Alex Bouaziz is the co-founder and CEO of Deel, the $17.3 billion global HR and payroll platform that allows companies to hire anyone, anywhere. Born in Paris in 1993 and raised between France and Israel, Bouaziz studied civil engineering at Technion and MIT before pivoting to entrepreneurship. He co-founded Deel in 2019 with MIT classmate Shuo Wang after observing glaring pay inequities for international talent and experiencing firsthand the pain of paying overseas workers. Under his leadership, Deel surpassed $1 billion ARR in Q1 2025, raised $300 million in Series E funding at a $17.3 billion valuation in October 2025, and became one of the fastest-growing HR technology companies in history.
Jonathan Perichon is the Co-founder and CTO of Checkr, Inc., a San Francisco-based AI-powered background screening platform he co-founded in 2014 with Daniel Yanisse. A French-born software engineer who discovered the gig economy's broken background check infrastructure while working at an LA startup, Perichon turned that frustration into a $4.6 billion company serving over 100,000 clients including DoorDash, Lyft, Coinbase, and Uber. A Y Combinator S14 alumnus who applied three times before getting in, he embodies the principle that persistence and execution beat credentials every time.
Karim Karti is the CEO of RapidAI, a deep clinical AI company whose platform is used in 2,500+ hospitals across 100+ countries for stroke, vascular, and radiology workflows. He brings 22+ years from GE Healthcare — including running its $9B imaging division — and a stint as COO of iRhythm, where he doubled revenues to $210M in 18 months. Trained as an engineer in France and a former P&G brand manager, he now leads one of the most clinically validated AI platforms in medicine, backed by 700+ published studies and 10+ million scans processed.
Frédérique Dame is a General Partner at GV (Google Ventures), where she leads investments in consumer technology, life sciences, and AI. A French immigrant who moved to Silicon Valley at 24, she built her career as a product and engineering leader at Yahoo!, Photobucket, SmugMug, and Uber — where she helped scale the company from 80 employees to 7,000+ across 68 countries. At GV she co-leads the Women's Health investment team and has backed companies including Midi Health, Found, Allara, Oula Health, and TMRW. She serves on the board of Les Mills International and previously on Ubisoft's board, and was named to Rock Health's Top 50 in Digital Health.
Mathieu Planche is the CEO and Director of R&D at Witbe, a Paris-founded, publicly traded company (Euronext Growth) that builds AI-powered robots and platforms for video Quality of Experience monitoring and automated testing. Since taking the helm in 2019, he has steered Witbe through a rapid AI transformation - from hardware testing appliances to the industry's first agent-native video QA platform - serving 300+ broadcasters, OTT providers, and telecom operators across 120+ countries. A dual-degree engineer from CentraleSupélec and Georgia Tech, Planche rose through every rung of the Witbe ladder: consultant, UI designer, Americas ops manager, Chief Experience Officer, and Chief Product Officer before becoming CEO.
Jonathan Grandperrin is the co-founder and CEO of Mindee, a Y Combinator-backed (W21) API-first platform that automates document understanding using computer vision and machine learning. A graduate of École Polytechnique and UC Berkeley, he previously served as CTO at ECTOR and TankYou before founding Mindee in 2018. Under his leadership, Mindee has raised over $23M, participated in Y Combinator's Winter 2021 batch, grown to $3.5M ARR with 200-250% net dollar retention, and become a leading developer tool for intelligent document processing serving accounting, finance, and enterprise software companies worldwide.
Victor Vanbremeersch is a French-born entrepreneur and venture scout operating at the intersection of AI, healthcare, and women's sleep health. As CEO and Co-Founder of Moona Health - an AI-powered CBT-I sleep therapy platform backed by Andreessen Horowitz - and simultaneously a Scout for a16z, he occupies a rare dual role: building a company while sourcing the next generation of founders. Moona Health has raised $3.7M, launched clinical partnerships, and is quietly reshaping how insomnia is diagnosed and treated for women.
Fabrice Grinda is a French-born serial entrepreneur, prolific angel investor, and co-founder of FJ Labs - the venture fund Forbes named home to the #1 Angel Investor in the world. With 1,100+ startup investments, 300+ exits, and a ~39% realized IRR built over 25 years, Grinda has backed household names including Alibaba, Airbnb, Uber, Coupang, and Vinted - often before anyone else saw the potential. He built and sold Zingy for $80M after sleeping in his office on $2/day, scaled OLX into the world's largest free classifieds platform across 90+ countries, and in 2024 co-founded Midas, a tokenization platform that hit $1.4B TVL within a year. Off the clock, he walks to the South Pole, kite-surfs, heli-skis, and throws week-long birthday parties with themed nights for 100+ friends.
Tomas Pueyo is a Franco-Spanish writer, strategist, and newsletter creator best known for his wildly viral COVID-19 articles that reached 60 million readers in 2020 and for his Substack newsletter Uncharted Territories, where he explores tech, geopolitics, AI, and the forces shaping civilization. A Stanford MBA and former Silicon Valley executive (Course Hero VP of Growth, Ankorstore CPO), he voluntarily cut his income by 80% to write full-time - building a 123,000+ subscriber audience without spending a dollar on advertising.