Sharath Kuruganty is a serial entrepreneur, community builder, and angel investor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Holder of an O-1/EB-1A 'Alien of Extraordinary Ability' visa, he has founded and exited two SaaS startups, is the #1 hunter on Product Hunt with 140+ launches, hosts 'The Undefeated Underdogs' podcast, and is currently building GuestLab.ai - an AI-powered research assistant for podcast hosts. Known for his 'build in public' philosophy, he grew from 200 to 22,000+ Twitter followers and advocates that no-code tools are a superpower for aspiring founders.
Tom Bilyeu is a serial entrepreneur, media founder, and podcast host who co-founded Quest Nutrition - achieving 57,000% growth in three years before selling for $1 billion - then pivoted to build Impact Theory, a media company generating over 1 billion views through content centered on entrepreneurship, mindset, AI, and geopolitics. A USC-trained filmmaker turned business builder, Bilyeu channels his obsession with human potential into daily content, courses, live events, and a graphic novel series, positioning himself as one of the most prolific voices in the creator-entrepreneur space.
Edith Harbaugh is the CEO and co-founder of LaunchDarkly, the leading feature management platform trusted by over 5,500 organizations including 25% of Fortune 500 companies. She helped pioneer the feature flag category in 2014, scaling the company to $100M ARR, raising over $330M in venture capital, and building infrastructure that evaluates 45 trillion feature flags daily. A Harvey Mudd engineering alumna, patent holder, ultramarathoner, and co-host of the 'To Be Continuous' podcast, Harbaugh returned as CEO in 2025 to lead LaunchDarkly into the generative AI era.
Gadi Shamia is the CEO and co-founder of Replicant, a voice AI platform that automates customer service calls at enterprise scale. A serial entrepreneur who sold his first company (TopManage) to SAP, helped EchoSign sell to Adobe for $400M, and scaled Talkdesk from seed to unicorn as COO, he brings two decades of building and scaling B2B software companies to the challenge of replacing traditional IVR systems with natural-sounding, AI-driven conversations. Under his leadership, Replicant has automated over 1 billion minutes of customer interactions and raised $113M in funding.
Nellie Wartoft is a Swedish technology entrepreneur and the CEO and founder of Tigerhall, a Change Activation Platform that helps Fortune 500 companies drive organizational transformation at scale using AI and social learning. She moved from a small Swedish village to Singapore at 18 with a one-way ticket, spent 4.5 years as a top billing recruiter at Michael Page, then built Tigerhall from scratch into a platform operating across 32 countries, backed by Sequoia Capital and Monk's Hill Ventures with over $10 million in venture capital. Before her tech career she was a Swedish national champion in skeet shooting and air rifle.
Brian Sharp is the CEO of Time Doctor, a workforce analytics platform trusted by over 10,000 organizations globally. A 27-year veteran of building and rebuilding companies, Sharp started his first business at 22 after spinning records as a DJ at 14, and has since navigated every stage of company-building - from bootstrapped startups to $100M+ enterprises. Appointed CEO in February 2026, he champions a philosophy he calls 'Help & Hustle': the belief that high performance and personal happiness are not a tradeoff. He hosts the podcast 'High Performance Happiness' and runs a course called 'Burnout to Balance' for remote leaders.
Jascha Kaykas-Wolff is the CEO of Visiting Media, a Portland-based hospitality sales enablement company, and a veteran tech executive whose career has spanned Yahoo, Microsoft, BitTorrent, and Mozilla. Raised in a socialist collective outside Eugene, Oregon - by a pioneering rock concert promoter - he grew up thinking deeply about systems, autonomy, and how teams work. He is the author of 'Growing Up Fast' (2014), a pioneer of Agile Marketing methodology, the first CMO to pull all Facebook advertising after the 2018 data breach, and co-host of the podcast 'This is Your Life in Silicon Valley.'
Tomer Cohen spent 14 years reshaping LinkedIn from a dusty resume repository into a platform used by a billion professionals daily. As Chief Product Officer, he oversaw the transformation of the feed, led the charge into AI-first product development, and coined the 'Full Stack Builder' model that is rewriting how product teams work. Born in Beer Sheba to Tunisian immigrant parents who lived in transit camps, he coded BASIC at age 10, served in IDF intelligence, backpacked through Latin America and Southeast Asia, earned an MBA from Stanford, and arrived at LinkedIn in 2012 - leaving more than a decade later as one of the most influential product minds in Silicon Valley.
Heidi Roizen is one of Silicon Valley's most iconic figures — a serial entrepreneur who co-founded T/Maker in 1983, led Apple's Worldwide Developer Relations during a pivotal transition, and became a venture capitalist at Threshold Ventures. She is the subject of a landmark Harvard Business School case study on networking and the famous 'Heidi vs. Howard' gender bias experiment. Today she is a Partner at Threshold Ventures, a Stanford lecturer, board director at Planet Labs and Upside Foods, and host of 'The Startup Solution' podcast.
Jared Friedman is Managing Director of Software at Y Combinator, one of the world's most influential startup accelerators. A Harvard dropout, he co-founded Scribd - one of YC's earliest bets - and grew it to 80M+ users as CTO before joining YC as a partner in 2015. He has read over 12,000 startup applications, advised 20+ YC unicorns, and championed hard tech, biotech, and AI at YC. In 2024 he became one of the loudest voices on vertical AI agents being '10X bigger than SaaS.' He spends roughly 4% of his waking hours in Waymo robotaxis, which he uses as a mobile office.
Dorie Clark is a strategy consultant, executive education professor, and bestselling author recognized four times by Thinkers50 as one of the top 50 business thinkers in the world. Named the #1 Communication Coach in the World by the Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Awards, she teaches at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and has written four books published by Harvard Business Review Press and Portfolio/Penguin. A former political campaign press secretary, documentary filmmaker, and Grammy-winning jazz album producer, Clark is also an active Broadway investor and musical theatre lyricist-in-training - living proof that the 'long game' she preaches is one she plays herself.
Jay Baer is a 7th-generation entrepreneur, Hall of Fame keynote speaker, and the author of seven business books including the New York Times bestseller Youtility. Founder of Convince & Convert - once home to the world's #1 content marketing blog - he has advised 700+ brands including Nike, Oracle, IBM, and Salesforce. After selling his marketing empire during COVID, he pivoted to become the world's #2 tequila influencer (non-celebrity division), a certified tequila sommelier, and a co-founder of The Tequila Report. He currently keynotes 50-70 times a year in 12+ countries on customer experience, speed, and human connection in the AI era.
Sheel Mohnot is a San Francisco-based fintech investor and co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures (BTV), a $300M+ seed-stage fund backing fintech companies globally. A two-time fintech founder himself - having built and exited FeeFighters (acquired by Groupon, 2012) and Innovative Auctions - Sheel brings rare operator credibility to early-stage investing. He co-founded The Pitch podcast, co-leads BTV's The Mint accelerator, and is one of fintech's most-followed voices on Twitter/X with 150K+ followers. Known for his fintech-only thesis, global portfolio (33% outside US), and a Taco Bell metaverse wedding officiated by Kal Penn.
Amanda Goetz is a 2x founder, 4x CMO, USA TODAY bestselling author, and podcast host who built and sold a luxury CBD brand (House of Wise) from her garage during a pandemic-era divorce, then pivoted to a $500K+ solo portfolio career on her own terms. She reaches 150,000+ readers weekly with her anti-hustle newsletter Life's a Game, hosts the Girlboss Ambition 2.0 podcast, and authored 'Toxic Grit' — a takedown of hustle culture that became an instant bestseller in October 2025. A single mom of three based in Miami, she turned her hardest seasons into her most compelling IP.
Dave Gerhardt is the founder and CEO of Exit Five, the #1 paid community for B2B marketers, with 5,700+ members and $3M+ in annual revenue. A former CMO who rose from PR intern to the CMO chair at Drift and Privy, he turned a decade of B2B marketing experience into a bootstrapped media company built on LinkedIn influence, a 50k+ subscriber newsletter, and a podcast with 348+ episodes. He is the author of Founder Brand (2022) and co-author of Conversational Marketing (2019), and lives in Burlington, Vermont.
Collin Stewart is the Co-Founder and CEO of Predictable Revenue, the B2B sales outsourcing company that has booked 10,000+ meetings for 55+ companies including Toptal and Vox Media. A self-described 'failed musician' turned one of North America's most trusted voices in sales development, Collin built his company from 1,100 LinkedIn messages and near-bankruptcy to $1M ARR in under a year. He hosts the Predictable Revenue Podcast (400+ episodes) and published his debut book, The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers, in October 2025.
Mark W. Schaefer is a globally recognized marketing strategist, bestselling author of 12 books, keynote speaker, and Rutgers University professor who has spent 30+ years pioneering human-centered marketing. Known for writing the world's first book on influencer marketing and six #1 Amazon marketing bestsellers, he champions the idea that 'the most human company wins' — a philosophy that has taken on new urgency in the AI era. His latest book, Audacious (2025), features the world's first AI-activated augmented reality book cover.
Max Altschuler is a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and author who built Sales Hacker from a 4-person meetup into a 170,000-subscriber media company, sold it to Outreach, re-bought it back, and then accidentally founded GTMfund - a $76M operator-led VC firm. He wrote three books (including the Wiley bestseller 'Hacking Sales'), invested early in Outreach and Gong, and is now one of the most influential voices in go-to-market strategy and B2B sales.
Molly Pittman is the CEO and Managing Partner of Smart Marketer, a leading digital marketing education and agency company. She rose from an unpaid intern at DigitalMarketer to VP of Marketing by age 24, personally managing over $16 million in profitable ad spend and generating 500,000+ leads. Co-host of the Perpetual Traffic Podcast (5M+ downloads), author of 'Click Happy' (2020), and founder of Fields of Freedom Dog Rescue - a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has saved 2,500+ dogs from euthanasia in Kentucky.
Roger Dooley is a neuromarketing pioneer, bestselling author of Brainfluence and Friction, and host of the long-running Brainfluence podcast. A Carnegie Mellon engineer turned behavioral scientist, he co-founded College Confidential before devoting himself to decoding the subconscious drivers of customer decisions. His work sits at the intersection of brain science, AI, and practical marketing — helping businesses eliminate friction, build loyalty, and persuade smarter.
Sangram Vajre is the co-founder and CEO of GTM Partners, the only analyst firm exclusively focused on go-to-market strategy for B2B SaaS companies. Before that, he co-founded Terminus (2014), the platform that defined the account-based marketing software category, and served as CMO at Pardot through its $2.5B acquisition by Salesforce. A WSJ and USA Today bestselling author of three books, host of the 900-episode FlipMyFunnel podcast, and curator of the GTMonday newsletter with 175,000+ subscribers, Vajre is one of the most influential voices in B2B marketing. An immigrant from Nagpur, India who arrived in the U.S. with $350, he became an American citizen in late 2024 after 22 years in the country.
Ronen Kirsh is an Israeli-born entrepreneur and blockchain investor at the intersection of Web3 gaming and venture capital. He co-founded Blockchain at Berkeley (2016), one of the largest university blockchain organizations in the US, then launched Dekrypt Capital with a $20M fund. He is a co-founder of Game7 (G7_DAO), which controls a $500M treasury and deployed $100M in grants to accelerate Web3 gaming, and serves as Strategic Partnerships lead at Forte. A former IDF Special Forces sergeant, he brings military discipline to the chaotic frontier of decentralized gaming.
Val Geisler is a lifecycle marketing strategist and VP of Partner Programs at Digioh, best known for founding Fix My Churn and creating the 'Dinner Party Strategy' — a behavior-driven email onboarding framework that has powered 209% conversion lifts for SaaS and ecommerce brands. With 12+ years at the intersection of customer empathy and marketing systems, she has built advocacy programs at Klaviyo, grown retention email to 25% of company revenue at ByHeart, and hosted the Ecommerce Marketing School podcast. Her philosophy: emails are relationships, not broadcasts.
Mona Charen is a syndicated political columnist, author, and podcast host who has spent four decades at the center of American conservative commentary. A former speechwriter for Nancy Reagan and one of the original Never Trump voices, she writes with unflinching honesty about the GOP's drift toward extremism. Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and host of The Mona Charen Show on The Bulwark, she is one of the few conservative commentators who has maintained intellectual consistency through decades of partisan turbulence.