
He left an art marketplace because nobody could figure out how to ship a painting. A decade later his software quietly runs the last mile for fine art, watches, and collectibles across 45 countries.
Tolga Tezel is the founder and CEO of Canopy Connect, an insurance data infrastructure company that lets consumers securely share their insurance information with agents and businesses in seconds. A University of Waterloo electrical engineering graduate and former early engineer at Dropbox and Nova Credit, he prototyped Canopy Connect over a weekend after a dinner conversation with a friend's mother who ran an insurance agency. Since founding the company in February 2020, he has grown it to serve thousands of agencies and raised a $6.5M Series A, building what he describes as trusted, consumer-permissioned infrastructure for property and casualty insurance data.
Cyrus Karai is the Co-Founder and CEO of CoverForce, a New York-based insurtech building unified API infrastructure that connects insurance carriers, agencies, and wholesalers so commercial insurance can be quoted, paid, bound, and issued in real time. Originally from Australia and a Wharton MBA, he moved from finance roles at BlackRock, Credit Suisse, and PwC into founding CoverForce out of the University of Pennsylvania's Innovation Labs in 2020. Under his leadership the company reached over 9,600 producers nationwide, integrated with major carriers including Travelers, Chubb, Liberty Mutual, and AmTrust, and raised a $13M Series A led by Insight Partners in 2025.
Rishi Sharma runs Briza, a Toronto-based commercial insurance API platform that connects carriers, MGAs, brokers and software companies through a single interface. He joined in 2018 as CTO/head of product after a stint leading engineering on the FreshBooks redesign, and stepped up to CEO in December 2022 after co-founder Ben Munro departed. His work focuses on API reliability, quote-and-bind automation, and making legacy commercial lines behave like modern developer infrastructure.