Joe Horowitz is the founder and Managing General Partner of Icon Ventures, a Palo Alto-based venture capital firm with over $1.4 billion in assets under management. With more than four decades in venture investing - beginning with the seed financing of Sun Microsystems - Horowitz has backed iconic technology companies across cybersecurity, digital health, and enterprise software. He built Icon into a disciplined growth-stage firm focused on Series B and C, built on the belief that human capital is more precious than financial capital.
Mike Carusi is a General Partner at Lightstone Ventures, a leading life sciences venture capital firm based in Portola Valley, California, with $847 million in assets under management. With a career spanning over three decades in healthcare investing, Carusi has built a reputation as one of the most active early-stage investors in biotech and medical devices, appearing on the Forbes Midas List for top technology and life science investors. He co-founded Lightstone Ventures in 2014 after years at Advanced Technology Ventures (ATV), and has overseen landmark exits including Plexxikon (acquired by Daiichi Sankyo for ~$1 billion), Ardian (acquired by Medtronic for $800 million), Ra Medical Systems (acquired by UCB for $2.3 billion), and dozens more. He teaches healthcare venture capital at Dartmouth Tuck and is a faculty member of the Stanford Biodesign Emerging Entrepreneurs Forum.
Steve Krausz is a General Partner (now Senior Advisor) at U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), one of Silicon Valley's longest-running early-stage venture capital firms. With over 35 years of investing experience, he has led or co-led board-level involvement in landmark exits including Check Point Software, Box, Guidewire Software, Imperva, and Trusteer (acquired by IBM). A Stanford-trained electrical engineer and Arjay Miller Scholar MBA, Krausz joined USVP in 1985 and has built deep domain expertise in cybersecurity, enterprise software, and data analytics. He currently serves on the boards of Cato Networks, Human Interest, Quantifind, Badge, Informed.iq, and Zefr, and is a strategic advisor to the B612 Foundation, which tracks near-Earth asteroids.
Ted Schlein is Chairman and Founding General Partner of Ballistic Ventures, a cybersecurity-dedicated venture capital firm based in Daly City, California. After nearly 30 years at Kleiner Perkins where he became Silicon Valley's foremost cybersecurity investor, Schlein launched Ballistic in 2021 with a $300 million inaugural fund, followed by a $360 million second fund in 2024 and a $100 million third raise in 2025. A former operator at Symantec and founding CEO of Fortify Software, he sits on the DHS Homeland Security Advisory Council and the CIA's InQTel board, bridging the gap between Silicon Valley capital and national security infrastructure.
Reid Weaver Dennis (1926-2024) was the founding father of institutional venture capital in Silicon Valley. As founder of Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), he pioneered the model of raising venture funds from institutional investors - insurance companies and endowments - at a time when VC was barely a cottage industry. His 1974 fund raised nearly half of all private venture capital in the U.S. that year. Over seven decades, he backed companies like Seagate, Netflix, TiVo, and Juniper Networks, served 37 years on the San Francisco Opera board, and built IVP into a firm managing $7 billion with a 40-year IRR of 43.1%.
Renata Quintini is a Brazilian-American venture capitalist and co-founder of Renegade Partners, a $228M early-stage VC firm she launched in 2020 with Roseanne Wincek. Known for coining the 'Supercritical Stage' - the critical post-product-market-fit phase before full-scale growth - she brings two decades of investing experience from Felicis Ventures and Lux Capital, where she backed companies generating over $40B in enterprise value at exit, including Dollar Shave Club, Cruise Automation, Warby Parker, Wise, and Glossier. A Stanford-trained lawyer and MBA, three-time state karate champion, and Bossa Nova guitarist, Quintini is one of the rare women who runs her own venture fund.
Shauntel Garvey is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Reach Capital, a $300M+ San Francisco-based venture firm laser-focused on education technology. A chemical engineer turned edtech investor, she parlayed an MIT degree and a Stanford MBA/MA in Education into backing some of the most consequential learning platforms of the last decade - ClassDojo, Epic, Outschool, and Handshake among them. She co-founded Reach Capital in 2015 after her stint at NewSchools Venture Fund, building it into a firm with 132+ portfolio companies, five unicorns, and one IPO. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, founding member of All Raise, and Pahara Institute Fellow, Garvey is one of the most influential figures at the intersection of capital and educational equity.