All Investors

Jeff is a Founder of the OS Fund. He is focused on discovering and empowering entrepreneurs who are working on advancements that are fundamental to the future of humanity. Jeff has nearly two decades of experience in the investment business. He was a founding member and CFO of West Family Investments. In his role there, he led a team of seasonedinvestment professionals through some of the most difficult times in financial market history with tremendous success. Jeff began his career at Ernst & Young where he advised several of the nation’s leading families on complex estate and investment plans and strategies. Jeff is a Certified Public Accountant. He earned his BA in Accounting from Michigan State University. In his off time, Jeff is passionate about tennis, golf, SCUBA and travel. He lives in Chicago with his family.

A public and private markets investor for 18 years. Prior to WndrCo, Jeff worked at several leading alternative asset management firms investing in public securities. Most recently, Jeff was a Senior Analyst at Artisan Partners where he helped manage all aspects of the $4 billion Antero Peak Group long-only and long-short equity-focused strategies, including research, portfolio construction, risk management and firm building.

One of the most active and respected startup ecosystem leaders in all of Asia.

Jeffrey Silverman is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Laconia, which was launched in 2014. A seasoned operator turned investor, Jeffrey has over 20 years of experience building early stage technology and media companies. playing integral roles in all aspects of business management, including strategic planning, business development, operations, sales and marketing. As both an angel investor and a venture capitalist, he has invested in a broad array of sectors during his career, including enterprise SaaS, fintech, health & wellness tech, e-commerce, martech and web 3. Some of his notable investments include TripleLift, PromoteIQ, FreeWheel, LevelSet, SyncOnSet & ALICE. Jeffrey is always seeking new investment opportunities with highly regarded strategic partners and potential for attractive returns. In 2021, Jeffrey co-founded 3SE Holdings in 2021, a fund of funds that invests in Web 3 infrastructure. In 2022, Jeffrey co-founded Proteus Collection, a private partnership focused on collecting a diversified art portfolio of works by emerging artists. Prior to founding Laconia Ventures, the precursor to Laconia Capital Group today, Jeffrey held several senior leadership roles at technology companies including DoubleClick (acquired by Google) and Integrated Color Solutions (ICS). At Laconia, Jeffrey guides portfolio companies on sales acceleration, operational execution, and capital strategy. He is a board member at Addapptation and observer at Marpipe. Jeffrey is passionate about mentoring early stage startups and the next generation of leaders. He is a founder and Board Member of Off The Record, a private network designed to support seed and Series A founders as they navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship. He also mentors aspiring entrepreneurs through Laconia’s weekly open office hours. Outside of work, Jeffrey is actively involved in mentorship through Civics Unplugged, Project Morry and Tulane University’s Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. Jeffrey holds a BA in history from Tulane University and completed Columbia University’s Executive Education Program.

Jen Crystal is WndrCo's General Counsel, bringing 13 years of experience in strategic advising, asset management, private equity and transactional matters. Before joining WndrCo, Jen served as Managing Director and Deputy General Counsel at PineBridge Investments, a global asset manager, where she was responsible for legal matters for the firm's private equity, private credit and alternative investments businesses managed from the Americas. Jen started her career at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, focusing on private equity, M&A and general corporate law matters.

Investor, Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (as GP and LP) Parthenon and Bridgespan Group consultant Active board member to public and private consumer companies

ex-managing partner at NewSchools Venture Fund where she led many of the firm's most successful edtech investments and oversaw research studies. Started her career as a history teacher in Elmwood Park Illinois. Currently sits on the Boards of Outschool, Stellic, Derivita, Desmos, SeeSaw and BookNook. co-founded and taught the class innovations in Teaching 338 at Stanford School of Education and currently is on the teaching staff for Lean Launchpad ENG 245 at Stanford GSB.

Previously served as the Executive Director at JP Morgan

Managing Partner at Climate Capital.

Operator turned investor who has backed over 50 early stage startups. As Partner and Cofounder of Flashstarts, an early stage venture fund in the Midwest, she discovered her passion for investing in visionary women at the earliest stage of their entrepreneurial journeys. As an operator, she launched and scaled media and advertising businesses at 21st Century Fox and YouTube. She has an MBA from Stanford and a BA from Harvard.

Jennifer Laue is a Founder and Vice Chair of Stray Dog Capital, Director of the GlassWall Syndicate, and a board member at Companion Protect. She is also on the non-profit boards of Stray Dog Policy, the Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault (MOCSA), All About Autism, and Humane Society International. She is the co-founder of The Quinn Foundation, Stray Dog Institute, and Ringo’s Fund which are private foundations that focus on charitable giving and programs for animal, environmental, and human welfare causes.

Jenny is a principal on the investment team, and is based in New York. Prior to Craft, she was an early employee at Brex across Operations and Strategic Finance, driving cross-functional strategic planning and helping scale the company's underwriting processes to serve thousands of customers. She was also involved with the launch of the company's ecommerce offering. Jenny started her career at Visa, where she worked in New York and San Francisco across IoT, digital product, and consumer credit. Jenny serves on the leadership team as the Head of Professional Development for Women in Fintech, a non-profit dedicated to increasing representation in the fintech industry.

Jen oversees operations and actively invests for Initialized, leveraging her experience as a product and user experience executive to guide companies to product-market fit. She also works closely with founders on leadership and growth areas including hiring diverse teams, co-founder conflict, and leading with empathy. Prior to joining Initialized, she was chief product officer at Reserve, an Expa-funded hospitality platform that connects restaurants and diners. Before that, she was the founder and CEO of a boutique consultancy where she worked with companies like Apple, Chase, Nordstrom, Starwood Hotels, and Twitter.

dropped out of the Silicon Valley startup scene and landed in a 4th grade classroom in San Jose.

Co-founder of Four Acres Capital and Managing Partner of Supernode Ventures. Prior to Supernode, Jenny worked at Eniac Ventures, where she focused primarily on seed stage investments in mobile-first technology. Jenny also spent time in an operational role at Minibar Delivery, an e-commerce startup, focusing on data analytics and business development. She worked as a financial professional at Goldman Sachs in the Investment Management Division. 

Best known for investing at the front of innovation in areas such edtech, fintech, robotics/AI, EV, and Web3. Similarly, her lifelong passion for gaming led to investments in the metaverse and companies such as YY, and desire to help tackle food insecurity around the world have led to many investments in foodtech and sustainability around the world. She has had eight IPOs in the last five years, including two in 2021, across the NYSE, Nasdaq, ChiNext, HKSE and SSE STAR Market exchanges, and numerous portfolio companies exits via M&A. Jenny’s portfolio includes 18 unicorns with companies such as Agora (API), Bombax, Geek+, Keep, Kingsoft WPS (SSE: 688111), Labster, Momenta, NextGen Foods, NIU (NIU), Huohua, Thunes, Tongdun, Xpeng (XPEV), and more. Selected past investments include hiSoft (NASDAQ: PACT), 21Vianet (NASDAQ: VNET), SinoSun (SHE: 300333), YY (NASDAQ: YY), Xiaomi (HKSE: 1810), 51credit (HKSE: 2051), and UCWeb (acquired by Alibaba).

Co-Founder and former CEO of ESL, Co-Founder and Chairman of G2 Esports, and Co-Founder and former CEO of Bayes (formerly, Dojo Madness). Based in Berlin.

A lifelong serial entrepreneur, Jere Doyle joined Sigma Prime Ventures in the fall of 2015 as a Managing Director.  Jere is passionate about working with entrepreneurs, and is known for his energy and enthusiasm when helping his portfolio companies.  Jere’s deep background in sales and marketing makes him particularly helpful to Founders and CEO's with their “go to market strategy”— with a focus is on how to drive and scale customer acquisition at the right price, while maximizing lifetime value of customers. Prior to joining Sigma Prime, Jere came to be known as one of the most active startup coaches and seed/angel investors in the Boston area through both Doyle Enterprises and The Oyster Angel Fund. Jere made more than 50 such investments in over 4 years, investing in strong entrepreneurs who are building scalable companies with disruptive technologies and large market opportunities.

Since joining Versant in 2011, Jerel has been involved in launching and investing in a number of Versant’s portfolio companies including BlueRock (sale), Crispr (public 2016), Inception 4 (sale), Inception 5 (sale), Quanticel (sale), Akero (2019 IPO), Northern (sale), Repare (2020 IPO), Chinook (2020 reverse merger), Graphite Bio (2021 IPO), Turnstone, Ventus, Rayze and Tentarix. He has focused on company creation, syndicated deals, and creative corporate transactions. He was also instrumental in establishing Versant’s presence in Canada. Jerel was promoted to Managing Director at Versant in December 2015.

Founded Picus together with Alexander in 2015. Previously led large renewable energy and real estate investments in Europe.

an accomplished data scientist, technologist, entrepreneur, and investor. started working on applied AI and data science in 2004 and in 2012 founded the unicorn AI company DataRobot, which he led as CEO for nine years. During the pandemic, Jeremy moved to Washington, DC to help the US government with multiple key parts of Covid response including the vaccine trials, hospital capacity monitoring, and rapid antigen testing. co-founded hOS and Neo Cybernetica in 2021 with the intention of developing impactful AI-powered technologies that positively impact humanity.

Jeremy Hitchcock has been building mission driven companies, teams, and ecosystems from New Hampshire and Greater Boston for the past 20 years. Today, he is a co-founder and partner of New North Ventures, an early stage VC investing in dual use companies at the intersection of national security and commerce. From a Worcester Polytechnic Institute dorm room in 2001, Jeremy founded Dyn, an Internet infrastructure through the global routing/DNS system. After graduating with a B.S. in Management Information Systems and growing Dyn to 500 people, $100mm of ARR, and raising $100mm of growth capital, Jeremy left as CEO in 2016. The company was acquired by Oracle in 2017.

Jeremy is a Co-Founder and serves as Managing Partner at Infinity Ventures. Prior to Infinity, he spent nearly a decade at PayPal in a plethora of deal-related and operating roles, including M&A, PayPal Ventures, Global Pricing, Finance, Partnerships, Product, and Engineering. He was responsible for a number of transformative acquisitions, including Braintree, Venmo, Xoom, Paydiant, Hyperwallet, Swift Financial, iZettle, Go-Pay, and Honey. Also, he was the co-founder of PayPal Ventures and led the venture investments into Plaid, PPRO, Toss, Tink, Acorns, etc. and the growth equity investments into Mercadolivre, Uber, Pine Labs, and Go-Jek. Prior to PayPal, he was the Head of M&A at Sabre Holdings and an investment banker at JP Morgan.

has founded 6 companies and successfully exited 4 of them. His most recent was goworkspace.com which was acquired in Q4 2019.

Jeremy found his way to technology in the mid-1990s when the commercial internet was emerging. In 2014, Jeremy joined Spark. He helped build the firm’s growth fund, where he leads a small team of investors who equally enjoy the journey of finding exceptional founders and products and uncovering the nuances in the data.

Strategic, and transformational leader who engages teams to deliver business results, and drives sustainable excellence. Great at execution and "getting the right things done." Over 20 years of management experience in industrial products, auto manufacturing, and Bio-Tech. Proven ability to drive innovation and deliver products at the speed of the customer. Strong record of achieving competitive advantage and profitable growth in varied economic conditions. Front-end business savvy combined with operational excellence. Inspires team, solves problems, and takes wise risks to achieve business goals. Builds trusting relationships with management, staff, and customers. Experienced in global operations with international assignments. Specialties: TECHNICAL: Operational Excellence, Lean Supply Chain Strategy, Business Development, Lean Manufacturing Principles, Hoshin Kanri (Strategy Deployment)

Jerry started his career in Taiwan where he co-founded a semi-conductor startup. He then moved to Silicon Valley where he joined Atheros and later became a member of technical staff at Qualcomm. He sits on the boards of Giraffe360, Qashier, and Valispace.

Yahoo! co-founder.

leads seed and early-stage investments in Internet and SaaS companies loves products that save money and make life a bit more joyous for consumers, developers, and knowledge workers.

Jesse Draper is a mother of 3 boys, founding partner of Halogen Ventures and focused on early stage investing in consumer technology companies led by female and co-ed teams. Draper is a Kauffman Fellow and 4th generation venture capitalist. Among her 70+ portfolio companies, are the Skimm, ThirdLove, HopSkipDrive, The Flex Company, Squad (acquired by Twitter), Eloquii (sold to Walmart) and This is L (sold to P&G).

Jesse leads Battery’s industrial-technology practice, which has completed more than 60 transactions across the U.S. and Europe since 2003. Prior to Battery, Jesse spent a number of years with Ionian Management and was a founding member of Ionian Ventures, a specialized fund dedicated to transportation and logistics technology companies. At Ionian, he also worked on a range of private equity transactions, collaborating closely with portfolio management teams to design and implement growth strategies. Earlier in his career, Jesse worked at GE Capital.

Prior to founding The Chernin Group, Jesse was a senior member of the media, entertainment, and sports advisory, investing and financing team at Goldman Sachs. Jesse began his career in NFL, MLB, and NHL sports television production at the inception of Fox Sports and then for CBS Sports in the Olympics.

Jesse Johnson is the Director of the TVA. He co-founded and was CEO of Q Collection, a leading sustainable design company (now a part of Twill Textiles). He has been involved as a mentor and investor in several startup businesses and served on the board of two companies sold to a Fortune 50 company. He serves on the board of 1% For The Planet, Yale’s Center for Business and the Environment, Harvard’s Center for Health and the Global Environment and several others. Jesse has an MBA and MES (Environmental Science) from Yale and a BA from Princeton.

Investments in Uniswap, Aleo, and Phantom have touched on all aspects of crypto from DeFi to privacy and security to wallet management. Prior to founding Variant, Jesse was an investment partner on the first crypto fund at Andreessen Horowitz and led the firm’s crypto startup school. Also led blockchain R&D at Spotify after a company he founded – Mediachain Labs, which developed a protocol for tracking ownership of digital media assets on public blockchains – was acquired by the company in 2017.

Jesse joined CapitalG in 2013. Prior to CapitalG, Jesse worked at TPG Capital where he focused on private equity and growth equity investments across multiple sectors and geographies. 

former big pharma CDO, health tech leader, and investor. first Chief Digital Officer for the Bayer AG group, as well as the first woman to hold that role in the industry. transitioned to venture in 2018, moving back to the US and joining a Boston based VC with a focus on digital health and life sciences. co-chair of the Drug Information Association Digital Acceleration Community, and serves on the Yale Medical School Institutional Review Board.

Founder and CEO, Alltruists. Founder and GP, Untapped Capital. Formerly: Cofounder, former CMO of Kiva. CEO, cofounder of ProFounder. Investor, Collaborative Fund. Chief Impact Officer, Aspiration. Stanford MBA. Educator (USC, Stanford) and speaker. Expertise in social enterprise, crowdfunding, microfinance, small biz. Extensive int'l experience.

Focused on future of work, teams, and jobs. Previously in Learning & Development at Cisco Systems, and worked on an innovation and design fellowship in South Africa at Harvard University. Longtime GED instructor, and passionate about transforming workforce development through tech. Writes column for Forbes on the future of jobs and startups helping to create jobs here in the U.S. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessicalin.

Passionate, life-long student of technology and how its use affects children, families, schools, and our overall society & culture. Co-organizer of the 9000+ member NYEdTech Meetup Ex-Director of Engagement + User Experience Research team member at BrainPOP, Inaugural Education Fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center @ Sesame Workshop, Adjunct Professor at Bank Street College, and featured speaker for Common Sense Media’s national family engagement initiatives.

Prior to founding Hannah Grey, Jessica was the Senior Managing Partner at MDC Ventures, the corporate VC fund of MDC Partners.  She’s led investments in companies including Netomi, Gradient.io (acquired by Criteo), Veritonic, Indicative (acquired by mParticle), Catch & Release, Perksy, and Mezzobit (acquired by OpenX). She’s also an active angel with investments in breakout companies such as Lively (acquired by Wacoal), AspireIQ, Bennie, Alleyoop, and Sphere.

Jett invests at the intersection of worthwhile and fun. If there’s no fun, what’s the point? If it’s not worthwhile, who cares? He is drawn to resilient founders who don’t fit a mold.

Jewel Burks is an experienced sales and marketing professional. Jewel Burks leads the Partpic team as CEO. Since its founding in August 2013, Jewel has been responsible for building a team, goal setting and execution and fundraising. Prior to founding Partpic, Jewel worked in Enterprise Sales at Google and in Sales Management at McMasterCarrIndustrial Supply. Jewel graduated from Howard University and is from Nashville, Tennessee.

Jiho built his career working with South Korean tech giant SK Planet and ecommerce unicorn Coupang as lead product manager. Jiho is also well connected to Silicon Valley becoming the first Korean to be accepted into the 500 Startups accelerator program in 2010 and went on to co-found Soomgo, a Y-Combinator portfolio company(#153 of top YC portfolio companies) recently valued at over $200m. Jiho’s most recent venture was blockchain startup BxB which was acquired by the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange; Binance in 2020.

Interested in founders working on Vertical software, SMB software, developer-centric solutions, e-commerce tech, and martech

Jim’s commitment to be a multiplier for entrepreneurs and engineers comes to life on Galvanize’s campuses in Denver, San Francisco, Boulder, Fort Collins, Seattle, and Austin (2016). Each Galvanize (now Upslope) campus is a unique and inspiring learning environment.

At a young age, Jim learned he was “unemployable” and pursued his passion for building tech companies. Upon exiting his last firm, Ascendant Technology, he witnessed an “entrepreneurial renaissance” — the rise of a generation of people like himself, technologically savvy aspiring founders — and he set about galvanizing and supporting these “students” on campuses in communities around the country.

Jim Dugan is the Founding Managing Partner of OCA Ventures, specializing in Fintech investments. Jim sits on the board of various portfolio companies, including Ocient, Alembic, The MOM Project, Prisidio, SumRidge Partners, SpotHero, ArcherEDU, Impossible Objects, BigStep, and Falcon Insurance Group. Prior to forming OCA Ventures, Jim traded derivatives at the Chicago Board of Trade & CBOE, and worked in corporate finance with Continental Bank. Jim has over 30 years of corporate finance, capital markets, and venture capital investment experience. Jim serves on various non-profit Boards such as USOPF, NU Wave, 1871, IVCA, Illinois Institute of Technology, and HCHS HardShip Endowment Fund, among others. Jim received a BA in Economics from the University of Rochester and earned his MBA (MM) from the JL Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Go to karaoke song: Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen

Prior to Blu Venture Investors, he served as scientist for the U.S. Government and afterwards founded BDS, Inc. in 1982, where he was the CEO until 1991 when BDS merged with BTG leading to a successful IPO in 1992. After, he formed the System Integration practice of Price Waterhouse in 1994. He exited PW in 1996 and founded Ernst & Young Technologies, serving as CEO until its purchase by Cap Gemini in 2004, where he was president of CapGemini Technologies post merger. As an investor, Jim focuses on companies that are leading innovations in technology that fit within the market for national security. Moreover, he looks for competent teams, creative paths to market, and great concepts.

accidental entrepreneur, eschewing the investment banking path that so many of his Stanford classmates took to try to make a difference as a teacher.  co-founded Teachers’ Curriculum Institute.

Jim Swartz founded Accel with Arthur Patterson in 1983. Over 50 years in venture capital, Jim has been a lead director of more than 50 successful companies. He was instrumental as a founder/mentor of Accel London and in the founding of Meritech Capital. Before Accel, Jim was the founding general partner of Adler & Company, which he started with Fred Adler in 1978 after his tenure as a vice president of Citicorp Venture Capital. A long time industry leader, Jim is a former chairman of the National Venture Capital Association and the 2007 recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award. He serves as Chair of the Swartz Foundation, Co-Chair of the Christian Center of Park City and MVYouth, and Director Emeritus of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Foundation. As an active philanthropist, Jim’s initiatives include dozens of academic, arts, athletic, health, scholarship, and social impact programs including founding Impact Partners, the leading funder of social impact documentaries, and winning an Oscar for Producing the 2018 Best Documentary, Icarus. Jim grew up in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, graduated from Harvard in Engineering and has a M.S. in Industrial Administration and an Honorary Doctorate from Carnegie Mellon, where he sponsors the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship.

Jimmy is also a Co-founder & Partner at SparkLabs, a startup accelerator in Korea. Jimmy is Co-founder and President of N3N, an IoT platform company and Cisco’s first global IoT investment. They service numerous Fortune 500 companies and governments, such as Samsung Electronics, POSCO, Port of Singapore, The North Face, and Hyundai Motors. He previously served as N3N’s CEO. Previously, Jimmy was CEO of Nexonova, a game development studio of Nexon Corp that specializes in Social Network Games. 

works with founders at the very beginning of their entrepreneurial journey, and supports them to make a positive impact on everyday consumer lives, including digital health, education, food tech, e-commerce, marketplace, community-driven business, creator economy, etc.

Technologist, Entrepreneur, and Investor

A Singaporean scholar turned venture capitalist, Jixun leads GGV Capital’s global investment team and oversees its sector-focused investment strategy. Consistently recognized among the top VCs in Asia, completed four new IPOs in 2021 alone, and serves on the board of directors for SGInnovate, an accelerator funded by the Singaporean government to help entrepreneurial scientists. Jixun has been recognized by Forbes China as one of the “Best Venture Capitalists” every year since 2006 and was also named as one of the Top 10 Venture Capitalists by Zero2IPO as well as "VC Professional of the Year" by the Asia Venture Capital Journal. He has been named to the global Forbes Midas list since 2019, and was also recognized among the Top 100 Venture Capitalists by The New York Times/CBInsights in 2019.

Jo Ann Corkran is Co-CEO and Managing Partner of Golden Seeds LLC, an investor consortium that invests in early-stage women-led businesses. Golden Seeds' nationwide network of over 300 investors is one of the largest and most active angel investment organizations in the US. Also a General Partner of Golden Seeds Venture Fund, Golden Seeds Fund 2, and Golden Seeds innovate NY Fund. Previously Managing Director at Credit Suisse Asset Management.

General Partner at Acrobator Ventures

As an early employee at Facebook and through her 9+ year tenure, Joanna Shevelenko played leadership roles in various organizations including user operations, platform operations, business development, and building the Facebook office in India. After Facebook, Joanna spent time at Social Capital as an EIR, and was the COO at Premise Data. Now asChief Business Officer of Atrium, she leads various teams including G&A, business operations, legal operations, recruiting, finance, management operations, and accounts. In this role, she is helping define repeatable processes to operationalize the business so that it can continue to scale with ease Joanna has a BA from Harvard and lives in San Francisco with her husband and two young children.

Joanne’s passion for technology developed early, when her mathematician dad and computer scientist mom taught her how to program. By the time she was nine years old, she had turned her skills into a business and made her first webpage for a client. Joanne began her career as an engineer at Cisco Systems and later co-founded a mobile gaming company. Joanne was on the boards of TubiTV (acquired by Fox for $500m) and Mya (acquired by Stepstone), and is currently on the board of and/or invested in Tonkean, Jasper.AI, SafelyYou, EraDB, CaptivateIQ, Oasis Labs, Watchful and others. Joanne studies the impact of AI on the enterprise and invests in AI-first B2B applications and data platforms that are the building blocks of the automated enterprise. She has shared her learnings as a featured speaker at conferences including CES, SXSW, WebSummit, and has spoken about the impact of AI on society in her TED talk “Confessions of an AI Investor.”

Prior to Luno Expeditions, Jocelyn was an early stage employee at an impact investing VC, an infrastructure investor in Latin America, and worked at a bulge bracket private equity fund.

I'm personally keenly interested in cloud infrastructure, DevOps, security, supply chain & logistics, and tech that transforms industries. I've spent my career building software in the formative years of companies like VMware and Facebook (as well as a few startups). I've spanned a broad set of domains from operating systems to consumer web and mobile apps to shrink-wrapped software to developer tools to big data. The one "constant" has been high-growth and industry transformation. I'm passionate about scaling products, teams, and companies, and I care deeply about STEM education.

Before focusing on institutional investing, Joe co-founded Palantir (NASDAQ: PLTR) a global software company known for its work in defense and other industries, as well as for providing the platform to run the COVID-19 common operating picture for key decision makers in over 35 countries. After Palantir, he founded and remains as Chairman of both Addepar, which has over $4 trillion USD on its wealth management technology platform, and OpenGov, which provides software for over 2,000 municipalities and state agencies. More recently, he is also a co-founder of Affinity, Epirus, Resilience Bio, and other mission-driven technology companies, which he continues to create with his team out of the 8VC Build program.

Joe Montana, a Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback, might be better known for his four Super Bowl championships with the San Francisco 49ers than as a financier of startups. But through Liquid2 Ventures, his seed-investment fund founded in 2014, Montana has invested in 87 startups. Two of his standouts include the customer-onboarding startup Flatfile and money-management software company Origin, which hit a $400 million valuation in August. In February, Montana and his Liquid2 partners announced that they’d raised an $80 million third fund, and that the previous funds had each hit the industry bull’s-eye of a three-time return for their investors.

Prior to joining a16z, Joe was chief revenue officer at Segment, where he scaled revenues to upwards of $200M ARR in advance of the company’s $3.2B acquisition by Twilio. Before Segment, he was was the EMEA vice president and general manager for three open source software companies: Hortonworks, which combined with Cloudera in a $5.2B merger in 2019; MongoDB, which went public in 2017; and MySQL, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems for $1B in 2008.

Joe Proto became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Transactis Inc. in 2007, after nearly three decades in the billing and payments industry as a senior executive and successful entrepreneur. Prior to Transactis, he launched REMITCO, a remittance processing company, which was acquired in 2000 by First Data Corp, as well as Financial Telesis (CashFlex), which was acquired in 1992 by CoreStates, now part of Wells Fargo. Joe recently joined the Board of Directors of BillMyParents and is also an LP and Advisor in Metamorphic Ventures (focused on transactional media). Joe is a member of various financial services associations and has been a frequent speaker at conferences in the payments industry.

Joe stayed in New Jersey and worked for five years at AT&T Bell Labs and its spin-off Lepton Inc. In 1995, Zhou returned to work in China as the VP of UTStarcom China until 1999 when he joined Softbank China Venture Capital as the head of its Beijing office. In October 2001, he became a partner at Softbank’s SAIF for five years. In 2007, he became a founding managing partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers China. In April 2008, he co-founded Keytone Ventures as managing partner.

experienced leader, medical professional, researcher, and entrepreneur. previously served as the Chief Scientific Officer at Tempus, a company focused on bringing the power of data and artificial intelligence to healthcare. ex-Associate Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and founding Director of the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. led investments in companies such as Harmonic Discovery and Character Biosciences

Startup founder with a technical background, spent the last years investing in startups solving important problems. He believes we need both degrowth ideas and venture-scale technical solutions to solve the climate crisis.

VP of Asia-Pacific for Rapyd payments and Managing Director for Rapyd Ve

Johan Brenner is an experienced entrepreneur and investor in technology and growth companies. Johan is a General Partner with Creandum, a leading European early-stage VC firm. His prior experience includes time at Balderton Capital (previously Benchmark Europe) working with investments such as LiveBookings, Habbo Hotel, Rebtel, Zopa and others.

Founder and Managing Partner at Elevar Equity.

John is the Co-founder and managing partner of Relay Ventures

John Brennan, Senior Partner at YL Ventures, oversees the firm’s core U.S. investment processes and portfolio company value-add initiatives from its Silicon Valley office. He also serves as the firm’s CFO and manages its Limited Partner relationships. John is committed to mentoring YL Ventures’ portfolio companies from their earliest days. He spends much of his time working with founders on business development, customer engagement, hiring, finance, fundraising, and general strategy, as well as taking on active board positions. John also manages the firm’s Venture Advisory Board, which now boasts over 100 cybersecurity experts.  He has over 10 years of experience in venture capital, having previously held positions at Data Collective (DCVC), Horsley Bridge Partners, and OCA Ventures.

As Managing Partner, John oversees the Fund’s operations and investment process, including fundraising; investment identification, due diligence, and structuring; portfolio management; and asset disposition. John joined FCA in 2001. Prior to joining FCA, John co-founded MyOfficeProducts, Inc., and served as Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer, President, and Vice Chairman.  Previously, he served as Executive Vice President of Motorent, Inc., an Avis Rent-A-Car System, Inc. licensee.

Partner at Union Square Ventures, joining the firm in 2010. He began his career as a corporate lawyer at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York and Paris and was a partner in the firm’s mergers and acquisitions group from 1994-2000. Between 2000 and 2010 John was involved in a number of private equity and venture projects.

Experienced operator. Most recently, he served as Chief Executive Officer for a fintech SME in Europe.

Prior to founding 5AM in 2002, Dr. Diekman was a Founder and-Managing Director of Bay City Capital. Previously Dr. Diekman was Chairman and CEO of Affymetrix, and Chairman and Managing Director of Affymax.

Prior to founding Firebrand, John served as Managing Director for Techstars. While at Techstars he ran three accelerator programs in Kansas City and invested in 30 startups.

John was previously a part of five startups, including one he cofounded. Before Techstars he spent nine years at UnitedHealth Group, managing large scale projects including scaling a business from zero to $1.5 billion per year and 1,500 employees in four years.

With a passion for building startup ecosystems, John has been active in the Kansas City startup community since 2012, serving on several advisory boards of community organizations.

John began his career as a consultant to the Department of Defense (DoD), where he helped build the  DOD's Y2K Decision Support System. In 2001 he joined the Accenture Government Center where he was the Lead Architect and Deployment Manager designing and operating the infrastructure that hosted NYC 3-1-1, the world’s largest citizen service center, and well as NYC.gov, the City of New York’s web portal. Since 2005, John has run a consulting business providing technical and program management services for a range of enterprise customers, including The City of New York, The NYPD, Accenture, NYK Line, Perot Systems, and UBS.John was the Lead Migration Architect for the NYC CITIServ Data Center Consolidation Program supporting assessment, planning, and migration efforts across more than 35 City Agencies. 

John is a Founding Partner of Stout Street Capital. Prior to Stout Street, he managed TechMotion Capital, a private investment shop specializing in the algorithmic trading of energy futures and equities in New Orleans. John started his career as a construction manager, managing keystone projects worth over $1 billion in India. John holds a Bachelor’s of Science in civil engineering and a Master’s degree in construction management from India’s National Institute of Construction Management and Research as well as an MBA in Finance and Energy from Tulane University.

John Frankel is the founding partner of ff Venture Capital. He founded the firm in 2008 and has been a seed and early-stage investor since late 1999. Prior to founding ffVC, John worked at Goldman Sachs for 21 years in a variety of roles that involved technology development, reengineering and capital markets. At Goldman Sachs, he worked closely with some of the world’s leading hedge fund managers and developed a keen understanding of emerging technologies and portfolio risk/return management. John started his business career in London with Arthur Andersen having earned a Master of Arts from New College, Oxford, where he studied Mathematics, Philosophy and Logic. He is a Fellow Chartered Accountant of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. John also sits on The NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s Board of Overseers.

At DataTribe, John helps great entrepreneurs accelerate the growth of their businesses. John loves working at the intersection of technology, design, and business. Prior to DataTribe, John led product management at WealthEngine. Previously, John has co-founded and built three successful technology firms, all of which have been acquired by larger companies: Clara Vista acquired by CMGI (1999), Pickle.com acquired by Scripps Networks (2007), and BrightContext acquired by WealthEngine (2014).

John is a seasoned entrepreneur, operating executive and corporate director with significant experience founding, funding and developing early-stage life sciences and technology companies. Prior to JAZZ, John was the founder, president and CEO of NeuroVista, a Seattle-based medical device company pioneering new technologies for the management and treatment of epilepsy. John was also a founder of Northstar Neuroscience, which went public in 2006 and was subsequently acquired by St. Jude Medical. Previously, John was a founder of Heartstream, a company that revolutionized the treatment of sudden cardiac arrest with uniquely designed external defibrillators that remain the global market leader and can be found in airports, sports arenas, public buildings and many other locations. Heartstream went public in 1996 and was subsequently acquired by HewlettPackard.

with 25 years of leadership experience scaling from start up to multi Billion IPO in both B2B and B2C companies across the Technology, Airline and AgriFood sectors. Founder of the Forbes AgTech summit 

My first job after college as an IBM marketing rep taught me two important things about myself. Through that initial work, I first discovered and explored my love for sales and marketing. I also learned that success is achieved only when the customer believes that their needs are understood and met with care. As my mentor used to say, “Take good care of your relationships or someone else will.” After getting my MBA at Harvard, I went into private equity where I could integrate these capabilities into the core mission of the investment firms that I worked for. At the time, the investor relations role was still quite new and no one had written the playbook on how it should be done. Bridging those two worlds became a calling for me. Over the course of my career, that calling helped me to create authentic and meaningful connections with a broad range of investors while working for world-class investment firms such as JP Morgan, Court Square Capital, and most recently at Kelso & Co.

John Malloy is a General Partner and co-founder of BlueRun Ventures.  He focuses on mobile software and services opportunities across both consumer and enterprise businesses.  John has been an integral part of the explosive growth phases of major services & brands such as Friends & Family, NOKIA, PAYPAL and WAZE. As a VC, John was the first venture investor in PayPal (IPO 2002 & eBay), Waze (GOOG), Topsy (AAPL), Slide (GOOG), Bitfone (HP), Chomp (AAPL) and others.  Some of his current investments include HumanAPI, Kitman and AlwaysAI. Prior to starting BlueRun Ventures, John held executive and operating roles at NOKIA, MCI and co-founded Go Communications.  He holds a J.D. from George Mason University and a B.A. from Boston College.

John joined Sigma in 1996. With over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur, a business unit manager, and an investor, John uses motivation, enthusiasm, and his own technology and operational expertise to support Sigma’s portfolio companies. Throughout his career, he has held executive management positions, created new business units and departments, and sponsored new projects at some of the industry’s most successful technology companies.

John led TechCrunch’s AI coverage, providing analysis on hundreds companies applying machine learning to solve enterprise problems. He has also contributed to outlets like NPR, SXSW and The Washington Post on advancements in artificial intelligence. John spent time with the Mid-Atlantic and Michigan Venture Associations, supporting founders and venture firms outside of Silicon Valley. He previously drove technology modernization in the nation’s 17th-largest school district.