Disrupt SF 2018
September 5 – 7, 2018 — San Francisco
Speakers
Fope Adelowo
Vice PresidentHelios Investment Partners
Jim Adler
Founding Managing DirectorToyota AI Ventures
Rose Afriyie
Co-Founder and Executive DirectormRelief
Sophia Amoruso
Founder & General PartnerTrust Fund
Chris Anderson
CEO3D Robotics
Colin Angle
Chairman, CEO and FounderiRobot
Brian Armstrong
Co-founder & CEOCoinbase
Michael Arrington
PartnerArrington XRP Capital
Natalya (Brikner) Bailey
CEOAccion Systems
Cyan Banister
Venture Partner, The FrontierLong Journey Ventures
Peter Barrett
CTO & General PartnerPlayground Global
David Baszucki
Founder & CEORoblox
Peter Beck
Founder & CEORocket Lab
Brian Behlendorf
Executive Director of the Hyperledger ProjectLinux Foundation
Robin Berzin
Founder & CEOParsley Health
Helen Zelman Boniske
PartnerLemnos VC
John Borthwick
Founder & CEOBetaworks
Roelof Botha
Managing Partner and StewardSequoia Capital
Brian Brackeen
Co-founder & General PartnerLightship Capital
Reilly Brennan
Founding General PartnerTrucks Venture Capital
Adam Bry
Chief Executive OfficerSkydio
Dalton Caldwell
Managing Director & Group PartnerY Combinator
Sarah Cannon
PartnerIndex Ventures
Steve Case
Chairman & CEORevolution
Sam Cassatt
Priscilla Chan
Co-FounderChan Zuckerberg Initiative
Martin Chavez
PartnerGoldman Sachs
Jina Choi
Jason Citron
Founder & Former CEODiscord
Jeff Clavier
Founder and Managing PartnerUncork Capital
Rob Coneybeer
Founder and Managing DirectorShasta Ventures
Claire Delaunay
COOFarm-ng
Laura Deming
General PartnerThe Longevity Fund
Cyril Ebersweiler
General PartnerSOSV
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins
Founder & CEOPromise
Effie Epstein
Managing PartnerSound Ventures
John Foley
Founder & CEOPeloton
Avichal Garg
Managing PartnerElectric Capital
Brad Garlinghouse
CEORipple
Dario Gil
Vice President of AI and IBM QIBM
David Gilboa
Co-Founder & Co-CEOWarby Parker
Kirsten Green
Founding PartnerForerunner
Ken Goldberg
Chief Scientist, Ambidextrous Robotics & Distinguished Chair, EngineeringUC Berkeley College of Engineering
Fengmin Gong
Vice PresidentDidi
Sarah Guo
Founder and Managing PartnerConviction
Arvind Gupta
PartnerMayfield Fund
Amanda Gutterman
Chief Marketing OfficerConsenSys
Arlan Hamilton
Founder & Managing PartnerBackstage Capital
Tess Hatch
PartnerBessemer Venture Partners
Rachel E. Haurwitz
Co-founder, President & CEOCaribou Biosciences
Whitney Wolfe Herd
Founder & CEOBumble
Marillyn Hewson
Emily Heyward
Co-founder & Chief Brand OfficerRed Antler
Reid Hoffman
PartnerGreylock
David Hornik
General PartnerAugust Capital
Ben Horowitz
Co-founder & General PartnerAndreessen Horowitz
Drew Houston
Co-founder & CEODropbox
Razmig Hovaghimian
Frederick Hutson
CEO and FounderPigeonly
Mike Judge
Co-creator, Executive Producer, Writer and Director HBO "Silicon Valley”HBO
Rebecca Kaden
PartnerUnion Square Ventures
Chaitanya Kanojia
Co FounderStarry
Dara Khosrowshahi
CEOUber
Nina Kjellson
General PartnerCanaan
Bob Kocher
Contributor
Philip Krim
Co-Founder, CEOCasper
Ashton Kutcher
Co-Founder and General PartnerSound Ventures
Aileen Lee
Founder & Managing PartnerCowboy Ventures
Bo Young Lee
Chief Diversity & Inclusion OfficerUber
Kai-Fu Lee
Chairman & CEO, Sinovation VenturesPresident, Sinovation Ventures Artificial Intelligence Institute
Sam Liang
CEO & CofounderOtter.ai
Norman Liang
Eric Liedtke
Executive Board Member, Global BrandsAdidas
Jeremy Liew
PartnerLightspeed Venture Partners
Bobby Lo
Founder & CEOVurb
Joseph Lubin
FounderConsenSys
Kristian Lum
Lead StatisticianHuman Rights Data Analysis Group
Susan Lyne
Co-founder & General PartnerBBG Ventures
Rebecca Lynn
Co-founder & General PartnerCanvas Ventures
Rich Mahoney
CEO and FounderSeismic
Laura Major
CTOMotional
Jason Mars
Will Marshall
Co-Founder & CEOPlanet
Trevor Martin
Co-Founder & CEOMammoth Biosciences
Dieter May
Senior Vice President Digital Products and ServicesBayerische Motoren Werke
Anjney Midha
Co-founder & CEOUbiquity6
Ken Njoroge
CEOCellulant
Matt Ocko
Sam O'Keefe
Founder in Residence, A120Google
Tayo Oviosu
Founder & CEOPaga
Delane Parnell
Founder & CEOPlayVS
Aaron Patzer
Brynn Jinnett Putnam
Founder & CEOMIRROR
Megan Quinn
General PartnerSpark Capital
John Riccitiello
CEOUnity Technologies
Eric Ries
Founder & CEOLong-Term Stock Exchange
Chad Rigetti
Founder & CEORigetti Computing
Dr. Jennifer Schneider
CMO & PresidentLivongo
Daniel Schreiber
Co-Founder & CEOLemonade
Tina Sharkey
TitleCo-Founder + Co-ChairpersonBrandless
Michael Seibel
Partner & Startup Accelerator CEOY Combinator
James Siminoff
Founder, CEO and Chief InventorRing
Arianna Simpson
General Partnera16z crypto
Alan Stern
Associate Vice PresidentSouthwest Research Institute
Nikolay Storonsky
Founder & Chief Executive OfficerRevolut
Valerie Szczepanik
Sr. Advisor for Digital Assets & InnovationU.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Arnaud Thiercelin
Glen Tullman
Co-Founder & Managing Partner7wire Ventures
Hans Tung
Managing PartnerNotable Capital
Catherine Ulrich
Venture PartnerFirstMark
Chris Urmson
Co-founder & CEOAurora
J.D. Vance
PartnerNarya Capital
Kyle Vogt
Founder & CEOCruise
Emily Warren
Senior Director of Policy & Public AffairsLime
Emily Weiss
Founder and CEOGlossier
Aniyia Williams
Co-founderZebras Unite
Ellie Wheeler
PartnerGreycroft
Anne Wojcicki
Co-Founder and CEO23andMe
Tony Xu
CEO and Co-FounderDoorDash
Laurie Yoler
General PartnerPlayground Global
Fope Adelowo is an investor at Helios Investment Partners, one of the largest Africa-focused private equity funds. She spends her time on a broad range of tech investments especially in fintech and retail. Fope believes that technology could truly transform economies and livelihoods in African countries and looks forward to the seeing the continent’s potential realized through innovative solutions that will leapfrog the pace of development in other parts of the world. Fope currently serves as a board observer for Interswitch, the largest payments business in Nigeria, and Mall for Africa an innovative e-commerce platform. Prior to Helios, Fope worked with the Principal Investment Group of Cardinal Stone Partners Nigeria, where she was involved in the restructuring and integration of new investee companies into the Group, as well as exploring new investment opportunities. Her previous experience includes strategy consulting at BCG and investment banking at Goldman Sachs. Fope holds an MEng in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London, and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. She is also an Associate Fellow of the Nigerian Leadership Initiative.
Rose Afriyie is co-founder and Executive Director of mRelief. The YC-backed nonprofit has built an easy-to-use tool on web and SMS for low-income Americans to find out if they qualify and enroll end-to-end in the SNAP program. mRelief has connected more than 260,000 families to social services. Before mRelief, she worked as a Marketing Associate for Google where she co-produced Oprah Winfrey’s first Google+ Hangout and President Obama’s annual State of the Union Hangout. She interned in the Domestic Policy Council of the White House during the passage of the Affordable Care Act. She holds a Master of Public Policy from the University of Michigan. Rose is a lifetime learner of Ruby code, a founder, writer, BYP100 Chicago Board Chair and a changemaker who lives in Chicago.
Sophia Amoruso is the Founder & General Partner at Trust Fund, an emerging early-stage venture fund focused on pre-seed and seed-stage investments. In 2020, Sophia founded Business Class, a comprehensive digital entrepreneurship course and community for founders. Sophia made her mark as the founder of fashion e-commerce phenomenon Nasty Gal, which she founded in 2006 and built to over $100 million in revenue. Sophia is also the author of #GIRLBOSS, which spent 18 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List, sold 500,000 copies, and was adapted into a Netflix series of the same name produced by Charlize Theron. In 2016, Sophia was featured on the cover of Forbes Magazine’s America’s Richest Self-Made Women issue, and has been featured on the covers of Inc., Entrepreneur, Success, and Money magazines. Sophia was also named to the Fortune 40 under 40, Forbes 30 under 30, Inc. 30 under 30, and Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business lists. Sophia resides between Los Angeles and Kauai and can’t remember what she was thinking when she decided to accept three tiny toy poodles named Donna, Gino, and Cosi into her home, rent-free, forever.
I’m the CEO of 3DR, founder and chairman of the Linux Foundation’s Dronecode Project, and founder of the DIY Drones and DIY Robocarscommunities, including the ArduPilot autopilot project. From 2001 through 2012 I was the Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine. Before Wired I was with The Economist for seven years in London, Hong Kong and New York. I’m the author of the New York Times bestselling books The Long Tail and Free as well as Makers: The New Industrial Revolution. Awards include: Editor of the Year by Ad Age (2005). Named to the “Time 100,” the newsmagazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world (2007). Loeb Award for Business Book of the Year (2007). Wired named Magazine of the Decade by AdWeek for my tenure (2009). Time Magazine’s Tech 40 — The Most Influential Minds In Technology (2013). Foreign Policy Magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers (2013) I founded GeekDad, BookTour and a few other companies now lost in the mists of time. My background is in science, starting with studying computational physics and doing research at Los Alamos and culminating in six years at the two leading scientific journals, Nature and Science. In my misspent youth I was a bit player in the DC punk scene and, amusingly, a band called REM (not that one). I live in Berkeley, California, with my wife and five kids.
Colin Angle is incurably optimistic about the future of people and robotics. A robot builder from MIT who wanted to change the world by making practical robotics a mainstream reality, Colin envisions a world where intelligent and and purpose-first robots help people do more. As a visionary at the forefront of the growing home robot industry, today Colin serves as chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the iconic consumer robot company he founded in 1990: iRobot. He is an industry pioneer and one of the world’s leading authorities on practical robots. Under Colin’s leadership, iRobot has grown from a MIT startup to become the global leader in consumer robots, with $884 million in revenue and more than 1,000 employees in twelve countries. In 2002, iRobot established the home robot category with the creation of the award-winning Roomba robot vacuum. The company’s product line, including the Roomba and the Braava family of robot mops, made practical home robots a reality for the first time and have become the most successful consumer robots in history, with more than 25 million sold worldwide.
Brian Armstrong is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Coinbase. Founded in 2012, Coinbase is building the cryptoeconomy – a more fair, accessible, efficient, and transparent financial system enabled by crypto. Coinbase serves over 56 million verified users, 7,000 institutions, and 115,000 ecosystem partners in over 100 countries. Recently, Coinbase listed publicly on NASDAQ as COIN. In April 2020, Brian committed Coinbase to Pledge 1%, dedicating 1% of Coinbase profits, equity, and employee time toward charitable activities that leverage the power of crypto to help people around the world. In June 2018, he founded GiveCrypto.org, a nonprofit with the mission to financially empower people by distributing cryptocurrency globally. Brian also personally signed the Giving Pledge, committing the majority of his wealth to charitable causes throughout his lifetime. Before founding Coinbase, Brian served as a software engineer at Airbnb where he focused on fraud prevention. Before Airbnb, Brian founded and was CEO of Universitytutor.com, an online tutoring directory and a subsidiary of Johnson Educational Technologies LLC. Brian also previously served as a consultant for the enterprise risk management division at Deloitte & Touche LLP. Brian has a B.A. in Computer Science and Economics and an M.S. in Computer Science from Rice University.
Michael Arrington most recently Co-Founded CrunchFund after leading TechCrunch to a successful exit with AOL. His venture investments include Uber, Airbnb and Pinterest. Michael was the Editor of TechCrunch, which he founded in 2005. In 2008 Time Magazine named Michael “One of the World’s 100 most influential people”. Michael also practiced securities law at O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.Michael graduated from Stanford Law School and Claremont McKenna College.
Natalya Bailey is the CEO and a co-founder of Accion Systems, a company providing in-space propulsion for satellites and spacecraft. An Oregon native, Natalya moved to Cambridge to complete her doctorate in space propulsion at MIT where she helped invent the first working prototype of an ion engine technology for small satellites, which would become the first product at Accion. Prior to MIT, she invented a new chemical rocket technology that she turned into a space startup. Natalya was a New England Entrepreneur of the Year finalist in 2017, a Boston Business Journal Woman to Watch in 2017, and named to Inc. Magazine¹s 30 Under 30 in 2017 and Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in 2016. During graduate school, Natalya was a National Science Foundation Fellow and a NASA Ambassador to the US at the International Aeronautical Congress. In her free time, she works with the group YouthCITIES to show kids you can work on changing the world and having fun at the same time in STEM fields, and is also learning to program in Python with her husband.
Cyan Banister is a partner at Founders Fund, where she invests across sectors and stages with a particular interest in augmented reality, fertility, heavily regulated industries and businesses that help people with basic skills find meaningful work.
Peter Barrett is a founder and CTO of Playground Global. Peter believes the computing revolution—and arguably even the industrial revolution—haven’t happened yet. He is drawn to the toughest challenges at the boundaries of deep tech and hard science. Peter has been writing software since he was a teenager. At 19, his first security program caught the attention of the NSA. From his first company, Rocket Science Games, he’s had an adventurous career in technology from creating the first widely used video codec in the early 90s, building the world’s most popular IPTV platform at Microsoft, cloud intelligence for automotive at CloudCar and now quantum and optical computing, robotics and artificial intelligence at Playground. He holds over 100 patents. At Playground, Peter delights in the opportunity to deeply collaborate with entrepreneurs and help create transformative companies with multigenerational impact. He thrives on technologies that lie somewhere between improbable and impossible and companies whose success will help move civilization forward. Peter lives in Palo Alto with his wife, two children, a surly cat, and a friendly dog.
David Baszucki is the founder, co-creator and CEO of ROBLOX.
Peter Beck is the founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Engineer of Rocket Lab, a Nasdaq-listed leading launch and space systems company opening access to space to improve life on Earth. Rocket Lab’s capabilities span the space economy, including satellite design and manufacture, industry-leading spacecraft software and components, and reliable launch services. Under Mr. Beck’s leadership, Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle has become the most successful small launch vehicle globally and Rocket Lab satellite subsystems have featured on more than 1,700 missions. Rocket Lab technology enables some of humanity’s most ambitious space missions, including complex interplanetary science missions, national security programs, and vast commercial constellations. Since founding the company in 2006, Mr. Beck has grown Rocket Lab into a global organization of 1,800 people across the United States, Canada and New Zealand. Today, Rocket Lab’s launch vehicles, satellites and space systems are relied upon by a range of global mission partners including NASA, the United States Space Force, DARPA, the National Reconnaissance Office, and a broad range of commercial satellite and constellation operators.
Robin Berzin, MD is the founder and CEO of Parsley Health, a primary care medicine provider with a data-driven, whole body approach. A summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she completed medical school at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and trained in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Dr. Berzin also trained with the Institute for Functional Medicine, where she acts as an advisor on digital technology. She speaks regularly for organizations including Stanford Medicine X, Health 2.0, Rock Health, Summit Series, and Further Future about how health care can be reinvented.
Helen Boniske is a partner at Lemnos, a Silicon Valley-based pre-seed & seed venture firm that invests in robotics and hardware companies. Lemnos thrives in the earliest stages of building hardware, when every dollar counts, every hour matters, and each decision is crucial to success or failure. Investments include Spire Global, Swift Navigation, Airware, and Built Robotics. Prior to Lemnos, she spent five seasons working in the front office of the Arizona Diamondbacks. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
John Borthwick is the founder and CEO of betaworks, has been a leader and early-stage investor in New York technology for more than two decades and is leading the COVID-19 Tech Task Force.
Roelof is Managing Partner and Steward of Sequoia Capital. He has spent over 25 years building companies in Silicon Valley. He began within the walls of nascent PayPal, where he joined in March 2000 while completing his MBA at Stanford. He became CFO in 2001 and led the company through both its IPO in early 2002 and the subsequent acquisition by eBay. Roelof joined Sequoia in 2003 to help founders build enduring businesses. In 2017, he assumed leadership of Sequoia Capital’s US/Europe business and became a Steward of the Sequoia Partnership. Roelof is a Director of Block, Blues, Ethos, Flow, MongoDB, Natera, Pendulum Therapeutics, and Unity Technologies, among others. Previously, he was a Director of companies that include YouTube, Tumblr, Xoom, Eventbrite, and Evernote. He also led Sequoia’s investment in Instagram.
Brian Brackeen is the chief executive officer of the facial recognition software developer Kairos.
Reilly Brennan is a general partner at Trucks Venture Capital and a lecturer at Stanford.
Dalton is Managing Director, Architect and Group Partner at YC. He was the co-founder and CEO of imeem (acquired by MySpace in 2009), and the co-founder and CEO of App.net. He has a BS in Symbolic Systems and a BA in Psychology from Stanford University.
Steve Case is one of America’s best-known and most accomplished entrepreneurs, and a pioneer in making the Internet part of everyday life. For the past 15 years, Steve’s focus has been on starting and scaling Revolution, the Washington DC-based investment firm that now backs entrepreneurs at every stage of their development. Revolution Growth has invested nearly $1 billion in growth-stage companies including Sweetgreen, Tempus, Tala, DraftKings, and Clear. Revolution Ventures has backed more than two dozen venture-stage companies, including Framebridge, Policygenius, and Bloomscape. The Rise of the Rest Seed Fund has invested in more than 130 startups in over 70 U.S. cities, in partnership with many of America’s most successful entrepreneurs and investors. Steve’s entrepreneurial career began in 1985 when he co-founded America Online (AOL). Under Steve’s leadership, AOL became the world’s largest and most valuable Internet company, helping to drive the worldwide adoption of a medium that has transformed business and society. AOL was the first Internet company to go public, and the best performing stocks of the 1990s, delivering a 11,616% return to shareholders. At its peak, nearly half of Internet users in the United States used AOL. In 2000, Steve negotiated the largest merger in business history, bringing together AOL and Time Warner in a transaction that gave AOL shareholders a majority stake in the combined company. To facilitate the merger, Steve agreed to step down as CEO when the merger closed.Steve’s passion for helping entrepreneurs remains his driving force. He was the founding chair of the Startup America Partnership—an effort launched at the White House in 2011 to accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the nation. Steve also was the founding co-chair of the National Advisory Council on Innovation & Entrepreneurship, and a member of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, where he chaired the subcommittee on entrepreneurship. Steve has been a leading voice in shaping government policy on issues related to entrepreneurship, working across the aisle to advance public policies that expand access to capital and talent. He was instrumental in passing the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act and the Investing in Opportunities Act, and is active in advocating on behalf of immigration reform and legislation that supports and accelerates the emergence of startup ecosystems in rising cities. Steve also serves as the Chair of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum and research complex. In this role, Steve leads the Board of Regents’ efforts to increase the Institution’s reach, impact and relevance. Steve is also Chairman of the Case Foundation, which he established with his wife Jean in 1997. Together the Cases have invested in hundreds of organizations, initiatives and partnerships with a focus on leveraging the Internet and entrepreneurial approaches to strengthen the social sector. In 2010, Steve and Jean joined The Giving Pledge, and publicly reaffirmed their commitment to give away the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. Steve is also the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future. In it, Case recounted many of the lessons he learned from building businesses, and outlined the growing importance of place, policy and partnerships. Steve was born and raised in Hawaii and retains active ties to his home state, but has lived in the Washington D.C. area for more than 30 years.
Sam’s experience spans from consulting to technology entrepreneurship. His clients have included some of the world’s largest organizations in government and industry, where he has consulted on consumer analytics, computer vision, and machine learning. He has also led entrepreneurial technology organizations at the forefront of consumer mobile technology. He focused on the intersection of technological and biological computation at Johns Hopkins University, conducting graduate work and research in Cognitive Sciences. His research into human visual and language processing eventually led him to co-found Sensorstar Labs, a research and development company focused on computer vision, robotics, and biosensing. In consumer technology, he acted as CTO of Atmospheir, a mobile identity company. Now, as CSO at ConsenSys, he defines strategy regarding business models in the emerging blockchain economy. Additionally, Sam brings expertise in Venture Capital, software development methodology, enterprise architecture, and growth strategy to ventures within ConsenSys. He designed and implemented the investment and mentorship processes that now comprise ConsenSys Labs, their portfolio of prominent companies in the blockchain space. Sam has volunteered time in South Africa with Engineers Without Borders, building water pumps that require no electricity and educating local communities on their construction. He has served on the board of The Philosophical Society of Washington and the Baltimore Green Currency Association, an organization that issues and promotes local currency.
Priscilla Chan is co-founder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic organization she started with her husband, Mark Zuckerberg, in December 2015. As a pediatrician and former teacher, her work with patients and students in communities across the Bay Area has informed her desire to make learning more personalized and find a path to cure disease. She is also the founder of The Primary School, which integrates health and education and serves children and families in East Palo Alto and the Belle Haven neighborhood in Menlo Park, California. Priscilla earned her BA in Biology at Harvard University and her MD at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She completed her pediatrics training in the UCSF/PLUS Pediatrics Residency.
Marty Chavez is executive vice president and chief financial officer of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. He is a member of the Management Committee, Firmwide Capital Committee, Firmwide Risk Committee and Steering Committee on Regulatory Reform. Marty is also a member of the Firmwide Hispanic/Latino Network and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Network. Marty first joined Goldman Sachs in 1993 in the J. Aron Currency and Commodities Division, where he was a senior energy strat until 1997. He returned to the firm as a managing director in Investment Banking Division Strats in 2005, becoming global co-head of Securities Division Strats and then global co-chief operating officer of the Equities Franchise. Prior to assuming his current role, Marty was chief information officer, responsible for the Technology Division and jointly responsible with divisional leadership for the firm’s global strategists. He was named partner in 2006. Prior to first joining the firm, Marty was co-founder and chief technology officer of Quorum Software Systems from 1989 to 1993. From 1997 to 2000, he was global head of energy derivatives at Credit Suisse Financial Products. In 2000, Marty co-founded Kiodex, Inc. and was chairman and chief executive officer until 2004. Marty serves on the Harvard Board of Overseers and is a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine. Marty earned a PhD in Medical Information Sciences from Stanford University in 1990, an SM in Computer Science from Harvard University in 1985, and an AB, magna cum laude, in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard College in 1985.
Jina L. Choi is the Regional Director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s San Francisco Regional Office. The Regional Office has a staff of over 125 people and is responsible for the SEC’s enforcement and examination programs in Northern California, Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho and Alaska with over 1000 investment advisers (and $5 trillion in assets under management), over 50 mutual fund complexes and over 250 broker-dealers located in the region. The public and pre-IPO companies located in the region are among the most dynamic and closely-followed issuers and companies in the country, including those in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland. Prior to her appointment as Director of the Regional Office, Ms. Choi served as an Assistant Regional Director and in the Division of Enforcement’s Market Abuse Unit. She has conducted and supervised investigations into financial reporting fraud, insider trading, misconduct by investment advisers and brokers, FCPA and other securities law violations. Ms. Choi also served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Texas. Before joining the SEC, Ms. Choi clerked for the Honorable Robert P. Patterson, Jr. (SDNY), worked as an associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York and served as a Trial Attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, DC. She received her BA from Oberlin College and her JD from Yale Law School.
Jason is the founder and former CEO of Discord, a voice, video and text platform that makes it easier and more fun for friends to talk and hang out before, during, and after playing games. Prior to starting Discord, Jason founded and served as CEO of OpenFeint, the biggest 1st generation mobile social gaming platform. He serves on the boards of Discord and Campus.edu.
Jeff Clavier is Managing Partner at Uncork Capital, a seed-stage venture firm in Palo Alto and San Francisco. He founded Uncork Capital in 2004 (then called SoftTech VC) to provide active support and capital for companies in their first 18 months of life. Jeff has helped numerous companies reach successful outcomes, including Eventbrite (NYSE:EB); Sendgrid (NYSE:SEND); Fitbit (NYSE:FIT); Vungle (Blackrock); and Mint.com (Intuit). His current investments include Vidyard, Postmates, Molekule, Shippo and Front. Jeff was born in France, and graduated from Université Paris Descartes with an MS in Computer Science. He was formerly the CTO and an early employee at Effix, a fintech startup that sold to Reuters. In 2000 he immigrated to the U.S. and joined RVC, Reuters’ $450 million corporate venture capital fund, as a general partner. He recently wrapped up his 4-year term on the board of the National Venture Capital Association.
Rob is a founder of Shasta Ventures and a 23-year veteran of the Silicon Valley venture capital industry. At Shasta Ventures, Rob focuses on investing in robotics, space, and the future of transportation. Early in his career, Rob served as an engineer in the Astro Space division of Martin Marietta, where he helped build the first A2100 satellite, a platform which is still in production today at Lockheed.
Rob spends his weekends car-racing and believes similar skills are needed to be a successful entrepreneur. As he explains, “Racing requires you to focus and make good decisions quickly.” Rob led Shasta’s Series A investment in Nest (acquired by Google for $3.2 billion in 2014). His current investments include Accion (ion engines for in-space propulsion), Fetch Robotics (robots for warehouse logistics), Starship Technologies (local delivery robots), and Turo (peer-to-peer carsharing company).
Rob earned an MS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Virginia. He also holds an MBA degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was named a Palmer Scholar.
Claire is a seasoned robotics and engineering professional with a diverse background in the field. She most recently held the position of COO at Farm-ng. Prior to this, she served as Vice President of Engineering at Nvidia, where she developed the groundbreaking Isaac Platform for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. Claire also co-founded self-driving tech company OTTO and held the role of Vice President of Engineering before its acquisition by Uber. Her experience extends to leading advanced robotics projects at Google Robotics.
Laura is the founder and managing director of the Longevity Fund, an early stage venture capital fund focused on extending healthy human lifespan. After years working on nematode longevity at the UCSF graduate school, Laura matriculated at MIT at 14 and 2 years later participated in the inaugural Thiel Fellowship class. Since then, she has built Longevity Fund and AGE1, funds focused on helping start and fund longevity companies. Longevity Fund companies have collected >$500M in follow-on funding, resulting in the 2018 IPO of the first company dedicated to reversing the diseases of aging, and multiple programs in clinic to reverse or prevent age-related disease.
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins is an American social justice advocate and businesswoman. Phaedra is the founder and CEO of Promise, a payment technology platform that simplifies government debt. Prior to Promise, Phaedra ran revenue and operations at Honor, a home care technology company. Before Honor, Phaedra worked with the musician Prince and led the effort to secure ownership of his masters. She is a labor and community organizer by trade who is committed to making measurable change. Earlier in her career, Phaedra was the Executive Officer of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council, an organized labor federation representing more than 100 unions and more than 110,000 members in California. She was also Executive Director of Working Partnerships USA, a coalition of community groups, and labor and faith organizations working to address economic disparities in California’s Silicon Valley. She also served as the CEO of the anti-poverty organization Green For All. Over the course of her career, Phaedra has been recognized for her leadership. She was honored by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader, Essence for their 25 Most Influential African Americans, Ebony for their Power 150, The Grio for their 100 History Makers in the Making, Black Enterprise for their 40 Next: Emerging Leaders for Our Future and San Jose Magazine named her one of the 100 most powerful people in Silicon Valley. Phaedra serves on the boards of Honor and Tipping Point.
Effie is the Managing Partner of Sound Ventures, an LA-based venture capital firm founded by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary. She joined Sound Ventures in 2016 and has brought a multi-disciplinary approach to the firm. In her role, Effie leads investing, strategy and the day-to-day management of the firm. With more than $1 billion under management and 200 portfolio companies, Effie and her partners have been at the helm of six top quartile funds. Prior to Sound, Effie led Global Strategy at Marsh, a multi-billion dollar division of financial services firm Marsh & McLennan (NYSE: MMC). She’s also held leadership positions across media, tech and financial services. Effie was an SVP at iHeartMedia, as well as Head of Business Development and Strategy at CLEAR. Earlier in her career, Effie was part of Merrill Lynch’s Global Energy and Power Investment Banking group as well as the Global Strategy team at NYSE Euronext. Effie earned her BA from University of Texas in Austin and her MBA from Harvard Business School.
John Foley is the Founder and CEO of Peloton. As an avid cyclist and boutique fitness addict, John leveraged his tech and business experience to create Peloton, a technology company at the nexus of fitness and media. Prior to founding Peloton, John spent six years in manufacturing leadership with Mars Inc. He also served as a President at Barnes&Noble, CEO and Co-founder of Pronto.com, CEO of Evite.com and an early leader of Citysearch.com starting in 1996. When John’s not brainstorming Peloton’s next big innovation, you can find him training for triathlons, at boutique group fitness classes with his wife Jill, or strolling through the West Village with his two children.
Avichal is Managing Partner at Electric Capital. He is a serial entrepreneur and technology executive. Avichal sold two companies and was most recently Director of Product at Facebook, which acquired his company Spool in 2012. He previously worked at Google on search ranking and ads ranking, is part-time at YCombinator, and an active angel investor. Avichal’s firm, Electric Capital, focuses on cryptocurrencies that are rooted in technological utility. Electric performs deep technological diligence, such as compiling code, profiling nodes, and analyzing blockchains with in-house software. The founders of Electric have started and sold five companies, have been investing in cryptocurrencies since 2013, and are investors in Anchor, Bitwise, Chia, Coda, dYdX, Dfinity, Oasis, Thunder and many other crypto projects.
Brad Garlinghouse is the CEO of Ripple and a member of the Board of Directors. Prior to Ripple, Brad served as the CEO of file collaboration service Hightail. From 2009 to 2012 he was President of Consumer Applications at AOL and prior to that he held various executive positions at Yahoo! from 2003 to 2009, including Senior Vice President. Earlier in his career, Brad helped to pioneer the VoIP industry as CEO of Dialpad Communications. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of OutMatch and has held board positions at Ancestry.com and Tonic Health.
Dario Gil is the vice president of Science and Technology at IBM Research.
Dave Gilboa is the co-founder and co-CEO of Warby Parker, a transformative lifestyle brand offering designer eyewear at a revolutionary price while leading the way for socially conscious businesses. In 2015, Fast Company named Warby Parker the most innovative company in the world. Prior to Warby Parker, Dave worked at merchant bank Allen & Company and Bain & Company. Dave has worked extensively with non-profit organizations, and serves as a founding member of the Entrepreneur Board of Venture for America, an organization dedicated to mobilizing graduates as entrepreneurs in low-cost cities. He is a member of the Aspen Institute’s 2014 Henry Crown Fellowship class and the Aspen Global Leadership Network, received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award, and was recognized as part of “The Next Establishment” by Vanity Fair. Born in Sweden and raised in San Diego, Dave graduated with a BS in Bioengineering with Honors from UC Berkeley and holds an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. With the ultimate goal of making safe, routine vision tests more accessible and convenient for the millions of adults who wear prescription glasses, Warby Parker introduced Prescription Check in 2017, a mobile refraction service designed in-house that, if you are eligible, allows an eye doctor to assess your vision and provide an updated prescription within 24 hours.
Kirsten Green is the Founder and Managing Partner of Forerunner, the consumer-driven venture capital partnering with ambitious founders and companies redefining industries. Combining an unconventional and powerful blend of professional experiences and acquired investment expertise, Kirsten launched San Francisco-based Forerunner in 2012, and has since led the firm to raise nearly $3 billion in assets under management. Kirsten’s 25+ years of evaluation and investment success stem from a combination of product savvy, consumer insight, research, and a thesis-driven approach that has been the basis of all her investments — from pre-revenue startups to multi-billion-dollar enterprises. Her early investor and board member roles span Faire, Hims&Hers, Chime, Ritual, Daydream, Decagon, Warby Parker, Wonder, and Balance, among others. She is also on the Board of the National Venture Capital Association, and has been part of both the Forbes Midas List and Forbes World’s 100 Most Powerful Women List for the past nine years.
Ken Goldberg teaches and supervises research in Robotics, Automation, and New Media. Ken holds dual degrees in Electrical Engineering and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania (1984) and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University (1990). He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1995 and is Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, with secondary appointments in EECS, the School of Information, Art Practice, and the UCSF Dept of Radiation Oncology. Ken and his co-authors have published over 200 peer-reviewed technical papers on algorithms for robotics, automation, and social information filtering, and he holds eight U.S. patents. He is Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE), Co-Founder of the Berkeley Center for New Media, Co-Founder and CTO of Hybrid Wisdom Labs, Co-Founder of the Moxie Institute, and Founding Director of UC Berkeley’s Art, Technology, and Culture Lecture Series. Ken’s art installations, based on his research, have been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Whitney Biennial, the Berkeley Art Museum, the SF Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Pompidou Center, the Buenos Aires Biennial, and the ICC in Tokyo. Ken has co-written three award-winning Sundance documentary films, “The Tribe”, “Yelp”, and “Connected: An Autoblogography of Love, Death, and Technology.” He is represented by the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco. Ken was awarded the Presidential Faculty Fellowship by President Clinton in 1995, the National Science Foundation Faculty Fellowship in 1994, the Joseph Engelberger Robotics Award in 2000, and was elected IEEE Fellow in 2005.
Fengmin Gong is a well-respected cybersecurity technologist with more than 30 years of industry experience. As head of DiDi Labs, Dr. Gong currently drives R&D innovation and strategy for safety, security and user experience on DiDi platforms, and works on developing the next generation of security tools He has held chief scientist and R&D VP roles in a variety of large security corporations, including McAfee and Symantec JV, and served as chief security content strategy officer for FireEye, where he led the development and management of the company’s security initiatives. He is also a serial entrepreneur, having founded several leading security companies, including Palo Alto Networks and Cyphort Inc., and is an angel investor in more than half a dozen startups. Dr. Gong received both his M.S. and D.Sc. in computer science from Washington University, St. Louis. He is a graduate of Xi’an Jiaotong University in China where he completed his B.S. in computer organization and architecture, and M.S. in computer science.
Sarah Guo is the Founder and Managing Partner at Conviction, a venture capital firm founded in 2022 to invest in intelligent software, or “Software 3.0.” Prior, she spent a decade as a General Partner at Greylock Partners. She has been an early investor or advisor to 40+ companies in software, fintech, security, infrastructure, fundamental research, and AI-native applications. Sarah is from Wisconsin, has four degrees from University of Pennsylvania, and lives in the Bay Area with her husband and two daughters. She co-hosts the AI podcast “No Priors” with Elad Gil
Arvind Gupta co-leads Mayfield’s engineering biology practice and is founder and venture adviser at IndieBio. He is the co-author of “Decoding the World,” published by Hachette.
Amanda Gutterman is CMO at ConsenSys, a global formation of technologists and entrepreneurs building the Ethereum ecosystem, and co-creator of Ethereal, the leading blockchain event series. Amanda is also the founder of ConsenSys Catalyst, a marketing agency with expertise building blockchain brands. She was featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2016. Before ConsenSys, Amanda cofounded Slant, a digital media platform, and served as Special Projects Editor at The Huffington Post. Amanda graduated from Columbia University, Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Her work has been covered in The New York Times, TechCrunch, Business Insider, and more.
Arlan Hamilton is the Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital, a venture capital firm dedicated to minimizing funding disparities in tech by investing in high-potential founders who are people of color, women, and/or LGBT. Started from scratch in 2015, Backstage has now raised more than $12 million and invested in more than 150 startup companies led by underestimated founders. In 2018, they launched a four-city accelerator program in Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia, and London. Arlan is the author of, It’s About Damn Time, an inspirational and tactical business book for budding entrepreneurs and aspiring investors. She hosts the popular podcast, Your First Million, and has been featured on CNN, PBS, and others, and in 2019 became the first Black woman to have an entirely devoted episode of Emily Chang’s Bloomberg 1.0. In October 2018, Arlan was featured on the cover of Fast Company magazine as the first Black woman non-celebrity to do so (following Oprah, Serena, and Beyonce). In 2019, Arlan and her mother, Mrs. Earline Butler-Sims, announced their new scholarship program, which kicked off with Oxford University’s first-ever undergraduate scholarship for a Black student, as well as a commitment to fund a full-ride scholarship for a Psychology student at Mrs. Sims’ alma mater, HBCU Dillard University.
Tess Hatch hopes to travel to space. In the meantime, she is a venture investor at Bessemer Venture Partners who invests in frontier tech.
Rachel is a co-founder of Caribou Biosciences and has been President and CEO since its inception. She has a research background in CRISPR-Cas biology, and is also a co-founder of Intellia Therapeutics. Rachel is an inventor on several patents and patent applications covering multiple CRISPR-derived technologies, and she has co-authored scientific papers in high impact journals characterizing CRISPR-Cas systems. In 2014, she was named by Forbes Magazine to the “30 Under 30” list in Science and Healthcare, and in 2016, Fortune Magazine named her to the “40 Under 40” list of the most influential young people in business. Rachel earned an A.B. in Biological Sciences from Harvard College, and received a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley.
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.
Marillyn A. Hewson is Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Lockheed Martin Corporation. She previously held a variety of increasingly responsible executive positions with the Corporation, including President and Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of Lockheed Martin’s Electronic Systems business area.
Emily Heyward is the Co-founder and Chief Brand Officer at Red Antler, the leading brand company for startups and new ventures. Emily works closely with founders to develop purposeful, strategic visions for their business idea and has led branding efforts for top companies such as Casper, Allbirds, and Brandless.
An accomplished entrepreneur, executive, and investor, Reid Hoffman has played an integral role in building many of today’s leading consumer technology businesses. In 2003 he co-founded LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional networking service.
In 2009 he joined Greylock. He currently serves on the boards of Apollo, Aurora, Coda, Convoy, Entrepreneur First, Microsoft, Nauto, Neeva, Xapo, and a few early stage companies still in stealth. In addition, he serves on a number of not-for-profit boards, including Kiva, Endeavor, CZI Biohub, New America, Berggruen Institute, Opportunity@Work, the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, and the MacArthur Foundation’s Lever for Change.
He is the host of Masters of Scale, an original podcast series and the first American media program to commit to a 50-50 gender balance for featured guests. He is the co-author of three best-selling books: The Start-Up of You, The Alliance, and Blitzscaling. He is an Aspen Institute Crown Fellow, a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, and a graduate of Stanford University.
Ben Horowitz is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The Hard Thing About Hard Things and What You Do Is Who You Are. He also created the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund to connect cultural leaders to the best new technology companies, and enable more young African Americans to enter the technology industry.
Prior to a16z, Ben was cofounder and CEO of Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Previously, Ben ran several product divisions at Netscape Communications, including the widely acclaimed Directory and Security product line. Ben has an MS and BA in Computer Science from UCLA and Columbia University, respectively.
Drew Houston is co-founder and CEO of Dropbox. Since founding the company in 2007 with Arash Ferdowsi, Drew has led the company’s growth from a simple idea to a service used by over 600 million people around the world. Drew received his bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2006. After graduating, he turned his frustration with carrying USB drives and emailing files to himself into a demo for what became Dropbox. Today, Dropbox is one of the world’s leading business collaboration platforms, with 15 million paying subscribers and nearly 3000 employees across 12 global offices.
Frederick is the CEO and founder of Pigeonly, a platform that makes it easy for people to search, find and communicate with an incarcerated loved one. A born entrepreneur, Frederick launched and sold his first business at the age of 19. His desire to attain the American dream on his terms took him down the wrong path and at 23, he was indicted for distributing 3,000 kg of marijuana. It was during this four-year federal prison sentence a new idea surfaced, one that would give him an opportunity to impact the lives of people no one else was paying attention to – inmates, Pigeonly was born. Pigeonly’s technology cuts the cost of expensive prison calls by 80% and allows people to send their inmate photos, greeting cards, and more right from a cell phone, tablet or computer. Although the company is still young, Hutson has grown Pigeonly to become one of the largest independent inmate service providers in the country.
Mike Judge was born in 1962 in Ecuador, but raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico and attended University of California at San Diego where he earned a degree in physics. He worked as an engineer and played bass professionally before MTV picked up his 1992 animated short, FROG BASEBALL. MTV decided to spin off BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD into a show of its own in the 1990’s, with Judge doing the voices of both characters as well as others. His next project was KING OF THE HILL for FOX TV. Judge expanded into writing and directing his own live-action films, OFFICE SPACE, IDIOCRACY and EXTRACT. He’s done voices for SOUTH PARK, FAMILY GUY, AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE, and acted in Robert Rodriguez’s SPY KIDS movies. In 2012, Mike resurrected BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD with twelve new shows for MTV. Currently, Judge is a co-creator, executive producer, writer and director for the Emmy® and Golden Globe® nominated comedy series, SILICON VALLEY, which debuted its fifth season in April.
Rebecca Kaden is a Partner at Union Square Ventures. She began her career as a journalist and, prior to USV, was a Partner at Maveron, a consumer-focused early stage fund. Rebecca was born in New York City. She studied English and American Literature at Harvard and received her MBA from Stanford.
Chaitanya “Chet” Kanojia is founder and CEO of Starry, Inc., a Boston- and New York-based technology company focused on re-imagining and revolutionizing how consumers connect to the internet by developing an eco-system of products designed to make broadband access simple and affordable. Prior to Starry, Chet was the founder and CEO of Aereo, Inc., the groundbreaking online television platform that enabled consumers to record and watch live HD broadcast television on virtually any type of Internetconnected device via a cloud-based OTA antenna and DVR. Previously, Chet was the founder and CEO of Navic Networks. Like Aereo, Navic Networks addressed the challenges of today’s highly fragmented media landscape. Under Chet’s direction, Navic Networks grew to be the undisputed industry leader in advanced television advertising. In 2008, Navic Networks was acquired by Microsoft. Chet holds more than 31 patents in fields ranging from robotics to data communications systems and is an innovative leader known for pushing beyond the conventional and developing breakthrough solutions. He has been recognized as one of the “Top Disruptors of 2013” by Forbes magazine, noted as part of Vanity Fair’s 2013 “Next Establishment List” and named one of Inc. Magazine’s 2013 “Entrepreneurs of the Year.” Aereo’s technology was also named one of TIME magazine’s Top 50 Best Websites (2012) and a Top 50 Technology (2013) by MIT Technology Review. Chet holds a master’s degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Northeastern University in Boston and a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology in Bhopal, India. He resides in Newton, Massachusetts with his wife and two children.
Dara Khosrowshahi is the CEO of Uber, where he manages the company’s fast-growing business in 65 countries around the world and leads a global team of more than 16,000 employees. Dara was previously CEO of Expedia, where he grew the company into one of the world’s largest online travel companies. A seasoned executive with a background in both engineering and finance, Dara oversaw a number of acquisitions that bolstered Expedia’s offerings and aggressively invested in mobile, which now accounts for more than half of Expedia’s traffic. He was also beloved by Expedia’s employees and named the Highest Rated CEO on Glassdoor. Dara was promoted to Expedia CEO after serving as the Chief Financial Officer of IAC Travel, a division of IAC, which purchased Expedia in 2001 and spun it off in 2015. He was also instrumental in the expansion of IAC’s portfolio of travel brands. Before joining IAC, Dara served as Vice President of Allen & Company and spent a number of years as an analyst. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Expedia and was previously on the Board of the New York Times Company. He’s a passionate advocate for refugees in crisis around the world, having himself left Iran during the Iranian revolution at the age of nine. Dara grew up in Tarrytown, New York, and received his bachelor’s degree in engineering from Brown University.
Nina Kjellson has been a General Partner at Canaan since 2015 and invests in biopharma and digital health start-ups that serve high unmet needs. She has 20 years of experience funding, growing and transacting early-stage companies. Current Canaan investments include Intrepida, Pact Pharma, Tizona, Tyra and Vineti. She also serves on the board of WellTok and previously served on the boards of Labrys (acquired by Teva), Cidara (CDTX), Trius (TSX, acquired by Cubist), Eiger (EIGR), NovaCardia (acquired by Merck) and co-sponsored investments into Paratek (PRTK), Tesaro (TSRO, acquired by GSK) and Aspreva (ASPV, acquired by Galenia), along with numerous other ventures during her tenure at InterWest Partners. As a leader of Canaan’s Women of Venture program, Nina is a vocal advocate for female entrepreneurs and investors. She serves as an advisor to Springboard Life Sciences, Nina Capital (no relation), The Gates Foundation and serves on the boards of Essential Access Health, Girl Effect and the Oliver Wyman Health Innovation Center. Nina is a 2018 Aspen Institute Health Innovators Fellow. Prior to InterWest and Canaan, Nina worked at Bay City Capital, Oracle Partners and the Kaiser Family Foundation. She holds a B.A. in human biology from Stanford University. Nina is an avid reader, is active in nature, runs, skis and loves to travel the world.
Bob Kocher, M.D., is an adjunct professor at Stanford Medicine, non-resident senior fellow at the USC Schaeffer Center, and partner at the venture capital firm Venrock, which is an investor in the virtual care companies Doctor on Demand, Grand Rounds, Lyra Health, Virta Health and Sitka Health.
As CEO, Philip leads Casper’s comprehensive business strategy, expansion, and vision for the future. Working with the company’s four other co-founders, Philip drives Casper’s goal of becoming the first end-to-end sleep brand. Philip and Casper’s co-founders recognized a paradox in 2014 — a generation of entrepreneurs and working professionals who were placing increasing value on their health and fitness were neglecting sleep. Casper is now reimagining the sleep industry from the ground up. A serial entrepreneur, Philip has founded and served as CEO at two previous startups, where he focused on new and evolving consumer and ecommerce trends. He launched his very first business out of his dorm room at the University of Texas, Austin. Philip’s work has been profiled in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today, and he has been featured on CBS This Morning, Mad Money with Jim Cramer, and Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN. He was named one of Business Insider’s Silicon Alley 100 and received a TechCrunch Crunchie award for Best in ECommerce
Ashton is an entrepreneur, technology investor, actor, and philanthropist. Ashton has been investing in tech for nearly two decades and has co-founded two VC firms, A-Grade Investments in 2010 and Sound Ventures in 2015 alongside Guy Oseary. Ashton’s overarching investment philosophy is to invest in “enduring happiness,” a strategy that has proven to be highly successful. With more than $1 billion under management and 300 portfolio companies, Ashton and his partners have been at the helm of six top quartile venture funds. A-Grade and Sound Ventures’ investments include Affirm (NASDAQ: AFRM), Airbnb (NASDAQ: ABNB), Airtable, Anthropic, Brex, Duolingo (NASDAQ: DUOL), Gitlab (NASDAQ: GTLB), Hugging Face, OpenAI, SentinelOne (NYSE: S), and Uber (NYSE: UBER). He is an active and sought-after technology investor with proven expertise in product and user experience. Ashton was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World and was on the cover of Forbes’ Midas List issue for Tech’s Top Investors. He was also included in Vanity Fair’s “New Establishment List,” which identifies the top 50 of an innovative new breed of buccaneering visionaries, engineering prodigies and entrepreneurs. Ashton studied biochemical engineering at the University of Iowa.
Aileen is the founder of Cowboy Ventures, a leading seed-stage focused venture firm investing in enterprise and consumer software including companies like Dollar Shave Club, Drata Security, Guild and Ironclad Software. Prior to Cowboy, Aileen was a partner at Kleiner Perkins for over a decade, founding CEO of digital media company RMG Networks and worked at Gap Inc in operating roles. Aileen is also known for coining the business term “unicorn” and is a co-founder of All-Raise, a non-profit to accelerate success for women in the tech ecosystem. She has been included on the Forbes Midas List, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women, Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people. She has degrees from MIT and HBS, is a mom of 3 and wife to a startup founder. Aileen is also known for coining the business term “unicorn” and co-founding All-Raise, a non-profit to accelerate success for women in the tech ecosystem. She has been included on the Forbes Midas List, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women, Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people. Prior to Cowboy, Aileen was a partner at Kleiner Perkins for over a decade, founding CEO of digital media company RMG Networks and worked at Gap Inc in operating roles. She has degrees from MIT and HBS, and is mom of 3 and wife to a startup founder.
Bo Young Lee leads Uber’s diversity and inclusion efforts in the company, with our stakeholders, and in the communities where we operate. Bo partners with senior leadership, including CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, to build a work culture where radically diverse and inclusive teams drive innovation, accelerate growth, and build a work culture and systems where all employees have the opportunity to excel and grow to their highest potential. Prior to joining Uber, Bo was the first Global Diversity and Inclusion Officer for the Risk and Insurance Services businesses for Marsh and McLennan Companies. Bo also launched and led Aon/Hewitt Associates’ Global Emerging Workforce Solutions consulting practice and held diversity leadership roles at Ernst & Young and National Grid. Bo served as a Director of Advisory Services at Catalyst, the leading nonprofit focused on the advancement of women in business. As a consultant and thought leader, Bo has enabled dozens of clients to achieve their diversity and inclusion goals. Past clients include Marriott International, Northern Trust, John Deere, Allstate, Booz & Co., Discover, Aon, Human Rights Campaign, and McKesson. Bo has an MBA with distinction from New York University’s Stern School of Business and a BBA magna cum laude from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. Prior to joining Uber, Bo was the first Global Diversity and Inclusion Officer for the Risk and Insurance Services businesses for Marsh and McLennan Companies. Bo also launched and led Aon/Hewitt Associates’ Global Emerging Workforce Solutions consulting practice and held diversity leadership roles at Ernst & Young and National Grid. Bo also served as a Director of Advisory Services at Catalyst, the leading non-profit focused on the advancement of women in business. As a consultant and thought leader, Bo has enabled dozens of clients to achieve their diversity & inclusion goals. Past clients include Marriott International, Northern Trust, John Deere, Allstate, Booz & Co., Discover, Aon, Human Rights Campaign, and McKesson. Bo has an MBA with distinction from New York University’s Stern School of Business and a BBA magna cum laude from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.
Kai-Fu Lee is a co-author of AI 2041: Ten Visions For Our Future.
Sam Liang is the Founder and CEO of Otter.ai, based in Mountain View, California. Otter.ai is the world’s leading meeting transcription and team collaboration tool. Teams connect Otter to their calendars and video conferencing apps to capture, store and even collaborate using their notes from every meeting. The company is backed by early investors in Google, DeepMind, Zoom and Tesla. Before Otter, he was the CEO and co-founder of Alohar Mobile which created the first mobile location context platform. Before that, Sam was the lead on Google’s Map Location Platform and API team. Previously, Sam was the CEO and Co-Founder of Alohar Mobile Inc in Palo Alto, California, which created world’s first mobile location context platform. Alohar was later successfully acquired by Alibaba. Before that, Sam was the lead of Google Map Location Platform & API for four years. Sam got his Ph.D in EE from Stanford University, specialized in large scale distributed Internet systems.
As Executive Board Member, Global Brands, Eric leads all adidas and Reebok Business Units, sub-brands as well as key Brand functions including Design, Innovation, Brand Management and Digital Brand Commerce. Since joining the Executive Board in 2014, Eric has reset the adidas brand by unleashing a culture of collaboration and creativity by inviting employees, athletes and consumers to create the future of sport together. Under his leadership, adidas has out-paced its competition posting double-digit growth for 3 years running. A former competitive swimmer, and Oceans Advocate, Eric has merged his passion for the water with his open-source approach to business, catalyzing a company-wide commitment to sustainability. To fight marine pollution, he initiated a partnership with Parley for the Oceans, committing to create one million pairs of shoes made from Parley Ocean Plastic™, upcycled waste, intercepted before it reaches the ocean from beaches and coastal communities and is driving the ambitious goal of eliminating virgin polyester from adidas products and ultimately the entire supply chain. He has shared his vision and practical experiences with up-cycling plastics as both a cause for good and driver for business growth at the United Nations, COP21, with the aim to onboard other brands and businesses in to the mission to save the oceans. During his 20-year career with adidas, Eric has been at the forefront of innovation and consistently striving for progress. He is a serial intra-preneur – bridging fast-paced, technology driven innovation with the legacy of the world’s greatest sports brand. He founded the adidas Digital Sports program, scaled adidas digital marketing through the adoption and acceleration of new platforms, launched the industry-changing BOOST foam. Most recently, Eric has led the introduction of adidas Futurecraft 4D, the world’s first running shoe featuring the revolutionary additive manufacturing technology – Digital Light Synthesis. Eric sits on the Parley for the Oceans Steering Committee and is on the Board of Directors of Carbon, a Silicon Valley-based digital 3D Manufacturing company. Eric’s greatest passion is his two daughters who he spends time with at home in Germany and surfing on the Oregon Coast.
Jeremy is the Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. He joined Lightspeed in 2006 as the firm’s first consumer specialist, focusing on massive-scale social media, commerce, new media, and financial services. Like many in the industry, he was drawn to venture capital for its forward-looking approach to business. In addition to completing an MBA at Stanford, Jeremy spent the ‘90s and early 2000s working for web pioneers such as Netscape, AOL, CitySearch, and Interactive Corp. It was then that he learned to view the world through the eyes of the mass market—not just the digerati—and how to spot patterns in user behavior.
Bobby Lo is the Founder and CEO of Vurb, a mobile search and messaging startup acquired by Snap Inc. Prior to its 2016 acquisition, Vurb won Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2014 and raised over $10M in funding. At Snap, Bobby led product initiatives including Context, a new way of surfacing relevant actions and content to Snapchat’s 191M daily active users. Before founding Vurb, Bobby was a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group focusing on consumer, travel, and technology. Prior to BCG, Bobby was involved in two other startup ventures: starting his first software company at 15, and then as Co-Founder and CTO of Yodle (acquired by Web.com), a search advertising company. Bobby holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from MIT in Computer Science, and a bachelor’s degree in Management from MIT Sloan.
Joseph Lubin is a co-founder of blockchain computing platform Ethereum and the founder of Consensus Systems (ConsenSys), a blockchain venture studio. ConsenSys is one of the largest and fastest-growing companies in the blockchain technology space, building developer tools, decentralized applications, and solutions for enterprises and governments that harness the power of Ethereum. Headquartered in New York, ConsenSys also has a global presence, employing top entrepreneurs, computer scientists, software developers, and experts in enterprise delivery worldwide. Lubin graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He worked in the Princeton Robotics Lab, at tomandandy music developing an autonomous music composition tool, and at private research firm Vision Applications Inc. building autonomous mobile robots. As a software engineer and consultant, Lubin worked with eMagine on the Identrus project and was involved in the founding and operation of a hedge fund with a partner. He held positions as Director of the New York office of Blacksmith Software Consulting, and VP of Technology in Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs. Through these posts, Lubin focused on the intersection of cryptography, engineering, and finance. Switching gears, Lubin moved to Kingston, Jamaica to work on projects in the music industry. Two years into his musical endeavors, Lubin co-founded the Ethereum Project and has been working on Ethereum and ConsenSys since January 2014.
Kristian Lum is the Lead Statistician at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), where she leads the HRDAG project on criminal justice in the United States. Previously, Kristian worked as a research assistant professor in the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech and as a data scientist at DataPad, a small technology start-up. Kristian’s research primarily focuses on examining the uses of machine learning in the criminal justice system and has concretely demonstrated the potential for machine learning-based predictive policing models to reinforce and, in some cases, amplify historical racial biases in law enforcement. She has also applied a diverse set of methodologies to better understand the criminal justice system: causal inference methods to explore the causal impact of setting bail on the likelihood of pleading or being found guilty; and agent-based modeling methods derived from epidemiology to study the disease-like spread of incarceration through a social influence network. Additionally, Kristian’s work encompasses the development of new statistical methods that explicitly incorporate fairness considerations and advancing HRDAG’s core statistical methodology—record-linkage and capture-recapture methods for estimating the number of undocumented conflict casualties. She is the primary author of the dga package, open source software for population estimation for the R computing environment.
Susan Lyne is president and founder of BBG Ventures; board member of Gilt, Brit+Co., and Starz, LLC; and former board member of AOL, MSO and CIT.
Rebecca Lynn is co-founder and general partner of Canvas Ventures.
Rich Mahoney is the CEO and Founder of Seismic, a spin-off venture from SRI International, where he was the Director of one of the best robotics programs in the world for more than seven years. During his tenure at SRI, Rich led the transition of SRI Robotics technology into new ventures, helping to foster the creation of multiple early-stage companies bringing robotics products to market, including Abundant Robotics, Verb Surgical, Motobot, Redwood Robotics, Grabit, Robot Miner, and Seismic, among others. Rich also led a team delivering cutting-edge robotics innovations to DARPA and other government and commercial customers for healthcare, security, and consumer applications. Rich was the founding President of Silicon Valley Robotics, and has more than 25 years of experience in research, development, and commercialization of robotics technology. He received his B.S. and M.S. from Drexel University in Philadelphia, and a Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Cambridge, England, while attending on a Fulbright Scholarship.
Laura Major is an accomplished Chief Technology Officer and author. As CTO at Motional, Major leads hundreds of engineers in the development of revolutionary driverless technology systems. She began her career as a Cognitive Engineer for Draper Laboratory, where she combined her psychology and engineering skills to design decision-making support devices for US astronauts and soldiers. After 12 years with the company, she served as Division Leader for the Information and Cognition Division. During this time Laura was recognized by the Society of Women Engineers as an emerging leader in 2014. Major also spent time at Aria Insights, Inc. (formerly known as CyPhy Works), a US-based drone manufacturer that specialized in developing highly advanced drones. She served as VP of engineering, and then Chief Technology Officer, working on the development of autonomous aerial vehicles. Major is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is an accomplished writer and co-author of the book What To Expect When You’re Expecting Robots: The Future of Human-Robot Collaboration.
Dr. Jason Mars is co-founder and former CEO of Clinc. He is a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan where he directs Clarity Lab, one of the top labs in the world to be trained in A.I. and system design. He is an active part of the IBM Watson Conversational System Research Center and participates in ongoing collaborative research with Intel and the National Science Foundation. Jason has devoted his career to solving difficult real-world problems with A.I., computer vision, and natural language processing at scale. Prior to University of Michigan, Jason was a professor at UCSD. He also worked at Google, Intel, and IBM. Jason’s work building the world’s first open-source platform for constructing large-scale A.I. and deep learning-based Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs) has been recognized globally and continues to have a significant impact on industry and academia. He was recently recognized as one of the top 10 most innovative CEOs in Banking. Jason holds a PhD in Computer Science from UVA.
Will Marshall is the Co-Founder and CEO of Planet. He leads the overall company strategy and direction. Prior to Planet, Will was a Scientist at NASA/USRA where he was a systems engineer on lunar orbiter mission “LADEE”, a member of the science team for the lunar impactor mission “LCROSS”, served as Co-Principal Investigator on PhoneSat, and was the technical lead on research projects in space debris remediation. Will received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Oxford and his Masters in Physics with S pace Science and Technology from the University of Leicester. Will was a Postdoctoral Fellow at George Washington University and Harvard.
Dr. Trevor Martin co-founded Mammoth Biosciences with the mission to enable the next generation of CRISPR-based synthetic biology products across therapeutics and diagnostics. Areas of focus include a novel class of affordable, effective, and rapid CRISPR-enabled molecular diagnostics that allow individuals worldwide to better understand their health and novel families of nano-sized CRISPR proteins including Cas14 and CasPhi that can enable in-vivo editing and permanent genetic cures. Trevor earned his BA from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in Biology from Stanford. His scientific work has been featured in outlets including FiveThirtyEight and The Atlantic. He is the featured healthcare honoree on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, is on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list, and is a Malaria No More “10 to END” innovator.
Dieter May joined BMW in May 2014. Dieter has 23 years of experience in global high tech companies, spanning mobile products, large-scale cloud based consumer services and semiconductor technology. Dieter has a track record in scaling, transforming and re-positioning of global businesses. During his career, Dieter built and managed large scale and high performance teams in the US, Europe, India and China. His portfolio includes setting-up digital consumer services activities in Nokia with more than 200 M active users and focus on emerging markets, connecting the next billion consumers to the internet. Dieter also ran Nokia’s Emerging Businesses Unit and was instrumental in multiple strategic acquisitions. During Dieter’s Corporate Strategy leadership with Infineon, the company made significant strides into the systems and solutions business and built the basis for its China activities. Dieter was also turning around one of Infineon’s global business divisions. In addition to his consulting background with Booz, Dieter held management positions with Motorola Semiconductors and IBM.
Anjney Midha is the CEO and co-founder of Ubiquity6, a massively multiplayer augmented reality platform focused on bringing people together in physical spaces. Previously, Anjney was an investing partner at Kleiner Perkins, where he founded the firm’s dedicated seed fund KPCB Edge and worked with AR, VR and computer vision companies including Magic Leap and TheWaveVR. Anjney pursued his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Stanford University and lives in San Francisco.
Ken is a co-founder and the group CEO of Cellulant. A mobile commerce evangelist and career entrepreneur, Ken previously served as co-founder and Solution Design Director of 3Mice Interactive Media. The company grew from a two-man team to a leading web development firm in East Africa. 3Mice was later acquired by Africa Online- the largest Pan-African Internet Service Provider. Ken is unwavering in his pursuit of seeing Cellulant achieve its mission of building a world class, values-driven $1B business for Africa, by Africans, in Africa. Ken has led the company from an idea sketched on a serviette in 2003 with his co-founder Bolaji Akinboro, to a reputable payments company in Africa. Cellulant currently has more than 300 employees across 11 markets; servicing 34 countries in Africa. Over the past couple of years, Ken has invested time in training and advising the next generation of entrepreneurs, and contributing to the growth of the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Africa. In recognition of this, in 2017, Ken was selected as the first Sub-Saharan and Kenyan Global Endeavor Entrepreneur for his commitment to advancing an ecosystem of entrepreneurship in Africa.
Matt Ocko is co-Managing Partner and co-founder of DCVC (Data Collective).
Tayo is the Founder & Group CEO of Paga (www.paga.com), Nigeria’s leading mobile money service. Prior to Paga, Tayo was Vice-President at Travant Capital Partners, a private equity fund in West Africa. Prior to joining Travant, Tayo was a Manager, Corporate Development, at Cisco Systems in San Jose California. Tayo’s work at Paga has been recognized globally – in 2014 CNBC selected Tayo as the Entrepreneur of the Year West Africa, and in 2015 the African Leadership Network selected Paga as the outstanding growing company of the year in Africa. Tayo is also the co-founder of Kairos Angels, an angel investment club. Tayo earned his Bachelors of Science degree in Electrical Engineering, cum laude, from the University of Southern California, and also has a Masters in Business Administration from the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.
Delane Parnell is currently the Founder and CEO of PlayVS, the venture-backed startup building the infrastructure for amateur esports. Prior to starting PlayVS, Delane worked at IncWell Venture Capital where he became the youngest black venture capitalist in The United States. Delane was then part of the early team at Rocket Fiber that raised $31M and focused on retail strategy directly with the CEO. While at Rocket Fiber, Delane founded Rush Esports, an esports team that was acquired by Team Solomid. A lifelong entrepreneur, Delane started his first job at 13, working 40 plus hours a week during the school year. At 17, Delane used the money he saved to purchase three cell phone stores and joined the founding team of Executive Car Rental that now has 16 locations across Michigan.
In January, I started another company, Vital Software, with Dr. Justin Schrager of Emory University. Vital makes software for hospital emergency rooms. This includes a mobile patient check-in for patients, and the fastest, most usable electronic medical records you’ve seen for doctors and nurses. We use extensive machine learning and natural language processing to determine patient severity and anticipated actions. Our longer term goal is to cut ER wait times in half, as they are often 4-5 hours long. You might not know it, but there are 140M ER visits in the US alone each year. Medical / sales are in the US, while development is all in Auckland New Zealand. My long-time partner Rebecca, an architect, is a Kiwi and I am now a resident of New Zealand as well.
Brynn Putnam is the founder and CEO of MIRROR, a fitness technology company poised to revolutionize the way people work out by bringing the boutique studio experience in-home. For more than a decade, Brynn has been well-regarded as a pioneer of the fitness industry. She started her career as a professional ballet dancer for the New York City Ballet, spending years training to peak performance while also working in some of New York City’s top gyms and boutique fitness studios. In 2010, Brynn took her learnings from elite trainers and physiologists across the nation and founded Refine Method, the acclaimed fitness studio dubbed “Best New Workout” by New York magazine. Now, Brynn is applying her deep expertise in fitness, both as an entrepreneur with a proven track record and an accomplished athlete, to transform the fitness industry again. Brynn graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in Russian Literature and Culture and is based in New York City.
Megan is a General Partner at Spark Capital, focusing on growth investments. She specializes in working with world-changing entrepreneurs to design, build and scale transformative consumer products and companies. Prior to joining Spark in 2015, Megan was a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers where she led a number of the firm’s early-stage and growth consumer investments. Megan joined KPCB from Square, the company revolutionizing payments for buyers and sellers. She led strategy and development of the company’s products across merchant and consumer audiences. Before her tenure at Square, Megan spent seven years at Google where she held various leadership positions in marketing, business development and product management. She oversaw the development and launch of some of the company’s most successful products, including Google Maps. Her team’s work continues to serve as the foundation for Google’s location-based consumer and advertising products. Megan received her degree in Political Science and History from Stanford University. Megan lives in San Francisco with her husband.
Since joining Unity as CEO in 2014, John Riccitiello has been a driving force in the successful launch of Unity 5 – the company’s next-generation multiplatform engine and development tools. Previously serving as CEO of Electronic Arts, John played a critical role in the company’s transformation into a mobile, online, and digital gaming leader, with subsequent revenue growth exceeding $1.6 billion during that time. John is also an active private investor, serving on Unity’s board since 2013 as well as Syntertainment, Telltale Games, and a few other higher-ed and non-profit boards. In addition, he was an investor and advisor to Oculus.
Eric is the author of New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup, The Startup Way, and The Leaders Guide (funded by one of the top Kickstarter book campaigns of all time). He’s also the creator of the Lean Startup methodology, practiced by individuals and companies around the world and the inspiration behind the LTSE. He has founded a number of startups, including IMVU, where he served as CTO, and has advised on business and product strategy for startups, venture capital firms, and large companies across many industries.
Chad Rigetti is the founder and CEO of Rigetti Computing, a full-stack quantum computing startup based in Berkeley and Fremont, Calif. The company’s product, Forest, is the world’s first full-stack programming and execution environment for hybrid classical-quantum computing. Founded in 2013, Rigetti has raised over $70 million from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Vy Capital, and has over 50 patent applications on file. Chad holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Yale University and a B.S. in Physics from the University of Regina.
Dr. Schneider is the Chief Medical Officer for Livongo Health. In this role, she is responsible for the company’s strategic clinical product vision, data science, clinical trials, and our team of certified diabetes educators. She is a frequent speaker about innovation in healthcare, where she shares her unique perspective as a practicing physician, health services researcher, and senior executive. Jenny is an avid athlete, having just completed her first IronMan and has lived with Type 1 diabetes for over 30 years. Prior to Livongo, Dr. Schneider held several key leadership roles at Castlight Health, including in clinical product development and strategic analytics, and most recently served as Chief Medical Officer. She has also held leadership roles in the provider setting as a health outcomes researcher and Chief Resident at Stanford University, and has practiced medicine as an attending physician at Stanford University, the VA Palo Alto Health Care System, and Kaiser Permanente. Dr. Schneider has an undergraduate degree from the College of the Holy Cross, a Doctor of Medicine degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and a Master of Science degree in Health Services Research from Stanford University. She completed her internal medicine residency at Stanford University Hospital.
Daniel is a tech leader whose passion for innovation took him from startups to the Fortune 500 (and back again). As President of Powermat Daniel oversaw its transformation into an industry standard and a default feature in the world’s foremost smartphones (Samsung Galaxy), venues (Starbucks) and cars (GM). Prior to Powermat, Daniel served as SVP Corporate Marketing at Sandisk, with global responsibility for the company’s social media, press relations, 50 web and ecommerce sites and major rebranding. During the iPod’s heyday, Daniel served as SVP andGM of Sandisk’s Audio-Video business unit, attaining #1 market share worldwide after Apple, and outselling all other brands combined. Daniel joined SanDisk via the $1.6B acquisition of msystems, where he served as VP Marketing and BD. He was co-founder and CEO of Alchemedia Inc., a content security software company, and began his career as a corporate-commercial attorney. Today Daniel is CEO & cofounder of Lemonade, the insurance carrier built on AI and Behavioral Economics.
Tina Sharkey is the CEO of SherpaFoundry.
Michael Seibel is a Partner at YC and CEO of YC’s startup accelerator. He was the cofounder 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.
A lifelong inventor and successful entrepreneur, Jamie created the world’s first Wi-Fi video doorbell while working in his garage in 2011. The doorbell, then called DoorBot, has since transformed into what’s now known as Ring, a security powerhouse that offers several DIY home security products and services, including the popular Ring Video Doorbell that’s capable of preventing and solving neighborhood crime. Although much has changed since the company’s inception, it is the mission of reducing crime in neighborhoods that continues to drive Jamie. Intensely dedicated not only to the Ring mission, but also to Ring Neighbors (what Ring calls its customers), Jamie is a loyal and trusted leader. He gives his team autonomy so that they can stay focused on what’s most important: the company’s mission of making neighborhoods everywhere safer. Under Jamie’s direction, Ring has seen incredible success and growth. In 2018, Amazon purchased Ring, the company’s second largest acquisition. With the support of Amazon, Ring and Jamie continue to innovate and remain at the bleeding edge of home security. Prior to Ring, Jamie founded several successful ventures including PhoneTag, the world’s first voicemail-to-text company, and Unsubscribe.com, a service that helped email users clean commercial email from their inboxes. He successfully sold both companies in 2009 and 2011 respectively. Jamie holds his Bachelor of Science in Entrepreneurship from Babson College. When he’s not working, Jamie enjoys spending time with his wife, son, and two dogs, Shortrib and Pancake.
Arianna Simpson is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz where she invests in crypto. Prior to joining Andreessen Horowitz, Arianna founded Autonomous Partners, an investment fund focused on cryptocurrencies and digital assets. She also helped launch Crystal Towers Capital, an early-stage fund investing primarily in YC companies, in 2015. Arianna previously spent time working in sales and product roles at Facebook and BitGo, an enterprise security company for bitcoin and other digital currencies. Arianna earned dual degrees in International Politics and Spanish from the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State University. She grew up in Milan, Italy.
Alan Stern is the co-author of of the recently released “Chasing New Horizons, Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto,” and also an engineer and planetary scientist, who has held executive roles at NASA and who leads New Horizons, NASA’s mission to the Pluto system and the Kuiper Belt. He has served as a consultant to private space exploration projects, including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, and he is a co-founder of Worldview Enterprises, which has raised $42 million to provide an accessible, affordable way to access near-space with high-altitude balloons.
Nikolay Storonsky is the Founder and CEO at Revolut. He is a former Equity Derivatives Trader at Credit Suisse and Lehman Brothers. Storonsky graduated from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (State University) (MIPT) with a master of science in General and Applied Physics and earned a master of arts in Applied Economics and Finance at New Economic School.
Valerie A. Szczepanik is Senior Advisor for Digital Assets and Innovation and an Associate Director for the Division of Corporation Finance at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Before that, she served as Assistant Director in the Division of Enforcement’s Cyber Unit. She is Head of the SEC’s Distributed Ledger Technology Working Group, Co-Head of its Dark Web Working Group, and a member of its FinTech Working Group. Ms. Szczepanik served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney at the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. She clerked for federal judges on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and, prior to clerking, practiced patent law. Ms. Szczepanik received her JD from Georgetown University and her Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from the University of Pennsylvani
Arnaud Thiercelin is the Head of R&D of North America for DJI, overseeing global developer technologies and enterprise R&D projects. Within this role, he is responsible for driving the vision for DJI’s developer technologies and enterprise solutions, managing teams located in Palo Alto and Shenzhen, China. Arnaud has more than 15 years of experience in software development from embedded systems to cloud infrastructure. Arnaud has been in the United States for nearly a decade and is originally from France where he studied at Epitech.
Glen Tullman is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Livongo. Livongo is empowering people with chronic conditions, beginning with diabetes, to live better lives, using a combination of innovative technology paired with personalized and context sensitive information delivered when and where it is most impactful at improving health. Today, Livongo is the leading consumer digital health company focusing on chronic conditions. A visionary leader and entrepreneur, Tullman previously ran two public companies that changed the way healthcare is delivered. Most recently, he served as Chief Executive Officer of Allscripts (NASDAQ: MDRX), the leading provider of Electronic Health Records, Practice Management and Electronic Prescribing systems, where he grew revenues from $30 million in 1997 to more than $1.4 billion in 2012, and led the company’s IPO and secondary offerings. Prior to Allscripts, Tullman was CEO of Enterprise Systems, a leading healthcare-information services company providing resource-management solutions to large, integrated healthcare networks that he also took public before it was sold to McKesson HBOC (NYSE: MCK). Tullman is also a successful entrepreneur, and Co-Founder and Partner in 7wireVentures, a Chicago-based investment firm focused on healthcare and education. Through 7wire, he has co-founded a number of ventures including one of the country’s leading solar energy companies, SoCore Energy, sold to Edison Ventures, and a digital education company, and holds investments in several ventures focused on mobile and cloud-based health solutions. As a recognized leader in healthcare and entrepreneurship, Glen is a contributor to Forbes, and sought after as a speaker and industry expert on innovation and change. A strong proponent of philanthropy, he serves as a Chancellor to the International Board of JDRF.
Hans Tung is a Managing Partner at Notable Capital, and have invested in early-stage investments across the global digital economy. He has partnered with top founders from everywhere in ecommerce and fintech where US is a key end user market. Hans’ consumer internet portfolio has included notable companies like Airbnb, Coinbase, Ibotta, Peloton, Poshmark, Quince, StockX, and TikTok. a dedicated fintech and related AI applications investor, Hans has invested in over 14 fintech firms worldwide, including Affirm, Aven, Novo, ADDI, Clara, Rupeek, Slope, and Stori. He and his team launched the FintechInnovation 50 List with NASDAQ in early 2023, highlighting emerging leaders in fintech. Globally recognized, Hans has been on the Forbes Midas list for 12 years, consistently in the top 10 for five years, and is among the Top 100 Asian Americans by Gold House. Originally from Taiwan and raised in Los Angeles, Hans earned a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Stanford. His career spans Wall Street in New York, Silicon Valley startups, and eight years of investing in Asia before coming back to Silicon Valley in 2013 and joining Notable Capital.
Catherine Ulrich, a Managing Director of FirstMark Capital, invests in a broad range of enterprise and consumer start-ups. She has a deep passion for and expertise in health and wellness, AI, and behavior change. Prior to joining FirstMark, she was the Chief Product Officer at Shutterstock (NYSE: SSTK) where she was responsible for product strategy and execution across all of Shutterstock’s offerings and brands including the company’s move into machine learning/computer vision and creative editing tools. She was also the first Chief Product Officer at Weight Watchers (NYSE: WTW), responsible for their global digital and retail experiences. Catherine holds an AB in Engineering and a certificate in Public Health Policy from Harvard College.
Chris Urmson is the co-founder and CEO of Aurora, the company delivering the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly. Chris has been instrumental in instigating and advancing the development of self-driving vehicles and the industry for the last 15 years. Before founding Aurora, Chris helped start Google’s self-driving car program and served as CTO. Prior, Chris was a faculty member of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University where he worked with house-sized trucks, drove robots in the desert, and was the technical director of the DARPA Urban and Grand Challenge teams. Chris has authored more than 60 patents and 50 publications.He earned his Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University and his BSc in computer engineering from the University of Manitoba in 1998.
J.D. Vance is an investor, commentator, and author of the #1 NYT Bestselling Hillbilly Elegy, described by the National Review as a “brilliant book” and by the Economist as “one of the most important” reads of 2016. Raised by his working-class grandparents in Middletown, Ohio, J.D. graduated from Middletown High School in 2003 and then immediately enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. During his time in the Marines, he deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. When he finished his four-year enlistment, J.D. moved back to Ohio and enrolled at The Ohio State University, where he studied Political Science and Philosophy and helped coordinate the university’s bipartisan voter education drive in 2008. After graduating from college, he studied at Yale Law School. During his time at law school, J.D. worked at Yale’s Veterans Legal Services Clinic, providing free legal counsel to veterans of our nation’s wars in Vietnam and Iraq. J.D. earned his law degree in 2013. After a stint at a large corporate law firm, J.D. moved to San Francisco to work at the leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm Mithril Capital, cofounded by Peter Thiel and Ajay Royan. Following that role, J.D. became the managing partner of the first Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Revolution’s seed-stage venture capital fund. Today, J.D. serves as a special advisor to the Rise of the Rest Seed Funds. J.D. continues to lecture and write on topics of public interest. He regularly discusses politics and public policy on national networks and has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, and Fox News.
Kyle Vogt is the CEO, CTO, president, and co-founder of Cruise, which he has scaled to over 3,000 employees (and counting!) with heavy-hitting backers like GM, Honda, Microsoft, and Walmart. An engineer at heart, Kyle has more than a decade of experience designing and deploying large-scale distributed systems, infrastructure, and complex robots that serve hundreds of millions of users. Before Cruise, he co-founded Twitch, which Amazon acquired for over $1B.
Emily Warren is an accomplished shared mobility expert, focused on leveraging new transportation technologies to advance the public interest. She leads Policy and Public Affairs at Lime and brings years of direct experience in ridesharing policy to the company. She began her career as a transportation policy aide for a U.S. congresswoman and later served as a financial adviser for municipal infrastructure projects. Warren has worked with countless NGOs and transportation agencies to integrate shared mobility as an alternative to car ownership and understands its impact on infrastructure, behavior and the environment. Prior to joining Lime, she spent the breadth of her career at Lyft, as a member of the original team. She worked on the front lines of the industry to forge new regulatory pathways, mobilized public support, and integrated Lyft within the traditional landscape of infrastructure and public transport. As Senior Director of Transportation Policy, she created and led Lyft’s national Transportation Policy team, serving as Lyft’s primary ambassador to city transportation agencies and experts. As a prominent public speaker on transportation technology, Warren has been featured in over 200 speaking engagements, including panels and keynotes at large transportation conferences including the World Mobility Leadership Forum and The Commonwealth Club. She speaks to a wide range of topics including mass transit innovation, future impacts of autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles, transportation technology, urban transportation policy, and shared mobility. She currently serves as an advisory council member for the National Center for Sustainable Transportation and a board member of UCLA’s Institute of Transportation studies. She holds an M.P.A. in Public Finance from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego
Emily Weiss is the founder and CEO of Glossier, a direct-to-consumer beauty company that leverages content and community to power a superior shopping experience. Emily is heavily involved in product development, creative and brand marketing, ensuring that all products and content are created with the signature Glossier voice. Founded in 2014, Glossier has 150 employees and over $86M in venture capital funding. The company has won Women Wear Daily Beauty Inc.’s 2015 Digital Innovator of the Year award and is one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2017. Emily has been included in Forbes’ 30 Under 30, Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business 2015 and AdWeek Top 20 Content Creators 2016. Emily lives in New York City.
Aniyia Williams is a creator, inventor and tech changemaker. She is a co-founder of Zebras Unite, an entrepreneur-led movement focused on creating a more ethical and sustainable startup ecosystem, and Executive Director of Black & Brown Founders, which provides education and resources to Black and Latinx tech entrepreneurs.
Ellie Wheeler is a Partner at Greycroft and is based in the firm’s New York office. Prior to joining Greycroft, Ellie worked in a similar role evaluating investment opportunities at Lowercase Capital. Ellie also worked at Cisco in Corporate Development doing acquisitions, investments, and strategy within the unified communications, enterprise software, mobile, and video sectors. While at Cisco, she was involved in multiple acquisitions and investments, including PostPath, Jabber, Xobni, and Tandberg. She began her career in growth capital private equity at Summit Partners in Boston. Ellie graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University with a BA in Psychology and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Anne co-founded 23andMe in 2006 after a decade spent in healthcare investing, focused primarily on biotechnology companies. Her hope was to empower consumers with access to their own genetic information and to create a way to generate more personalized information so that commercial and academic researchers could better understand and develop new drugs and diagnostics. Presently, 23andMe has built one of the world’s largest databases of individual genetic information. Its novel, web-based research approach allows for the rapid recruitment of participants to many genome-wide association studies at once, reducing the time and money needed to make new discoveries, and the company has created a proven and standardized resource for finding new genetic association and confirming genetic loci discovered by others. Under Anne’s leadership 23andMe has made significant advances in bringing personalized medicine directly to the public. Anne graduated from Yale University with a BS in Biology. Getting access to and understanding her own genetic information had always been one of her ambitions.
Tony Xu is the CEO and a co-founder of DoorDash.
Laurie Yoler is an ambitious problem-solver and prolific connector by nature, who has decades of experience operating, scaling, and advising companies from seed startups to multinational corporations. After spending time at Accenture and PwC, Laurie worked at Visa for four years where she helped create a new division focusing exclusively on debit cards, which eventually yielded the groundbreaking Visa Check Card. Next, she was at Sun Microsystems, where she helped the company emerge as the go-to server platform for software in the internet age. Next, Laurie was a founding team member at Packet Design, focusing on incubating networking and security companies. Laurie served as a Founding Board Member of Tesla, serving on the board of directors, and later on the board of advisors as the company went public. She also served on the board of Interactive Investor International in London through taking the company public. She became a founding managing director at GrowthPoint Technology Partners, advising entrepreneurs, completing M&A transactions and raising funds. Laurie was also President of Qualcomm Labs and SVP of Business Development for Qualcomm, driving new innovation, and closing new strategic partnerships and joint ventures. In addition to Zoox, Laurie currently serves on the board of directors of Bose, Church & Dwight, and the Computer History Museum, and on the advisory boards of Accenture, Platform Science, AI4All, and the Washington State Frank Fellows Entrepreneurship Program. At Playground, Laurie is applying her decades of experience and learnings to help early-stage tech companies grow and thrive.
