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 Founder operating in the Apps space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.us.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
James Park
CEO and Co-Founder of Fitbit
James is our Co-founder and has served as our Chairman since May 2015, as a member of our board of directors since March 2007, and as our President and CEO since September 2007. Previously, James served as a Director of Product Development at CNET Networks, as the President and a Co-founder of Wind-Up Labs, Inc. (an online photo-sharing company acquired by CNET Networks in April 2005). He was also CTO and Co-Founder of Epesi Technologies, Inc., a software company. James attended Harvard College where he studied Computer Science. He was selected to serve as a member of our board of directors due to the perspective and experience he brings as our Co-Founder, President, and CEO.
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About Fitbit: Fitbit offers compact, wireless, wearable sensors that track a person’s daily activities in order to promote a healthy lifestyle.
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Eric Friedman
Co-Founder & CTO of Fitbit
Eric is our Co-Founder and has served as a member of our board of directors since March 2007, and most recently as our CTO. Previously, Eric served as an Engineer Manager at CNET Networks, as a Co-Founder of Wind-Up Labs, a founding engineer of Epesi Technologies, and a technical member of the Real-Time Collaboration Group at Microsoft Corporation. Eric holds a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from Yale University. He was selected to serve as a member of our board of directors due to the perspective and experience he brings as our Co-Founder and CTO.
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About Fitbit: Fitbit offers compact, wireless, wearable sensors that track a person’s daily activities in order to promote a healthy lifestyle.
Guillermo Rauch
CEO & Founder of Vercel
Before starting ZEIT in November 2015, Guillermo was the CTO and co-founder of LearnBoost and Cloudup, acquired by Automattic in 2013. He’s the creator of several popular Node.JS open source libraries like socket.io, mongoose and slackin. Prior to Node.JS, he was a core developer of the MooTools frontend toolkit.
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About Vercel: Vercel is a platform that enables users to develop, preview, and ship Jamstack sites.
Itai Tsiddon
Co-Founder of Lightricks
Itai Tsiddon was one of the 5 co-founders at Lightricks, an Israeli unicorn. He leads two deals a year, broadly ranging from 6-60m in size (early A to Pre IPO). Itai serves as a board member at Lightricks, Frame.io, Homesome, and Standard Bots and led Forter’s Series E pre IPO fundraise with Bessemer and Felix capital joining his TS as a solo capitalist.
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About Lightricks: Lightricks develops creativity tools that enable its users to craft and share visual content on mobile devices.
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
Laurent Perrin
CTO and Co-Founder of Front
Laurent Perrin is the CTO and co-founder at 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
Suhail Doshi
Founder of Mightyapp
Founder at Mighty.
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About Mightyapp: Mighty makes Google Chrome faster & use 10x less memory.
Christopher Cheung
Co-Founder of Boxed
Chris is a Co-Founder at Boxed; an mobile commerce startup focusing on delivering wholesale goods at wholesale prices for smartphones and tablets, as well as a co-founder and managing partner at Blackgate Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in leading-edge, early-stage technology and mobile companies. Prior to forming Boxed and Blackgate Ventures, Chris was Director of Game Design at social gaming giant Zynga and former Co-Founder at Astro Ape SGS (which was subsequently acquired by Zynga). Before pursing his entrepreneurial passions, he worked at a number of Fortune 500 companies in a variety of roles, but most recently at Goldman Sachs, before leaving to pursuing social gaming. Since he never sleeps, he has also pursued side businesses ranging from Korean fashion imports, eBay stores, print-on-demand apparel and web design services; all while maintaining his day job. Chris earned his Bachelor’s of Economics from The Johns Hopkins University. Currently in semi-retirement, his main interest is financing companies that may one day grant him immortality.
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About Blackgate Ventures, Boxed: Boxed is an online bulk grocery retailer used to offer wholesale club experience for modern shoppers.
William Fong
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer of Boxed
William Fong joined Boxed as CTO in 2013. Having developed an early love of programming, William has been coding since the age of 9. Prior to Blackgate Ventures, William was Co-Founder and CTO of Astro Ape Studios before being acquired by Zynga and becoming CTO of Zynga Mobile NY. William holds a Bachelors of Computer Science from Rutgers University.
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About Blackgate Ventures, Boxed: Boxed is an online bulk grocery retailer used to offer wholesale club experience for modern shoppers.
Jared Yaman
Co-Founder, COO of Boxed
Prior to Blackgate Ventures, Jared was a corporate attorney at Proskauer before becoming a Co-Founder at Astro Ape Studios. Most recently, he was made upper level management at Zynga Mobile NY where he oversaw high profile mobile properties. Jared holds a J.D. from Fordham University and a Bachelor’s in Economics and Business from Michigan State University. Unbeknownst to most, Jared is actually Troy Aikman’s younger, stronger, better looking brother.
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About Blackgate Ventures, Boxed: Boxed is an online bulk grocery retailer used to offer wholesale club experience for modern shoppers.
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.
Rohan Seth
Co-Founder of Clubhouse
Rohan Seth is the Co-founder at Clubhouse and Lydian Accelerator.
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About Clubhouse, Clubhouse, Lydian Accelerator: Clubhouse is an audio-based social app that allows users to spontaneously join group chats.
Scott Banister
Founder of IRL
Scott is an American entrepreneur and angel investor. He is best known as a co-founder of IronPort and an early advisor and board member at PayPal. Scott Banister started his career as a pioneer in the email business. He was Founder and VP of Technology at ListBot, the largest ASP for business email list hosting. ListBot was acquired by Microsoft. After ListBot, Scott spent his time working with other start-ups as a board member and investor. These start-ups include eVoice, creator of the first email-enabled home voicemail service, which was acquired by AOL in 2001. He served as VP of Ideas at idealab!, where he contributed numerous innovations, including the unique bid-for-placement search engine model that powers Overture. In December 2000, with Scott Weiss, Banister co-founded IronPort, an email appliance provider that was acquired in 2007 by Cisco for US$830 million. Scott Banister is co-founder and Chairman of [Zivity](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/zivity), a social networking site co-founded with his wife, [Cyan Banister](http://www.crunchbase.com/person/cyan-banister). He was an early investor in [Powerset](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/powerset), a startup building a natural language search engine, and sits on the company’s Board of Directors. He also sits on the Board of Directors for Slide, a start-up founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin. Other private equity investments include Zappos.com, LiveOps, Facebook, Hi5.com, Tagged.com, iLike, and Causes.com. Banister attended University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, from which he dropped out in 1996 to move to Silicon Valley. He currently lives in Half Moon Bay, California with his wife Cyan.
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About IRL: Groups, Chats, Events
Abraham Shafi
Founder and CEO of IRL
Abe attended UC Berkeley and studied the intersection of computer engineering, business, cultural anthropology and sociology before starting his first company, getTalent, a highly acclaimed social recruiting platform, prompting him to leave school. The platform was born of out a personal experience while job hunting and realizing there was improvements to be made with the resume-sorting process. The platform leveraged data science to take away the biases from the hiring process, thus helping organizations hire the best talent. getTalent had global clients including Walmart, JetBlue and Viacom, and was later sold to Dice in 2013. In 2018, Abe founded IRL because he was personally driven to build an app that would bring people together. He found his addiction to social media was related to his own depression and left him close to quitting social media all together. This propelled him to make a social product that could help people feel connected in a way that felt healthier and less addictive. Since inception, the app has brought friends together over 600M times. IRL has eleven employees and is based in San Francisco, California. In Abe’s spare time, he likes playing piano and composing music. Currently, he is most interested in merging electronic music with classical leveraging deep folkloric music from around the world, blending with archeologic tunes of humankind’s musical history.
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About IRL: Groups, Chats, Events
Henry Khachatryan
Co-Founder of IRL
Henry Khachatryan is the Co-Founder of IRL App. He is a former Co-Founder of Sponge. Mr. Khachatryan graduated from Boston College with a BS in Finance & Information Systems.
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About IRL: Groups, Chats, Events
Oleg Tscheltzoff
Co-Founder & CEO of Fotolia
Oleg Tscheltzoff is Co-Founder & CEO at Fotolia. Oleg Tscheltzoff is the Investor of LOTS18. Oleg Tscheltzoff is one of the top serial internet entrepreneurs but also a successful angel investor with over 30 investments, board member, serious innovator, provocateur, disruptor, and connector. As an entrepreneur, Oleg has leveraged a global vision and knowledge of international business, management and marketing to develop successful online businesses. In 2004 Oleg co-founded Fotolia.com, the first global online social marketplace for creative digital stock images. As president, he led the company to the world’s largest microstock photography site. Prior to Fotolia, Oleg co-founded Amen, the leading Internet hosting company in France, which was sold in 2004 to Vianetworks (NASDAC Symbol VNWIE).
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About 90 Seconds, Aircall, Birchbox, Bird, Calm, Carta, Customer.io, Dealroom.co, Doctrine, eFounders, Farfetch, Fotolia, Molotov TV, Opendoor, PandaDoc, PayFit, Robinhood, SimpliField, StarOfService, Stash Financial, talent.io, Tempow, WeWork: Fotolia is an image bank that offers a crowdsourced library, which includes royalty-free images, vectors, illustrations and video clips.
Ari Ojalvo
Co-Founder and CEO of REEF
Ari Ojalvo is the Co-Founder and CEO at REEF Technology.
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About REEF, Thesis Ventures: REEF Technology is a company that transforms urban real estate such as parking facilities into thriving mobility and logistical hubs.
Philippe Saint-Just
Co-Founder and SVP of Product of REEF
Philippe Saint-Just is a Co-Founder and SVP of Product at REEF Technology.
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About REEF: REEF Technology is a company that transforms urban real estate such as parking facilities into thriving mobility and logistical hubs.
Whitney Wolfe Herd
Founder & CEO of Bumble
Whitney Wolfe Herd is the CEO + Founder of Bumble, a global group that builds and operates leading dating and social networking apps including Badoo, the first free dating site with over 500 million users worldwide, and Bumble, the women-first social networking platform with over 100 million users globally. In 2014, Wolfe Herd launched Bumble as the only connection platform where women make the first move and control the interaction. As the company has grown, Wolfe Herd has executed upon her vision of making Bumble the first social network where women make the first move to create empowered connections across all areas of life. The company launched Bumble BFF in 2016 as a friend-finding feature and launched Bumble Bizz for professional networking in 2017. In five years, her vision has led to Bumble’s growth of over 100 million users worldwide in 150 countries. In January 2020, Wolfe Herd welcomed Blackstone as Bumble’s new majority owner with a shared vision of growth for Badoo and Bumble. Prior to Bumble, Whitney Wolfe Herd co-founded Tinder, where she served as the Vice President of Marketing. In 2018, Wolfe Herd was named to TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, Forbes “30 Under 30” list, the Bloomberg 50 and InStyle’s 50 Women Who Are Changing the World. Wolfe Herd was also recently on the cover of Fast Company, Forbes and WIRED magazines.
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About Bumble: Bumble is an app that brings dating, friend-finding, and career-building into a single social networking platform.
Kevin Chou
Founder of Rally
Kevin Chou is co-founder and CEO of Kabam, a world leader in AAA mobile free-to-play games. Kevin is an entrepreneur who has guided Kabam’s explosive growth, which started with a handful of people working above a dim sum restaurant and catapulted to $400 million in revenue, sustained profitability, and a valuation of more than $1 billion in 2014. Since co-founding a company in 2006 that became Kabam in 2009, Kevin has led the disruption of the video game industry by revolutionizing the way players access and pay for games. He has secured partnerships with leading game platforms, as well as with Hollywood studio giants such as Disney, Lionsgate, MGM, NBCUniversal, Paramount and Warner Brothers for games based on some of the world’s most beloved movie franchises. Under Kevin’s leadership, Kabam has raised more than $240 million from venture and strategic investors, including some of the world’s largest entertainment and internet companies such as Alibaba, Google, Intel and Warner Brothers. Before co-founding Kabam, Kevin worked at the global venture capital firm Canaan Partners, which is Kabam’s initial investor and where he invested in 14 consumer technology and online media companies. Earlier, Kevin advised public technology companies on M&A and corporate finance as part of Deutsche Bank’s technology investment banking practice. Kevin graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley with a BS in Business Administration. At UC Berkeley, Kevin was admitted to the inaugural class of Gates Millennium Scholars. In 2014 Kevin was named one Fortune magazine’s prestigious “40 Under 40” and, in 2012, was identified by Fortune as one of the “Smartest People in Tech.” The Los Angeles Times called Kevin “absurdly accomplished.”
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About Aftershock, Forte, Gen.G Esports, LUMA Capital Partners, Rally: Rally provides a blockchain platform for the development of video streaming and gaming apps.
Mahesh Vellanki
Co-Founder & VP, Growth of Rally
Mahesh Vellanki is an Associate with Redpoint Ventures where he focuses on early-growth investment opportunities in the internet, digital media, mobile, e-commerce, gaming and online education sectors. Prior to joining Redpoint, Mahesh was an Analyst in the technology investment banking division of Citigroup where he focused on internet, digital media, software, hardware and semiconductor companies. He advised a variety of clients on equity and debt financings, as well as strategic business development, M&A and LBO transactions. At Citigroup, Mahesh worked with companies such as Zillow, Groupon, AutoTrader, Synacor and Equinix. Mahesh earned a bachelor’s degree in Finance with honors from the University of Maryland.
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About Rally: Rally provides a blockchain platform for the development of video streaming and gaming apps.
Toby Sun
Co-Founder and CEO of Lime
Toby Sun is the CEO and Co-founder of Lime, the leading global micromobility company that has revolutionized the first and last-mile transportation challenge. Lime has raised $777 million and is backed by world-leading investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, GGV, IDG, DCM, Franklin Templeton, Section 32, AME Cloud Ventures, Stanford Start-X, Kevin Durant, etc. Prior to Lime (formerly LimeBike), Toby was an investment director at Fosun Kinzon Capital, a $400M US-China cross-border venture fund backed by Fosun Group, focusing on early and growth-stage investment in consumer internet and IoT space. Toby invested in Tapingo, Grubmarket, Usens, Ding’Ding Smart Lock, and was involved in the board duties. Prior to Fosun, Toby was a Product and Marketing Manager at PepsiCo and managed a large US-China cross-border team, where he launched Gatorade in China and managed 7UP ($300M annual sales). Toby also worked as a management consultant at Monitor Group and Deloitte Consulting’s San Francisco office. Toby holds an MBA from Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley, and is a frequent guest speaker.
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About Lime, Lime: Lime helps people move around their cities in an affordable and convenient way while eliminating their carbon footprint.
Yakir Gola
Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Gopuff
As a freshman at Drexel University, Yakir Gola met co-founder Rafael Ilishayev on the first day of their Business 101 class, and the two went on to start Gopuff a year later. A first-generation American who grew up in an entrepreneurial family, Yakir – along with Rafael – have grown Gopuff into one of the fastest growing tech companies in the U.S. with operations in more than 650 cities, leveraging its network of over 250 micro-fulfillment centers and recently acquired BevMo! stores to fulfill orders of thousands of everyday essentials to customers in 30 minutes. Constantly analyzing the business and industry to identify potential for growth, Yakir’s data-driven approach to business and strategic insights motivate and drive the company forward. Yakir, along with Rafael, was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in the Retail & Ecommerce category in 2017, in 2019 received the Drexel University Founders Award and in 2020, Gopuff was named to CNBC’s Disruptor 50. Yakir is closely involved with Chabad serving Drexel University and spearheads many of Gopuff’s philanthropic efforts, including recent $1 million matching donation for the Boys & Girls Clubs COVID-19 Relief Funds.
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About Gopuff: Gopuff is digital delivery service designed to deliver daily essentials within minutes.
Rafael Ilishayev
Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Gopuff
Rafael Ilishayev is a first-generation American who grew up with an entrepreneurial family in the New York metro area. Rafael met Yakir Gola in their first Business 101 class at Drexel University and the two went on to start Gopuff the following year. Together, they’ve grown Gopuff into the instant needs category creator and one of the fastest growing tech companies with 7,000 employees across the country. Today, Gopuff has operations in more than 650 U.S. cities, leveraging its network of over 250 micro-fulfillment centers and recently acquired BevMo! stores to fulfill orders of thousands of everyday essentials to customers in 30 minutes. Under Rafael’s leadership, every Gopuff initiative – big or small – is developed with a customer-first mentality. Rafael, along with Yakir, was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in the Retail & Ecommerce category in 2017, in 2019 received the Drexel University Founders Award and in 2020, Gopuff was named to CNBC’s Disruptor 50. Rafael is closely involved with his alma mater, Drexel University, through the Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship and Chabad Serving Drexel University.
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About Gopuff: Gopuff is digital delivery service designed to deliver daily essentials within minutes.
Arsen Tomsky
CEO & Founder of inDriver
Arsen Tomsky is the founder and CEO of inDriver. He leads the company’s global team of more than 1500 employees and over 100 million-user inDriver ecosystem in 34 countries around the world. Arsen founded inDriver in 2013 and developed the business into the world’s fastest growing ride-hailing services. Arsen grew up in Yakutsk, Russia, and received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Yakutsk State University. He is a passionate runner and finisher of the Chicago and Tokyo Marathons.
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About inDriver: inDriver is the world’s fastest-growing ride-hailing service.
Sunmeet Jolly
Founder & CEO of GROTU
Founder and Patent holder – GROTU mobile app @ 101 Islands LLC. Angel investor in 40 pre-IPO technology startups. Frequently invited by accelerators and angel forums to Judge startup competitions and discuss technology innovation. Former IT Consulting industry executive who sold hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting services to Fortune 500 companies working for Cap Gemini, HCL, L&T, NTT data.
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About GROTU: Patented GROTU app provides a much needed “private” collection of productivity and communication tools for friends and family social groups
Scott Chacon
Co-Founder and CEO of Chatterbug
Scott Chacon is a Git evangelist and Ruby developer currently as the Cofounder & CEO of Chatterbug. He is the author of the Pro Git book by Apress, the Git Internals Peepcode PDF as well as the maintainer of the Git homepage and the Git Community Book. [Source](http://schacon.github.com/about.html)
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About Chatterbug: Chatterbug building a new way to help you master language skills through adaptive courses.
Russell Belfer
Co-Founder and Engineering of Chatterbug
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About Chatterbug: Chatterbug building a new way to help you master language skills through adaptive courses.
Liz Clinkenbeard
Co-Founder and Chief Communications Officer of Chatterbug
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About Chatterbug: Chatterbug building a new way to help you master language skills through adaptive courses.
Greg Kidd
Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer of GlobaliD
Believer that ones identity credentials should be truly portable and owned by individuals themselves rather than corporations or governments. The trade-off between security and privacy can meet the needs of both traditional institutions worried about compliance and risk, but also consumer protection advocates who care about the underserved and underbanked. Adviser/Investor via hardyaka.com for numerous startups in the exchange space including Shift, Ripple and 3taps, and previously Square and Twitter. Previously a director at Promontory Financial and a senior analyst for payments at The Board of Governor of the Federal Reserve. Senior Associate at Booz Allen. Founded and took Dispatch Management Services Corp public on the NASDAQ. Have worked as an instructor/leader for Outward Bound and the National Outdoor Leadership School. Specialties: Portable identity, digital currencies and exchange markets for goods, services, and information with functional emphasis on messaging, payments, and reputation/trust/risk. Well versed in visualizations for risk reporting and controls.
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About Apto Payments, GlobaliD, Hard Yaka: Create and manage your own portable, digital identity with globaliD.
Mitja Simcic
Co-Founder Chief Technology Officer of GlobaliD
Building and empowering people with portable, user controlled identities. Entrepreneur since college. Computer Science and MBA background.
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About GlobaliD, Kupi, Qloud.io: Create and manage your own portable, digital identity with globaliD.
Sean Parker
Founder & Chairman of Causes
Sean Parker is the Co-Founder & Executive Chairman at Brigade.
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About Airtime, Brigade, Causes, Economic Innovation Group, FWD.us, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy: Causes.com is an online campaigning platform for people who support a common cause.
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.
Jason Chicola
Founder, CEO of Rev.com
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About Rev.com: Rev’s speech-to-text services are powered by artificial intelligence and perfected by a community of skilled freelancers.
Ron Zuckerman
Co-Founder of StandWith
Ron Zuckerman is an angel investor. Mr. Zuckerman was a founder and CEO of Sapiens International Corporation and currently serves as its non-executive Chairman. In addition, Mr. Zuckerman was a founder and the Chairman of Precise Software Solutions prior to its sale to VERITAS in 2003.
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About StandWith: STANDWITH is a mobile app that allows communication between Caregivers and Supporters
Parag Chordia
Founder & Chief Technology Officer of HOOKED
Parag Chordia is the director of the Georgia Tech Music Intelligence Lab, and CTO of Khush. Parag is Chief Scientist at Smule. He is the former director of the Georgia Tech Music Intelligence Lab, a research institute funded by the National Science Foundation to build intelligent systems that are musically creative. Parag was recently the recipient of the competitive NSF CAREER Award for his research in music prediction. He received a PhD in artificial intelligence and music at Stanford University and a BS in Mathematics from Yale. He has extensive experience managing commercial software development, and is also the founder of BolRecords, an Indian classical music record label. Parag is an actively performing Indian classical musician and electronic music composer.
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About HOOKED, Telepathic: HOOKED is redefining entertainment for the Snapchat generation.
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.
Ganesan Rathinam
Founder, Executive Director, Chain-Sys Corporation of Chain Sys
Ganesan is a post graduate from Electrical Engineering department of IIT Chennai with his bachelors from Electronics and Communications Department of AC College of Engineering and Technology. He has extensive experience in VLSI design, Software Systems Design and Development, Project Management, Marketing, Business Administration, Contracts. Currently is the Executive Director of Chain-Sys Corporation, USA. Before his current role with Chain-Sys, he was associated with Unisys Corporation, DSRC, Tata Unisys and Bharat Electronics. Presented a paper on “Test Patterns” at the First International Conference on VLSI Design held in IIT Chennai (1984). He has traveled widely in the USA, India, Canada, Europe, Singapore and the Middle East. His other interests are Story Telling, Creative Design, Painting, Swimming, Hiking, Canoeing and Kayaking. He speaks Tamil, English, Hindi and a little Telugu and Kannada.
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About : Offers ChainSys Smart Data Platform for data migration, integration, quality and analytics and Smart BOTs for testing automation.
James Yoder
CEO & Founder of Chat Sports
James Yoder is CEO of Chat Sports and founder of Chat Sports Studios. Prior to co-founding Chat Sports, he worked for Verizon Wireless as a Mobile Product Manager. Focusing on Verizon’s Android and iOS products, James has vast experience at the forefront of mobile industry technology. Prior to Verizon, he worked for the college sports giant, Rivals.com. James graduated with a degree in Business Management from the University of Toledo. As an angel investor, James has 4 portfolio exits. All investments to date have been consumer focused.
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About Chat Sports: Chat Sports is a live sports news network for digital platforms
Tracy Chou
Founder & CEO of Block Party
Tracy Chou is an entrepreneur, software engineer, and diversity advocate. She spent five years at Pinterest as an engineer and tech lead and was an early engineer at Quora prior to that. She is a co-founder of Project Include, a non-profit working with tech startups on diversity and inclusion, and #MovingForward, a movement working with VC firms to establish and publish anti-harassment policies; and an investment scout and advisor for several Bay Area VC firms. In her latest venture she is CEO of Block Party, with a mission to solve online harassment and abuse.
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About Block Party, Pinterest, Project Include: Block Party is a consumer app that tackles online harassment and puts you back in control.
Walter Driver
Co-Founder, Chairman & Co-CEO of Scopely
Walter Driver is the co-founder, Chairman and co-Chief Executive Officer of Scopely, one of the fastest-growing mobile-first video game companies. Scopely creates and publishes a highly-diverse portfolio of top-grossing, immersive game experiences, including: the award-winning ”MARVEL Strike Force,” “Scrabble® GO,” “Star Trek™ Fleet Command” and”Yahtzee® With Buddies,” among others, which are played by hundreds of millions of players worldwide. Fueled by a world-class team, Scopely leverages its proprietary technology platform Playgami to bring directed-by-consumer, interactive experiences to audiences around the globe. Under Walter’s leadership, the company has achieved billions of dollars in lifetime revenue and attracted more than $1 billion in financing from leading venture capital firms, tech luminaries and cultural icons.
Walter has been recognized as one of the “100 Most Influential Young Executives” by The Business Journal, “Visionary of the Year” by C-Suite Quarterly, “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Ernst & Young, a “Young Global Shaper” by the World Economic Forum, one of the “100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs” by Goldman Sachs and a “Dealmaker of the Year” by Variety. Under Walter’s leadership, Scopely has also received many recognitions, including: “Best-led Company” in 2021 by Inc. magazine, “Private Company of the Year” in 2021 by Los Angeles Business Journal, a four time “Best Places to Work” winner by Built In LA, and a two time “World’s Most Innovative Companies” winner by Fast Company. Scopely has also been recognized on top charts such as Deloitte’s “Technology Fast 500,” being named the second fastest-growing technology company in North America and in the Top 10 mobile app charts for consumer spend.
Walter is an investor and advisor to many private technology companies as well as a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization and Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Los Angeles Technology & Innovation Council. Prior to Scopely, Walter founded and served as CEO of O Negative Media where he developed online social games. Before O Negative, he co-founded Ignition Interactive, one of the first developers of third-party applications for Facebook.
Walter holds a B.A. in English Literature from Brown University.
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About Scopely: Scopely is a global leader in interactive entertainment and mobile-first video games.
Ankur Bulsara
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer of Scopely
Ankur Bulsara co-founded Scopely, Inc. in 2011 and serves as its Chief Technical Officer. Ankur Bulsara oversees all aspects of technology and engineering at Scopely. He has experience in building large-scale and robust systems used by millions of people across multiple platforms. Ankur Bulsara has over 10 years of experience in technology, development, and architecture. He was the Founder of Brainwave Software Inc. While consulting, he held several different positions with his clients, including Architect of Revenue and Inventory Optimization at uSamp, Architect/Lead Developer at Internships LLC, and Architect at Freedom Speaks. Since 2007, he was the Lead Software Developer on Myspace’s Developer Platform, where he was responsible for the developer website and the portal dashboard for developers to create and managed Myspace apps. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Cornell University.
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About Scopely: Scopely is a global leader in interactive entertainment and mobile-first video games.
Prince Boakye Boampong
Founder of Dash
Prince Boakye Boampong is the Founder and CEO of Dash.
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About Dash: Dash builds an alternative payment app where users can send, spend, and receive money, pay for goods and services, save, and invest.
Greg Mercer
Founder and CEO of Jungle Scout
Greg Mercer is the Founder and CEO of Jungle Scout.
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About Downstream, Jungle Scout: Jungle Scout is a platform for finding, launching, and selling products on Amazon.
Dmitri Cherniak
Founder and CTO of Chargehound
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About Chargehound: Chargehound is a comprehensive chargeback solution that makes handling disputes easy.
Roland Ligtenberg
Co-Founder and SVP Growth & Innovation 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.
Reza Olfat
Co-Founder, VP of Engineering 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.
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.
Hamza Zia
Founder & CEO of GitStart
Founder and CEO at GitStart (YC S19) Y Combinator-backed startup that helps engineering-focused companies be more agile, scale feature deployment faster, and reduce management complexity. Passionate about technology and programming from a very young age, I have built technology-based businesses globally and scaled high-performance teams across San Francisco, Zurich, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. Worked closely on the core Microsoft Azure team at Shanghai, helping improve their cloud platform, and was recognized as an outstanding individual contributor.
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About GitStart: The modern way to scale your tech team
Genevieve Ryan Bellaire
Founder & CEO of Realworld
Genevieve Ryan Bellaire is the Founder and CEO of Realworld, a company that provides a simple way to navigate adulthood and its life moments, with help from your community. Genevieve has had a broad array of professional experience across business, law, and government. An attorney by profession, she received her JD/MBA from Georgetown University, and worked on strategic partnerships at Goldman Sachs until leaving to found Real World Playbook. Genevieve received her B.A. in Politics-International Relations from Princeton University, where she held numerous campus leadership roles and graduated with Honors in her department. Beyond her work in the entrepreneurial world, Genevieve is passionate about women’s empowerment, education, and national security. She currently serves as a member of the Pencils of Promise Leadership Council, the Acumen Fund Young Professional Committee, and the Washington Institute for Business, Government, and Society.
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About Realworld: The #1 platform to navigate adulthood
Candice Peters
CEO and Founder of Hello Parent
Candice is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Hello Parent and Lolihops.
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About Hello Parent: Hello Parent provides parents a convenient way to plan playdates, parties, special events and other activities.
Ranveer Kunal
Co-Founder of Meemo
Ranveer Kunal is a co-founder at Meemo.
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About Meemo: Meemo is an AI-powered social finance app that lets users receive personal rewards based on recent activity and transfer money to friends.
Wisam Dakka
Co-Founder of Meemo
Wisam Dakka is a co-founder at Meemo.
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About Meemo: Meemo is an AI-powered social finance app that lets users receive personal rewards based on recent activity and transfer money to friends.
André Madeira
Co-Founder & CEO of Meemo
André Madeira is the Co-Founder & CEO at Meemo.
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About Meemo: Meemo is an AI-powered social finance app that lets users receive personal rewards based on recent activity and transfer money to friends.
Robson Araújo
Co-Founder of Meemo
Robson Araújo is a co-founder at Meemo.
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About Meemo: Meemo is an AI-powered social finance app that lets users receive personal rewards based on recent activity and transfer money to friends.
Phil Gordon
Founder and CEO of Prompt.io
Phil Gordon is CEO and founder of Jawfish Games, the industry leader in real-time multi-player tournaments for mobile and web. Phil is best known as a professional poker player. He hosted 42 episodes of Bravo’s Celebrity Poker Showdown, has appeared at 7 World Series of Poker final tables, and has won a World Poker Tour tournament. Phil has authored four books that have sold nearly 400,000 copies worldwide and have been translated into 12 languages. Phil currently resides in Newport Washington with his wife and two boys, Xander and Zachary.
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About Prompt.io: Prompt.io is a simple, scalable solution for communicating with customers in their preferred medium messaging.
Kevin Long
Co-Founder & CEO of The Dyrt
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About : The Dyrt is consumer subscription software and top ranked camping app, with over 1.5M user-submitted reviews and tips across the U.S.
Sarah Smith
Founder of The Dyrt
Sarah Smith is Founder at The Dyrt.
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About The Dyrt: The Dyrt is consumer subscription software and top ranked camping app, with over 1.5M user-submitted reviews and tips across the U.S.
Marina Sidorko
Founder of glitchi
Founder at glitchi
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About glitchi: glitchi is an app that protects you from getting hacked remotely.
Rajan Annadurai
Founder of glitchi
Founder at glitchi
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About Deserve, glitchi: glitchi is an app that protects you from getting hacked remotely.
Torri Shack
CEO / Co-Founder of Twella
Energetic and innovative Business Development Executive with more than 10 + years of experience in building and managing highly motivated sales and delivery teams. Flair for developing and growing market penetration through strategic partnerships, creative marketing and sales campaigns. Track record of building substantial sales and marketing teams and systems. PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY • Strong leadership skills with a proven history of building motivated and focused teams by investing in people through listening, coaching, training and mentoring. • 15 years’ experience in selling across a variety of platforms including outbound phone sales, cold calling, qualifying and converting leads, presentations, networking and managing a geographically distributed sales force. • Broad sales and business development experience across various industries including: property, mortgage, real estate, wellness, and technology. • Experienced in designing and implementing targeted focused sales and marketing campaigns with a track record of rapidly growing and maintaining market share. • Well-developed analytical and problem-solving skills. • Broad social media and technology experience with an innate understanding of what will work best on which platform. • Managed and exceeded KPI’s across various and diverse industries. • Strong financial management, budgeting and forecasting skills. • Highly organized with great time managements skills with the ability to focus on detail without losing sight of the bigger picture.
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About Tangible Movement, Twella: A mindful approach to mental wellness
Noah Labhart
CTO, Co-Founder of Veryable
Noah has over 10 years of software development experience, a mixture of mobile/web development experience and enterprise systems management. Noah is the owner and lead engineer at Touchtap, a native mobile development agency, and he and his team have designed, developed and implemented award winning apps. Prior to Veryable, Noah was an IT Manager with Alcon Laboratories, supporting the manufacturing processes at both Fort Worth plants, overseeing the deployment, configuration, and maintenance of IT infrastructure. This included SCADA clients, virtualization of servers, network infrastructure and ERP/MES systems. Noah holds two bachelors degrees from Texas A&M University and a MBA from the University of Texas at Arlington.
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About Code Story, Veryable: Veryable is an industrial technology company with marketplaces designed to improve speed, flexibility, and agility in manufacturing.
Mike Kinder
CEO, Co-Founder of Veryable
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About Veryable: Veryable is an industrial technology company with marketplaces designed to improve speed, flexibility, and agility in manufacturing.
Dot Bustelo
CEO/Founder of Loupe
Dot Bustelo, CEO/Founder of Apple TV visual art streaming platform Loupe, recognized as a Creative Technologies/Entertainment Software Strategist. She developed Loupe in 2016 as a visual complement to streaming music platforms, featured by Apple and reaching #1 Lifestyle app around the world. An internationally-recognized Apple Logic Pro consultant, music producer, Emmy Award-winning sound designer, author and stage demonstrator of Apple software, Dot formerly worked on Apple’s Worldwide Product Team introducing Apple product software techniques to A-list artists, engineers and their producers such as Maroon 5, The Killers, John Legend, One Republic, T. Pain and M.I.A. After Apple, she went on to author #1 Amazon best-selling books on Apple software and online courses for Lynda.com and consulted to iOS and Mac audio app companies. An electronic music producer herself with licenses to Sony PlayStation, NBC, VH1, CBS, and MTV, she serves on the Recording Academy’s National Advisory Council of the Producers & Engineering Wing. In her spare time, Dot writes science fiction.
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About Loupe: Pioneering service transforming how art is experienced; #1 Lifestyle app in 64 countries on AppleTV/Fire TV/Android/PlutoTV/Samsung/Comcast
Herman DeBoard
CEO & Founder of Huvr Inc.
Successful Entrepreneur, built major technology projects working with Sony, Universal, Warner, EMI and more. Products have been distributed in Target, Best Buy, Fry’s Electronics and many more.
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About Huvr Inc.: Huvr is a global virtual marketplace that helps to connect human walkers to virtual travelers to explore the world in real-time.
Michael Ritter
Founder & CEO of Maple Media
Michael Ritter is the Founder and CEO of Maple Media, a mobile apps and games company backed by private equity firm Shamrock Capital. Maple Media is a mobile media, advertising and technology company that acquires, manages and operates mobile applications focused on the utility, productivity, games and entertainment verticals. Popular titles include Snowboard Party: World Tour, Skateboard Party, Minesweeper Classic, Sudoku 🙂 and CalConvert. Previously he was SVP of Business & Corporate Development for Jam City, a large social and mobile game company based in Los Angeles where he oversaw mergers & acquisition activities, publishing, licensing, distribution, sales, legal and partnerships for social and mobile games. Michael was also the Founder and Publisher of Saturday Night Magazine, which at the time, he built into the largest circulated monthly collegiate lifestyle and entertainment magazine in the country.
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About Fantasy Baseball Arbitration, Maple Media: Maple Media is a mobile media, advertising, and technology company that acquires and operates category-leading, consumer apps.
John Krajewski
Founder and CEO of Strange Loop Games
John Krajewski is founder and CEO of Strange Loop Games, a studio focused on evolving the classroom by connecting entertainment and educational games. He is currently the designer of the US Department of Education funded ecology game ‘Eco’ and the forthcoming National Science Foundation funded ‘Exo’. His background is the console games industry, having worked at EA and Midway prior to founding Strange Loop. After founding Strange Loop Games in 2009, he has led development on 6 titles including a suite of games for Amplify Education, and the Steam and Playstation Indie hit ‘Vessel’.
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About Strange Loop Games: Strange Loop Games is an video game developer.
Allen Chen
CEO & Co-Founder of Fitbod
Allen is the Co-founder & CEO of Fitbod.
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About Fitbod: Fitbod allows users to maximize the use of indoor gym equipment and confidence to train effectively for strength.
Jesse Venticinque
Co-Founder, Product Head of Fitbod
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About Fitbod: Fitbod allows users to maximize the use of indoor gym equipment and confidence to train effectively for strength.
Andrew Goldfarb
Founder of Photo Butler
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About Globespan Capital Partners, Photo Butler: Photo Butler is a free mobile app for collaborative, real-time photo sharing that’s changing the way the world shares memories.
David Benaim
Co-Founder & CTO of Photo Butler
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About Photo Butler: Photo Butler is a free mobile app for collaborative, real-time photo sharing that’s changing the way the world shares memories.
Maurice Harary
Founder and CEO of Fluz
Maurice is a Founder of the Fluz App. He is a serial entrepreneur with a 10-year background in e-commerce. He currently manages over 20 e-commerce sites in the B2B and B2C environment, ranging from interactive learning-based experiences to price-competitive marketplace trading sites. Experience in all areas of e-commerce sites, ranging from custom e-commerce software development to operational planning. He has extensive experience in fashion eCommerce and marketplace selling.
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About Fluz: Reinventing cashback to give you more. Get paid when you shop + when your friends shop. Earn Cashback Forever.
Uri Raz
Founder & Executive Chairman of Tango
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About Tango: Tango Live is a leading global social media platform connecting influencers and their followers through live mobile video engagement.
Eddie Lou
Co-Founder of Shiftgig
An active problem-solver and strategist, Eddie guides Shiftgig from an idea to an expanding technology business. He is also a co-founder and executive board director of One Goal, an education nonprofit, and has invested in and advised start-up entrepreneurs. He was formerly a General Partner at OCA Ventures and holds an MBA and a B.S. in Engineering from Washington University. A relentless competitor, Eddie did the Louisville Ironman, placing 2nd in the Janus Charity Challenge.
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About Shiftgig: Shiftgig helps staffing firms empower their workforce to browse and claim work that fit their skills and schedules.
Gordon Chiu
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer of Grafoid
Described as an “execution-driven businessman,” Gordon Chiu has combined domestic and international experience in the biomedical, chemical, cosmetic, medical, and technology industries. As President, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Grafoid Inc., Gordon Chiu is engaged in the discovery and research of graphene on behalf of Grafoid, as well as the development of graphene applications with Grafoid’s joint venture application development partners. He is also Focus Graphite Inc.’s Chief Scientist. Gordon Chiu is a former research scientist at Pfizer Inc. and Merck & Co., Inc. and has healthcare and marketing experience with strong links to Wall Street and Asia. Gordon Chiu holds a B.Sc. degree summa cum laude in chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, graduated with a M.Sc. degree in chemistry from Seton Hall University with honors, and is globally distinguished by his acceptance as an MD/PhD candidate under the National Institutes of Health’s Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Gordon Chiu jointly combined his cumulative training with a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine (ND) degree from the University of Bridgeport.
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About Grafoid, Hemptown Organics: Grafoid invests and develops markets for processes that produce pristine graphene for energy storage and other applications.
Kuty Shalev
Founder of Clevertech
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About Clevertech: Clevertech is a custom software and app development company that solves hard problems. Business & systems integration.
Bradley Miles
CEO and Co-Founder of Roll
Bradley previously led research for CoinDesk, the world leader in news and information on digital currencies, and architected their State of Blockchain report and spotlight study on ICOs. He is the CEO of Turing Advisory Group, a sell-side advisory firm for token sales with an emphasis on research and best practices. Bradley is the best selling author of #BreakIntoVC: How to Break Into Venture Capital and Think Like an Investor and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Techstars in New York City.
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About Roll, Techstars: Roll is building blockchain infrastructure for social money on Ethereum.
Amit Agrawal
Founder & Chief Operating Officer of Cyber Infrastructure (p) Ltd
Mr. Amit Agrawal directs CIS’s Operations Quality & Process initiatives that are instrumental in driving major Financial and Operational benefits to CIS and its clients. He plays a vital role in establishing key alliances and building competent teams who are quite adept in using Latest Technology, Frameworks and Techniques; giving CIS a competitive advantage. He is also responsible for providing direction to strategic initiatives at CIS and building up CIS’s technical capabilities.As a technology veteran since 2002, he is leading and managing multiple projects, while maintaining budgets and meeting deadlines. He also steers the development lifecycle of all our web initiatives, mentors the research and implementation of innovative Web/ Mobile & Cloud Solutions. He is responsible for assimilation and adoption of latest technology in the company. Prior to CIS, Mr. Agrawal has served in various managerial roles in global IT companies in the US, Europe, and India. He possesses a number of certificates in Programming Languages, Project Management, Quality Control and Innovation Straategies.He holds a Bachelor’s Degree (BE) in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of RGPV and graduated in 2002 and is an MDP alumnae of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), 2007.
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About Cyber Infrastructure (p) Ltd: Cyber InfraStructure Pvt. Ltd. or CIS is a IT and consulting company in Central India.
Sam Chaudhary
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of ClassDojo
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About ClassDojo: ClassDojo is a school communication platform that teachers, students, and families use to build close-knit communities.
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.
Timothy Li
Founder and CEO of Fluid Credit
Timothy has been working in FinTech and Marketplace Lending industry for the past decade. He has launched various marketplace lending platforms and held c-level positions at RealtyMogul.com, loanDepot.com, Quick Bridge Funding, Think Finance and JPMorgan Chase. Timothy also co-founded LendFoundry.com, KuberFinancial.com MaxDecision.com. He also sits on various advisory boards such as Ziero Finance, Solar Mosaic, Blinker Inc., Docitt and CreditExchange.in. Timothy holds various degrees from Harvard Business School, University of Southern California and San Jose State University.
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About Alchemy, Fluid Credit, kuber, MaxDecisions, University of Southern California: Fluid Credit provides university students with credit and personal finance education.
Andrew Boryk
Co-Founder and CTO of Lunchbox Technologies
Co-founder at Lunchbox Technologies.
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About Lunchbox Technologies, Tapt: Lunchbox Technologies offers digital marketing and ordering solutions for brick and mortar restaurants.
Joe Chen
Founder & CEO of Renren
Yizhou Chen is the chairman and CEO of China InterActive Corporation. Chen attended Wuhan University and received his B.Sc degree in Physics in 1987, and his M.Sc in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in 1993. He also went on to receive his MBA and M.S. degree in Electromechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 1997. In 1999 Chen co-founded ChinaRen.com and served as Chairman and CEO of the company. He was later appointed Vice President of Sohu after Sohu acquired ChinaRen in 2000. He also founded China InterActive Corporation in 2002.
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About Renren: Renren.com is an online social network service that offers an extensive interactive communication platform for Chinese users.
Sanchali Pal
Founder & CEO of Joro
Sanchali Pal currently works as the Founder and CEO for Joro App. She previously worked at Tesla as the Market Access Intern.
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About Joro: Joro is an app that tracks the users’ carbon footprint and develops a climate action practice.
Weina Scott
Founder of Handy
Weina Scott graduated with a degree in Computer Science and minor in Economics from Harvard College in 2011. She first gained attention as the founder of several successful technology companies including a company she sold (Switchpod.com) just a year after launch, when she was just 15 years old. Before it’s acquisition, Switchpod.com was the second largest podcasting network in the world. Weina’s entrepreneurial endeavors were featured in Inc Magazine, Red Herring, Yahoo News, New York Post, NBC News, TechCrunch, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, Silicon Republic, New York Times, Irish Times, Mashable, and Business Insider. She and Ignacio Leonhardt are the technical founders of venture-backed, Handy.com. At the young age of 21, she helped the company raise $2,000,000 (initial funding) from top venture capital firms (Highland Capital and General Catalyst) in less than three months. Handy, which has raised over $100Million dollars from renowned investors, was sold to ANGI Homeservices Inc in October of 2018. Weina actively advises and invests in technology companies that help empower people. Through her work as a founder and investor, Weina has become an advocate for technology and community initiatives that empower creative people and help businesses leverage the creative potential of their people. Weina currently works for a top Fortune 400 company in San Francisco, California. She is Haitian American. You can reach her at wnscott@post.harvard.edu
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About Handy: Handy, formerly Handybook, is an app through which users can book cleaners, plumbers, handymen, and other household service providers.
Oisin Hanrahan
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Handy
Oisin Hanrahan is the CEO and co-founder of Handy, the leading on-demand home services platform. Oisin founded Handy along with Umang Dua, Ignacio Leonhardt and Weina Scott. Oisin’s idea is changing the way people receive and provide home services. Prior to founding Handy, Oisin founded MiCandidate, a service that provided real time political content to media companies in 25 European countries. He also founded Clearwater Group, a real estate development business in Budapest, Hungary. In 2009, Oisin co-founded The Undergraduate Awards, a foundation that supports and celebrates outstanding undergraduate students globally. From day one, Oisin aimed for Handy to revolutionize the way people receive, provide and think about home services, an $400 billion market. Since it launched, nearly 3 million bookings have been made, and the Handy platform has served over 600,000 customers and activated over 80,000 independent professionals. This exceptional growth was made possible by a laser focus on the most innovative technology and service, resulting in Handy successfully expanding to 28 cities across 15 states and three countries. Oisin has deep knowledge of so many of the issues facing startups today, including navigating the regulatory environment. It is his personal mission to move the future of work of forward and find a solution that allows today’s work force to build their own business, work flexibility, but still have access to new types of “portable benefits” that would allow workers to move between workplaces while still maintaining access to benefits like training, health insurance, and disability insurance. Finding a solution to these challenges is a personal priority of Oisin’s – the demographics of the Handy platform make the company uniquely close to these issues in a way other platforms are not. In fact, 90% are women, over 60% are caring for dependents, and nearly 70% serve as the primary income earner for their household. Oisin has been unwilling to sit on the sidelines and become a leading voice in this area: He serves on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Digital Economy Board of Advisors and has written on these issues for Fox Business News and Wired.
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About Angi, ANGI Homeservices, Handy: Handy, formerly Handybook, is an app through which users can book cleaners, plumbers, handymen, and other household service providers.
Umang Dua
Co-Founder & COO of Handy
Umang is an entrepreneur and along with Oisin Hanrahan, Ignacio Leonhardt and Weina Scott, a co-founder of Handybook. Handybook.com enables users to book household services such as cleaners and handymen instantly for any convenient time. Prior to doing his MBA at the Harvard Business School, Umang also founded College Connect, an online platform in India that connected aspiring college students with enrolled students around the world.
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About Angi, Handy: Handy, formerly Handybook, is an app through which users can book cleaners, plumbers, handymen, and other household service providers.
Colin Walsh
CEO and Co-Founder of Varo Money
Colin Walsh is the brainchild behind Varo and its mission to revolutionize banking. Colin and his team founded Varo to create a better way of banking that empowers consumers to be more in control of their financial lives. He believes too many people are not well served by the big banks, which have created a significant opportunity for innovators. Varo is building a seamless retail banking solution that addresses big pain points for the ~20 million millennial Americans (ages 22-36) who are creditworthy yet still manage their money on a month-to-month basis. These Americans are often one unexpected event away from running into financial trouble, which can prevent them from building savings and investing their money around longer-term goals. Varo has designed a product that allows its customers to see their full financial picture, understand how they’re spending, and access lending and savings products to smooth cash flow and build wealth over time. Varo’s frictionless, mobile-first banking solution does not charge overdraft fees or punitive interest rates, thereby eliminating the harmful fees traditional banks rely on to make money from this large segment of consumers. As proven in other industries, innovators who introduce products people love at lower cost often create massive disruption. We believe the time for such a change in retail banking has arrived. Understanding banking and how people manage their money is a vital part of developing such a new mobile banking platform. Walsh is perfectly positioned to do this with more than 25 years of retail financial services industry experience. His knowledge and expertise is guiding the Varo team to deliver a platform that allows users to effortlessly cover their expenses and build their wealth, so they can get on with their lives.
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About Varo Money: Varo is a digital bank that offers innovative, premium banking services wrapped in inclusive design.
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.
Bjoern Zinssmeister
CEO & Founder of Templarbit
Bjoern is the Co-Founder and CTO of Design Inc. He is best known for his work with building community platforms like Match and Synack. Bjoern has spent more than a decade as a software engineer and built two venture backed startups from the ground up. Prior to Design Inc. Bjoern worked as a mobile lead for Match Group (Match, Tinder, OKCupid) and was instrumental in helping Match establish their labs office in San Francisco prior to their IPO and acquisition of OK Cupid. Bjoern went on to lead engineering at YCombinator backed Userfox, which was later acquired by Adroll. In September of 2013 Bjoern joined Synack as their Director of Engineering and helped to build up their engineering team from the ground up, helping the company to grow and raise successful A and B rounds. Originally from Germany, Bjoern graduated from the Trier University of Applied Sciences with a degree in Computer Science before moving out to San Francisco to pursue his work with startups.
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About Templarbit: Templarbit protects applications from malicious activity.
Nimit S. Sawhney
Co-Founder,CEO of Voatz
Nimit has 14 years experience in mobile software development, information security, embedded systems including 5 yrs as the business/technical head of a R&D unit. Nimit holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Business Management from the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
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About Voatz: Voatz is a mobile election voting platform, secured via smart biometrics, real time ID verification, and the blockchain for irrefutability.
Jonathan Bittner
CEO & Co-Founder of Splitwise
He is Co-founder and CEO of Splitwise.
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About Splitwise: Splitwise is a mobile app and web platform that builds consumer FinTech software to help users split expenses.
Keval Baxi
Founder of Codal of Codal
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About Codal: Codal is a full-stack UX design and application development agency with a focus on emerging technologies and Agile development.
Luis von Ahn
CEO & Co-Founder of Duolingo
Louis von Ahn is the CEO and Co-Founder of Duolingo. He is an associate professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and he’s at the forefront of the crowdsourcing craze. His work takes advantage of the evergrowing Web-connected population to achieve collaboration in unprecedented numbers. His projects aim to leverage the crowd for human good. His company reCAPTCHA, sold to Google in 2009, digitizes human knowledge (books), one word at a time. His new project is Duolingo, which aims to get 100 million people translating the Web in every major language.
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About Carnegie Mellon University, Duolingo: Duolingo is a language-learning education platform that offers 98 total courses across nearly 40 distinct languages.
Igor Barinov
Founder of Block Notary
Igor Barinov co-founder of Oracles Network, the first Ethereum-based public network with Proof of Authority consensus, reached by independent validators.
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About Block Notary, Donate Your Data, itsbeta, POA Network: BlockNotary is an app that allows users hash and timestamp their media files in public ledgers from their phone.
Adrian Graham
Co-Founder & CEO of Seesaw
Adrian handles a variety of leadership responsibilities within Seesaw, with much of his time spent overseeing new product development, engineering efforts, and the company’s overall workplace culture.
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About Seesaw, Shadow Puppet: Seesaw is a platform for student engagement.
Carl Sjogreen
Co-Founder & CPO of Seesaw
Carl Sjogreen is the Co-founder and CPO of [Seesaw](http://web.seesaw.me). Before founding Seesaw, Carl was the Director of Product Management for Facebook Platform and Facebook mobile. Carl joined Facebook via the acquisition of nextstop.com, a social travel guide he founded in 2008. Before nextstop, Carl was a Group Product Manager at [Google](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/google) where he started [Google Calendar](http://www.crunchbase.com/product/google-calendar) and helped it grow into the #1 online calendar product. Carl holds a bachelors degree in Computer Science from Harvard University.
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About SeeSaw, Seesaw, Shadow Puppet: Seesaw is a platform for student engagement.
Susan Brazer
Chief Executive Officer and Founder of LionShare Media
Susan is a commercial visionary with a 2020’s view. She’s led the successful development, launch and scale of consumer-facing platforms, apps and services for world-leading media, tech and telecom companies: Apple, DirecTV, SES Astra, FIFA World Cup, Viacom, Virgin Mobile, and Nokia. Susan is the CEO of LionShare Media, which is launching the THIN/AIR™ Metaverse, a 5G cloud-native, blockchain-enabled distribution platform for premium entertainment and immersive media. Previously, Susan was VP, Strategy and Business Development at Nokia, and VP, Corporate Development and Entertainment Services at Virgin Mobile USA). Prior to this, Susan was EVP, Corporate Development at KirchMedia’s Venture Fund for the FIFA World Cup, where she raised $50M+ for interactive TV, gaming and mobile app ventures. Susan was the SVP, Networks & Marketing for Viacom’s Showtime service in the Middle East and Africa, overseeing a P&L and operations for MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, The Movie Channel, TV Land, Bloomberg, Paramount, Style and Discovery. Susan led the launch of DirecTV as VP, Marketing at Compression Labs and the migration of 85M European TVHH to digital satellite and cable services for SES ASTRA. The genesis of Susan’s product development and UI/UX expertise began at Apple Computer, where she launched its 1st portable computer, the Newton, and Knowledge Navigator (prototype for the iPAD and Siri). She was also served as an M&A analyst at PepsiCo and International Treasury Analyst at Phillip Morris. Susan holds a B.A. in Economics from Brandeis University, an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and attended the London School of Economics. Susan is on the Board of Global Women in Blockchain, a UN Delegate for Media for Social Impact and a mentor at Princeton University’s Keller School of Engineering for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
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About LionShare Media: LionShare Media develops a media distribution platform-as-a-service to harness the power of converging and emerging technologies.
Derek Collison
Founder & CEO of Synadia Communications
Derek Collison is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Synadia Communications. An industry veteran and pioneer in large-scale distributed systems and enterprise computing, Derek founded Apcera and has held executive positions at VMware, Google and TIBCO Software. Derek created NATS.io and CloudFoundry as well as TIBCO’s messaging systems. As Chief Technology Officer and Chief Architect of Cloud Application Platforms at VMware, he co-founded the cloud computing group and designed and architected Cloud Foundry, the industry’s first open PaaS. During Derek’s time at Google, he co-founded the AJAX APIs group. Prior to Google, Derek spent more than a decade at TIBCO, where he designed and implemented a wide range of messaging products, including Rendezvous and EMS. As TIBCO’s Senior Vice President and Chief Architect, Derek led technical and strategic product direction and delivery. Derek is a sought after speaker and collaborator. Derek holds more than 20 software patents and is a recognized leader in distributed systems design and architecture, as well as emerging cloud platforms. Derek earned a Bachelor’s degree with honors in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.
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About Covaxx, Heavybit, NATS, Savonix, Synadia Communications, Vicarious, Xperiel: Powering the secure connective technologies to drive cloud and edge native
Hao Li
CEO & Co-Founder of Pinscreen
Hao Li is Founder and CEO of Pinscreen, Inc., and Distinguished Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, Director of the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, a visiting professor at Weta Digital and a research lead at Industrial Light & Magic / Lucasfilm. For his contributions in non-rigid shape registration, human digitization, and real-time facial performance capture, Hao received the TR35 Award in 2013, recognizing him as one of the top 35 innovators under the age of 35, from the MIT Technology Review. He was named Andrew and Erna Viterbi Early Career Chair in 2015, and was awarded the Google Faculty Research Award and the Okawa Foundation Research Grant the same year. He won the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award in 2018. He is best known for his work on dynamic geometry processing, facial animation, and data-driven techniques for making 3D human digitization and facial animation accessible to the masses. During his PhD, Hao co-created the first real-time and markerless system for performance-driven facial animation based on depth sensors. The team later commercialized a variant of this technology as the facial animation software Faceshift (acquired by Apple Inc. in 2015 and incorporated into the iPhone X in 2017). He was brought on as visiting professor at Weta Digital to build the high-fidelity facial performance capture pipeline for reenacting the deceased actor Paul Walker in the movie Furious 7 (2015). His recent research focuses on combining techniques in Deep Learning and Computer Graphics to facilitate the creation of 3D avatars and to enable true immersive face-to-face communication and telepresence in Virtual Reality.
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About Pinscreen, University of California Berkeley: Revolutionizing digital communication and online human interactions with user-generated and personalized 3D virtual avatars.
Corey Ashton Walters
Founder & CEO of Here
Corey Ashton Walters is the Founder & CEO of Here, a revolutionary online marketplace that enables anyone anywhere to invest in vacation rentals online and earn passive income—without ever lifting a finger. Prior to founding Here, Corey, a seasoned entrepreneur, brand builder, and college dropout, has founded multiple successful companies over the last 15 years. Most recently in 2017, Corey co-founded Homeworthy, a venture-backed first-of-its-kind fully remote home selling experience available to homeowners located in more than 900 cities across the Pacific Northwest.
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About Here: Here makes investing in vacation rentals as easy as buying stocks.
