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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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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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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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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Markus Villig

Markus Villig is the founder and CEO of Bolt (formerly Taxify), the leading European on-demand transportation platform that’s focused on making urban travel easier, quicker and more reliable. Bolt’s services range from ride-hailing to micromobility and food delivery. It serves 25 million customers across 30 countries around the world. Markus teamed up with his brother Martin, ex-Skype, to build the first version of Bolt in 2013 when he was 19 years old. Markus has been featured as the youngest tech CEO in Forbes Europe 30 under 30 list and is the youngest founder of a billion-dollar company in Europe.

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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Private: 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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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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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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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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Valentina Milanova

Valentina Milanova is the Founder and CEO of Daye. They have developed a pain-relieving tampon, infused with cannabidiol (CBD) extracted from hemp. Going beyond industry standards, the tampons are medically approved and sustainable, and are sold with a subscription model in sync with the customer’s cycle. Daye is transforming a market that is saturated by established players and little innovation, and is still, in some sense, taboo.

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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.

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.

Selcuk Atli

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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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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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Jan Goetz

Jan received his PhD on superconducting quantum circuits in 2017 from TU Munich and continued as a Postdoc in Helsinki at Aalto University. Helsinki is a great hub for quantum technology, which allowed him to receive a Marie-Curie Fellowship from the EU H2020 program. In addition, he has been working for the local Quantum Computer Project, where 8 research groups and the State Research Center VTT are co-developing a quantum processor. Based on these efforts and together with three co-founders, Jan has been spinning off a company, IQM Finland Oy. Since February 2019 he is the CEO of IQM and the company is now expanding their operations on the research campus in Espoo (Helsinki area). IQM’s is to developing a fast lane for quantum computer using innovative technology for 2nd generation quantum processors.

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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's 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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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.

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.