Aziz Qureshi is one of the four co-founders of Gusto (formerly ZenPayroll), the cloud-based HR, payroll, and benefits platform serving over 500,000 small and medium businesses across the United States. Founded in 2012 as part of Y Combinator's Winter 2012 batch, Gusto has grown into one of the most prominent HR SaaS companies in the world, raising over $796 million in funding at a $10 billion valuation. Qureshi, based in Karachi, Pakistan, has maintained a notably private profile compared to his co-founders, contributing to Gusto's mission of bringing simplicity and humanity to workforce management for small businesses.
Joyce Salas is a Founder at Deel, the San Francisco-based global HR and payroll platform that has redefined how companies hire, pay, and manage international teams. Based in Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil, she brings a finance and accounting lens to one of the fastest-growing HR tech companies in the world - a company that has raised over $1.27 billion in funding, crossed $1 billion in annual revenue, and employs more than 8,400 people serving businesses in 150+ countries.
Kate Torgersen is the founder and CEO of Milk Stork, the world's first breast milk shipping service for traveling professionals. After lugging 26 pounds of milk home from a business trip while nursing infant twins, she co-invested $25,000 with her father and built a logistics platform now serving 850+ companies, having shipped more than 7.5 million ounces of breast milk across 112 countries. A former 18-year Clif Bar communications executive with an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, Kate turned a deeply personal frustration into a category-defining company backed by Backstage Capital and named to Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies list.
Deborah Hanus is the co-founder and CEO of Sparrow, a San Francisco-based HR technology company that combines AI automation with human expertise to manage employee leave. Armed with degrees from MIT (BS in Computer Science and Brain & Cognitive Sciences, MEng in EECS) and a Harvard PhD in Computer Science & Machine Learning, she left academia after watching six close friends struggle through the leave process and built the company from scratch as a solo founder. Sparrow has raised $55M in total funding (Series B led by Silver Lake Waterman in July 2025), serves 1,000+ companies including OpenAI and Reddit, and has saved customers over $350 million in payroll costs.
Holly Rose Faith is the Executive Talent Partner at Greylock Partners, one of Silicon Valley's most storied venture capital firms. Specializing in C-suite, VP-level, and board placements for Greylock's portfolio companies, she has placed top executives at Roblox, Nextdoor, Databricks, Abnormal AI, Gem, PayJoy, Snorkel, Casper, and Transfix. With roughly eight years in VC talent roles spanning Khosla Ventures, NEA, and now Greylock, Faith brings a founder-first philosophy that goes beyond transactional recruiting — coaching founders on hiring strategy, building interview frameworks, and staying involved through references, compensation, and the close.
Ryan Batra is the VP, Talent Partner at Khosla Ventures, one of Silicon Valley's most influential deep-tech venture firms. A career talent architect with over a decade in hypergrowth tech, he spent six years building DoorDash's technical and executive recruiting machine through multiple phases of explosive expansion, then led recruiting at Lime and OpenStore before landing at Khosla. Now he helps founders across KV's portfolio - spanning AI, biotech, space, and climate - hire the engineers, researchers, and leaders who make bold ideas real. He's placed 500+ engineers and leaders. His philosophy: talent is one of the most powerful forms of leverage a founder has.
Zahabiya Gabaji is a Compensation Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), one of the world's most influential venture capital firms. Based in San Mateo, California, she leads compensation strategy and people operations for a16z's portfolio and internal teams. With roots in education and arts — she studied English and Education at UC Berkeley and worked at the Berkeley Art Museum — Gabaji made a deliberate pivot into tech HR, scaling compensation programs at Snowflake before joining a16z. At one of the most closely-watched firms in Silicon Valley, she architects the compensation frameworks that help a16z attract and retain world-class talent across its 950-person organization and advise portfolio companies on competitive pay structures.
YouShift is building the operating system for hospital workforce management - an AI-powered platform that automates shift scheduling, swap management, and compliance tracking for healthcare teams. Founded by three Harvard alumni, the company targets the massive inefficiency in hospital staffing: full-time administrators juggling spreadsheets, chaotic last-minute coverage, and staff burnout from unfair schedules. With 1,000+ doctors already on the platform across Europe and the US, YouShift is turning hospital scheduling from a daily fire-fight into a background process - so clinicians can focus on patients, not paperwork.