Investors focused on Hardware

Gavin is the founding visionary at Kickstart. In 2008, he recognized the need for both leadership and seed-stage capital in the region, so he launched Kickstart to fill this gap. His guidance to founders is born of first-hand experience and a desire to build not just a fund but an entire ecosystem.

Before helping to pave the way for seed funding in Utah, Colorado, and the Mountain West, Gavin was an analyst, associate, and principal at vSpring Capital (now Signal Peak).

Deepak advises entrepreneurs at the UC Berkeley Haas Business school and is a mentor at various accelerators in Silicon Valley. He has 10 years of venture investing experience across 3 institutional funds. Prior to investing, he was part of 4 medical startups as either an entrepreneur or in management roles, having an exit with Cepheid (NASDAQ:CHPD), a molecular diagnostic company.

After being hired as the first analyst at Union Square Ventures and helping to open First Round Capital’s first NYC office as a Principal, Charlie founded Brooklyn Bridge Ventures in 2012 He helped source First Round’s investments in GroupMe (acq. by Skype), SinglePlatform (acq. by Constant Contact), Moat (acq. by Oracle) and Backupify (acq. by Datto)

In his 15-year-career, Todd Jackson has helped build some of the biggest products in tech that hundreds of millions of people use every day, from Gmail’s user interface and Facebook’s Newsfeed to Twitter’s timeline and Dropbox’s bottom-up revenue engine.

Atin looks for outstanding Founders who are building big businesses - and are nice people leaving a net positive impact on our world. Most recently, he was a Principal at the hardware-focused VC firm Q Venture Partners. He continues to be involved with the amazing team at QVP, in the role of Venture Partner. If you're a hardware startup/investor, do reach out. An ex-entrepreneur, he loves the sport ultra-marathon trail running. He considers finishing a couple of 100K races his biggest (sporting/physical) achievements to date.

Software engineer by trade and former DOD contractor.

Alex Luce is an investor, materials scientist, and technology enthusiast. As a Partner at Creative Ventures, he invests in entrepreneurs tackling the most pressing global macroeconomic trends, including demographic changes straining our healthcare system, secular labor shortages, and the effects of climate change. He has led investments in a number of deeptech categories including medical devices, semiconductors, robotics, synthetic biology, and clean energy. Previously, Alex led CalCharge, a public-private partnership focused on energy storage and manufacturing innovation working with National Labs, startups, and leading corporates. He also spent time with Prelude Ventures, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E), and a solar energy startup company. Alex holds a M.S. and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from UC Berkeley and a B.S. in Engineering Physics with Honors from the University of Arizona.

Previously he was co-founder CEO of Transist, an incubator and investor in impact-driven tech startups in China and the US. Earlier Calvin was founder CEO of Qifang, China's first online student loan service and the first Chinese company recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer. Calvin is a member of the Aspen Institute's inaugural China Fellowship Program, a WEF Young Global Leader. He was named one of Fast Company magazine's 100 Most Creative People In Business for 2011, was named 2009 Chinese Business Leader of the Year by Horasis and Baker & McKenzie, and is a Social Innovation Park Fellow. He has an MBA from TRIUM (NYU, LSE, HEC Paris), a B.A. from Yale University and has also studied social entrepreneurship, global leadership and other management and policy subjects at Harvard University and INSEAD.

At NEO Tech, Shaun grew topline revenue from $20M to $800M by scaling manufacturing operations, supply chain, marketing, sales, facilities, IT, and finance.

Tal is a Managing Partner at StageOne Ventures, bringing two decades of experience in technology, management, and investments at major corporations. He led Israeli and Russian investments and acquisitions at Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO), overseeing an investment portfolio of over $400 Million, with acquisitions that included two of Cisco’s largest in Israel, valued at $6 Billion. A graduate of Israel’s top training program Talpiot, Tal served in the IDF for a decade, leading technology innovation in the Elite Technology Unit of the Intelligence Corp.

Alexis founded HCVC in 2015 as a community-first venture firm to support hardtech founders. He's based in Paris and sits on the boards of Cowboy, Norbert Health, Twist and Remedee Labs.

Prior to founding New Stack, Nick began his career as a Developer. He went on to work in M&A and Product Management for Danaher. There he developed one of the most successful products in the company's history -an analytical device for testing compounds in drinking water. In May 2014, Nick founded the 1st VC podcast, The Full Ratchet, which has grown to over 90k active subscribers.

Prior to starting Superangel, Ben was an angel investor in 30 companies, including, the first investor and founding advisor to quip (2014), Caraway (2018) & Arber (2020), before each had its name.

Ben personally experienced the complete life cycle of building a company: from identifying a problem/market opportunity, coming up with the “idea”, to painstakingly developing a business plan, product road-map and executing on it.

He strives to be one of the first checks (day 0) and leverage my network to bring in other strategic capital and resources in an advisory role. Ben is often described by founders as their company’s #1 fan, providing unwavering support and dedication for the short, medium, and long-term.

Prior to becoming a full time investor, he was the COO at a NYC-based real estate investment and property management firm.

Invests in founders and companies at the early stages in emerging areas, including but not limited to Crypto, AI/ML, Robotics, Healthcare/Bio, and more. Began his career investing multiple asset classes ranging from public equities and derivatives, cross-border private equity, and eventually seed-stage startups at Crane Partners, a multi-strategy hedge fund. Graduated from New York University.

 was Chief Business Officer at Life360 and a Venture Capitalist at Morgenthaler Ventures.

Chris is a 20+ year media and technology entrepreneur turned early-stage venture capitalist. He has launched three early-stage venture funds to help scale the C2V brand and has invested in over 45 portfolio companies.

Chris was the CEO and Co-founder of appssavvy, a pioneer in mobile native advertising, ultimately driving $70 million in revenues to the app ecosystem. He is a LP in Bowery Capital and Tech Stars and has held executive roles at Unacast and Ironsource, a now $11B mobile technology company.

He has been named one of the "Most Important People in Mobile Advertising" by Business Insider and an Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist” two years in a row.

Shaun leads Urban.Us funding startups that help cities upgrade for climate change. Before Urban Us, Shaun was an active angel investor, investing in more than 20 firms between 2007 and 2013.

Bernard Moon is a Co-founder & General Partner at SparkLabs Global Ventures. He is also a Co-founder & General Partner at SparkLabs, a startup accelerator in Korea. Previously, he was Co-founder & CEO of Vidquik, a web conferencing & sales solutions platform. Bernard was a Managing Director at the Lunsford Group, which is a private investment firm with holdings in real estate, healthcare and other industries. Bernard was Co-founder & VP of Business Development of GoingOn Networks, a social media platform for companies, and also led their product development where BusinessWeek recognized them in their "Best of the Web" list.

Zal is the solo partner at Refactor Capital, a seed-stage firm focused on climate, bio, and health investments. Previously, he helped launch the Bio Fund at a16z and prior to that, spent 10 years in product at Google, Netflix, and LinkedIn. He is an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania.

Bill has led investments in companies including Looker, Flexport, Verkada, Superhuman, Airbase, Nova Credit, Legion, and Labelbox.

After coming off his own entrepreneurial journey as Founder/CEO of FreshNeck, David joined Alpaca in 2014. He relies on empathy and personal experience to form deep bonds with founders and add value where it matters most. David enjoys partnering with startups on high-level strategy and building scalable ‘operating systems’ consisting of structured priorities and OKRs. Before getting the startup bug, David spent his early career in finance and law at the University of Miami and Fordham University. He spent three years as an Assistant District Attorney, representing the people of New York, and following that, spent three years across Merrill Lynch and Jefferies & Co.

Founder since 2005 and investor since 2007.

Peter co-founded Lux Capital with the idea that in order to have the biggest impact on the future, one should support the most scientifically and technologically ambitious ventures. Peter led Lux’s investments in Auris Health (acquired by Johnson & Johnson for up to $6 billion, making it one of top 10 VC-backed private M&A transactions of all-time), Everspin Technologies (NASDAQ: MRAM), Lux Research (acquired by Bregal Sagemount), Luxtera (acquired by Cisco for $660 million), Matterport (NASDAQ: MTTR), SiBEAM (acquired by Silicon Image), Transphorm (NASDAQ: TGAN), and Vium (acquired by Recursion).

Led rounds for Arbo, Bitso, Bond, Clara, Cloudwalk, Luna, Meld, Melio, Mercury, Pinwheel, Pleo, Quanto, Silverflow, Step.

Ian Rountree founded Cantos Ventures in 2016, with a focus on next-generation tech related to climate science, biology, aerospace, and health. Formerly director of partnerships at SoFi.

Stonly is the Co-founder of Urban Us, an early stage venture capital fund that invests in mobility, construction and other urban sectors where technology like IoT, AI and Robotics can help make cities more efficient. Prior to investing, he was a 6 time founder (with 2 exits) including Veddio Cloud Solutions, a cloud-based aggregator for managedservices providers (MSP) which sold after a year of founder funded growth. Stonly has been recognized as a CNNMoney 30 under 30 and one of Govtech Magazine's 25 top leaders amongst other industry recognitions. He is also a guest contributor at Tech Crunch and an instructor at University of Chicago's Booth School of Business where he created an MBA course on how startups can build solutions to upgrade cities. Stonly and Urban Us are also the subject of a Harvard Business School course on urbantech investing.

Focuses on investments in frontier tech, logistics, marketplaces & consumer. Seth led Susa's investments in Flexport, Periscope Data and Expanse. Also served as the VP of Strategic Marketing for The Richemont Group, a publicly traded company (CFR:VX) which owns brands and e-commerce sites Cartier, Net-A-Porter.com, Mr. Porter, Montblanc, and Chloe. Seth graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder with a bachelor's degrees in Business and Finance.

VC since 1991 and 3x founder. His first company was Mountain Bike Outfitters, Inc., which he created at age 18. Before founding True, Jon was a managing director at Globespan Capital Partners. recently the Chairman of the National Venture Capital Association.

General partner at Spark who partners with ambitious founders out to build amazing things. Worked at scrappy small scale, in hyper-growth mode, and at large public company scale several times over the last couple decades as a CEO, COO, and head of product.

Prior Experience McKinsey & Company, Founder of OnChip Technologies

Principal at Founders Fund and cofounder and President of Varda Space Industries, which is building the world’s first space factories. Before joining Founders Fund, he was a principal at Khosla Ventures, head of growth at Teespring, and founder of a healthcare company called Nightingale. 

Partner at BITKRAFT Ventures. Former Vice President and head of the global gaming and esports practice at Goldman Sachs. Based in Los Angeles and New York.

I was a General Partner with North Bridge Venture Partners, from April 2012 to November 2014. During my tenure I started the seed practice and led investments in Lytro, Periscope.io, Quora, and Ravel Law, in addition to co-founding Coolan. Prior to NBVP, I worked at Facebook, where I led global infrastructure, site architecture, and internal systems as VP Infrastructure & Technical Operations, from 2007 until 2012. During that time Facebook grew from 35 million to over 800 million users. Earlier in my career, I co-founded and was CTO of GlobalCenter, and later founded Global Crossing’s venture capital group. While scaling GlobalCenter, we saw an opportunity to build the world’s first native-optical IP network. I currently serve on the board of directors of Webmonsters, in addition to Vertex portfolio companies PerimeterX, CloudAcademy, and SpaceIQ.

I am Managing General Partner & founder at SOSV, a venture capital firm with more than $1B in assets under management. SOSV pioneers & runs world-leading startup development programs. We help fund, at the seed stage, about 130 new companies per year out of the over 8,000 that apply to HAX, IndieBio, Chinaccelerator, dlab, MOX... We follow-on invest into SOSV-backed companies with investment and marketplace traction. Specialties: helping SOSV-backed founders go further & faster; getting other people interested in things I care about; improving efficiency in processes; creating technology to solve real problems for real human beings.

Prior to joining BCV, he co-founded two companies and spent seven years as a partner at Sequoia.