STARTUP FUNDING 2.0

Samuel Lessin is a Co-Founder and serves as Partner at Slow Ventures. Mr. Lessin is a Co-Founder of Fin, a startup exploring artificial intelligence and collaborative data. Previously he served as the Vice President of Product Management at Facebook. Sam joined Facebook in 2010.

Prior to Facebook, Sam was the CEO of drop.io, a New York based cloud file-sharing company and was a consultant at Bain and Company. Sam attended Harvard College and graduated in 2005 with a degree in Social Studies.

In his spare time Sam enjoys skiing and kite-surfing. He also writes part time for The Information.

Falon Fatemi is the Founder and CEO of Node, the first people-based artificial intelligence platform revolutionizing how people and businesses discover new opportunities. At age 19, Falon was the youngest employee at Google and has since spent over a decade focused on go-to-market strategy, global expansion, and strategic partnerships at Google, YouTube, and in the startup world.

 

Falon also writes a column for Forbes covering company building in Silicon Valley, artificial intelligence, and the future of sales and marketing. She was recently named "The Rainmaker" on Marie Claire’s New Guard List 2017, for the top 50 women visionaries changing the world. Falon and Node have been featured in CNBC, Bloomberg, Business Insider, TechCrunch, Inc., and Fast Company. You can follow her at https://www.linkedin.com/in/falon.

Jack Wu is a Co-Founder and CEO of Nightingale Security, a drone business. He has 17 years of startup and corporate experience in product development and design. Jack joined eGroups as employee no 3. eGroups was subsequently acquired by Yahoo! in 2000, and renamed as Yahoo-groups.

After Yahoo!, Jack was recruited by the CEO of Tickle to fill the role of Creative Director. Tickle was later acquired by Monster in 2004. After Tickle, headed up advertising product for Glam Media.

He also invests and advises companies in the online space. Current & past advisory roles consists of: EventBrite, Geni, Glam Media, SpaceX, and Yammer.

Nathan Beckord is the CEO of Foundersuite which makes the leading CRM for raising capital. Prior to Foundersuite, Nathan spent 10 years working as interim CFO / advisor to over 150 startups including Kickstarter, Clicker, Autonet, Zerply, and others.

In addition to Fundingv2.com, Nathan hosts StartupBD.com and StartupExits.com to help educate startups on business development and exit strategies. He has taught at General Assembly, Draper, GAN, and others on raising capital.

Nathan has an MBA and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). In his free time, he enjoys sailing, traveling, and riding air-cooled BMW motorcycles.

Jenny Lefcourt serves as a Partner at Freestyle Capital. She invests in next-gen commerce, marketplaces, real estate technology and SaaS. Freestyle has led investments in companies such as Intercom, Patreon, Apple Pie Capital and Digit.

Jenny has personally led the firm's investments in Narvar, BetterUp, Nestio, TrueFacet, Crexi,, Riffsy, and Giftbit. Prior to joining Freestyle, Jenny cofounded WeddingChannel.com in 1998 (sold: KNOT), cofounded Bella Pictures (sold: CPI) and has personally invested and/or advised start-ups such as StyleSeat, Minted, and MainStreetHub.

Jenny has a BSE at Wharton and attended Stanford GSB.

Mike Ghaffary is a Partner at Social Capital, investing in marketplaces, consumer, and software companies.

Mike has 10 years of operating experience as CEO of Eat24, VP Business and Corporate Development at Yelp, BD at TrialPay, and co-founder of Stitcher and BarMax. Before that, he started his investing career at Summit Partners.

His angel and venture investments include: Strava, Optimizely, Pocket, Metromile, Philz Coffee, Atrium, Indigo Fair, Superhuman, and HubHaus.

Mike received a JD/MBA from Harvard University and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Southern California.

Ben is a Co-founder and Partner at BootstrapLabs, a leading Venture Capital firm focused on Applied Artificial Intelligence.

Prior to BootstrapLabs, Ben was repeat entrepreneur and an Investment Banker who advised on corporate strategy, financing, and M&A. Over a period of 10 years, Ben helped his clients raise over $300M from institutional investors and close over $5B in M&A transactions.

Ben is a frequent keynote speaker on innovation, entrepreneurship, investing, artificial intelligence, and globalization in the US, Europe, and Asia.

Nick is an Investor and entrepreneur in the internet industry, currently at Republic, leading diligence. Nikhil looks to identify marketplaces undergoing massive shifts and then to work with founders that are building tech to catalyze those shifts.

Republic's mission is to democratize angel investing. With $10 or $10K, investing is voting for innovations and businesses you want to see in the future (for both crypto and equity).

Republic is part of a family of startup platforms together with AngelList, Product Hunt, and CoinList.

Ryan is an accomplished entrepreneur and leader in Bitcoin, the broader open source ecosystem, academia and the non-profit sector. Ryan was Co-Founder and COO of the largest American Bitcoin exchange, Tradehill, Inc. Since Tradehill, Ryan co-founded CryptoCorp, a multi-signature security company, Blockchain Clearing, a securities clearing technology company, Blockchain Health, which does document control for clinical documents using the Blockchain and Chia Network, a crypto-currency company building a better bitcoin.

Other ventures include Peace Markets, a marketplace for cross-conflict peace building, a project of the Stanford Peace Innovation Lab, The OpenDocument Foundation, The OpenDocument Fellowship, OpenOffice.org and stints working for Sun Microsystems, Starbucks and the State of Georgia. Ryan enjoys reading science fiction, studying economics and building the future.

Paul Hsiao is a General Partner at Canvas Ventures. His investments include Everwise, Fluxx Labs, Kidbox, Roofstock, Thrive Global, Transfix, and Zola. Prior to Canvas, Paul was a partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), where he led an early-stage investment in Houzz, as well as, had the privilege of helping eight companies go public on the NYSE or NASDAQ and seventeen companies with successful M&A exits during his 10-year tenure with the firm.

Paul was an entrepreneur before he became an investor. He founded Mazu Networks, a venture-backed startup and pioneer in network security. Paul began his career working in product development at Medtronic, and leading market entry strategy for China at McKinsey & Company.

Paul holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BSc in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering from MIT.

Christie is Partner + Chief of Staff of Backstage Capital. She is responsible for guiding our Crew to ensure Backstage runs smoothly towards its mission as well as joining Managing Partner, Arlan Hamilton, in making investment decisions (aka signing Headliners!)

Christie has extensive experience creating valuable partnerships between startups and Fortune 500 top 20 corporations, and joins Backstage from her role as Venture Development Manager at Verizon Ventures.

Christie holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from San Jose State University, and an MBA from University of Phoenix.