investor-education
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Calgary Technologies Inc. puts startups on the ground floor
Now called Platform Calgary, the nonprofit gathers founders, coaches and investors beneath an East Village parkade. Its latest bet is that a customer’s signature tells you more than a roomful of applause.
Ben Yang and the five-year wait to open a fund supermarket
He left the fund industry to give investors more choice. The licence took five years; building a way to help people choose has occupied Howbuy’s founder ever since.
Ishkaran Chhabra and the value of a second thought
After years in private banking, Ishkaran Chhabra is building an assisted approach to digital wealth at Centricity. His recurring question is what happens to an investment plan when the person holding it gets nervous.
Angels4Women puts women on both sides of the cheque
In Milan, a network of business angels backs women-led startups and teaches investors how to judge them. The interesting part is the machinery between a promising introduction and an actual investment.
FEA Angels turns the alumni reunion into a funding round
Born at the University of São Paulo, FEA Angels puts founders in front of people who can write checks and ask difficult questions. Its real asset is what happens between the introductions and the investment.
Rockies Venture Club makes the pitch the beginning
The Colorado angel network has built a business around what happens after the applause: teaching investors, checking the numbers, and assembling enough capital to make a deal.
VNTR Is Selling a Seat at the Investor Table
A $100-a-month community, a deal-by-deal syndicate and a private club in Portugal: VNTR is turning investor introductions into a business. The interesting part is how carefully it manages the guest list.
Sergey Savastiouk
Sergey Savastiouk, Ph.D., is the founder and CEO of Tickeron, a Reno-based platform that pairs artificial intelligence with plain-language explanation to give self-directed investors and advisors trading signals, pattern recognition, and automated 'AI robots.' A former applied-mathematics professor at Santa Clara University with two prior startups behind him, he turned the losses of the 2008 crisis into a mission to hand retail investors the kind of algorithmic tools once reserved for institutions.
Skyler Fernandes
J. Skyler (Sky) Fernandes is the Founder and General Partner of VU Venture Partners, a global venture capital fund spanning San Francisco, Hong Kong, Munich, and São Paulo, and the Co-Founder & CEO of Venture University, widely considered the world's leading investor accelerator. A Powerlist 100 VC, Fernandes has assembled a portfolio of 150+ investments including early positions in SpaceX, OpenAI, Meta (Facebook), Uber, Palantir, and Neuralink - with 25+ unicorns and 20+ multi-billion dollar exits. Before VU, he founded Simon Venture Group, the VC arm of Simon Property Group (S&P 100), which CB Insights ranked a top 5 retail investor alongside GV, Intel Capital, and Comcast Ventures. He graduated summa cum laude from NYU and studied Physics and Foreign Policy at Harvard. Beyond capital, Fernandes gave the first TED Talk on venture capital, created the #1 Startup Pitch Deck template (700,000+ views), and co-created 'The Next Big Thing' board game on entrepreneurship with his wife Jenna.