All Investors

Has 18 years of technology, entrepreneurship and corporate venture capital experience with Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Computer Sciences Corporation, The Modem Shop (which he founded) and Kleiner Perkins-backed WineShopper.com (acquired by Wine.com).

A pioneering software and internet entrepreneur, leader, networker, and investor. Rick loves technology and building healthy organizations. During his career, venture capital has been a continual theme, either as the entrepreneur leader receiving venture funds or as the venture investor.

The only thing that matters is the entrepreneur. Their drive and passion are way more important than anything we do as investors. During that extended period of time that I took off, I was trying to figure out what was next. I had a conversation with my gardener, where he noted how passionate I was in describing venture capital compared to the other paths. I made the decision right there to follow my passion and get back into venture capital by founding Crosscut. I learned there is no substitute for hard work. I also learned the importance of entering the right market at the right time and never discounting the role of luck in any outsized success.

Rick Yang joined NEA in 2007 and is focused on information technology and energy investments. He is currently on the board of Compass Labs, and was previously a director and is still active with One Block Off the Grid (acquired by Pure Energies Group). Prior to joining NEA, Rick advised on and executed a number of strategic financing initiatives for leading public and private tech companies in the Credit Suisse Technology Group. Rick earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University, where he was also a varsity swimmer.

Prior to co-founding Equal Ventures, Rick was an investor at Lightbank, an early-stage venture fund based in Chicago, where he led investments in companies like Riskmatch (acquired by Vertafore), Vettery (acquired by Adecco), Neumob (acquired by CloudFlare), Expel and Catalytic amongst others. In addition to those investments, Rick served on the boards of Snapsheet and Benchprep and angel invested in several industry-leading companies like Rigup. 

One of Airbnb's first 10 employees, where he built its Data Science team

divides his focus between supporting the company’s existing portfolio and searching for the next entrepreneur to back – something that takes a real eye for detail and intuition for good ideas. was an Associate at Arctaris Capital Partners and the founder of Crash Alert.

also currently serves as the Country Director for Near, Inc. Experienced investor and operator.

Rio is the Director of the Boulder program and residency. Prior to Antler, Rio was focused on growth strategy and innovation at frog where he was a Senior Strategist, shaping ideas into commercially viable products and services. Previously, Rio had experience in both growth equity and early-stage VC. He is now developing Antler’s footprint in the Rocky Mountain Region, hoping to grow the Boulder/Denver startup ecosystem.

has been investing in technology startups for over 20 years and is an entrepreneur and operating executive Prior to Link Ventures, Rob co-founded silicon valley based venture capital firm Bridgescale Partners, and software user interface company Typesoft which was acquired by Apple in 2014.  managed multiple venture capital funds totaling over $1B in assets spanning all segments of the technology industry.  Prior to forming Bridgescale, Rob was a general partner Mohr Davidow Ventures and prior to that worked in various marketing positions at Intel Corporation.

Rob is a co-founder of Shasta Ventures and a 24-year veteran of the venture capital industry. He focuses on investing in emerging platforms – Robotics, Space, Connected Hardware, and Transportation. His current Shasta investments include Doctor on Demand, Fetch Robotics, LawVu, Spire Global, Starship Technologies, Survios, Tonal, and Turo.

Rob Desborough is a Partner in the Seraphim Space Fund and CEO of Seraphim Space Camp Accelerator, now one of the world's leading accelerator programmes for Space Tech start-ups, which he launched in 2018. Rob heads up the Early Stage Investment activity for Seraphim. Rob has over 20 years' technology Venture Capital experience in both investment and operational roles from start-up and university spin-out through to early-stage, growth, development, and IPOs. Prior to Seraphim, Rob was with YFM Equity Partners as an Investment Director. Rob has been a board observed or director for over 35 companies internationally, including the world's leading social listening company Brandwatch. Rob holds a BSc (Hons) in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Glasgow and a Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip) in Information Technology Systems from the University of Strathclyde.

Rob has spent his career investing, living and working in developing markets. Prior to co-founding Lateral Frontiers he was a Venture Partner with Conversion Capital and established Frontier Dawn Partners, an evergreen vehicle for capital deployment to early stage, technology enabled founding teams in sub-Saharan Africa. Rob started his career in capital markets at JP Morgan, Johannesburg, became an Executive Director at Goldman Sachs and Investment Director at ACI. He spent ten years based in Johannesburg, Moscow and London transitioning across hedge fund coverage and private equity buyout advisory in markets including sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

Extensive media, tech, and entertainment experience working as a VC at Spark Capital, Business Unit Owner at Ebay, and consultant at The Parthenon Group. Has held project management roles at different companies. Founded Letslink.jp, one of the first social networking sites outside of the United States. Areas of interest include the Internet, new media, consumer marketing, and consumer finance.

Focused on seed, early stage and emerging growth companies dedicated to the transformation of learning and the improvement of individual and societal capacities at scale. Currently serves on the board for a number of Learn Capital companies including Amplify, Photomath, Smashcut, Brilliant, Andela, Brainly and several other breakthrough firms. In addition to his work with edtech companies, he is a participant in two academic neuroscience organizations. He was additionally co-founder and president of Swarm Networks, a massively scalable storage company purchased by Intel.

Rob was Yelp CFO and took the company public in 2012. He was previously CFO of Move.com, Shopping.com, eBay Germany and Digital Think. Rob is a UT Austin alum and a certified public accountant (inactive) who also teaches a course on "How to be a Great CFO."

VC & angel investor with 120+ deals done. Rob likes to invest in deep tech. Prior to founding Asymmetry, Rob was a Manager at Capgemini, a Project Lead at Grant Thornton, and a Senior Consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Rob entered venture capital after a 15-year career at Salomon Smith Barney, where he was co-head of global arbitrage trading, a member of Salomon’s operating and risk-management committees and chaired the recruiting committee. He earned his degrees in engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and education from the Wharton School of Management.

has been investing in high growth companies since 1993. ex-Managing Director of the Small Enterprise Assistance Funds (SEAF), a $300 million managed emerging market venture capital company. ex-Associate of Private Equities at the Calvert Group, a $10 billion socially responsible mutual fund has worked for two start-up companies. 

In founding Allegis, Bob’s mission was to build a seed and early-stage venture firm that would combine operational experience with an entrepreneurial spirit and a focus on forging true partnerships with portfolio companies to build successful and sustainable cybertechnology companies. Bob has been recognized as a Fortune 100 cybersecurity executive and also as one of “CyberSecurity’s Money Men”.

Bob founded Osage Partners in 1990 and has built a track record as a top-performing venture investor. Along with the other Managing Partner, Bob is responsible for overseeing and approving all Partnership investments and all other Partnership and organizational activities. In addition to founding Osage Partners, Bob is a founder and Managing Partner of Osage Venture Partners (currently investing out of OVP IV) and Osage University Partners (currently investing out of OUP III). He is also the founder of Cimarron Healthcare Partners, a PE firm focused on lower-middle market healthcare investing. Previously Bob founded Osage Industries, a PE firm focused on industrial manufacturing companies, and RAF NetVentures, a top-decile, 1999 vintage venture fund focused on early stage dot-com investing.

Bob joined Sigma Partners in 1995 and has over 30 years of experience in the high technology industry. His ability to identify and motivate innovative founding teams has been an essential ingredient of his investment success. Bob regularly leverages his deep operational experience and technology intellect to support the firm’s portfolio companies. Prior to joining Sigma Partners, Bob was President & CEO of Epoch Systems, the leading vendor of client-server data management software.

Robert brings 20 years of legal experience, working with both startups on venture capital investments and investors on impact investing deals.

Multi-time founder Currently heading Compound Labs, an open source protocol for developers.

Robert Nelsen is a co-founder and a Managing Director of ARCH Venture Partners. He joined ARCH at its founding and played a significant role in the creation, early sourcing, financing and development of more than 150 companies, including 39 which have reached valuations exceeding $1 billion. Mr. Nelsen is focused on generating new ideas for disruptive technologies or business models and partnering with founding management teams and entrepreneurs to execute on these visions by advancing novel platform technologies with the overarching goal of improving health care and outcomes. Some of his notable early-stage investments include Illumina (ILMN), Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (ALNY), Juno Therapeutics (JUNO – acquired by Celgene), Beam Therapeutics (BEAM), Karuna Therapeutics (KRTX), Altos Labs, EQRx, Lyell Immunopharma (LYEL), Array BioPharma (acquired by Pfizer), Unity Biotechnology (UBX), Hua Medicine (2552:HK), Vir Biotechnology (VIR), Agios Pharmaceuticals (AGIO), Sage Therapeutics (SAGE), GRAIL (acquired by Illumina), Gossamer Bio (GOSS), Ikaria (acquired by Mallinckrodt), Kythera Biopharmaceuticals (KYTH – acquired by Allergan), Receptos (RCPT – acquired by Celgene), Aviron (AVIR – acquired by MedImmune), Denali Therapeutics (DNLI), Rubius Therapeutics (RUBY), Syros Pharmaceuticals (SYRS), Sana Biotechnology (SANA), Verve Therapeutics (VERV), Brii Biosciences (2137:HK), Bluebird Bio (BLUE), R2 Technology (acquired by Hologic), Caliper Life Sciences (CALP – acquired by PerkinElmer), Trubion Pharmaceuticals (TRBN – acquired by Emergent Biosolutions), Adolor (ADLR – acquired by Cubist), deCODE Genetics (DCGN – acquired by Amgen), Editas (EDIT), 10x Genomics, Semma Therapeutics (acquired by Vertex), and IDUN Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Pfizer). Mr. Nelsen is a director of VIR, SANA, LYEL, National Resilience, Insitro, Prime Medicine, Nutcracker Therapeutics, Maze Therapeutics, Neumora Therapeutics, Brii Biosciences, and serves as Chairman of Hua Medicine, among others. He previously served as a Trustee of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute, the Institute of Systems Biology, and was a director of the National Venture Capital Association. Mr. Nelsen holds an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and a B.S. from the University of Puget Sound with majors in Economics and Biology.

At Expa, Roberto focuses on running the Expa platform and providing operational, hands-on support to our portfolio companies and their founders.

Former Chief Enterprise Innovation Officer at Samsung, Chief Information Officer / Chief Technology Officer / Chief Information Security Officer for BlackBerry, and Chief Compliance Officer at AT&T, Robin brings 20 years of direct technical due diligence to her role as Founding Partner at Valor.

She leads Valor’s technical diligence process, chairs our Innovation Council, and coordinates portfolio alliances with major enterprise technology firms. She has 15 patents, many in use today. Robin has presented at the CIO Forum, Gartner and Forrester, and is sought for comment by Forbes, Fortune and The Wall Street Journal. She is the founder and owner of Atlanta Tech Park, one of the largest innovation centers on the East Coast. Robin serves on the boards of Mitsubishi Financial (MUFG) and Great West Life Co

Robin Praeger CPA (inactive) is Managing Director and advisor. Robin served as Versant's CFO from 2000 to 2022. He was promoted to Managing Director in 2005. Robin works closely with Versant’s senior leadership team on the firm’s internal operations.

passionate about helping entrepreneurs build amazing products, strong management teams, big businesses and ultimately lasting companies. The primary areas of emphasis are product and market strategy, partnerships and customer development, team building and financing strategies.

Rodney Sampson is heralded as the leading pioneer in building diverse, equitable and inclusive technology, startup and venture ecosystems from the ground up. He is respected as a pioneer and innovator of streaming technologies at the start of the 21st century; and was the first Black cofounder of a technology startup to raise millions in venture capital throughout the Southeastern United States. Today, he serves as Chairman & CEO, Opportunity Hub; General Partner, 100 Black Angels & Allies Fund; and Venture Partner, Draper Goren Holm. Sampson is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC; a Venture Partner at Draper Goren Holm; and Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professorship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University.

Rodolfo is fascinated by financial disintermediation, peer-to-peer funding, and bringing transparency and simplicity to the consumer experience. When Rodolfo was 17, he co-founded his first startup, Mexplosion, to host the Mexican qualifiers for the World Cyber Games e-gaming competition in 2001. His second and more recent entrepreneurial venture was a crowdfunding platform for social enterprises called YouVest.

I’m passionate about innovation and how it can positively change people’s lives. I’ve been an investment professional for the last 17 years. I have invested on behalf of and represent some of the world’s most recognized business leaders. Be smart and be honest is the code on which I have built my professional relationships.

experienced investor in FinTech, Sports, Real Estate, etc. Member of the Miami Marlins ownership group and Advisory Board.

Roger retired as corporate vice president and general counsel of Johnson & Johnson (J&J) after a 30-year career with the company. He served as a member of the J&J Executive Committee for 15 years. Roger is the chairman of the board of trustees of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the 3rd largest foundation in the U.S. and the largest foundation in the world devoted to healthcare. He is also chairman of the board of trustees of the Child Health Institute of New Jersey. Roger currently serves on the Business Advisory Board of Healthpoint Capital, a private equity fund in New York. He is also chairman of the Foundation Venture Capital Group, an in-house VC fund focused on commercializing discoveries made by scientific faculty at the Rutgers Medical School.

Former entrepreneur who invests in talented founders building innovative consumer-technology companies. Before joining Battery, Roger spent 10 years as an entrepreneur and operator. He was the co-founder and president of NetMarket, an ecommerce company that executed the first retail transaction on the Internet in 1994. NetMarket was acquired by Cendant Corporation. Roger also co-founded Corio, a leading managed-service provider that went public and was later acquired by IBM. Finally, he co-founded SMART, a non-profit that provides disadvantaged students access to educational opportunities, personal experiences and social support services to foster academic excellence and access to a college education. Roger has been named to the Forbes Midas List many times. Roger graduated from Yale University and is the President of the Yale University Council.

Rohan invests in mission-driven teams building companies that transform pharma operations and catalyze biological breakthroughs. Prior to joining Obvious, he led venture investments in biotech, diagnostics, and healthcare technology companies at Verily Life Sciences, a Google spinout, and at Northpond Ventures, a life-sciences focused venture firm. He started his career in product management roles at CompuGroup Medical, building electronic medical records, and at Verily, productizing neural networks for diagnostic applications.

Advisor and CFO/COO for venture and growth-stage companies Experience in SaaS, infrastructure, ad tech, healthcare, e-commerce, real estate, industrial, etc. Work with companies from inception through the exit (M&A or IPO) Deep expertise with capital raising (debt and equity),M&A, leading company operations, Board leadership, and complex restructuring/company transformation Active Angel investor

Roland Fryer is the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University. His research combines economic theory, big data, and randomized social experiments to help design policies that can increase opportunity in America. Professor Fryer was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, the John Bates Clark Medal (given by the American Economic Association to the best American Economist under age 40), and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, among others. He was a member of the 2009 Time 100 (most influential people in the world) and has been featured in Esquire's Genius issue. Prior to Harvard, he worked at McDonalds (drive-thru, not corporate).

Roman leads investments, sits on the board of our portfolio companies and actively works with startup founders. Roman’s main focus is around analytics and everything finance- and planning-related, but his brilliant mind makes him a versatile team member.

Through various non-profit activities, Roman is involved in helping underprivileged people from diverse backgrounds get up to par with their more fortunate peers. His other activities outside of the VC world still revolve around finance and math, including interest in cryptocurrencies and trading of various instruments.

Ron Burkle has served as a member of Yahoo's board of directors since November 2001. Burkle is managing partner of The Yucaipa Companies, a private investment firm, which he co-founded in 1986. Burkle also serves as a director of Yucaipa Equity Partners, L.P., Occidental Petroleum Corp. and KB Home Corporation.

Prior to Closed Loop Partners, Ron was the Deputy Commissioner of Sanitation, Recycling, and Sustainability in New York City in the Bloomberg Administration. has been recognized with a number of business and environmental awards including recognition as a ‘Champion of the Earth’ by the United Nations Environment Program

Frequently sought out by media such as the New York Times, Bloomberg and Forbes, Ron Gula is one of the leading cybersecurity thinkers in the industry. Ron started his career in information security at the National Security Agency conducting penetration tests of government networks and performing advanced vulnerability research. He was also the original author of the Dragon Intrusion Detection System and CTO of Network Security Wizards, acquired by Enterasys Networks.

responsible for investment selection and portfolio management at Rainfall. After serving as Head of Organization for Mamram (IDF Tech Unit), Ron was part of the founding team of Plarium, a global gaming company. committed to finding the best founders capable of delivering category-leading investments across sectors.

Ronald Jan is an experienced operator, entrepreneur and investor, with expertise in a.o. e-commerce, fintech and healthtech. He has spent over a decade with various C-level roles in tech startups including Rocket Internet and Delivery Hero. Previously he has been a strategy consultant at Booz & Co and an investment banker at ABN Amro.

Entrepreneur and investor; supporting (technology) companies to the next level Specialties: Growth management & Strategy, Change management (both in growth and turn-around stage), Financial engineering and Banking experience, Marketing and Sales Excellence, Personnel Selection & Management Reviews, Executive Coaching

Roopan has technology and DeepTech investor background. She invested in early to growth stage global startups in robotics, semiconductor and renewable energy sectors while at Applied Ventures (corporate Venture Capital arm of Applied Materials). Prior to turning investor, she worked in DeepTech as a technologist.

Serves as the Vice President of Asia Procurement and Operations at Apple Inc. and is based in Pudongxin District, Shanghai, China. He has held this role since 2014, when he moved to China from the San Francisco Bay

Roseanne currently serves on the boards of Renegade portfolio companies Spekit, Nate, Rewire, LaHaus, Daily, and Auxilius. Prior to starting Renegade, Roseanne was a Partner at IVP, a later-stage venture capital firm. At IVP, she invested across enterprise and consumer in companies such as Glossier, Compass (COMP), MasterClass, Wise (LSE:WISE), Looker (Acquired by GOOG), and Motive. She continues to serve on the board of MasterClass, where she had led the Series C and D. Roseanne started her venture career at Canaan Partners, where she invested in companies such as MetaCloud (Acquired by CSCO), Unifi Software (Acquired by Boomi/Dell), and Turo. Before moving to the dark side, Roseanne’s tech career began when she dropped out of her PhD to co-found imthemusic, building apps on the early Facebook platform. She was also a product manager at NextBio (Acquired by Ilumina).

First female executive at Dropbox and served as their Vice President of Operations. She came to Dropbox through its acquisition of Cove, a company she founded in 2011. Prior to that Ruchi was the first female engineer at Facebook, and was instrumental in implementing the first versions of key features like News Feed, Facebook Platform, Facebook Connect and Privacy.

Ruchita leads healthcare investing at AV8 and has spent her professional career in the healthcare industry as a scientist, operator, investor and advisor to healthcare and life science startups. Prior to AV8, Ruchita was the head of digital health investing at Sanofi Ventures. Earlier, Ruchita was at GE Ventures, where she led a range of initiatives including equity investments, partnerships, and portfolio management. She executed deals that delivered millions in upside for GE Healthcare businesses.

Rudina Seseri is Founder and Managing Partner of Glasswing Ventures, leading the firm’s investments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled enterprise software as a service (SaaS), cloud, Information Technology (IT) software, and vertical markets. Rudina has 19 years of investing and operational experience in high-growth companies in IT software, cloud and enterprise SaaS. Prior to venture capital, Rudina was a Senior Manager in the Corporate Development Group at Microsoft Corporation.

Co-Founder and General Partner of Mastry

Russ was a founder and CEO of E Ink, which commercialized electronic paper displays invented at MIT. The company reached $200 million in revenue and was acquired for half a billion dollars in 2009. He also started and led university spin-outs related to energy and drug discovery. Russ invests in companies enabled by data, science, and technology and applied to a wide range of industries including proptech, computing, biotechnology, consumer, hardware, and blockchain gaming.

Russ is a former software-industry operator–and three-time CEO–who shares that deep expertise with the software CEOs he backs. Prior to joining Battery as a partner, Russ was the CEO of HighJump, a supply-chain management software company formerly in the Battery portfolio. Before that Russ served as CEO of another former Battery portfolio company, Healthvision Software, a healthcare information-technology provider. Prior to Healthvision, Russ served as CEO of TriSyn Group, a core banking applications-software provider focused on serving the top 100 banks in the U.S.

Rusty is the Co-Founder & General Partner at Swell Partners.

leads business operations and strategy for the advisory portfolio at Decisive Point. led programming at Techstars where she advised early-stage defense and space technology companies. served in the U.S. Navy for nine years as a Surface Warfare Officer deployed aboard warships and later as a Public Affairs Officer in the Pentagon

Ryan started my first venture when I was 7 years old, harvesting and selling sweet corn door to door in his hometown in Iowa. While lucrative, he've since gone on to be the founder of multiple startups including University Guide; a university-based publication business that he started while at the University of Minnesota, and sold two years out of college.

Following this sale, he moved to Boulder for my MBA at CU-Boulder. The energy around tech and startups in Boulder acted as a catalyst for him to start something similar when I moved back to the Twin Cities in 2012. In short order, Ryan co-founded Beta.MN, Twin Cities Startup Week and the Techstars Retail Accelerator w/ Target.

Ryan loves founders from atypical backgrounds. He relates to diverse, humble founders who have a chip on their shoulder and identify as the “underdogs.” They assemble humble, hard-working teams obsessed with the problems they are solving. Real problems that are worth solving.

Ryan is a Managing Director at MMV, and joined the team in 2018 to establish the firm’s presence in Asia. His key areas of investment focus include financial technology, digital health, cybersecurity and enterprise SaaS. Before entering the venture capital industry, Ryan spent over ten years in public markets at Goldman Sachs and at a multi-strategy hedge fund. He then joined data analytics startup, Essentia Analytics, to lead expansion into Asia. After Essentia, Ryan managed regional operations at LOFT, an emerging technology incubator with a focus on artificial intelligence, IoT and blockchain applications. Ryan currently serves as a board director at Qure.ai, Aspire, InDebted, Neat and Microsec, and as a board observer at Biofourmis, Qoala, Lynk Global, Milieu Insight and See-Mode Technologies. He holds a BSc in computer science and an MSc in psychology with research experience in cognitive and behavioural neuroscience.

made 50+ seed investments since inception and has also founded 4 VC-backed companies. co-founded Evolving E with GGV Capital.

Since 2015, he's invested in 40 early-stage fintech firms, which have grown to represent approximately $3 billion in aggregate equity value. Prior to founding Venture Studio, Ryan led the development of the Financial Solutions Lab, a partnership between JPMorgan Chase and the Financial Health Network. Before managing the Lab, Ryan worked with leading tech firms to develop payment solutions at Silicon Valley Bank.

Ryan brings to Norwest Venture Partners more than thirty years of healthcare experience and twenty years as a growth equity and buyout investor. Combining deep medical knowledge and extensive strategic business experience, Ryan focuses on growth equity investments in the healthcare sector including healthcare services, pharma services, healthcare IT, and medical products. Ryan’s current investments include American Endovascular, Blue Cloud, Elligo Health Research, Kyo (formerly Gateway Learning Group), Mindful Health Solutions, Onsite Dental, and Target RWE. Prior to joining Norwest, Ryan was a Principal with The Carlyle Group and a Venture Partner with Industry Ventures, where he focused exclusively on healthcare services, pharmaceutical, and medical device investments from large cap buyouts to growth equity and venture.

Worked at SaaS, internet, and infrastructure companies worldwide. Started working with Insight Partners 2012, invested in Pluralsight and Smartsheet, two of the largest IPOs of 2018.

Ryan is the founder of Hootsuite. He started the company in 2008 and has helped grow it from a startup idea into the world’s most widely used social relationship platform, with 18-million-plus users.

He is also the author of Saving Social: The Dysfunctional Past and Promising Future of Social Media, as well as the Amazon-best-selling guide to social media for leaders, The $4 Billion Tweet. He shares his insights in Forbes, Fast Company and Inc. and ranks as a global influencer on LinkedIn.

With over a decade of experience as an investor and advisor, Ryan presently serves as CIO to The Robert Andrew Kriser Family Foundation as well as advisor to Evercore Wealth Management.  He is a Board Member of Radian Aerospace, Vice-Chair and Chair-Elect of the Board at Space for Humanity, advisor to both Voyager Space and Allocations, and on the Advisory Council of The Planetary Society, all of which he plays an active role in the growth of the companies strategically and operationally. At the Planetary Society, Ryan advises and develops space exploration and K-12 STEM education programs. Ryan has a reputation for integrity, creativity, and resourcefulness. These are the same attributes he seeks in any entrepreneur or startup he invests in.

Ryan started his career in venture at Mobius Venture Capital in January 2000, just before the bursting of the first internet bubble.

Prior to becoming a VC, Ryan co-founded the early internet search engine Excite in 1993, which went public on NASDAQ in April 1996 and later became Excite@Home following the merger of Excite and @Home in 1999, and was one of the top five websites in the early innings of the world wide web.

Ryan was a software engineer at Excite, and his experience there at the dawn of the web building the infrastructure to support a large-scale consumer-facing site informs his predilection to invest in developer-focused products and services as well as enterprise and consumer-facing businesses.

Ryan holds a bachelor’s degree in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University.

vice-president and property manager for the Expansion Group Inc. , a real estate corporation with holdings in both residential and commercial sectors. has been responsible for successfully pairing potential entrepreneurs/companies with ideal investments.' particularly dedicated to Kids of Courage, an organization focused on improving the daily lives of children and adults battling catastrophic illnesses.

Ryan is a Managing Director at Crossbeam and focuses across a variety of sectors including consumer technology, fintech, and enterprise SaaS. Prior to Crossbeam he was the co-founder of rmdy, a consumer wellness company and an active angel investor. From 2015-2018 he was on the investing team at DFJ Growth, where he helped work on their investments in Unity Technologies, SpaceX, Katerra, Outreach.io, and Ring. He has an MBA and bachelor's degree from Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania.

experienced investor (ex-Morgan Stanley; ex-King Street Capital)

Ryan Petersen is the CEO and Founder of Flexport. Prior to starting Flexport to fix the user experience in global trade, Ryan was co-founder and CEO of ImportGenius.com, a data-as-a-service business for global shipping. He holds a degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from Columbia University.

Investing in early-stage FinTech companies at Dash Fund. Building world-class alt data products at Bloomberg. First business hire at both Pipe & Second Measure (acq. by Bloomberg). Started off at JPMorgan.

Ryan is an entrepreneur and business development professional that has built and scaled ventures in the financial services, apparel, technology, and food/beverage spaces. For the past few years, he has focused on simultaneously growing a financial services start-up and a nonprofit organization that provides pro-bono services to empower lower-income entrepreneurs.

Ryan is known as a VR/AR expert who oversees VR/AR companies in the US and greater China, with solid insights and strong connections in both markets. Prior to Outpost, Ryan was a Venture Partner at CLI Ventures, a $200 million boutique VC fund based in Palo Alto. He led the TMT sector at CLI and had made a number of investments in VR/AR, Drones and Artificial Intelligence. Early in his career, Ryan has compiled a comprehensive and successful career as an investment banker at Citigroup and Societe Generale in New York City.

Prior to Antler, Ryo was a Principal at East Ventures, Japan, an early stage venture capital firm. As a serial entrepreneur, Ryo founded two companies, including AllCoupon Japan (acquired), and was Japan’s country manager for companies such as Tinder, Homeaway (Expedia Group) and Hailo.

Saar Gur is a General Partner at CRV. He was named one of the top 8 up and coming Venture Capitalists by Forbes and a top 10 VC under the age of thirty-six by Venture Capital Journal, Saar loves consumer products and services and is passionate about helping his companies succeed. Saar has been involved in 11 acquisitions in the past few years byfirms such as Google, Facebook, Disney, Warner Bros., and Intuit. Prior to CRV, Saar was a Co Founder of BrightRoll, a leading video ad network. He holds a Stanford MBA and a Biochemistry degree from University of Wisconsin.

Saeed Amidi is a seasoned investor and executive with over 30 years of experience growing businesses in numerous industries, including real estate, bottled water, packaging, and technology investing. Following the early success of his various businesses, The Amidi Group initially purchased a building in Palo Alto and decided to rent the extra office spaces to startups.

As the CEO and founder of Plug and Play, Saeed applies his passion for the tech industry daily by working with forward-thinking partners and the best global startups to facilitate positive change worldwide.

Founder and CEO of Gumroad. Previously, he was early at Pinterest.

Before launching TechOperators, Said was CEO and Chairman of Synchrologic, Inc. for seven years. Previously, Said was the founder and CEO of Samna Corporation, a software company, from 1983 to 1990. He took Samna public in 1987 and sold it to Lotus three years later. Samna's primary product, Ami Pro, became a significant part of Lotus/IBM SmartSuite. For the following four years, Said worked as an executive with a portfolio of product divisions at Lotus Development Corporation. Additionally, Said has nine years of executive service at Intellisync and Lanier Business Product, also serving as a design engineer for five years.

Sakib is a member of the Investment Team and serves as a Board Observer for seven different companies in the portfolio. Prior to Crossbeam, he was an investment banking analyst at J.P. Morgan. Sakib also founded The Capsule, a South Asian news aggregator / podcast that has over 23,000 subscribers across Instagram and email. Sakib received a B.S. from Cornell University, where he served as a teaching assistant for classes in Entrepreneurship and Equity Research.

Managing Director for Growth investments The thing that gets me most excited about a founder’s pitch is the articulation of their vision, their desire to take on incumbents, and their appetite to solve really big problems. I look for founders who are obsessed with rebooting the Indian dream. I seek the magical combination of ambition, courage, and the dream gene. I’ve seen a few cycles over the last decade and witnessed a wide variety of startup journeys, with their share of highs, lows, mistakes, and wins. What has always stood the test of time is a founder with a burning ambition to win and a high-performance team built on the shoulders of a well-defined culture.

Salil Deshpande was an engineer for 15 years before becoming an investor, and he credits this expertise as the key to his success as a seed-stage investor. Deshpande has been a venture capitalist since 2006, when he became a general partner at Bay Partners. He also did a long stint as the managing director of the venture arm of Bain Capital. Now, he’s a general partner at Uncorrelated Ventures, his early-stage fund that focuses on open-source and infrastructure software. Deshpande’s early investments in decentralized-finance startups have paid off: CoinDCX reached unicorn status in August at a $1.1 billion valuation. His best piece of advice for seed investing: “Specialize and be a domain expert so that you can add value to startups.”

Founding Partner of Merus Capital. Previously Vice President of Corp-Dev at Google, and a General Manager for Corporate Strategy at Microsoft.

was the Head of Startups & VC at Facebook France. has built very strong relationships with many of the top VCs in Europe and the US. Prior to Facebook, he was one the early employees of Marcus, the consumer & fintech arm of Goldman Sachs in New York.

For years Sam Altman has been one of the most prominent seed investors. He’s perhaps best known for his five years as the president of the famous startup accelerator Y Combinator, a role he left in 2019. Altman’s keen eye for investments helped him jump 80 spots up to No. 13 on this year’s Seed 100 list. One example: After first backing the fusion-energy startup Helion Energy in 2015, he invested $375 million in the startup's $500 million Series E round in November, which boosted its valuation to $3 billion. When not investing, he leads OpenAI, an organization that works with open-source artificial intelligence.

Before founding FTX, Sam was a trader on Jane Street Capital’s international ETF desk. He traded a variety of ETFs, futures, currencies, and equities, and designed their automated OTC trading system.

Sam is a non-traditional venture capitalist from a non-traditional background. – starting his career as a paramedic with a penchant for “white-hat” hacking on the side. Throughout his career, Sam has been at the intersection of sales and engineering inside multiple venture-backed SAAS companies – leading technology partnerships and contributing tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue.

Sam Englebardt is a Co-founder and Partner at Galaxy Digital and the Founding General Partner of Galaxy Interactive. He is a media and technology investor and content producer who has created, acquired and/or financed a broad range of traditional and digital businesses and dozens of films and television shows over the past decade. Prior to Galaxy Digital, Englebardt was a Partner and Managing Director at Lambert Media Group (LMG) from 2007 2016, where he sourced and managed a portfolio of media-sector private equity investments. Before LMG, Englebardt was a Vice President and Financial Advisor at Alliance Bernstein.

Co-Founder and General Partner of Mastry

gravitates toward ideas that leverage emerging technology, growing datasets and accelerating learning cycles to improve real-world infrastructure. currently sits on the board of: Plotlogic, Machina Labs, Fero Labs and FutureProof

Samakab has over a decades experience in investing in early stage and fast growing companies across developed and emerging markets. Prior to joining Lateral Frontiers, he established the Middle Eastern presence of Avanz Capital an emerging market growth focused Private Equity firm where he focused on making investments across Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Samakab started his career as an investment banker in London working across Corporate Restructuring, Leveraged Finance and Growth Finance with the Lloyds Banking group, before joining the Private Equity arm of Allstate Investments a US institutional investor. During his time at Allstate, Samakab invested circa $1 billion in PE deals across Africa Asia and Europe.