John H. Cochrane is an American economist, the Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and author of the field-defining textbook Asset Pricing. A physicist-turned-finance scholar, he champions the fiscal theory of the price level, writes the popular free-market blog and Substack The Grumpy Economist, co-stars on Hoover's GoodFellows broadcast, and flies competition sailplanes in his spare time.
Ciaran Long is the CEO of a.k.a. Brands Holding Corp. (NYSE: AKA), a portfolio of next-generation fashion brands targeting Gen Z and millennial consumers. A qualified Irish Chartered Accountant with 25-plus years of financial and strategic leadership, Long joined a.k.a. Brands as CFO in 2021, stepped into an interim CEO role in 2023, and was named permanent CEO in January 2025. Under his leadership the company returned to net sales growth with three consecutive quarters of double-digit U.S. sales expansion, repositioning the portfolio around a demand-driven 'test-and-learn' merchandising model and a major bet on physical retail expansion. He previously served as CFO of Samsclub.com and held senior roles across Walmart's e-commerce division, and earlier in his career he co-founded CleanGrow, a water quality sensor technology startup.
Marc Morgan is the CEO and co-founder of Braven, a San Francisco consumer venture he started after more than a decade in finance. He spent his first career reading markets, building deal structures, and forging partnerships; he is now applying that operator's playbook to building a category-defining brand from scratch.
Vesta is a San Francisco-based B2B SaaS company building the next-generation loan origination system (LOS) for the mortgage industry. Founded in 2020 by ex-Blend engineers Mike Yu and Devon Yang, Vesta replaces legacy mortgage software with a cloud-native, open, rules-driven platform that lets lenders configure workflows, automate compliance checks, and integrate with 40+ ecosystem partners - all without custom code. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Pennymac, Vesta tripled its loan volume and customer count year-over-year through 2025.
Yukiko Jenkins is a General Partner and CFO at Cox Exponential (CX2), the early-stage AI and robotics venture vehicle backed by Cox Enterprises. Born in England and raised between England and Japan, she is a Certified Public Accountant with over 20 years of finance and operations experience spanning Big Four auditing, startup consulting, and leadership at AI computer vision company Fyusion. At CX2 - a fund run by engineers for engineers - she bridges rigorous financial oversight with a deep insider knowledge of what it takes to build frontier AI companies from zero to product.
Dmitri Lepikhov is the CEO of MightyCall, a San Francisco-based cloud call center and VoIP platform built for small and mid-sized businesses. Since taking the helm in 2015, he has grown the company by over 500%, landed it on the Inc. 5000, and earned recognition from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as one of America's most innovative small businesses. A CPA by training with roots in auditing and corporate finance at firms like Deloitte and Severstal, Lepikhov has positioned MightyCall as a G2 Leader in Contact Center Solutions and expanded its engineering footprint to Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Max Adams is the CEO of Executech, one of the largest managed IT services providers in the western United States and a flagship company within Evergreen Services Group's portfolio. A licensed CPA who cut his teeth at KPMG auditing clients with up to $60 billion in revenue, Adams joined Executech as CFO in 2023 and climbed to CEO, bringing a finance-first discipline to an industry often run by technologists. He leads a 240-person team serving 700+ organizations with a 97.7% customer satisfaction rate, while advocating loudly for AI and automation as the dividing line between MSPs that survive and those that don't.
Pat Cotroneo is a seasoned life sciences financial executive who spent over two decades at FibroGen, Inc. (now Kyntra Bio), serving as Chief Financial Officer from 2008 to 2021. During his tenure, he guided FibroGen through two defining transformations: its landmark 2014 IPO - the largest biotech public offering in 12 years - and its evolution into a commercial-stage company with the launch of roxadustat in China in 2019. With 25+ years of senior financial leadership in life sciences, Cotroneo built his career at Deloitte & Touche, SyStemix (a Novartis subsidiary), and ultimately FibroGen, where he oversaw finance, accounting, human resources, and information technology before transitioning to Executive Advisor to the CEO.
Peter Lee is Chief of Staff to the CEO at Coactive AI, a San Jose-based enterprise AI platform that helps Fortune 500 companies search, tag, and analyze visual content using multimodal AI. He brings over a decade of experience across algorithmic equity trading at PEAK6, strategic consulting at Booz Allen Hamilton, and high-stakes M&A advisory at Guggenheim Securities - where he worked on transactions totaling more than $10 billion in enterprise value. A Wharton MBA and MIT Management Science graduate, Peter joined Coactive in 2025 as the company scaled following its $30 million Series B round.
Stephenie Zhang is a partner on the Growth investing team at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the storied Silicon Valley venture firm behind Airbnb, Coinbase, and GitHub. A Phi Beta Kappa computer science graduate from MIT who grew up in Palo Alto, she joined a16z from Warburg Pincus, where she honed her instincts on growth and late-stage technology deals. At a16z, she backs enterprise technology companies at the growth stage, with investments spanning workflow orchestration (Temporal), AI-native presentations (Gamma), and internal developer tools. She also co-authored a16z's 'Big Ideas 2026' thesis on the agentic interface - the idea that software design is shifting from visual, human-first hierarchies to machine-legible structures built for AI agents.
Brian Roberts is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he works across the American Dynamism and AI Apps funds. Known as BK to those in the know, Roberts is a serial CFO turned investor who took Lyft public at a $24 billion valuation, helped Splunk get acquired by Cisco for $28 billion, and was OpenSea's first CFO during the NFT boom. With 30+ years spanning investment banking at Evercore, corporate development at Microsoft and Walmart, and C-suite finance roles at some of tech's most pivotal companies, he joined a16z in October 2024 to bring an operator's lens to early and growth-stage investments in enterprise software, fintech, and America's strategic tech infrastructure.
Christian Keil is an Investing Partner at Andreessen Horowitz on the American Dynamism team, backing startups that build for the national interest - from aerospace to defense to infrastructure. Before turning investor, he spent seven years as a top executive at Astranis, the satellite company he helped scale from a 50-person R&D shop to a 500-person aerospace-grade factory with over $1 billion in sales. He may be the only venture capitalist who has personally bought a dedicated Falcon 9 rocket. A proud Midwesterner who moved to Silicon Valley in 2017, Keil writes, podcasts, and thinks deeply about what it means to build things that matter for America.
Giovanni Ahern is an Investing Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture capital firms, where he focuses on growth-stage investments. A dual-degree MIT graduate in Mathematics and Computer Science with Economics, Ahern built his investment acumen through roles at Blackstone, Houlihan Lokey, and three years as a Private Equity Associate at Bain Capital specializing in healthcare and technology. Joining a16z in September 2025, he brings a quantitative rigor and cross-sector perspective to backing the next generation of market-defining technology companies.
Jen Kha is the Operating Partner and Head of Investor Relations and Fundraising at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture capital firms. She leads global partnerships, managing the firm's relationships with limited partners and orchestrating capital raises across all of a16z's investment strategies. Over her career she has been involved in raising over $55 billion in LP capital - an extraordinary track record that spans healthcare investment banking, corporate strategy at HSN, investor relations at TCV, and now the front lines of tech VC. In 2023 she registered as a lobbyist in California to help a16z tap major pension funds like CalPERS for the first time in the firm's history.
Kathleen Forte is an Investor Relations Partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the world's most storied venture capital firms. With over two decades of experience across investor relations, business development, and fundraising, she has held senior roles at Lightspeed Venture Partners, SVB Financial Group, ADM Capital, and Clearwater Capital Partners. Known for her deep expertise in LP relationships and fund management, Forte joined Sequoia in July 2022, bringing a rare blend of financial acumen and relationship-driven dealmaking to one of Silicon Valley's most prestigious platforms.
Shali Peng is a Carried Interest Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture capital firms. Operating within a16z's People Practices team, she specializes in carried interest administration - the complex machinery that translates fund returns into partner compensation. Her work sits at the intersection of finance, talent, and the internal architecture of a $39B+ AUM firm, making her a behind-the-scenes force in how a16z structures and retains its top talent. With an educational background from Teachers College at Columbia University, she brings an unusual blend of people-centered thinking to a rigorously quantitative domain.
Thomas W. Morgan is a 30-year private equity veteran who pioneered the GP stakes investing category when he founded Hycroft Capital in 2015, the first firm dedicated solely to minority, non-control investments in private equity management companies. His career arc spans First Boston, Bain Capital during its formative 1990s growth, and 15 years at New Mountain Capital (raising $15B+ AUM). After merging Hycroft into Magnetar Capital and co-founding Aviditi Advisors (acquired by Piper Sandler in 2024), he now manages Greylock Capital Partners, his family office with interests in franchise concepts, commercial real estate, and private investments, from Manhattan's Upper East Side.
Zoe Wang is the Operations Partner on the New Media team at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the storied Silicon Valley venture firm that manages over $39 billion in assets. She came to a16z through the firm's acquihire of Turpentine, the fast-growing podcast network that became the backbone of a16z's media ambitions. Before Turpentine, Wang built a career spanning venture capital operations, capital markets, and investor relations at firms including 10X Capital and SAX Capital. Based in New York, she sits at the intersection of media, operations, and venture — the rare ops executive who understands both the spreadsheet and the microphone.
Ellie Bof is the Director of Finance at Forum Ventures, a leading pre-seed venture capital fund and B2B SaaS accelerator based in New York. A Commerce graduate of Ryerson University's Ted Rogers School of Management, she spent 13 years mastering accounting and operations at Canadian Iceberg Vodka Corporation before pivoting to the fast-paced world of venture capital. At Forum Ventures - which backs over 100 companies annually - Ellie keeps the financial engine running: closing books, ensuring accurate LP reporting, and processing invoices across a 30+ person team. Her promotion to Director of Finance recognized her as, in the firm's own words, 'a warrior in closing our books, ensuring accurate reporting to our LPs, processing invoices, and ultimately keeping the lights on.'
Katherine Francis is an Analyst at Right Side Capital Management, a quantitative, data-driven pre-VC-stage investment firm in San Francisco that has backed over 1,900 tech startups since 2012. She brings nine years of specialized experience in venture fund accounting and administration, including a prior role as fund manager for a $2 billion fund administrator — expertise that keeps the operational gears turning at one of the most prolific early-stage VC firms in the US.
Jack Raines is a writer, investor, and author who turned a $150,000 trading loss into a media career and a Penguin Random House book deal. He writes Young Money, a newsletter with 61,000+ subscribers covering behavioral finance, career philosophy, and what your twenties are actually for. He's now an investment associate at Slow Ventures, where he works on their $63M Creator Fund. Known for viral LinkedIn satire that got him reported to Columbia Business School as the 'Bacon Bandit of Hell's Kitchen,' he combines intellectual rigor with a refusal to take himself too seriously.
Kyla Scanlon is an economist, author, and content creator who coined the term 'vibecession' and has built a multi-platform media presence dedicated to making economics accessible. Her debut book 'In This Economy? How Money and Markets Really Work' (2024) became a New York Times bestseller. She reaches over 1 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Substack, and Twitter/X, and has been named to Barron's 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance. A triple major from Western Kentucky University, she left a career in institutional asset management at Capital Group to pursue financial education full-time.
Michael Kao is a veteran macro investor, former hedge fund manager, and founder of Akanthos Capital Management, now running his family office. A UC Berkeley EE/CS and Wharton MBA graduate who traded commodities at Goldman Sachs and co-founded Canyon Capital Arbitrage Fund, he built his career on a proprietary framework called 'Alpha With Asymmetry.' Known online as @UrbanKaoboy, he publishes the Kaoboy Musings newsletter on Substack - covering finance, macroeconomics, geopolitics, and thrash metal - and co-hosts the KAOS THEORY podcast with Grant Williams.
Noah Smith is an independent economist-turned-writer best known for Noahpinion, one of Substack's largest economics newsletters with over 414,000 subscribers. A former Bloomberg Opinion columnist and ex-finance professor at Stony Brook University, he writes about technology, macroeconomics, geopolitics, and domestic policy with a techno-optimist, center-left lens. He also co-hosts the 'Econ 102' podcast with Erik Torenberg and is working on an English-language macroeconomics book.
Matthew Zeitlin is an economics and energy journalist currently reporting for Heatmap News, where he covers the intersection of policy, finance, and the energy transition. With bylines at BuzzFeed News, Grid, Slate, The Nation, n+1, Bloomberg Opinion, and The Atlantic, Zeitlin has built a career dissecting how money, power, and policy shape the energy grid. He writes a personal economics newsletter on Substack and is one of the sharper voices covering how the U.S. economy navigates decarbonization.