Robert K. Weigle is a medical device and diagnostics executive with more than 25 years of experience taking healthcare products from pre-clinical research to commercial launch. He is CEO of NOW Diagnostics, an independent board member of Tenon Medical, and a former entrepreneur-in-residence at DigitalDx Ventures. He led Benvenue Medical as CEO for over a decade, raising more than $200 million and launching spine devices in two markets, and later ran saliva-based diagnostics companies focused on cancer detection. His career spans Fortune 500 names like Johnson & Johnson and Baxter as well as a string of venture-backed startups.
Carta is a San Francisco fintech that turned the messy spreadsheet of startup ownership into software. Founded in 2012 as eShares, it manages cap tables, 409A valuations, equity plans, and fund administration for tens of thousands of companies and venture funds - now positioning itself as the connective tissue for the entire private capital market.
Dennis Fois is the CEO of Bloomerang, the leading nonprofit donor management and CRM platform serving over 26,000 organizations across North America. With more than 25 years of international leadership in CRM and customer experience technology - spanning roles at Copper CRM, NewVoiceMedia (sold to Vonage for $350M), Rant & Rave, eGain, Barclays, and ADP - Fois brings a rare combination of high-growth SaaS playbook execution and genuine conviction about the nonprofit sector's transformative potential. Based in San Francisco, he joined Bloomerang in January 2023 to lead the company's next phase of growth, overseeing a strategic investment from Warburg Pincus in 2024 and the acquisitions of Qgiv and InitLive to build what he calls the 'First Giving Platform.'
GoFundMe is the world's largest social fundraising platform, where individuals, communities, and nonprofits raise money for everything from medical bills and tuition to disaster relief. Founded in 2010, it has helped people raise over $40 billion through nearly 200 million donations.
Arup Banerjee is the CEO and Co-founder of Windfall, a San Francisco-based people intelligence platform that uses AI to estimate the net worth of every American and deliver actionable consumer financial data to over 1,500 organizations. With a background spanning investment banking at Citi, venture capital at Updata Partners, and product leadership at Radius Intelligence and GoodData, Banerjee founded Windfall in 2016 after identifying critical inaccuracies in consumer wealth data. In April 2025, Windfall raised a $65 million Series B led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, bringing total funding to over $95 million.
Babak Nivi is the co-founder of AngelList, the platform that rewired how startups raise money and find talent. Alongside Naval Ravikant, he turned a casual email list of angel investors into a $3.5B+ funding infrastructure that backed over 7,000 startups and produced 200+ unicorns. Before AngelList, Nivi co-created Venture Hacks, the blog that demystified term sheets and negotiation for a generation of founders. An MIT-trained engineer who once co-invented the first printed inorganic transistor, he brings both scientific rigor and street-level startup pragmatism to everything he builds.
Treering is a Redwood City technology company that reinvented the school yearbook. Schools design online; families personalize their own pages; each book is printed on demand. For every yearbook sold, Treering plants a tree with Trees for the Future - over 4 million planted to date. Used by more than 15,000 schools worldwide.
Windfall is a San Francisco-based people intelligence and AI company that estimates the net worth, career signals, and giving capacity of every U.S. household, then plugs that data into the workflows that go-to-market and fundraising teams already use. Founded in 2016 by Arup Banerjee, Cory Tucker, and Dan Stevens, it serves more than 1,500 organizations - from Make-A-Wish to the University of Michigan - and raised a $65M Series B from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital in 2025.
Brent Fulfer is the Co-Founder and General Partner of TBV, an early-stage Web3 venture firm built around deal flow, advisory, and the now-infamous 'The Best Event' party series. He has helped raise over $110M for early-stage startups across deep tech and crypto, and previously ran investor relations at Asymmetry Ventures and the venture program at Blockchain Founders Fund.
Pulley is an equity and token management platform that helps founders, finance teams, and employees run cap tables, fundraises, valuations, and tax-compliant token distributions from one place - without spreadsheets or paralegal time.
Joe Eandi is a General Partner and Co-Founder of Cyber Mentor Fund, a mentorship-driven early-stage venture fund exclusively focused on cybersecurity startups. A former attorney turned tech executive turned founder turned investor, Eandi brings an unusually wide arc to his work: he started as a corporate lawyer at Wilson Sonsini, served as General Counsel at Inktomi through its Yahoo acquisition, spent seven years as SVP and GM at LiveOps, founded and ran BrightPoint Security (acquired by ServiceNow in 2016), and then co-founded Cyber Mentor Fund in 2018 alongside Tim Eades. CMF deploys $100K-$5M from pre-seed through Series A into cybersecurity startups, with over 35 portfolio companies, three unicorns, and four successful exits including Okera (Databricks), Revelstoke (Arctic Wolf), Message Control (Mimecast), and LeakSignal (F5).
Khaled Nasr is a General Partner and Chief Operating Officer at InterWest Partners, a Menlo Park-based venture capital firm with over 40 years of history investing in healthcare and information technology. A Cambridge-educated mathematician turned Silicon Valley dealmaker, Nasr joined InterWest's IT team in 2005 and became COO in 2016, overseeing all financial, fundraising, investor relations, and administrative operations. Before InterWest, he spent 16 years in networking and telecom startups - including stints as CEO of FlowWise Networks and COO of Advanced Computer Communications - then made the jump to venture investing at Alta Partners. Born and raised in Lebanon, Nasr co-founded LebNet and is a charter member of TechWadi, bridging Silicon Valley capital with Arab and MENA entrepreneurs. In January 2026, he published 'Rule Arbitrage,' a book on evading regulatory, tax, and accounting rules.
Mike Carusi is a General Partner at Lightstone Ventures, a leading life sciences venture capital firm based in Portola Valley, California, with $847 million in assets under management. With a career spanning over three decades in healthcare investing, Carusi has built a reputation as one of the most active early-stage investors in biotech and medical devices, appearing on the Forbes Midas List for top technology and life science investors. He co-founded Lightstone Ventures in 2014 after years at Advanced Technology Ventures (ATV), and has overseen landmark exits including Plexxikon (acquired by Daiichi Sankyo for ~$1 billion), Ardian (acquired by Medtronic for $800 million), Ra Medical Systems (acquired by UCB for $2.3 billion), and dozens more. He teaches healthcare venture capital at Dartmouth Tuck and is a faculty member of the Stanford Biodesign Emerging Entrepreneurs Forum.
Sathya Nellore Sampat is the General Partner and co-founder of BoldCap, a pre-seed and seed-stage venture fund backing AI-native B2B startups built by Indian-origin founders for global markets. An engineer by training and entrepreneur at heart, Sampat built and scaled a data modernization startup to $3M in revenue before pivoting to venture capital in 2021. At BoldCap, he writes $250K-$1M checks into companies in Data/AI, developer infrastructure, vertical SaaS, and cybersecurity - and goes far beyond capital with Bracket, a proprietary GTM network connecting Indian founders to North American and European revenue leaders.
Tim Paris is the co-founder and CEO of Dataro, an AI-native fundraising intelligence platform helping nonprofits predict donor behavior and optimize campaigns. A former cognitive neuroscientist with a PhD from Western Sydney University, Tim pivoted from brain research to social impact by applying statistical machine learning to charitable fundraising. He co-founded Dataro in 2017 alongside high school friend David Lyndon (CTO) and later Chris Paver (COO). The company has grown to serve 300+ organizations worldwide - including World Central Kitchen, Amnesty International, and Stand Up To Cancer - and raised a $14.28M Series A led by Blueprint Equity in February 2026, bringing total funding to $16.78M.
Sam Wong is Chief Business Officer at ChatLabs - the LVMH Innovation Award-winning AI social commerce platform serving luxury and consumer brands - and CEO of FundableStartups.com, a startup training academy. A five-time startup executive with 30+ years in the trenches and three successful exits under his belt, Wong has turned serial entrepreneurship into a second act: coaching founders and investing through Band of Angels, Silicon Valley's oldest angel group. He's also the author of '21 Secrets of Successful Startups' and a regular fixture at TechCrunch Disrupt, Fortune, and the startup conference circuit.
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.
Josh McFarland is the Executive Chairman of Boom Supersonic, the Colorado-based company racing to bring commercial supersonic flight back to the skies. The son of a Wyoming coal miner who grew up building rockets and flying Piper Cubs with his dad, McFarland parlayed a Stanford economics degree into a career arc that touched Google's earliest advertising infrastructure, the $500M-plus sale of his AI marketing startup TellApart to Twitter, a VP role running Twitter's revenue products, and a partnership seat at Greylock Partners - before landing back in the world he loved as a boy: aviation. As Executive Chairman, he leads fundraising and go-to-market strategy for Boom, whose XB-1 demonstrator broke the sound barrier in 2025 and whose Overture airliner promises Mach 1.7 travel on sustainable aviation fuel.
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.
Peter Blackwood is a Partner on the Capital Network team at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he leads the Consumer vertical and manages the firm's global investor, corporate strategic, and advisory relationships for consumer and gaming companies. A former investment banker with over 15 years in the technology sector - spanning SoundView Technology Group, Janney Montgomery Scott, and JMP Securities - Blackwood brings deep capital markets expertise to a16z portfolio companies navigating equity raises, debt financing, and strategic partnerships. He is co-author of a16z's widely-read '16 Commandments of Raising Equity in a Challenging Market' and joined the board of gaming platform Overwolf following a16z's $75M Series D investment. Off-hours, he chases trout on rivers.
Bill Trenchard is a Partner at First Round Capital, a top-tier seed-stage venture capital firm. A serial entrepreneur turned VC, he sold his first company (Jump Networks) to Microsoft at 23, scaled LiveOps to $100M in sales, and made early-stage bets on category-defining companies including Uber, Looker (acquired by Google for $2.6B), Flexport, Notion, Verkada, and Superhuman. Known for creating First Round's Pitch Assist program, he's a fundraising savant who teaches founders his process-driven approach to raising capital. He was named to Forbes Midas List in 2017 (#41) and 2020 (#17), and BusinessWeek's Best Young Technology Entrepreneurs in 2006.
Haje Jan Kamps is a Dutch-born journalist, serial founder, and pitch coach who turned a decade covering startups for TechCrunch into an AI-powered pitch deck review service. Best known for his long-running 'Pitch Deck Teardown' series analyzing real decks from companies that raised $125K to $500M, he now runs Pitch Guide - an AI tool that reviews startup pitch decks against 250+ criteria. A former hardware founder (Triggertrap), VC portfolio director (Bolt), and prolific author of 8+ books, he brings rare operator-journalist-investor perspective to early-stage startup fundraising.