Speakers

Geoff Ralston is the President of Y Combinator and has been with YC since 2011. Prior to YC, he built one of the first web mail services, RocketMail, which became Yahoo Mail in 1997. While at Yahoo, Geoff worked in engineering and ran a business unit before becoming Chief Product Officer. After Yahoo, he was CEO of Lala, which was acquired in 2009 by Apple. In 2011, he cofounded Imagine K12, the first Ed Tech accelerator, which funded companies like ClassDojo and Remind, and merged with YC in 2016.

He has an AB in Computer Science from Dartmouth, an MS in Computer Science from Stanford, and an MBA from INSEAD.

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); and Mint.com (Intuit). His current investments include Vidyard, Postmates, Vungle, 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 is a board member of the National Venture Capital Association.

Chris Yeh is the co-author, along with Reid Hoffman, of Blitzscaling, the book that explains how to build world-changing companies like Amazon, Alibaba, and Airbnb in record time.

A writer, investor, and entrepreneur, Chris has had a ringside seat in the world of startups and scaleups since 1995. His books help founders, venture capitalists, corporate leaders, policymakers, and everyday people better understand how the internet has changed the way we work together to build amazing organizations.

Hundreds of companies, from garage-dwelling startups to Fortune 50 titans have tapped his knowledge and insights to accelerate and transform their businesses.

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); and Mint.com (Intuit). His current investments include Vidyard, Postmates, Vungle, 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 is a board member of the National Venture Capital Association.

Justin Kan is the co-founder and CEO of Atrium, a full-service corporate law firm that uses modern technology to provide startups a legal experience that is fast, transparent, and price-predictable. Having been a repeat founder and investor both personally and as a Partner at Y Combinator for many years, Justin coins himself an involuntary user of legal services. With countless legal frustrations under his belt, he sought out to redefine the industry by removing the unknown barriers with transparency and operational efficiency to improve the delivery of services and inherently also the client-attorney relationship.

Justin previously founded many companies including:
Kiko, the first AJAX web calendar;
Justin.tv which later became Twitch, a video game streaming platform (acquired for $970mm by Amazon in 2014) and Socialcam, a mobile video sharing app (acquired for $60mm by Autodesk in 2012);
Exec, an on-demand maid service (acquired by Handybook in 2014).

He’s personally invested in over 100 companies, including Zenefits, Ginkgo Bioworks, Cruise, and Alto Pharmacy. Justin graduated from Yale University with a degree in Physics and Philosophy.

Geoff Ralston is the President of Y Combinator and has been with YC since 2011. Prior to YC, he built one of the first web mail services, RocketMail, which became Yahoo Mail in 1997. While at Yahoo, Geoff worked in engineering and ran a business unit before becoming Chief Product Officer. After Yahoo, he was CEO of Lala, which was acquired in 2009 by Apple. In 2011, he cofounded Imagine K12, the first Ed Tech accelerator, which funded companies like ClassDojo and Remind, and merged with YC in 2016.

He has an AB in Computer Science from Dartmouth, an MS in Computer Science from Stanford, and an MBA from INSEAD.

Jonathan Abrams is an engineer, entrepreneur, and investor, who has spent his career building technology to help connect people.  Jonathan is a co-founder and Managing Partner of Founders Den, San Francisco’s most exclusive workspace and community for startups and investors.  Jonathan is a also board member at Girls in Tech.  Previously Jonathan was the founder of the professional news discovery service Nuzzel and the pioneering social networking service Friendster, and a software engineer at Netscape and Nortel.  Jonathan is an investor in over 50 startups, including AngelList, Docker, Front, HelloSign, Instacart, Mixmax, Pachyderm, SafeGraph, Sapho, Sense, Slideshare, and Zeplin.

Anne is a results-driven serial entrepreneur and co-founder/executive director of various successful for-profit and non-profit ventures. After a career in the corporate world in IT and digital health, and selling a consumer product startup, Anne founded the first AI-driven women’s networking platform to help women built stronger networks. She recently ran an AI-powered founder funder program and connects entrepreneurs at the SERENDIPITY conference. She served as the executive director for Women In Product, a 501(c)3 organization and serves on multiple advisory boards of startups in healthtech, STEM and corporate innovation.

Serial entrepreneur, Camilla Olson, is driven by curiosity. It’s led her to successfully complete her undergraduate degree in microbiology, and advanced degrees in business and fashion design. Her career has covered electron microscopy, venture capital, predictive modeling, her own fashion ecommerce label and now the AI retail technology company, Savitude. She holds 2 patents, with 2 more in process; fought in the Techcrunch Battlefield; launched her label on the runway of Lincoln Center during NY Fashion Week, and saw her designs worn at the Met and the LAcMa Galas, and the White House. Still, she is most proud of her family, that her children still talk with her and her marriage is strong after 30+ years. The recent addition of Gracie, the stray dog, has given her many smiles.

Ammon is COO and Co-founder of Triplebyte. He is responsible for technical interview design and analysis at Triplebyte, and has personally conducted over 1000 interviews. Before Triplebyte, Ammon was an early engineer at Justin.tv before co-founding Socialcam, which was acquired by Autodesk in 2012. He enjoys cryptography (but not cryptocurrency).

Ari pioneered instant video messaging with Glide, a company he co-founded in 2012 that attracted millions of active users and 10s of millions of investment dollars from VCs. In 2015, Ari teamed up with an original member of the Apple Watch engineering team to pioneer the camera for Apple Watch.

Ari was included in MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35, and has persisted through many ups and downs in his entrepreneurial journey.

He is a dedicated family man passionate about helping others whenever he can.His new product is set to debut later this year.

Omar Tawakol is Chief Executive Officer of Voicea. Prior to Voicea, Omar Tawakol was the founder and CEO of BlueKai which built the world’s largest consumer data marketplace and DMP. Their technology powers EVA, an enterprise voice assistant that works with more than 5,000 companies and partners with tools like Slack, Salesforce and BlueJeans. Oracle acquired BlueKai in 2014 & Omar served as the SVP & GM of the Oracle Data Cloud.

Omar earned an MS in CS from Stanford (BS, MIT) where he researched and published work on AI agents.

Ravi Mulugu is a Partner with UL Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Underwriters Laboratories. He focuses on early stage venture investments related to Cybersecurity, Autonomous Systems and Digital Manufacturing. Before joining UL Ventures, Ravi was a Principal at Next47 (Siemens Venture Capital) where he invested in growth stage startups in Smart Grid, Industrial IoT and Analytics. Ravi received a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Arjun Arora is Partner at 500Startups the most active early stage venture firm in the world. Arjun is currently “In Residence” at Expa and advises funds, startups and Fortune 100 companies. He is also a Part-Time Partner with the House Fund (investing in UC Berkeley student and alum founded companies). Arjun was the Founder of ReTargeter which was acquired by Sellpoints (March 2015). Arjun was the founding CEO of ReTargeter and bootstrapped the company to be in the top 100 of Inc’s Fastest Growing Companies list in 2013. Arjun graduated from UC Berkeley with degrees in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Entrepreneurship & Technology.

Outside of Silicon Valley Sarah is most famous for her role in Randi Zuckerberg’s “Startups: Silicon Valley” on Bravo, a reality TV show following the lives of entrepreneurs in the Bay Area. Inside Silicon Valley Sarah is well known as a connector, and media personality. Early in her career she reported from the most exclusive events where her web show appeared on the front page of Forbes.com. She honed her expertise as advisor to the CMO for Intel, and offering marketing consulting for Ford, GM, HPE, and Microsoft. Following her television role Sarah learned natural language processing, and data science. Since, Sarah has shipped two personal virtual assistant products, a solution for evaluation of personality based on Jungian Psychology, and a suite of tools for marketing optimization. Today, Sarah is a fellow at the United Nations’ Humanitarian Innovation Forum. Sarah is a Johns Hopkins certified data scientist, and made the first ever Forbes 30 Under 30 List. She is also President and Chairwoman of CodingFTW, a non-profit with the goal of closing the divide in industries which lack employment diversity. Sarah is Founder of the venture-backed company Peak Energies. She helps blockchain based tech companies in marketing and public relations.

Jean Baptiste “JB” is a Principal Analyst and Futurist at Atherton Technology Research, a global technology consulting and intelligence firm, advising organizations with their growth strategies. Prior to joining Atherton Research, JB spent 20+ years as a journalist, both in Europe and the U.S., covering the business of technology at IDG, La Tribune, L’Expansion and more recently at FORBES.

Ethan is the co-founder and Head of Engineering of Musely, a marketplace of natural beauty and skincareproducts. Prior to Musely, Ethan was the co-founder and CEO of uni-U, a journaling app for your closefriends and families.

Pavel Cherkashin, Managing Partner at Mindrock Capital and GVA Capital, VC funds based out of San Francisco, CA with more than $200M under management and the portfolio of fast-growing tech startups including Diamond Foundry, Establishment Labs (NASDAQ:ESTA), Luminar Technologies, OmniScience, Opus12, People.ai, Telegram, Vipkid, and many others. Pavel moved to Silicon Valley in 2013 from Moscow, Russia, where he started and sold 3 successful companies (Actis/Wunderman, AdWatch/Aegis, Sputnik Labs/TechnoServ). He also served as corporate executive at Adobe and Microsoft.

Shyam Rao is CEO and Co-Founder of Punchh, the leading customer platform for restaurants and retailers, providing all-in-one CRM, loyalty, and analytics. Previously, he held positions of increasing seniority at Motorola in its CDMA and WiMAX divisions, co-founded LoCognition, served on the Principal Investments Team at Merrill Lynch, and served as a Vice President of Business Development at Prime Focus. Mr. Rao holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Nuno is Grishin Robotics’ Venture Partner. Grishin Robotics is a series A and B Sand Hill Rd firm focused on Smart Hardware with investments in companies such as Zume Pizza, Starship, Zipline, Spin, Yellow, Ring, eero and others. He is also the Managing Partner & Founder of Strive Capital, the San Francisco Bay area’s first quant micro-VC firm, now focused on “deep” AI and Blockchain, with investments in companies like AppAnnie, KeepSafe, Gusto and Rubrik. He has had a 22 year career in Tech as a Product Manager, Operator, Investor and Board member in the Bay area, Europe and Asia, and was previously a Senior Expert and member of the Asia-Pacific leadership team at McKinsey & Co, based in Beijing. 

Stacey has extensive experience building companies and fueling growth from stealth startup to brandname, global technology organizations, and is a passionate advocate for the advancement of women inthe workplace. Stacey Epstein is currently President of Zinc, an enterprise messaging platform recentlyacquired by ServiceMax. Prior to Zinc, Stacey was Chief Marketing Officer at ServiceMax. Prior to that,Stacey was head of global marketing at SuccessFactors, which was acquired by SAP for $3.4b in2012.Stacey holds a B.A. from Emory University where she was a four-time all conference soccerplayer. She is mother to two young daughters and is a prolific writer about her perspective concerningleadership, technology, and innovation.Her pieces have appeared in Inc., Fast Company, Entrepreneur,and Recode, among others.

Axel Tillmann is Managing Partner at Alpha-Consult, a going to market and business strategy consulting firm and is alsoCEO of Pitch Global Innovation Capital.Be it transitioning to a new market, brand, strategy, or partnership, Mr.TIllmannhelps clients design understandable plans, and innovate meaningful solutions. Mr. Tillmann brings close tothree decades of leadership experience to the table, having directed numerous startups to and through successfulexits, which also allowed him to gain a wealth of experience dealing with publicly held firms. Known as a serialentrepreneur, Mr. Tillmann is a well-known, well-connected expert involving start-ups, entrepreneurship andenterprise endorsement. In the last 5 years Mr. Tillmann consulted with 100s of firms from a wide range of technologyand industry sectors (Communication, Internet Security, IoT, Travel Industry, Life Sciences, Renewable Energy andGreen Technologies) Prior positions were with RVC-USA, $1B Fund of Funds, and a Going-To-Market strategy firmfor foreign companies that wanted to enter the US market, Alpha Consult (among many projects lead a team ofGerman Energy developers to work on the opportunity for 300 MW wind power in New Hampshire cooperatingwiththe then Governor of NH), Arcsight (acquired by HP), Azure Technologies (acquired by GN), ENIRA Technology(acquired by ArcSight) and GBS Laboratories. In 1998 he founded NOVILIT, Inc., a firm specializing in the design ofelectronic automation products and protocols. At NOVILIT, Mr. Tillmann oversaw and successfully ran the funding,market strategy all product development and R&D for the firm. An accomplished speaker and author well known forhis technical expertise, Mr. Tillmann advises numerous industry organizations and served as Chairman of the Boardof Alion Energy, Chairman of the Board of Appnow, Past Member of the BoD of SMI (before recent M&A), and is inthe BoA of more than 10 other companies. He holds degrees in Bachelor of Science in EE from the University ofWuppertal in Germany and a Bachelor of Science in BA from Luebeck.

Harper Cheng is an angel investor at Sand Hill Angels. She works as a senior hardware system integrator in Pixel engineering team at Google. She worked as a senior power system design engineer in Mac engineering team at Apple for over 5 years. Prior to Apple, she worked as a power management engineer at Renesas Electronics America and Marvell Semiconductor. She is looking into entrepreneurial opportunities. She is also involved in real estate investment and rental property management. She is very passionate in philanthropy supporting healthcare services and medical research.

I spend most of my daytime running MightySignal, a mobile software analytics company acquired in October 2018 by Xenon Ventures. They asked me to lead the company after the original employees left to join Instacart. 

Prior to that, I ran FindEmails and a few other small sales and marketing technology companies like eNPS, TrackJobChanges, and Voxloca. The passive income was enough to sustain and give me the freedom to write a book, The Parallel Entrepreneur, and spend a lot of time being a pretty awesome dad. In November 2018 I sold most of that income to Ramp Ventures and went full-time onto MightySignal. 

Besides work (and still being a pretty awesome dad and husband too, I think) I volunteer frequently in my community. I’m leading some initiatives for the Democratic Party of Contra Costa County, I’m on the Contra Costa County Sustainability Commission, and frequently speak about entrepreneurship at Diablo Valley College, where I’m also on the business program’s advisory board. 

I graduated from UC Berkeley in 2004 with a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Environmental Sciences. A few years later, I graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School with a Master’s in Public Policy and from the MIT Sloan School of Managementwith an MBA. 

Want to connect? Here’s who I’d love to hear from: 

• Thoughtful, energetic people who want to run for office in or around Contra Costa County and do something interesting in the vast middle ground between our two major parties. 
• Entrepreneurs who have found a balance between maximal earnings and maximal flexibility and family time. 
• People who have overcome some external obstacles and are focusing on health and happiness. 

Alexandre Lazarow is Director at Cathay Innovation, a global venture capital firm based in San Francisco. Cathay Innovation was founded around the conviction that empowering digital entrepreneurs with a global platform can help them accomplish their vision. Cathay Innovation is part of Cathay Private Equity, a global private equity firm with over $3 billion in assets under management, and a global footprint including San Francisco, New York, Paris, Munich, Tel Aviv, Beijing and Shanghai.  Previously, Alexandre was a Principal with Omidyar Network, focusing on fintech investments across US, Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. This includes investments in a number of innovative companies including GuiaBolso, Offgrid:Electric, Kin, Chime, Juntos, Cignifi, Entrepreneurial Finance Lab, Lenddo, MicroEnsure, Pagatech, RUMA, and Zoona.  Prior to joining Omidyar Network, Alexandre was a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Co.’s Brussels and Washington D.C. offices, where he served clients across Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and North America, across the private, public, and social sectors. Previously, Alexandre worked in financial regulation with the Bank of Canada’s Financial Stability Department, investing with Bridges Ventures and M&A investment banking with the Royal Bank of Canada. Alexandre is a Kauffman Fellow, earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholder. He has a bachelor of commerce in international business and finance from the University of Manitoba. He is a Term Member with the Council on Foreign Relations.

Helen MacKenzie is Managing Director at Avalon Net Worth, a boutique investment bank. She is also a Managing Director of Artemis Ventures, Co-Capital Partners and President of MacKenzie & Associates, Inc.  She was Managing Director of multi-billion dollar Softbank Technology Ventures. She has been advisor/partner to more than a dozen other venture and private equity funds, including early stage Peregrine Ventures. She is an advisor, board member or investor to dozens of digital media and enterprise software companies. Previously, she was a Bank of America Vice President alternating between the Bank’s Credit Committee and managing corporate lending group.

Dr. Cameron Gray is Investment Banker at MDB Capital since 2013, and sits on the Boards of Cue Biopharma and Provention Bio. Cameron has a Ph.D. in biophysics and a J.D. Dr. Gray was a hedge fund trader prior to returning to law school. Before joining MDB Capital in 2013, Dr. Gray held senior roles at a fintech company in the community banking sector. After receiving his J.D., Dr. Gray led the early development of IPXI, a financial exchange spun out of Ocean Tomo in Chicago. Dr. Gray also ran Asia Pacific for ICAP’s Patent Brokerage business.
Dr. Gray has lived in the Bay Area since 2010.

Anand is the Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Armorblox, the company that has built the world’s first natural language understanding (NLU) platform to secure enterprise communications. Prior to Armorblox, he led product marketing and product management at ThoughtSpot, a billion dollar Gartner magic quadrant leader in business intelligence. Anand was a founding team member and product manager at Blue Jeans Network, helping to grow it from two employees to 200+ employees and 2,000+ customers. Before that, he held several engineering roles, including six years at NVIDIA. Anand has a B.Tech in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, an M.S. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with honors and was named a Palmer Scholar.

Brian Mac Mahon, the founder of Expert DOJO, has consulted and coached in over 35 countries bringing a global perspective to starting and growing a small business. He has been teaching the power of connecting in a community and the process of turning a pay it forward mindset into a revenue generator for years. Brian combines this teaching with the experience of working with thousands of small business over the years.
Brian heads the Expert DOJO high-performance accelerator and has access to thousands of experts and mentors who will help any entrepreneur find what they need to pursue their small business dream. He has spoken all over the world about the most efficient ways to start, grow and expand any business. He is a vital partner for any small business team.
Brian and his team are the chosen coaching partner for many of the biggest entrepreneurship conferences in the United States including the Green Festival, Techweek, TechDay, Ideas Festival, Sustainatopia, Digital Hollywood, UPS Conference, Crypto Funding Summit, CryptoBloCon, Start Engine Summit, Crypto Invest Summit.

Bill Reichert is Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures, a leading seed-stage and early-stage venture capital fund, based in Silicon Valley. Garage makes seed investments in promising early stage technology companies and works intensively with them to help them to the next step. Some of Garage’s most successful startups include Pandora, Tripwire, LeftHand Networks, Coremetrics, Hoku Scientific, Kaboodle, WhiteHat Security and Simply Hired.

Bill has spent most of his career as an entrepreneur and operating executive. Prior to joining Garage in 1998, Bill was a co-founder and senior executive at several early-stage, venture-backed technology companies, including Trademark Software, The Learning Company, Infa Technologies, and Academic Systems. Earlier in his career, Bill worked at McKinsey & Co. in Los Angeles, the World Bank in Washington, DC, and Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. in New York. Bill earned his BA from Harvard University and his MBA from Stanford University.

Email: reichert@garage.com
Desk: 650.383.5659
Twitter: @billreichert

Website: http://www.garage.com

Michael Sidgmore is a Partner at Broadhaven Ventures, where he has led investments into Credijusto, ScaleFactor, Trizic, Nowports, Kovi, Beam Solutions, Liveoak Technologies, Starship HSA, and house of gigs. He has spent his career as a financial technology investor and entrepreneur focused on the financial infrastructure, wealth management, and specialty finance sectors. Prior to Broadhaven Ventures, he was a pre-product employee and SVP at iCapital Network, where he helped build the family office and RIA networks of the online investment platform that has over $40 billion in assets and has received over $50 million in funding from investors including BlackRock, Blackstone, and Carlyle. Prior to iCapital Network, Michael was the first sales hire and Director of Institutional Investments at Mosaic, a financing platform for solar loans that has originated over $1 billion and has received $295 million in funding from Warburg Pincus and other investors. He was formerly an investment professional with Goldman Sachs’ Principal Strategic Investments group in London, a direct investing team focused on market structure and financial technology. Michael is a Board Member of Liveoak Technologies and Starship HSA and a Board Observer and Advisor at Scalefactor, Trizic, and Credijusto. He is also the Founder and Managing Member of M4Fund and Sixth Man Capital. Michael holds a BSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics.

Steffen Bartschat is a member of Sand Hill Angels, one of the most active angel groups in the world. During his day job as CEO of Hill88, Steffen helps large corporates engage with the Silicon Valley ecosystem. He has held senior management positions ranging from early stage startups (Lumo BodyTech) to Fortune 50 corporations (IBM) in the consumer, automotive, and enterprise software sectors.

Steffen holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University and an M.S. in Business Management from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Harshitha directs investment research and helps shape the overall strategy of the firm. She’s particularly intrigued by the multidisciplinary nature of the blockchain space and enjoys exploring its intersection between economics, finance, and technological innovation.
Prior to Decipher, she did a stint as the CFO of an edtech startup and spent three years in the prestigious TAP program at Capital Group.
She holds a B.A. in Economics-Mathematics from Columbia University, which she completed in 3 years.

Prior to joining Greylock, Seth worked as a Product Manager at Facebook where he led initiatives for the Messenger Developer Platform. He oversaw the transition from Facebook to a standalone Messaging app, managed integrations with key partners, such as Uber, Lyft and KLM, and launched the open developer platform, with over 30,000 developers. In just two years, Messenger went from 200 million users to 1 billion users.

Before Facebook, Seth worked at Goldman Sachs in New York doing tech & media investment banking. At Goldman, Seth helped take companies public, including RetailMeNot and Intelsat, worked on financings for AT&T, and helped with the sale of Tekelec to Oracle. Seth received a Bachelor of Commerce with Honors from Queen’s University.

Seth is originally from Winnipeg, Canada and is a West Coast transplant.

Tadas Jucikas is a Founder and CEO of Genus AI, a next generation artificial intelligence platform rooted in neuroscience and behavioural psychology. Genus AI is an off-the-shelf Enterprise AI platform for deep customer understanding and next best action recommendation. Genus AI works with companies in financial services, insurance, fashion & luxury e-commerce and entertainment space. Tadas completed his PhD in Computational Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. Since then he has built and managed data science teams and pioneered applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms for both the private and public sector.

Ken Elefant is Managing Director at Sorenson Capital. Ken joined Sorenson Capital in 2017 and leads the firm’s early-stage technology practice. Prior to Sorenson Capital, Ken spent more than 20 years in Silicon Valley at leading venture capital firms including Battery Ventures, Lightspeed and Intel Capital.  Ken enjoys working closely with entrepreneurs to help them attack new market opportunities and gain access to key initial customers and partners. His efforts have led to recognition as one of the most connected names in tech.  Before joining Sorenson, Ken was Managing Director at Intel Capital and VP at Intel Corporation. Leading the software and security groups at Intel Capital, Ken invested in several market-leading companies including AtHoc (Blackberry), Prolexic (Akamai), DocuSign, Forescout, AlienVault (AT&T), Venafi, Vectra Networks, Gigya (SAP), BrightEdge, among many others. Prior to Intel Capital, Ken was a founding general partner at Opus Capital. While at Opus, he served on the boards of Spock Networks (Intelius), Transpond (Webtrends), Supersecret (Knowledge Adventure), Alert Enterprise, Jivox, and TrustedID (Equifax). Previously, Ken was a Senior Associate at both Lightspeed Venture Partners and Battery Ventures. Before business school, Ken worked at Radius, Claris Corporation (the software subsidiary of Apple), and RealNetworks, where he held various sales, marketing, finance, and business development positions. Ken received an MBA from Harvard Business School and holds a Bachelor of Science in economics from the Wharton School of Business. He is a Kauffman Fellow. 

Thejo Kote is the founder and CEO of Airbase, the first all-in-one spend management platform for growing businesses. Before Airbase, Thejo was co-founder and CEO of Automatic, a connected car platform that was acquired by SiriusXM in 2017. He holds a Master’s degree from the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University, India.

Mark Albertson is an experienced Silicon Valley journalist. He is currently Senior Writer for SiliconANGLE Media and his stories have been previously published for the San Francisco Examiner, Blasting News, and CBS-Bay Area. He is also an experienced video and TV producer, having created Tech Closeup, a nationally syndicated program on technology that aired on ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX affiliate stations over the course of four years.

As iCEO, co-founder and member of the board of directors for Ripcord, Alex Fielding is responsible for the leadership, vision and execution of the company. Fielding started his career as an engineer at Cisco Systems and Apple, where he worked on multiple generations of MacOS, PowerBook, Network Server and was part of the first iMac team. Shortly after departing Apple, he worked at Exodus Communications with Ellen Hancock, Exodus’ CEO who was Apple’s former CTO. He co-founded Wheels of Zeus with Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak in 2001, which was sold to Zontrak in 2006. Alex was Chief Technology Officer, Federal Government at Power Assure and then Vice President at Vigilent before starting Ripcord. Alex sits on the Board of Directors of The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), is a Board Member of the Code Warrior Foundation and is a founding member of Singularity University. He is an Orange Telecom mentor in their Mentor Fab startup accelerator and an Advisor to Astra Space.

Armando Biondi is co-founder & COO of AdEspresso, acquired by Hootsuite in Feb 2017. Investor in 75 startups and AngelList Lead. Guest Contributor for Entrepreneur, FastCompany, BusinessInsider, VentureBeat. Also: 500Startups Mentor, Independent Board Member, former Radio Speaker.  

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.

With a Ph.D. from Stanford and a Master’s from UC Berkeley (plus the Executive Program at Singularity U), Angelika gives workshops on the investor pitch and SV communications in 5 languages in Silicon Valley.

She is a Venture Partner of SV Latam Fund where she scouts out promising startups in the areas of AI, robotics, biotechnology, food tech, diagnostic and health services all related to or taking place in Latin America.

She mentors at 500 Startups, Brazil Innovator, SiliconHouse, and at Singularity University Labs.

George A. Willman is a partner at the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, in Palo Alto, California, where he practices in the areas of technology transactions, intellectual property, financings, mergers and acquisitions.  George is a founder and Co-President of the Berkeley Angel Network and member of Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs. He is a frequent speaker on technology law as well as early stage (including angel investor) financings.

George holds a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, a B.S., Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford University, and an M.B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.  He is a recipient of the Raymond E. Miles Alumni Service Award and Richard H. Holton Teaching Fellow Award, from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

Amy Gross is the Founder and CEO of VineSleuth, a US-based startup that uses sensory science, rock-solid data and Artificial Intelligence to build personalization platforms for the food and beverage industry.

VineSleuth was one of the original IBM Watson Ecosystem partners, but built its solution on proprietary AI. The business has released several mobile applications assisting with wine selection and is releasing its first beer assistant in June 2019.

Amy’s work with VineSleuth has been noted in the New York Times, Fortune, CNN, Meininger’s Wine Business International, Xconomy and Better Homes and Gardens, among others. She has presented on AI, data integrity and wine at trade conferences for IBM on several occasions, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, at Wine2Wine in Verona, the National Retail Federation’s Big Show in New York, the Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle and more.

Amy has served as a wine judge since 2012, an active blogger since 2008, and a mom since 2001.