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.

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. 

He is the author of several books including Return to the Little Kingdom, the first major book about Apple published in 1984, and more recently LEADING with Sir Alex Ferguson, the longtime Manager of Manchester United. 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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John Collison

John Collison is 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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Blake Scholl

Blake Scholl founded Boom Supersonic in September 2014 with the goal of making high-speed travel mainstream and enabling a new world of human connection. Blake is passionate about tackling big problems which the world has overlooked. After seeing Concorde in a museum, he dreamed of the return of commercial supersonic flight. A few years later, Blake dove into aerospace engineering—reading textbooks and taking classes—to figure out from first principles how to enable a supersonic renaissance. As a leader, Blake focuses on inspiring the best people from a range of disciplines to unite in pursuit of Boom’s vision. 

Prior to founding Boom, Blake held leadership roles at Amazon and Groupon and co-founded mobile technology startup Kima Labs. He started his career at Amazon as a software engineer in 2001, where he developed software for personalized and automated merchandising and later owned a $300M P&L at age 24. Blake pioneered the automation of digital ad buying, enabling advertisers to build their own “long tail” by promoting niche products to relevant customers. Later, Blake was the first employee and director of product development at Kleiner-backed mobile startup Pelago. In 2010, he co-founded mobile technology startup Kima Labs, which was acquired by Groupon in 2012. At Groupon, Blake held multiple executive roles, culminating in responsibility for the relevance, email, and search. 

Blake’s interest in aviation on started in childhood—he grew up in suburban Cincinnati, where his parents often took him to the local airport to watch Cessnas take off and land. He started flying for fun in college, earning his private pilot license in 2008 and instrument rating in 2011. 

Blake holds a BS in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University; he lives in Denver and is the father of three.

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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.

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. Using AI to vet companies and tailor term sheet offers without gender, racial, or location biases, Clearbanc’s 20-Min Term Sheet is the industry’s first and fastest way to get growth capital without losing board seats or controlling interest. 

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 the co-Founder of Buytopia.ca, which acquired ten competitors including Shop.ca and WagJag. 

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Dax Dasilva

Dax Dasilva is the creative mind behind Lightspeed, Never Apart, and Age of Union. Founded in 2005, Lightspeed develops a cloud commerce platform used by retail and restaurant customers in over a hundred countries. The company’s mission is to bring cities and communities to life by powering independent business. 

Lightspeed employs over 800 staff located in eight cities and has raised $292M USD from Accel Partners, iNovia Capital, Investissement Québec and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. The company went public in March 2019 on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol LSPD, becoming one of Canada’s top 10 technology IPOs.

In 2015 Dasilva also founded Never Apart, a cultural non-profit determined to bring about positive social change and unity through original programming with global reach and impact. Housed in Lightspeed’s former offices, Never Apart cultivates a diverse following and has welcomed thousands into its 12,000-square-foot space.

Helping entrepreneurs become leaders in their communities through Lightspeed’s technology and elevating artists through his work at Never Apart are fundamental to Dasilva’s philosophy. He fosters cultures of innovation, promotes diverse leadership, and values different viewpoints.

Dasilva’s debut book released in May 2019, Age of Union: Igniting the Changemaker, brings leadership, spirituality and environmental guardianship together with themes of identity, diversity, cultural expression, and individual empowerment to ignite the impactful changemakers that the world needs now.

Kimbal Musk

Kimbal Musk is chef, restauranteur, and philanthropist. His personal mission is to pursue an America where everyone has access to real food. Mr. Musk has been named a Global Social Entrepreneur by the World Economic Forum. He is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of three businesses – The Kitchen Restaurant Group, Big Green, and Square Roots – with real food missions that are rapidly scaling across the United States.

The Kitchen Restaurant Group — with its three concepts Next Door, Hedge Row, and The Kitchen — serves real food at every price point and has created over a thousand mission driven jobs. The restaurants source sustainably grown food from American farmers, stimulating the local farm economy to the tune of millions of dollars a year. Mr. Musk’s non-profit organization, Big Green, builds permanent, outdoor Learning Garden classrooms in hundreds of underserved schools across America reaching over 300,000 students everyday. His urban farming company, Square Roots, brings local, real food to people in major cities by empowering next-gen farmers to grow food in indoor, modular, hydroponic farms.

Mr. Musk is on the board for Tesla and SpaceX. Follow him on Twitter @Kimbal and Instagram @KimbalMusk.

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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.

Derek Haoyang Li

Derek Haoyang Li, the Founder of Squirrel AI Learning, is a serial entrepreneur who has 20+ years of experience in the Chinese K-12 education industry and also co-foundered Only International Education, which was the first educational organization in the A-share stock market in China. Squirrel AI Learning is the leading AI+ education innovator at the forefront of K12 AI revolution. Within 4 years, Squirrel AI Learning has established more than 1,800 learning centers in China and hosted the first series of human-vs-AI competitions in the Asia-Pacific region and proved the AI’s success. Squirrel AI Learning is included in the TOP 20 Chinese artificial intelligence Unicorn companies and the Deloitte technology fast 50 China in 2018. Squirrel AI Learning is included in the MIT Review TR50.

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Peter Reinhardt

Peter Reinhardt is CEO and co-founder of Segment, the Customer Data Infrastructure company. Founded in 2011 in the dorm rooms of MIT, Segment has raised over $284 million from top investors including Google Ventures, Accel and Meritech Capital, and is now used by thousands of companies around the world. Segment has also been named one of Forbes’ next billion-dollar startups, and Peter was named in Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list in 2015.

Diane Bryant

Diane M. Bryant is a global technology leader with more than three decades of executive leadership in the global semiconductor industry, enterprise IT solution development and deployment, and cloud computing services.

Bryant served as the Chief Operating Officer of Google Cloud from 2017 to 2018, where she focused on accelerating the scale and reach of Google Cloud’s business, including optimization of the global supply chain, acceleration of customer adoption, and development of next-generation information technology solutions.

Prior to Google, Bryant spent 32 years at Intel, the last five years as Group President of Intel’s Data Center Group, the worldwide organization that develops server, storage and network platforms for the digital services economy, growing it to $19 billion in revenue in 2017. Before becoming Group President, Bryant was Intel’s Corporate Vice President and Chief Information Officer, responsible for the corporate-wide information technology solutions and services that enable Intel’s business.

Bryant was named among Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business in 2015 and 2016 and is a tireless advocate for women and underrepresented minorities in the fields of engineering and technology. Business Insider ranked Ms. Bryant #6 among the Most Powerful Female Engineers in 2018. In 2016, World Affairs and its Global Philanthropy Forum honored Ms. Bryant with its Global Citizen Award.

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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 of 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.

Scott Painter

Scott is Fair’s Founder and CEO, and a serial entrepreneur in the automotive and technology industries who has founded dozens of disruptive companies over the past 25 years. Prior to Fair, Scott founded TrueCar with the aim of eliminating negotiation from the car-buying process by providing data-driven pricing research to both dealers and consumers. Painter also founded Cars Direct, which took the pioneering step of introducing upfront pricing to auto retail. Painter regularly attends TED, All Things D, and is a member of the World Economic Forum, regularly attending and speaking at its annual meeting in Davos since 2011.

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Edith Harbaugh

Edith is CEO & Co-founder of LaunchDarkly, the leading feature management platform. Edith has more than 20 years of experience in product, engineering and marketing with both consumer and enterprise startups. Most recently she was Product Director at TripIt and Concur. She holds two patents in deployment from her time in engineering at Vignette. She is a contributing writer to DZone, DevOps.com, and ReadWriteWeb; and cohosts the “To Be Continuous” Podcast with Paul Biggar, CircleCI founder. Edith earned a BS in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College.

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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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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Sujay Tyle

Sujay is the CEO and Co-Founder of Frontier Car Group (FCG), a Berlin-based, emerging markets-focused automotive marketplace. FCG has raised $175M+ from Naspers, Balderton, and TPG Growth. Prior, Sujay was a partner at Kingsway Capital, a London-based emerging-markets focused fund. Sujay was on the founding team of Hired.com (a talent marketplace) as its COO, which now operates  in Australia, Europe, and the US. Before Hired, Sujay entered Harvard at age 15, before leaving with a Thiel Fellowship. Sujay was named one of Forbes’ 30 under 30 and one of Goldman Sachs’ top 100 intriguing entrepreneurs in 2016 and 2018.

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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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Oscar Pierre

Aerospace engineer and entrepreneur, Oscar Pierre, 26, is CEO and co-founder of Glovo. He began his studies at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. After two years, he moved to Georgia Tech, in United States, to explore better opportunities. After graduating, he began his professional career as aerodynamics engineer at Airbus, at his base in Toulouse. After 6 months he decided to look for new challenges and dedicate to creating a new business. Glovo began in early 2015. Previously, while studying, Pierre had already founded Zikkomo.com, a solidarity platform with 30 children sponsored in Malawi, and LoveItLocal.es in 2014, a market destined to boost local craft businesses. In January 2017, he was on Forbes magazine’s 30under30 annual list of most influential young people.

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 behaviour 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 programme 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.

Sofia Hmich

Sofia is the Founder of Future Positive Capital, a new venture firm seeking Europe’s boldest entrepreneurs who use advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, synthetic biology, genetics, and other deep technologies to solve problems such as feeding the world’s growing population sustainably, tackling climate change and coping with an ageing population. Her investments includes Ynsect – the global leader in alternative protein supply, Meatable, who are pioneering the next generation of lab-grown meat, BioBeats, the world’s first unified computational platform for preventative mental health and What3Words – the global multi-award winning location technology company, providing unique 3-word identifiers for any location.

At the intersection of entrepreneurship and investment, her career has encompassed tech innovation throughout with stints at Index Ventures, Europe’s top venture capital firm, and Deezer, the worldwide digital music service, where she was in charge of international expansion. 

Sofia has been recognised by Forbes as “30 Under 30”, by the World Economic Forum as a “Global Shaper and is part of Founders Forum.

Cara Brennan Allamano

Cara has deep experience scaling HR operations, recruiting, and learning & development at fast-moving, global companies. Prior to joining Udemy, she was SVP of People at Planet (formerly Planet Labs) and previously served in HR leadership roles at Pinterest, Efficient Frontier, Young and Rubicam, and Knight Ridder, among others. Cara is also co-founder of PeopleTech Partners, a group of HR leaders working to bring new HR/recruiting technologies to market. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Kentucky, holds a master’s degree from the University of San Francisco, and completed graduate studies at Stanford University.

Antoine Hubert

Antoine Hubert is Ÿnsect’s Chairman, CEO and Co-founder. He also chair the cooperative insect industry association, the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed (IPIFF) and is Board Member of Agrocampus Ouest, Agriloops and LFD. Prior to co-founding Ÿnsect, Antoine worked on scientific projects in environmental risk assessment, biomass and plastics recycling. He is an agronomy engineer graduate from AgroCampus-Ouest and AgroParisTech. Together with Alexis, he co-founded Worgamic non-profit association and the companies OrgaNeo and Agriloops. He is also member of Choiseul 200 and Galion association.

Avi Meir

Avi Meir is CEO and Co-founder of Barcelona-based TravelPerk, the next-generation platform for booking, managing and optimising all stages of business travel: flights, hotels, trains, expenses – everything. 

Interested in tech from a young age, Avi started coding when he was 12, and continued to develop his engineering credentials throughout his early career. It was in and early role as operational manager at Charles de Gaulle Airport, however, that he first discovered an interest in the travel industry; and quickly spotted the opportunity to draw on his life-long love of technology to modernise much of the out-dated practice in travel. 

Avi sold his first company, Hotel Ninjas, to Booking.com, after just two years – and by that stage he knew his next challenge was to tackle the huge disparity in user-experience between the leisure and business travel sectors. He and his co-founders set out to transform the whole end-to-end business travel experience for both travellers and administrators through state-of-the-art technology, consumer-level design and a revolutionary business model that is 100% free. Four years into business, TravelPerk is on track to complete bookings for 1 million business travellers by the end of 2019, experienced 700% YOY growth in 2018, has expanded to a team of 260, and has raised almost $75 million from some leading global investors.

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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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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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 start ups. He has done this working with Accel, Raine, and Sequoia. Mika is currently a Partner with Lakestar a top global VC based in Europe.

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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Andrea Barrica

Andrea Barrica is the CEO and founder of O.school, a judgment-free media platform to learn about sexuality and pleasure. As a queer woman of color, she’s been fighting to bring more humanity to the tech industry, and her mission is to create the world’s most trusted sexual wellness brand to help people increase their sexual health, power, and confidence. Previously, Andrea co-founded the leading financial solution for growing startups, inDinero.com, which now employs 150+ employees globally. She also served as a venture partner at 500 Startups, a global venture capital fund, where she worked with hundreds of startup companies. 

Andrea was raised in a religious, conservative Filipino family that only taught abstinence and she only had fear-based sex education in public schools. Seeking support and information, Barrica could not find reliable resources and experienced harassment online. Determined that no one else should have to struggle like she did, Barrica launched O.school in 2017 to change the way people learn about sexuality.

Ethan Smith

Ethan Smith is an advisor in growth and search engine optimization (SEO). He has helped build SEO and growth engines at leading marketplaces such as Thumbtack, Ticketmaster, Honey, and Masterclass.

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Remo Gerber

Dr Remo Gerber, Chief Commercial Officer at Lilium, has extensive leadership experience in hyper-growth startups from Gett, the ride hailing company where he was MD for Western Europe, to Groupon where he was COO for Northern Europe. Before this he spent four years at McKinsey & Co., having completed a PhD at the University of Oxford.

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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. 

He is the author of several books including Return to the Little Kingdom, the first major book about Apple published in 1984, and more recently LEADING with Sir Alex Ferguson, the longtime Manager of Manchester United. 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.

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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Rebecca Lynn

Ranked #31 out of 100 top tech investors on Forbes’s 2018 Midas List, Rebecca Lynn is a General Partner at Canvas. She focuses on early-stage venture investments in AI, FinTech, digital health, SaaS, and mobile. Rebecca led Canvas’s investments in Casetext, Figure Eight, Gabi, HealthLoop, Roofstock, and Vida Health, and currently sits on the boards of each. She also led Canvas’s investment in Luminar, 11 Honore, as well as, FutureAdvisor which was acquired by BlackRock.

In 2007, Rebecca joined Morgenthaler Ventures and continues to serve on the boards of that firm’s portfolio companies. She led an early-stage investment in Lending Club (NYSE: LC), which was the largest US technology IPO of 2014 and the fourth largest US Internet IPO since 2001 behind Facebook, Twitter, and Google. She also led investments in Check (acquired by Intuit), RelateIQ (acquired by Salesforce), Doximity, Practice Fusion, and Convo. Rebecca is a board member of Lending Club, Doximity, Convo, and a board observer of Adara Media and Socrata.

Rebecca is a native of the Midwest, born and raised in Missouri and worked in Ohio for her first job out of college. She began her career at Procter and Gamble’s corporate headquarters in Cincinnati where she launched new products internationally. She is active on the boards of the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), UC Berkeley’s SkyDeck, and Signature Innovation Fellows.

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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 start ups. He has done this working with Accel, Raine, and Sequoia. Mika is currently a Partner with Lakestar a top global VC based in Europe.

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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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.

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 behaviour 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 programme 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.

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.

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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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.

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 of 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.

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. Using AI to vet companies and tailor term sheet offers without gender, racial, or location biases, Clearbanc’s 20-Min Term Sheet is the industry’s first and fastest way to get growth capital without losing board seats or controlling interest. 

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 the co-Founder of Buytopia.ca, which acquired ten competitors including Shop.ca and WagJag. 

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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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Sophia Bendz

Sophia Bendz is an Executive in Residence at Atomico. Based in Stockholm, she advises founders on communications and marketing strategy and scaling their brand. As an active player in Stockholm’s startup scene, Sophia also helps with sourcing and the evaluation of new investment opportunities.

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 and advisor to startups, and serves as a Board Director at Avanza, Kindred Group and non-profit organization Race For The Baltic. She is also a co-founder of non-profit foundation AllBright.se and has invested in start up’s such as Tictail, Clue, DogBuddy, Shim, Joints Academy, Search Inc, Bokio, DigiExam, Greta.io, Scout, Brighten, Prion, Simple Feast, and Sana Labs.

With hands on experience from building a brand, launching a product in 56+ markets and growing a team across different continents Sophia can relate to the joy and stress of life as an entrepreneur. The insights and experiences from her years at Spotify is something she’s happy to share as well as insights from the VC world on how to go about raising funds.

Sophia believes in working with people who share the same set of values and want to improve the world through innovation.

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.

In 2009, he co-founded Dashlane, a leading software company providing digital identity solutions for consumers and small businesses.

He has received a number of distinctions including “Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur” in 2007 in France, Time Magazine Europe’s Digital Top 25 and BusinessWeek Stars of Europe of 2002, Top 10 CEOs in North America by Chief Executive Magazine in 2001.

Education: Diplôme d’Ingénieur, Ecole Centrale de Paris, and Master of Science, Engineering Management, Stanford University.

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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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

Prior to joining EQT Ventures, Hjalmar Winbladh supported EQT Partners for several years as key Industrial Advisor with the TMT segment. Hjalmar founded SendIt in 1994, one of world’s first developers of mobile internet technology including world’s first clouded mobile mail service, having patents for underlying technology for MMS etc. In 1997 SendIt listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange and was later acquired by Microsoft in 1999. Hjalmar has been a Board member at Springer Science and is currently Chairman of the Board at Sportradar. Hjalmar has also previously founded Rebtel (a leading independent mobile voice over IP company), Epidemic Sound, Sinch and Wrapp.