Venture with Grace

Natasha is a partner at Silicon Legal Strategy. Her practice focuses on advising emerging growth and development stage companies on a variety of matters: pre-incorporation planning and entity formation, debt or equity financing and day-to-day business issues, and through the exit process. She also represents emerging technology investors. Prior to joining SLS, Natasha was a corporate associate at...

Nir Eyal is an author, speaker, and expert in behavioral design, which combines psychology, technology, and business. He wrote the bestsellers Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. Nir has taught as a Lecturer in Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Design School and has sold two tech companies since...

Tushar Roy is a Partner at Square Peg Capital, focusing on investing in venture and growth stage online and technology companies across Southeast Asia, Australia, and Israel. With almost a decade of experience in the region, he specializes in identifying and supporting tech founders to help them achieve their goals. Tushar’s current portfolio includes Chope, Cialfo, Doctor Anywhere, FinAccel, Kaod...

Jack McClelland is an investor and engineer at Afore, a pre-seed focused venture capital fund managing approximately $300 million across three funds. He actively supports and invests in early-stage founders while also developing internal tools crucial for Afore's operations. Jack leads the Alpha Program, a pre-seed deal investing $1 million at $10 million (post) into promising tech startups gl...

Mo Koyfman is the Founder and General Partner at Shine Capital. In 2022, Shine Capital announced the launch of two new funds: Shine II, a $200M early-stage fund, and Shine Opportunities I, a $100M vehicle. Prior to starting Shine, Mo was the Managing Member at Moko Brands, where he made angel investments in notable companies such as Coinbase, Polychain, and Harry's. Before Moko, Mo spent over...

Jason Marks is the founder and CEO of Telo Trucks. He led the Autonomous Vehicles and Driver Assistance Systems test programs at National Instruments (NI), where he was a Chief Business Development Manager. He developed the test systems for five major U.S. automakers’ Autonomy and ADAS test systems for their 2024 model year vehicles. He’s an experienced Sales, Marketing, and R&D leader with pa...

Howard Ko is an Investment Partner at Morpheus. With expertise spanning across robotics, healthcare, insuretech, fintech, and proptech, Howard brings a unique blend of knowledge to the table. Currently serving as a board member for Rize, RIOS, Rugged Robotics, IngeniousIO, and Tagnos, as well as a board observer for Bridg and RapidDeploy, Howard is deeply involved in shaping the success of emergin...

Amir leads Fintech and Insurtech investing at AV8 and has been one of the earliest investors in the Insurtech space. Amir has been an entrepreneur, operator and investor with over 15 years of experience, working with early and mid-stage companies on financing, partnerships and strategic growth initiatives. Prior to AV8, Amir was an investment director and founding team member at Munich Re Ventures...

Meet Alasdair Mann, the driving force behind Alementary, where videos spark excitement about emerging technologies and the brilliant minds behind them. With over 100 million views per month, Alasdair's expertise spans engineering, data science, and product development. Transitioning to video content creation in 2021, he dedicated himself to producing daily videos, overcoming challenges to achi...

Ilya Strebulaev is the foremost academic expert on venture capital. He is the founder of the Venture Capital Initiative and David S. Lobel Professor of Private Equity and Professor of Finance at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where he teaches a popular class on venture capital. Ilya’s research has been widely published in leading academic journals and featured by the Wall Stree...

Vivien is a Partner at Pear. Vivien focuses on investing in health: human and planet health. She leads Pear’s Female Founder Circles program supporting the next generation of female technical founders and runs a 14 week program twice a year. Previously, she worked on executive business strategy, new products and product growth for Airbnb Homes and Transportation, and was a consultant at BCG, focus...

Larry Liu is the CEO and founder of Weee!, North America's largest and fastest growing ethnic e-grocer with 5+ X growth in 2020. Larry envisions a world where people celebrate life through food, promoting the collective enjoyment and exploration of delightful, home-based food products and experiences. Established in 2015 and now valued at over $4.1 billion. - Technology and Innovation in E-Gro...

Alda Leu Dennis is the Managing Partner at Hawktail VC and a Board Partner at Initialized Capital. She has an extensive background in venture capital, previously serving as General Counsel at Founders Fund and as Managing Partner at 137 Ventures. Alda also contributes her expertise as a board member to several innovative companies, including The Mom Project, HomeVision, A-Frame Brands, SkySelect,...

Danielle Strachman is the Founder and General Partner of 1517 Fund, a venture firm that offers grant, pre-seed, and seed funding to technology startups. With a focus on makers, hackers, and scientists operating outside traditional educational tracks, 1517 Fund champions alternative paths to innovation, encouraging individuals to pursue their passions and learn through hands-on creation of new tech...

Kyle Wong is currently the CEO of StartX and was previously the founder & CEO of Pixlee, a UGC and Influencer Marketing company that powers most of the customer stories seen during online shopping. He has worked with some of the world's largest brands, helping them amplify their customer stories and rethink their social commerce strategies. Under his leadership, Pixlee grew to over 100 emp...

Michael Houck is the founder of Megaphone and co-founder of Launch house. Launch House is an early stage venture fund for companies building the New Silicon Valley. It began as a membership club built around IRL coliving residencies in LA, NYC, Tulum, Aspen, Miami, and Lisbon. Topics: - Bootstrapping vs. Venture Capital - Strategies for Effective Social Media Growth - Building a Brand Through Stor...

Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts the Fintech Leaders podcast, a weekly newsletter & podcast featuring exclusive interviews with unique leaders reshaping the global financial industry. - Emerging Trends in Fintech - Challenges and Opportunities in Seed-Stage Funding - Cross-Bor...

Eric is the co-founder and CEO of Revere. Revere provides venture capital data and portfolio management solutions to asset allocators. Before starting Revere, Eric was Head of Institutional Capital at AngelList, the world's largest online venture capital investment platform that supports over $10B in assets and has financed over 190 "unicorn" companies. At AngelList, Eric worked clos...

Emila Damjanovic is a Partner focused on Investor Relations at Lead Edge Capital. Lead Edge Capital is a $5 billion growth equity firm investing in software, internet, and tech-enabled businesses globally. The firm has invested in a number of major software and internet companies around the world, including Alibaba Group, Arrive Logistics, Asana, Azul Systems, Bazaarvoice, Benchling, Clearscore, D...

Shomik is a Partner at boldstart and has over 6 years of venture investing in enterprise software. He’s experienced all the highs and lows of the entrepreneurial journey from IPOs and acquisitions to a failed startup. And is uniquely positioned to help pre-product enterprise startups. Prior to boldstart, Shomik worked as a growth stage investor at Top Tier Capital where he invested in companies li...

Siqi is the founder and CEO of Runway, an a16z funded startup enabling operators to understand their business without needing a degree in finance. As an operator and founder: Siqi was CEO of Sandbox VR (a16z), VP of Product and Growth at Postmates (acquired by Uber), CEO of Hey, Inc (Google-funded, acquired by Postmates), Head of Product at Zynga (IPO 2011), CEO of Serious Business (funded by Ligh...

Alex Edelson is the Founder and General Partner of Slipstream Investors. Before starting Slipstream, he worked at QED Investors, a top fintech-focused venture capital firm with $4.3 billion in assets under management. Alex joined as Nigel Morris's Chief of Staff and became the Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel. He previously worked at a fintech startup and spent seven years practicin...

Brady Broadbent joined Sorenson in 2008. As an investment partner and entrepreneurial mentor, he collaborates with enterprise entrepreneurs developing and scaling application, analytics, and vertical SaaS applications. Brady graduated magna cum laude from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Science in business management and an emphasis in entrepreneurship. He took a break from Sorenson in...

Hooman Radfar is a computer scientist and founder dedicated to helping other founders. He's co-founder and CEO of Collective, Venture Partner at Expa, founder of 10e9, and co-founder of AddThis (acquired by Oracle). As CEO of Collective, he is responsible for the strategy, growth, and operations for the company. Collective's vision is to increase the number of financially successful busine...

Nick Moran is the founder and General Partner of New Stack Ventures. Prior to New Stack, Nick spent time as both an investor and an operator. He worked in M&A for Danaher, a science and technology conglomerate. Subsequently, Nick developed one of the most successful products in the company’s history, a novel way of testing compounds in drinking water. New Stack Ventures is a pre-seed / seed st...