Venture with Grace

Ian Park is a Partner at Primer Sazze. Prior to joining the firm, Ian invested in startups and VC funds at KIC, one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds. He also spent time at VMG Partners and Bertram Capital identifying and reviewing investment opportunities using A.I. He started his career in consulting at BRG and McKinsey & Company. As an aspiring economist, Ian studied mathematics...

Aidan Madigan-Curtis is a Partner at Eclipse. As an investor, board member, public company executive and entrepreneur, Aidan’s career has centered around the innovation and transformation of critical industries. As a Partner at Eclipse, Aidan invests across core, disruptive themes in today's world including geopolitical disruption, supply chain dislocation, energy transition, manufacturing onshori...

Susannah is a Partner at AlleyCorp, focused on investments in a range of tech categories, with an emphasis on B2B and consumer marketplaces. She has invested in and incubated marketplaces across a diverse range of industries from global logistics to the creator economy. In addition to investing, Susannah is deeply involved with AlleyCorp’s incubation process, dedicating substantial time to support...

Jihong Kim is a venture capitalist at Samsung Ventures and has led both financial and strategic investments in software, digital media, and services. Noteworthy exits include SentinelOne (NYSE: S), Couchbase (NASDAQ: BASE), BigCommerce (NASDAQ: BIGC), Raxium (acquired by Google), ClassPass (acquired by Mindbody), Centrify (acquired by Thoma Bravo), Pluto.tv (acquired by Viacom), Fetch Robotics (ac...

Dave Anderson is the founding partner of Beat Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm investing in companies that use AI to enhance humans in overlooked legacy industries. Early checks into Ziva Dynamics (acq. by Unity), Bipi (acq. by RBI), AEYE (NASDAQ: LIDR), Common Sense Machines, Drishti, Operant AI, Volur, Stack AI, Oxen AI, Bitpart AI, Bolo AI, Middleware, Hireguide, Treehouse, Fishtai...

Ben Huh is the founder of Orange Fund. Orange Fund is the seed-stage venture investing partner of the Orange DAO, a community of more than 1,000 experienced tech founders working in crypto. He is also the former CEO of The Cheezburger Network, which at its peak in 2010 received 375 million views a month across its 50 sites. Topics: The intersection of AI and blockchain technology Evolution of Inte...

Suman Natarajan is a Principal at B Capital’s San Francisco office, where she invests in startups powering the enterprise, across domains such as cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, DevOps, data and ML/AI, and B2B SaaS. Previously, she was a Senior Vice President at Citi Ventures and an investor at Intel Capital, where she drove investments in companies such as Cribl, Tessian, Snyk, Styra, Nylas,...

John Frankel is a Partner at ff Venture Capital. He is passionate about working with founders that are building the big businesses of tomorrow. He founded ff Venture Capital in 2008 to work with founders who share this vision, which has since funded over 150 seed and early-stage companies that have in turn created thousands of jobs and impacted the lives of millions. While ff Venture Capital’s inv...

Omar Shaya is the founder of MultiOn, an AI company that develops autonomous agents. Prior to this, he led product management for Core Product Ranking at Meta and worked on product management at the Microsoft Search, Assistant, and Intelligence (MSAI) organization. Additionally, Omar has worked as a product manager at Crealytics and LiquidM, two successful startups where he helped incubate and dev...

Nick Adams is the co founder of Quill. Quill is a local meeting tool designed to free you to be present in meetings, and get work done fast afterward. Whether you're capturing notes from startup pitches, documenting founder updates, or organizing insights from multiple discussions, Quill makes post conversational work a breeze. With customizable templates for various roles and industries, Quill fu...

Mark Kraynak is a Founding Partner at Acrew Capital. 🚀 This episode is brought to you by Quill Meetings. 🚀 Mark Kraynak is a technology executive, company builder and erstwhile poet/engineer. Before co-founding Acrew, Mark joined Aspect Ventures as Entrepreneur in Residence and converted to a full time investor at the end of 2017. Prior to joining Aspect, Mark spent nearly 13 years at Imperva, w...

Chris Picardo is a Partner at Madrona. Chris joined Madrona in 2017. As a partner on the investment team, Chris focuses on identifying, evaluating, and leading new investment opportunities and working closely with existing companies. Chris helps lead Madrona’s investments in companies innovating around the intersection of life and computer science through combining novel wet lab science with cutti...

Arvind Jain is the Co-founder and CEO of Glean ($4.6 Billion valued), the Work AI platform connected to all your data. 🚀 This episode is brought to you by Quill Meetings. 🚀 Find, create, and automate anything. Prior to Glean, Arvind co-founded and led R&D at Rubrik, one the fastest growing companies in cloud data management. Arvind also spent over a decade at Google as a distinguished engine...

Sumit Chauhan is the Corporate Vice President of Office Product Group at Microsoft. 🚀 This episode is brought to you by Quill Meetings. 🚀 She heads up a wide portfolio of Microsoft 365 experiences, guiding product, design, and engineering teams for both M365 Copilot and M365’s flagship applications and creator tools. Her portfolio includes M365 Copilot, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Designer...

Scott Walbrun is a venture capital investor at BMW i Ventures, BMW's independent VC fund, where he focuses on investments targeting the future of mobility, energy, supply chain, and artificial intelligence. In addition to this role, he provides workshops and coaching to hundreds of startups each year through various accelerator/incubator programs. Prior to joining BMW i Ventures, he provided M&amp...

Amin Shaykho is the CEO of Kadama, social media star, and TED talk speaker honored on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. Shaykho is a former senior software engineer at Apple on teams like iMessage and Health. Shaykho raised $1.7M for Kadama and grew it to 2M+ users, 2.5M+ followers and 1B+ views on social media, and reached a peak App Store ranking of #2 in education. Shaykho has over 2M+ followers acr...

Elana Gold is a partner at Red Beard Ventures (RBV), a pioneering Web3 fund with over $25M in capital, investing in blockchain consumer apps, infrastructure, gaming, metaverse, and DeFi, both in equity and tokens. She leads the RBV Syndicate, which invests in startups at any stage and sector, with over 3,900 LPs, 210+ company investments, and over $50M deployed. An advocate for women in investing,...

René Lomelí is a Partner at 500 Global, he joined the team back in 2013. Since then, he has been responsible for the 16-week program they run for their investments in Spanish-speaking LatAm "Somos Lucha". He's also been part of the +240 investments they've made in the region such as Konfio, Clip, Ayenda, 99Minutos, Conekta, Jüsto, Terapify, and Graviti. He enjoys helping early-stage companies in s...

Ashu Garg is a General Partner at Foundation Capital. Foundation Capital is a leading Silicon Valley based early stage venture capital firm. He focus on investing in bold founders who have a vision to transform markets and build enduring companies. Ashu has extensive experience across the stack from AI 1st applications to data/ML infrastructure, cyber security, and cloud infrastructure. Ashu is an...

Jeff Seibert is the co-founder and CEO of Digits, where he's building the world's first AI-powered accounting platform for startups and small businesses. He previously served as Twitter's Head of Consumer Product, leading the company's teams across Twitter for iOS, Android, and the Web, as well as its Developer and Data platforms. Jeff was the co-founder and CEO of Crashlytics, the award-winning m...

Kyle Harrison is a General Partner at Contrary. Contrary is a talent and research-driven investment firm. We back a small number of exceptional people and the companies they build, from seed to scale. He is an investor in Ramp, Replit, Anduril, OneSchema, Zepto, Moment, Nomic, Pave, Patch, Modern Intelligence, Teamshares, Leland, Synthesis, Armada, Power, and more. Prior to Contrary he is a Partne...

Wei Lien Dang is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures and leads investments in infrastructure software, security, and developer tools. He has spent more than a decade building products at startups. Wei was a co-founder of StackRox, a cloud-native security company, where he was responsible for product management, user experience, product marketing, and technical evangelism prior to its acquisition...

#159 JuE Wong is the former President & CEO/ Executive Board Director of Olaplex Inc. (Nasdaq: OLPX). Prior to Olaplex, she was the Global CEO/ Executive Board Director of Moroccanoil, the President of Elizabeth Arden, and an Independent Board Director of The Red Door by Elizabeth Arden. Other notable companies she has served as a leader include Murad and Perricone MD, among others. You can le...

🚀 This episode is brought to you by LG NOVA. 🚀 Watch the latest Smart Venture Podcast episode. #156 Mark Rostick is a Vice President & Senior Managing Director located in Raleigh, NC. He is a voting member of Intel Capital’s investment committee. He joined Intel Capital in 1999. Mark also co-manages our Cloud domain investment activities and portfolio. He has deep investment experience in cl...

🚀 This episode is brought to you by LG NOVA. 🚀 Amit Vasudev is the Managing Partner of Earl Grey Capital. Earl Grey Capital is an early-stage venture fund run by Amit Vasudev, Alex MacCaw, and Matt Sornson. They were part of the founding team at Clearbit. Clearbit helps companies create, capture, and convert demand from ideal customers — all from one powerful and flexible go-to-market platform....