2018

Nathan Beckord is the CEO of Foundersuite.com a venture-backed company that makes the leading Investor CRM and Investor Updater tools for startups raising capital. Since launching in March of 2016, customers have raised over $650M in seed and venture capital.
Prior to starting Foundersuite, Beckord spent ten years working with over 150 startups as interim CFO, Business Developer, and Advisor. Beckord has an MBA in Entrepreneurship, a BSC in Finance, and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). In his free time, he enjoys sailing and riding motorcycles.

John Mannes is an investor at Basis Set Ventures, a $136 million early stage venture capital fund focused on supporting startups using machine learning to address big problems across industries. Prior to Basis Set Ventures, John was a TechCrunch writer covering machine intelligence startups, machine learning research and major AI initiatives from big tech. His work has also been featured in The Washington Post and Education Week.
Previously, John consulted startups and VC associations on development and growth. In 2012, John was elected to a seat on the Montgomery County Board of Education (MD), the nation’s 17th largest school district, where he advocated technology modernization across over 200 schools. For his public service work, John was honored by members of the U.S. Congress.

Erik Murphy-Chutorian is the founder and CEO of 8th Wall, building cross-platform solution for developers to build augmented reality applications on all mobile devices. Erik has deep expertise in computer vision, imaging infrastructure, data analysis and full-stack/mobile product development. Prior to founding 8th Wall, he worked at both Facebook and Google as an engineering manager and senior staff software engineer respectively, leading the initiatives behind a number of key projects on Google Images and Google Photos. Erik holds a PhD in computer vision from the University of California, San Diego and a BA in Engineering Physics from Dartmouth College.

Eric S. Yuan founded Zoom in 2011. Prior to starting Zoom, Eric was Corporate Vice President of Engineering at Cisco, where he was responsible for Cisco’s collaboration software development. As one of the founding engineers and Vice President of Engineering at WebEx, Eric was the heart and soul of the WebEx product from 1997 to 2011. Eric proudly grew the WebEx team from 10 engineers to more than 800 worldwide, and contributed to revenue growth from $0 to more than $800M. Eric is a named inventor on 11 issued and 20 pending patents in real time collaboration. In 2017, Eric was added to the Business Insider list of the 52 Most Powerful People in Enterprise Tech. Eric is a graduate of the Stanford University Executive Program.

Ching-Yu Hu just joined next47 as a Principal in our Palo Alto office. Prior to that, she was an Entrepreneur In Residence in Google’s internal startup incubator Area 120. In 2009, she co-founded Skybox Imaging, a data and aerospace startup that designed, built, and launched the world’s largest constellation of high resolution imaging satellites. As the Director of Business Operations and Customer Relations, she was responsible for growing a stealth company into an industry-defining brand, driving new global business opportunities with strategic partnerships, and playing a critical role in securing Skybox’s venture capital financing from leading investors and eventual acquisition by Google in 2014 for $500M. Ching-Yu holds dual Bachelor’s degrees in Operations Research Management Science and Statistics from UC Berkeley, and a Master’s degree in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University. In 2014, Ching-Yu was named as one of Inc Magazine’s 35 Under 35.

In 1999, Tom Villante founded YapStone with the simple goal of converting bills commonly paid by paper check into online electronic payments. Today, YapStone processes over $18 billion in online and mobile payments and has raised over $110 million in capital. As Chairman and CEO, Tom leads the strategic vision, operational execution and global expansion of the company. With his experience and expertise in the FinTech industry, Tom is focused on positioning YapStone’s innovative and proprietary payments platform to meet the needs of global marketplaces and large vertical markets.

Prior to YapStone, Tom was a Partner at The Seidler Company, a private equity firm, and an investment banker with S.G. Warburg (now UBS) and William E. Simon & Sons. In addition to his role at YapStone, Tom is a member of Young Presidents’ Organization (Santa Monica Bay) and has served on the Boards of local schools and charitable organizations. With 20 years of entrepreneurial experience, he is an active angel and real estate investor, frequent speaker at FinTech and Leadership conferences as well as a contributing writer to notable business publications. Tom earned a Bachelor’s Degree from Princeton University.

Jack Altman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Lattice, a modern performance management platform for growing companies. Since graduating the Y Combinator Winter 2016 class, Lattice serves 250+ customers such as Birchbox, Coinbase and Glossier. Lattice closed its Series A with investments from Thrive Capital, Slack Fund, Khosla Ventures, Marc Benioff (Salesforce), and Alexis Ohanian (Reddit). Prior to starting Lattice, Jack was the VP of Business and Corporate Development at Teespring, and an angel investor in companies such as Opendoor, Instacart, Pinterest, Gusto, LendUp, Soylent, and Patreon.

Tony dropped out of Stanford in 1992 to join Apple as PM of the mobile Newton OS and Tools.  After Apple, in the early days of the Web, ​he ​co-founded
a successful development firm, ​which  designed early online services for Bank of America, Microsoft, Netscape, Intel, Sony and Magic the Gathering.
​Tony ​has ​co-found​ed​  a number of ​ venture-funded​ consumer internet startups including When.com (acquired by AOL in 1999) and Social Express (acquired by MTV Networks in 2010).  In each case, post-acquisition Tony lead business units as GM/VP and scaled  team and revenue​  to $50MM.  In addition to funding his own companies over the years, Benchmark Capital recruited Tony as a VP Product (Kollective), CEO (Couchsurfing), and Limited Partner.  Personal angel Investments include Postini (acquired by Google) and Ofoto (acquired by Kodak).

In addition to ​building ​social and mobile apps​, games​ and web services, Tony is also a successful music producer and sound engineer with credits recording Alanis Morissette, New Order, REM, David Gray, Ice Cube, DJ Shadow and Radiohead.

These days, Tony enjoys working with​early stage ​​entrepreneurs as a coach helping to guide and support the process from formation through financing​ and​
product/market fit through scaling​.