Strategy & Operations

Chris Yeh is a writer, investor, and entrepreneur who has been in the world of startups and scale-ups since 1995. Co-author of the bestselling book Blitzscaling together with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Chris offers advice and mentorship on on how to build and scale your business. Hundreds of companies, from garage-dwelling startups to Fortune 50 titans have tapped his knowledge and insights to accelerate and transform their businesses. As the Founding Partner of Blitzscaling Ventures, he helps founders rapidly scale their companies, fundraise and figure out how to crack new markets. Prior to his investing journey, he was the CMO of Target, and started his career as a PM at D.E. Shaw in the 90s.

Itay Forer co-founded Cleanly, an on-demand laundry & dry cleaning service backed by YCombinator (W15), Initialized Capital, Soma Capital, Paul Buchheit (creator of Gmail), and NFL legend Joe Montana. He is a serial entrepreneur, board member, mentor/coach, and active angel investor who has built a startup from the ground up to a 400+ person workforce. Specializes in PMF and scaling companies from 0 to 10. As a mentor & coach, he has helped over 300 founders realize their full potential.

Described as a "creative dynamo" by Inc. Magazine. A recognized expert in marketing and entrepreneurship, Dan Bauer founded The MBA Exchange education and career advisory firm ranked among the Inc. 5000. Since then, as head of Bauer & Associates, he has delivered high-impact, marketing guidance to clients ranging from Fortune 100 to startups in 30+ industries. Previously, he was SVP of Global Debit Marketing & Sales for MasterCard International and as VP of National Marketing for Citicorp. His career includes account management at DDB Needham and Ketchum Advertising. Bauer earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in general management and marketing. He ranked in the top 15% of his class in industry and competitive analysis.

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. 

Tristram Hewitt is an experienced ops executive with a track record of scaling companies like Turo (Series B to E) and Outschool (Series A to D). His expertise covers customer ops, risk, insurance, go-to-market, and company operations in marketplaces, mobility, and edtech. Tristram excels at data-driven problem-solving and has prior experience at Bain. He got his degree from Harvard and holds his MBA from the University of Chicago.

Darren Sugiyama is an entrepreneur, nationally recognized motivational speaker and an internationally acclaimed author. His published works include "Living Outside The Cubicle - The Ultimate Success Guide For The Aspiring Entrepreneur," “How I Built A $37 Million Insurance Agency In Less Than 7 Years” and "The Icon Effect" to name a few. He has built several successful companies in multiple industries and has delivered keynote speeches to multi-billion dollar companies like Aflac, Colonial Life, and UNUM. Darren’s bluntness, non-nonsense style and candid approach makes his work that much more engaging and inspiring to entrepreneurs all over the world.

Hamilton Chan is the CEO of Coaching for Startups. He holds a BA in Psychology from Harvard University and a JD from Harvard Law School. He worked as an investment banker at JP Morgan in Hong Kong and in New York, performing Mergers & Acquisitions and Corporate Finance. After graduating from Law School, Hamilton was a corporate attorney at Munger, Tolles & Olson, where his clients included Berkshire Hathaway and Kobe Bryant. Hamilton did Y Combinator as a solo founder and raised millions of dollars in venture funding for his startup. He has since launched his coaching practice and coached over 300 YC founders.

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.

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.

Abhishek Kapur is the CEO of NEXT Trucking, a freight technology platform and digital marketplace connecting shippers and carriers. Abhishek brings a unique blend of global logistics, financial, and business leadership experience to the company. Prior to NEXT, he was at KKR Capstone, the operational arm of the PE giant KKR, where he served as Managing Director. NEXT has raised more than $124 million in funding from investors such as Sequoia and Brookfield Technology Ventures. He previously served as COO of Cognita Asia Holdings and worked at the Boston Consulting Group. He began his career in logistics and supply chain with A.P. Moller-Maersk, where he held a variety of operational roles before becoming Chief of Staff to the group's CEO. Kapur holds an MBA from the London Business School and a Bachelor of Engineering from the National University of Singapore.

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.

Wil Eyi is the CEO and co-founder of Toolbox, a Y Combinator-backed startup building a vertical Fintech platform. The company has raised $18M in debt and equity. Prior to founding Toolbox, Wil worked in private equity at Walburg Pincus and as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. Wil holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. He came to the US as an immigrant from Gabon and worked blue-collar jobs to pay for college.

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.

Joey Flores is the founder and Managing Director of Inversion Art, an accelerator for artists. He has over 20 years of experience launching, growing and scaling startups. In 2010, he co-founded Earbits, a music streaming service designed to prioritize the needs of musical artists. He raised venture capital from Y Combinator and top angel investors and went on to serve over 15,000 artists and 600 record labels, before being acquired in 2015 by You42. In 2019, he was invited to design and lead a startup accelerator for the Queensland University of Technology in Australia. Joey has experience in marketing, business development, product design and development, and is an advisor to numerous venture-backed startups.

Dominick “Dom” Miserandino is a serial entrepreneur who specializes in online media publishing. He founded ThecelebrityCafe.com, one of the world's first and longest-running online publications. He was most recently the CEO of Inquisitr.com, an international news website with over 40 million unique visitors per month. He has built up over 100 e-commerce and .com companies as a C-level founder and advisor. He's worked with founders of start-ups to multi-million dollar companies.

Trey Sisson is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Baboon To The Moon, a DTC adventure brand that sells bags and accessories. Trey began his career as a Business Analyst for Goldman Sachs, before moving to the world of startups where he led teams at Amplify and StumbleUpon. He later co-founded two startups before his current company – Stefan's Head (backed by Techstars) and Goods of Record. Trey holds a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA in Entrepreneurial Management from The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania. Trey specializes in operations, digital marketing, fundraising, supply chain, product management and taking startups from 0->1.

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.

Kara LaForgia is an early stage investor and operator. She owns a business development consulting firm that spearheads sales distribution and growth strategies for CPG brands. Some of her current and past clients include: Topicals, SolaWave, Fur, Mad Rabbit, HIGHR, Duradry, Veracity, Blume, SILKE London, Golde, etc. Throughout her career, Kara has had first hand experience scaling 55+ startups. She mentors founders, advises companies and invests on an ongoing basis.

Rogelio "Ro" Choy is the CEO of Cars & Bids, . Previously he was the CEO of Eaze from 2019 to 2022, a cannabis-focused on-demand marketplace, where he led it's growth from less than $2OM to $2OOM+ in revenue. Prior to Eaze Ro was the CEO of BitTorrent (acquired by TRON blockchain), CBO of Luxe (on-demand valet parking app, acquired by Volvo), Director of eBay's Auto Group, and Strategy Consultant at Bain & Company.

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.

Mallory leads the founder community at Mercury and is the founder of a 1k+ member, paid community called the old girls club. She was on the early teams at Pinterest, Compass and Cameo focused on growth loops and product/revenue strategy, then served as COO of a gaming startup through a series A fundraise. Her expertise is direct-to-consumer marketing, community-led growth, brand activations, and team leadership.

Nadim is a product manager in the tech industry. He leads efforts to build next-generation, AI products for Google Search, YouTube, Bard and Workspace. During his 10+ years at Google he has worked on a number of projects, including scaling Google's Ad Extensions business by millions of $ in ARR, as well as leading business and product strategy teams. He has also worked as a software engineer at United Nations and investment banker at Morgan Stanley. Nadim's experience spans across the US, Europe, and the Middle East. He holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and an undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering from the American University of Beirut.

Roy Chung is the co-founder and former COO of Apollo.io, a $1.6B unicorn sales automation startup backed by Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, and Bain Capital, among others. Roy is also a General Partner at JoyFund and LP in multiple VC funds like Pioneer, GTM, and LionHeart. Before founding Apollo.io (YC W16), Roy was on the founding team at Doblet (YC S14) and previously worked as a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Co. A two-time Y Combinator alum, Roy also holds an MBA from UC Berkeley.

Josh Auffret is an accomplished digital media and entertainment leader with over 25+ years of experience developing innovative digital campaigns and content solutions for some of the world's top brands. With extensive experience in product development, creative design, UX, and go-to-market strategies, Auffret excels in driving operational excellence. He is adept at account management, online marketing, and brand management, consistently delivering impactful results and enhancing brand value.

Scott Ford is cofounder and CEO of SparkRockets.com, a global innovation platform that empowers entrepreneurs to build and launch quickly. Using their AI-powered platform (SparkRockets), they enable entrepreneurs to build an entire business validation roadmap in less than two minutes. Prior to SparkRockets, Scott was the COO of Techstars, where he led the organization’s accelerator footprint expansion to 50+ programs in 30+ cities in 13 countries across four continents. Annually deploying over $50M in investment capital across 500+ early-stage companies, the Techstars portfolio grew from <$10B to over $160B during Scott’s tenure. Scott and his family live in Boulder, Colorado where he also teaches entrepreneurship at CU Boulder.

At the heart of Ramsey's professional journey lies a blend of pioneering sales strategies, a knack for technological innovation, and a profound commitment to mentoring and growth. Co-founding RevGen Labs was not merely about launching another venture; it was about revolutionizing lead generation through an exquisite fusion of proprietary tools and strategic insight. His tenure as Head of Global Sales at Apollo.io, marked by the company's ascension to unicorn status, epitomizes his ability to blend strategic mastery with narrative finesse. Ramsey's diverse experiences, from strategic advisory roles across various industries to spearheading revenue for several companies, have ingrained in him a multifaceted perspective on business growth.