Speakers

Rikki Singh is VP of Product & Engineering for Emerging Technology & Innovation at Twilio. In this role she leads Twilio's Horizon-3 initiatives focused on driving step-change innovation that empowers builders and unlocks Twilio’s next era of growth. These innovations span AI-powered customer engagement, LEOS communication, privacy-first data services, and the next-generation developer experience.

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Adrian Rosenkranz is Chief Revenue Officer at Webflow. He leads global Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Partnerships, and Revenue Operations. He is helping grow Webflow into the leading AI-powered website experience platform for ambitious brands. Prior to Webflow, Adrian was Chief Operating Officer of Tableau Americas at Salesforce, where he scaled a multi-billion dollar business and led go-to-market strategy across the enterprise segment. Adrian speaks on the future of go-to-market leadership, AI-powered growth, and building resilient, high-performing teams. He’s an alum of Stanford and serves on the board of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.

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Sandesh Patnam is the Managing Partner at Premji Invest, running both the private and listed equities investing practice in the US and tech investing globally. He joined PI to establish their US presence and drive their investment strategies in the US. At PI, he has led investments in Anaplan (SaaS Planning Solution, IPO, Ticker: PLAN), Zuora (SaaS Subscription Billing, IPO, Ticker: ZUO), Coupa(SaaS eProcurement, IPO, Ticker: COUP), Looker (BI Analytics, Acq. by GOOGL for$2.85B), Apttus (SaaS CPQ and CLM, Acq. by Thoma Bravo for $1.85B), ServiceMax(SaaS Field Service Automation, Acq. by GE for $1.0B), Navan (AI enabled travel platform), Outreach (SaaS Sales Enablement), Icertis (SaaS Contract Management), Heyday (E-commerce enablement), Signifyd (E-commerce Fraud), Sysdig (Container Security), DataStax (NoSQL database), Cohesity (Enterprise Data Management), Innovium (Switch Fabric Silicon, Acq by MRVL for $1.2B), and Ikigai (Enterprise AI). ‍Prior, Sandesh was a Senior Equity Analyst and Investment Officer at the Seligman Technology Group at Ameriprise, where he helped manage more than $15B in both long only and long/short investment vehicles while leading their software and IT infrastructure equity portfolios. Prior to Seligman, Sandesh was a General Partner at Bay Partners and led the IT Infrastructure and SaaS practices. ‍Prior to Bay Partners, he was with TeleSoft Partners where led the systems and components investment practices. Before joining TeleSoft, he held both business and technical roles at Malleable Technologies, Silicon Graphics, Integrated Device Technologies, and Cirrus Logic.

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Emily Bennett is an Investment Partner at a16z, where she focuses on pre-seed investment out of a16z Speedrun. Prior to a16z, Emily was a Partner at Owl Ventures, where she drove early-stage investments across EdTech and future of work. Previously, she served as PMM for news integrity at Meta, was PM of Video at the New York Times, and worked on creator product strategy at Spotify.

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Anders has been investing since 2012 in more than two dozen companies. He seeks to partner with exceptional founders building category-defining B2B software companies in AI and data & analytics, cybersecurity, and software infrastructure, as well as leading supply chain and manufacturing companies. Anders investments include companies such as Auth0, JFrog, Alation, Exabeam, JupiterOne, InfluxData, PortWorx, and Dremio. Prior to Sapphire Ventures, Anders was a product management and strategy executive at SAP for 12 years.

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Kanu is a Partner at Khosla Ventures where she invests in enterprise applications and infrastructure that leverage advances in AI, as well as robotics and autonomous systems. She has led, and helps manage investments in companies including PolyAI, FieldAI, Aleph, Point One Navigation, Windborne, Kognitos, Zendar, Nomagic, Waabi and Genesis AI among others. Kanu has more than 10 years of operating experience as a research scientist at Intel and Cadence, and founding / early engineer Heavy.ai (hardware-accelerated analytics solution), Spyglass (predictive analytics for design, acquired by Synposys) and Nascentric (fast-circuit simulation tool, acquired by Cadence). She was awarded the Nvidia Graduate Fellowship for her work in hardware acceleration. Kanu has co-authored three books; authored 35+ peer-reviewed publications; and holds a US patent. She obtained a Ph.D. and master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Texas A&M University and a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from the University of Delhi. Kanu also earned her MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was co-president of the annual Venture Capital and Private Equity Conference.

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Cheryl is a Managing Partner at M12. Cheryl has spent the last 16 years investing in early to growth stage software companies ranging from healthcare and enterprise applications to developer tools. Prior to M12, she founded and ran Vive Collective, a healthcare investment platform and before that she was a General Partner at BlueRun Ventures. Earlier in her career, Cheryl worked in brand management and marketing at The Clorox Company and The Sharper Image. She has also worked in technology mergers and acquisition at Broadview International where she covered enterprise software and semiconductors. Cheryl holds a B.A. in Public Policy from Stanford University and a M.B.A from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University where she was a Forte Foundation scholar. She advises Stanford’s Biodesign program and works closely with the Stanford d.school.

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Amit Chaturvedy is the Global Head & Managing Partner of SE Ventures, the specialist venture fund backed by Schneider Electric, where he oversees the €1B global venture investments platform. Amit drives the overall fund strategy and brings nearly 20 years of professional experience in venture capital, private equity, and corporate development. Previously, Amit was at Cisco Systems, where he was the Global Head of venture investing and corporate development for Cloud Computing, IoT, Data Center & Enterprise Networking. Before Cisco Systems, Amit was a Director at Summit Partners, where he led investments in US and Asia with a focus on industrial sectors. Amit started his career as an R&D Engineer at Cummins Engines, supporting connected vehicles and EV programs. Amit has an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MSME from Purdue University, and his BTech in ME from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

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Alysaa Co is a partner at Bain Capital Ventures, where she invests in early-stage AI application and healthcare companies. Prior to BCV, she was an investor at Inovia Capital and founder of FoodFund, an imperfect produce delivery platform that grew to thousands of subscribers and rescued over 3 million pounds of food. Alysaa is originally from Canada and is based in San Francisco.

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Bilal Zuberi is the Founder and Managing Partner of Red Glass Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm investing in AI and the physical world. Red Glass backs bold technical founders building high-impact, high-growth companies transforming massive industries and economies. We lead or co-lead investments from incubation stage through Pre-seed, Seed, and Series A. Bilal brings over 18 years of venture experience, including 12 years as a General Partner at Lux Capital, where he led more than 65 investments, served on over 35 boards, and helped scale the firm to $5B+ AUM. His portfolio led to multiple IPOs, decacorn and many unicorns, e.g. Applied Intuition, Nominal, Nozomi Networks, Cloaked, Zededa, OpenSpace, Commure, Evolv, Ironclad, Frontera, Saildrone, and many others. Earlier, he spent five years at General Catalyst building its deep tech practice, and prior to that, was co-founder of a startup in the advanced materials space. He holds a PhD from MIT, under the guidance of Nobel Laureate Mario Molina, and serves on the advisory board of The Lemelson Foundation. He is a U.S. citizen and lives in Menlo Park with his wife and two children.

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Jeremy is a Partner at Scale. His investments sit at the application layer of AI across a variety of vertical and functional markets. One of the most interesting trends in the AI era has been that many of the most explosive vertical AI companies (legal, healthcare, trucking) have come out of markets where traditional software adoption lagged and where core systems of record were weak, making these markets particularly attractive in the AI era. Recent investments include GC AI (legal AI), Freed (medical scribing), HelloPatient (voice AI), and AI investments focused on the physical world including Motive (trucking), Spot AI (video AI) and Inspiren (sensors in senior care).

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Lu Zhang, Founder and Managing Partner of Fusion Fund, is a renowned Silicon Valley-based investor, a serial entrepreneur, and a Stanford Engineering alumna. Lu has deep domain expertise in AI in healthcare, Enterprise AI/Networks, Edge Computing, and Data Privacy. Lu started Fusion Fund in 2015. Since then, Lu has built a distinguished eco system and established her reputation in the VC industry. Lu frequently speaks at conferences such as World Economic Forum(Davos), Future Investment Initiative (FII), Web Summit, SuperReturn, etc. and she is also an instructor at Stanford University. Lu serves as a board member of many portfolio companies, the board director of CommonSpirit Health Foundation, the Board of the Youth Council of Future Science Award, and Jury Board of the Cartier Women Initiative. She holds an M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University.

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Julien is the Senior Partner at Oraseya Capital, the Venture Capital arm of Dubai Integrated Economic Zones Authority (DIEZ – Dubai Government), where he leads the firm’s investment strategy, oversees deal sourcing and execution, and actively manages a diverse portfolio of early-stage startups. Oraseya Capital invests from pre-Seed to Series B stages, fostering innovation and scaling transformative businesses across key sectors. Julien is also a member of the investment committee. He began his career as an Investment Banker with Société Générale CIB in Italy. After moving to Dubai in 2012, he launched his first startup (the first online artist agency in the GCC) which he successfully exited. He subsequently contributed to several ventures as a co-founder, advisor, and product director before joining DIEZ’s VC arm 7 years ago.

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Jeremiah is well-recognized by both the tech industry and the media for his grounded approach to deriving insights through research. He identifies trends and advises major companies to adapt their business models to better connect with customers. His clients include Adobe, Cisco, Wells Fargo, Nestlé, Esurance, Johnson & Johnson, Visa, and Colgate, among others. An acknowledged thought leader and widely read publisher, Jeremiah has appeared in prominent publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and Fast Company. He also publishes numerous research reports, playbooks, and frameworks to help businesses navigate change, improve customer experiences, and identify trends before they happen. Jeremiah's expertise extends beyond analysis and consulting-he has served on the board of directors of multiple tech startups, including Ustream, which sold to IBM for $130M.

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Jeff is a founding partner of Blitzscaling Ventures, the founder of the AI Salon Global Community, and the co-author of “AI and the Art of Being Human.”

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Adeo Ressi is an American entrepreneur, investor, and visionary who has played a pivotal role in reshaping the landscape of venture capital, startup acceleration, and ethical investment. Known for his bold approach to societal engineering and his commitment to empowering entrepreneurs worldwide, Ressi has founded numerous organizations that contribute to both technological progress and social good. He is the co-founder and Chairman of the Founder Institute and CEO of Decile Group, and he has a deep passion for mentorship, sustainability, and global innovation.

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Illia Polosukhin is the Co-Founder of NEAR, on the mission to build User-Owned AI. He is best known as a co-author of "Attention Is All You Need," the 2017 paper that introduced the Transformer architecture. Before founding NEAR Protocol in 2018, Illia was an AI researcher and contributor to TensorFlow at Google, where he worked on deep learning, natural language understanding, and large-scale ML infrastructure. His work has spanned from foundational research to building real-world systems. A pioneer at the intersection of blockchain and artificial intelligence, Illia is working to make AI open source, decentralized, privacy-preserving, and aligned to users.

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Ray Dargham is the Co-Founder and CEO of Step, the company behind Step SF and Step Conference — one of the largest tech and startup festivals in the world, running since 2012. He started Step to build what didn't exist where he was: a place where founders, investors, and operators could actually find each other. Fourteen years and hundreds of companies later, Step has become the room where a lot of people got their first investor meeting, first customer, or first stage. Ray is now based in Austin and focused on scaling Step SF, the company's San Francisco edition, into a defining event for the AI builder economy. He is also an active angel investor in early-stage AI startups. He was named to Forbes' Arab 30 Under 30.

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Mohamed Afifi is a Seasoned Sales leader with Experience in Customer Experience, Cloud and SaaS software. His experience involves sales management, channel management, business development, consultation. A Cloud Copilot and CX evangelist. Mr.Afifi has been involved with leading organizations to establish new markets in emerging markets Globally. involved in recruiting right channels , acquiring strategic customers and define a go to market strategies, building a leading team and customers obsessed. Mohamed Afifi has Joined Amazon Web Services in Sept 2021, serving GCC and Levant Public Sector market helping Government, Education and Healthcare providers in building better societies for all, that are healthy, happy, safe and successful. Prior to AWS Mr.Afifi has been working for Genesys since April 2008, under capacity of Managing Director for MENA region, In his role, Mr. Afifi was responsible for overseeing Genesys’s operations in the region and managing a talented team that focus on marketing, sales and operational activities for the company in the Middle East and North Africa. Prior to joining Genesys, Mr. Afifi served in different management roles serving South Europe, Africa, Middle East and India at the Enterprise Business group in Alcatel-Lucent. Prior to that, Mr. Afifi held several positions with leading multinational companies in the domain of Unified Communication domain including Vodafone Egypt, where he had held several roles in IT. Mr. Afifi holds a Bachelor of Science in Communication & Electronics Engineering from the University of Alexandria and a Diploma in Computer Networking from Nottingham University. He has also completed several post-graduate programs at various international institutions including Stanford and Cambridge University.

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Guy Marion, Chief Marketing Officer at Chargebee, leverages over 15 years of strategic marketing and leadership in driving SaaS growth. Before joining Chargebee, he was CEO and Founder of Brightback, now Chargebee Retention. At Chargebee, he spearheads the go-to-market strategy, enhancing brand awareness, and driving customer acquisition. In his free time, he enjoys spending time with his family, boating on the SF Bay, and contributing to the startup ecosystem.

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Chiraag Devani joined Lyft in 2019 and currently serves as Director of Autonomous Vehicle Partnerships and Emerging Businesses, responsible for developing the company's partner ecosystem, commercial strategy, advancing new modes of transportation, and supporting international expansion efforts. Chiraag holds a Master of Engineering from Duke University, and outside of work, he enjoys cooking, traveling, playing tennis, and is an avid car enthusiast.

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Tim Davis is co-founder and President of Modular, the company building AI's unified compute layer. Previously, he was a product leader at Google, helping create and scale AI systems inside Google Brain — including TensorFlow, on-device ML reaching billions of devices, large model infrastructure, and open-source compiler projects like MLIR and XLA.

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Edward Mehr is a robotics engineer and visionary founder, reshaping how the world builds. As CEO of Machina, he’s leading the charge to modernize manufacturing with intelligent, software-defined factories that form metal on demand. His background spans leadership roles at Relativity Space, SpaceX, Google, and Microsoft.

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Cassie Campbell is a startup product executive, advisor, and coach. After years leading product in the Los Angeles startup scene, she founded Cassie Camp, advising founders, CTOs, and product leaders on product strategy. In 2025 she mentored AI development bootcamps with Ember.new, helping product and business leaders build full-stack applications with AI. This year she returned to the startup world as SVP of Product and Technology at Plug, a Lightspeed-backed automotive fintech — excited to be hands-on in this new era of AI superpowers, blurred lines, and speed. Cassie also produced Product Rising, a podcast series for Women in Product, and writes on building in the AI era at her Substack, Athena & Jazz.

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Sachin Kale is a seasoned Senior Engineering Manager and Architect with deep expertise in distributed systems, scalable microservices, and enterprise infrastructure. Currently leading engineering initiatives focused on scalable platforms and mission-critical architectures, he has a proven track record of architecting high-throughput, mission-critical systems for global technology providers. He holds a B.E. in Electrical Engineering and frequently shares practical insights on scaling high-performance engineering systems within complex corporate environments.

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Charles Hudson is the Founder and Managing Partner of Precursor Ventures. Under his leadership, Precursor has raised five funds, invested in 450+ companies, and supported 1,000+ founders. Prior to founding Precursor, Charles was Partner at Uncork Capital and Co­-founder/CEO of Bionic Panda Games. He holds an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and a B.A. in Economics and Spanish from Stanford University. Charles stays connected with Stanford through volunteering and teaching. He is an active member of the VC community, serving on advisory boards and as a mentor to emerging managers. Charles was the 2023-2024 Chair of the NVCA Board of Directors and also serves on the San Francisco Opera Advisory Board.

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Lisa Yu is a Venture Capitalist and Speaker. She is a General Partner of 99VC, a Physical AI fund based in San Francisco. She is a GTM expert with 15+ years of experience launching hardware, software, enterprise SaaS, and data products to over 50 countries. Her ability to translate technical speak into marketing language and strategy has positioned products for successful launches on a global scale. Lisa is also a community builder and super connector in the startup ecosystem and hosts some of the most attended networking events, pitch competitions, thought leadership panels, TechWeek events, and curated events for top founders and investors. She has been featured on Forbes, Yahoo! Finance, LAWeekly, and launched award-winning consumer electronics featured on Wall Street Journal, CNN, Wired, CNET, Mashable, Fast Company, The Verge, and other press outlets. She has spoken at Web Summit, Tech Capital, VentureBeat, SuperReturn, AI Infra Summit, Draper University, StepSF, and many more.

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Nuno Goncalves Pedro is the founder and managing partner of Chamaeleon, a unique VC firm with a disruptive operating model and AI, quantitative & technology platform - Mantis - developed and maintained fully in-house to augment its deal sourcing, due diligence, risk, portfolio management and liquidation activities. While based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Firm also has offices in Europe and it focuses on series Seed and Series A investing. Nuno is particularly focused on consumer and consumer-like start-ups, e.g. gaming and social, as well as horizontal SaaS, e.g. consumerized Enterprise and bottom-up SaaS.  Before this, Nuno founded and was the managing partner of Strive Capital, the first quant early-stage VC firm in the US and in the San Francisco Bay area. The firm focused on consumer and enterprise software, with investments in DraftKings (IPO), Robinhood (IPO), Ohmconnect (Merger Google), Rubrik (IPO), Gusto, App Annie (Sold), Enish (IPO), Virta Health, among others.  He is the co-founder and co-host of decipheredshow.com, a top 2.5% podcast, globally, across all topics, and the creator of the “Rejection & Adversity as a path to Growth” methodology (bit.ly/3badkvb). Nuno has served and continues to serve as a board member, advisor and coach to various start-ups, corporations and nonprofits in the US, Europe and Asia. Nuno was a Senior Expert and member of the Asia-Pacific Technology, Media & Telecom leadership team at McKinsey, where he created impact for Fortune 500 clients, including consumer electronics, network equipment, carriers/operators, Internet players, sovereign wealth funds and private equity funds. Nuno was previously the Head of Strategy, Product, Corporate & Business Development for the GSM Association, where he created and executed, at its inception, the blueprint that led to the GSM Association becoming the leading non-profit for Mobile globally.  Nuno is a guest lecturer on product management and growth at Stanford GSB and Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley. He is also a guest lecturer on Venture Capital and innovation topics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the College of Engineering of the University of California Berkeley. Nuno is an alumnus of Stanford, London Business School, and other world-renowned organizations.

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Mariane Bekker is the founder of Founders Bay, a community of 150,000 founders, executives, and investors built to bring more diversity into tech. She believes great ideas can come from anyone, and has created one of the most inclusive networks in the startup world. Mariane also leads Developer Relations and Engineering at You.com, an AI-powered search platform, where she helps builders and developers get the most out of the product.

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Nyah Macklin is a seasoned researcher and speaker on topics around AI, ML, Ethics, Governance, and Responsibility. They specialize in context engineering, knowledge graphs, and AI-driven developer tooling where they built high-impact technical communities and led initiatives that advance a critical understanding of AI and its use cases. They are also the Founder & CTO of Afros in AI, a technical community dedicated to showcasing the multifaceted nature of AI. Beyond Nyah's technical expertise, Nyah has a background in technology policy, having served as Chief of Staff in U.S. state government, where they helped shape tech-driven legislative initiatives and equity-driven legislation. When not immersed in their work, Nyah cares about empowering, teaching, and tutoring engineers, live-streaming technical deep dives, and building open-source tools that make software more accessible, explainable, and community-driven.

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Kayvan is the Founder of SignalRank, an AI driven global venture capital fund, that scores every single round of investment at every stage of investment and every sector, globally. SignalRank invest at series be in the top 95% of B rounds. SignalRank is in the process of listing its fund on the NYSE which means it will provide liquidity to it its investors and allow anyone around the world to invest in the best venture capital deals globally.

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Grace Gong is the founder of Smart Venture Media and the host of two well-known VC podcasts: Smart Venture Podcast (SVPpro.com) and Venture with Grace, a daily show. She is an angel investor in the AI sector, a super angel & venture scout for Alumni Ventures, Advisor at Berkeley SkyDeck. Her podcasts have featured high-profile guests such as C-level executives and VPs from companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Sephora, Dunkin' Donuts, Chipotle, Adidas, Pepsi, Instagram, Deloitte, Reddit, DoorDash, Pinterest, Cisco, Salesforce, NVIDIA, Snowflake and more. Additionally, she has interviewed Managing Partners from top funds, many of whom have appeared on the Forbes Midas List, as well as unicorn founders from companies like Craigslist, Square, Loom, and Glean. Grace regularly posts about technology, venture capital, and entrepreneurship and has been recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice in Finance. She is also a #1 Bestselling author in the VC category on Amazon New Release. Before founding Smart Venture Media, she worked in venture capital and private equity. If you share her interests, feel free to connect with her on LinkedIn @GraceGong.

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Drew Dennison has a diverse work experience that spans over a decade. Drew is currently the Co-Founder and CTO of Semgrep since May 2017. Prior to that, they worked as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Redpoint Ventures starting in September 2016. Before that, they worked at Palantir Technologies, where they held various positions including Lead Software Engineer from October 2015 to September 2016, Software Engineer from August 2012 to October 2015, and Software Engineer Intern from May 2012 to August 2012. Drew also founded Silhouette Technologies in 2012 and worked there as a Founder until January 2013. In addition, they served as the Tech Chair for the Simmons Hall Tech Committee at MIT from November 2009 to June 2012. Drew also gained valuable experience as a Software Engineer Intern at OnStar from May 2011 to August 2011, where they developed a packaging utility in Java. Moreover, they worked as an Undergraduate Researcher at MIT in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering from September 2009 to September 2010. Lastly, they participated in the MIT Autonomous Robotics Competition in January 2010, where they contributed as a student and gained skills in team collaboration, problem-solving, soldering, programming, and control theory. Drew Dennison attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2009 to 2013, where they obtained a Bachelor of Science (S.B.) degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

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Anurag Goel is the founder and CEO of Render, the modern cloud platform helping millions of application developers and teams innovate and scale faster. The company has raised over $250M from top investors and was recently valued at $1.5B. He previously founded and exited Crestle, a GPU-powered notebook platform for data scientists. Earlier, he was the eighth employee at Stripe, where he led the Risk organization and played a key role in scaling the company through its hypergrowth phase. Anurag holds a B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Delhi.

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Soham Ganatra is the Co-founder and CEO of Composio, a Series A SF-based startup building infrastructure for AI agents to connect to apps and do real work. Composio enables agents to seamlessly integrate with over 1,000 apps, handling authentication and actions so developers can ship faster. Previously, he co-founded Cogno AI and was a Founding Engineer at Bureau. He holds a B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Bombay.

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Dan Klein is a serial entrepreneur and professor of AI at UC Berkeley, where he has spent decades advancing the state of the art in natural language processing and intelligent systems. Many of his former students now lead AI teams at Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and other major research labs. Beyond academia, Dan has founded and scaled multiple successful startups. He co-founded adap.tv, an early pioneer in applying machine learning to advertising, which was acquired by AOL. He later co-founded Semantic Machines, where he led groundbreaking work in action-taking neural models and program synthesis before the company was acquired by Microsoft. Following the acquisition, Dan served as a Technical Fellow for AI at Microsoft, contributing to the company’s work on language interfaces and applied AI systems.

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Dr. Pavel Vinitsky is a serial founder and AI operator with a PhD in Quantum Physics and 26 years of building products, companies, and ecosystems from zero. He is Founder and CEO of Synexis, an AI-native decision infrastructure platform for private markets, where he built agentic AI workflows for enterprise diligence and raised $1M from strategic investors. In under two years he built an audience of 25,000+ investors and founders and hosted 40+ events across Silicon Valley, including the Frontier Tech Forum with 60 speakers and 450 attendees. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, he runs the Synexis Premium founder-investor program, serves as a Venture Advisor at KFC Ventures, a $1.8B corporate VC, and is a Draper Hero Program alum.

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Jeni is focused on weaving human behavior & the physical into the DNA of AI. Our relationship to it is changing. As AI and agents shift from tools we use to things we interact with, technology alone is not enough. The untapped potential is not in understanding human drivers. It's in applying that understanding to how AI shapes our world and business. 🔹Jeni’s journey has been unconventional. She’s a geneticist by education with behavioral psych in tow. Mgmt consultant for Fortune 100 companies (Citi, United, Google). Swapped out professional button downs for founder tees & started a startup. Now Mg Dir. for a global accelerator (Founder Institute) & GP (New Energy Financial Grp).

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Building humanoids 🤖 in SF | Prev @ top AI labs | Washington DC | 2x exits | EECS + MBA | Physics @ Cambridge

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Brian Sparkes is CEO of Silicon Valley Venture Corp., a global venture platform supporting investors, founders, and ecosystem leaders. A third-generation Silicon Valley entrepreneur, he is known as a “super connector,” facilitating high-value relationships across the startup ecosystem. As Head of Strategic Ventures & Activation with STAK Ventures, he builds venture ecosystems that turn community into deal flow, market access, and growth. A Community-First operator and Strategic GTM Communication advisor, Brian works with over 1,400 startups and executives annually to refine positioning, fundraising, and market strategy. He collaborates with leading organizations to accelerate traction and leadership development. Brian also hosts the Silicon Valley Impact podcast and has lectured at Stanford Law School on communication and entrepreneurship.

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Captain Hoff (Steve Hoffman) is a well-known angel investor, AI expert, and the author of three award-winning books: Make Elephants Fly (Hachette), Surviving a Startup (HarperCollins), and The Five Forces (BenBella). He’s also the founder of the Captain’s Future Foundation, a non-profit organization that helps young people become future leaders in the era of AI. As the Chairman & CEO of Founders Space, a global venture builder with over 50 strategic partners in 22 countries, Hoffman has mentored and incubated hundreds of startups. Hoffman also advises global corporations on innovation, leadership, and AI strategy. These include Qualcomm, Adobe, Alibaba, Bosch, Intel, Disney, Warner Brothers, Volkswagen, PwC, Ad Age, MetLife, Infosys, NBC, A&E, Siemens, Huawei, Viacom, Turner, Cemex, Gulf Oil, Ford, EXL, Cognizant, and Ralph Lauren. Hoffman served on the Board of Governors of the Producers Guild’s New Media Council, was the founder and Chairman of the Producers Guild Silicon Valley Chapter, and was a founding member of the Academy of Television’s Interactive Media Group.

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Ben Bergman is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, where he investigates the tech industry with a focus on venture capital and startups. He can frequently be seen on CNN, NBC News, CBS News, and other channels, providing analysis on a range of business and economic topics.

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Kate started her career building a fashion brand from scratch, then led innovation at Cisco and BCG Digital Ventures, launching dozens of new ventures for some of the world’s biggest brands. She’s now Co-Founder and CEO of Heatseeker, where she helps marketing teams move faster, test bolder, and make smarter go-to-market decisions with live and synthetic market experiments.

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Nima is the Co-Founder and CEO of Assemble Labs, building AssembleAI: an AI test platform for embedded systems. It autonomously tests, debugs, and verifies firmware by controlling lab instruments in a closed loop on physical hardware. Assemble Labs is backed by Menlo Ventures and based in Menlo Park, California. Before Assemble Labs, Nima worked in systems engineering at Google's Pixel division, Meta's Reality Labs, and Amazon's Lab126, spanning the engineering, integration, and manufacturing of hardware devices. He spent his early career in startups as a founding member of Orro Home and an early employee at Misfit Wearables. His background is in mechanical and aerospace engineering, with graduate degrees from Stanford and USC and an undergraduate degree from UC San Diego.

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Steven is an entrepreneur and startup strategist focused on AI-enabled businesses. He is considered a “producer” across several areas, including startups, tech conferences and summits, hackathons, accelerators, media, and marketing.

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Ash Kumra is an AI ecosystem builder. He writes a column on AI and leadership for Inc.com, serves as SF Chapter Lead of The AI Collective, the world's largest AI community with 150,000 plus members across 175 plus global chapters, and produces AI programming for Step Conference, a global tech and entrepreneurship festival. A former business radio host, Ash has interviewed 500 plus founders and technology executives, and his LinkedIn Learning course has reached 25,000 plus professionals. He cocreated AI for Leaders with MIT Sloan Management and received the White House EMPACT 100 Award for Entrepreneurship Excellence. A two time TEDx speaker, Ash has moderated dozens of live events and panels and won the 2024 Toastmasters District Evaluation Contest. His work has been featured by Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, and Sony. He has completed advanced coursework in AI and technology leadership at UC Berkeley Haas, MIT Professional Education, and Microsoft.

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Anand Vallamsetla is an Applied AI engineering leader and the founder of Exponential OS. He was most recently Engineer in Residence at AI Fund, Andrew Ng's venture studio, building AI products 0 to 1, and before that spent six years as a Senior Software Engineering Manager at Google. Across 20+ years -- at Google, on enterprise platforms, and as a startup founder -- he has lived the pre-PMF grind firsthand: running sharp experiments, doing the unscalable things, and surviving multiple pivots through the "messy middle." He also got his own ICP wrong. He had one written down before he had customers, confident and specific and mid-market, then shipped a public beta page with no paid spend and read the company-size field on every real signup that came through it. The signal pointed at solo operators and teams under ten instead, so he rewrote the positioning to match the data rather than the document. Known as "The Why Man" for a first-principles lens on responsible AI, he also teaches 1,500+ Fortune 500 executives at UC Berkeley on AI system design. He brings an operator's scars and a builder's bias toward shipping over theorising. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7495135955742294016/

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Maker and Venture Capitalist, focused on deep tech. Berkeley Physics, Stanford Management Science

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