Tim Ferriss is a five-time #1 New York Times bestselling author, host of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast (1 billion+ downloads), early-stage investor in Uber, Facebook, Shopify, Duolingo, and 50+ companies, and founder of the Saisei Foundation funding psychedelic research. Known for popularizing 'lifestyle design' with The 4-Hour Workweek, he is also a Guinness World Record holder in tango, a national kickboxing champion, and a polyglot who speaks five languages.
Jim McKelvey is the co-founder of Square (now Block, Inc.), a serial entrepreneur, master glassblower, author, and philanthropist from St. Louis. He built Square after losing a $2,000 sale at his glass studio because he couldn't accept American Express - and turned that frustration into a payments company that beat Amazon when it tried to copy them. He's also founded Invisibly, co-founded LaunchCode (a nonprofit that guarantees tech jobs), serves as an Operator Advisor at Redbud VC, and is a former Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
David Fialkow is the co-founder and Managing Director of General Catalyst, a $40+ billion venture capital firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Beyond building one of America's most influential VC firms, he has produced over 20 documentary films - including two Academy Award winners (Icarus and Navalny) - making him a rare figure who operates with equal conviction in finance and storytelling. Known for backing bold ideas from Airbnb to Anduril, Fialkow brings the same instinct for truth-telling to the board room that drives his work on screen.
Josh Kopelman is the co-founder and managing partner of First Round Capital, one of the world's most influential seed-stage venture firms, and a serial entrepreneur who sold Half.com to eBay for $300 million in 2000. A Wharton grad who started his first company as a sophomore in 1992, Kopelman has backed over 500 startups including Uber, Square, Warby Parker, and Notion. Known for the legendary Half.com/Halfway-Oregon PR stunt and the 'Penny Gap' essay, he is a consistent Forbes Midas List honoree who describes his career as a deliberate effort to stay permanently in the first 18-24 months of company-building - the phase he loves most.
Matt Cohler is one of Silicon Valley's most accomplished yet deliberately low-profile venture capitalists. A Yale music graduate turned McKinsey consultant, he joined LinkedIn as a founding member, became Facebook employee #5 and VP of Product under Zuckerberg, then joined Benchmark Capital in 2008 as its youngest-ever General Partner. His investment portfolio - including Instagram, Tinder, Dropbox, Asana, and Zendesk - places him among the most successful consumer internet investors of his era. Since stepping back from active fund management in 2018, he serves on the boards of KKR, the Yale Investments Office, and the Environmental Defense Fund, and sustains a lifelong devotion to classical music through 17+ years on the San Francisco Symphony board and patronage of the Berlin Philharmonic.
Sheryl Sandberg is a technology executive, author, and philanthropist who served as Meta's COO for 14 years, transforming Facebook into a profitable advertising powerhouse and becoming one of the most influential voices in business leadership. The author of 'Lean In' and founder of LeanIn.org, she's a champion for women's leadership and currently runs Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, investing in AI-native companies while serving on Meta's board and advising early-stage founders.
Nathan Blecharczyk is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Airbnb, the world's largest hospitality platform. A self-taught programmer who built a million-dollar software business in high school, Blecharczyk coded Airbnb's original website and led its engineering, data science, and payments teams. Known for the infamous cereal box fundraising stunt that kept Airbnb alive in 2008, he now oversees the company's global strategy and chairs Airbnb China. With a net worth of $9.4 billion and a commitment to The Giving Pledge, he's transformed from a Boston kid tinkering with his father's old machines into one of tech's most influential builders.
Gordon Earle Moore (1929-2023) was the co-founder and emeritus chairman of Intel Corporation, and the visionary behind Moore's Law - the observation that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. A chemist and physicist by training, Moore was one of the 'Traitorous Eight' who left Shockley Semiconductor to found Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957, then co-founded Intel in 1968 with Robert Noyce. His 1965 prediction became the guiding principle of the semiconductor industry and fueled the digital revolution. Beyond technology, Moore and his wife Betty donated over $10 billion through their foundation to environmental conservation, scientific research, and patient care, making him one of the most generous philanthropists in history.
Brian Acton is the co-founder of WhatsApp, which sold to Facebook for $19 billion in 2014, and the founder of Signal Foundation, where he champions privacy-focused communication. After walking away from $850 million in unvested Facebook stock over ethical disagreements about user privacy, he invested $50 million to build Signal, an encrypted messaging platform designed to put users first. A Stanford computer science graduate who was rejected by both Facebook and Twitter in 2009, Acton has given over $1 billion to charitable causes with his wife Tegan, focusing on low-income families, reproductive rights, and internet privacy.
Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, known as The Weeknd, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor who transformed R&B from the shadows of a Scarborough upbringing into a global phenomenon. With 75+ million records sold, a billion-dollar touring empire, and the most-streamed song in Spotify history, he is redefining what a career exit looks like — retiring the Weeknd persona after his 2025 album and film 'Hurry Up Tomorrow', the closing chapter of a dark pop trilogy, to begin again as Abel Tesfaye.