See None (None) at Startup Grind Silicon Valley, San Francisco Bay Area

Marc Andreessen

Andreessen Horowitz

Marc Andreessen is an innovator and creator who pioneered a software category used by more than a billion people and established multiple billion-dollar companies. Marc co-created the highly influential Mosaic Internet browser and co-founded both Netscape and Loudcloud (Opsware). Most recently, Marc co-founded the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz which invests in technology companies including Airbnb, Actifio, BuzzFeed, Coinbase, Facebook, Github, Pinterest, Honor, and Twitter, among others.

Ron Conway

SV Angel; FWD.US

Ron Conway is the Founder and Co-Managing Partner of SV Angel. Ron has been an active angel investor since the mid 90’s. He was the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds (1998-2005). He was included in 2010’s Vanity Fair 100 most influential people in the Information Age. He was awarded Best Angel at The 2009 TechCrunch Crunchies Awards. He was named #13 in Forbes Magazine Midas list of top “deal-makers” in 2011. Ron was with National Semiconductor Corporation in marketing positions (1973-1979), Altos Computer Systems as a co-founder, President and CEO (1979-1990) and took Altos public on Nasdaq in 1982 and served as CEO of Personal Training Systems (PTS) (1991-1995). PTS was acquired by SmartForce/SkillSoft (Nasdaq SKIL). Philanthropically, Ron is a Board Member of the Salesforce.com Foundation, and member of the UCSF Medical Center Chancellor’s Advisory Board in SF, and is active in fundraising for the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, College Track, Sandy Hook Promise-Newtown CT, Americans for Responsible Solutions-Gabby Giffords, and the THORN Foundation. Ron is an advocate for technology companies and civic engagement in San Francisco and founder of sf.citi (San Francisco’s tech-backed civic organization). Ron is also an advocate for immigration reform and a co-founder of FWD.US.

Stewart Butterfield

Slack

Stewart Butterfield is the co-founder and CEO of Slack. Stewart has built a distinguished career as a designer, entrepreneur, and technologist. A co-founder of Flickr, he has been named to Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, BusinessWeek's Top 50 Leaders and Vanity Fair’s New Establishment List.

Clayton Christensen

Innovators Dilemma; HBS

There are few people whose impact on entrepreneurs and business in general you hear about as frequently as Clayton Christensen. Clay’s body of work includes co-founding a publicly traded company, being a Rhodes Scholar, writing one of the most influential business books of our generation, fighting cancer and a stroke that forced him to relearn to speak, teaching thousands at the Harvard Business School, and raising five children.

Dustin Moskovitz

Asana; Facebook

Dustin Moskovitz is co-founder of Asana, the fast-growing work tracking app for teams. Asana's mission is to help humanity thrive by enabling all teams to work together effortlessly. Prior to Asana, he cofounded Facebook and was a key leader within the technical staff, first in the position of CTO and then later as VP of Engineering. Dustin attended Harvard University as an Economics major for two years before moving to Palo Alto, California to work full-time at Facebook.

Brit Morin

Brit + Co

Brit Morin is the founder & CEO of Brit + Co, a new media and commerce company that enables creativity among women and girls through inspirational content, online classes and do-it-yourself kits. From traditional crafts to high-tech manufacturing, Brit + Co connects millions of users with makers, designers, chefs, and inventors, together in one place at www.brit.co. When she's not coming up with creative ideas to share with her fellow makers, Brit can be seen on the TODAY Show, Rachael Ray, Steve Harvey and Meredith Vieira as a regular DIY and lifestyle contributor. She has also been a contributor for Katie Couric, CNN, Yahoo and the Huffington Post. Her best-selling book, Homemakers, was published in March of this year, and is available for purchase now.

Aaron Levie

Box

Aaron Levie is Chief Executive Officer, co-founder and Chairman at Box, which he launched in 2005 with CFO and co-founder Dylan Smith. He is the visionary behind the Box product and platform strategy, incorporating the best of secure content collaboration with an intuitive user experience suited to the way people work today. Aaron leads the company in its mission to transform the way people and businesses work so that they can achieve their greatest ambitions. He has served on the board of directors since April 2005. Aaron attended the University of Southern California from 2003 to 2005 before leaving to found Box.

Payal Kadakia

Classpass

Payal Kadakia is the CEO and Co-Founder of ClassPass, a monthly membership program that provides people of all fitness levels unlimited access to the best boutique fitness classes and gyms across the US and internationally. Since its launch in 2013, ClassPass has facilitated more than 11 million reservations across 7,000 studios in 36 markets. Payal is also the Founder and Artistic Director of The Sa Dance Company, founded in 2009 with the mission to increase awareness of Indian Dance in the mainstream and serve as a platform for expressing the Indian-American identity through movement. Payal previously worked as a consultant at Bain & Company and holds a degree in Operations Research from MIT.

Ryan Smith

Qualtrics

A serial entrepreneur, Ryan Smith co-founded Qualtrics in 2000 as a junior in college at a time when online surveys were a thing of the future. As CEO, he has led the company from a basement startup to the industry leader in online data collection and survey analytics. Qualtrics is one of the fastest-growing technology companies, experiencing triple-digit growth in the past four years. The company has more than 5,000 customers including 500 universities, BusinessWeek’s top 30 business schools and almost all of the Fortune 500. Smith is a frequent lecturer at the nation’s leading business schools and is a member of the advisory board for the Masters in Market Research (MSMR) Program at the University of Texas at Arlington. He also serves on the executive advisory board of the Huntsman Cancer Institute. Before Qualtrics, he worked at HP and Ford Motor Company and studied at the Marriott School of Management.

Steven Chen

YouTube; Google Ventures

Steve Chen was the co-founder and chief technology officer of YouTube. Steve arrived in Silicon Valley in 1999 to join PayPal. On his first day at PayPal, Steve met Chad Hurley, who would become his YouTube co-founder, together with Jawed Karim. Steve was instrumental in building YouTube into a viral video phenomenon. He helped lead YouTube through the Google acquisition for $1.65 billion, less than a year after launching the site. As the key technologist, Steve developed the company’s massive data centers and helped build YouTube into a premier entertainment destination, and one of the most popular websites on the Internet today. Steve has received several prestigious honors and acknowledgments from the business and entertainment communities including: Business 2.0’s “50 Most Influential People,” GQ’s “Men of the Year,” Time magazine’s “Best Invention of the Year”, and Fortune’s “Most Powerful People in Business.” Steve is now a partner at Google Ventures. Prior to GV he was running AVOS, the incubator he founded with Chad Hurley in 2011.

Yves Behar

August

Designer and entrepreneur who believes that integrated product, digital, and brand design are the cornerstones of any business. Béhar is founder and chief designer of the award-winning integrated design studio fuseproject, and co-founded August with Jason to reinvent the way we enter our homes.

Tim Draper

Draper Associates

Tim Draper founded Draper Associates in July, 1985, which later became the world famous venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (now DFJ). Investments include Skype, Hotmail, Tesla, & Baidu among many others. Draper Associates, investments include Twitch.TV, YeePay, Indiegogo, Docusign, Parametric Technology and AngelList. He is the creator of viral marketing, a marketing method for spreading a software application from customer to customer, instrumental to the successes of Hotmail and Skype among hundreds of others including Gmail and Yahoo!mail.

Aileen Lee

Cowboy Ventures

Aileen is the founder of Cowboy Ventures, a seed-stage focused fund. They seek to back exceptional teams building technology that re-imagines work and personal life in large and growing markets - what they call "Life 2.0". She was formerly a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and the CEO of RMG Networks. A graduate of MIT, Aileen has an MBA from Harvard Business School and is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.

Jason Fried

Basecamp

Jason Fried is the founder + CEO of Basecamp, everyone’s favorite project management tool. Previously called 37signals, Basecamp was born in February of 2004. Today, over 10-years later, 15,000,000 people have worked on a project with Basecamp and every week, thousands of companies sign up to use Basecamp. Fried is also co-author of the book Rework, about new ways to conceptualize working and creating -- learning to do less and create more. He also writes Inc.'s Get Real column.

Guy Kawasaki

Canva

Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva, a graphics-design online service, and an executive fellow at the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley. Formerly, he was an advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google and chief evangelist of Apple. He is also the author of APE, What the Plus!, Enchantment, and many other books. Guy has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Selina Tobaccowala

SurveyMonkey

Selina joined SurveyMonkey in October 2009. Previously Selina was Senior Vice President of Product and Technology at Ticketmaster’s Europe division, where she managed the 200-person Product, Technology and Operations team. Prior to that, Selina was Vice President of Online Product and Technology at Entertainment Publications, where she led the company’s online sales and technology initiatives. In 1997 Selina founded Evite.com, an online invitation service that lets users organize an offline event online, and which currently sends over three million invitations per month. As VP of Engineering for Evite.com, she led the company’s development and operations and played a key role in setting the strategic direction with the board of directors. In 2001, Evite.com was sold to Ticketmaster. Tobaccowala holds a BS degree in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Chamath Palihapitiya

Social Capital

Chamath Palihapitiya is the Founder and Managing Partner of The Social+Capital Partnership (Social Capital) – a venture capital fund based in Palo Alto, CA that incubates and invests in breakthrough companies in healthcare, education, financial services, mobile and enterprise software. Preceding his focus as an investor, Chamath was the longest tenured member of Facebook's senior executive team and helped drive its ascension to one of the most important companies in the world. Prior to Facebook, Chamath had leading roles at The Mayfield Fund, AIM+ICQ and Winamp. In addition to his focus at the fund, Chamath is Owner and Director of the NBA's Golden State Warriors. Chamath was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in Canada, and graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Tracy Young

PlanGrid

After earning a degree in Construction Engineering Management, Tracy helped build several hospitals before founding PlanGrid. She likes to joke that, with PlanGrid, she went from working for one superintendent to hundreds of thousands of them.

Vinod Khosla

Khosla Ventures

Vinod grew up dreaming of being an entrepreneur, despite growing up in an Indian Army household with no business or technology connections. Since the age of 16, when he first heard about Intel starting up, he dreamt of starting his own technology company. Upon graduating with a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Vinod failed, at age 20, to start a soy milk company to service the many people in India who did not have refrigerators. He came instead to the U.S. and got his master’s in biomedical engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University. His start-up dreams attracted him to Silicon Valley, where he got an MBA at Stanford University in 1980. Upon graduation he was one of the three founders of Daisy Systems, which was the first significant computer-aided design system for electrical engineers. The company went on to achieve significant revenue, profits, and an IPO, but Khosla, driven by the frustration of having to design the computer hardware on which the Daisy software needed to be built, started the standards-based Sun Microsystems in 1982 to build workstations for software developers. At Sun he pioneered “open systems” and RISC processors. Sun was funded by longtime friend and board member John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In 1986 Vinod switched sides and joined Kleiner Perkins, where he was and continues to be a general partner of KPCB funds through KP X. Through the years there, with other partners, he took on Intel’s monopoly with Nexgen/AMD (the only microprocessor to have significant success against Intel, sold to AMD for 28 percent of AMD), incubated the idea and business plan for Juniper to take on Cisco’s dominance of the router market, formulated the very early advertising-based search strategy for Excite, and transformed the moribund telecommunications business and its archaic SONET implementations with Cerent (sold to Cisco for $7B). He helped in creating value, having fun, succeeding, failing (remember Dynabook?), and driving impact in partnership with entrepreneurs and the partners at KPCB. In 2004, Vinod, driven by the need for flexibility to accommodate four teenaged children and a desire to be more experimental, to fund sometimes imprudent “science experiments,” and to take on both for-profit and for “social impact” ventures, formed khoslaventures, funded entirely with family funds. His goals remain the same: work and learn from fun and knowledgeable entrepreneurs, build impactful companies through the leverage of innovation, and spend time in a partnership that makes a difference.

Ryan Sweeney

Accel

Ryan Sweeney joined Accel in 2008 and manages its growth fund. He is the first outside investor and board member in a number of leading enterprise software companies like Atlassian, Hootsuite, Qualtrics, Squarespace and Xero. Ryan is also active with innovative mobile and payments startups like Invoice2go, Lightspeed and VSCO. He was also responsible for numerous investments with notable exits, including AirWatch (acquired by VMware), Braintree/Venmo (acquired by PayPal), Groupon (public), Lynda.com (acquired by Linkedin) and OzForex (public). Ryan grew up in South Jersey and graduated from Notre Dame and Harvard Business School.

Bastian Lehmann

Postmates

Bastian Lehmann is Co-founder + CEO of Postmates, the on-demand logistics company he co-founded in 2011. With partnerships with Chipotle, Starbucks and 7-Eleven, Postmates now operates the largest on-demand delivery fleet. With a fleet of nearly 13,000 in 28 major metropolitan markets, Postmates has made more than 2.5M deliveries.

Julia Hartz

Eventbrite

In 2006, Julia left her responsible career as a television development executive to start Eventbrite. With a focus on strategy and growth for the company that has processed $2 billion in gross ticket sales for organizers in 179 countries, Julia is responsible for building, evolving and sustaining the global ticketing company’s growing team of 300 “Britelings” and award-winning company culture (voted “Best Places to Work in the San Francisco Bay Area” four years running). She was a TechCrunch annual “Founder of the Year” finalist and made Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs list in 2013.

Michael Seibel

Y Combinator

Michael Seibel works at Y Combinator as a full-time partner and CEO of the YC accelerator program. Previously, Michael Seibel was the co-founder and CEO Justin.tv and Socialcam. Socialcam sold to Autodesk in 2012 and under the leadership of Emmett Shear, Justin.tv became Twitch.tv and sold to Amazon in 2014. Before getting into startups, he spent a year as the finance director for a US Senate campaign and in 2005, Michael graduated from Yale University with a BA in political science.

Sebastian Thrun

Udacity

Sebastian has set his sights on democratizing higher education. Co-founder and CEO of Udacity, Sebastian is also a Research Professor at Stanford University, a former Google Fellow, as well as the inventor of the autonomous car and project lead on Google Glass. Sebastian has been named the 5th Most Creative Person in Business (Fast Company), among the 50 Smartest People in Tech (Fortune), and highlighted in 50 Best Inventions of 2010 (Time).

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy

Joyus

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is Founder & CEO of JOYUS, the web’s premium online video shopping network. Prior to founding JOYUS in January 2011, she has been a leading consumer internet and media executive with over 18 years of leadership experience at global and early stage companies including Google, Amazon, Yodle, and News Corp. Most recently, Ms Singh Cassidy served as CEO and Chairman of the board at the leading social commerce site, Polyvore, Inc, and CEO-in-Residence with Accel Partners. Sukhinder currently serves on the board of TripAdvisor, Inc (TRIP), and J. Hilburn. She has previously served as an advisor to Twitter, and on the board of J. Crew Group Inc. (JCG).

Steve Blank

Startup Owner’s Manual

Steve Blank has had a 33-year career as a successful businessman, conservationist and teacher. As a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Steve was part of/or founded eight venture-backed companies. Four of his eight startup companies went public. After he retired, he started new careers in conservation, public service, and teaching. After retiring, Steve moved from being an entrepreneur to teaching entrepreneurship to both undergraduate and graduate students at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford University and the Columbia University/Berkeley Joint Executive MBA program. Steve wrote a book (actually his class text) about building early stage companies: Four Steps to the Epiphany. He followed it in 2012 with his next book; The Startup Owner’s Manual.

Bryan Johnson

Braintree; OS Fund

Bryan is the founder of Braintree (Sold for $800M to PayPal) and OS Fund, which he started in 2014 with $100 million of his personal capital to support inventors and scientists who aim to benefit humanity by rewriting the operating systems of life. He supports endeavors to cure age-related diseases and radically extend healthy human life to 100+ (Human Longevity), make biology a predictable programming language (Ginkgo Bioworks & Synthetic Genomics), replicate the human visual cortex using artificial intelligence (Vicarious), mine asteroids (Planetary Resources), reinvent transportation using autonomous vehicles (Matternet) and reimagine food using biology (Hampton Creek), among others. He's an outdoor enthusiast, a pilot, and author of a children's book.

Marco Zappacosta

Thumbtack

Marco Zappacosta is a co-founder and CEO of Thumbtack. Marco started Thumbtack after graduating from Columbia University where he majored in Political Science and fell one class shy of another degree in Neuroscience. During college, Marco was the Director of Saving Social Security in Washington, DC. The group represented the student voice in the Social Security debate with over 10,000 student members in over 300 campus chapters nationwide.

Diishan Imira

Mayvenn

Diishan Imira is the co-founder + CEO of Mayvenn, the startup that reinvented the distribution channel for hair extensions by allowing hair stylists to sell directly to their clients. Mayvenn announced an Andreessen Horowitz led $10mm round of funding (which also included 500 Startups, Serena Williams, and Apple’s Jimmy Lovine) mid-2015. To date, they're experiencing revenue figures in the tens of millions and have grown to a community of over 30,000 hair stylists.

Kate Aronowitz

Wealthfront

efore joining Wealthfront as the VP of Design, Kate held leadership positions at three multi-billion dollar software companies. She joined Facebook as its Director of Design in 2008 and contributed to building a world-class assembly of designers, researchers, engineers and content strategists. Prior to Facebook, she joined LinkedIn as its first Director of Design in 2007. Her focus on interactive design and UX began when she joined eBay in 2000. Kate first started her design career at Amerifit Brands, designing retail corporate identity and packaging. She holds a BA in Graphic Design from the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Nirav Tolia

Nextdoor

Nirav Tolia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Nextdoor, the free and private social network for neighborhoods. Prior to Nextdoor, he was an early employee at Yahoo!, co-founder/CEO of Epinions (acquired by eBay), and EIR at Benchmark Capital. Nirav graduated from Stanford University.

Don Harrison

Google

Don Harrison is Vice President of Corporate Development at Google. He was formerly Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, and worked on a variety of projects, from large international acquisitions to investments and innovative compensation programs. He joined in 2005, and has since closed more than 100 transactions for Google, including Urchin Software, Keyhole, DoubleClick, Motorola, AdMob and ITA. Prior to that, Don was an associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where, in 2003, he was first introduced to Google and helped them acquire a small, Santa Monicabased startup (Applied Semantics). He started his career at the Toronto law firm of Davies, Ward, Phillips & Vineberg, after earning a degree in political science and philosophy at Dalhousie University and a law degree from the University of Toronto.

Andrew Braccia

Accel Partners

Andrew Braccia joined Accel in 2007 and focuses on consumer-oriented mobile and web services companies. He was the first investor and board member in Slack, lynda.com (acquired by LinkedIn), Squarespace, Vox Media, MyFitnessPal (acquired by Under Armour), 99designs and Cloudera. He also works closely with the teams at Braintree (acquired by PayPal), Etsy (public), Xero (public) and UserTesting. For more than a decade, Andrew ran Yahoo’s search and marketplace businesses. During his time he oversaw the acquisitions and integrations of Flickr, Del.icio.us, Inktomi and Overture. Andrew is from Santa Rosa, California and graduated from the University of Arizona, where he sits on the business school board.

Derek Andersen

Startup Grind

Derek Andersen is the Founder & CEO of Startup Grind, a 400,000 person entrepreneurial community with 200 chapters in 85 countries run by more than 1,000 volunteers. Startup Grind's mission is to help every entrepreneur in the world. It's core values are giving before you take, helping others first, and making friends. Derek Andersen spent four years in product management at Electronic Arts working on games like The Godfather, Burnout, The Sims 3, and Mirror’s Edge. He left EA in 2009 to start Vaporware Labs, a product incubator which mostly failed but built products including Commonred which was acquired by Income.com in 2012, and Startup Grind. After running Startup Grind as a side project for 2 years, Derek turned his full attention to scaling it from 3 chapters to 200 chapters today. In 2015 Startup Grind will host 1,200 events for 75,000 entrepreneurs. He currently lives in Palo Alto, California but has lived eight years outside the U.S. in France, Germany, Switzerland, New Zealand, and the Cook Islands.

Max Mullen

Instacart

Max is the co-founder of Instacart - where they’re making groceries magically appear. He started the company with his two co-founders in 2012. Previously, he's worked for several startups including Schematic, an award-winning interactive agency which was acquired by WPP. Max is originally from Los Angeles where he graduated from the University of Southern California, studying entrepreneurship and cinematic arts. He also owns @Max on twitter!

Katrina Lake

Stitch Fix

Inspired by the opportunity to create a truly personalized shopping experience by blending the best of the brick and mortar retail experience with an innovative approach to data and technology, Katrina founded Stitch Fix while she was a student at Harvard Business School. Since 2011, Katrina hired a world-class executive team with experience from major companies including Netflix, Walmart.com, Nike and lululemon, and has grown the company to over 1,500 employees across the country. Prior to founding Stitch Fix, Katrina honed her skill set at the intersection of fashion, retail, and technology at social commerce company Polyvore and consulted with a variety of e-commerce and traditional retailers during her time at The Parthenon Group. She also invested in and worked with dozens of entrepreneurs and start-ups at Leader Ventures. Katrina holds a B.S. in Economics from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Mary Grove

Google for Entrepreneurs

Mary Grove is director of Global Entrepreneurship Outreach where she leads Google for Entrepreneurs, the company's programs and partnerships to support startups and entrepreneurs in over 100 countries around the world. Mary joined Google in 2004 as part of the legal team working on the company's IPO then moved to New Business Development where she spent 6 years focused on a range of early stage product incubation and partnerships. Mary has led dozens of strategic technology partnerships across products including Gmail, Google Docs, Search, Chrome, and Social. She is an active leader in entrepreneur and developer outreach efforts both in the US and internationally, spanning initiatives in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. She has led exploratory trips and efforts for Google in Pakistan, Afganistan, Iraq, Gaza, and the West Bank. Mary earned her B.A. and M.A. from Stanford University and sits on the Alumni Association Board of Directors.

David Butler

Coca Cola

David is Vice President, Innovation and Entrepreneurship for the Coca- Cola Company. David leads a platform called Coca-Cola Founders, designed to co-create seed-stage startups by partnering Coca-Cola with a global network of experienced founders. In 2004 David was named Coca-Cola's first Vice President of Global Design where he led the Company’s vision and strategy for design. In 2009, Fast Company recognized David as a “Master of Design” and in 2013, he was included in Fortune Magazine’s “Executive Dream Team.” Prior to joining Coca-Cola, David held a succession of roles in design, brand strategy and management consulting. In 1997, David co- founded a digital agency called Process1234. David’s side project has been co-authoring, "Design to Grow: How Coca-Cola Learned to Combine Scale and Agility (and How You Can, Too)" with Linda Tischler (Fast Company Senior Editor) which was released in February 2015.

Michelle Zatlyn

CloudFlare

Michelle Zatlyn is the co-founder & head of user experience of CloudFlare, the web performance and security company. Today CloudFlare accelerates and protects more than 2 million web properties. Previously, she worked at Google and Toshiba, and launched two successful startups. CloudFlare was selected by the Wall Street Journal as the Most Innovative Internet Technology company two years running, and named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. Michelle holds a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and a minor in management, with distinction, from McGill University. She also holds her MBA from Harvard Business School and was awarded the Dubliner Prize for Entrepreneurship.

Marlon Nichols

Cross Culture Ventures

Marlon Nichols is a founding managing partner at Cross Culture Ventures (CCV), which finds the entrepreneurs who are building the future for the rest of America. He’s a former Kauffman Fellow and Investment Director at Intel Capital and a current adjunct professor in entrepreneurship and venture capital at the SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University. Marlon’s unique eye for global trends and shifts in consumer behavior has helped him capture high-potential investments like Gimlet Media, MongoDB, Thrive Market, Fair, LISNR, Mayvenn, Blavity, Wonderschool, and others. He’s been featured on Fortune, Blavity, and Smart Company and is the recipient of SXSW 2018 Innovator of the Year award, Digital Diversity’s Innovation & Inclusion Change Agent award, and was named Pitchbook’s 25 Black Founders and VCs to Watch in 2018.

Josh Elman

Greylock

Josh is a partner at Greylock. He joined the team in 2011 and invests in entrepreneurs building new consumer products and services. His areas of focus include social networks and platforms, mobile apps, new media, and connected devices. Josh specializes in designing, building, and scaling consumer products, having been part of multiple companies that have grown to over 100 million users. Before joining Greylock, Josh spent 15 years in product and engineering roles at leading companies in social, commerce, and media. Josh was the product lead for growth and relevance at Twitter, growing Twitter's active user base by nearly 10x. Prior to Twitter, Josh worked on the platform at Facebook and led the launch of Facebook Connect. Earlier in his career, Josh was an early employee at LinkedIn and helped establish early models for user growth and launched the first version of LinkedIn Jobs. Josh also held roles leading product management for Zazzle, and leading product and engineering for RealJukebox and RealPlayer at RealNetworks. Josh currently serves on the boards of Medium, Jelly, and SmartThings. Josh also works closely with our investments in Nextdoor, Whosay, and Path.

Des Traynor

Intercom

Des Traynor is the Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Intercom, and was previously a Co-Founder of Exceptional (now a part of Rackspace). Des's role covers many areas including product strategy, content marketing, customer support, and customer education. In addition he frequently represents Intercom when speaking at international conferences on topics such as product management, marketing, customer support, and the challenges of growing a product company.

Christine Tsai

500 Startups

Christine is the CEO and Founding Partner of 500 Startups. Since the firm’s inception in 2010, she grew 500 Startups to over $500M committed capital, 2,300+ portfolio investments, 100+ team members, 25 accelerator batches, and a vibrant community of founders spanning more than 75 countries around the world.

Christine spent her entire professional career building and investing in Silicon Valley. From 2003 to 2010, Christine held product marketing and operating roles at Google, focusing primarily on monetization and developer products. She was part of the original technical support team that helped launch Google AdSense, an advertising program for website publishers which now accounts for a significant part of Google’s revenue. During her tenure at Google, Christine also drove developer and syndication marketing at YouTube post-Google acquisition. Christine also oversaw marketing for YouTube’s APIs and developer tools, and she collaborated with numerous developers and early-stage startups integrating YouTube into their products.

Christine holds a B.A. in Cognitive Science, with a concentration in Cognitive Psychology, from the University of California at Berkeley. While at Berkeley, she was accepted into the prestigious Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program for Psychology. She was also a National Merit Scholar.

Rob Solomon

GoFundMe

With more than 20 years of experience helping to build some of the biggest names in tech, Rob wants to make GoFundMe the online destination for personal causes. Previously he was a venture partner at Accel Partners, where he advised their portfolio companies on a wide range of strategic and operational issues. Rob's most recent operating role was as President and COO of Groupon during the company's hyper-growth stage. He helped scale the company from 100 to more than 5,000 employees with a focus on Groupon's sales, marketing, business development, operations and international functions. Rob also served as CEO of Sidestep, where he led the company's turnaround and merger with Kayak. At Yahoo, he ran the commerce business unit. He has also served in various product, marketing and investment roles at Electronic Arts, Technology Crossover Ventures, Cendant, GolfWeb, Zaplet, and Hapag-Lloyd. Rob has a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an active investor in technology startups, and he serves on the board of directors of the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA.

Amy Banse

Comcast Ventures

Amy Banse, Managing Director and Head of Funds, Comcast Ventures Amy Banse serves as Managing Director and Head of Funds of Comcast Ventures and Senior Vice President at Comcast Corporation. Prior, she was President of Comcast Interactive Media. She serves on the board of Adobe and Quantifind. She graduated from Harvard and has a juris doctor from Temple University.

Debo Olaosebikan

Gigster

Debo Olaosebikan is an entrepreneur & engineer based in San Francisco. Debo has founded multiple marketplace, energy, and AI startups and is on leave from a Physics PhD at Cornell where he worked with MIT, Caltech and Stanford on a $6M project to build an electric silicon laser. He was once a radio featured musician and was the young Nigerian scientist of 2011. Upon taking a leave from his PhD., Debo moved out to Silicon Valley and along with Roger Dickey founded Gigster, an on-demand service for software development & design with a network of 350 top freelancers. Gigster is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock, and Y Combinator. Debo advises startups and helps young founders at the Thiel Fellowship.

Debby Hopkins

Citi Ventures

Debby founded and built Citi Ventures recognizing the critical role innovation must play in driving growth at Citi amid accelerating disruptive forces and heightened customer expectations. A lifelong change agent, Debby partners with Citi’s businesses to shepherd creativity and implement breakthrough solutions. Based in Palo Alto, her team works to connect Citi to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial ecosystem through their work in venture investing, identification of transformative trends, sponsorship of a network of labs, accelerators across the company and bringing the adoption of Lean Start Up to the enterprise. Since joining Citi in 2003, Debby has served in a number of executive roles including Head of Corporate Strategy and Mergers & Acquisitions, and Chief Operations & Technology Officer. She continues to act as a senior advisor to Citi’s Global Investment Bank. Her experience prior to Citi spans multiple industries; automotive, aerospace, telecommunications and information technology. Previous roles include Chief Financial Officer at both Boeing and Lucent Technologies, VP of Finance at General Motors Europe and General Auditor at General Motors. At Unisys she was General Manager of Information Services and Corporate Controller. Debby serves on the board of Qlik Technologies as well as the Advisory Boards of Riverwood Capital and Stanford’s Technology Venture program. Recently she was named an Executive Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Fortune has twice placed Debby among the top 10 most powerful women in business and she has been on the Institutional Investor’s Top 50 list every year since 2011. Debby holds honorary doctorate degrees from Westminster College and Walsh College.

Micha Kaufman

Fiverr

Micha is Fiverr co-founder & CEO and an angel investor.

Fiverr is the world's most transacted marketplace for services, creating economic opportunities for the entrepreneurs of the gig economy. Fiverr was founded by ShaiWininger and Micha Kaufman in 2009 and ccurrently lists more than three million services on the site that range between $5 and $500. Fiverr.com has been ranked among the top 100 most popular sites in the U.S. and top 150 in the world since the beginning of 2013.

During August 2014, Fiverr announced that it has raised $30 million in a Series C round of funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Accel and other investors. The round brings their total funding to date to $50 million.

Tony Xu

DoorDash

Tony Xu is the CEO and Co-founder of DoorDash. Prior to co-founding DoorDash, Tony worked in product at Square, led special projects for the CEO and CFO at eBay, and began his career at McKinsey and Company. He holds a B.S. with High Honors in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from UC Berkeley and a MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Katie Benner

New York Times

Katie writes about Apple, venture capital and startups for the New York Times. Previously she wrote about technology at Bloomberg and the Information, and she covered Wall Street at Fortune magazine. She has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Marketplace Radio and WNYC. Her work includes features on Dell's doomed turnaround plan, General Electric's financial crisis woes, the rise and fall of Buddy Fletcher and Ellen Pao, trouble at Jawbone and the disasters that befell employees when Good Technology was sold to BlackBerry.

Yuval Tal

Payoneer

Yuval Tal is the founder, President and a board member of Payoneer. Before founding Payoneer in 2005, Tal co-founded Borderfree (NASDAQ: BRDR), and was its CEO from 1999-2005. Borderfree is a provider of services that expedite cross-border ecommerce and payments for many large online and offline retailers. Tal previously served as vice president of business development for RADWARE (NASDAQ: RDWR). He is a member of YPO and an angel investor in a number of start-ups in the payment space, including ZooZ and TravelersBox. Tal is a member of Harvard Business School plan for managers, Tal holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and an M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering, with minor in business administration, from Tel Aviv University

Eurie Kim

Forerunner Ventures

Eurie joined Forerunner Ventures as a Principal in May 2012. Over the past 10+ years, Eurie has evaluated and aided a wide variety of companies in their quest to define business models, identify target markets, and overcome operational and competitive challenges to drive growth. As a management consultant at Bain and Company, Eurie advised large retail and e-commerce clients on strategy, identifying acquisition opportunities, and harnessing consumer insights to drive growth. Prior to Bain, Eurie was an investor at Castanea Partners where she evaluated growth investments in consumer and retail businesses. Eurie also has a personal passion for entrepreneurship, which inspired her to launch an artisanal leather goods brand as well as serve on the founding team of a European luxury brand incubator.

Kara Goldin

Hint water

Kara Goldin is CEO + Founder of San Francisco-based Hint Inc, which produces all-natural fruit essence waters. Kara launched Hint to make it easier for consumers to drink more water and lead a healthier lifestyle. With an extraordinary track record of business success, Kara was formerly the Vice President of Shopping and E-commerce Partnerships at AOL. Kara is one of Fortune’s “Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs," one of EY’s “Entrepreneurial Winning Women,” and the Gold Stevie Award Winner for “Female Entrepreneur of the Year”.

Gurjeet Singh

Ayasdi

Gurjeet Singh is the CEO and co-founder of Ayasdi. In this position, he leads a technology movement that emphasizes the importance of extracting insight from data, not just storing and organizing it. Prior to starting Ayasdi, Gurjeet worked at Google and Texas Instruments and was named by Silicon Valley Business Journal as one of their 40 Under 40 in 2015. He is the author of numerous patents and has published in a variety of top mathematics and computer science journals. Gurjeet is a graduate of Delhi University and Stanford University.

Nicole Shariat Farb

DarbySmart

Nicole Shariat Farb is co-founder and CEO of Darby Smart – the platform to share, find and shop creativity. In 2013, Nicole left Goldman Sachs to start Darby Smart with the mission to unlock the world's creativity by making creativity easy and accessible for everyone at every level. Darby Smart’s platform has become an invaluable incubator for creative thinkers as it gives them a place to share their ideas, sell creations and find new inspiration. The company has quickly become recognized as revolutionary in the Maker Movement as it has grown to become an active community representing millions of creative voices and ideas.

Charles Hudson

Precursor Ventures

Charles Hudson is the Managing Partner at Precursor Ventures, a classic seed stage investment firm based out of San Francisco, CA. Precursor seeks to invest in a company’s first round of institutional investment and focuses on investments in B2B software applications, B2C software and services, and connected hardware.

Bridgette Beam

Google

As a the head of global programs for Google for Entrepreneurs, Bridgette Beam works to bring the best of Google’s resourced to support the growth of startups and entrepreneurs across 125 countries. In addition, Bridgette is part of the core team behind Campuses: physical hubs where entrepreneurs can learn, connect, and build companies that will change the world. Along with her team, she develops the programs that provide entrepreneurs unparalleled access to mentorship, connections and trainings to support the growth of their startup. Today, there are 5 Campuses in London, Seoul, Tel Aviv, Madrid and Warsaw serving over 65,000 member entrepreneurs.

Arvind Purushotham

Citi Ventures

Arvind co-heads the Global Venture Investing group at Citi Ventures. In addition to managing the group, he invests in companies in Financial Services, Security, and Enterprise Infrastructure. His portfolio includes Betterment, Chef, Click Security, Persado, Pindrop, Silver Tail Systems (acq by EMC), Tanium and vArmour. In addition, Arvind helps lead partnerships between portfolio companies and Citi’s business units. Prior to Citi, Arvind spent nearly a decade as a Managing Director at Menlo Ventures, a top-tier VC firm on Sand Hill Road. There, he was an investor and Board member in companies such as Kazeon Systems, Cavium Networks, Solidcore, nCircle Network Security, Intelligent Results and Vhayu Technologies. Previously, Arvind was a design engineer, and a Program Manager, in the Mobile Pentium group at Intel Corporation. Arvind obtained his BSEE from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, an MSEE from Case Western Reserve University, and an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School.

Christopher Johnson

Rapid Ramen

Christopher Johnson is the Founder and CEO of The Johnson Group, Inc. a corporate recruiting company. Chris is also the Inventor of the Rapid Ramen Bowl where he successfully pitched his invention to ABC's Shark Tank, where he landed a deal with Mark Cuban. He was recognized as one of Sacramento Business Journal’s “40 under 40” and was also recognized as one of the “40 Next” by Black Enterprise Magazine.

Steve Clemons

The Atlantic

Washington Editor-At-Large, The Atlantic Steve Clemons is Washington Editor-At-Large for The Atlantic and National Journal; and Editor-in-Chief of AtlanticLIVE, National Journal LIVE, and QuartzLIVE. He is also Editor-at-Large for Quartz and an MSNBC contributor. At AtlanticLIVE, The Atlantic’s premium events division, Clemons develops concepts and editorial content and leads programs as an interviewer, moderator, and host.

Iliana Montauk

Gaza Sky Geeks

Iliana Montauk is the director of Gaza Sky Geeks, the first startup accelerator in Gaza, launched in 2011 by the global humanitarian organization Mercy Corps. Gaza Sky Geeks fills a critical need in Gaza, where young tech talent is abundant but opportunities are in short supply. It brought the first international private investment to Gazan startups in late 2013. In 2015, Gaza Sky Geeks ran the biggest crowdfunding campaign to date in the Arab world.

Montauk’s interest in harnessing tech entrepreneurship for development in frontier markets arose from her past experience at Google, a microfinance nonprofit and Wamda, a media outlet focused on startups in the Arab world.

She graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 2006 and completed a Fulbright in Jordan in 2012 focused on startups in the Middle East. Originally from Poland and the San Francisco Bay Area, Montauk speaks five languages, including Arabic.

Pramod Dabir

West Agile Labs

Utilizing his investment background at Goldman Sachs and TA Associates, Pramod channeled his entrepreneurial spirit to develop Boutine an online fashion ecommerce site. During this time, Pramod identified a key challenge for startups - the need for a high quality, affordable solution for their product development and founded West Agile Labs. As the CEO Pramod oversees business development and growing relationships at West Agile.

Nabeel Hyatt

Spark Capital

Nabeel is an early-stage investor and supporter of entrepreneurs building hardware, software and services startups that offer creative solutions to practical, everyday problems. He has led Spark’s investments in Coin, Hey, Picturelife (acq. by StreamNation), Postmates, and Thalmic Labs. He looks for products in which the underlying technology or systems can be extremely complex, but are presented as a simple, magical experience to the people who use them. Coin, for example, does something seemingly small—it holds your credit cards—but at scale it reinvents how people interact with money. Postmates has a seemingly humble offering—it brings you dinner—but by doing so seamlessly, it upends urban logistics. Nabeel was previously General Manager at Zynga (NASDAQ: ZNGA), which he joined before the IPO in 2010 after Zynga acquired Conduit, a hyper-growth social gaming startup where he was cofounder and CEO. Previously he helped start and then lead product development at Ambient Devices, an MIT Media Lab spin-out that worked with designers like Yves Behar and Frank Gehry to bring a blend of IT and modern design to consumers, helping pioneer what would later become known as “The Internet of Things.” Nabeel received a B.A. in Design from Maryland Institute, College of Art, studied Computer Science at Purdue University and now lives in Berkeley, California.

Sandras Phiri

Africa Trust Academy

Sandras is co-founder and CEO of Africa Trust Academy (ATA), an education company dedicated to inspiring and educating people for economic transformation. ATA owns Pranary, a learning platform that provides personalised learning with emphasis on financial literacy, entrepreneurship and personal development. Sandras has spoken and consulted in several countries including Zambia, Malawi and Bali, Indonesia and has worked with renowned organisations such as General Electric, the African Union and several companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. He has lectured at 8 major universities in South Africa and is a mentor on South African Broadcasting Corporation TV programme that focuses on enabling entrepreneurs to build successful businesses. Sandras holds a Computer Science degree and an MBA from University of Cape Town. He lives in Cape Town South Africa with his wife and two kids.

Anjula Acharia-Bath

Trinity Ventures

Anjula Acharia-Bath is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, pop culture enthusiast & Angel Investor (ClassPass, The Hunt (acquired by Pinterest), Mayvenn, Gobble, The Muse, Cue, Hooked - Telepathic). As a partner at Trinity Ventures, Anjula works to transform portfolio companies into truly global brands as well as work to further Trinity’s campaign for greater diversity in tech. Prior to joining Trinity, Anjula co-founded Desi Hits!, which introduced mega-stars Lady Gaga, 50 cent and Britney Spears to India and launched Bollywood star, Priyanka Chopra with partner/investor jimmy Iovine in the U.S. She has deep connections in the entertainment/music/tech world and was recently named as one of Billboard’s 2014 ‘International Power Players’ and ‘Top 40 Women in Music.” She is passionate about mentoring entrepreneurs and bridging the gap between technology and entertainment and to this end was named on Vanity Fair’s ‘Next Establishment’ List as a “Titan disrupting media, technology and culture.

Nir Eyal

Author, Hooked

Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. The M.I.T. Technology Review dubbed Nir, “The Prophet of Habit-Forming Technology.” Nir founded two tech companies since 2003 and has taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. He is the author of the bestselling book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. In addition to blogging at NirAndFar.com, Nir is a contributing writer for TechCrunch, Inc. and Psychology Today. Nir is also an active investor in habit-forming technologies. Some of his past investments include: Eventbrite, Product Hunt, Pantry, Refresh.io (acquired by LinkedIn), Happy Bits, Presence Learning, 7 Cups of Tea, Pana, and Symphony Commerce. Nir attended The Stanford Graduate School of Business and Emory University.

Julia Barrett

Salesforce

Julia Barrett is the Global Program Director of Salesforce for Startups. Julia initially joined Salesforce through Heroku where she assisted in corporate alignment, strategic partnerships and go-to-market strategy through the Salesforce channel. Prior to Salesforce, Julia drove early-stage marketing for Wealthfront, the largest and fastest growing fintech startup which she joined at launch after many years managing global e-commerce partnership programs, including the eBay Partner Network.

Michal Lev-Ram

Fortune

Michal Lev-Ram, Senior writer, Fortune Michal has been on staff at Fortune since 2010. Previously, she worked at Business 2.0 and had been a frequent contributor to CNNMoney, Popular Science and Fast Company. Michal is based in Silicon Valley, where she covers the technology and entertainment industries for the magazine and website. She is also co-chair of Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference and Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit.

Steven van Wel

Karma

Steven van Wel is the Co-Founder/CEO of Karma. Born in The Netherlands, he started his first company when he was 19 years old. He is the co-author of the book Elastic Beanstalk, published by O'Reilly in 2011, and previously founded Marvia (acquired by PostNL). He is currently based in New York, where Karma was launched while in the TechStars NYC 2012 program. Karma is the easiest way to get online. By unlocking Wi-Fi we will make it possible for everyone to bring their own bandwidth, anywhere in the world. Today, Karma Go's Social Bandwidth brings frictionless Wi-Fi sharing to the masses. It's Wi-Fi for everyone to use.

Terry Chen

Pivotal

Terry Chen is an Associate Director of Pivotal Labs San Francisco, who has over ten years experience as a software development leader. Terry is passionate about solving business problems with innovation and has devoted his career to building software and managing large teams across different scales of organization from boot-strapped startup to Fortune 500. Terry currently overseas all aspects of business development, allocations and utilization for client engagements in our San Francisco office. Prior to joining Pivotal Labs, Terry was an Engineering Manager at mobile gaming startup Ngmoco:), which he saw through an acquisition. He was also part of early-stage software teams at Amazon and Avid. Terry continues to advise startups on development best practices, organizational management, and hiring through the Pivotal Labs Product Office Hours program and beyond.

Sarah Buhr

TechCrunch

Write about digital health, biotechnology, tech culture, gender and diversity, privacy and security news for TechCrunch.

Aaron Skonnard

Pluralsight

Aaron Skonnard is the CEO of Pluralsight, a SaaS learning platform that delivers on-demand courses on leading technologies to businesses around the world. Aaron cofounded Pluralsight in 2004 and has since grown the company to nearly 500 employees and 800 expert authors. As CEO, Aaron focuses on business strategy, future direction, product development and strategic partnerships. On a day-to-day basis, he works closely with the entire executive team in different capacities, including recruiting, brand management, marketing, sales, feature planning and content acquisition. Through his leadership, the company has flourished. Pluralsight acquired seven companies in the three years to widen the scope of its library and add key technologies to its product line. Aaron also led Pluralsight through two rounds of funding, including a $135 million Series B round in August 2014. Aaron is a thought-leader in the industry, speaking at events around the world. He’s the chairman of the board of Start Foundation, a nonprofit that supports Utah’s booming tech community. As a result of his efforts in the business world and community, Aaron was named 2015 Utah CEO of the Year from StartSLC and MountainWest Capital’s 2016 Entrepreneur of the Year.

Laís de Oliveira

8spaces.co

Entrepreneur and Community Builder focused on building companies that improve the way companies are built. Currently Founder at 8spaces (marketplace for sharing productive spaces) and Confluence.city, an initiative to build better cities through community building. Previously, she was Startup Grind East Community Director and facilitator of the socio-cultural aspects of MAP (MaGIC Accelerator Program, which gathered 50 startups from Malaysia and ASEAN in a 4 months program).

Chris Joannou

DREAMPUSHERS

Chris Joannou is the Co-Founder of the Private Label Lab an innovation house focused on the design, development, and delivery of private label food and beverage projects and programmes for major brands, retailers, and foodservice suppliers across the Asia-Pacific. He is the also Founding Director and General Manager of Startup Grind Australia / NZ connecting, inspiring, and educating the Australasian Startup Scene serving 8,000+ Entrepreneurs a month across the Pacific. Ranked as one the top 50 Australian startup influencers by StartupDaily.

Pablo Lascurain

Intrinno / 4founders

Pablo has participated professionally in different areas. Lawyer by education, before becoming a full time entrepreneur, he was involved in international business, real estate & government consulting, business strategic planning, and technology development. He previously founded 7 companies and currently serves as founder and CEO at INTRINNO the first OI platform in Latin America focused in creating, developing and managing innovation in big companies and implementing an innovation and happiness culture. He is Director of Startup Grind Latam and he participates actively in the organization and development of the Startups and Investors community in Latam with emphasis on creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem that provides opportunities on a regional level to latin american entrepreneurs. In 2017 he founded 4founders a Davos style forum focused on identifying and connecting top 20 startups and top 10 investors from a region to Silicon Valley Investors and Key Players; he is also an advisor and investor in 6 startups and 1 VC fund.

He is also a contributing writer for Forbes Magazine and the Huffington Post.

Betty Mutimba

Startup Grind

Betty is Startup Grind's Regional Director for Africa and runs the Nairobi chapter. She works at Fezah as Business Operations Lead in Nairobi. Fezah provides you the simplest way to book a musician, band or DJ for your events. She is also the Band Manager for the Kenyan rock group ParkingLotGrass. Previously, she co-founded Valuraha, a technology startup aimed at spreading financial literacy. Betty is an aspiring novelist currently working on her first book.

Paul Ahlstrom

Alta Ventures

Paul Ahlstrom is Managing Director and co-founder of Alta Ventures and Alta Growth Capital. Through his current Alta Ventures fund and prior seven funds, Paul has invested in Jott, VidAngel, Converus, Ancestry.com, Altiris, LanDesk, Rhomobile, SpaceMonkey and more than 125 startups throughout the US and Latin America. Paul is the author of the book Nail It, Then Scale It, and of the Big Idea Canvas. Through his investment platform of Alta Ventures and the Alta Innovation Institute, Paul is focused on accelerating positive venture outcomes for entrepreneurs and creating knowledge economy jobs in Latin America.

Perri Blake Gorman

Archively

Perri Blake Gorman is the Founder / CEO of Archively and the Co-founder of UnrollMe recently acquired by Slice/Rakuten. She is passionate about all things people, product, process and productivity. Before getting into the startup world, Perri spent over thirteen years doing retained executive search on Wall Street. Perri was recently appointed to the Board of Protohack, the codeless hackathon and she is a Mentor at Traction School, Tradecraft. She is an advocate for people who don't code, like herself, having the education and resources to get their ideas into the world.

Johan Brenner

Creandum

Johan is one of Europe’s most experienced venture capital investors. He has worked across a broad set of industries globally and built a number of successful businesses as an entrepreneur, and as Partner in leading venture capital firms. He has worked in large corporations and small start ups, seen failures and successes, has a vast global network in the VC ecosystem and has a true passion to build companies. Before becoming an entrepreneur Johan spend close to 10 years with ABB and Kinnevik. At ABB, Johan assisted the build up of ABB Financial Services globally and ran ABB’s Power Generation business expansion in Eastern Europe in the early 90s. At Kinnevik, Johan first oversaw the IPO of MTG as their COO, followed by being President of Kinnevik’s investments. At Kinnevik, Johan co-founded Net Entertainment, the leading supplier of online casino games. As an entrepreneur and angel investor, Johan first co-founded E*Trade in the Nordics in 1997 before selling it to E*Trade and then running E*Trade’s European business. He was a co-founder and chairman of Jobline, which became Europe’s largest Online Recruiter, went public and sold to Monster Inc. He co-founded Tradera which was bought by eBay. He was an angel investor and chairman of DIBS until it went public and co-founded Payson which was sold to Svea Ekonomi. He also co-founded Livebookings/Bookatable, Europe’s largest restaurant reservation management system. He has been early angel investor in several companies like the online insurance broker Insplanet, and the dental chain Smile Group, the largest Nordic private dental chain. Before Creandum, Johan spent almost 5 years as a General Partner at Balderton Capital (previously Benchmark Capital Europe) with investments in companies like MySQL, Rebtel and Zopa. Johan joined Creandum in 2010. He invests in entrepreneurs with big disruptive ideas particularly in financial services, marketplaces and Saas.

Marian Gazdik

Startup Grind; IPM Growth

Director at Startup Grind London. Founding Partner at IPM Growth, a VC company investing in top tech companies from Central & Eastern Europe. Board member at Matsuko.com, Advisory board at Tachyum.com, Acquisition Committee at Tate (REEAC).

Founder of BrainTrust, a think-tank helping top tech CEOs and founders in Central Europe scale globally. Ex-Orange, ex-Reebok. Marian was featured in New Europe 100 (organised by Financial Times, Google, Respublica and Visegrad Fund), the list of outstanding challengers who are leading world class innovation from Central and Eastern Europe.

Stephanie Palmeri

SoftTech VC

Stephanie Palmeri invests with SoftTech VC in marketplaces, consumer services, EdTech and SaaS – including Poshmark, Grovo, Class Dojo, Fatherly, Lantern, and Niche (aqc. Twitter). Previously, Stephanie worked at intersection of marketing and technology for startups and seed funds (Lot18 & NYC Seed) and large corporations (Accenture, Estee Lauder, SAP).

Simon Rothman

Greylock

Simon invests in entrepreneurs building consumer networks and platforms, and he leads Greylock’s $100 million commitment to marketplace investments. Simon joined Greylock in 2011 as an Executive-in-Residence and was promoted to Partner in 2013. His area of focus includes network effects businesses and transaction-based startups with a specialty around marketplaces. He has served as an advisor to many marketplaces and networks including Lyft, Tango, Taskrabbit, Poshmark, and others. Simon also leads Greylock’s $100 million commitment to marketplace investments. Simon is an early pioneer of online marketplaces and network effect businesses. He joined eBay when it was a small, US collectibles auction business and helped scale the company to nearly 200 million users generating over $40 billion in merchandise sales. While at eBay, Simon was Founder and Global Vice President of eBay Motors, a division of eBay that nationalized the used car market. Within 6 1/2 years Simon built eBay Motors into a $14 billion a year global business becoming the number one automotive marketplace in the world and a top 10 eCommerce property. In addition to founding and running eBay Motors, Simon was responsible for eBay’s US Operations. The $10 billion business unit covered the P&L’s for all US categories except media. Before founding eBay Motors, Simon worked for several years as a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company. He has also founded a marketplace, been issued 4 United States patents, and served as an early Tesla Motors board member.

Leena Rao

Fortune

Leena Rao is currently a Senior Writer at Fortune Magazine. Leena had a brief stint at Google Ventures as an Operating Partner. Leena’s first role out of journalism school was at TechCrunch which she joined in 2008. She rose through the ranks becoming the Managing Editor for TechCrunch and a voice at TechCrunch Disrupt. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was the captain of the women’s varsity tennis team. She has also contributed technology content for Oprah.com.

Rich Maloy

IBM

Rich Maloy is the Global Entrepreneur Program at IBM. IBM's mission is to transform the world through innovation and entrepreneurship. He believes that startups give all people the opportunity to grow, learn, and earn. He lived and worked in NYC for 14 years where his first career was in finance; his second career was in sales where he was a multiple-time President’s Club performer. And now startups are his third career, based out of Boulder, CO. He loves his wife, tech, video games, sci-fi, and skiing.

Rachel Chalmers

Ignition Partners

Rachel Chalmers joined Ignition as a principal in 2013. She sources deals in enterprise and cloud infrastructure, “big data” and the “Internet of Things;” advises portfolio companies and provides counsel on industry trends. Prior to Ignition, Rachel worked for 13 years at the 451 Group, an independent technology industry analyst firm focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation. She was most recently the company’s vice-president of research, overseeing all work on enterprise infrastructure software. Coverage areas included hypervisors, operating systems, provisioning and automation, application development, performance monitoring and lifecycle management. While at 451, Rachel was among the first analysts to cover Opsware, BladeLogic, VMware, Splunk and Cloudera. Before becoming a technology analyst, Rachel was a journalist in the U.S. and Australia. She helped launch Computer Week, later PC Week Australia, and was the Internet editor for Computerwire, where she wrote about software and open-source technologies. Rachel received a BA degree in English from the University of Sydney and a master’s in philosophy, with a focus on Anglo-Irish literature, from Trinity College, Dublin. She was an advisor to the Ada Initiative, a non-profit that supports women in open technology and culture.

Leela Srinivasan

Lever

Leela Srinivasan is CMO of Lever, the collaborative recruiting platform that powers a fundamentally more human approach to hiring. Prior to joining Lever, Leela ran B2B Marketing and Product Marketing for OpenTable. She developed an obsession with all things talent during her four and a half years at LinkedIn, where she was Director of Marketing for the company's Talent Solutions business. In her prior life she was a management consultant at Bain and Company in San Francisco and London. Leela holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and an MA from Edinburgh University in her native Scotland.

Colleen Taylor

Y Combinator

Colleen Taylor is based in San Francisco. Prior to her position at Y Combinator, she was a reporter for TechCrunch and the editorial director for TechCrunch TV. Previously she worked as a reporter for GigaOM, the Financial Times' Mergermarket newswire, and the semiconductor industry newsletter Electronic News.

John Rampton

Due, Entrepreneur

Best known as an Entrepreneur and Connector. John was recently named #3 on Top 50 Online Influencers in the World by Entrepreneur Magazine as well as a blogging expert by Forbes. Awarded Top 10 Most Influential PPC Experts in the World for the past 3 years. He currently advises several companies in the bay area. Read More

Aarthi Ramamurthy

Lumoid

Aarthi Ramamurthy is the founder of Lumoid, a YCombinator backed service for test driving consumer electronics, such as drones, wearables and photography gear. She worked on the XBox LIVE team at Microsoft for 6 years, and then joined Netflix to build the video streaming SDK for various CE platforms such as Sony, Panasonic, Apple etc. She has a Masters in software engineering.

Hunter Walk

Homebrew VC

Before Homebrew, I led consumer product management at YouTube, starting when it was acquired by Google. I originally joined Google in 2003, managing product and sales efforts for AdSense, Google‘s contextual advertising business. My first job in Silicon Valley was as the founding product and marketing guy at Linden Lab. Before graduate school, I was a management consultant and also spent a year at Late Night with Conan O‘ Brien. My parents are proud of my BA in History from Vassar and MBA from Stanford University.

Joy Randels

Joy launched the first of 15 ventures at age 18, nine successful acquisitions and 2 IPO’s later she exercises her passion for building high-value, scalable businesses as the founder and CEO of New Market Partners. Since it’s inception in 2004 she has worked with over 800 startups helping them build scalable businesses. Joy has led public and private companies from bootstrap through venture; raising over $360M in capital, leading 17 acquisitions and generating in excess of $15B in revenue. She is the founding Director of Startup Grind Florida, Technova Florida and an active angel investor. Her most recent honors from the business community include: Technology Leader of the Year, Business Woman of the Year, Power 100 Business Leaders, Top 10 Influencer of Innovation. A frequent speaker and contributor to Fortune, Bloomberg, Wired, CISO and other media outlets, she is a recognized voice in the areas of Entrepreneurship, Mobile and Cybersecurity.

Sandeep Bhadra

Menlo Ventures

Sandeep Bhadra joined Menlo in 2015 and focuses on enterprise investments. Companies in the Menlo portfolio he is involved with include Platform9 and Scality. Sandeep was most recently with Cisco’s Corporate Business Development team working on acquisitions and investments in cloud, enterprise infrastructure software and big data/analytics. Sandeep was actively involved with Cisco’s acquisitions of tail-f (SDN orchestration), Metacloud (Openstack private cloud) and Memoir Systems (next-gen network memory), and investments in Map-R, Platfora and Moogsoft (big data / analytics). Earlier, Sandeep was an engineer at Texas Instruments’ R&D unit – where he led projects to build an Openflow switch chip, an ultra low-power IoT wireless mote and 4G/LTE small-cell networks. Sandeep received a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelors degree from IIT Madras, both in Electrical Engineering, and an MBA from INSEAD. In his spare time, Sandeep likes to travel up and down the pacific coast with his dog, read fiction, and drink burgundies.

Nick Sturiale

Ignition Partners

Nick Sturiale joined Ignition in 2013, as a managing partner and oversees the Palo Alto office. Early on, Nick spent 12 years as an entrepreneur in three startups where he held most all functional roles from QA, to product management to channel sales to marketing and BD. He was also founding CEO and Director of Timbre Technologies, a manufacturing-analytics software company, which won the 1999 UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition and was acquired by Tokyo Electron for $138 million in 2001. As a VC in the last 15 years, Nick’s has been directly involved in over 100 startups, held more than 25 board seats and invested across multiple platform generations from applications to web/cloud infrastructure to mobile enterprise to Big Data. To date, Nick’s companies have generated nearly $700M in realized value from approximately $100M in investment cost. Prior to Ignition, Nick spent three years at Icon Ventures (formerly JAFCO Ventures) as a general partner, where he invested in companies such as VuClip (PCCW), Reputation.com, Bill.com and Delphix. Nick spent eight years at Sevin Rosen Funds, where he incubated and led first investments in companies such as Actional (PRGS), XenSource (CTXS), Solidcore (INTC) and Splunk (SPLK). Nick also worked at The Carlyle Group as a managing director and co-head of its Silicon Valley office. Nick holds a BS degree (and completed BA requirements) from California State University, Chico, and an MBA with academic distinction from the University of California, Berkeley, where he is a frequent guest lecturer and a member of the Haas School Dean’s Advisory Group.

None (None)

Fox Theater - 2215 Broadway Redwood City , 94063 Silicon Valley, San Francisco Bay Area Feb 23 - 24, 2016, 8:00 AM (PST)

About this event

Speakers

Marc Andreessen

Anne Wojcicki

Ron Conway

Stewart Butterfield

Clayton Christensen

Dustin Moskovitz

Brit Morin

Aaron Levie

Payal Kadakia

Ryan Smith

Steven Chen

Yves Behar

Tim Draper

Aileen Lee

Jason Fried

Guy Kawasaki

Selina Tobaccowala

Chamath Palihapitiya

Tracy Young

Vinod Khosla

Ryan Sweeney

Bastian Lehmann

Julia Hartz

Michael Seibel

Sebastian Thrun

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy

Steve Blank

Bryan Johnson

Marco Zappacosta

Diishan Imira

Kate Aronowitz

Nirav Tolia

Don Harrison

George Zachary

Andrew Braccia

Derek Andersen

Max Mullen

Katrina Lake

Mary Grove

David Butler

Michelle Zatlyn

Marlon Nichols

Josh Elman

Des Traynor

Christine Tsai

Rob Solomon

Amy Banse

Debo Olaosebikan

Debby Hopkins

Micha Kaufman

Tony Xu

Katie Benner

Yuval Tal

Eurie Kim

Kara Goldin

Gurjeet Singh

Nicole Shariat Farb

Bryan Schreier

Charles Hudson

Bridgette Beam

Arvind Purushotham

Christopher Johnson

Steve Clemons

Iliana Montauk

Pramod Dabir

Nabeel Hyatt

Sandras Phiri

Anjula Acharia-Bath

Nir Eyal

Julia Barrett

Michal Lev-Ram

Steven van Wel

Terry Chen

Sarah Buhr

Aaron Skonnard

Laís de Oliveira

Fox Theater - 2215 Broadway Redwood City , 94063 Silicon Valley, San Francisco Bay Area
Feb 23 - 24, 2016, 8:00 AM (PST)