Fundraising

Dr. Edvard "Eddie" Engeseath, MD is the Co-founder of telehealth startup Nurx, angel investor, startup advisor, and a former family physician. He founded Nurx to make prescription birth control more accessible. The company has since grown into a full-service telehealth startup in the prescription medicine delivery space and is backed by some of the world's most prestigious VCs such as Union Square Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Y Combinator, to name a few. Nurx has been featured on Y Combinator's list of 100 most valuable startups several years in a row. Eddie has made appearances on ABC, CBS, and NBC, and has been featured in Scientific American, New York Times, S&P Global, USA Today, and Forbes, among others. An active angel investor, he is passionate about helping entrepreneurs and aspiring founders looking to build great startups that help shape the future.

Jacob Jaber is the Co-Founder & Chairman of Philz Coffee. As CEO for nearly two decades, Jacob grew Philz from the original coffee shop in San Francisco's Mission District to more than 70 locations across the country. Jacob has raised more than $100 million in funding from investors. Jacob is also a renowned investor and advisor and was named Forbes' 30 Under 30. Jacob is a pro in the consumer space, specializing in product, design, customer experience, retail, consumer technology, team building, org culture and more.

Mercedes Bankston a LinkedIn Top Voice and a dynamic leader serving as Director at the Founder Institute, the world's premier idea-stage accelerator and startup launch program. In this role, she has helped over 1000 start-ups launch, raise capital, and exit. Mercedes is instrumental in helping participants refine their ideas, build strong teams, secure initial customers, and raise the necessary funding. Under her guidance, Founder Institute maintains an impressive portfolio valued at an estimated $20 Billion, a 80% graduate survival rate after five years, and has successfully launched over 3500 companies.

David Anderson is the founding partner of Beat Ventures, an early-stage venture fund that invests in startups reshaping the future of work. Prior to this, he was an investor at Toyota Ventures, and the co-founder of Bamboo, Detroit’s first co-working space for entrepreneurs. He holds an MBA from Harvard and an engineering degree from the University of Michigan. You can ask David about building and scaling tech startups, generating VC interest, the fundraising process, and building meaningful relationships with investors.

Amit Garg's career in technology spans over 20+ years in Silicon Valley. As a venture capitalist he has focused on seed-stage applied AI investments in digital health, automation and enterprises. Some of his key successes are nuTonomy (seed, sold for $450M) at Samsung NEXT Ventures and Misfit Wearables (seed, sold for $260M) at Norwest Ventures. His operational background is in product and analytics at his own startup, HealthIQ, and at Google, where he joined pre-IPO.

Colin Rogister is the founding partner of Beat Ventures, an early-stage venture fund that invests in startups reshaping the future of work. Prior to Beat Ventures, Colin was an investor at Maven Ventures and served as a technology advisor in the Obama White House’s National Economic Council. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can ask Colin about fundraising, pitching, and building/scaling projects.

Michael Litt has established a notable presence in the business world as a Founder, CEO, and Investor. He successfully raised $85 million in funding for Vidyard while leading a team with over 300 members. His dedication to Go-to-Market (GTM) strategies and sales technology is reflected in the numerous Generative AI products developed at Vidyard. In addition to his role at Vidyard, Michael also serves as an investor at Garage Capital, a firm that has backed more than 150 companies, with 12 of them achieving valuations surpassing $1 billion.

Lorenzo is an expert in Artificial Intelligence and a Managing Partner at Gaingels, one of the most active and prolific venture investing networks. He is a serial founder and operator, having co-founded Powerset, a pioneering AI company that developed one of the earliest AI-powered search engines. Powerset was later acquired by Microsoft and became a part of the launch of Bing in 2009​. Lorenzo is an investor and advisor to hundreds of startups, including Lucid, Crowdflower, Weights & Biases, Turing, Eight Sleep, Andi Search, Sailplane, Magic, Limitless, Levels and many more. Ask Lorenzo about AI, startup building, operations, product/GTM, venture capital, pitching your startup, and scaling your company exponentially.

Rune Hauge is the co-founder and CEO of Mentorcam (YC S21), angel investor, and startup advisor. Before co-founding Mentorcam, Rune founded three different startups with one successful exit as a founder. He has raised millions of dollars in venture capital from top-tier Silicon Valley VCs like General Catalyst and Goodwater Capital and several high-profile angel investors. He took Mentorcam through Y Combinator in the summer of 2021 and raised $4M at a $27M valuation in their seed round. A lifelong believer in continuous learning and development, Rune is passionate about mentoring other founders and building products that empower people's lives.

T Zhu is the co-founder of Tellus, a smart savings platform powered by real estate backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Alumni Ventures and Decent Capital. He previously founded and scaled a number of companies, including Sodacan, a social consumer mobile app startup that released Sip, an anonymous, location-based photo sharing app (top 50 on the US App Store), and More Corn (acquired by Answers.com) a Facebook apps company that was the seventh largest developer on the Facebook Platform. Zhu is a Stanford University graduate who enjoys assisting both technical and operational founders with their day-to-day, scaling/growth, cultural, and execution challenges.

Sascha Eder is the founder and CEO of NewtonX, a B2B enterprise research startup that has raised $40M+ in venture capital. Prior to NewtonX, Sascha was a management consultant spending time at both McKinsey & Co. and the Boston Consulting Group, as well as as a financial analyst at P&G. He graduated from MIT Sloan School of Management with honors and was named to the prestigious Forbes 30 under 30 list for Enterprise Technology in 2020.

Tim Specht is the Director of Engineering at Reddit and the Co-founder and CTO of Dubsmash, a TikTok competitor that he successfully started, grew, and sold with over 250M installs and 160M users. Specht has spent over a decade working with startups across the US & Europe, helping them execute, develop their vision & grow best-in-class engineering organizations. He has extensive experience leading projects in distributed systems at scale, large-scale native mobile development, and mentoring founders and engineers to help them grow & succeed. Tim was named to Forbes' 30 under 30 for social media in 2022.

Chad Fox is an advisor to entrepreneurs and family offices through his firm F Partners. Through his VC firm, Fox Ventures, he invests in exceptional founders focused on “The Future of Financial Services”. Chad has a global network that spans from North America to the Middle East and can help you with formation, fundraising, business development and all the challenges that come with building an early-stage company. He is a qualified lawyer, angel investor and venture capitalist.

I love mentoring entrepreneurs. For the last decade, I have helped over 50 entrepreneurs turn their idea into revenue. In 2016, I founded SHARE Mobility. We raised $19M of venture capital and serve major enterprise companies to solve their hiring and retention problems with employee transportation. On MentorCam, I work with scaling entrepreneurs that are looking to take their startup to the next level or overcome major roadblocks. I am looking to support founders that: · are building meaningful, high growth technology or tech-enabled services businesses · have raised or plan to raise venture capital · are solving problems that improve the way of life for large groups of people · are look for advice that leads to action Ready to help.

Bill Capsalis is a recognized expert in healthy lifestyles and go-to-market strategies in the natural product industry. He was previously the CEO of Haystack Mountain Creamery - an artisanal goat cheese company and saw the company through a sale in early 2021. Today he is the Executive Director of Naturally Boulder - a trade association in the natural products industry with over 1,000 members and 100 sponsoring companies. His in-depth industry knowledge gives him a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities facing today’s food and beverage brands. He has mentored, advised and coached over 250 food, beverage, personal care, vitamins and nutritional supplement brands over the past 27 years.

Chris Busch is a seasoned product and technology executive with over 20 years of experience driving digital transformation and innovation across healthcare, consumer goods, and enterprise technology. With a track record of building and scaling SaaS, AI/ML, and IoT platforms, Chris has consistently translated complex customer needs into market-leading digital solutions that fuel business growth and enhance customer experiences. He managed teams in India, China, Eastern and Western Europe and the US up to 160 cross-functional members. The teams he led received multiple industry awards. At Elevance Health, he pioneered an AI/ML platform that revolutioniz He can help with streamlining your product, market, fundraising, engineering and GTM.

Tobias is a sales-focused founder who launched and localized memmeo.me, an app for personalized video messages from celebrities, in 15+ markets. During his time with memmo, Tobias helped creators earn millions and reached $10m+ in revenue in year 2. He recruited 150+ employees in the first 20 months and experienced hypergrowth firsthand. During his time with memmo, he raised $25m in funding from top tier investors like FJ Labs and Left Lane Capital. Tobias started his career as an Account Executive and held various sales and operations leadership roles before launching his own company. He uses these learnings to work with fast scaling direct-to-consumer growth leaders – supercharging and scaling their sales and operations.

Mikael Makinen is the Co-Founder of Four Sigmatic, a functional foods company especially known for its mushroom coffees. Mikael was responsible for growing Four Sigmatic's retail business from scratch to 8 figures profitable revenue and +5,000 retail doors in over 20 countries with the main focus in the United States. In the process, he hired and managed an internal team from the ground up, and sourced tens of distributors, and hundreds of external sales reps. Mikael stepped down from his operational role after 11 years and remains an active board member of the company. Mikael is an expert in B2B sales, profitability, fundraising, international business, and CPG strategy and operations. 

Joe Coyne is a Venture Capitalist focused on helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses from day one to exit. Joe’s experience spans Venture Capital, Private Equity and Investment Banking, having started his career on Wall Street and transitioned to finding his passion for investing at Bain Capital Ventures, Samsung Electronics, and now as Managing Partner of Studio VC. Additionally, Joe studied Finance at the University of Wisconsin and earned an MBA at Harvard Business School. Joe is passionate about helping startups founders and mentoring young professionals looking to break into venture capital as a career.

Sam Hodges is the co-founder and CEO of Vouch, a venture-backed commercial insurance business focused on serving the needs of high-growth companies. Previously, Sam served as co-founder and U.S. Managing Director for Funding Circle, a leading global lending platform for small businesses, where he helped scale the U.S. operation to over $1.5B in total origination volume, serving tens of thousands of small businesses. Funding Circle went public on the London Stock Exchange in Fall 2018. Before this, Sam played a role in building several other financial technology companies and started his career in management consulting and investing. Sam currently serves on the boards of two private companies. He received his MBA and MS from Stanford.

Cristian is Founding Partner of Iluminar Ventures, a Seed fund investing in LatAm with 35 investments in fintech, marketplaces, SaaS and supply chain. He's a Venture Partner at Gaingels, where he led the firm's Research team. Cristian founded TrueColors LatAm, the first non-profit for LGBTQ entrepreneurs in LatAm. Cristian managed a $360B portfolio at AIG, investing across fixed income, structured products, real estate, and private funds. He holds an Economics degree from University of Chicago. Cristian loves turning brilliant ideas into mission-driven companies, and actively advises folks on early stage investing, fundraising, achieving product-market fit, growth and go-to-market strategies, and building mission-driven cultures.