Sam Hodges is co-founder and CEO of Vouch Insurance, a tech-enabled insurance platform built specifically for high-growth startups and venture-backed companies. A serial fintech entrepreneur with 20+ years at the intersection of technology and financial services, Hodges previously co-founded and led the U.S. operations of Funding Circle to a 2018 London Stock Exchange IPO. He holds an MBA and MS from Stanford and a magna cum laude degree from Brown University, and is a Fellow of the inaugural Finance Leaders Fellowship at the Aspen Institute. Under his leadership, Vouch has raised over $229M in total funding, serves 6,000+ companies, and completed a Series D round in early 2025 alongside its acquisition of StartSure Insurance Services.
Valerie Mahoney is a Principal at NFX, one of Silicon Valley's leading seed-stage venture capital firms managing ~$1.5B across four funds. A Materials Science engineer from Imperial College London who earned both an MBA and MPP from Stanford as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, she brings an operator's lens to early-stage investing after stints at Funding Circle (through IPO), SumUp, Tala, and Cash App/Block. At NFX she focuses on AI, fintech, enterprise software, and marketplaces - backing founders at the pre-seed and seed stages where network effects can be built from the ground up.