Venture with Grace

Stephanie Zufle Retcho has served as the Chief Marketing Officer for both KAYAK and Hungryroot. She has also held leadership positions at renowned agencies like McCann Erickson and TBWA\CHIAT\DAY, managing blue-chip accounts like Verizon Wireless and Sprint-Nextel. Throughout her career, Stephanie has driven growth through strategic marketing, resulting in increased revenue, profit, and market sha...

Vanessa Larco joined NEA as a Partner in 2016 and focuses on enterprise and consumer investing. She has led investments in Assembled, Kindred, Rewind AI, Cleo, Evernow, Rocket. Chat, and Mejuri, among others. She is also a board observer at Forethought, SafeBase, Orby AI, Granica, Modyfi, and HEAVY.AI. She was a board observer at Robinhood until its IPO in 2021. Prior to Venture, she led product t...

Tikue Anazodo is the co-founder and CEO of Kudos Technologies, a company launched in 2022 that developed an AI-powered smart wallet to help consumers maximize credit card rewards and cash back for online purchases. Under his leadership, Kudos has grown rapidly, securing a recent Series A round led by QED Investors. Tikue, who previously worked at Google and Affirm, has driven Kudos to expand its u...

Kyle Lui is a General Partner at Bling Capital. He has backed 7 “unicorn” companies across SaaS, consumer internet, digital health, and fintech. Previously, Kyle was a Partner at DCM where led early stage US investments including DocSend (acq. by Dropbox), TravelBank (acq. by US Bank), Wrike (acq. by Citrix), Hims & Hers (NYSE: HIMS), Shift (Nasdaq: SFT) and Tapingo (acq. by GrubHub). He also...

An entrepreneur at heart, Rami Rahal started Blue Cloud Ventures after having worked as a tech investment banker at Madison Park Group. Before that, he was an IT strategy consultant at Accenture. In 2016, he was named by Forbes to the Venture Capital "30Under30" list and by Inc. Magazine as one of "20 Young Entrepreneurs You Need to Know". In 2018, he was named by Crain New Yor...

Nick Singh is the Founder and CEO of DataLemur. Thousands of data scientists, data analysts, and BI professionals use DataLemur daily to prepare for their technical interviews and land their dream jobs in data. Previously, he worked at Facebook and Google. These days, he's the creator of the SQL interview platform DataLemur.com, the best-selling author of "Ace the Data Science Interview,&...

Kanyi Maqubela serves as Managing Partner at Kindred Ventures. He focuses his investment and formation work in theme areas including frontier technology, digital health, e-commerce, financial technology, supply-chain/logistics. He currently serves a number of startups as a lead investor, including Adyton, Basis Theory, Faircraft, Cloudtrucks, Goldfinch, and Tala. He previously led or participated...

David leads pre-seed investments at Roble Ventures, a future-of-work-focused fund that invests in technologies enabling people, teams, and organizations to achieve their most ambitious work. He looks for early-stage software companies that positively impact organizations and workers and can scale to be potential $1B+ unicorn companies. David served on a Fulbright Scholarship at the leading global...

Brian Harwitt is a Partner at CoVenture where he focused on finding alternative lending platforms to partner with for both debt and equity financings. Prior to joining the CoVenture team, Brian was an investment banking analyst at Guggenheim Securities focusing on healthcare. Brian received a BS Summa Cum Laude from Cornell University. - Key trends and innovations in alternative lending - How star...

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...