Pro
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About Housecall Pro: Housecall Pro is a developer of a mobile software platform used to connect back-end business operations and homeowners.
Abilash Krishna
Co-founder & CEO of CareStack
Abhi is a visionary entrepreneur who brings a decade of expertise building technology platforms in US healthcare. His business acumen, decision making, and analytical skills are shaping CareStack to be a force in the dental and retail healthcare space.
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About CareStack: CareStack is a practice management platform for dental groups to manage all of their software and daily operations through one platform.
Jorn Lyseggen
Founder & CEO of Meltwater
Jorn Lyseggen, a serial entrepreneur and philanthropist, is the Founder & CEO of Meltwater. Launched in his home country of Norway in 2001 with just a $15,000 investment, Jorn and his team have grown the company to become a global leader in media intelligence. Today, Meltwater has more than 1,500 employees in 55 offices across six continents, with more than 30,000 clients worldwide. Jorn released his first book, Outside Insight: Navigating a World Drowning in Data, in October 2017. The book describes the emergence of a new software category that will leverage insights gleaned from the vast amount of external information available on the web to transform corporate decision-making.
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About Meltwater, Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST): Meltwater is a media Intelligence & social listening tools for measuring, managing and magnifying corporate reputation.
Ivan Novikov
Founder & CEO of Wallarm
Ivan Novikov serves as an advisor at ElectroNeek.
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About Wallarm: End-to-end API Security for the Modern Teams
Shreesha Ramdas
CEO & Co-Founder of Strikedeck
Shreesha’s an entrepreneurial executive with a track record of launching and growing products in competitive markets. He has demonstrated experience as a GM in the areas of product conception and development, growth hacking, go-to-market strategy and execution. Shreesha is currently VP of Corp Dev & Partnerships at CallidusCloud. Shreesha Ramdas was the co-founder & COO at LeadFormix, a marketing automation platform, where he raised the initial funding, built the company and contributed to a successful acquisition by CallidusCloud in January 2012. Prior to LeadFormix, Shreesha was a co-founder of OuterJoin, an online marketing services company and an early member at Yodlee, where he held the role of General Manager of Yodlee’s offshore development center in Bangalore, India.
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About Aavenir, AccuKnox, BuyerAssist.io, Cultivate, Enact Systems, Forbes Communications Council, Fullcast.io, Medallia, Metadata, Promethium, Revv, Rocketlane, Strikedeck: Strikedeck is building a revolutionary Customer Success automation solution to deliver an outstanding customer experience.
Daniel Saks
Founder & Co-CEO & President of AppDirect
Daniel Saks is the Co-CEO of AppDirect, which he founded in 2009 with Nicolas Desmarais. Daniel plays a key role in the growth and development of AppDirect, from attracting a leading team, to nurturing relationships with customers and partners. Daniel’s presentation at the Under the Radar conference in the spring of 2011 resulted in AppDirect winning “Best in Show,” earning coverage in Wall Street Journal. Daniel received a BA in political science from McGill University then studied finance and accounting at Harvard. Prior to AppDirect, Daniel worked at Viant Capital, a boutique tech investment bank. In his free time, Daniel enjoys traveling, attending hockey games, and studying contemporary architecture and impressionist paintings.
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About AppDirect: AppDirect provides an end-to-end cloud commerce platform for both monetizing and managing digital customer relationships.
Nicolas Desmarais
Chairman & Co-CEO of AppDirect
Nicolas founded AppDirect in 2009 with Daniel Saks, and serves as AppDirect’s Chairman and Co-CEO. Nicolas is focused on the evolution of AppDirect’s product, investor relations, and overseeing the implementation of new marketplaces for our channel partners. Before co-founding AppDirect, Nicolas worked at Bain & Company as a management consultant focused on media and business services. Nicolas holds a bachelor’s degree with a double major in economics and political science from Amherst College. In his spare time, Nicolas enjoys outdoor activities and traveling to new countries.
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About AppDirect: AppDirect provides an end-to-end cloud commerce platform for both monetizing and managing digital customer relationships.
Chase Gilbert
Co-Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer of Built Technologies
Chase Gilbert is the CEO at Built Technologies, Inc.
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About Built Technologies: Built Technologies is an enterprise technology company that provides cloud-based construction lending software.
Varun Talwar
Co-founder and CEO of Tetrate
Varun Talwar is the founder and CEO of Tetrate.
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About Tetrate: Tetrate provides enterprise-ready service mesh for all workloads and all environments.
Ruzwana Bashir
Founder & CEO of Peek
Ruzwana Bashir is Co-founder & CEO of Peek.com. She is a travel junkie, having navigated her way through 40 countries. She previously worked at Gilt Groupe, Art.sy, the Blackstone Group and Goldman Sachs. Ruzwana has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was a Fulbright Scholar, and a BA in Economics from Oxford University, where she was President of the Oxford Union.
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About Peek: Peek is a booking software and marketplace for delightful things to do such as wine tours, watersports, skydiving, and art classes.
Jonathan Anderson
Co-Founder & CEO of Candu
Jonathan Anderson is a Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Candu.
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About Candu: Candu is a product experience platform for software teams who want to design, refine, and personalize their application’s user interface.
Samir Diwan
Cofounder/CEO of Polly
CEO/Cofounder at Polly
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About Polly: Polly is a survey platform that makes it simple for anyone to engage with colleagues, capture feedback, and make more data-driven decisions.
Paul Lynch
CEO of Chargify
Paul is considered one of the leading SaaS CEO’s in the global market. Paul has enjoyed enormous success throughout his career in industries spanning Telecoms, Hosting and Software as a Service. In his most recent role, he led Assembla, a then flat Subversion code repository business, to 200% growth over a three year period, successfully exiting the business to HGGC-backed Idera in September 2018.
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About Chargify: Chargify is a subscription billing software service that offers a recurring billing and subscription management space.
Karl Siebrecht
Co-Founder & CEO of Flexe
Karl is a seasoned technology executive, with leadership experience in both startups and large, global corporations. Prior to co-founding FLEXE, Karl was CEO of AdReady, a Seattle-based advertising technology company. He is also a founding Board member of EnergySavvy, a SaaS-based solution for energy efficiency management. Previously, Karl was President of Atlas at aQuantive, before its $6B acquisition by Microsoft, and earlier in his career he was a Manager at Bain & Company in Boston and a Diving Officer in the U.S. Navy.
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About EnergySavvy, Flexe, NetNavy: Flexe delivers omnichannel logistics programs for eCommerce fulfillment, retail distribution, same-day delivery, and network capacity.
Alex Britton
Co-Founder and CEO of Rentroom
Alex Britton is the co-founder and CEO of Rentroom. Prior to founding Rentroom as CEO, Alex worked as a growth product manager at Toast Inc. and Blue Apron. These positions assisted Alex in gaining a strong understanding of B2B and consumer software businesses. He has led software development, go-to-market strategy, and operations teams. Alex holds a B.A. in Entrepreneurship and Computer Science from NYU.
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About Rentroom: Next generation software for property owners and tenants
Howard Lerman
Co-Founder and CEO of Yext
Howard Lerman founded Yext in 2006 with a single goal: to build an impactful, great company with super talented people. Along the way, Yext has re-invented three industries: pay-per-call advertising, business listings synchronization, and today, digital knowledge management. With hundreds of amazingly talented employees serving many of the world’s leading businesses, Yext is on its way to realizing Howard’s original vision. Yext is Howard’s fourth software company. Howard is also Co-Founder and Chairman of Confide, a leading off-the-record messaging service. Howard is a proud graduate of TJHSST and barely graduated from Duke University.
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About Confide, Yext: Yext is a knowledge engine platform that helps brands deliver official answers.
Wendi Sturgis
CEO Europe of Yext
Wendi Sturgis serves as an independent board member at Kustomer.
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About Yext: Yext is a knowledge engine platform that helps brands deliver official answers.
Higinio O. Maycotte
CEO and Co-Founder of Molecula
Higinio is CEO & co-founder at Molecula.
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About Molecula, Pilosa, YPO: Molecula closes the gap between data and decision, enabling organizations to unlock the power of real-time analytics and AI.
Blake Lawrence
CEO and Co-Founder of Opendorse
Blake Lawrence is the CEO and co-founder of Opendorse, the athlete endorsement company. More than 75,000 athletes use Opendorse to understand, build, and monetize their name, image, and likeness (NIL) value. Prior to Opendorse, Blake co-founded Hurrdat, a social media agency, in Lincoln, Nebraska. Over four years, Hurrdat grew from two to twenty-five employees, and was acquired in July 2014 by B2 Interactive. Prior to his journey as an entrepreneur, Blake was a member of the Nebraska football team. Lawrence was a highly recruited linebacker, who started at Linebacker in 2008 and 2009, before his career was cut short due to recurring concussions. Off the football field, Blake earned his marketing degree in just 2.5 years, and received his MBA from Nebraska in 2011.
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About Opendorse: Opendorse operates the leading SaaS-enabled Marketplace in the athlete endorsement industry.
Jon Roskill
CEO of Acumatica
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About Acumatica: Acumatica is a provider of cloud business management software that empowers small and mid-size businesses to unlock their potential.
Nick Hedges
CEO of MomentFeed
A 20-year veteran of the Internet and software as a service (SaaS) industry, Nick comes to MomentFeed having been President and CEO of Velocify, the leading consumer sales acceleration platform. Nick helped orchestrate the successful sale of the company to Velocify partner and leading cloud-based platform provider for the mortgage finance industry, Ellie Mae. A widely recognized thought leader on organization transformation, technologies, and sales strategies, Nick has held senior positions at Bain & Company, Accenture.com, and Ogilvy. He was named one of the 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management. A Fulbright Scholar, Hedges holds an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree with first-class honors from Manchester University.
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About ICE Mortgage Technology, MomentFeed, uberall: MomentFeed is a platform that helps multi-location brands optimize for proximity search in order to connect customers with brands.
Magnus Kongsli Hillestad
CEO & Co-founder of Sanity
Magnus Kongsli Hillestad is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sanity.
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About Sanity: Sanity is a platform for structured content that lets teams build digital experiences.
Osman Koc
Co-Founder & CEO of UserGuiding
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About UserGuiding, YNOT Partners: UserGuiding improves product adoption rates through ‘no coding needed’ interactive user onboarding flows.
Aaron Frazin
Founder and CEO of Detective
Aaron Frazin is the Founder and CEO of Detective.io.
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About Detective: Detective is a digital adoption platform that automates the sales research process.
Fayez Mohamood
Co-founder & CEO of Bluecore
He is the co-founder and CEO of TriggerMail, a marketing automation company that allows eCommerce companies to personalize emails in real-time. Previously, he was Head of Product at BigDoor where He was responsible for concieving, executing and iterating on gamified loyalty and rewards programs to increase user retention across the websites of major global brands like NFL, Dell, Adobe and Starbucks to name a few.He also co-founded Gameday Tycoon, a simple fantasy sports game that runs on Facebook, as well as Sponty which was a service that allowed people to discover music events in town. In a previous life, He was into microprocessor design and simulation. He developed and integrated the first combined Graphics and Processor Memory Controller simulator at AMD to predict and analyze the performance impact of AMD’s Fusion CPUs. his first rookie Master’s publication when He was a student at Georgia Tech was awarded the Best Paper by the prestigious IBM’s TJ Watson Research, and a subsequent publication was adopted by AMD in one of their CPUs even before He finished graduate school. In addition, He also worked on developing graphical frameworks for Simulink and MATLAB at The Mathworks in Boston. He graduated with a Master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech, where He published several papers on high-performance microprocessor design.
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About Bluecore: Bluecore uses predictive intelligence to automatically connect shoppers to products, content, and offers, wherever they are.
Jorge Sun
CEO & Co-Founder of LendingFront
Founding team member and Chief Credit Officer for OnDeck. Most recently, Head of Small Business Credit at Capital One Bank.
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About GATHER & SAVE, LendingFront: Small business lending software platform for banks and other financial institutions
Andreas Rudyk
Co-CEO of Smartfrog & Canary
Andreas is a serial entrepreneur. He founded his first company, the online gaming enabler lionix, at the age of fifteen. He then founded IM Trading, a stock market newsletter publishing business, later acquired by a Swiss private equity firm. Subsequently, Andreas bootstrapped and co-founded ewido networks, a consumer cyber security company. With over 7 million users worldwide, the business scaled rapidly to a category leader and was awarded, “Best newcomer of the year” by Digital River’s ICE. In 2006, ewido merged with AVG Technologies, a leading antivirus and cybersecurity provider where Andreas led business development and later corporate development of the group worldwide. Andreas helped to grow AVG from 40 to over 110 million customers, scaling the team from 100 to 800 employees (including 450 software engineers) and taking the company public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012. Andreas co-founded Smartfrog as a consumer IoT SaaS pioneer in 2014. The company’s mission is making modern technologies useful, easy, affordable and safe—providing IoT for everyone. In 2018, the company acquired the US-based Canary Connect Inc. The two businesses were later merged into Smartfrog & Canary, headquartered in NYC. Andreas leads the group as Co-CEO. To date, the business has raised over $100M in venture funding and has achieved a 2015–2020 CAGR of 322%, becoming one of the fastest-growing category leaders.
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About Canary, Smartfrog & Canary: Smartfrog is a camera that lets users see what’s happening in any place, at any time.
Peter Brodsky
CEO & Co-Founder of Hyperscience
As Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Peter drives the strategy and direction of Hyperscience.
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About Hyperscience, Instinctiv: Hyperscience is a technology company that develops AI-based enterprise software designed to automate office work processes.
Dan Reich
Co-founder, CEO of Troops
Dan has started and been involved with companies that have collectively raised over $100M in venture capital and have exited for close to $1B in M&A, including companies like Buddy Media, Spinback and Lotame.As a result, he has extensive experience in startups, technology, business operations, financing, management, and scaling large teams. He’s a contributing writer for Forbes and Harvard Business Review. In March 2015, Dan co-founded Troops, a venture-backed technology company that gives professionals a mobile sales assistant powered by artificial intelligence. In early 2015 he was also selected to receive an Early Career Award by a vote of the College of Engineering Leadership Council at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. In 2014, Dan co-founded TULA, a health and beauty brand exclusively sold through QVC. He has led the company as active CEO from inception to over $1mm in sales in less than one year. In 2012 Business Insider named him on the top 100 of “one of the coolest people in New York tech.” In 2011 he co-founded Spinback, which was acquired by Buddy Media, which was then acquired by Salesforce.com in 2012, marking New York’s second largest technology acquisition ever. Dan led Spinback as the COO and upon acquisition, led part of Buddy Media’s accounts team, representing $40mm in business. Before Spinback, Dan was an early employee at Lotame leading new business development efforts and helping to grow the business from less than 10 employees and $0 in revenue to 80+ employees and 8 digits of revenue. In college, he co-founded two companies, studied and researched photonics, and was awarded the “Inaugural Accenture Leadership Award” for launching Accenture’s first ever Leadership Center in UW-Madison. In high school, Dan worked for an IT firm specializing in custom networks and systems, built award winning autonomous fire fighting robots, wrestled, played soccer, and joined the Mount Snow Ski Patrol as the youngest patroller nationwide.
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About Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), Forbes, Spinback, Troops, TULA: Troops provides a Salesforce automation platform used to improve sales velocity, forecast, visibility, and collaboration.
Andy MacMillan
CEO of UserTesting
Andy is Chief Executive Officer of UserTesting and oversees the strategic direction of the company. Prior to joining UserTesting he was CEO of Act-On Software. Andy also held several senior leadership positions at Salesforce, including Chief Operating Officer of the Products Division and Senior Vice President & General Manager of Data.com. In both these roles he helped significantly grow customer adoption of Salesforce products and services. Prior to Salesforce, Andy was Vice President of Product Management at Oracle and Vice President of Product Marketing at Stellent (acquired by Oracle). He started his career as a software developer at EDS. Andy holds a B.A. from Michigan State University and an M.B.A. from the University of Edinburgh (Scotland).
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About UserTesting: UserTesting is an on-demand human insight platform designed to improve customer insights.
Jennifer Bisceglie
Founder and CEO of Interos
Jennifer Bisceglie is the President and CEO of Interos Solutions, Inc. and Vigillence Inc., which are vendor and supply chain risk management (SCRM) companies that serve the US public, and global commercial, sectors. Interos is a leading provider of cyber security solutions and supply chain risk reduction to the Federal Government. Named the AT&T Innovator of the Year for its Global Threat Information Center (GTIC) ™ launched in 2015, Interos is renowned for its expertise in cyber security, supply chain risk management (SCRM) and network security. As such, Jennifer is a sought after expert on the impact of cyber risk and supply chain risk on US and global economies. Leveraging more than 20 years of experience in managing and mitigating risks in supply chains, Jennifer launched Vigillence in 2016, as the world’s leading supply chain risk research and advisory company. Vigillence provides a big data and analytics platform to proactively reduce supply chain threats for its global commercial clients by identifying risks based on each customer’s unique operational requirements and third-party partnerships. Vigillence partners with its customers to define their risk assessment posture based on organizational vulnerabilities related to supply chain vendors, partners and service providers; benchmark current risk profiles and provide “what if” scenario analyses; and provide its clients’ Boards, senior leadership and business managers with the knowledge required to make informed decisions on acceptable vendor risk exposure and how to allocate resources to mitigate it.
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About Interos: Interos helps companies manage risk and continuously monitor their supply chain and business relationships to avoid disruptions.
Steve Sloan
CEO of Contentful
Steve is responsible for Marketo’s long-term product roadmap, corporate strategy and partner ecosystem. Previously he led our product and engineering teams. He joined Marketo from Amazon Web Services, where he led product management for one of AWS’s emerging services and helped open the Silicon Valley development center. Prior to Amazon, Steve led product management for a range of products at Microsoft including Office 365, Exchange, Windows Azure and BizTalk. Steve also led various efforts at the XML and Web Services security startup Reactivity prior to its acquisition by Cisco. Steve holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
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About Contentful, SendGrid: Contentful offers a headless content management system that helps organizations deliver content across channels.
Todd Olson
CEO & Founder of Pendo
Todd Olson is co-founder and CEO of Pendo, a product experience platform that helps product teams create software customers love. A three-time entrepreneur, Todd has experienced the highs and lows of running fast-growth technology companies. A proficient coder by age 14, he spent his teen years working as a database designer and software architect for MBNA Bank in Delaware. By graduation from Carnegie Mellon University, he’d invented a data integration product, co-founded Cerebellum Software, and raised seed capital. Cerebellum went on to raise $17 million in institutional capital and hire 65 people, only to shut down when funding dried up during the dotcom era. A role as vice president of product development at TogetherSoft brought Todd to Raleigh, where he eventually started 6th Sense Analytics, which he sold to Rally Software. The inspiration for Pendo came as Todd led the product team at Rally. With no product usage data available, he struggled to decide which of the dozens of feature requests that hit his desk each week were worth the investment of time and capital. After Rally’s IPO, he teamed up with fellow product leaders and technologists from Red Hat, Cisco and Google to launch Pendo in October 2013. The company has since raised $56 million in venture capital, landed more than 500 customers and now employs 170 people across offices in Raleigh, San Francisco, New York and Yakum, Israel. It was named a Top 50 U.S. Startup by LinkedIn in 2017. Todd prides himself on his product background, and the knowledge, experience and empathy it lends to customers of Pendo. He frequently speaks at industry events on topics like Agile software development, product management, startup fundraising and entrepreneurship. Outside of work, Todd is typically enjoying life in Raleigh with his wife and four children, aged 1 to 21. He also loves to bake, especially cakes.
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About Pendo: Pendo is a product-analytics app that helps software companies develop products that resonate with customers.
Thomas Siebel
CEO of C3 AI
Tom Siebel is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of C3.ai. He was the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Siebel Systems, which merged with Oracle Corporation in January 2006. Founded in 1993, Siebel Systems became a leader in application software with more than 8,000 employees in 32 countries, over 4,500 corporate customers, and annual revenue in excess of $2 billion.
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About C3 AI: C3 AI is a provider of Enterprise AI software for accelerating digital transformation.
Jay Larson
Chief Executive Officer of Optimizely
Jay Larson is Optimizely’s CEO. Previously, Jay worked as chief executive officer of Birst. Jay holds a BA degree from Harvard University and an MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles.
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About Optimizely: Optimizely is a platform that provides digital experience solutions.
Don Kingsborough
CEO&Founder of OneMarket
Don has been a serial entrepreneur for 30+ years and is Managing Director GM/VP Payments & Ventures at Capital One. He was formerly Head of Retail at PayPal, CEO of Worlds of Wonder and President of Atari. He was also the Founder and former CEO of Blackhawk Network. Don lives in Silicon Valley and likes to vacation in Hawaii.
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About OneMarket: OneMarket offers customer data management and activation that empowers mid-sized and emerging retailers to acquire new customers.
David Politis
Founder and CEO of BetterCloud
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About BetterCloud: The SaaS Operations leader: Transform employee experience, centralize data protection, and maximize operational efficiency.
Joseph Quan
CEOa and Founder of Knoetic
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About CPOHQ, Knoetic, Twine: Knoetic is the all-in-one platform built for Chief People Officers. Powerful people analytics & the world’s #1 CPO community (CPOHQ).
Jay Fulcher
Chairman & CEO of Zenefits
Jay is Chairman & CEO at Zenefits, a leading cloud HCM & Benefits platform focused on providing comprehensive HR, Performance, Benefits, Payroll, Time and Compliance solutions for SMB and mid-market companies. Zenefits has more than 11,000 customers across the US and leverages an impressive list of marketplace partners including Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, Slack, Uber, Asana plus dozens of others. Zenefits is an acknowledged disruptive and innovative force for helping to facilitate the changing nature of work and helping to level the playing field for SMB companies. Jay’s CEO experience includes both public and private technology companies (Zenefits, Agile, Ooyala). After its IPO in 1999, Agile was acquired by Oracle in 2007. Ooyala was acquired by Telstra in 2015. Before his years as a CEO, Jay served in senior executive roles at PeopleSoft, Red Pepper and SAP. Jay is an advisor to and investor in a broad portfolio of tech companies focused on media, enterprise, education, retail, and healthcare. Over the last 20+ years Jay has served as a director at more than a dozen public and private companies. Jay is currently an advisor at iSport360, Momentum Partners, League Network and San Jose State University’s Lucas Graduate School and College of Business. He currently sits on the boards of Zenefits, AirPR and Splice Machine.
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About Zenefits: Zenefits delivers a complete, all-mobile HR experience for small and medium businesses.
Vijay Tella
CEO & Co‑Founder of Workato
Vijay has led creation of market leading integration technologies for over 25 years. Prior to Workato, he was the CEO of Qik, a consumer video communications company acquired by Skype. Before Qik, he helped create two multi-billion dollar integration products. He was part of the team that created world’s first middleware platform, TIB (The Information Bus) at Teknekron Software Systems, which was acquired by Reuters Plc, in 1994. He was also on the founding team and SVP, Engineering of TIBCO through its IPO. As Chief Strategy Officer, he then helped launch Oracle’s Fusion Middleware platform in 2005.
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About Workato: Workato is an enterprise automation platform that helps organizations work faster and smarter without compromising governance and security.
Bryan Mahoney
Co-Founder, CEO of Chord
Bryan started his career in Montreal, pursuing a degree in Finance and Entrepreneurship at McGill University. In 1998, during his sophomore year, he founded Dynamo, a digital design studio that would later become his full-time job with a team of thirty-five. Over the course of 15 years, Dynamo established itself as a go-to partner for venture-backed startups in the e-commerce space, including brands like Blue Bottle Coffee, Samsung, the Honest Company, and Glossier. After Glossier launched in 2014, Bryan was tasked with helping the New York-based company build out their own in-house tech team. He ended up taking on the job himself and now serves as their Chief Technology Officer. At Glossier, Bryan’s focus has shifted to overseeing an international team of developers and data analysts as they work to create a forward-thinking experience for customers and build a technology infrastructure from the ground up. He lives with his wife and daughter in New York City.
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About Chord: Chord offers a commerce-as-a-service software that provides businesses with technology and products to access meaningful data.
Ashish Bahl
Founder & CEO of KyckGlobal
Ashish Bahl is a proven FinTech entrepreneur who has founded, grown, and monetized significant ventures in the eInvoicing, debit routing, eCommerce, and home banking industries. Ashish’s current company, KyckGlobal, is a powerful SaaS-based payments platform that enables companies of all sizes to pay employees, contractors, and customers through more than a dozen payment types. Ashish holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Electrical Engineering from Vanderbilt University and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University.
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About KyckGlobal: SaaS firm with a cloud-based platform featuring 15 integrated payment methods to streamline overhead and optimize the payee experience.
Scott McFarlane
Founder & CEO of Avalara
Scott co-founded Avalara in 2004 and today is responsible for the vision and strategic direction of the company. He has a long history of advancing ideas that shake up the status quo, going back to his college days when he partnered with his roommate to launch Lifecycle, the most popular computerized exercise bike of all time. Since then Scott oversaw development for AIRCOA, the largest independent hotel company in the U.S., and he has led and developed several companies including MetaInfo, a pioneering internet software firm that was ultimately acquired by Check Point.
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About Avalara: Avalara develops a platform that automates the major steps of tax compliance, all in the cloud.
Daniel Michaeli
Founder & CEO of Glia
Dan Michaeli is the CEO and Co-Founder of SaleMove, where he is responsible for everyday strategy and shaping business direction. A proponent for customer-centricity, Dan is the driving force behind SaleMove’s mission to meet or exceed the in-person customer experience online. Prior to SaleMove, he served as a consultant working with several top enterprises on pricing strategy. Dan is originally from Guatemala and is a proud graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
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About Glia: Glia is a digital customer service provider connecting online retailers with customers through voice, video, and collaborative browsing.
Spenser Skates
CEO and Founder of Amplitude
Spenser Skates is the CEO and Co-Founder of Amplitude.
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About Amplitude: Amplitude is a product intelligence platform that provides digital product tools that help teams run and grow their businesses.
Randy Chou
Founder and CEO of Nubeva
Randy Chou is the Founder and CEO of Nubeva. Randy’s experience spans 15 years of technical and management leadership in the security, networking, and application acceleration fields. Prior to co-founding Panzura, Randy was a member of the founding software team at Aruba Networks, where he managed the architecture and development of the company’s security software. The combination of his technical expertise and business acumen helped Aruba become the leader in the enterprise Wi-Fi security market. Prior to Aruba Networks, Randy led the development of SSL security and load balancing software at Alteon WebSystems. Randy holds a degree in computer science from UC Berkeley.
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About Nubeva: Nubeva is a cloud security software company that provides decryption solution for real-time, historical or on-demand decryption.
Jett McCandless
Co-Founder and CEO of project44
Jett McCandless is Founder and CEO of project44.
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About project44: Project44 is a logistics technology company that provides a visibility solution to span the entire shipment workflow.
Ryan Chan
Founder and CEO of UpKeep
Founder @CEO at UpKeep. Angel Investor
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About UpKeep: UpKeep is a platform developed for technicians and maintenance workers that provides them with a computerized maintenance management system.
Max Paltsev
CEO & Founder of Service Fusion
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About Service Fusion: Service Fusion provides a suite of management software applications to HVAC, plumbing, electrical, IT and many other service businesses.
Alex Alpert
Founder & CEO of Shyft
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About NFX, Shyft: Shyft transforms the moving and relocation industry by introducing technology, customer service, and lead management solutions.
Athena Karp
CEO & Founder of HiredScore
Athena Karp is the founder and CEO of HiredScore, an artificial intelligence HR technology company that powers the global Fortune 500. HiredScore leverages the power of data science and machine learning to deliver deep hiring efficiencies, enhance talent mobility, and help organizations adapt for the future of work. HiredScore has won best-in-class industry recognition for delivering business value and transformation in the HR industry. Prior to founding HiredScore, Athena was an investor in New York, most recently at Altaris Capital, where she managed and sourced healthcare investments in highly regulated data environments. Previously, she was an Investment Banker at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, focused on public technology and media companies. Athena is a member of the technology advisory board of Belmont Charter Network schools, and founder and board member of Belmont Sprouts, which builds urban gardens and healthy eating experiences. She formerly served on the board of the Community Education Alliance of West Philadelphia, a network of charter schools with over 1,000 disadvantaged students, focused on preparing youth for the workforce and a successful life. She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers. Athena holds a BSFS in international politics from Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service. She is also actively involved in rebuilding West Philadelphia and creating a sustainable model for poverty alleviation through various boards and initiatives.
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About HiredScore: HiredScore is an artificial intelligence HR technology company that powers the global Fortune 500
Brad Brooks
Co-Founder, CEO of TigerConnect
Brad is the Co-Founder and CEO of TigerConnect and a Co-Founder of Whisper. He previously ran DIC Entertainment as President for 6 years after working for Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette as an Investment Banker. After acquiring the company with Bain Capital from the Walt Disney Company in 2000, he helped grow the company from less than $10mm of revenues to over $80mm in 2005 when he took the company public on the London Stock Exchange at a $200mm valuation. Brad received his BA from UC Berkeley and an MBA from the University of Chicago.
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About TigerConnect, Whisper: TigerConnect is a healthcare collaboration platform that streamlines clinical workflows and systems.
Peter Clark
Co-Founder & CEO of Journey
Peter Clark is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Our Journey Software.
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About Journey, Our Software Journey: Journey provides a sales platform that enables users to engage, close, and onboard customers in one link.
Mehdi Maghsoodnia
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of 1Health
Mr. Maghsoodnia is currently serving as CEO of 1Health.io and Vitagene. He is also on the board of SpineZone and MedCorder. He previously served as CEO of Rafter, BookRenter.com, SVP of products at CafePress, COO at Actiance and SVP at Intellisync. Mr. Maghsoodnia is a industry fellow at UC Berkeley where he teaches innovation and entrepreneurship. He studies EECS in UCB and Stanford with an emphasis in AI and Machine learning.
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About 1Health: 1health’s Testing as a Service (TaaS) Solution empowers precision testing and end-to-end process management in one simple, scalable tool.
Puneet Mehta
Founder / CEO of Netomi
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About Netomi: An AI-first customer service platform that enables companies to deliver the highest quality customer experiences.
Surbhi Rathore
CEO & Co-Founder of Symbl.ai
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About Symbl.ai, Women in AI: Symbl.ai is an early-stage, venture-backed startup that is democratizing access to conversational intelligence for developers.
Eric Schmidt
Co-Founder and CEO of Glue Up
As a leader in the global tech industry, Eric is focused on developing customer-centric products and transforming the way professional communities build and enrich relationships. He has incubated multiple tech startups within the software, mobile, and environmental industries, and has worked with venture capital and private equity investments in the United States and China. He also founded China Entrepreneurs — a community he built into a 20,000+ member network. Eric is an elected member of AmCham China’s Board of Governors. In 2004, sponsored by Nike and Phillips, he traced Marco Polo’s route, cycling 100 days from Beijing, China to Venice, Italy. Eric holds an M.S. and a B.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and has been featured in media such as the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Barron’s, CCTV, China Daily, and numerous other outlets.
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About Glue Up: Glue Up is an all-in-one engagement management CRM for associations, chambers of commerce, event organizers and marketing professionals.
Bradley Keywell
Chief Executive Officer of Uptake Technologies
Brad Keywell is a lifelong entrepreneur and co-founder of seven technology companies, a cultural curator of innovation platforms, and a philanthropist. He is the co-founder and CEO of Uptake Technologies, an Industrial AI software platform harnessing predictive analytics to deliver outcomes of increased productivity, reliability, safety, and cybersecurity to global industry. Uptake was named “Startup of the Year” in 2015 by Forbes, was #5 in the 2017 CNBC Disruptor 50, and was named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. Brad is a co-founder of Tempus, Groupon (NASDAQ:GRPN), Echo Global Logistics (NASDAQ:ECHO), MediaOcean, Drivin (acquired by NYSE:KAR), and the venture capital firm Lightbank. He is on the Board of Trustees of Equity Residential (NYSE:EQR). He is the founder and Chairman of Chicago Ideas, which has grown into one of the largest innovation and ideas gatherings in the world. He is the Chairman of Future Founders Foundation, providing entrepreneurial education to inner-city students in the Chicagoland area. Brad is an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He earned a J.D. at the University of Michigan Law School and a BBA from the University of Michigan School of Business. Brad and his wife, Kim, signed The Giving Pledge in 2016.
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About Chicago Ideas Week, Drivin, Echo Global Logistics, Groupon, Groupon Netherlands, Lightbank, Mediaocean, Uptake Technologies, Zest Health: Uptake Technologies designs and develops enterprise software.
Kayne Grau
Chief Executive Officer of Uptake Technologies
I am in my dream job and serving as CEO and Board DIrector of Uptake. While working with an amazing team, I am refining the company’s products, expanding its global footprint and developing/nurturing a high performing work environment. Previously, I served in various senior executive functions with KAR Global (NYSE: KAR), the acquirer of DRIVIN, a company I co-founded and served as CEO until April 2017. Prior to KAR, I held senior management roles with Music Dealers, Apartments.com, Cars.com, eToys.com, and Allstate. In my free time, I assist various companies as a board member, advisor, and investor.
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About Uptake Technologies: Uptake Technologies designs and develops enterprise software.
Oz Alon
Co-Founder and CEO of HoneyBook
Oz Alon is Co-Founder & CEO at HoneyBook.
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About HoneyBook: HoneyBook is a business management platform creating tools to help creative entrepreneurs run their business on their own terms.
Stephan Schambach
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of NewStore
Stephan is a serial entrepreneur with a proven track record of creating and growing successful tech companies in the United States and Europe. Under his leadership and vision, he brought Intershop and Demandware to IPOs with multi-billion dollar market caps. As Founder and Chief Executive Officer of NewStore, Stephan is setting out to change the market once again. This time by solving the omnichannel problem facing so many retailers and brands. He has won numerous awards around the world for his technology and entrepreneurial leadership. He is also an investor in several software and green-tech startups.
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About NewStore: NewStore operates a platform for retailers to run their stores on the iPhone.
David Sipes
Chief Executive Officer of 8×8
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About 8×8: 8×8 offers secure and reliable cloud-based, enterprise-class business phone systems, unified communications, and contact center solutions.
Jesse Leimgruber
Co-Founder & CEO of NeoReach
Jesse is a Stanford Alumni, co-founder of NeoReach and Bloom, Thiel Fellow, and angel investor in a dozen startups. Jesse is a partner at the Alchemist Accelerator, mentor at European Innovation Academy. He frequently guest lectures classes at Stanford University and USC.
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About Alchemist Accelerator, Bloom, Bloom, Clash, NeoReach, Rank Executives: Influencer Marketing For Big Brands
Will Laufer
Founder and CEO of Prelude
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Will spent two years leading go-to-market strategy for ePals (School Division), where he guided the business development of a new social LMS. He then became the first sales employee at Clever, where he drives enterprise partnerships with digital learning providers. He’s passionate about building sales teams and employing creative models for scaling innovative products in education.
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About Prelude: Prelude provides a platform designed to streamline recruiting operations.
Pankaj Srivastava
CEO of MentorCloud
Pankaj is a change catalyst and believes in building products that help overcome genuine human problems. A proven marketing and operations leader, Pankaj excels at building global technology brands through product, marketing and go-to-market strategy development and execution. He turns visionary instinct into reality in his dual role as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at FigLeaf, a privacy-first company built on the premise that when privacy is a choice, humanity is free. With a contagious passion, Pankaj balances strategy, technology, analytics and customer experience to deliver highly innovative products and services at global scale. Prior to FigLeaf, Pankaj led the turnaround of an online consumer security company, and led global consumer marketing for McAfee, where he helped launch one of the world’s first SaaS businesses, built a team from five to 130 people, managed 600+ partners, and grew revenues from less than $100M to more than $500M. Pankaj serves as a board member of ZEO Alliance and ROI Mantra Inc., and is an active startup mentor, where his experience pairs with new founders’ creative energy to translate vision into practical, bottom-line results.
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About MentorCloud, PracticalSpeak: MentorCloud is a cloud-based mentoring platform for enterprises to accelerate digital transformation, employee engagement and retention.
Mario Ciabarra
Founder & CEO of Quantum Metric
In 2015, Mario founded Quantum Metric to help organizations align with a single version of customer-defined and quantified truth. Previously founding and exiting an APM startup which solved where enterprise applications could be improved, Mario saw the natural next step was expanding organizational alignment around the entire product lifecycle.
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About Quantum Metric: Quantum Metric is a continuous product design platform that helps organizations build better products faster.
Alok Chanani
Co-Founder & CEO of BuildOps
Alok Chanani has been serving as Chief Executive Officer at BuildOps since 2018.
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About BuildOps: Industry leading all-in-one software solution for subcontractors driving profitability through best-in-class technology
Charlie Piper
CEO of Connexeo
Charlie is responsible for driving the company’s strategy and leading our world-class team. Prior to joining YottaMark, Piper was CEO of Prommis Solutions (acquired by 4 law firms), was previously CEO of ePay and DVDPlay, Inc. (acquired by NCR), SVP Operations of Blackhawk Network, Inc., and VP of Corporate Retail Operations of Safeway, Inc. He spent the first 20 years of his career holding a wide variety of roles in grocery retail management, and earned an MBA from Regis University. Charlie is an avid cyclist, outdoor sportsman, and diver.
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About Connexeo, YottaMark: A global software-as-a-service platform serving education & community organization.
