Beth Gerstein co-founded Brilliant Earth in 2005 after a personal search for an ethically sourced engagement ring turned up nothing worth buying. An engineer by training (Duke BS at 19, MIT MS, Stanford MBA), she built a company that now generates $422 million in annual revenue and trades on Nasdaq (BRLT). Brilliant Earth is the rare luxury brand that treats supply chain transparency as a marketing advantage rather than a compliance headache - offering Beyond Conflict Free diamonds with traceable origins, lab-grown stones, and recycled metals. Under Gerstein's leadership, the company has donated over $2 million through the Brilliant Earth Foundation, partnered with Dr. Jane Goodall on conservation collections, and expanded to 28+ showrooms while maintaining 14 consecutive quarters of profitability as a public company.
Barrett Boston is the former Chief Executive Officer of Ottimate (formerly Plate IQ), a San Francisco-based AI-powered accounts payable automation platform. Appointed CEO in October 2021 following FTV Capital's majority investment, Boston transformed the company from a restaurant-focused invoice tool into a multi-industry AP automation leader serving hospitality, healthcare, grocery, retail, construction, and manufacturing sectors. Under his leadership, Ottimate rebranded from Plate IQ, raised $160 million in Series B funding, launched an industry-first AI engine for AP, and introduced Conversational AP - an AI assistant for finance teams. Boston stepped down in March 2026, passing the CEO role to Shawn Lane. His career spans IBM, TravelClick, TriNet, and Merrill Lynch, with an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in Economics from Duke University.
Jeremy Zhang is the co-founder and CEO of Finch, a San Francisco-based company building the unified API layer for employment systems. After studying Electrical Engineering and Economics at Duke University and engineering connected-car APIs at Smartcar, Zhang co-founded Finch in 2020 with Ansel Parikh to solve a deceptively simple problem: why does every HR and payroll software company make developers rebuild the same integrations from scratch? Finch now connects 200+ HR and payroll providers, covers 88% of U.S. employers, and has processed data for 18+ million employees. The company has raised $58.5 million in venture funding from General Catalyst, Menlo Ventures, and Y Combinator.
Tomas Barreto is an Operating Partner for Engineering at Kleiner Perkins, one of Silicon Valley's most storied venture firms. He was the 5th engineer and 14th employee at Box, where he scaled engineering through IPO and past $500M in revenue, eventually leading 150+ person teams as VP of Engineering. He later joined Checkr as its first VP of Engineering, then co-founded Okay - an engineering analytics startup backed by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins that was acquired by Stripe in 2023. Now at Kleiner Perkins, he advises 20+ portfolio companies on building and scaling world-class engineering organizations, drawing on two decades of experience that spans IBM, Microsoft, Box, Checkr, and his own startup.
Fred Ehrsam (Frederick Ernest Ehrsam III) is a serial founder and investor who co-founded Coinbase in 2012 — the crypto exchange that went public on Nasdaq in 2021 — and Paradigm in 2018, the research-driven crypto VC firm that raised a $2.5 billion fund. Now he's chasing his next frontier: Nudge, a non-invasive brain-computer interface startup using focused ultrasound to modulate brain states, which raised $100 million in Series A funding in 2025. A Duke computer science graduate turned Goldman Sachs FX trader, Ehrsam discovered Bitcoin in 2011 and never looked back — quietly becoming one of the most influential architects of the crypto industry while building a reputation as a deep thinker obsessed with pushing the boundaries of human capability.
Zach Perret is the co-founder and CEO of Plaid, the financial infrastructure company that quietly powers the apps half of America uses every day. He and co-founder William Hockey built Plaid from a hackathon project in 2013 into a $8B+ company connecting over 500 million bank accounts to thousands of financial apps - including Venmo, Robinhood, and Coinbase. After famously walking away from a $5.3B Visa acquisition in 2021 (called a 'blessing in disguise'), Perret rebuilt Plaid as an independent company, reaching $546M ARR and profitability before raising a $575M Series E in 2025. A symphony conductor's son from North Carolina, he runs Plaid like he leads: with timing, rhythm, and an eye on what everyone else is missing.
Shaan Puri is an Indian-American entrepreneur, angel investor, and podcast host best known for co-hosting My First Million with Sam Parr - one of the top business podcasts with 25M+ downloads annually. He sold Bebo to Twitch (Amazon) for up to $25M in 2019, launched and sold the Milk Road crypto newsletter in an eight-figure deal in 2023, and built Bums and Roses into a $25M/year baby products brand with his wife. A self-described contrarian on hard work ('hard work is massively overrated'), he now focuses on content creation, early-stage investing, and writing through his Good Friday newsletter and One Hour Books project.