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FinTech Silicon Valley

FinTech Silicon Valley

By Pemo Theodore

FinTech Silicon Valley podcasts are focused on educating and highlighting FinTech in Silicon Valley to the global community both through video and audio. The podcasts & video interviews are short and fun, one on one interviews by FinTech Silicon Valley journalists with experts and investors on how they are contributing to the community and what their perspective is on the future of FinTech.
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Ken Elefant Managing Director Sorenson Ventures on Covid-19 crisis for startups

FinTech Silicon Valley Jun 18, 2020

00:00
17:19
Yash Patel, General Partner Telstra Ventures

Yash Patel, General Partner Telstra Ventures

Yash Patel is General Partner at Telstra Ventures, a San Francisco-based VC firm that differentiates by generating revenue for its portfolio with strategic channel partners and customer relationships as well as by using data science to drive its investment process. Yash's focus is on the consumer side of fintech, Web3, crypto, esports, gaming, SaaS apps, ecommerce, and marketplace. Some of his standout fintech investments while at Telstra Ventures are companies like Super.com (Super Apps) and Playbook (next-gen wealthtech). Previously, Yash was the Director of Corporate Development & Strategy at Adknowledge and was part of the technology investment banking team at Jefferies & Company prior.

Mar 01, 202416:07
Max Faldin, CEO/Founder Silverbird

Max Faldin, CEO/Founder Silverbird

Max has decades of experience building global IT & fintech businesses. After getting his MBA at Stanford, he co-founded Russia's largest eCommerce company, Wikimart (dubbed "the Amazon of Russia" by Silicon Valley VCs) and raised $50M+ from Tiger Global. He then switched over to work with e-commerce companies in Asia, focusing mainly on payments as a CEO, investor, and advisor to numerous startups. He started Silverbird amidst the pandemic in London, in 2020, after noticing a major banking gap in international trade: millions of underserved SMEs around Africa, Middle East, and Asian regions and beyond were exposed to high fees, unfair rejections, unnecessary paperwork, and outdated regulations. The key pain point was high-value cross-border transactions - something international trade is all about. Silverbird makes cross-border banking business-friendly and international payments borderless, limitless, frictionless and affordable. It can onboard companies traditional banks can't through the use of AI and data-driven KYC which analyzes publicly open customs and supply chain data to assess the risk-profile of a particular SME.

Feb 20, 202413:50
Max Krupyshev, CoFounder/CEO CoinsPaid

Max Krupyshev, CoFounder/CEO CoinsPaid

Max Krupyshev, CoFounder/CEO of the crypto payment ecosystem CoinsPaid. He is a serial entrepreneur with long-standing experience in developing fintech and crypto projects. Having entered the world of crypto in 2013, he stood at the origins of this market in Ukraine, launching a Bitcoin Foundation to promote crypto adoption in the country. Before joining CoinsPaid, he was the product owner for CEX.IO, a global cryptocurrency ecosystem and market leader. As the CEO of CoinsPaid, he sets the goal for the company to become the connecting link between crypto and traditional businesses.

Apr 19, 202315:15
Jeff Booth, Founding Partner ego death capital

Jeff Booth, Founding Partner ego death capital

Jeff Booth is a visionary leader, technology entrepreneur and best-selling author of The Price of Tomorrow – Why Deflation is Key to an Abundant Future. With his expertise in technology, system thinking and design, he is at the forefront of a transition from an economic system built for the past, and one built for the future. Jeff has been featured in Forbes, TechCrunch, Inc.com, The Globe and Mail, BNN, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Bloomberg, TIME, and The Wall Street Journal. In 2015, he was named BC Technology Industry Association’s (BCTIA) Person of the Year, and in 2016 Goldman Sachs named him among its 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs. He is a Founding Partner of ego death capital, Co-Founder of addy and NocNoc. He has been a Young Presidents Organization member since 2004 and contributes time as a Founding Fellow at the Creative Destruction Lab. Jeff currently sits on the boards of Scoop Solar, Terramera, Fedi and Breez.

Mar 21, 202313:45
Andy Schectman, President/Owner Miles Franklin Precious Metals

Andy Schectman, President/Owner Miles Franklin Precious Metals

Andy has been a prominent figure in the financial services industry for more than 25 years, during which he has served as President and owner of Miles Franklin, Precious Metals, Ltd.  Prior to starting Miles Franklin, Ltd. in 1989, Andrew became a Licensed Financial Planner, specializing in Swiss Franc Investments and alternative investments.  At Miles Franklin Ltd., a company that has recently eclipsed $5 billion in sales, Andrew has developed an operation that maintains trust, collaboration, ethical behavior, superior customer service and satisfaction to better serve their clients.  He is responsible for overseeing the firm's operations and business functions, including strategic planning, account management, finance, and new business. Andrew has distinguished himself as a successful entrepreneur, a foremost expert on the precious metals industry and a reputable speaker on economics, global investing, and foreign currencies.

Mar 08, 202325:42
Stacy Komarova Chief Marketing Officer calypso.finance

Stacy Komarova Chief Marketing Officer calypso.finance

Stacy has been working in the blockchain sphere since 2016. She has worked as a marketing consultant for businesses who wanted to integrate blockchain. She has worked with trading platforms, DeFi projects and has worked in Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa & South Korea. The Calypso Group are mainly focused on Calypso Pay. Calypso Pay is a crypto payment processor. They released several financial products for different business segments. Their global aim is to help business seamlessly adopt crypto (dive into Web3)

Feb 15, 202310:49
Eric Shoykhet, CEO Link Financial Technologies link.money

Eric Shoykhet, CEO Link Financial Technologies link.money

Eric Shoykhet is the Founder of Atom Finance and Link Financial Technologies link.money ,venture-backed software companies that collectively have raised $100mm. Previously, he was an investor at Governors Lane, an event-driven hedge fund. At Governors Lane, Eric worked on investments across a variety of sectors including industrials, financials, technology, and consumer staples. Prior to this, he worked in the Restructuring and Reorganization group at Blackstone. Eric graduated from the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business at the University of Pennsylvania with degrees from both the Wharton School and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Feb 08, 202314:33
Michael Fanfant, General Partner Runa Capital

Michael Fanfant, General Partner Runa Capital

Michael Fanfant is a Palo Alto-based General Partner at Runa Capital. He looks for early stage startups with solutions across B2B SaaS and regulated industries like fintech, edutech and digital health. Michael joined Runa in 2017 after co-founding Octane Lending, where he was also COO. He serves on the board of Octane Lending, which was valued at more than $900 million during its Series D round in 2021.

Jan 17, 202314:56
Vladimir Gorbunov Founder/CEO crypto firm Choise.com

Vladimir Gorbunov Founder/CEO crypto firm Choise.com

Vladimir is a entrepreneur with long-standing experience in establishing and developing fintech projects. The total capitalization of Vladimir’s projects exceeded $1 billion at the beginning of 2022. As a professional businessman, Vladimir is interested in developing new, never-before seen solutions that would benefit society and improve the quality of everyday life. As the CEO of Choise.com, Mr. Gorbunov is responsible for managing the company's development, building operational processes, and achieving short-term and long-term goals in accordance with the established mission.

Dec 13, 202217:57
Hugo Feiler, CoFounder/CEO Minima

Hugo Feiler, CoFounder/CEO Minima

Hugo is an entrepreneur with over two decades of experience in the marketing communication space. He is Co-Founder and CEO of Minima - the world’s first completely decentralized, and mobile native blockchain protocol. Prior to launching Minima, Hugo ran and founded internationally awarded advertising agencies, creating global campaigns for companies including Vodafone, Toshiba and Sony Electronics.  He was previously General Manager of marcomms at Sony Europe for its computer and audio divisions.

Sep 26, 202216:11
Jazmin Ribeiro, Tech Comms Manager Minima

Jazmin Ribeiro, Tech Comms Manager Minima

Jazmin has a STEM background, with a first-class degree in Mathematics from the University of Surrey, Guildford. She has a passion for innovative technology and using it as a tool to improve personal and corporate potential. Her previous career includes 8 years as a consultant, implementing Oracle’s Financial Planning software for UK based and global businesses; and becoming a certified management accountant. Since discovering blockchain technology in 2018, she has dedicated her time to learning about the vast societal, financial and technological opportunities that it can enable. Excited by the prospects of a mobile-native blockchain with low barriers to entry, she joined the Minima community in 2020, spending a year getting involved and supporting the Minima team in her spare time. By October 2021, she joined Minima full time as their Technical Communications Manager, making a side-step change in her career. Her role now involves bridging the gap between the developers and the community; analysing the protocol, creating educational content and promoting the growth of Minima as the most decentralised blockchain globally.

Jun 09, 202214:21
Wayne Van Dyck,Founder/CEO ClimateCapex

Wayne Van Dyck,Founder/CEO ClimateCapex

Wayne was a Wall St investment banker and venture capitalist; owner/operator of the number two rock broadcasting stations in Los Angeles; Founder/CEO of the first utility wind energy developer (backed by Chevron); CEO of an international telecom that introduced the first direct dial telephone and wireless service to Moscow; Founder of two software companies. He is now CEO of ClimateCapex, a fintech platform for clean energy project finance.

May 05, 202216:23
Dmitry Mishunin, Founder/CEO HashEx

Dmitry Mishunin, Founder/CEO HashEx

Dmitry Mishunin is the founder and CEO of a DeFi security and analytics company HashEx. He is a businessman with skills in strategic management, specializing in cybersecurity and security audits. Dmitry has a long-standing expertise in product development in Ethereum, Bitcoin, Binance blockchains. Under his management HashEx has become one of the leaders in the field of cybersecurity and smart contracts audit. Since its creation, the company conducted over 500 audits for projects of various levels and helped preserve more than $5 billion worth of investor funds.


Apr 14, 202224:05
Kamyar Naficy, Founder/Principal KNECTCOMMS

Kamyar Naficy, Founder/Principal KNECTCOMMS

Kamyar Naficy is the Founder and Principal of KNECTCOMMS, a marketing and communications consultancy to the finance, technology and fintech sectors. He previously worked in senior marketing and communications roles at JP Morgan, London Stock Exchange Group and UniCredit. He holds a BA from the London School of Economics and an MPhil (Masters) in Management Studies from Cambridge University.

Feb 24, 202218:39
Marwan Forzley, CoFounder/CEO Veem

Marwan Forzley, CoFounder/CEO Veem

Marwan Forzley is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Veem, a next-generation global payment provider that enables businesses to quickly and securely send and receive payments in local currency. Veem uses the blockchain as a new settlement rail to enable frictionless and inexpensive payments. Prior to Align Commerce, Forzley founded and served as CEO of eBillme, an online payment solution that extended online banking to the merchant’s checkout process. After selling eBillme to Western Union, Forzley joined the Western Union’s digital team as General Manager, eCommerce, and Strategic Partnerships. With extensive experience and expertise in eCommerce infrastructure, mobile payments, content delivery, and alternative payments, Forzley is one of the top entrepreneurs working to pioneer better payment systems.

Feb 22, 202216:56
Rosario Ingargiola, Founder/CEO BOSONIC.digital

Rosario Ingargiola, Founder/CEO BOSONIC.digital

Rosario Ingargiola is Founder/CEO BOSONIC.digital, a San Francisco based Financial Technology and Infrastructure company offering the only non-custodial, real-time clearing and settlement platform in existence. Clients include Banks, Neo Banks, Hedge Funds, Lenders, Market-Makers, Broker-Dealers and Miners. 

Jan 25, 202214:15
Alex Marquez, VP/Global Managing Director Experian Ventures

Alex Marquez, VP/Global Managing Director Experian Ventures

Alex Marquez launched Experian Ventures in 2016 and is currently the Global Managing Director and a member of Experian’s Investment Committee. As a leading global information services company, providing data and analytical tools to our clients around the world, we invest in data/analytics, information security, healthcare, automotive and the broader financial services ecosystem. We have invested more than $225m across the globe since inception.  Alex was Managing Director with USAA's Corporate Development Group and a member of USAA's Executive Management team where he built USAA Ventures into one of the most active FinTech CVC after his first year. Alex created USAA's Blockchain Working Group and investment thesis in blockchain [according to CBInsights, USAA was recognized as the first bank/insurance company to invest in blockchain technologies] and was responsible for the group investment in Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN), Saffron (acq by Intel), and CafeX, ExpectLabs (acq by Cisco), while establishing USAA's venture brand in Silicon Valley. Alex was a Director with Intel Capital, the world’s largest corporate venture group having invested over $14B globally. In addition, Alex was co-founder and CEO of AppScotch, which brought transparency to paid mobile advertising. AppScotch was acquired by AppAnnie in 2016. Alex received his BS Electrical Engineering with emphasis in Semi-Conductor Physics from UNLV and received his MBA from Purdue University.

Jan 17, 202223:44
Kaarel Kotkas, CEO Veriff

Kaarel Kotkas, CEO Veriff

Kaarel is the strategic thinker and visionary behind Veriff. Kaarel keeps Veriff’s team one step ahead of fraud and competition in the dynamic world of online identification. Under Kaarel’s leadership, Veriff has become a leader in the IDV market, currently the only service provider offering near-real-time verification (improving from 70 seconds to 6 seconds in 2020), with sophisticated fraud control delivering close to 99% decision accuracy. Kaarel’s emphasis on global impact has led Veriff’s AI-powered decision engine to analyze more than 9,550 variations of government-issued IDs from over 190 countries in 39 different languages. 

Jan 16, 202211:50
Jon Soberg, Managing Partner MS&AD Ventures

Jon Soberg, Managing Partner MS&AD Ventures

Jon Soberg is Managing Partner at MS&AD Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on the future of finance, risk assessment, and building a sustainable society. Jon has made over 120 investments across 5 continents and has held more than 40 board positions. Prior to becoming an investor, Jon was a serial entrepreneur and operator, with an IPO exit at Adforce. Jon has a Master's degree in Engineering, a CFA, and is an MBA and Palmer Scholar at Wharton. Jon is ranked #13 on Business Insider's Seed 100 list of top seed investors.

Jan 12, 202221:57
Akshay Krishnaiah, Founder/CEO Line

Akshay Krishnaiah, Founder/CEO Line

Akshay Krishnaiah Founder & CEO of fast growing subscription-based Cash Now Pay Later startup Line (useline.com) Akshay is a millennial, immigrant, uber driver (36,000 miles SF Bay Area) turned Techstars fintech startup founder & CEO at Line (useline.com) that came out of stealth this July and has taken the world by storm by delivering over $500,000 in Lines at $30 a line in just the last 90 days, to people who earn as low as $600 a month helping them make ends meet while proving to the world that you can do social good and run a profitable business by posting an impressive 11X  jump in monthly recurring revenue. He was previously Global Product Head at PayPal's research labs where he earned over 75 patent publications covering hardware, payments, embedded fintech and consumer fintech and prior to that he headed the highly coveted PayPal-eBay Retail Labs where he and his team invented Wallet Tokenization the foundational technology behind most of PayPal and Venmo's recent breakthroughs along with Handsfree shopping using bluetooth a predecessor to the computer vision based Amazon Go. His tour of academic duties include Stanford, MIT and University of Texas and was also once offered Adjunct Professor role at Cornell which he had to decline to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams. But, he is most proud of his role as a dad, husband, brother and son of parents who came from extreme poverty, worked hard to give great education, tolerant values and culture.

Jan 10, 202216:15
Nadim Homsany, CoFounder/CEO EarnUp

Nadim Homsany, CoFounder/CEO EarnUp

Nadim is the son of immigrants who arrived in the U.S. with virtually nothing. The passion to help people build financial resilience and independence was instilled in him through his upbringing. This, and the values learned from his family, led Nadim—along with his co-founder Matthew Cooper—to start EarnUp Inc. in 2013 with a goal of helping the over 200 million Americans in debt get out of it faster. Now EarnUp has grown into a company that brings lenders, financial institutions, nonprofits, and consumers together to identify core issues and to create solutions that work. Prior to EarnUp, he worked at Serent Capital, a $600M private equity firm, focused on tech-enabled services; led investments with NCB Capital, a $12B asset manager; and worked at McKinsey & Company consulting large banks. He also practiced IP and technology law at Kirkland & Ellis. Nadim holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and graduated with highest honors from Rutgers University.

Jan 09, 202232:43
Chris Hsu, CEO/CoFounder Azibo Inc

Chris Hsu, CEO/CoFounder Azibo Inc

Chris Hsu is the CEO & Co-Founder of Azibo, a VC-backed real estate fintech startup focused on simplifying the rental property experience. Prior to Azibo, Chris served as an Advisory Partner at a16z and previously was CEO of Micro Focus, a $4B enterprise software company. He also was COO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, where he successfully led the largest corporate separation in history. Chris spent the earlier part of his career in leadership roles at top consulting firms, including KKR and McKinsey. A military veteran, Chris graduated as a Distinguished Cadet from the United States Military Academy at West Point and completed his U.S. Army tenure as a Captain. He also has an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

SPONSORED VIA TACEN https://www.tacen.com/

Jan 05, 202217:24
Lauren Kolodny, Founding Partner Acrew Capital

Lauren Kolodny, Founding Partner Acrew Capital

Lauren is a co-founder and Managing Partner at Acrew Capital where she invests in fintech. Among her investments, Lauren led the 2016 Series A round in Chime. Other investments include Divvy, Finix, Gusto, Kettle, La Haus, Papaya Payments, and Pie Insurance. Previously, Lauren worked in product marketing at Google leading a number of launches for GSuite, including Google Drive. Lauren began her career building tech partnerships for the Clinton Foundation in India. Lauren is a Trustee Emerita at Brown University where she served as the university’s youngest board member.  Lauren was featured on the 2021 Forbes Midas Brink List.

SPONSORED VIA TACEN https://www.tacen.com/

Jan 03, 202215:17
Toshi Kameoka, Head Strategy Nth America Airwallex

Toshi Kameoka, Head Strategy Nth America Airwallex

Toshi Kameoka manages Airwallex’s U.S. and Canada business and administrative operations as Head of Strategy, North America. Based in San Francisco, he was Airwallex's first permanent U.S. employee and has been responsible for Airwallex's U.S. money transmitter licensing (MTL) and financial partnership strategy in the region. Toshi has more than 15 years of experience in business strategy, corporate development, and partnerships across various sectors, including payments and fintech, commerce tech, and mobile data and analytics.

SPONSORED VIA TACEN https://www.tacen.com/

Dec 29, 202116:20
Ram Ahluwalia, Head Digital Assets Cross River

Ram Ahluwalia, Head Digital Assets Cross River

Ram leads the Digital Asset business at Cross River. Ram is the founder of PeerIQ – the leading risk analytics firm for FinTech lending.  Prior to founding PeerIQ, Ram was an investor in structured products and an SVP at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch where he was a leader on the Cards & Deposits executive management team. Previously, Ram served as a management consultant working with C-leaders at Fortune 50 consumer finance companies. Ram received a B.A. in Economics-Philosophy from Columbia University and is a CFA charterholder

Dec 27, 202116:39
Raghu Yarlagadda, CoFounder/CEO FalconX

Raghu Yarlagadda, CoFounder/CEO FalconX

Raghu is the Co-founder and CEO of FalconX, one of the largest and fastest growing digital asset brokerages. He's an engineer by background and passionate about building products that create value – leading him to become a serial entrepreneur,product leader, active investor, andboard advisor to several Silicon Valley startups. Prior to FalconX, Raghu held product leadership roles in Google. He was on Sundar Pichai’s ChromeOS team and led efforts to scale Chromebooks to over $3 billion revenue for Google and its partners. He started his career atMotorola as an engineer in a team that pioneered high definition video transmission over IPstack, laying the technical foundation for many popular video streaming services such as Netflix and Youtube. Raghu holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School,M.S. from University of Texas at Dallasspecializing in Signal Processing & Machine Learning,and B.Tech. from Vellore Institute of Technology.

SPONSORED VIA TACEN https://www.tacen.com/

Dec 25, 202120:35
Ken Kruszka, Founder/CEO Snapcheck

Ken Kruszka, Founder/CEO Snapcheck

Ken is a FinTech and Payments pioneer, who holds the distinction of being the first person to send $1 around the world by mobile transfer. In his career, Ken has launched: the first mobile remittances service in the US, the first global mobile bank account, the first neobank for immigrants in the US, and the first decoupled business payments smart switch.  Currently, Ken leads SnapCheck in revolutionizing business-to-business payments: eliminating $50 Billion in costs, removing $20 Billion in fraud. Previously, as co-founder and CEO of m-Via, Ken grew the company into an industry-recognized leader in mobile financial services and brought the company to cash-flow positive before leading m-Via through an acquisition by Boom Financial. Ken is a Founding Member of the Faster Payments Council, as well as a member of the Federal Reserve’s Business Payments Coalition and the FedNow Community.  Ken has been named a Top Innovator to Watch by Bank Innovation, a Top FinTech Innovator by Aspioneer, a Top 25 FinTech CEO by Technology Innovators, and a Leading Corporate Digital Transformation Innovator by Databird.

Dec 22, 202113:15
Alexandre Lazarow, Global Venture Investor Cathay Innovation
Dec 20, 202116:49
Mark Straub, CoFounder/CEO Smile Identity

Mark Straub, CoFounder/CEO Smile Identity

Mark Straub is the Co-founder and CEO of Smile Identity, the leading digital KYC and identity verification provider in Africa. He has spent much of his career trying to help people in underserved markets get access to better opportunities through technology and entrepreneurship. Mark was a venture investor for a decade, and worked with over 20 companies doing business in adtech, fintech, healthcare, and energy in markets ranging from the US and China to India and Sub-Saharan Africa. Working with Vinod Khosla at Khosla Impact, he led investments in Kopo Kopo, NeoGrowth, Milaap, Branch, and Flutterwave; and he was an investor in all three of Elon Musk's companies during his time at DFJ.


Dec 17, 202113:39
Amir Kabir, Partner AV8 Ventures

Amir Kabir, Partner AV8 Ventures

Amir leads Fintech and Insurtech investing at AV8 Ventures and has been one of the earliest investors in the Insurtech space. Amir has been an entrepreneur, operator and investor with over 15 years of experience, working with early and mid-stage companies on financing, partnerships and strategic growth initiatives. Prior to AV8, Amir was an investment director and founding team member at Munich Re Ventures where he lead and managed investment efforts for two of the funds and made early bets in Insurtech, Mobility and Digital Health in companies like Next Insurance, Inshur, HDVI, Spruce, Ridecell, Babylon Health etc.. Earlier Amir worked for several venture funds, including Route 66 Ventures, focusing on Fintech and Insurtech, and investing in companies such as Simplesurance and DriveWealth. He began his career in Germany as a network engineer and subsequently at Legodo AG (acquired by Open Text, OTEX (NASDAQ)), an enterprise software startup, where he held several roles in sales, business development and product management until acquisition. In 2019, Amir was ranked 11 out of 100 on Global Corporate Venture’s Rising Stars list and was named a “VC Champions Select” by All Raise. Amir lives in San Francisco and holds an MBA from Georgetown McDonough School of Business, a BS in Business Informatics from RFH Cologne in Germany and is currently finishing an MS in Law from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.

Dec 14, 202119:04
Vivek Krishnamurthy, Investor Commerce Ventures
Dec 12, 202119:47
John Lunn, Founder/CEO Gr4vy

John Lunn, Founder/CEO Gr4vy

John Lunn is the Founder and CEO of cloud payment orchestration platform Gr4vy. He is a technology and fintech entrepreneur with 21 years of experience working and investing in financial services, commerce enablement, e-payments, data, security and infrastructure. Lunn worked as the Director of Technology for six years at CyberSource, the world’s first payment service provider, which was sold to Visa for $2Bn in 2010. He then helped found Passmark Security which was sold to RSA Security in 2006. In 2006, Lunn joined PayPal as the fourth employee in the UK (now 2,000+), where as Global Director of Developer and Startup Relations, he built and grew PayPal’s first Developer Relations team. In 2015, he was instrumental to the purchase of Braintree by PayPal and joined the team. In 2016, Lunn was part of the team that launched PayPal Ventures, the venture capital arm of PayPal, a $350m fund with backing from the Board. Lunn was a Board Observer for Dosh, Arkose, Raise, Acorns, Toss and many others.

Dec 10, 202111:42
Robin Gandhi, Senior VP Product Management/Payments TripActions
Dec 10, 202109:60
Hammad Aslam, Investor Susa Ventures

Hammad Aslam, Investor Susa Ventures

Hammad Aslam is an investor at Susa Ventures, where he focuses on Series B and Series C investments out of Susa's Opportunity Fund, and specializes in fintech, supply chain / logistics, enterprise software and emerging markets. Prior to joining Susa, Hammad helped lead technology and software investments at Vista Equity Partners. Hammad also brings extensive technology M&A and capital raising experience from his time at Morgan Stanley. He graduated with honors from Princeton University, with an AB in Near Eastern Studies and is based in San Francisco Bay Area.

Dec 08, 202122:27
Michelle Killoran, Principal OMERS Ventures

Michelle Killoran, Principal OMERS Ventures

Michelle is responsible for researching and executing on investment opportunities in proptech. She’s particularly interested in opportunities around democratizing home ownership, increasing transparency across the real estate transaction and automating workflows. Prior to joining OMERS Ventures, Michelle was a Senior Associate in Financial Advisory at Deloitte. As a part of the Valuations group, she provided valuation services to both public and private companies related to mergers and acquisitions, financial reporting, tax, and litigation. Michelle is a Chartered Accountant (CA), Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) and Chartered Business Valuator (CBV). She has a Bachelor of Commerce from Queen’s University.In 2020, Michelle was named one of Venture Capital Journal’s "40 Rising Stars under 40" in the global venture community.

Dec 03, 202111:50
Deep Varma, CTO Varo

Deep Varma, CTO Varo

Deep has more than 20 years of Silicon Valley experience creating consumer-focused products, developing platform experiences that use artificial intelligence and big data, and building world-class engineering teams. His experience includes companies like IBM, Yahoo!, Trulia/Zillow, and over 5 years of startup experience. He is leading Varo’s Technology teams to build Technology Bank from the ground-up to scale to millions of customers. He holds a Masters' degree and an MBA from UC Berkeley. Twitter is @varmadeep (Varo's is @VaroBank).


Dec 01, 202116:37
Sheel Mohnot, CoFounder Better Tomorrow Ventures

Sheel Mohnot, CoFounder Better Tomorrow Ventures

Sheel is CoFounder of Better Tomorrow, a $75M seed stage venture capital fund investing in Fintech companies globally. His own startup experience includes 2 successful FinTech exits – a payments company and a high-stakes auction company, and he was previously GP of the 500 Fintech fund. He formerly worked as a financial services consultant at BCG and started his FinTech career at the non-profit p2p lender Kiva.

Nov 29, 202116:47
Minnie Ingersoll, Partner TenOneTen

Minnie Ingersoll, Partner TenOneTen

Minnie Ingersoll is a partner at TenOneTen and host of the LA Venture podcast.  TenOneTen is a venture fund based in LA investing in early stage software and data companies.   Prior to TenOneTen, Minnie was the COO and co-founder of recently public Shift Technologies (Nasdaq : SFT), an online marketplace for used cars. In her spare time, Minnie surfs baby waves and raises baby people.

Nov 25, 202121:56
Stephen Bulfer, CEO/CoFounder StreamLoan

Stephen Bulfer, CEO/CoFounder StreamLoan

Stephen has immersed himself in mortgage lending since 2015 with StreamLoan, a pioneer in digital mortgage, streamlining the mortgage process with digital technology for his mortgage lending customers, specifically dedicated to redefining the lead management and mortgage origination experience.  Beyond thought leadership, he is a subject matter expert across the residential real estate & real estate finance category, including real estate experience covering both residential investment (20 years experience) and research; Stephen’s concentration during his MBA was real estate finance, with special focus on the subprime mortgage crisis.    As a technical CEO, he has a unique background, blending of both startup and enterprise software.  His extensive software start-up experience includes building five startups, most recently with the 2013 ionGrid acquisition by NetApp.  Stephen has significant experience across strategy, build, and deployment of enterprise software at Fortune 500 companies extending to White House & Executive Office of the President, HP, Visa, MasterCard, Allstate, Kaiser, P&G, and over 50 Fortune 500 organizations.  StreamLoan is an award winning mobile and SaaS platform.  StreamLoan is a Silicon Valley based venture backed software firm (with HQ in San Francisco).  Stephen holds two master's degrees from Columbia Business School and University of California Berkeley.  His passions cover skiing & snowboarding, travel, music, among other life adventures. 

Nov 23, 202116:59
Shuo Chen, General Partner IOVC

Shuo Chen, General Partner IOVC

Shuo Chen is a General Partner at IOVC, where she focuses on early stage venture investments in Silicon Valley with a focus on future of work and enterprise/SaaS. She is also Faculty at UC Berkeley and Singularity University. Shuo is appointed by California Governor Gavin Newson to serve as 1 of 13 voting members on California's Mental Health Commission (as the first Asian American Commissioner), which includes overseeing ~$2.6 billion annually in state budget and advising the Governor or the Legislature on mental health policy.In her venture role, Shuo has invested in companies now acquired by Goldman Sachs, Ford, Caterpillar, Binance and Dialpad, as well as now unicorns including Boom, Checkr, Grubmarket, Instacart and Rescale. She has helped portfolio companies close deals with Amazon, Apple, Google, Mercedes-Benz and NASA among others, as well as scaled portfolio companies into Europe and Asia.Prior, Shuo worked at Goldman Sachs in investment banking, where she worked with clients including Alibaba and Tencent, as well as represented the firm on the Board of Women in Finance. Before that, Shuo was at PwC, where she worked on Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola and LinkedIn’s $119 million acquisition of SlideShare. Shuo has also co-authored one of the leading books on financial regulations published by Cambridge University Press in 2019, and sits on the Advisory Board of Forbes China, where she advises on content and awards for Asian Americans in North America.

Nov 17, 202120:12
Marvin Liao, Global Macro Investor

Marvin Liao, Global Macro Investor

Marvin Liao is an Investor-Operator, executive coach and formal advisor to several large Family Offices. Marvin is a Partner at Rolling Fund Diaspora.vc, Manages the Angel Fund Sukna Global & a Board member at Game Groove Capital, an International Gaming Holding Company. He was previously a Partner at Venture Capital Fund 500 Startups, running the SF based accelerator program as well as investing in Seed stage start ups.  He has invested in over 414 Pre-seed & Seed stage startups during the 6 years spent there. Marvin also spent 10.5 years at Yahoo! as an executive with extensive operating experience expanding businesses across Asia, Europe, Latin America and the United States in his career at the company. Marvin presently serves on the Investment Committees/Advisory boards of several Venture Capital funds. He also mentors at numerous accelerator programs around the world.

Nov 14, 202119:51
Ramneek Gupta, Founder/Managing Partner PruVen Capital

Ramneek Gupta, Founder/Managing Partner PruVen Capital

Ramneek is the Founder and Managing Partner of PruVen Capital, an independent, returns driven firm created in partnership with Prudential Financial as the single limited partner. Our first fund is a $300M multi stage investment vehicle designed to focus on verticals including Insurance, Financial Services, Healthcare IT/Tech/Data, Real estate/Proptech, Asset/Wealth Management and Enterprise IT. Prior to founding PruVen, Ramneek was the Co-founder of the venture investing efforts at Citi. At Citi Ventures, he led investments in over 25 companies across fintech & digital commerce space that represent over $180B in market value. Some of his notable investments included Square (NYSE: SQ), Jet.com (Acq by Walmart for $3.3B), DocuSign (NASDAQ: DOCU), Honey (Acq by Paypal for $4B), Grab (NYSE: GRAB), Datarobot, Feedzai, Homelight & Zum. Prior to Citi Ventures, Ramneek was a partner at Battery Ventures, where he led the build out of their investment practice in India and before that he held various product development roles at PMC Sierra and TiVo. He is also an angel investor and has had the opportunity to partner with founders thru early investments in companies like Robinhood (NASDAQ: Hood), CheckR, Ipsy, Vicarious, Maxxa and Gridspace. Ramneek received a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, where he graduated at the top of his class and an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. 

Nov 10, 202121:23
SC Moatti Founding Managing Partner Mighty Capital

SC Moatti Founding Managing Partner Mighty Capital

SC Moatti is the Founding Managing Partner of Mighty Capital; the Founding CEO of Products That Count, the most influential product acceleration platform; and a lecturer at Stanford and Columbia Universities. Prior, SC built products that billions of people use at Facebook and Nokia. Andrew Chen, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, called SC “a genius at making products people love.” SC serves on the boards of public and private companies, earned a master’s in electrical engineering, a Stanford MBA, and is a Kauffman Fellow. For more information, visit Mighty.Capital. Mighty Capital is an early-growth Silicon Valley venture capital (VC) firm. We deliver exceptional returns by investing in great products that are also great businesses, like Airbnb, MissionBio and Amplitude. Founders and other VC firms invite us to invest because we help our portfolio companies sell faster, hire top talent, and generate liquidity, by giving them exclusive access to the original and most influential product acceleration platform, Products That Count. Amplitude calls us the “best value for the dollar invested." 

Nov 07, 202113:19
Rui Zhang, CoFounder/Managing Partner gumi Cryptos Capital

Rui Zhang, CoFounder/Managing Partner gumi Cryptos Capital

Rui Zhang, CFA, CICPA, is the CoFounder/Managing Partner of gumi Cryptos Capital. Mr. Zhang has both Economics and Computer Science educational background, and has two years banking and four years consulting firm experience in his early career. In late 2013, Mr. Zhang co-founded Zenith Group Holdings in Shanghai, China (a virtual idle technology development and operation company), and raised Seed and Series A rounds for the company, which was later successfully acquired by Bilibili. Since May 2016, Mr. Zhang has served as the Vice President of gumi Inc and took charge of all overseas investments of gumi Group, including the gaming investment in US and Europe, VR Fund and the VR/AR incubation programs in Seoul and Helsinki. At the beginning of 2018, he took charge of and succeeded in co-founding and raised gCC Fund I.

Nov 07, 202116:46
David Orban, Managing Advisor Beyond Enterprizes

David Orban, Managing Advisor Beyond Enterprizes

David Orban was an early adopter of Bitcoin in 2010 and Ethereum at its launch in 2014. He is the Managing Advisor for the blockchain advisory firm, Beyond Enterprizes. Orban serves on the Faculty of and acts as Advisor to the Singularity University, at the NASA Research Park. He is the author of Something New, on artificial intelligence, available in English, Italian, and Spanish. As a speaker, Orban has given over 100 talks worldwide. He is a mentor for the Thiel Fellowship, a Scientific Advisory Board Member for the Lifeboat Foundation, and an Advisor to the Institute of Ethics and Emergent Technologies. He was the Chairman of the Board, and is an Advisor to Humanity+, promoting scientific advancement and emerging innovation for social impact. David Orban’s personal motto is “What is the question I should be asking?” to help build a better world.

Nov 02, 202134:43
Access to Tokyo: A Startup's Guide to Tokyo via Pemo Theodore Exec Producer FinTech Silicon Valley

Access to Tokyo: A Startup's Guide to Tokyo via Pemo Theodore Exec Producer FinTech Silicon Valley

After living & doing business in 5 countries, Pemo offers advice on Learning about Culture when starting a business in a foreign country.  Pemo Theodore is a Media Publisher & Event Producer and a great people connector..  She is Founder/CEO Silicon Valley TV which has served the San Francisco Bay Area for 11 years! She has produced Silicon Valley Events for Investors & Startups for 9 years. Pemo loves to video interview venture capitalists & founders to engage the human behind the success stories.. She has been Executive Producer of FinTech Silicon Valley for 5 years, organizing twice monthly FinTech talks & panels in San Francisco & Palo Alto. She believes in learning through a great discussion with experts in the domains. Pemo has a talent to bring the right people together and is an incredible networker.  Pemo’s events have been seen as supporting Venture Capitalists & Angels in sourcing great deal flow from startups who attend her events. Many founders have received funding through meeting investors at her events. Her favored medium is visual media and she has built up a great body of work of videos of panels & interviews in Silicon Valley startup ecosystem.  Pemo is based in Silicon Valley & has been involved in online business for 16 years.  She has been in small business for 47 years in Silicon Valley, Ireland, London, Canada & Australia.  In 2010 Pemo published a free ebook (the findings of 1 year research from VCs, angels & women founders) “Why are Women Funded Less than Men? a crowdsourced conversation”

Feb 09, 202108:08
Derek Zanutto General Partner CapitalG on Covid Crisis for Startups

Derek Zanutto General Partner CapitalG on Covid Crisis for Startups

Derek Zanutto is General Partner CapitalG where he focuses on investments in enterprise software. Derek has led a number of investments at CapitalG, including Armis, Collibra and Dataiku, and he serves on multiple boards of directors. Prior to joining CapitalG, Derek helped lead technology investments for 10 years at TPG, Hellman & Friedman and GIC, including investments in Uber, Airbnb, Lynda.com and CAA. Derek started his career at Morgan Stanley. Derek holds an AB from Harvard College and an MBA with High Distinction from the Harvard Business School where he graduated as a Baker Scholar.

Jul 22, 202022:24
Patricia Nakache General Partner Trinity Ventures on Covid19 Crisis for Startups

Patricia Nakache General Partner Trinity Ventures on Covid19 Crisis for Startups

Patricia Nakache invests in early-stage consumer and business tech startups with current investments including Bevi, EAT Club, Life House, Side, thredUP, and Turo, and previous investments in Care.com (CRCM), LoopNet (LOOP), PayScale (acq. Warburg Pincus), and Sabrix (acq. Thomson Reuters), among others. Patricia is a board member of the National Venture Capital Association and a Lecturer in Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business where she teaches Startup Garage. She earned an M.B.A from Stanford University and an A.B. from Harvard University. 

Jul 14, 202016:29
Tim Draper Founder Draper Associates, DFJ & Draper Venture Network on Covid19 Crisis for Startups

Tim Draper Founder Draper Associates, DFJ & Draper Venture Network on Covid19 Crisis for Startups

Tim Draper is a top global venture capitalist, having founded Draper Associates, DFJ and the Draper Venture Network, a global network of venture capital funds. He is a leading spokesperson for Bitcoin, Blockchain, ICOs and cryptocurrencies. In promoting entrepreneurship, he created Draper University of Heroes, a residential and online school based in San Mateo, Ca to help extraordinary people accomplish their life missions. Tim Draper received a Bachelor of Science from Stanford University with a major in electrical engineering and a Master of Business Administration from the Harvard Business School.

Jul 09, 202016:32
Ken Elefant Managing Director Sorenson Ventures on Covid-19 crisis for startups

Ken Elefant Managing Director Sorenson Ventures on Covid-19 crisis for startups

At Sorenson Ventures, Ken has partnered with entrepreneurs in market leading companies such as CyCognito (attack surface security), Openpath (access control), Octarine (cloud security), CloudKnox (authorization management),  NS8 (anti-fraud), Bridgecrew (codified cloud security), Kenna (risk management), Paperspace (machine learning) and SupportLogic (customer support platform). Before joining Sorenson, Ken was Managing Director at Intel Capital and VP at Intel Corporation. Leading the software and security groups at Intel Capital, Ken invested in several companies including AtHoc (Blackberry), Prolexic (Akamai), DocuSign (IPO), Forescout (IPO), AlienVault (AT&T), Venafi, Vectra Networks, Gigya (SAP), and BrightEdge among many others.  Prior to Intel Capital, Ken was a founding general partner at Opus Capital. While at Opus, he served on the boards of Spock Networks (Intelius), Transpond (Webtrends), Supersecret (Knowledge Adventure), Alert Enterprise, Jivox, and TrustedID (Equifax). Previously, Ken was a Senior Associate at both Lightspeed Venture Partners and Battery Ventures. Before business school, Ken worked at Radius, Claris Corporation (the software subsidiary of Apple), and RealNetworks, where he held various sales, marketing, finance, and business development positions.  Ken received an MBA from Harvard Business School and holds a Bachelor of Science in economics from the Wharton School of Business. He is a Kauffman Fellow.


Jun 18, 202017:19