patent-holder
(6)
Noureddine Tayebi
Noureddine Tayebi is the founder and CEO of Yassir, North Africa's most valuable tech startup and the leading super app for francophone Africa. Born in Algiers in 1977, he earned a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University after completing a master's degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He spent eight years at Intel in Silicon Valley accumulating over 50 patents before founding InSense, a nano-motion sensor startup acquired by Mojo Vision in 2018. In 2017, he co-founded Yassir, which has grown to serve 8 million+ users across 45 cities in six countries, offering ride-hailing, food delivery, grocery delivery, and fintech services. Yassir has raised $193.25 million in total, including a historic $150M Series B led by Mary Meeker's BOND, cementing Tayebi's position as a defining figure in Africa's digital economy.
Gauri Naik
Dr. Gauri Naik is a Ph.D. biotechnologist, serial entrepreneur, and Co-Founder & CEO of OptraHEALTH, a Silicon Valley AI health-tech company building conversational AI and revenue cycle automation tools for genetics, genomics, and clinical workflows. With 11 U.S. patents, a career spanning digital pathology (BioImagene, acquired by Roche), and products deployed at leading health systems across the US, Europe, and Asia, she sits at the intersection of molecular biology, machine learning, and enterprise health IT.
Manlio Allegra
Manlio Allegra is the co-founder, President, and CEO of Polaris Wireless, a Silicon Valley company he built from the ground up in 1999 to become the global leader in high-accuracy, software-based 3D mobile location solutions. With over 30 years of international business experience spanning video games, Sega Enterprises' European expansion, and wireless technology, Allegra has guided Polaris Wireless to secure 90+ patents, earn multiple Frost & Sullivan awards, and sign landmark E911 Z-axis agreements with major U.S. carriers - helping emergency dispatchers locate people not just on a map, but on the right floor of a building.
Martin Devenney
Dr. Martin Devenney is the CEO of Nanosys, the world's leading quantum dot technology company now part of Shoei Chemical. A chemist-turned-manufacturer with a PhD from Queen's University Belfast and over 35 patents, he spent eight years scaling Nanosys's quantum dot production from lab curiosity to the backbone of more than 1,000 unique display products across 70 million consumer devices. Named CEO in May 2023, he then engineered the company's acquisition by Japanese chemical giant Shoei Chemical in September 2023, positioning Nanosys to lead the next generation of display technologies including NanoLED, QD-OLED, and automotive quantum dot applications.
Steven Lee
Steven Lee is a Venture Partner and founding member of Draper Athena (DFJ Athena), where he focuses on deep-tech investments spanning agricultural productivity, biomanufacturing, and automation. An MIT-trained electrical engineer with a US patent in internet-based audio transmission, he bridges the worlds of hands-on technology and venture capital. Before co-founding Draper Athena, he led US investments for STIC International, a global VC fund operating across the US, China, and Korea, and worked at Athena Technology Ventures, Chromatic Research, and InVision Interactive. With over 13 years of engineering and startup experience before entering venture, Steven brings rare technical depth to the table at one of Silicon Valley's most storied VC lineages.
Hemkesh Agrawal
Hemkesh Agrawal is an engineer-turned-venture-operator who went from arriving in the US from India in 2019 to holding a patent, founding multiple startups, and becoming Head of Engineering at Redbud VC in Columbia, Missouri. A Board of Trustees Scholar at Michigan State University with a perfect 4.0 GPA, he co-founded UniServices (an Uber-for-odd-jobs platform for college students) and Village (AI-driven HOA management), and was one of only 15 selected out of 4,000 applicants for the Survive & Thrive entrepreneurship bootcamp at age 16. He bridges deep technical skill with startup hustle, embodying the rare builder who can go from Arduino prototypes to VC infrastructure.