Turner Novak is the founder and solo General Partner of Banana Capital, a seed-stage venture fund investing in internet-first founders. He grew up in Winnipeg, Canada, in a single-parent household with intermittent internet access, then built a career path from CFA studies and endowment investing to VC entirely through Twitter presence and a viral fantasy portfolio. He hosts The Peel podcast, writes The Split newsletter, and operates from Ann Arbor, Michigan - proving that Midwest contrarianism and relentless online engagement can be a genuine edge in consumer tech investing.
Kenneth Schlenker is a French-American serial entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Opal, the #1 screen time and focus app on iOS. He first envisioned a focus app in 2008 while working at Google - it took him 11 years to actually build it. After founding art-tech company ArtList (acquired by artnet), launching Bird's Paris operations, and building a $10M ARR business with just 11 people, he also runs Open Scout, a weekly newsletter covering early-stage startups read by investors at Sequoia, YC, a16z, and Accel.
Matt Swider is a consumer tech journalist, media entrepreneur, and founder of The Shortcut - the #1 consumer tech publication on Substack. With 25+ years in technology journalism, he went viral during the 2020-2021 PS5 shortage by tracking console restocks, growing his Twitter following from 8,000 to over 1 million in under two years and helping an estimated 400,000 people buy a console. He left TechRadar after nine years as US Editor-in-Chief to launch The Shortcut on November 8, 2021, which now boasts 155,000+ subscribers, a 40% open rate, and 1.5 million monthly website views.
Rex Woodbury is the founder and managing partner of Daybreak Ventures, an early-stage VC firm, and the creator of Digital Native, a weekly newsletter with 72,000+ subscribers exploring the intersection of technology and culture. A Dartmouth and Stanford Knight-Hennessy Scholar, former Goldman Sachs analyst, TPG and Index Ventures partner, Guinness World Record holder, LGBTQ+ advocate, and competitive runner, Woodbury is one of the most distinctive voices in venture capital — blending anthropological observation with market analysis to decode how Gen Z and emerging technology are reshaping commerce, communication, and culture.
Nikhil Basu Trivedi is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Footwork Ventures, a San Francisco-based early-stage VC firm with $400M+ under management across two funds. A Princeton molecular biology graduate turned venture capitalist, he previously spent eight years at Shasta Ventures where he backed Canva, ClassDojo, Frame.io, and The Farmer's Dog. He writes the 'Next Big Thing' newsletter on Substack with 18,000+ subscribers, publishes public investment theses before backing founders, and built his career on a 'traction-first' philosophy and obsessive focus on founder learning velocity. An Indian-American from a family with deep public service roots, he co-founded Artsy as a Princeton sophomore and has been a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree.