Thomas Frank is a productivity YouTuber, entrepreneur, and Notion expert who built a multi-million dollar business helping students and professionals work smarter. Starting with College Info Geek in 2010, he grew to 2.9 million YouTube subscribers, generated $2.1 million in Notion template sales in two years, and co-founded Flylighter, a web clipper SaaS. He runs two YouTube channels, a podcast, and continues to build tools and systems for the creator economy.
Ivan Zhao is the co-founder and CEO of Notion, the all-in-one workspace platform used by over 100 million people worldwide. Born in Ürümqi, China, he studied cognitive science and fine arts at the University of British Columbia before nearly going bankrupt building Notion, retreating to Kyoto for eight months to rebuild the entire codebase from scratch. Today Notion is valued at $11 billion with $600 million in annual revenue, and Zhao still owns roughly 30% of it — an unusually large stake that reflects his insistence on building deliberately, keeping the team small, and refusing to let investors dictate the product's direction.
Ramu Arunachalam is a General Partner at A.Capital Ventures, the San Francisco-based VC firm known for a founder-friendly approach and a portfolio spanning Notion, Anthropic, Databricks, Coinbase, and Replit. An engineer turned product manager turned investor, Ramu brings a rare depth of technical credibility to the table - he helped build VMware's first virtual switch, shaped a16z's Cloud and Big Data thesis during his time as Partner there, and now leads A.Capital's $180M Fund V with a focus on AI and crypto-native companies.
David Cahn is a Partner at Sequoia Capital and one of the most closely-watched voices in AI infrastructure investing. A former General Partner and COO of Venture at Coatue Management, he backed foundational AI companies including HuggingFace, Runway, and Supabase before joining Sequoia in 2023. Known for his sharp, data-driven essays — most notably 'AI's $600B Question' — Cahn argues that the durability of the AI wave depends not on clever applications but on who controls the physical stack: servers, steel, and power. A University of Pennsylvania graduate, NYC native, and self-described iterative thinker, he is backing the next generation of AI-native companies from Sequoia's Menlo Park headquarters.
Raphael Schaad is a Swiss designer-engineer and Visiting Partner at Y Combinator who built three generation-defining products: iA Writer (the minimalist writing app), Flipboard (the original social magazine), and Cron (acquired by Notion in 2022). Raised in the Swiss Alps, trained at MIT Media Lab, he brings a rare combination of technical depth and design taste that has made him a go-to mentor for founders navigating the AI era.
Mike Vernal is a General Partner at Conviction Partners, an AI-native venture firm led by Sarah Guo. Before that he spent seven years as a Partner at Sequoia Capital, where he backed companies like Rippling, Clay, Notion, and Statsig. His investor instincts were forged at Facebook, where he spent eight years rising to VP of Product and Engineering - co-creating Facebook Login and the Graph API, managing the platform's pivotal mobile transition, and helping invent the modern 'growth team' playbook. A Harvard computer scientist turned operator turned investor, Vernal is known for his 'Market Curve' framework, his early-morning discipline, and a blunt skepticism about data moats.
Lachy Groom is an Australian-born serial entrepreneur turned Silicon Valley solo capitalist who built and sold multiple companies before turning 18, spent 6+ years as employee #30 at Stripe rising to Head of Stripe Issuing, then became one of tech's most prolific angel investors (200+ companies including Figma, Notion, Ramp, OpenAI, Anduril) before co-founding Physical Intelligence in 2024 - a robotics AI company building general-purpose foundation models for robots that has since reached a $5.6B+ valuation.
Francesco D'Alessio is a UK-based productivity media entrepreneur and co-founder of Tool Finder, a platform and YouTube channel (400,000+ subscribers) dedicated to helping people discover, compare, and master productivity software. Starting at age 15 with app reviews, he built Keep Productive into one of the most trusted independent productivity media brands before rebranding it as Tool Finder in 2024. He has reviewed over 1,000 tools, co-created the Bento Focus iOS app, and reached 120,000+ monthly readers through his writing and newsletter.