John Collison

John Collison is the President and Co-founder of Stripe, the software company that is expanding internet commerce by making it easy to process transactions from anywhere. John and his brother Patrick Collison started Stripe in 2010 while John was studying physics at Harvard. Their goal was to make accepting payments online simpler and more inclusive, after learning firsthand how difficult it was. Today, the 1500-person (and growing) Stripe team powers online businesses around the world.

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Michele Romanow

Michele Romanow is the Co-founder and President of Clearbanc: the fastest, most affordable way for founders to fund their business. Recently named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, Michele is a prolific investor who plans to invest $1 billion into 2,000 businesses this year and will continue to fund 8X more female-founded companies than traditional VC firms. As a “Dragon” on CBC’s hit show Dragons’ Den (Canada’s Shark Tank), Michele started five companies before her 33rd birthday and exited two before her 30th. She previously co-founded SnapSaves (acquired by Groupon) and was also Co-founder of Buytopia.ca, which acquired ten competitors including Shop.ca and WagJag. 

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Michael Moritz

Michael Moritz is a partner at Sequoia Capital, which he joined in 1986. He has helped Sequoia adjust to the profound changes in global technology and was one of the co-founders of its business in China and India as well as Sequoia Global Growth, a global technology fund; Sequoia Heritage, the firm’s single pool of globally diversified, long-term assets; and Sequoia Capital Global Equities, a public market fund. Michael has represented Sequoia on the boards of a number of companies including Yahoo!, PayPal, Google, LinkedIn, and Kayak; and younger businesses such as Instacart, Klarna and Stripe. Prior to joining Sequoia, Michael co-founded Technologic Partners and was a correspondent for Time, where he was the San Francisco bureau chief. Michael graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1976 with a MA in History and is an Honorary Student of the College. Together with his wife, Harriet Heyman, he has made a series of major donations to educational causes. He received a knighthood from the Queen of England in 2013.

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April Underwood

April Underwood is a founding partner of the angel investing collective #Angels and a member of the board of directors for Zillow Group. Until 2019, April was the Chief Product Officer at Slack Technologies, Inc., a cloud-based software company that builds professional collaboration tools. Prior to joining Slack, April was Director of Product at Twitter from 2010 to 2015. Previously, April has held product, partnerships, and engineering roles at Google, Travelocity, and Intel.

April holds a B.B.A. in Management Information Systems and Business Honors from The University of Texas at Austin (2001), and an M.B.A. from The University of California at Berkeley (2007). April has received numerous honors, including Fast Company’s “Most Creative People” (2015), Fortune’s “40 Under 40″ (2016), and the highest alumni honor for professional achievement from The University of Texas at Austin, the “Outstanding Young Texas Ex Award” (2019).

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Kevin Lin

Kevin Lin is a 2004 Yale graduate and Co-Founder of Twitch, a global community that comes together each day to create multiplayer entertainment: unique, live, unpredictable experiences created by the shared interactions of millions. Kevin was instrumental in the 2011 launch of the service when he joined Justin.tv in 2008. Kevin now leads Culture, Strategy, and Innovation, where he is responsible for new Twitch programs including original content and corporate strategy.

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Lydia Jett

Lydia serves as a Partner at SoftBank Vision Fund L.P. and SoftBank Group Corp. since March 2019, where she oversees some of the world’s largest technology investments. Lydia joined SoftBank four years ago, leading and managing global investments in consumer internet and e-commerce companies. Lydia serves on the boards of Tokopedia and Coupang, the largest online marketplaces in Indonesia and South Korea, as well as, Fanatics, Fair, and Klook. Before joining SoftBank, Lydia was a Vice President and Senior Associate at M/C Partners. She joined M/C Partners on October 26, 2009 and was previously a Senior Associate at the firm. She focused on investments in a variety of media, communications and technology industry segments.

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Alex Chung

Alex Chung is currently the Founder and CEO of GIPHY, the people who bring you all the GIFs. Before founding GIPHY he was a Hacker in Residence at Betaworks and directed media technology for companies such as MTV, Viacom, Comcast, managed research for Paul Allen’s R&D lab, and started his career as a hardware engineer at Intel. He’s a serial entrepreneur whose past projects include The Fridge (a private social network acquired by Google) and several others backed by investors such as YCombinator, Mitch Kapor, Google, Intel, Yahoo, and others. He was named on Business Insider’s Top 25 most influential technologists in New York, Fast Company’s most creative people in business, Ad Age’s 50 most creative people of 2016, and has degrees in philosophy, computer engineering, and graphic design.

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Tina Sharkey

Tina Sharkey is the Co-Founder of Brandless, a direct-to-consumer brand that makes hundreds of fairly-priced, high-quality items, consciously curated for every member of your family and room of your home. Tina was previously a Venture Partner at Sherpa Capital. She was Chairman and Global President of BabyCenter (part of Johnson & Johnson) and was a senior leader at AOL where she led Programming, Networks, Messaging and Community. Before AOL, Tina co-founded iVillage, built Sesame Street Online, and helped create a new home shopping channel for QVC. She is the Co-chairperson of the Brandless Board and additionally sits on the Boards of ipsy and Brit + Co, and is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute.

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Sebastian Siemiatkowski

In 2005, Sebastian Siemiatkowski co-founded Klarna in order to provide safe and smooth online payments. He currently serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Over the past decade, he has overseen the company’s rapid growth across Europe and North America. Klarna is a now fully licensed bank with over 60mn consumers, 130,000 retail partners and 2500 employees. Sebastian has received multiple awards for his leadership and holds a master’s degree from the Stockholm School of Economics.

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John Schoolcraft

In 2012, together with CEO Toni Petersson, John began to turn a 30-year-old maker of oat drinks, Oatly, into a global movement focused on the development of a more sustainable, plant-based lifestyle. By eliminating the marketing department and replacing it with the Oatly Department of Mind Control, his team of creatives has created a voice that often questions the role of companies and brands and has become instantly recognisable for its consistently inconsistent approach to encouraging people to take small steps in order to upgrade their lives and the sustainability of the planet.

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Whitney Bouck

Whitney Bouck joined HelloSign as COO in 2016, where she is responsible for growing and scaling the company in partnership with the CEO, CTO and the executive team. Before joining HelloSign, she ran the global marketing organization at Box and built Box’s Enterprise business from the ground up, helping pivot the company from being an SMB-oriented product. Whitney also spent 15 years with Documentum and then EMC (via acquisition) and held a variety of leadership positions, including CMO of the Information Intelligence division at EMC. Previously, Whitney held a variety of technology and leadership roles at both Sybase and Oracle. She was recognized in 2017 as one of the top 40 Women in Revenue, in 2015 as one of the World’s 100 Most Innovative CMOs, previously recognized with the Silicon Valley Women of Influence award in 2009 and received the Top 40 Under 40 award in 2003.

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David Rogier

David Rogier is the co-founder and CEO of MasterClass, where he is leading the company’s re-imagination of online education. Based in San Francisco, MasterClass was founded on the idea that everyone should have “access to genius.” David grew up in Los Angeles where he became known for two things: entrepreneurship (he sold his first company, an Internet search engine, while still in middle school), and asking too many questions in class. David attended the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he met renowned tech investor Michael Dearing, whom he went to work for after graduation. After a year with Michael, David decided what he really wanted to do was rekindle his two favorite pastimes from his youth: entrepreneurship and question-asking, by starting MasterClass (Michael became his first investor).

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Rahul Vohra

Rahul is Founder and CEO of Superhuman, the fastest email experience in the world. Superhuman users get through their inbox twice as fast as before — and many see Inbox Zero for the first time in years! Previously, he founded Rapportive, the first Gmail plugin to scale to millions of users. Rapportive was acquired by LinkedIn, where Rahul led email integrations. GQ once described him as “50% hair, 50% brain”.

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Mada Seghete

Mada leads marketing as a co-founder of Branch, the mobile growth platform for today’s top companies, powering mobile linking and growth for over 40,000 apps and 2 billion monthly users around the world. Born and raised in Romania, Mada came to the US to study Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University and then earned her Masters of Engineering and MBA from Stanford. Mada enjoys playing the latest viral mobile game, binge-watching the hottest sci-fi show, and photographing Branch events. Mada regularly speaks about mobile growth at top tech events like Websummit and Saastr, and she was included in Linkedin’s Next Wave, 150 top professionals in 15 industries all under 35.

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Cameron Adams

Cameron Adams is Chief Product Officer and Co-founder of Canva, an online design and publishing tool which makes graphic design simple for everyone.

Since launching in 2013, Canva has grown to over 15 million users across 190 countries, with more than 1 billion designs created – that’s over 33 designs per second! Today Canva is growing from strength to strength, with over 600 team members working together on a mission to empower everyone to create beautiful designs.

Cameron is responsible for heading up the design and product teams, as well as playing a key role on future product directions and innovations.

Prior to joining Canva, Cameron ran his own successful design consultancy, before joining Google, where he found himself working closely with Lars and Jens Rasmussen (co-founders of Google Maps) to realise the design vision for Google Wave.

He then moved on to build email startup Fluent, before meeting Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht and deciding to bring Canva to the world.

With a strong design background, Cameron has also authored five books on web design and regularly speaks at conferences around the globe.

In his spare time, Cameron enjoys spending time with his two kids, playing music or DJing. And you’re also likely to find him relaxing with a nice cup of hot chocolate!

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David Simas

David Simas is the Chief Executive Officer of the Obama Foundation. A native of Taunton, Massachusetts, he was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick in 2007. Simas then joined President Obama’s administration in 2009 as a Deputy Assistant to the President, working with senior advisors David Axelrod and David Plouffe. In 2012, he served as Director of Opinion Research for President Obama’s reelection campaign. Following the reelection, Simas returned to the White House as Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Political Strategy and Outreach. Simas holds a B.A. in political science from Stonehill College and a J.D. from Boston College Law School. He serves on the national board of directors of OneGoal and lives in Chicago with his wife, Shauna, and their two daughters.

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Claire Novorol

Claire is Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Ada Health, an AI-powered health guide that helps people understand their health and navigate to appropriate care. Ada also partners with healthcare payers and providers, supporting them in the delivery of quality, cost-effective care. Ranked as the number one medical app in over 130 countries, Ada has completed over 6 million health assessments worldwide and raised $67m of investment. Before founding Ada, Claire worked as a Paediatrician in London before specialising in Clinical Genetics. She has degrees in Pathology and Medicine as well as a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge. Claire is also the founder of Doctorpreneurs, a global community for doctors interested in healthcare innovation and entrepreneurship.

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Eric Liaw

Eric Liaw is General Partner at IVP. He is focused on later-stage investments in high growth companies across the enterprise software, Internet, and mobile sectors. Eric serves as a Board Director or Observer for IVP portfolio companies App Annie, Deputy, Glossier, The Honest Company, IEX, Lulus, MasterClass, NextRoll, The Players’ Tribune, and ZipRecruiter and led IVP’s investments in Datadog (DDOG), GitHub (MSFT), Klarna, and UiPath.

He previously served as a Board Director or Observer for Dropcam (GOOG), MINDBODY (MB), OnDeck (ONDK), RetailMeNot (SALE), Supercell (SFTBF), and Wikia (TPG). Eric holds a B.A. in Economics and an M.S. in Management Science and Engineering, both from Stanford University.

Eric was recognized by GrowthCap as one of the Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors in 2018, which highlights exceptional private capital investors in the growth segment.

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Chris DeWolfe

Chris DeWolfe is a serial entrepreneur with a track record for building global brands at the nexus of pop culture: social networking, mobile gaming, media, and technology. Having co-founded, helmed and sold MySpace for $580M when it was the highest-trafficked site in the US, Chris DeWolfe went on to create Jam City, a worldwide leader in mobile entertainment. 

Founded in 2010, Jam City is one of the earliest entrants and leading players in mobile gaming, a $75B a year industry, with nearly two-and-half billion players globally. Over the past five years, Jam City has grown over 500% to more than $400M in annual revenue and has been increasingly profitable year over year. Jam City currently owns and operates nine game studios in five countries, with over 700 employees. The company has raised over $300M in funding from some of the industry’s biggest investors and banks. 

The company is the creative power-house behind several of the biggest game titles including Cookie Jam, achieving over $650M in revenue to date; Panda Pop, which has over 125 million downloads; and Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, the #1 game in over 40 countries at launch in 2018. At any moment around the world, millions of players are enjoying Jam City games. 

Jam City is also the go-to partner for Hollywood, having developed immersive, narrative-rich mobile games around iconic entertainment brands such as Harry Potter, Family Guy, and Frozen (launching in November 2019). 

DeWolfe is a globally recognized entrepreneur. He was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2015, and also received the Producers Guild of America’s Vanguard award. DeWolfe studied finance at the University of Washington, recently delivering the University’s School of Business commencement address. DeWolfe attended the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, which honored him in 2006 with its Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year award. He also serves as an advisor at USC’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. DeWolfe resides in Los Angeles with his family.

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Jessica Schultz

Jessica is a Partner at Northzone, the leading European VC fund behind game-changing companies like Spotify, iZettle, Avito, Klarna, Trustpilot, Personio and Red Points. Since 1996, Northzone has backed over 140 companies and raised 8 funds, with over €1 billion under management. The fund has offices in Stockholm, London, New York and Oslo. Jessica‘s main focus is on e-commerce and consumer internet. Her portfolio includes Red Points, NA-KD, Matsmart, Klarna, Outfittery, Lemoncat and Fyndiq. Prior to joining Northzone, Jessica co-founded and was CMO of market-leading recipe-kit delivery service HelloFresh, spearheading the global marketing operations.

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Jean-Eric Paquet

Jean-Eric Paquet has been appointed Director-General of DG Research and Innovation of the European Commission since 1 April 2018.

Mr. Paquet began his career in the European Commission in 1993 in the Directorate-General for Transport, in the International Relations area, and later as assistant to the Transport Director-General, Robert Coleman. In 1999 he joined the office of Mr. Verheugen (Member of the European Commission in charge of enlargement).

In 2002 he became the deputy head of the office of P. Busquin, a member of the European Commission in charge of Research policy. Mr. Paquet was EU Ambassador in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania between 2004 and 2007. He returned to transport in 2007 where he led the development of the Trans-European Transport Network policy. As Director for the European Mobility Network; he was responsible for Europe transport infrastructure policy and investment strategies, the single European rail area, inland waterways and port policy.

He joined DG Enlargement in November 2013 where he took over the Directorate in charge of relations with Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo. In January 2015 he became Director for Western Balkans, adding Montenegro and the FYROM to his portfolio.

In November 2015 he was appointed Deputy Secretary-General of the European Commission responsible for Better Regulation and Policy Coordination (economic governance, internal market and competitiveness, resource efficiency and employment, education and social policies).

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Meltem Demirors

Since she first joined the cryptocurrency industry in 2015, Meltem Demirors has been actively managing and leading investment firms, supporting and advising founders building early-stage companies, and leveraging her experience and network to accelerate the growth of the crypto asset class and the firms developing it. In her role at CoinShares, Meltem oversees strategy and focuses on developing private funds and investment vehicles. In addition, she serves as the managing director of the firm’s US operations.

From 2015 until 2018, Meltem led the Development team at Digital Currency Group. She advocates for a number of industry initiatives via her participation in the World Economic Forum Blockchain Council. She hosts a weekly podcast that explores the intersection of finance, history, and technology, called “What Grinds my Gears,” and the annual “Crypto Springs” conference in Palm Springs. Meltem holds a BA in Mathematical Economics from Rice University and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. She also actively lectures at the MIT Media Lab and the Oxford Saïd Business School.

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Hjalmar Winbladh

The epitome of the serial entrepreneur, Hjalmar is a seven-time founder, having previously built and managed global technology companies such as Wrapp, Rebtel and Sendit. The world’s first mobile Internet company, Sendit, was later acquired by Microsoft in 1999. An early pioneer of the European tech ecosystem, Hjalmar has been at the forefront of technological innovation and disruption since the advent of the internet. Now a seasoned industry veteran, Hjalmar has a number of successful exits under his belt, including an IPO and two M&A deals with publicly listed companies, and Angel investments in the likes of iZettle and Epidemic Sound.

As a founding partner at EQT Ventures, Hjalmar launched the fund with the mission of creating global winners out of Europe and being the kind of VC that he would have wanted on his entrepreneurial journey. In pursuit of this goal, Hjalmar works closely with the most ambitious European founders, helping them to execute their visions. Providing portfolio companies with his sage advice, Hjalmar hopes to empower the next generation of entrepreneurs to come out of Europe.

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Michael Moritz

Michael Moritz is a partner at Sequoia Capital, which he joined in 1986. He has helped Sequoia adjust to the profound changes in global technology and was one of the co-founders of its business in China and India as well as Sequoia Global Growth, a global technology fund; Sequoia Heritage, the firm’s single pool of globally diversified, long-term assets; and Sequoia Capital Global Equities, a public market fund. Michael has represented Sequoia on the boards of a number of companies including Yahoo!, PayPal, Google, LinkedIn, and Kayak; and younger businesses such as Instacart, Klarna and Stripe. Prior to joining Sequoia, Michael co-founded Technologic Partners and was a correspondent for Time, where he was the San Francisco bureau chief. Michael graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1976 with a MA in History and is an Honorary Student of the College. Together with his wife, Harriet Heyman, he has made a series of major donations to educational causes. He received a knighthood from the Queen of England in 2013.

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Lydia Jett

Lydia serves as a Partner at SoftBank Vision Fund L.P. and SoftBank Group Corp. since March 2019, where she oversees some of the world’s largest technology investments. Lydia joined SoftBank four years ago, leading and managing global investments in consumer internet and e-commerce companies. Lydia serves on the boards of Tokopedia and Coupang, the largest online marketplaces in Indonesia and South Korea, as well as, Fanatics, Fair, and Klook. Before joining SoftBank, Lydia was a Vice President and Senior Associate at M/C Partners. She joined M/C Partners on October 26, 2009 and was previously a Senior Associate at the firm. She focused on investments in a variety of media, communications and technology industry segments.

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John Lindfors

John Lindfors is the Managing Partner at DST Investment Management, the investment adviser of DST Global funds. Over the last several years, DST Global has invested in companies such as Facebook, Alibaba, JD.com, Didi, AirBnB, Spotify, Xiaomi, WhatsApp, etc. and manages more than $12 billion. John joined DST in 2010 and has been based in Hong Kong since 2011. Prior to joining DST, John was the Partner in charge of the European Technology and Media Investment Banking department for Goldman Sachs. He joined Goldman Sachs in 1993 and worked in London and New York during his 17 years at the firm.

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Sarah Cannon

Sarah is a Partner at Index Ventures’ San Francisco office,  working with companies that are defining the future of work, including Slack and Pitch. She is most interested in productivity, analytics and automation. 

Prior to Index, Sarah was at Alphabet’s CapitalG, and before that she was a Policy Advisor on the National Economic Council at the White House during the Obama Administration. She also worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and spent a year in Ghana as a Fulbright Scholar. Sarah received a B.A. in Ethics, Politics and Economics from Yale College, an M.P.A/I.D. from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Sarah is a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Eric Liaw

Eric Liaw is General Partner at IVP. He is focused on later-stage investments in high growth companies across the enterprise software, Internet, and mobile sectors. Eric serves as a Board Director or Observer for IVP portfolio companies App Annie, Deputy, Glossier, The Honest Company, IEX, Lulus, MasterClass, NextRoll, The Players’ Tribune, and ZipRecruiter and led IVP’s investments in Datadog (DDOG), GitHub (MSFT), Klarna, and UiPath.

He previously served as a Board Director or Observer for Dropcam (GOOG), MINDBODY (MB), OnDeck (ONDK), RetailMeNot (SALE), Supercell (SFTBF), and Wikia (TPG). Eric holds a B.A. in Economics and an M.S. in Management Science and Engineering, both from Stanford University.

Eric was recognized by GrowthCap as one of the Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors in 2018, which highlights exceptional private capital investors in the growth segment.

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Niklas Zennström

Niklas Zennström is CEO and Founding Partner at Atomico. He is an experienced technology investor and entrepreneur, having previously co-founded and managed globally successful technology companies including Skype, Kazaa and Joltid.

In 2006, Niklas founded the venture capital firm, Atomico, to help entrepreneurs, primarily from Europe, to scale their businesses globally. Atomico has partnered with and supported a growing number of highly successful technology companies, including Supercell, Klarna, Rovio, ofo and many more. It raised its fourth fund in 2016, which was the largest independent venture capital fund ever raised in Europe. In addition to overseeing Atomico’s strategy, he works closely with a number of founders of portfolio companies and sits on the boards of Rovio, Mapillary, Pipedrive, Lilium and Farmdrop. Niklas is most excited about founders that are solving major world problems using digital technology.

Prior to Atomico, Niklas co-founded Skype, which became the first truly global category winning online company to be founded outside the US. He has also co-founded and managed other globally successful technology businesses, including Kazaa and Joltid. Niklas helps support the European tech ecosystem as President of the European Tech Alliance (EUTA), a group of fast-growing tech companies that have all been built in Europe.

In 2007, he co-founded Zennström Philanthropies with his wife, Catherine. They invest strategically in two areas: human rights and the environment. Niklas focuses primarily on sustainability projects, supporting organisations that are tackling issues such as climate change and the state of the oceans. The foundation is also funding a professorship at Uppsala University to establish an academic environment focused on climate change leadership.

Niklas also founded the Race for the Baltic, a foundation for a well-managed and sustainable Baltic Sea, one of the most threatened major bodies of water in the world.

Sophia Bendz

Sophia Bendz is a Partner at Atomico focusing on Nordic sourcing activities. Based in Stockholm, she is passionate about helping founders with communications and marketing strategy and scaling their brand. She also leads the Atomico Angel Programme. Sophia was the Global Marketing Director at Spotify from 2007-2014, where she built out a strong consumer brand from scratch, while launching and marketing the service globally. Today she is an active angel investor, especially in femtech startups including Daye and Clue. She serves as a Board Director at Avanza, Kindred Group and non-profit organization Race For The Baltic.

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Mika Salmi

Mika Salmi is a serial entrepreneur whose work life has been primarily around discovering and nurturing talent. Mika has searched for talent in numerous industries and has discovered Grammy and Oscar winning artists (Nine Inch Nails), created the first online short video company (AtomFilms), ran the largest casual games web sites (Shockwave/AddictingGames), built one of the first sports tracking apps (MadRaces) and pioneered new business models in education (CreativeLive). Entrepreneurs are Mika’s favorite kind of talent and he enjoys helping them realize their ideas and dreams for their startups. He has done this working with Accel, Raine, and Sequoia. Mika is currently a Partner with Lakestar a top global VC based in Europe.

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James Joaquin

James brings over 25 years of experience building businesses as a leader and an investor. His consumer marketing and trend-spotting expertise have helped create new categories such as online photography, web-based calendaring and the Personal Digital Assistant. While studying computer science at Brown University in the 80’s, James co-founded Clearview Software (acquired by Apple). After six years at Apple in engineering and marketing roles, James co-founded When.com, an Internet calendar and events service (acquired by AOL). After that successful acquisition, James became President and CEO of Ofoto. From its early beginnings through acquisition by Kodak in 2001, James led the growth of Ofoto into the world’s largest online photo service. He later served as President and CEO of Xoom.com (IPO March 2013).

James has been working in venture capital since 2007 and has invested in a wide range of mission-driven startups including Plum Organics (acquired by Campbell’s Soup), TenMarks Education (acquired by Amazon), and Opower (IPO April 2014).
James grew up in a Portuguese fishing community in southeastern Massachusetts.

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Luciana Lixandru

Luciana Lixandru joined Accel in 2011, where she focuses on enterprise software and consumer internet companies.

Luciana led Accel’s investments in Deliveroo, UiPath, Framer, Tessian, Miro and is on the board of Vinted. Luciana also helped lead Accel’s investments and ongoing work in Avito, Wallapop, Algolia, and Doctolib.

Prior to Accel, Luciana worked at Morgan Stanley and was also an investor with Summit Partners.

Luciana is from Romania and graduated in Mathematics and Economics from Georgetown University.

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Rytis Vitkauskas

Rytis Vitkauskas is a Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners in Europe. He’s been part of the European tech scene as either entrepreneur, venture or angel investor for over a dozen years. Rytis learned his entrepreneurial lessons early in life; at age 14, he started his first company, a white box PC assembly business. Later on, after his studies as a proud first ever Lithuanian at Harvard Business School, he joined Summit Partners to invest in the leading tech companies in Europe, backing the likes of Avast (LST:AVST) and Acturis. After a while, he left VC to start another business, a mobile ticketing software company called YPlan, which raised capital from some of the top VCs globally and ultimately was acquired by the leading lifestyle media group, Time Out Group (AIM:TMO). After a short sabbatical, he found himself back as a VC at a European fund Target Global, and now, at Lightspeed.

Speaking at:

Jessica Schultz

Jessica is a Partner at Northzone, the leading European VC fund behind game-changing companies like Spotify, iZettle, Avito, Klarna, Trustpilot, Personio and Red Points. Since 1996, Northzone has backed over 140 companies and raised 8 funds, with over €1 billion under management. The fund has offices in Stockholm, London, New York and Oslo. Jessica‘s main focus is on e-commerce and consumer internet. Her portfolio includes Red Points, NA-KD, Matsmart, Klarna, Outfittery, Lemoncat and Fyndiq. Prior to joining Northzone, Jessica co-founded and was CMO of market-leading recipe-kit delivery service HelloFresh, spearheading the global marketing operations.

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Andrew Reed

Andrew Reed is a Partner at Sequoia. He focuses on software, consumer, and fintech investments in product- and design-driven companies around the world. He is involved with Figma, Robinhood, Tourlane, and Front, among others. Andrew was also involved with Sequoia’s 2015 investment in GitHub (acquired in 2018). Prior to Sequoia, Andrew worked at Goldman Sachs in the technology, media, and telecom group in San Francisco. Andrew has a B.A. with distinction in economics and classics from Amherst College

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Melissa Guzy

Melissa is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Arbor Ventures. Prior to founding Arbor Ventures, Melissa was Managing Director and Head of VantagePoint Asia, a $4.5 billion venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley with offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. As a thought leader in the global technology community, with experience across Asia and Silicon Valley, Melissa has been recognized as one of the Top 200 FinTech Influencers in Asia 2018.

Melissa brings with her a unique set of global experience and perspective, with deep technological and innovation prowess anchored in an extensive international network. Melissa is a regular speaker on the Venture Capital markets, Key FinTech Trends and the changing global landscape.

Melissa serves on the Board of Directors of the HKVCA and is Co-Chair of the HKVCA Venture Committee. She also serves on the Board of Innovation for the Hong Kong Securities and Commodities Commission. She is a Hopkins Fellow and participated in the Women’s Leadership Program at Harvard University.

Melissa attended Wellesley College and received a Master’s degree in Finance from the University of Florida. She is the author of the paper “Venture Capital Returns and Public Market Performance.” She has been a speaker at Financial Times Top 50 Women in Asia, Money2020, Asian Financial Forum, RISE and a guest lecturer on the Venture Capital Industry at the University of Florida, Hong Kong University, Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and is a Contributing Expert at CFTE, Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship.

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Patrick Pichette

Patrick Pichette has 25+ years of financial and operating expertise. He has led world-class companies like Google, McKinsey, and Sprint Canada to break through the complexities of ‘hyper growth’. As CFO at Google from 2008 to 2015, he took an active part in the creation of the Alphabet structure. Patrick was actively involved in Google’s extensive corporate M&A agenda, engaging in close to 200 acquisitions, including Nest ($3B) and Motorola ($13B).

After departing Google, Patrick served as a board member of Bombardier and Twitter. In addition, he has been an independent investor, advisor and board member to a number of startups around the world, including Zoona (Sub Saharan Africa), OkHi (Kenya), Boosted Boards (Mountain View), and Arctoris (UK), among others. Patrick graduated with a Master of Arts in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford in 1989 and with a BBA from UQAM in 1987.

Speaking at:

Michele Romanow

Michele Romanow is the Co-founder and President of Clearbanc: the fastest, most affordable way for founders to fund their business. Recently named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, Michele is a prolific investor who plans to invest $1 billion into 2,000 businesses this year and will continue to fund 8X more female-founded companies than traditional VC firms. As a “Dragon” on CBC’s hit show Dragons’ Den (Canada’s Shark Tank), Michele started five companies before her 33rd birthday and exited two before her 30th. She previously co-founded SnapSaves (acquired by Groupon) and was also Co-founder of Buytopia.ca, which acquired ten competitors including Shop.ca and WagJag. 

Speaking at:

Paul Murphy

Paul is a Partner at Northzone, the leading European VC fund behind game-changing companies like Spotify, iZettle, Avito, Klarna, Trustpilot, Personio and RedPoints. Since 1996, Northzone has backed over 140 companies and raised 8 funds, with over €1 billion under management. Paul is focused on consumer and entertainment, as well as enterprise applications. His portfolio includes TIER, Thirty Madison, Klang, and Bunch. Prior to Northzone, Paul founded and was CEO of mobile games company Dots in NYC, and built and invested in companies at betaworks, the startup studio behind companies such as Poncho and Giphy.

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Bernard Liautaud

Bernard joined Balderton as a Partner in 2008. He was named Managing Partner in 2016. Bernard Liautaud founded Business Objects in 1990 and was CEO for 15 years then Chairman until January 2008. With 6,700 employees, 45,000 customers and $1.5 billion of revenue in 2007, Business Objects was the world leader in Business Intelligence and one of the 15 largest software companies in the world. Business Objects was the first European software IPO on Nasdaq in 1994. In January 2008, Business Objects was acquired by SAP for $6.8 billion, making it the third-largest software acquisition at the time. Bernard is now a member of the Supervisory Board of SAP. He also served as a member of the Board of Trustees of Stanford University from 2013 to 2018. He is now a member of the Stanford Global Advisory Council to the President.

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Katherine Boyle

Katherine Boyle is a principal at General Catalyst, a venture capital firm with $5 billion raised to date, where she co-leads General Catalyst’s seed platform. She focuses on early-stage investments in highly-regulated industries, including aerospace, defense, financial technology and computational biology. She sits on the board of Airmap and works closely with Anduril, Nova Credit, Spring Discovery and a number of unannounced companies. Before becoming an investor, Katherine was a staff reporter at The Washington Post.

Katherine received an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she was teaching assistant to Dr. Condoleezza Rice for her course “Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity.” She’s a graduate of Georgetown University and holds a master’s degree from the National University of Ireland, Galway.

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Henry Tan

Henry is a seasoned executive with over 20 years of experience in technology, business strategy & operations, finance and investment. Henry is the Co-Founder and General Partner of Q Venture Partners, an early stage venture capital firm that invests in the most promising hardware and deep tech startups in the world. In addition to deal sourcing and investing, he focuses on helping QVP’s portfolio companies establish strategic partnership and generate revenue in Asia.

Previously, he was the Head of Corporate Development of PCD Stores Group Limited, a national high-end department store and outlet mall chain in China that he took public on the HKEX at >$1.5B in market cap; and a strategy consultant with Bain & Company Greater China practice. He acquired his B.A. in Economics from Cornell University and M.B.A. from M.I.T. Sloan School of Management.

Hjalmar Winbladh

The epitome of the serial entrepreneur, Hjalmar is a seven-time founder, having previously built and managed global technology companies such as Wrapp, Rebtel and Sendit. The world’s first mobile Internet company, Sendit, was later acquired by Microsoft in 1999. An early pioneer of the European tech ecosystem, Hjalmar has been at the forefront of technological innovation and disruption since the advent of the internet. Now a seasoned industry veteran, Hjalmar has a number of successful exits under his belt, including an IPO and two M&A deals with publicly listed companies, and Angel investments in the likes of iZettle and Epidemic Sound.

As a founding partner at EQT Ventures, Hjalmar launched the fund with the mission of creating global winners out of Europe and being the kind of VC that he would have wanted on his entrepreneurial journey. In pursuit of this goal, Hjalmar works closely with the most ambitious European founders, helping them to execute their visions. Providing portfolio companies with his sage advice, Hjalmar hopes to empower the next generation of entrepreneurs to come out of Europe.

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Caterina Fake

Partner & Co-founder Yes VC. Board member, Public Goods, Sundance. Formerly cofounder Flickr, Chairman of Etsy. Advocate for online community, social software, art, literature, myth and poetry.

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Crystal Huang

Crystal is an NYC-based Principal at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), a global venture capital firm with over $20B raised since inception. At NEA, she focuses on enterprise software, infrastructure, fintech, and marketplaces, and sits on the board of Attest. Prior to joining NEA, Crystal started her venture capital career at GGV Capital, where she focused on US and China-based investments in enterprise software and consumer internet. She was closely involved with the firm’s investments in Aptible, BigCommerce, Bitsight, BrightWheel, HashiCorp, Headspin, NS1, OpenDoor, Slack, Tile, Unravel Data, and Wish among others. Previously, Crystal was a member of the technology M&A team at Blackstone in Silicon Valley. She was one of the Forbes 30 under 30 in Venture Capital in 2016.

Crystal earned an A.B. in Government from Harvard University and grew up in Vancouver, Canada.

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Danny Rimer

Danny joined Index in 2002 and established the firm's London office. He later opened the San Francisco office with Mike Volpi. His current investments include 1stdibs, Discord, Farfetch, Figma, Glossier, GOAT, Good Eggs, Grailed, Humu, Patreon and Scoop.

Prior to Index, Danny was a General Partner at The Barksdale Group, where he invested in over a dozen companies. Earlier in his career, he was at Hambrecht & Quist (now owned by JP Morgan), where he began the Internet sector equity research group. He was managing director and underwriting analyst and took Amazon, Netscape and Verisign public among others.

Previously, Danny was a director of Betfair, Dropbox, Etsy, Sky, Last.fm, Lovefilm, MySQL, and Skype; and formerly on the Board of Trustees at SFMOMA and MAGGIE’S Centres. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to business and charity.

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Ophelia Brown

Ophelia is the Founder of Blossom Capital, an early-stage venture fund that brings a wholly differentiated approach to investing. Blossom makes a small number of high conviction investments each year, which allows the team to work closely with their companies, helping them achieve their ambitious goals. Fascinated by user behavior and design, Ophelia loves worked with founders with strong product DNA and design-oriented teams.

Ophelia is also the founder of ALT “Ambitious Ladies in Tech” – a mentor program that matches junior women in technology start-ups with senior functional leaders to provide them with valuable coaching, skills development, and networking. The network includes executives from some of the world’s leading tech companies like Amazon, Airbnb, Facebook, Google, Uber and many more

Previously Ophelia was a GP at LocalGlobe and a principal at Index Ventures where she led investments into a number of outstanding companies like Typeform and Robinhood. Blossom Capital’s portfolio includes travel startup Duffel, payments company Checkout, rental marketplace Fat Llama, brand management platform Frontify, deep learning and AI development platform Spell, and monitoring and security protection platform Sqreen.

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Matus Maar

Matus is both an experienced entrepreneur and venture capital investor. Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Pirate Studios – the world’s largest chain of music rehearsal studios, fully autonomous and live streaming equipped. Involved since inception with Threads – the pioneering chat-based ecommerce platform.

As an investor he has led or closed over 50 private equity and venture capital deals. Matus enjoys early stage investing, working closely with the entrepreneurs. Matus represents (or did in past) Talis on various boards for companies such as Onfido, iwoca, Pirate Studios, Threads, Import.io, eporta, Narrativ, Price f(x), Plum Guide, and others.

Matus is passionate about world changing technology companies and spending time with entrepreneurs who are building them. Matus loves travelling and experiencing different cultures, he has lived in six countries and speaks five languages.

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Linda Höglund

Linda is currently General Partner at growth VC firm Luminar ventures. Previously Linda was CFO at Klarna in Europe and Grab in South East Asia. Before this she was CFO at Electronic Arts Games Europe 2006-2010 and game developer Dice in Sweden 2002-2006. She has also been an entrepreneur in the mobile space and started her career in Goldman Sachs London.

Linda has a strong passion for supporting growth and driving company development, both through the finance function and working close to the business and operations overall. She has been part of several growth journeys building unicorns and knows what it takes to scale. Linda is born and raised in Stockholm Sweden.

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David Gardner

30+ years in game sector. Former CEO & board director, Atari Previously EVP & COO, Worldwide Studios, Electronic Arts (“EA”). 25 years at EA incl. building EA Europe from 0 to $1bn in annual revenue. Successful exit as an Angel Investor in Playfish ($400m sale to EA). Experience working in Silicon Valley and Europe. Awarded OBE in 2007.

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