Sophie Novati is the CEO and co-founder of Formation, an A16Z-backed engineering fellowship that helps underrepresented software engineers break into top-tier tech companies. A Carnegie Mellon computer science graduate who rose to staff engineer at Facebook and Nextdoor, she founded Formation in 2019 after recognizing that talented engineers from non-traditional backgrounds were being systematically excluded from elite tech roles. Formation pairs adaptive AI-driven learning with mentorship from senior engineers, and its graduates have landed roles at Meta, Google, Netflix, Amazon, and Dropbox, with an average first-year compensation increase of over $100,000. The company has raised $9 million in funding and Novati credits a 2am chess game with Mark Zuckerberg as one early spark for thinking about business models.
Bill Gurley is one of Silicon Valley's most consequential venture capitalists - a 6'9" Texan who played college basketball, led the analyst team on Amazon's IPO, and then bet Benchmark's money on a then-tiny black-car startup called Uber. As a General Partner at Benchmark from 1999, he built a track record that includes Uber, GrubHub, OpenTable, Zillow, Stitch Fix, and Nextdoor. He writes the 'Above the Crowd' blog, has appeared consistently on the Forbes Midas List, and in 2026 published 'Runnin' Down a Dream,' a career guide ten years in the making. After stepping back from active investing, he relocated to Austin, Texas - where his wife Amy always wanted to end up.
David Sze is an Advisory Partner at Greylock Partners who built the firm's consumer investing franchise from scratch, backing Facebook at a $500M valuation in 2006, LinkedIn when it had 1 million users in 2004, Discord in 2016, and Roblox before it became a household name. A former operator at Excite, Electronic Arts, and HBO, he ranked #4 on the Forbes Midas List in 2012 and remains one of Silicon Valley's most decorated consumer internet investors. He is a Yale trustee, Rockefeller University board member, and advisor to McLaren Racing.