m&a
(17)
Ori Eldarov
Ori Eldarov is the co-founder and CEO of OffDeal, a New York based AI-native investment bank that runs sell-side M&A processes for owners of small businesses with $10-100M in revenue. A former RBC Capital Markets banker with over $20B in advised deals and a Harvard MBA, Eldarov started OffDeal out of Y Combinator in 2024 with ex-Meta engineer Alston Lin, and in mid-2025 raised a $12M Series A led by Radical Ventures.
Peter Lehrman
Peter Lehrman is the founder and CEO of Axial, a New York based online platform where owners of small and lower middle market private companies meet buyers, lenders and financial sponsors. He also hosts the Masters in Small Business M&A podcast. Before Axial, he was on the founding team of Gerson Lehrman Group and worked in private equity at SFW Capital Partners.
Brian Pallas
Brian Pallas is the Italian founder and CEO of Opportunity Network, a private business-matching platform where vetted CEOs and investors anonymously connect on commercial, fundraising, investing and M&A deals above $1M. What started as an anonymous newsletter he circulated at Columbia Business School to help his father's Milan family business grew into one of the world's largest communities of CEOs and investors, with tens of thousands of vetted members across 130+ countries and hundreds of billions in transaction flow. A former Boston Consulting Group consultant with private equity and investment banking experience, Pallas also co-founded Collective Equity Ownership and the Milan real estate firm Medhelan Capital.
Maryssa Barron
Maryssa Barron is the founder and CEO of BuildQ, an AI-powered project intelligence platform for the energy sector that structures project data, automates due diligence, and accelerates clean energy financing and M&A. A Harvard graduate, Stanford-trained lawyer, and licensed D.C. attorney, she spent nearly a decade in renewable energy - pioneering early power purchase agreements and rising to COO at a global independent power producer - before building the tool she wished had existed. She founded BuildQ in 2024 while studying for the bar exam, won the 2025 AngelNV competition and over $1 million in funding, and within a year had grown the platform to 300+ projects, 10+ gigawatts of clean energy capacity, and over $150 million in deal flow.
Aditya Venugopal
Aditya Venugopal is the Chief Business Officer of Alentis Therapeutics, a clinical-stage Swiss biotech chasing first-in-class therapies aimed at claudin-1 for fibrosis and cancer. An immunologist turned dealmaker, he spent 15-plus years moving between the lab bench and the negotiating table: a Ph.D. in immunology from Weill Cornell, seven years in strategic life-science consulting, then senior roles at Intercept, VectivBio and Versanis Bio. He has a habit of being in the room when companies get acquired - VectivBio went to Ironwood, Versanis went to Eli Lilly - and he reunited with CEO Mark Pruzanski at Alentis after first partnering with him at Intercept.
Alfonso Villanueva
Alfonso Villanueva is the EVP, Chief Transformation Officer and Interim CEO of Verizon Consumer Group - the largest consumer wireless carrier in the United States. A former McKinsey Senior Partner and PayPal EVP, he joined Verizon in November 2025 at the invitation of new CEO Dan Schulman, his former PayPal colleague, to lead a sweeping $5B+ operational transformation. With roots in strategy consulting across Asia-Pacific and two decades of experience in telecom, media, and technology, Villanueva brings a rare blend of corporate venture expertise, AI-driven data strategy, and global transformation leadership to one of America's biggest companies.
Michael Richards
Michael Richards is the Interim Chief Executive Officer of Wiser Solutions, a San Mateo-based commerce execution platform serving brands and retailers with pricing, promotions, and retail intelligence. A career operator and transformation specialist, Richards spent three decades inside private equity and Big Four advisory before stepping into operating roles, including stints as COO/CFO of Muse Group and Chief Transformation Officer at Whip Media. He joined Wiser in his interim capacity backed by Symphony Technology Group, where he serves as Operating Partner.
Terry Heath
Terry Heath is the founder and CEO of Sciens Building Solutions, a Pleasanton, California-based fire and life safety integrator he built from a whiteboard plan in 2016 into one of the largest independent platforms of its kind in the United States. A former Royal Navy electrical engineer who came to America via Siemens, Heath has stitched together more than sixteen acquisitions and now runs a roughly 1,800-person company headquartered in the East Bay.
Asher Siddiqui
Asher Siddiqui is a General Partner at Sukna Ventures, a Riyadh-based early-stage venture fund backing software and data-infrastructure startups across MENA. He spent a decade running global M&A and corporate venture at Etisalat (around $15bn in deals), then joined 500 Startups as a partner and investment committee member before settling into the GP role at Sukna. He advises a constellation of funds from Palo Alto to Pakistan and splits time between the San Francisco Bay Area, Dubai, and Riyadh.
Ashley Caldwell
Ashley Caldwell is Partner and General Counsel at Sapphire Ventures, the Menlo Park venture capital firm with more than $11B in AUM across its Ventures, Partners, and Sport platforms. She runs legal across all three strategies — deal execution, governance, regulatory, exits — for a firm that backs growth-stage technology companies globally. A former Kirkland & Ellis private equity associate and Bluevine in-house counsel, she joined Sapphire in 2019, was elevated to General Counsel in 2021, and now wears the Partner title too.
Bill Myers
Bill Myers is Partner and General Counsel at Norwest Venture Partners, the multi-stage investment firm based in Menlo Park. He handles deal structuring, fund administration, portfolio counsel and cross-border regulatory work for a global fund spanning North America, India and Israel. Before Norwest he was a partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and earlier at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, where he focused on M&A, venture financings and public company transactions.
Dirk Morbitzer
Dirk Morbitzer is a senior executive and consultant with 25+ years of experience in renewable energy, solar, and cleantech. He is CEO of DIMOCO Inc., a boutique consulting firm specializing in solar and energy storage, and is a top 1% expert in the Energy Group at GLG (Gerson Lehrman Group). Previously CEO North America and Group CEO of AEROCOMPACT Group Holding AG, and before that Director of Strategic Sourcing at Sunrun for eight years, Morbitzer brings deep expertise in strategic sourcing, international supply chain management, M&A, and PE investment navigation across Europe, Asia, and North America.
Yoav Samet
Yoav Samet is a General Partner at Almaz Capital, a Palo Alto-based venture firm backing disruptive deep tech and B2B software companies with a unique focus on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Before joining Almaz, he spent 13 years at Cisco as VP of Corporate Development, where he led roughly 20 acquisitions totaling over $7 billion and managed a $1 billion investment portfolio. An Israeli native and veteran of IDF Unit 8200, Samet holds an MBA from Stanford GSB and MS/BS degrees in Computer Science from Hebrew University, and has built a career as a rare bridge between Silicon Valley, Israel, and the CEE/CIS technology ecosystem.
Federico Baradello
Federico Baradello is the Founder and CEO of Finalis, an AI-powered investment banking platform he built from his frustration with a 30-year-old technology stack while executing M&A deals at Kirkland & Ellis. An Argentine-American multilingual attorney with degrees from Princeton, Harvard, LSE, and UC Berkeley, Baradello launched Finalis in 2020 and has grown it into one of the fastest-growing investment banking platforms in history - now powering over 900 bankers across 24 countries with $22.5B+ in closed transactions.
Adrian Radu
Adrian Radu is a Partner at Khosla Ventures, focused on early-stage investing from New York. Born in the UK to Romanian immigrant parents - his father worked in the satellite industry - he built his career from investment banking at Qatalyst Partners in London (advising on landmark European tech M&A) to helping establish Lightspeed Venture Partners' European presence and later opening their New York office. His portfolio spans frontier companies including Stripe, Anduril, Wiz, ClickUp, Flex, and Lightyear. A self-described top 0.1% Daft Punk listener and lifelong Chelsea FC supporter, he plays 100+ padel games a year and channels an obsession with technology that began watching his father work in satellites.
Brian Roberts
Brian Roberts is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he works across the American Dynamism and AI Apps funds. Known as BK to those in the know, Roberts is a serial CFO turned investor who took Lyft public at a $24 billion valuation, helped Splunk get acquired by Cisco for $28 billion, and was OpenSea's first CFO during the NFT boom. With 30+ years spanning investment banking at Evercore, corporate development at Microsoft and Walmart, and C-suite finance roles at some of tech's most pivotal companies, he joined a16z in October 2024 to bring an operator's lens to early and growth-stage investments in enterprise software, fintech, and America's strategic tech infrastructure.
Peter Blackwood
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.