Dennis Steele
Dennis Steele is the Co‑Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Podium, a leading interaction management platform for local businesses—now valued at $3 billion after raising a $201 million Series D in November 2021 led by YC Continuity He began by helping local businesses boost online reviews, founded Podium in 2014 alongside Eric Rea, and led the company from an attic […]
Nasrin Thierer
Nasrin Thierer is a Chicago-based entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist with a 22-year career at Motorola, where she pioneered their first consumer two-way radio. After founding and successfully exiting a cloud-based marketing automation company, Revenew, Inc., in 2016, she co-founded the Thierer Family Foundation and AssetBlue Investment Group in 2015–2016. She leads efforts to leverage technology […]
Patrick Ennis
Patrick Ennis, PhD, is a highly experienced venture capitalist and technologist based in the Pacific Northwest. He currently serves as a Venture Partner at Madrona Venture Group (since April 2019), where he helps build and scale startups across cybersecurity, AI, and enterprise infrastructure . Before Madrona, Patrick was Global Head of Technology at Intellectual Ventures, leading […]
Mat Sherman
Mat Sherman is a founder, builder, and community-driven entrepreneur known for his work connecting early-stage founders with resources, storytelling tools, and growth strategies. Through his personal platform, MatSherman.com, and ventures like Seedscout (formerly Forward Thinking City), he has built a strong network of startup founders and investors. His passion lies in democratizing access to startup […]
John Richards
John E. Richards is a serial entrepreneur, educator, and early-stage investor based in Provo, Utah. He founded the Startup Ignition entrepreneur bootcamp in 2015, helping over 500 founders validate ideas through lean methodology . A decade-long professor at BYU’s Marriott School of Business, he helped elevate their entrepreneurship program to a global top 2 ranking […]
Raphael Danilo
Raphael Danilo is a French entrepreneur and investor based in New York. He co‑founded Yobs Technologies in 2016, an AI-driven talent intelligence platform that raised a $2 M+ seed round (including €280k from Italian Angels for Growth). Yobs was later acquired by Gong in 2022, where Raphael transitioned into a senior product leadership role. He then […]
Luis J. Salazar
Luis Salazar is a serial tech entrepreneur and Fortune‑500 software executive turned social impact innovator. He co-founded Giving Tech Labs (2017–present), an innovation studio that launched pre‑product startups in the public interest sector—spawning ventures in child welfare, analytics, immigration, and more. Over eight years, he’s co‑led five startups from Giving Tech Labs, generating $3.5M in […]
Joseph Delong
Joseph Delong is a leading blockchain technologist based in San Antonio, Texas. He made his mark as CTO of SushiSwap, helping build one of the most prominent decentralized finance platforms before resigning in December 2021 amidst internal governance challenges. Following his departure, he co-founded Astaria, an NFT lending protocol that launched into open beta in mid-2024. Most […]
Amit Agarwal
Amit Agarwal is a seasoned enterprise software executive and investor. He spent over a decade at Datadog—initially as Chief Product Officer from 2012 and later serving as President from August 2022 until stepping down at the end of 2024. During his tenure, he shaped Datadog’s product roadmap, helped scale its cloud-monitoring platform, and led the […]