Previous Speakers
Partner at Altos Ventures
Partner Moonseok Oh has been a partner at Altos Ventures since 2016. He is based in the Seoul office of Altos Ventures, which acts as the Korean branch of the American Altos Ventures. The investment in Korean startups by the U.S. Altos Ventures began in earnest in 2014, leading to the establishment of Korea's Altos Ventures in 2015, focusing on startup investments and portfolio management.
Before joining Altos Ventures as a partner, Moonseok Oh served as a director at Goldman Sachs Principal Investment for six years and he also has experience working as an analyst at TOPIA SRL and Morgan Stanley. Additionally, he holds a bachelor's degree from Brown University.
CEO of WhaTap Labs Inc.
CEO Dongin Lee, with over 15 years of development experience, founded WhaTap Labs in 2015 and has been serving as its CEO ever since. WhaTap Labs is a leading IT analytics service company in the field of IT monitoring in Korea, being the first in the country to offer a SaaS-based integrated IT monitoring service. Currently, it provides integrated IT monitoring services to a wide range of clients, including major corporations like LG Uplus, KT, Lotte, Hyundai, public institutions, and startups.
CEO of Nexon
CEO Jung-heon Lee joined Nexon as a new recruit in 2003 and has climbed the ranks from business operations to executive management, proving himself as a business expert by managing various projects and showcasing outstanding business capabilities. He was promoted to CEO of Nexon after 14 years, a testament to Nexon's corporate culture that values talent and promotes leaders from within.
His career includes roles as the team leader of the Publishing QM Team in 2006, the director of Neople's Control Room in 2010, the head of the FIFA Department in 2012, and the head of the Business Division in 2014. He then served as the Vice President of Business Operations before becoming the CEO of Nexon in 2018.
Under Lee's leadership, Nexon has not only achieved significant growth through a strategy of focus and selection but has also undergone major improvements in its structure, leading to the successful launch of new games like 'Dungeon & Fighter Mobile', 'Blue Archive', and 'Dave the Diver'.
Under Lee's direction, Nexon's new and live games have experienced steady growth, contributing to over 50% increase in Nexon's global annual sales in five years. The mobile game sales ratio expanded from 22% to 31% on consolidated basis, showcasing Nexon's prominence in the mobile game market. His other notable achievement is leading Nexon to become the first Korean game company to surpass 3 trillion won in annual sales, fueled by explosive revenue growth in Korea. He also announced a significant upgrade to the company remuneration system, the first in the industry, underlining a commitment to investing in talent and enhancing competitiveness in the global market to grow Nexon into a top-tier company.
CEO Lee plans to continue leveraging his deep understanding and contemplation of Nexon to maximize its unique character and competitiveness in the global market.
CEO of Marpple Corporation
CEO Hye-yoon Park is the founder of Marpple Corporation, the operator of the creator commerce platform "MarppleShop".
Since its official service launch in March 2020, "MarppleShop" operated by Marpple Corporation has welcomed over 70,000 creators, selling more than 1.4 million creator IP products.
MarppleShop offers a Print-on-Demand (POD) fulfillment service, providing all the solutions needed for commerce operations, including product manufacturing, shipping, and customer service. Furthermore, it has expanded into brand commerce by connecting creators and brands and was selected as a partner for the YouTube shopping platform in 2023.
Marpple Corporation completed a Series A funding round worth a total of 9 billion won in December 2020 and received Series B investment from Nexon in March 2022.
Senior Managing Director of Investment Division, LB Investment
Mr. Jung-Hoe Goo, graduated from the Department of Materials Engineering at Korea University with a bachelor's and master's degree, and obtained a Ph.D. in Technology Management from Korea University's Graduate School of Technology Management. He gained experience in new business planning at a comprehensive trading company and worked as an MEMS process engineer at a large corporation before entering the venture capital industry in 1999.
After working at Korea Venture Finance and Korea Investment Partners (formerly Dongwon Entrepreneurship Investment), he joined LB Investment in 2006. Currently, he focuses on investing in advanced manufacturing industries, including materials, components, and equipment, as well as in the field of convergence technology combining manufacturing and AI data platforms, deep tech, and high-tech sectors.
Some of the key investment companies include Bridge Bio, Aurora Therapeutics, GPCR, as well as Enchem, BitSensing, TheWaveTalk, PmGrow, Alum Materials, Jipilos, and Gint.
GINT CEO
After graduating from the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University, Yonghyun Kim joined Hyundai Kepco (a joint venture between Hyundai Motor and Robert Bosch) where he conducted research on powertrain SW platforms for numerous mass production projects of Hyundai/Kia vehicles.
Later, he decided to combine automotive and IT technologies and apply them to the agricultural field. In October 2015, he founded GINT and currently serves as the CEO.
GINT has not only established business partnerships with agricultural machinery manufacturers and government agencies but also launched the B2C brand 'PLUVA' in 2021. GINT has received positive reviews from the market by introducing advanced products and services necessary for Asian farmers, including autonomous farming and robots, online/offline agricultural machinery markets, and data-based agricultural machinery financial services.
Vice President of Atinum Investment
Che Uk Kim joined Atinum Investment in 2010 and is leading investments in mobile services/platforms, software/SaaS. He focuses on startups that innovate the market through IT technology. Before joining the Atinum Investment, he worked on SW development and technology strategy at Samsung Electronics. He won the excellent venture capitalist award from KVIC in 2016 and the best venture capitalist award from KVCA in 2021.
Portfolio
Dunamu, Ridi, CLO Virtual Fashion, Zigbang, Echo Marketing, IGA Works, Watcha, Channel Corporation, Fast Five, Adena Software, Brandi, Styleshare, Bungaejangter, Jobis & Villains, Cupix, Catenoid, Fabrictime, Postype, Tosslab, Allganize, Law&Company, Classting, Trenbe, Howser, Rapportlabs, Jaranda, Chequer, PRND Company(hey dealer), MarqVision, Codit, Lemonbase
Academic Background
M.S. in Computer Engineering, B.S. in Earth and Environmental Sciences from Seoul National University
Allganize CEO
Changsu Lee is the CEO and founder of Allganize. Before founding Allganize, he successfully founded the game data analytics company 5Rocks, which was acquired by the world's largest mobile advertising company, Tapjoy, in 2014.
In 2017, Changsu Lee founded Allganize as his second venture after 5Rocks. Allganize is an all-in-one solution company that innovates corporate productivity using Large Language Models (LLMs). Initially, the company provided a core service called "Ali," an AI cognitive search solution for enterprises. Ali was designed to learn from various forms of documents, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, images, etc., and provide answers to employees' questions. Recently, Allganize expanded into a platform for LLMs for businesses.
The Ali LLM App Store, launched by Allganize in September 2023, was developed to enhance the competitiveness and productivity of companies. Similar to using various apps on smartphones, it allows users to choose AI apps in their desired fields and apply them directly to their work. Corporate customers can select from six categories in the app store: General, Legal, HR, Customer Support, Productivity, and Others. They can choose and use registered LLM apps for their job roles or create apps themselves using a no-code approach.
Allganize currently operates in the markets of the United States, Korea, and Japan, serving over 200 global clients. In March 2021, the company secured a total investment of $10 million from investors including Atinum Investment, Stonebridge Ventures, SBI Financial Group (Japan), and existing investors in Korea, the United States, and Japan. In 2017, Allganize attracted $1 million in investment from Global Brain (Japan), $3.4 million in 2019 from SparkLabs Ventures, Base Investment, Laguna Investment, and Fast Investment, among others.
Founder and CEO of mintNFT
James Sun is the Founder and CEO of mintNFT. He invented a patent-pending video provenance technology to help brands, IP owners, and creators protect their ideas and work behind NFT’s. James is an entrepreneur with deep expertise in creating vertical online communities where he generated over 140M users and over 2B page views leveraging the convergence of mobile & web consumer products. He is the owner of Dramabeans for 14 years - the largest Korean drama online recap and community site focused on the English speaking market and BeautyTap – the first beauty professional online review community. Previous to this, he was the founder & CEO of Pirq, a consumer app which was successfully acquired by one of the largest payment processing companies in the U.S. James also has Fortune 500 experience where he served as an engineer at Intel and management consultant at Deloitte Consulting for several Fortune 500 clients including Honeywell, Microsoft, Daimler Chrysler, and Boeing.
James also comes with content and media experience where he was the producer and host of a program called “Sun Tzu War on Business.” This show was a co-collaboration between BBC (British Broadcasting Corp), Mediacorp, and CMMN, which aired worldwide in over 20 countries. James was also a finalist on NBC’s reality show "The Apprentice." He has previous publishing experience as the co-owner of Koream magazine, which was an award-winning monthly magazine dedicated to news, commentary, politics, lifestyle and culture. He was also the owner of Audrey Magazine, which was an award-winning national publication covering the Asian experience.
James is a highly sought out speaker on the topic of consumer segmentation and diversity especially in the areas of globalization. He is a 3x Tedx Speaker and he has advised over 35 companies on this topic alone including Proctor & Gamble, Deloitte & Touche, JP Morgan, Ernst & Young, BASF, Qwest, Honeywell, US Army, and dozens of top tiered universities. He is published in a book titled "Millennial Leaders Y" as an expert in this field. James has been featured on CEO Magazine and Fortune Magazine as a guest blogger on the topics of leadership and entrepreneurship.
James graduated Cum Laude from the University of Washington Business School with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Computer Information Systems. James was recently selected as a top 100 alumni from the University of Washington in the "Wonderous 100 Alumni Award" which included prominent individuals like Bill Gates Sr., Governor Christine Gregoire, and musician Kenny G.
Co-founder & Co-CEO at EST Media
Jaeson Ma is a serial entrepreneur, artist & media executive. He is the founder and partner of multiple companies focused on accessing the Asian market through entertainment, media, and technology. Mr. Ma is considered one of the leading financiers to companies, institutions, and individuals investing in Asian media and Hollywood entertainment.
In 2019 Mr. Ma as a principle partner in Proxima Media was also instrumental in putting together the merger and acquisition of social music video app Triller & MXX (a leading music AI technology) that has become one of the fastest growing social media platforms globally discovering & breaking new music artists.
In 2017, Mr. Ma co-founded Stampede Ventures with former Warner Brothers President of Worldwide production Greg Silverman.
In 2015, Mr. Ma co-founded 88rising, a multi-platform digital media company that is the leading global destination for Asia-related digital content catering to the Asian millennial market. Most notably, as then Chairman & co founder he negotiated 88rising series seed investments and the series A strategic investment with leading global advertising agency WPP.
Prior to forming 88rising and Stampede Ventures, Mr. Ma has been the founder of East West Ventures (EWV). An HTC Portfolio Company, EWV manages top tier clients, production of premium content, & financial advisory for A-list clientele across all areas of investments.
During his career, he has raised capital and/or advised on transactions totaling over $1 billion in value, including numerous Asian film, television, and music transactions. In 2018, Mr. Ma initiated & advised on the successful acquisition of Dark Horse Comics between Cenic Media & Dark Horse Comics founder.
Currently, Mr. Ma is a Senior Advisor to KKFarm Fund, a joint investment fund between Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) and KKBox - two of the most dominant music streaming platforms in greater China. As well, Jaeson is a senior advisor to private equity funds advised by Courage Capital Management, LLC that invest in music rights.
Mr. Ma is also a venture partner with GoodWater Capital, a consumer tech focused venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. His investments include Musical.ly, Grab, Brain, Slock.it, Triller, Oursong, Kind Heaven, XiaoPeng, Coinbase, Nanotech Energy, OpenNest, CAA Caravan & Maum.
Co-Founder of Highstreet and Lumiere VR
Jenny Guo is an Emmy award-winning creative producer, XR and NFT arts patron, and co-founder of Highstreet. She has been named on Forbes 30 under 30 in 2018 and AACYF 30 under 30 in 2020. She was also recognized as the top 10 Asian American entrepreneurs in 2021.
Backed by HTC , Binance Lab, and Animoca, her company Highstreet is building a commerce-centered MMORPG game using VR and Blockchain. The High token is listed on major exchange like Binance, coinbase, and crypto.com.
The VR projects she had worked on have also won multiple awards in both
Asia and the U.S. She has produced and distributed multiple VR art installations, including renowned artist Rachel Maclean’s I’m Terribly Sorry with KWM Art Center, Wang Xin’s Maybe it’s Time to Refresh the Art World a Little Bit at K11 art mall in Hong Kong, and Tian Zhuo Chen's Trance. Her producing work Living Distance with artist Xin Liu has been selected into multiple renowned film festivals, including Sundance, SXSW, Beijing Film Festival, and it’s the first Chinese immersive project that Sundance New Frontier Lab has taken on.
Her latest VR artwork Devil's Ivy with artist Liu Wa was shown at Busan Biennale and Sandbox Immersive Festival. This film has won the young creative award from International Emmys. MS. Guo is passionate about conservation and Climate change projects, she has a new VR film on Glacier conservation coming out this year.
Ms. Guo had extensive experience in auction houses and art dealing between China and the U.S. Ms. Guo is also a Sundance fellow and researcher at Harvard Visualization Lab.
Ms. Guo has spoken at multiple conferences including Harvard Graduate School of Design, SXSW, Wharton School of Business, J.P Morgan, TEDxBohaibay, and Christie’s.
Balaan
After visiting giant boutiques in Europe, Choi Hyung-rok, CEO of Balaan came up with a business idea to retail various luxury boutique products in reasonable price via online service platform. By 2015, he found the company Balaan.
Although the logistics process innovation has been facilitated in the overall fashion industry, Korean and other Asian luxury boutique stores don't have accurate dataset corresponding to the their market size. Despite of the smaller market scale compared to those of Japanese and Chinese markets, Korea is leading the luxury brand industry; seeing Balaan's capability to construct database from Korean luxury brand market, multiple luxury brand boutique brand stores decided to be part of Balaan's sales platform.
Balaan plans to innovate the value chain of domestic luxury boutique distribution channels; user experince will be enhanced by its omni channel integrating online and offline aspects, and the domestic retailers will be provided with integrated logistics service.
Moreover, Balaan aims to launch a luxury lifestyle 'superapplication' by upgrading the e-commerce infrasturcture based on data and IT technology along with innovating the overall luxury shopping experience demanded by the customers'
CEO & Co-founder of SendBird
John S. Kim is the Co-founder and CEO of SendBird, the world’s no.1 chat API. The platform currently serves over 200M monthly chat users across the world’s leading companies such as Reddit, DoorDash, Yahoo!, Rakuten, Paytm, Accolade, Livongo, and DHL.
John is a serial entrepreneur, engineer at heart, and an expert in the API economy and communications tech space. Little known fact about John is that he was Korea’s no.1 pro-gamer for Unreal Tournament.
CEO & Founder of Radish
Seung-yoon Lee is the CEO and Founder of Radish. The app is a mobile fiction platform for serialized storytelling, offering the literary equivalent of the addictive TV drama series.
Radish produces Radish Originals, serials in a variety of genres designed specifically for its mobile platform and written by a talented team of Emmy Award-winning soap writers, authors, and Radish’s Content Team creators. Some of Radish Originals have netted more than US$6M in revenue and have attracted more than 300 million reads. Radish recently got acquired for $440M by Kakao Entertainment and raised nearly US$70M from Softbank, Bertelsmann, and UTA beforehand.
For his work in media innovation, Seung-yoon was recognized as one of the inaugural members of Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia. Before launching Radish, Seung-yoon has also built Byline, the world's leading crowdfunded journalism platform. He served as the first East Asian President of the Oxford Union, world’s famous debating society.
During his term, he hosted PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Martti Ahtisaari. He also launched the Union’s own YouTube Channel that opened up its key speaker events to the wider public.
CEO & Founder of MBX
Hyungseok Dino Ha is the founder & CEO of MBX (Memebox). Dino studied Environmental Engineering in college until he joined the Army and voluntarily deployed to Afghanistan to work with 20 coalition forces. It was in Afghanistan where he made his first American friend which inspired him to move to the states.
After serving in the Army, Dino moved to New York to pursue a career in fashion. After attending Parsons School of Design, Dino was able to join Tom Ford’s PR department for two years. He thought that he could fix inefficiency in the workplace and fashion industry.
He then moved back to South Korea in 2011 to join Tmon, an E-commerce start-up where he led new businesses and sales. It was at Tmon where Dino was truly inspired to become an entrepreneur and start his own business. With his diverse background of engineering, fashion, beauty, and business, Dino hoped to build an innovation-driven beauty company to share K-beauty with a global audience.
He established Memebox in February 2012. Although Memebox was a latecomer in the market, it became the No. 1 beauty commerce player in the world within a few months. In January 2014, MBX raised funds from Y Combinator for the first time in South Korea. Dino expanded his business to the United States, China, and Taiwan.
Executive Director / Engineering & Co-founder of WantedLab
Reagan Hwang is the co-founder and CTO at AI-based career platform WantedLab. At WantedLab, Hwang innovated a referral rewards sysem and built the initial iterations of Wanted's services including a website, mobile app, and AI-based recommendation system.
He singlehandedly grew the product development team to more than 50 members and is now focused on scaling the engineering team. Prior to WantedLab, Hwang worked in Microsoft Korea's Developer Platform division, and was at NHN developing Naver's secure login service as well as games.
Executive Director / New Business & Co-founder of WantedLab
Sehoon Kim is the co-founder and CDO of WantedLab, and is in charge of the new business. He has done branding to make Wanted platform loved by users, and has been designing Wanted's own B2C sevice that is different from existing B2B recruitment services.
Currently, he is helping Wanted to leap forward as a career growth platform by planning and executing new businesses. Prior to WantedLab, he worked as a founding member and design director of Beslow, the online&offline fashion commerce platform. Also, he was selected as Korea's representative design entrepreneur in the montly [Design], and was a major speaker at Seoul Work Design Week(SWDW) in 2020.
EVP & Co-founder at SmartStudy
Ryan Lee is the co-founder and Executive Vice President of SmartStudy, the global entertainment company behind the beloved children's brand, Pinkfong.
With extensive knowledge and experiences in the digital content industry, Ryan specializes in developing business models, monetization strategies, and business relations.
Chief Business Officer at Dapper Labs
Mik Naayem is Cofounder and the Chief Business Officer of Dapper Labs, the creators of CryptoKitties, Flow, and NBA Top Shot. His focus is on building out Flow's ecosystem by directing business strategy and partnerships.
Mik is committed to spreading blockchain education and creating delightful user experiences through partnerships with organizations like Ubisoft and Samsung, as well as with beloved brands such as UFC, Dr. Seuss, and, of course, the NBA.
Co-founder & Partner at Hashed
Ethan is co-founder and partner at Hashed. Ethan started his career as a software engineer since 2008 and worked in IT startup companies in South Korea.
He is especially interested in infrastructure level technology of blockchain and variety of applications using blockchain and decentralization including Metaverse.
Co-founder & CEO at Genies
Akash Nigam is an American entrepreneur and investor born in Los Altos, California. In 2017, Nigam founded Genies (previously Blend, 2013) and is currently its CEO and co-founder.
With its Avatar and Digital Goods SDK, Genies enables celebrities and brands to drive engagement and sell exclusive digital goods on their platforms.
CEO at GAN
Patrick Riley is the CEO of GAN, where he oversees and supports an expansive and curated network of independent accelerators, corporates, and investors by connecting startups to the resources they need to build powerful businesses.
Patrick began his career at the American Red Cross where he oversaw the COO’s office as its Chief of Staff. Patrick left the Red Cross to manage the sales and operations for a venture-backed healthcare technology company that recently exited. He then went on to Techstars, leading business development, before joining GAN and co-founding their venture investment arm.
Managing Director at Alchemist Accelerator
Ravi Belani is a Managing Director of the Alchemist Accelerator, which has accelerated over 300 startups and garnered over $1.2B in funding. Alchemist Accelerator is the leading accelerator on the development of seed-stage startups that monetize from enterprises.
Ravi formerly spent six years as part of the investment team at Draper Fisher Jurvetson's headquarters, where he led investments and served on the boards in companies such as Vizu (acquired by Nielsen) and Yield Software (acquired by Autonomy). He was formerly a consultant at McKinsey and Company and is a lecturer at Stanford University.
Founder & CEO at Perfitt
Steena (Sun Yong) Lee is the Founder and CEO of Perfitt. Formerly, Steena was a senior consultant at IBM Korea, where she specialized in global B2B marketing, IT strategy and go-to-market execution.
Perfitt leverages AI technology to find your correct shoe size. With the Perfitt app, customers can ensure they choose shoes that fit—without ever needing to visit the store in person. When you sign up for the app, Perfitt mails you a paper kit. Take a picture of your foot on top of the paper and AI technology analyzes the length, width and height of your foot to find the shoe that perfectly fits. They also recommend the most appropriate sneaker model and size, from the various brands registered in the app.
Perfitt has grown significantly this year, as COVID-19 accelerated the expansion of the e-commerce market. App subscribers have increased by more than 150,000 and monthly transactions are up nearly 70%.
Perfitt has attracted $2.5 million in Series A investment from Sparklabs, TBT, Capstone Partners, Shinhan Capital, and KODIT last December. Perfitt is preparing to incorporate in the U.S., with further plans to improve their AI engine and expand into the North American market.
Founder & CEO at WantedLab
Bokkee Lee is the Founder and CEO of Wantedlab. Bokkee, an SNU grad, was at Accenture for five years before founding Wanted.
Wanted is a referral-based recruiting platform that matches job seekers and companies. Currently, they offer their recruitment service to 10,000 companies in five countries, with more than 1 million job seekers and 8,000 companies on the platform.
Wanted leverages users, who can recommend friends or colleagues for a job and get rewarded for successful referrals, as well as AI technology based on 1.5 million cases of hiring data to match candidates with jobs and predict with over 80% accuracy which candidates will be successful.
Wanted is expanding their global presence, establishing offices in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. With 20% of job seekers and companies coming from outside Korea, overseas membership is steadily increasing.
Wanted is currently preparing for their IPO for the second half of this year. Wanted has attracted various institutional investors, including Korea Development Bank, Stonebridge Ventures, KTB Network, Company K Partners, Kolon Investment and SL Investment.
Founder & CEO at SSenStone
Yoo Chang Hun, the founder and CEO of SSenStone, the next-generation authentication security solution startup, and swIDch, SSenStone's global business headquarter in the UK, started his career at Samsung Heavy Industries in 1996.
SSenStone is his second startup. Based on 15 years of experience in ERM and cyber security, he has successfully been growing businesses, even wining the Prime Minister's Award on behalf of security startups in 4 years. As a result, he succeeded in expanding business to the global market with about 180 global patents.
SSenStone was selected as the number one baby unicorn with the highest score in the 'Baby Unicorn 200 Promotion Project' by the Ministry of Small and Medium Venture Businesses held in 2020. It is also showing remarkable growth in the global market winning renowned awards including the “Authentication Solution of the Year” award in the 4th annual CyberSecurity Breakthrough Awards, 2020 Cybertech category winner of EUROPAS 2020 Award, and 2020 Cybertech 100.
Grammy Award-Winning Music Artist & Entrepreneur/Investor
“When MC Hammer Talks, Silicon Valley Startups Listen”
MC Hammer transformed from a world-wide popular Grammy Award-winning musician to a respected entrepreneur, investor, and corporate advisor in Silicon Valley. He invested in dozens of companies over the past 29 years and supported Salesforce and other companies' growth through his role as an advisor.
He has been interested in and supportive of companies not only in the music field but also in various fields that make connected life more interesting and easy. He recently joined as an advisor to SparkLabs Frontier-ASU, one of the accelerator programs of SparkLabs Group, and is continuing various activities as a strong supporter of startups.
CEO & Co-founder Instant Tattoo
A founder and CEO whose mission is to create change and opportunity and influence new ideas and behaviors.
Founded Instant Tattoo in 2018, which is currently growing rapidly in global markets such as Japan, Singapore, and the United States.
Before its founding, she was a brand marketer at P&G and is also the author of “Going to Work in Global Professional Singapore”.
CEO Kim Nam Sook is the founder and CEO of Instant Tattoo, a tech-based company leading the next beauty and fashion. In 2017, while discussing a new digital-based beauty innovation with her housemate, she was convinced of the possibility of temporary tattoos and co-founded Instant Tattoo in April 2018. Just two months after its launch, Instant Tattoo won the Hankook Ilbo’s New Product of the Year award, drawing enthusiastic customer responses. Based on this, the business is showing rapid globalization by entering into Japan and Taiwan in 2019 and signing official licensing agreements with BTS in six regions around the world, including the United States and Japan, in October 2020.
Prior to the founding of Instant Tattoo, she worked as an Asian beauty care brand manager at Procter & Gamble and developed her marketing expertise. Being in charge of marketing for a beauty care brand with annual sales of more than 1 trillion won in the Asia Pacific region, including Japan and Australia, she led double-digit growth every year and achieved the No.1 market share in Asia. Through this experience, we have gained insights into how important beauty plays a role in our lives and what innovations can be brought about with the help of digital and mobile technology.
CEO Kim Nam Sook double majored in Business Administration and Chinese literature at Sogang University and has a book titled “Going to Work in Global Professional Singapore.” She is developing her brand and business with a mission to create change and opportunity and influence new ideas and behaviors.
CEO & Co-founder Fireside
Falon Fatemi stood out from the pack even as a teenager. At 19, while still a student at Santa Clara University, she managed to land a full-time job at Google. She spent six years there, cutting her teeth in several departments including driving sales strategy and operations for the company’s core AdWords, online sales, and syndication partnerships teams and YouTube’s business development and partnerships team, focused on areas like live streaming, sports, and gaming.
Fatemi shares the same drive and love of business as her parents, Persian entrepreneurs who came to the U.S. during the Iranian Revolution. In 2015 she founded the enterprise software startup Node, which specializes in using A.I. and cutting-edge data crunching to help corporate sales and marketing teams.
In April, Node raised $6 million, bringing total funding to $40 million, led by the billionaire and Shark Tank investor Mark Cuban. Four months later, SugarCRM, an enterprise software firm, bought Node for an undisclosed amount with Falon planning to move on to new adventures.
CEO Edmodo
Susan Kim is the CEO of Edmodo, a global education technology platform with over 100 million users that connects learners with the community and content needed to reach their full potential.
Previously, she was CEO of EatWith, a Greylock Partners-backed global marketplace for communal dining featuring over 700 home chefs in 50 countries and 160 cities around the world and the CEO of Plum District, an e-commerce start-up that under her leadership doubled to over 2 million members. She also spent time in various leadership positions at Google and eBay.
Susan serves as co-chair for the annual fund at The Nueva School and mentors entrepreneurs for start-up incubators MuckerLab, SparkLabs, and TechStars LA. She previously served as a founding board member of the Korean-American Community Foundation of San Francisco and as a board director for mobile fashion app Cladwell.
Susan received her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BA from Harvard College.
CEO & Co-founder UYU
Jinhee Ahn Kim is co-founder & CEO of UYU Ltd. UYU is a global esports organization active in fielding competitive professional teams, content creation, lifestyle merchandising, as well as ecommerce. With a highly competitive global roster, UYU has quickly established itself as a contender across numerous esports games. Working in collaboration with some of the industry’s top talents and brands, UYU continues to push the creative boundaries of gaming centric content.
Jinhee was previously co-founder & president of Snapette, the largest mobile platform for local fashion shopping, which was sold to leading eCommerce platform PriceGrabber in 2013. At the time of its sale, Snapette was VC funded and had over 2 million users and over 300 top fashion retailer and brand partners such as Nordstrom, Nine West, UNIQLO, Theory and DVF.
She began her career as a management consultant at Bain & Co., then followed her creative interests as a menswear designer at Ralph Lauren. She founded True-Learning and was also the Director of Product Development at Mindshapes, a mobile e-learning company where she oversaw the development of award winning children's educational apps.
Jinhee was selected as one of the "Most Creative People" by Fast Company. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Harvard Alumni Association and is a board member and vice president of the Harvard Asian American Alumni Alliance. She is a board member for the Council of Korean Americans, a global network of Korean Americans working to advance issues of national importance, and is the founding co-chair for the Inspire Gala. Previously she served as the 2016 and 2017 CKA Summit & Gala co-chair.
Jinhee received her A.B. in economics from Harvard College, A.A.S. in fashion design from Parsons School of Design and J.D. from the University of Hawaii.
CEO and Founding Partner 500 Startups
Christine is the CEO and Founding Partner of 500 Startups. Since the firm’s inception in 2010, she grew 500 Startups to over $500M committed capital, 2,300+ portfolio investments, 100+ team members, 25 accelerator batches, and a vibrant community of founders spanning more than 75 countries around the world.
Christine spent her entire professional career building and investing in Silicon Valley. From 2003 to 2010, Christine held product marketing and operating roles at Google, focusing primarily on monetization and developer products. She was part of the original technical support team that helped launch Google AdSense, an advertising program for website publishers which now accounts for a significant part of Google’s revenue. During her tenure at Google, Christine also drove developer and syndication marketing at YouTube post-Google acquisition. Christine also oversaw marketing for YouTube’s APIs and developer tools, and she collaborated with numerous developers and early-stage startups integrating YouTube into their products.
Christine holds a B.A. in Cognitive Science, with a concentration in Cognitive Psychology, from the University of California at Berkeley. While at Berkeley, she was accepted into the prestigious Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program for Psychology. She was also a National Merit Scholar.
General Partner Vertex Ventures
In Sik Rhee began his career as a successful entrepreneur and transitioned to an early stage technology investor and mentor.
In Sik co-founded Kiva Software in 1995, where he developed one of the industry’s first Java application servers. Kiva was acquired by Netscape Communications in 1997 for $180 million. In 1999, In Sik co-founded Opsware (Loudcloud) — a pioneer of cloud computing – which IPO’ed and was acquired by HP for $1.6 billion in 2007.
As an investor, In Sik started as an angel/mentor then eventually found professional footing as a venture capitalist – first at Accel Partners, then Rembrandt Venture Partners, and currently as General Partner of Vertex Ventures US. Vertex US is an early stage VC with $300M under management and invests in startups focused on Enterprise B2B markets.
In Sik has a BS from UC Berkeley EECS and currently serves on the Executive Advisory Board for the College of Engineering.
Principal Notation Capital
Katherine is a Principal at Notation Capital, a New York-based venture capital fund that focuses on investing in software companies at its earliest days.
Katherine began her career in law and prior to Notation was the Director of Business Development at an NYC-based tech startup. Katherine grew up between China and Hong Kong and holds a BA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University and a JD from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
Managing General Partner Xfund
Patrick is Managing General Partner of Xfund. Prior to Xfund, Patrick was a partner at NEA and led the firm’s consumer and seed investment practices.
He is a director of 23andMe and Philo, and led investments in Guideline, Halo Neuro, IFTTT, Landit, Nebula Genomics, NewtonX, Rock Health, ThirdLove, and Zumper. Past investments include Segment (acquired by Twilio), Kensho (acquired by S&P Global), Plaid (acquired by Visa), Pulse (acquired by LinkedIn), Loopt (acquired by Green Dot), GoodGuide (acquired by Underwriters Laboratories), Ravel Law (acquired by Lexis-Nexis), Xfire (acquired by Viacom), and Xoom (NASDAQ: XOOM).
Prior to joining NEA, Patrick helped to grow ZEFER, an Internet services firm (acquired by NEC) to more than $100 million in annual revenues and more than 700 people across six global offices. Prior to ZEFER, Patrick was with McKinsey & Company, where he specialized in hardware, software, and services companies.
Patrick received a joint JD-MBA degree from Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School, where he served as an Editor of the Harvard Law Review. Patrick was a Commonwealth Scholar at Oxford University, where he earned a Master of Science degree.
Patrick earned his A.B. degree at Harvard College in Environmental Science. He is a member of the New York and Massachusetts bars, was an elected director of the Harvard Alumni Association, and a member of the Committee to Visit Harvard College. He is also an Associate of the Creative Destruction Lab at the University of Toronto.
Chairman & CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group
Peter Guber is Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group. Prior to Mandalay, Guber was Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Chairman and CEO of Polygram Entertainment, Co-Founder of Casablanca Record & Filmworks and President of Columbia Pictures. Guber produced or executive produced (personally or through his companies) films that garnered five Best Picture Academy Award nominations (winning for Rain Man) and box office hits that include The Color Purple, MidnightExpress, Batman, Flashdance, The Kids Are All Right and Soul Surfer.
Mandalay's most recent release, The Birth of a Nation, recently premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and swept the two top prizes - the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and the prestigious U.S. Dramatic Jury Award. The film sold to Fox Searchlight for a record breaking price.
Peter Guber is Owner and Co-Executive Chairman of the 2015 NBA Champion Golden State Warriors, an Owner of the three-time National League West Champion, Los Angeles Dodgers, and an Owner and Executive Chairman of Major League Soccer's Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC). He is an Owner of Dick Clark Productions a leading independent producer of television programming including such perennial hits as the American Music Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and So You Think You Can Dance.
He is an investor, board member and Chairman of the Strategic Advisory Board for NextVR. Peter Guber is Co-Executive Chairman, with Ted Leonsis, of the new eSports ownership group, aXiomatic, which purchased the controlling interest in Team Liquid, one of the most successful global esports team franchises. He is Chairman of Mandalay Sports Media and a full professor at UCLA.
Peter Guber is a noted author with works including Shootout: Surviving Fame and (Mis)Fortune in Hollywood, which became a 7 year television series on AMC which he hosted. Guber wrote the cover article for the Harvard Business Review titled, The Four Truths of the Storyteller. Guber's most recent business book, Tell To Win - Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story, became an instant #1 New York Times bestseller.
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Peter Guber and Bruce Stein see bright future in esports business [ESPN] Nov 1, 2016
Warriors Co-Owner Peter Guber Makes Bel-Air’s A-List Of Mega Water Wasters [CBS] Sep 20, 2016
Peter Guber says VR will become as big as reality [Fortune] May 16, 2015
Partner at Y Combinator
Justin Kan is an internet entrepreneur and partner at seed fund Y Combinator. Justin has founded many companies including Kiko, the first AJAX web calendar and Justin.tv, a live video streaming platform. His attempt to broadcast his entire life at Justin.tv popularized the term “lifecasting”.
The company decided to transition to providing a live video platform so anyone could publish a live video stream. Justin.tv, the platform, launched in 2007 and was one of the largest live video platforms in the world with more than 30 million unique users every month.
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Justin Kan launches video Q&A app Whale [Techcrunch] Oct 31, 2016
Y-Combinator’s Justin Kan Is A Snapchat Life Coach For Thousands Of People [Techcrunch] Oct 31, 2016
Berkeley Forum announces spring 2017 speaker lineup [The Daily Californian] Jan 22, 2017
Director of Medical Research at Intuitive Surgical
Dr. Catherine Mohr is currently the Director of Medical Research at Intuitive Surgical, where she develops new surgical procedures and evaluates new technologies for improving surgical outcomes.
An expert in the fields of robotic surgery and sustainable technologies, Dr. Mohr is passionate about realizing the potential benefit that appropriately applied technologies can have in our society. She has had numerous articles published and been featured in the news many times.
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Robot-Assisted Surgery Praised Despite High Cost [The Korea Bizwire] May 27, 2016
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Intuitive Surgical Exec: Here Is Why Robotic Surgery Is Useful [Forbes] JUL 17, 2014
CTO & Vice President of IBM Systems
Scott Crowder is currently Chief Technical Officer and Vice President, Quantum Computing, Technical Strategy and Transformation for IBM Systems. His responsibilities include leading the commercialization effort for quantum computers, driving the strategic direction across the hardware and software-defined systems portfolio, leading the agile and Design Thinking transformation, and accelerating innovation within development through special projects.
Previously, Scott was Vice President, Technical Strategy within IBM Corporate Strategy. In this role, he helped define the cross-IBM technical strategy for cloud infrastructure, workload optimized systems, Big Data and Analytics, composable services, software-defined infrastructure and cognitive solutions.
Scott joined IBM in 1995 and was the lead engineer on the industry's first logic-based embedded DRAM technology before serving in a variety of executive management roles within the semiconductor research and development organization.
Scott received A.B./Sc.B. degrees in Electrical Engineering and International Relations from Brown University and a M.A. in Economics and M.Sc./Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
Founding Partner of Riverwood Capital
Nicholas Brathwaite is a founding Partner of Riverwood Capital. Nicholas has spent over 25 years developing and evaluating technology.
From 1996 to 2007, he served as the Chief Technology Officer at Flextronics, where he worked alongside Michael Marks, former CEO. At Flextronics, Nicholas was innovative in his drive to move the company into product development, and he oversaw the launch and growth of several of Flextronics’ largest business units.
Previously, he was a founding member of nChip responsible for development of the industry-leading advanced multi-chip module assembly process. More recently with Riverwood, Nicholas served as the interim CEO for Aptina Imaging from February 2007 to August 2008. His unique combination of technology know-how and commercial judgment will add value throughout the investment life-cycle at Riverwood.
Nicholas earned a M.Sc. Degree in Polymer Science Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada and a B.Sc. (Honors) Degree in Applied Chemistry from McMaster University, Canada. He is a director of Globant, Arkmicro., Power Integrations, Tessera Technologies, Inc and Chairman of the Board at Aptina Imaging.
Venture Partner at SparkLabs
Chanho Park is the most winningest Asian-Born Major League Baseball pitcher in history with 124 career wins, and the first South Korean-born player in major league history. He played for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Texas Rangers, San Diego Padres, New York Mets, Philadelphia Phillies, New York Yankees, and Pittsburgh Pirates from 1994 through 2010.
Chanho has been an inspiration to so many Koreans throughout the world and has been a great role model for many young people in South Korea. He has been active in many youth programs including the Chanho Park Dream Foundation which supports young baseball talent. Chan Ho has been actively participating in various fundraising events for charity, lectures, concerts and mentoring activities both in South Korea and the U.S.
He recently joined global startup accelerator SparkLabs as a Venture Partner as he continually seeks opportunities to support young generations, especially Korean startups who aim to expand their business into the global market.
Co-Founder of Square, Founder of Mira, and Third Degree
Jim McKelvey is an engineer, entrepreneur, artist, and widely known together with Jack Dorsey as the co-founders of Square, a new mobile payment platform. A revolutionary service that enables anyone to accept credit cards anywhere.
His other company Mira, started out as a software company. Eventually, Mira was refocused as a digital publishing company and provides online submission management and traditional print and electronic publishing services for more than 100 organisations from numerous disciplines.
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How Jim McKelvey’s Launchcode Is Helping Unconventional Tech Talent [Fast Company] Apr 18, 2016
Jim McKelvey donates $15 million to Washington University for new building [St. Louis Business Journal] Oct 28, 2016
All payments will become frictionless just like Uber’s: Jim McKelvey [Times of India] Feb 11, 2016
Author, speaker, Blogger (Previously creative director at various agencies for Apple, Intel, Dell, NeXT, BMW, IBM and others)
Ken Segall is an advertising executive and the man who put the 'i' in iPad. He worked side-by-side with Steve Jobs for 12 years as the advertising creative director of both NeXT and Apple. Segall was instrumental in seeing Apple grow from near bankruptcy to become the world’s most valuable company. Currently, Segall does creative work, branding and product naming for major brands, and regularly blogs about technology and marketing.
To Steve Jobs, ‘simplicity’ wasn't just a design principle. It was a religion and a weapon. The obsession with simplicity is what separates Apple from other technology companies. It's what helped Apple recover from near-death in 1997 to become the most valuable company on Earth in 2011, and guides the way Apple is organized, how it designs products and how it connects with customers.
It's by crushing the forces of complexity that the company remains on its stellar trajectory. As Creative Director, Segall played a key role in Apple's resurrection, helping to create such critical ad-campaigns as 'Think Different' and coming up with the 'i' before Apple's key products. As an advertising executive by trade, Segall previously worked as a global creative director at Dell, IBM, Intel and BMW before joining Apple.
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The simple secret to Apple’s success [Metro] May 27, 2016
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Founder & CEO of Talko
Ray Ozzie is an independent software entrepreneur and pioneer in social productivity, an area more known in the field as Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. He recently founded and serves as CEO of Talko, a startup focused on a new generation of mobile communications apps and services. Through late 2010 he was Chief Software Architect of Microsoft, the company’s most senior technical strategy & architecture role previously held by Bill Gates.
Ozzie came to Microsoft in 2005 through the acquisition of Groove Networks, a company he founded in 1997 to focus on software and services for small-team dynamic collaboration. Prior to Groove, in 1984 Ozzie founded and led Iris Associates, the creator and developer of Lotus Notes. A decade later, Iris was acquired by Lotus and then by IBM. Under his leadership during that period, Lotus Notes grew to be used for communication & social productivity by hundreds of millions at most major enterprises worldwide. Before creating Notes, he worked on 1-2-3 and Symphony at Lotus, on VisiCalc and TK!Solver at Software Arts, and on operating systems at Data General.
Ozzie studied computer science & engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he has been honored as a distinguished alumnus. It was there where he first took in the significance of online community and social interactive systems as a systems developer on the seminal PLATO project.
Honored as one of seven Windows Pioneers by Microsoft, Ozzie was named Person of the Year by PC Magazine, and has been inducted into the Computer Museum Industry Hall of Fame. He has been honored as a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer and has received numerous awards including the IEEE Computer Society's W. Wallace McDowell Award and the SDForum Visionary Award. In 2004 Ozzie was inducted as a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and in 2010 he was named as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
He currently serves on the board of directors of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), has served as a member of the National Research Council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, and was a member of the NRC committee that produced the landmark CRISIS report on the societal impact of cryptography.
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Microsoft Buys Another Ray Ozzie Company [Fortune] Dec 22, 2015
A TALKO CONVERSATION WITH RAY OZZIE [The New Yorker] September 24, 2014
Ray Ozzie’s New Venture Talko Launches An App For Collaborative Voice Communications [TechCrunch] Sep 22, 2014
President & CEO of the Partnership Fund for New York City
Maria G. Gotsch is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Partnership Fund for New York City (www.pfnyc.org), which is the investment arm of the Partnership for New York City. The Fund, which has raised over $100 million, has built a network of top experts from the investment and corporate communities who help identify and support New York City’s most promising entrepreneurs in both the for-profit and non-for profit sectors.
In addition to leading the Fund’s operations, Maria has spearheaded the creation and operation of a number of the Fund’s strategic initiatives, including: FinTech Innovation Lab; New York Digital Health Accelerator; NYCSeed (seed financing for IT/digital media companies); BioAccelerate Prize NYC (proof-of-concept funding for university-based biomedical research); Arts Entrepreneurial Loan Fund (low cost loans for mid-size arts groups); and ReStart Central and Financial Recovery Fund (assistance and funding for small businesses impacted by 9/11/01).
Prior to joining the Fund in 1999, Maria was a Managing Director at BT Wolfensohn (now part of Deutsche Bank), providing strategic and financial advice related to mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures and the development of business strategies. Before starting with Wolfensohn, Maria worked at LaSalle Partners in the New York area and for Merrill Lynch Capital Markets in New York and London.
Maria has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.A. from Wellesley College. She was also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to study international relations at the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva, Switzerland.
Maria also is a member of the boards of Reach Out and Read of Greater New York (children’s literacy non-profit), the New York Venture Capital Association and the Lang Fund and serves on the business advisory board of ProPublica (investigative journalism non-profit).
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State Focus: New York – Accelerating Biotech Innovation In The Empire State [Business Facilities] May 12, 2016
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Partnership Fund for NYC Expects a Spring of FinTech, Life Sciences, & More [XCONOMY] March 18th, 2013
Co-founder & President of Xiaomi
Bin Lin co-founded Xiaomi Corporation with famous angel investor Lei Jun in April 2010. He is now President of Xiaomi Corporation and is in charge of Xiaomi’s day-to-day operation, business and product strategy, and supply chain management.
Bin Lin worked at Google Inc as Engineering Director from 2006 to 2010. He founded and led the product development and engineering effort for Mobile, Android apps, and Music at Google China office. Bin and his team successfully launched many Google products including many versions of Google Mobile Maps (GMM) on Symbian/J2ME/iPhone/Android, Mandarin voice search, mobile verticals such as video, dictionary, finance, local, etc., Android Pinyin IME, Android Dictionary, Android News and Weather widget, Google Music (free streaming and download of legal music online), Google Pinyin IME, and various oneboxes. Under Bin’s leadership, Google’s mobile search traffic in China grew from 200k to 26M (SRPV) in 3 years, and GMM usage grew from 0 to 13M (MAU) in 3 years.
Prior to joining Google, Bin worked at Microsoft from 1995 to 2006 and held various senior positions. In 2003 he served as Development Director of Microsoft and co-founded Microsoft’s Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Beijing. He helped grew the center to over 400 people in 3 years. From 2000 to 2003 Bin was Senior Development Manager at Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) and was in charge of MSRA’s technology transfer effort. From 1995 to 2000 Bin was Software Design Engineer and Development Lead at Microsoft Redmond headquarter. Throughout the entire 11-years of career at Microsoft, Bin made significant contribution to many Microsoft products including Exchange, Windows, IE, Office, Tablet PC, MSN, Xbox, etc. He received Microsoft’s GoldStar Award in 2004.
Bin is also Visiting Professor at Zhejiang University (Hangzhou, China), Zhongshan University (Guangzhou, China), Nankai University (Tianjin, China), and Tongji University (Shanghai, China).
Bin received MS in Computer Science from Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA in 1992, and BS in Electronics and Information System from Zhongshan (Sun Yet-Sen) University, Guangzhou, China in 1990.
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Bin Lin on Xiaomi’s Growth Beyond Phones [Wall Street Journal] Oct. 28, 2015
Xiaomi's Bin Lin Says Chinese Smartphone Maker May Enter the U.S. [recode] OCT 21, 2015
Xiaomi CEO Calls His Business an 'Internet Company' [Wall Street Journal] 10/21/2015
Founder and CEO of TheMuse.com
Kathryn Minshew is the CEO & Founder of TheMuse.com, a career platform and job discovery tool helping 1 million people a month find inspiring careers at thoughtful companies. Kathryn has spoken at MIT and Harvard, appeared on The TODAY Show and CNN, and contributes on career and entrepreneurship topics to the Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review.
She was recently named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Media for the second year in a row, as well as Inc.’s 15 Women to Watch in Tech. Before founding The Muse, Kathryn worked on vaccine introduction in Rwanda and Malawi with the Clinton Health Access Initiative and was previously at the management consultancy McKinsey & Company. Follow her on Twitter @KMin
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Minshew’s Manhattan: Why The Muse CEO ditched San Francisco for N.Y.C [New York Business Journal] Sep 9, 2016
How Kathryn Minshew, CEO and Founder of The Muse, Gets It All Done [New York Magazine] Sep 27, 2016
The Muse Raises $16 Million To Make Its Career Platform More Personal [Forbes] Jun 22, 2016
Co-founder of Healtheon & WebMD
Pavan is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor who enjoys working on great ideas with great teams. His investments include Neoteris (acquired by Juniper), myCFO (acquired by Harris), Sigaba (acquired by Proofpoint), Benu, Infoaxe and Trackle (where he was the founding CEO). Previously, he was the Chairman and CEO of Cendura Corporation which he co-founded in 2002. He grew the company into one of the market leaders for data center automation software with an installed base that included several Fortune 500 companies. Cendura was acquired by CA (formerly Computer Associates) in 2006.
Prior to that, he co-founded Healtheon (now WebMD [WBMD]) in 1996 along with Jim Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics & Netscape Communications, and served as its Chief Technology Officer and General Manager/EVP of its Internet Operations. In his General Management role, he was responsible for WebMD’s entire suite of products including its Internet-based ehealth services. During his tenure, Pavan led the company’s transformation from a concept to the worlds largest e-health company approaching a billion dollars in annual revenues, over eight thousand employees and several billion in market capitalization. Pavan’s role was extensively profiled in the bestseller “The New New Thing” by Michael Lewis.
Prior to WebMD, Pavan worked at Silicon Graphics, where he was the General Manager for the company’s Interactive Media Group and was responsible for deploying Time Warner, Inc.’s Interactive TV project in Orlando, Florida. The Time Warner project is widely recognized as the most prominent and sophisticated ITV system ever created and has been the foundation of several advanced technologies and companies (eg. Tivo). Pavan holds a B.S.E.E. from the Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur) and an M.S.C.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Pavan serves on several Corporate Boards and Advisory Boards. He also served on the board of the US India Business Council from 1999-2009. He is a member of the Band of Angels and TIE Angels.
Creator of Mt. Gox, Ripple and Stellar
Jed McCaleb is the CTO and cofounder of Stellar.org, where he leads technical development. Jed believes in consciously leveraging technology to reduce inefficiency and improve the human condition. He created eDonkey, one of the largest file-sharing networks of its time, as well as Mt. Gox, the first Bitcoin exchange and in 2011, Ripple.
Ripple is now the 4th largest cryptocurrency in the world. Recognizing that the world’s financial infrastructure is broken and that too many people are left without resources, he cofounded Stellar Development Foundation in 2014. Jed is also an advisor to MIRI, which researches artificial intelligence for positive impact.
Founder and Managing Partner of SoftTech VC
Jean-Francois “Jeff” Clavier is the Founder and Managing Partner of SoftTech VC, one of the most established seed VC firms in Silicon Valley, having closed 150 investments since 2004. An early angel investor in Web 2.0, Jeff and his team have backed successful startups like Mint (Intuit), Kongregate (GameStop), Brightroll, Milo (eBay), Wildfire (Google), Bleacher Report (Turner), Fitbit, Eventbrite, Sendgrid, Fab, Poshmark and Class Dojo. The portfolio has also seen acquisitions by Groupon, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo and AOL. The firm is currently investing out of its $55M Fund III, making 20 commitments of $500K per year in mobile/cloud saas, monetization infrastructure, marketplaces and e-commerce.
Born, raised and educated in France, Jeff graduated with a MS in Computer Science and a degree in Distributed Computing. He joined Effix, a financial services startup, as one of the initial developers while still at school and eventually led it as CTO.
After 5 years, Reuters acquired the company and Jeff expanded his remit to several product and development organizations in Europe and the USA. In 2000, he moved to Silicon Valley as General Partner for RVC, the $450M venture fund affiliated with Reuters.
In 2004, Jeff left RVC to start SoftTech VC and invest in the early pioneers of Consumer Internet. Within a couple of years, he was being recognized in the media as one of the “super angels”, and in 2007, he subsequently raised one of the first micro-VC funds, $15M Fund II. After three years, and 60+ investments closed on his own, Jeff built a team and raised a larger, $55M Fund III.
One of the early VC bloggers in 2004, Jeff is now a popular conference speaker and social media/TV commentator. When he is not spending time with SoftTech’s portfolio companies, Jeff enjoys traveling, skiing, scuba diving and hanging out with friends and family.
Co-founder of Netflix
Marc Randolph is a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur, angel investor and executive mentor. Most recently, Marc was founder of the online movie service Netflix, serving as their founding CEO, as the executive producer of their web site, and as a member of their board of directors until his retirement in 2004. Today, Netflix is the leading streaming video company with over 60 million subscribers across 40 countries and generated over $5.5 billion in revenues. In 2011, Netflix began acquiring original content and produced “House of Cards” with Kevin Spacey. They went on to product and distribute other series such as Lilyhammer, Hemlock Grove and Orange Is the New Black.
Prior to founding Netflix, Marc was on the founding team of more than half a dozen other successful start-ups in the e-commerce, media, enterprise software and portable device markets – all of which went on to IPOs or other liquidity events.
Since leaving Netflix he has been an active angel investor, executive mentor and consultant. He currently sits on the boards of Rafter, ReadyForce, Getable, and the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS); and is a mentor to the executive teams of numerous other startups.
Marc is charming, handsome and modest; and whenever possible, avoids referring to himself in the third person.
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Netflix’s Marc Randolph on how an idea became a household name [CNBC] Jun 9, 2016
Professor at the University of Toronto and New York University & Senior editor for The Atlantic
The Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, Global Research Professor at New York University, and the founder of the Creative Class Group, which works closely with governments and companies worldwide, Richard Florida is perhaps the world’s leading urbanist, “as close to a household name as it is possible for an urban theorist to be in America,” according to The Economist. Esquire has included him on its annual list of “The Best and the Brightest,” and Fast Company dubbed him an “intellectual rock star.”
Florida is the author of several global best sellers, including the award-winning The Rise of the Creative Class (“one of the best business books of all time”—800-CEO-READ), and is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he co-founded and serves as Editor-at-Large for Atlantic Cities, the world's leading media site devoted to cities and urban affairs. Florida appears regularly on CNN and other news broadcasts and is a regular contributor to the op ed pages of major newspapers and magazines. TIME magazine recognized his Twitter feed as one of the 140 most influential in the world.
Florida previously taught at Carnegie Mellon and George Mason University, and has been a visiting professor at Harvard and MIT. He earned his Bachelor's degree from Rutgers College and his Ph.D. from Columbia University.
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ALL HAIL THE CREATIVE ECONOMY [The Korea Bizwire] 06.02.2017
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CEO & co-founder of MyFitnessPal
Mike Lee is co-founder of MyFitnessPal, the leading health and fitness platform. MyFitnessPal was acquired by Under Armour for $475 million in early 2015.
Prior to founding MyFitnessPal, Mike co-founded NextC, a venture-funded startup focused on building online communities., During his 20 year tenure in the technology industry, Mike has held leadership positions at several other top start-ups in Silicon Valley, including Palm, Handspring, Beyond.com, and Regis McKenna. Mike graduated summa cum laude from Princeton with a B.A. in economics.
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Fast Forward With Mike Lee, Under Armour’s Chief Digital Officer [PC Magazine] Jan 10, 2017
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I’m Mike Lee, and This Is the Story Behind MyFitnessPal [Lifehacker] Mar 19, 2014
Founder of Room to Read
John Wood is the founder of Room to Read. An organization that believes World Change Starts with Educated Children®, Room to Read seeks to transform the lives of millions of children in developing countries by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education.
At the age of 35, John left an executive career track at Microsoft to form Room to Read. The business acumen honed there, combined with his passion to change the world, makes John a unique and inspiring speaker with universal appeal.
He is the author of Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, a memoir that was named by Amazon as one of the Top Ten business narratives of 2006. The book and was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and led to John’s lifelong dream – a television interview with Charlie Rose.
At the invitation of former President Bill Clinton, John served three terms on the Advisory Board of the Clinton Global Initiative. He was chosen as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and was named by Goldman Sachs as one of the world’s 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Tribeca Film Festival, is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, and along with Malala Yousufzai was awarded the World’s Children’s Prize, often called the Children’s Nobel Prize, by the Queen of Sweden. John was chosen for the first-ever Microsoft Alumni of the Year award, given by Bill and Melinda Gates.
John has been a three-time speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative and a five-time winner of Fast Company Magazine’s Social Capitalist Award. He has been honored by Time Magazine’s “Asian Heroes” Award and is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. He was selected by Barron’s as one of the “25 Best Givers” in 2009 and 2010, ranking 11th and 9th on the list, respectively.
John holds a master’s degree in business administration from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Colorado, and honorary doctorates from McGill University and the University of San Francisco.
Founder of Raintree Ventures
Jon Jashni is a media investor and content producer who recently founded Raintree Ventures, an investment and incubation fund operating in the entertainment space. Jashni is also an advisory board member of Evolution Media Partners, a joint-venture with TPG Capital and Creative Artists Agency.
Previously, Jashni was President and Chief Creative Officer of Legendary Entertainment. He joined the company in January 2006 and was integrally involved over a ten year period in evolving the company from a film-financing entity into a leading, diversified, multi-platform media company.
Jashni was essential to Legendary’s building, through complete or joint ownership, a library of marquee media properties and establishing itself as a trusted brand which consistently delivers high-quality, commercial entertainment; including some of the world's most popular intellectual property. In aggregate, Legendary Pictures-associated productions have realized grosses of more than $12.5 billion worldwide at the box office.
As one aspect of his duties at Legendary, Jashni oversaw the development and production of such film projects as WARCRAFT, KRAMPUS, CRIMSON PEAK, GODZILLA, the Jackie Robinson biopic 42, AS ABOVE/SO BELOW, CLASH OF THE TITANS, 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE and PACIFIC RIM.
Prior to joining Legendary, Jashni was President of Hyde Park Entertainment, a production and financing company with partnership deals at 20th Century Fox, Disney and MGM. While there, he oversaw the development and production of SHOPGIRL, DREAMER, WALKING TALL and PREMONITION. Before joining Hyde Park, Jashni was a producer on the successful romantic comedy SWEET HOME ALABAMA and, as a senior production executive at 20th Century Fox, oversaw the highly-profitable EVER AFTER.
Jashni has co-produced two films that received a total of three Academy Award® nominations: the critically acclaimed drama THE HURRICANE, which garnered a Best Actor nomination for star Denzel Washington, and a non-musical reinterpretation of ANNA AND THE KING, which starred Jodie Foster, and earned two Oscar nominations.
Jashni is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Producers Guild of America in addition to serving as a Trustee of the American Film Institute. He holds a BS in Corporate Finance from the University of Southern California and an MBA in Organizational Behavior from UCLA's Anderson School of Management.
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Legendary Entertainment President Jon Jashni Exits To Form Raintree Ventures [Deadline] Feb 29, 2016
Former CTO of Spotify
Andreas is Wrapp's co-founder and was its Chief Technology Ffficer (CTO) until recently. Wrapp is a leading mobile gifting service that raised over $25 million from investors such as Niklas Zennström (Skype co-founder), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder) and Fabian Månsson (former global CEO of H&M and Eddie Bauer).
Previously Andreas was Spotify’s first employee and CTO, where he brought together the world-class tech team that designed and built the platform and product for the music service. He was at Spotify from its launch through 3 years of rapid growth. Today Spotify has over 60 million users (15 million paid) across the globe. The company recently raised US$350 million at $8 billion valuation earlier this year.
Before Spotify, Andreas worked for the Swedish online-gaming company Stardoll. Andreas is a board member and angel investor in several companies, and he is frequently hired as an advisor by promising Internet start-ups and venture capital funds.
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Wrapp: Zennstrom-Backed Startup Reinvents The Gift Card [Forbes] Jan 2, 2012
Timekit wants to make it easy to build your own online booking system [Techcrunch] Jan 17, 2017
Founder, CEO and Chief Creative Director at Perverse Sunglasses
Toni Ko is a Founder, CEO and Chief Creative Director at Perverse Sunglasses. Prior to founding Perverse Sunglasses, she founded the multi-million dollar cosmetics brand NYX, which was recently acquired by the largest beauty company in the world, L’Oreal, for a reported $500 million.
Discovering a gap in the cosmetics market between prestige brands sold in department stores and mass brands sold in drugstores, Ko created NYX in 1999, with the goal of delivering professional, richly pigmented products at affordable prices. Working as a one-woman show from a 600-square-foot showroom in California, Ko began selling a single item – makeup pencils.
She impressively generated two million dollars in sales during her first year, and quickly grew to become a leader in the color cosmetics industry, gaining the respect of such retail giants as Target, CVS and Ulta.
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Banking On Beauty: How Toni Ko Built NYX Cosmetics Into A $500 Million Brand [Forbes] Jun 1, 2016
How PERVERSE Founder Toni Ko Went From NYX Cosmetics Creator To Sunglass Mogul [Bustle] Aug 23, 2016
Peggy Cherng, Toni Ko And Celine Dion Among America’s Richest Self-Made, Foreign Born Women [Forbes] Jun 2, 2016
President of SK Global
John Penotti serves as President of SK Global (www.skglobalentertainment.com), the merged entity of Ivanhoe Pictures, an international local-language content company, and Sidney Kimmel Entertainment (SKE), a Hollywood-based, independent film finance and production entity. John has produced over 45 films and has been a prominent industry executive since his start working with legendary director Sidney Lumet.
With Ivanhoe, John has established a number of key partnerships to produce local-language films in China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Latin America. This includes relationships with Blumhouse Productions to produce a comprehensive slate of local-language genre films in India, including the limited series Ghoul, which debuted on Netflix in August.
Through Ivanhoe Pictures, John produced (along with Color Force) and co-financed (with Warner Brothers) the breakout romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians, an adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s best-selling novel directed by Jon M. Chu (Now You See Me 2), with an all-Asian cast including Michelle Yeoh and Constance Wu. The film opened number one at the box office and is now one of the highest grossing romantic comedies of all time in the U.S. John also executive produced the Taiwanese film Cities of Last Things, directed by Wi Ding Ho, which won the Toronto Platform Prize at TIFF.
John produced the upcoming film Greta, which Focus Features will distribute in 2019. Directed by Neil Jordan (The Crying Game), the film stars Isabelle Huppert and Chloë Grace Moretz. John also produced Going Places, written and directed by John Turturro (The Night Of), and starring Turturro, Bobby Cannavale, Audrey Tautou, and Susan Sarandon.
In 2016, John Executive Produced director Na Hong-jin's Korean phenomenon The Wailing, an Official Selection at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival; the film grossed $50M at the Korean box-office, making it the second highest-grossing Fox Korea film of all time (after Avatar). He also Executive Produced the Academy Award-nominated CBS/Lionsgate feature Hell or High Water, starring Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine, which was also a 2016 Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival and a 2017 Academy Award nominee for Best Picture.
John was the founding partner and President of GreeneStreet Films, a NY-based company from 1994 until 2013. While there, he oversaw the financing and producing of over thirty films, including the five-time Academy Award-nominated In the Bedroom, the #1 box office thriller Swimfan, the studio hit comedy Uptown Girls, Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion, the action-thriller Crank, and the documentary Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos.
In 2015, John relocated from New York City to Santa Monica, CA, with his wife Sheryl and son Luca. Born and raised in Paterson, NJ, John is a graduate of Tufts University, with degrees in Biology and Psychology.
CSO at Impossible Foods
Nick Halla joined Impossible Foods as its first employee and has helped build the company from the ground up. Nick leads corporate strategy, business development and international development. Before joining Impossible, Nick became an expert in food commercialization at General Mills, where he developed and launched several new product lines and designed large-scale food manufacturing systems.
He also has experience in agriculture, having grown up on a family dairy farm, and commercializing new technologies such as solar, energy storage and biofuels. Nick holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and an M.S. in Environment and Resources from the Stanford School of Earth Sciences.
Creator of Qtum
Patrick is the creator of Qtum. He is graduated from Draper University and dropped out of his doctoral degree from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Previously employed by Alibaba, and committed to the blockchain technology development, with abundant blockchain industry development experience.
Co-founder of Kiva
Jessica is an entrepreneur and investor. Her work over the last decade has focused on financial inclusion, the sharing economy, and social justice.
She is best known as a cofounder of Kiva, the world's first p2p microlending website. Kiva lets internet users lend as little as $25 to individual entrepreneurs, providing them affordable capital to start or expand a small business. Since its founding in October 2005 Kiva has facilitated over $880M in loans worldwide.
Jessica currently teaches Social Entrepreneurship at the Marshall School of Business at USC. She is also an independent consultant on social impact initiatives, and an investor and advisor with the Collaborative Fund. She also recently served as Walt Disney Imagineering's first Entrepreneur in Residence, focusing on projects related to corporate citizenship, the sharing economy, and happiness.
Before this, Jessica was a Cofounder and CEO of ProFounder, a pioneering crowdfunding platform for U.S. entrepreneurs which later joined forces with GOOD to create new tools and experiences for their community of creators.
Jessica served from 2010-2012 as a Visiting Practitioner at Stanford’s Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society. She has taught Entrepreneurial Design for Social Change at Drew University and has lectured around the world. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a 2011 World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader, and serves as an active board member or advisor for several nonprofit organizations including Habitat for Humanity.
She holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business , a certificate in Global Leadership and Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, a BA in Philosophy and Political Science from Bucknell University, and honorary PhDs from Centenary College and Quinnipiac University.
Jessica is a trained yoga instructor and avid surfer who lives in Los Angeles with her husband, author Reza Aslan, and their three young sons. Her first book, CLAY WATER BRICK: Finding Inspiration from Entrepreneurs Who Do the Most with the Least was published in June 2015 (Penguin Random House).
Group Chief Financial Officer at ADNOC
Joined ADNOC May 2018 as Group Chief Financial Officer. ADNOC is the second-largest NOC in the Middle East and produces 3.5 million barrels /day. Formerly at the Abu Dhabi Investment Council (joined March 2008) where he established the de novo “Special Situations” unit. This group now has a 10 year+ track record and focuses on investing globally in idiosyncratic and one-off transactions across the capital structure with geographic and asset class flexibility.
Prior to ADIC was in Japan for six years first with Unicredito (HVB) as CEO and then with Shinsei Bank in the newly created position of Chief Investment Officer. At HVB, originally hired in their New York Branch as Treasurer for the Americas, was responsible for developing and directing their proprietary allocation to Alternative Investments. Subsequently, transferred to Tokyo as the CEO of HVB’s Japanese operations. Previously at Merrill Lynch for 10 years and EBRD for 6 years both in London and NY.
Core expertise is asset allocation, proprietary trading and ALM. Experience includes both direct “hands-on management“ of risk and risk-takers as well as allocating to external managers in alternatives. Experience both on buy-side as well as sell-side. Has worked in NY, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo Moscow and now Abu Dhabi.
MBA from the Wharton School, BA in Economics from Emory University. Elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Speaks French and Greek and has a working knowledge of German.
Head of Open Innovation at Daimler AG
Philipp Gneiting, Head of Open Innovation at Daimler AG, is responsible for the initiation and management of STARTUP AUTOBAHN, which is a startup innovation platform located in Stuttgart, Singapore, Beijing and Bangalore. With the platform, he initiated more than 150 pilot projects between Daimler departments and startups worldwide. A two-digit Number of the projects already got Investment from Daimler or became serial applications of Mercedes-Benz.
He also established various innovation cooperations, platforms and challenges with external corporations and universities. Philipp Gneiting started his career at Daimler AG in 2007 at Corporate Research of Daimler. Before initiating STARTUP AUTOBAHN, he was Head of the team for Advanced Exterior Concepts and Manager for Research & Technology Policy. Philipp Gneiting studied in Mannheim and completed his Ph.D. about Supply Chain Design in Zurich (Switzerland) and Boston (USA).
CEO and Founder at Labber, Principal Research Scientist at MIT
Simon Gustavsson, Ph.D., is quantum engineer with 15 years of experience with experimental quantum computing. He is the CEO and founder at Labber (http://quantum.labber.org), a startup company providing the interface between quantum devices and the classical electronics needed for qubit control and manipulation.
He is also a Principal Investigator in the Engineering Quantum Systems (EQuS) group at MIT (http://equs.mit.edu), working on quantum control techniques and implementing small-scale algorithms with superconducting qubits. He has published more than 50 scientific articles, and his work on quantum control, coherence and quantum computation has been cited more than 1500 times.
Head of Video at Oculus
Eugene Wei is Head of Video at Oculus. A graduate of Stanford, Eugene Wei has spent his career working at the intersection of entertainment and technology. At Amazon.com he worked as a product manager on video, third party seller platform, and later AWS. He studied editing at the Edit Center in New York and then directing at UCLA Film School before returning to technology to help launch Hulu and led its product team for several years.
He also co-founded Erly with several colleagues, and after it was purchased by Airtime, he joined to Flipboard to run the product team for two years before joining Oculus as the Head of Video in 2015.
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Oculus Has Hired Former Flipboard, Hulu Product Exec Eugene Wei to Run Video [Re/code] Feb 27, 2016
‘Game of Thrones’ 360 Facebook Video Reveals Season 6 Easter Eggs [Inverse] Apr 13, 2016
The NBA and Oculus just released one of the longest, most dynamic VR films so far [The Verge] Sep 14, 2016
Co-founder of Refactor Capital
David Lee is Co-founder of Refactor Capital, a new venture capital fund focused on healthcare. Previously, he was Co-founder and Managing Partner of SV Angel, an angel fund with investments in companies such as Twitter, Pinterest, Dropbox, Airbnb, Product Hunt, Snapchat, and others. Prior to SV Angel, David was at Baseline Ventures, a leading seed-stage venture firm. He was a founding member of Google's New Business Development team and led business development at StumbleUpon prior to its sale to eBay.
He also was a corporate attorney at leading technology law firms.
David has an M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford, where he was a National Science Foundation graduate fellow; a J.D. from NYU; and a B.A. from Johns Hopkins. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health. David is a survivor of Stage IV Hodgkin's Disease.
In 2011, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz named David as "One of the 7 Most Powerful People in Technology You've Never Heard Of." He has was named one of "The Secret Power Brokers of Silicon Valley" and twice to The Silicon Valley 100, both by Business Insider.
Co-founder of APR
Jukwang Lee is the CEO of APR, a beauty and health company. APR joined the media commerce market with the 2014 launch of its flagship brand, AprilSkin, which emerged as a popular skincare brand favored by the 1020 generation with its unrivaled marketing through various social media channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Kakaostory. Currently, APR boasts over 10 million clients on its distribution channels and achieved revenue of $30 million in just two years since its launch, reaching $65 million in 2017.
APR currently owns over 10 brands, including MEDICUBE, FORMENT, GLAM.D, and MOTHER’S PICK. With its presence in offline networks such as Olive Young and Lotte Department Store, as well as home-shopping channels, APR is demonstrating sharp growth based on its strong presence in diverse content distribution platforms.
APR was selected as ‘Asia’s Most Influential E-Commerce’ by Facebook in 2016 and featured in ’10 South Korean Startups Breaking Out in 2017’ by Forbes in 2017. The Co-Founders, Jukwang Lee and Byunghoon Kim, were selected as ’30 Under 30 Asia’ in 2017. Lee, expert in Mobile SNS Management and Marketing, met Kim when Lee was an Economics student at Sungkyunkwan University and Kim was a Business Administration student at Yonsei University. They co-founded APR and have been leading the company together since then.
- APR Homepage:: www.apr-in.com
- Related article: [VIEW]
Entrepreneurship Faculty at Singularity University
Monique Giggy founded Singularity University Ventures (su.org/ventures) and has directly advised over 1,000 startups. She’s also a successful investor, having deployed capital in more than 20 technology startups, and a go-to speaker on all topics related to the startup lifecycle and impact investing. She has built a network of 21,000+ founders, 2,500+ active startups and 600+ experts that she wields to lead others to success. And, she teaches entrepreneurs how to build high-growth, sustainable global businesses that can positively improve the lives of 1 billion people.
Monique’s a seasoned value creator with proven success building/exiting companies, driving turnarounds, and leading high-performing global teams and advisory boards. Experienced in business strategy, product development, product-market fit, go-to-market strategy, business modeling, fundraising strategy, and business development, Monique has contributed significantly to the venture sector.
General Manager at Daimler Mobility Services Africa and Asia Pacific
David is currently responsible for the development of Daimler Mobility Services in the AAP region. He had previously gone through several roles within Daimler including Innovation Lead, Digital Lead, Internal Consultant and Co-Founder of one of Daimler’s corporate venture, AutoGravity. Before Daimler, David was involved in several business ventures and was a management consultant who had served global clients in strategy and M&A agendas.
CEO of BlueSpace.ai
Joel is the co-founder and CEO of BlueSpace.ai. BlueSpace.ai is on a mission to provide safe, accessible, and sustainable urban mobility for everyday people. They are a team of autonomous vehicle industry veterans building the next generation of self-driving technology to deploy practical driverless transportation globally.
Joel has over 8 years of experience in the autonomous vehicle industry and has worked at General Motors, Nissan, and drive.ai. He was a co-founder of drive.ai and raised $77M in venture funding. Joel also grew the team to 180+ people and held management, engineering, and business roles. He also led cross-functional efforts between software, hardware, and business teams to develop and publicly deploy AV fleet. Previously at General Motors, Joel was a core team member for SuperCruise freeway autonomy feature, and it was deployed in production on 2018 Cadillac CT6 as the world first hands-free highway self-driving system.
Joel is an expert on full autonomous vehicle stack, including Mapping, Localization, AV Hardware, and Perception. He studied at the Stanford AI Lab and was a Stanford Graduate Fellow. Joel was also named 2018 Forbes 30 under 30. Joel earned his MS at Stanford and BS at Carnegie Mellon University.
Director of Engineering at Lyft
Anantha Kancherla is a Director of Engineering at Lyft where he heads up the Level5 software team which is building the self driving car. He loves building projects that can potentially have a massive impact on human kind by bringing in cutting edge technology that is out of the research domain to solve it.
Prior to Lyft, Anantha spent some time at Dropbox helping them with building products that enable teams to collaborate. Before that at Facebook he participated in pioneering building mobile software at scale, for over a billion users all over the world by delivering the core experiences like Newsfeed on mobile phones.
Anantha started his career at Microsoft specializing in 3D Graphics, working on DirectX and Windows. His work enabled Microsoft and its partners to take real-time graphics from the world of Doom and Quake to what we are accustomed to today; in the process revolutionizing the world of Graphics in Games and bringing amazing visual effects to commodity PCs in real-time that were hitherto possible only in movies. This work resulted in a number of innovations including Shaders, which was recognized by a Technical Emmy Award in 2007.
He received his B. Tech in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There his research focused on Augmented Reality and he published a paper on A Novel Virtual Reality Tool for Teaching Dynamic 3D Anatomy. He is an avid traveller and outdoors enthusiast, frequently venturing out from his home base in California to explore the world of nature and culture with his family.
Co-founder & board member of drive.ai
Brody is a co-founder and board member of drive.ai which spun out of Stanford's AI lab. He has years of experience with AI and working with data infrastructure to support deep learning.
He spent four years as a PhD student in Andrew Ng's lab at Stanford researching deep learning within NLP and computer vision before dropping out to co-found drive.ai. At drive.ai he has worked on perception, mapping & localization, and the infrastructure to support deep learning.
Chief Creative Officer of CarVi
Dinesh C is the Chief Creative Officer of CarVi where he oversees all product and business development initiatives with the aim of bringing together global partners in offering affordable and impressively design upgrades to today’s cars with safety technology and connectivity and turning data into intelligence for future autonomous vehicles.
With a successful track record of over 15+ years in establishing and managing global businesses, Dinesh C believes in success through passion and creativity. He is also a technically savvy, highly driven and an award-winning global marketing and technical professional.
With an exceptional ability to identify and connect with the right customers and partners, Dinesh move ideas to fruition, optimize market penetration, and motivate teams to be surpass goals. His creativity and drive in starting and expanding a company, coupled with intimate business knowledge, allows him to build emotional attachment with customers and partners. By combining strong technical and business skills with outstanding visuals, Dinesh brings creative approaches to startups and established businesses.
Dinesh started his career with IBM after graduating from Brown University in Computer Science and Business Economics. He then went on and found 3 successful startups which lead to major investments and acquisitions. The businesses range from technology to the food industries with coverage in over 20 countries. Dinesh is a true global entrepreneur and loves building international businesses with team members from multicultural background. He is also a respected thought leader and teaches Entrepreneurship at the University of California Berkeley.
Director & CTO of Watson Health Cloud at IBM
Dr Hui Lei is Director and Chief Technology Officer of IBM Watson Health Cloud, an IBM Distinguished Engineer, and an IBM Master Inventor. He also holds honorary professor titles at Sun Yat-sen University, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and The Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Previously he was Senior Manager, Cloud Platform Technologies at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, and led IBM’s worldwide research strategies in cloud infrastructure services and cloud managed services. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Columbia University.
Dr. Lei's technical vision and creative contributions have influenced many commercial software products and services, which range across big data and cognitive solutions, cloud service offerings, middleware platform for mobile and pervasive computing, and e-business tooling. His work has resulted in over 70 patents, has been widely cited in the scientific literature, and has received extensive media coverage.
Dr. Lei is a Fellow of the IEEE, Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, and a past Chair of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Business Informatics and Systems. He has taken part in many international conferences as a steering committee chair, general chair, technical program chair, or keynote speaker. He was recognized with an IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award in 2017 and an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Service Award in 2014.
Chief Data Scientist at Allianz Asia-Pacific
Dr. Lawrence Wee is a data science practitioner andinnovatorinthehealthsciences.HeiscurrentlyChiefData Scientist at Allianz Asia-Pacific where he directs the development of data-driven innovation platforms for the APAC markets. He works closely with the different stakeholders of the industry, co-creating solutions in the intersection of fintech, insurtech and healthtech.
Prior to this role, he founded the healthcare and biomedical analytics laboratory at the Institute of Infocomm Research (I2R) in Singapore, and served as principal investigator for research initiatives encompassing genomics, precision medicine, digital health and health services. After the stint at I2R, he moved on toZuellig Pharma where he took on the role of Chief Data Scientist.
Dr. Wee sits on the scientific advisory boards of several technology companies, and speaks regularly at conferences on artificial intelligence, digital technology and healthcare. He was previously the President of the Association for Medical and Bio-informatics Singapore (AMBIS), and the current vice-chair of the Chinese-American Pharmaceutical Society (CABS) Singapore chapter. He received his Ph.D.inComputational Biology and Machine Learning from the National University of Singapore.
Managing Director of Argon Group
Elliot Han is currently Managing Director at The Argon Group, the boutique investment bank focused exclusively on the digital finance sector. He is an experienced financial and legal professional in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and its respective market.
Prior to Argon, he was Head of the West Coast technology equity capital markets team for Jefferies, the mid-market investment bank. Previously, he was an executive director, business unit manager and operating officer for the UK and Emerging Markets teams in the investment banking division of Goldman Sachs in London, where he focused on a variety of industries, including leading the TMT capital markets effort.
Elliot has also spent time as a corporate lawyer at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer based in New York and London. He began his professional career at Credit Suisse / Credit Suisse First Boston in their investment banking division. He was also a White House intern during President Bill Clinton’s administration focusing on domestic policy. In addition, he currently serves as an advisor & consultant to various early-stage technology companies, domestic and international.
Elliot is a graduate of Columbia University (BA), Oxford University (Master’s) and Cambridge University (law and Master’s).
Co-founder at CoinList
Brian Tubergen is the co-founder and VP of Product at CoinList. CoinList is a financial services company for the next generation of technology companies. CoinList emerged as an independent company from AngelList and Protocol Labs’ collaboration running the Filecoin token sale.
They are building the leading platform for token-based financial services, starting with being where the world’s best digital assets run their token sales. Prior to CoinList, Brian was the director of product at AngelList. He led the team responsible for over $850 million in investments. Before that, Brian worked at Facebook and was the top Computer Science student at Princeton.
Co-Founder & CEO at SettleMint N.V.
Founded and exited two companies in Japan, then got his MBA in Belgium after which he joined a large financial institution, performing a variety of roles ranging from COO of the consumer finance business line to head of platform innovation for the brokerage and crowdfunding platform. In 2016, he left the bank and co-founded SettleMint.
Founder & CEO at Dharma Labs
Nadav is the Founder & CEO of Dharma Labs - a SparkLabs Global, Polychain Capital, and YCombinator backed R&D shop focused on building blockchain-based credit infrastructure. Nadav is the Project Lead of Dharma - a protocol for generic, tokenized debt agreements - and was formerly an engineer at both Coinbase & Google. Nadav graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Computer Science.
Global Head of Innovation at GM
For more than 15 years, Kurt Hoppe has focused on emerging product and service innovation at the intersection of Connected Consumer IoT devices, digital services and Tier-1 service providers, developing and launching award-winning value-added services for more than 75 million users worldwide.
Kurt currently leads global business innovation efforts at General Motors, driving rapid prototyping and in-market testing of new Connected Car services that are adjacent to traditional GM and OnStar businesses.
Prior to General Motors, Kurt was Vice President of Applications & Services at Prodea, the international IOT Platform company, creating a compelling portfolio of multi-screen media & entertainment, home automation, eHealth and eGovernment services for the world’s leading service providers and their subscribers.
Before that, Kurt was Head of Smart Home Solution Development and Product Innovation for LG Electronics North America, where he founded a team to create consumer and service provider solutions across 5 LG product business units. Kurt also led LG strategic go-to-market engagements for Smart TV, wearables, and multi-screen solutions.
Kurt has held business development, product marketing, and product management leadership roles at Paul Allen’s Digeo/MOXI, 2Wire, Amdocs and Netscape, working with global customers such as AT&T, Verizon, Best Buy, British Telecom, Time Warner Cable, Chrysler, Telstra, and DISH, to name a few.
Kurt graduated at the top of his Computer Science class at the Royal Military College of Canada and studied Human Computer Interaction at the University of British Columbia.
Entrepreneur in Residence at Upload VR
Robert Scoble is an Entrepreneur in Residence at Upload VR, and will be launching his own business inside the "world's best Virtual Reality media company."
As Startup Liaison for Rackspace, the Open Cloud Computing Company, Robert Scoble traveled the world looking for what's happening on the bleeding edge of technology for Rackspace's startup program. He's interviewed thousands of executives and technology innovators and reports what he learns in books ("The Age of Context," a book coauthored with Forbes author Shel Israel, has been released at http://amzn.to/AgeOfContext ), YouTube, and many social media sites where he's followed by millions of people.
Robert is a geek who grew up in Silicon Valley (his dad was an engineer at Lockheed) and since 1985 he has been building online communities. In 2000 Robert started his technology blog, http://scobleizer.com, and his life has been on a rocketship ever since. In 2003-2006 he worked at Microsoft as an evangelist and one of the five guys who started Microsoft's famous Channel9 video community.
[Related Articles]
Q&A: Tech evangelist Robert Scoble predicts mixed reality devices will largely supplant smartphones [GeekWire] February 10, 2017
Robert Scoble on the future of VR, why Jack needs a new board, and how Orwell’s 1984 is now [The Next Web] Nov 4, 2016
Robert Scoble: Here’s Why Virtual Reality Will Change Everything [Huffington Post] 09/15/2016
Co-founder & CEO of Blue Goji
Kai Huang was co-founder and CEO of Blue Goji, an interactive fitness company that brings motivation and fun to health and fitness. Prior to Blue Goji, he co-founded video game publisher RedOctane and was President and CEO from 1999 to 2009. RedOctane was the publisher of Guitar Hero, which went on to become a multi-billion dollar global video game franchise and was acquired by Activision in 2006.
Prior to RedOctane, Mr. Huang was co-founder and CEO of Adux Software, which was sold in 1999. Mr. Huang started his career as a consultant with Accenture in the San Francisco office.
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Blue Goji to Demonstrate Active Virtual Reality Enhancement for Award-Winning Goji Play Game System at VRLA in Los Angeles (Aug. 5-6) and GamesCom in Cologne (Aug. 18-21) [Business Wire] August 03, 2016
Exclusive: Huang Brothers’ Next Project, Blue Goji, Will Layer Games on Top of Cardio Fitness [All Things Digital] JULY 29, 2013
Blue Goji launches its cardio exercise Goji Play games that will keep you on a treadmill [VentureBeat] DECEMBER 12, 2013
Founder & Managing Director of Linse Capital
Michael Linse is the founder and Managing Director of Linse Capital. Linse Capital invests in late-stage technology companies in the transportation space. Prior to founding Linse Capital, Michael was a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) for seven years where he invested in sustainable growth businesses like ChargePoint, Proterra, uShip, Telogis, INRIX, Friedola, HYLA, and Redaptive.
Before joining KPCB, Michael worked at Goldman Sachs for over a decade, most recently as the Managing Director of their alternative energy investing team within the London-based European Special Situations Group where he led over 20 investments including Nordex, CMP, and IFCO Systems. Michael joined Goldman Sachs as an analyst in the Financial Institutions Group in 1997 and worked both in the Frankfurt and Hong Kong offices.
Michael earned a BA degree in economics from Harvard University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Co-CEO of Redaptive Inc
John Rhow is the Co-CEO of Redaptive Inc, the nation’s largest enabler of turnkey energy efficiency and building IoT solutions for Fortune 500 companies and municipalities. Backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), Redaptive has established a game-changing turnkey financing platform for “smart” lighting, HVAC, and water efficiency technologies.
Prior to Redaptive, John served as a Special Financing Adviser to KPCB's Green Growth Fund. John previously headed Barclays Capital’s Western Region Power and Water Infrastructure practice where he structured and financed utility-scale energy generation and water infrastructure projects.
In addition, John worked over 11 years at Goldman Sachs & Co. serving in various financing advisory and structuring roles spanning corporate finance and off-balance sheet project financing, including public-private partnership (PPP) financing in both the Federal and State sectors.
Over his 15 years in the investment banking industry, John has played an integral role in approximately $20 billion of successful financing transactions on behalf of Fortune 500 companies, infrastructure developers, and municipalities. John is a graduate of Harvard University.
CEO of GAN(Global Accelerator Network)
Patrick Riley is the CEO of GAN(Global Accelerator Network) which is a highly-curated community of independent accelerators, corporates, and investors. GAN connects startups to the human and financial resources they need to create businesses and make a meaningful impact in the cities they call home. He's also Managing Partner of GAN Ventures, the VC fund associated with GAN.
He started his career at the American Red Cross where he oversaw the COO's office as its Chief of Staff. Patrick left the Red Cross to manage the sales and operations for a venture-backed healthcare technology company that had a recent exit.
Following his passion to support start-up companies around the world, Patrick joined Techstars, a well-known tech accelerator, and oversaw its growth which included the development of GAN. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with his wife and two girls, bike riding, traveling, and skiing around Colorado.