Shawn O'Neil is the CEO of ViaLase, a clinical-stage medtech company building FLIGHT, an incision-free femtosecond laser procedure for glaucoma. He spent more than two decades at Alcon rising to head of sales and marketing for surgical glaucoma, then ran commercial at Sight Sciences before joining ViaLase as Chief Commercial Officer and stepping up to CEO in July 2025. His career has been a running tour of the products that reshaped eye surgery: EX-PRESS, LenSx, CyPass, OMNI, TearCare, and now a laser that treats glaucoma without ever touching the eye with a blade.
Shimin Ooi is the CEO of Sleep Reset, a virtual sleep clinic that pairs licensed clinical care with a proprietary CBT-I program to treat insomnia without sleeping pills. A Princeton graduate who built her career across McKinsey, Pilot, and Index Ventures, she now runs a company arguing that a lot of what people call burnout is really untreated bad sleep. In 2025 she took Sleep Reset's pitch to the HLTH stage and walked away with the AARP AgeTech After Dark prize.
Shreya Murthy is the cofounder and CEO of Partiful, the text-first party invitation app that became Gen Z's default way to gather. Launched in 2020 during pandemic lockdowns, the New York company has grown past millions of users, raised a $20M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, won Google's Best App of 2024, and landed Murthy on the 2025 TIME100 Next list. A Princeton politics grad and ex-Palantir operator, she left mission-fatigued tech jobs to build the social layer for offline life, betting that parties are not frivolous but infrastructure for community.
Sylvana Ward Durrett spent eight years producing the Met Gala as Vogue's director of special projects before walking away to build Maisonette, a curated online marketplace for children's clothing, toys and home decor she co-founded in 2017 with fellow Vogue alum Luisana Mendoza de Roccia. She turned a parent's frustration - the missing 'Net-a-Porter for kids' - into a venture-backed consumer company headquartered in Brooklyn, applying the editorial taste and relentless work ethic she absorbed in 14 years at Conde Nast to the messy, fragmented world of kids' retail.
Trevor Sumner is the CEO of i-Genie.ai, an AI platform that mines hundreds of billions of Google searches, reviews, and social posts to feed consumer insights and product R&D for brands like Unilever, Coca-Cola, Kenvue and Clorox. A NYC-based serial entrepreneur with multiple exits, he previously ran Perch (acquired by Raydiant) and co-founded LocalVox (acquired by Blackstone). He runs the early-stage advisory and investment firm Summoner, mentors at the ERA accelerator, and has been a Rethink Retail Top Retail Expert six years running. Off the clock he is a scuba diver on every continent, a 600-pound-marlin angler, and a Princeton computer scientist who treats pressure as a privilege.
Vaidhy Murti is the founder and CEO of WIT, a New York fan-engagement and consumer-data platform that runs sponsored contests, polls, and instant-win games for teams across the NFL, NHL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, MLS, and NCAA. A Princeton computer-science grad, he built his first company, the college dating app Friendsy, out of his dorm room and became the youngest founder backed by Lerer Hippeau at 21. WIT took four years and three pivots to turn profitable, and now powers digital activations for nearly 100 venues, leagues, and Fortune 1000 brands.
William Hicks is the co-founder and CEO of Magic Mind, the mental-performance shot that wants to retire your second cup of coffee. A Princeton cum laude grad who left Barclays after deciding investment banking was too soulless to stomach, he went on to co-found the lupini-bean snack company BRAMI before partnering with James Beshara to build Magic Mind into a brand poured into the morning routines of tens of thousands of people. He preaches '90-day trailing average emotions' as the only sane way to survive the violence of startup life.
Dickie Bush is the co-founder of Ship 30 for 30, the cohort-based course that has taught more than 10,000 people to write short 'atomic essays' online. A former Princeton football center and BlackRock portfolio analyst from Tampa, he started writing online in January 2020, pivoted from a stalling newsletter to Twitter, and built an audience of 400,000+ followers. With business partner Nicolas Cole he turned a daily writing habit into a seven-figure education business, the writing software Typeshare, and the Premium Ghostwriting Academy.
Edward Tian is the co-founder and CEO of GPTZero, the AI-detection tool he wrote in three days at a cafe over the 2023 New Year holiday while a senior at Princeton. Within days, tens of thousands of teachers swarmed the app and crashed its server. Two years on, GPTZero has raised $13.5 million, reached millions of users, turned profitable, and become a default check for educators, recruiters, and grant agencies trying to tell human writing from machine writing.
Catherine Rampell is an economics journalist who turned spreadsheets into prime time. After 11 years as a Washington Post opinion columnist, she now runs the economics desk at The Bulwark, writes the 'Receipts' newsletter, and co-anchors 'The Weekend: Primetime' on MS NOW. Her trademark is data-driven argument: charts, receipts and footnotes deployed against political spin, on immigration, inflation, trade and the cost of living.
Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. A Princeton-trained historian who started at National Review as an intern and never really left, he has spent more than two decades as one of the most cited voices in American conservatism, championing 'reform conservative' ideas like expanding the child tax credit and rethinking monetary policy. He is also a contributing editor to the policy journal National Affairs and a frequent television commentator.
Rachel Chen is a corporate communications specialist at eBay in San Jose, where she works on CEO communications and the global content team. A Princeton graduate from Philadelphia, she blends press-release craft with editorial storytelling and a data-driven instinct for what readers actually want.
Scott Howe is the Chief Executive Officer of LiveRamp, the San Francisco-based data collaboration platform that helps the world's largest brands stitch together customer signal across walled gardens, clean rooms, and a cookieless web. He took the job in October 2018 after seven years running Acxiom, LiveRamp's former parent, and before that ran Microsoft's multi-billion-dollar advertising business and helped build Avenue A | Razorfish at aQuantive.
Scott Sellers is the co-founder, President, and CEO of Azul, the Sunnyvale-based company that has spent two decades making Java run faster, cheaper, and freer from Oracle's licensing grip. Before Azul, he co-founded 3dfx Interactive, the graphics company that gave PCs real-time 3D before NVIDIA bought it. Eight patents, a Princeton EE degree (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa), and a backup-quarterback origin story round out a quietly relentless career.
Yi Wang is the co-founder and CEO of Liulishuo (LingoChamp / LAIX), the Shanghai-based company that built one of the world's first AI-powered English teachers. A Princeton PhD and ex-Google product manager, he returned to China in 2011 and shipped an app that climbed to the top of China's App Store within months, eventually serving tens of millions of learners and taking the company public on the NYSE in 2018.
Chris Merrick is the Co-Founder and CTO of Omni, a $1.5B-valued AI analytics platform that raised $120M in Series C funding in April 2026. A Princeton physics graduate and longtime Philadelphia resident, Merrick shaped the modern data stack long before Omni existed - he wrote the first lines of code for dbt, co-created the Singer open-source ETL standard at RJMetrics, and led engineering through Stitch's acquisition by Talend. At Omni, he reunited with college friends Colin Zima and Jamie Davidson to build a BI platform that combines governed semantic modeling with the flexibility of ad-hoc SQL analysis, serving customers like BambooHR, Perplexity, and BuzzFeed.
Clay Bavor is Co-Founder of Sierra, the AI customer experience company he launched in early 2023 alongside Bret Taylor. Before Sierra, Bavor spent 18 years at Google, where he rose from product manager to VP leading Google Labs — overseeing Google's AR/VR efforts (including Cardboard, Daydream, ARCore, Google Lens, and Project Starline), and before that running product and design for Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Workspace. Sierra has raised $1.585 billion in total funding, most recently a $950M Series E at a $15.8 billion valuation in May 2026, serving over 40% of the Fortune 50 with AI agents that resolve 50–90% of customer inquiries.
Frank Mycroft is the co-founder and CEO of Booster, the tech-driven mobile energy delivery platform that dispatches custom mini-tankers directly to fleet and consumer vehicles - eliminating the gas station entirely. A Princeton-trained aerospace engineer who worked at NASA, Boeing, and an asteroid-mining startup before parenthood inspired him to reinvent how America fuels its cars, Mycroft has raised over $242 million and built Booster into a platform serving Amazon, UPS, PepsiCo, and hundreds of fleets across the U.S.
Michael Gilson is the CEO of Conversica, the San Francisco-based conversational AI company behind over 1.5 billion automated customer conversations. Appointed in April 2025, he has repositioned Conversica as 'The Conversation Company,' expanding its AI agent platform from sales automation into automotive data intelligence, sports and entertainment ticketing, and enterprise customer lifecycle management. A Princeton graduate with a background spanning enterprise SaaS, media technology at Telestream, and data analytics at Wiser Solutions, Gilson brings operator instincts to a company that pioneered AI-to-human conversation at scale.
Petko Plachkov is the Co-Founder and CEO of Bright Money, a San Francisco-based AI-powered personal finance platform that helps middle-income Americans manage debt, build credit, and access affordable financial products. A Princeton and Wharton-educated serial entrepreneur who grew up in Bulgaria and Swaziland, Petko spent over a decade building digital financial products at McKinsey and as Co-Founder of CommuterClub before launching Bright Money in 2019. The company has raised $93M in funding, serves over 1 million users, and is powered by MoneyScience - a patented system of 34 AI algorithms.
Tanner Johnson is the Co-Founder and Former President of Curated, a San Francisco-based expert marketplace that matches shoppers with passionate product specialists for high-consideration purchases like outdoor gear, skiing equipment, golf clubs, and jewelry. A Princeton-educated psychology and neuroscience graduate with roots in outdoor education, Johnson helped build Curated from a 2017 founding concept into a $141.5M-funded platform with over 250 employees - until its $330 million stock acquisition by social commerce company Flip in July 2024.
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.
Gordon Ritter is Founder and General Partner of Emergence Capital, the San Francisco-based venture firm he co-founded in 2003 that became one of the defining forces in enterprise SaaS investing. He backed Salesforce in its earliest days, co-founded a SaaS company with Marc Benioff, championed Veeva Systems when it had 25 employees and under $1M in revenue (now a $35B public company), and helped land Zoom's first institutional check. A four-time Forbes Midas List honoree, Ritter closed Emergence's seventh fund at $1 billion in March 2025, focused on AI-native enterprise software. Away from the portfolio, he has summited Denali, run 250 miles across the Swiss Alps, and serves on Princeton's Board of Trustees, where he shapes AI and education curricula.
Tripp Jones is a General Partner at Uncork Capital, a San Francisco-based seed-stage venture firm with over 260 early-stage startup investments. A Princeton psychology grad who spent a decade at August Capital before joining Uncork in 2021, he backs consumer, B2B, and frontier tech companies at the seed stage. Known for his contrarian view that consumer VC is far from dead, he has backed companies ranging from BARK to GPTZero, and champions supply-driven marketplace models with hard-to-access inventory.
Wayne Hu is a General Partner at SignalFire, the AI-native venture capital firm he helped build from its first investment team in 2015. A Princeton-trained mathematician turned Google strategist turned VC, he led the YouTube ads monetization operation at Google before pivoting to investing — backing companies like Grow Therapy, EvenUp, and Solace from the earliest stages. His edge is equal parts pattern recognition and proprietary data: SignalFire's Beacon AI platform ingests signals about talent, market trends, and founder trajectories that most investors never see. He invests where incumbents haven't bothered — sectors ripe for end-to-end reinvention.
Bill Schuh is the Chief Executive Officer of Firstup, the intelligent workforce communication platform built to reach, inform, and activate every employee from deskless frontline workers to corporate HQ. A Princeton-educated SaaS veteran, Schuh has spent three decades scaling enterprise software companies through IPOs and billion-dollar revenue milestones — from Sunrun to Medallia to Anaplan — before taking the helm at Firstup in June 2025 to lead the company's next chapter of growth.
George Kurian is the Chief Executive Officer of NetApp, the $20B+ enterprise data storage and cloud infrastructure company, where he has led a decade-long transformation from legacy storage vendor to AI-ready data platform. Born in Pampady, Kerala, he arrived at Princeton at 17 with a partial scholarship and a twin brother — Thomas Kurian, now CEO of Google Cloud — making them one of the rarest pairs in tech: identical twins who both run major Fortune 500 companies. Under his tenure since 2015, NetApp has posted record revenues of $6.57B in FY2025 and positioned itself as critical backbone for enterprise AI workloads.
Clinton Smith is Co-Founder and CEO of RIOS Intelligent Machines, a Menlo Park-based robotics and AI company deploying dexterous robots in factories across industries like wood products, food, and beverage distribution. A Princeton-trained electrical engineer with a Ph.D. on laser spectrometers for wireless trace-gas sensing, he spent years at Xerox PARC and Physical Sciences Inc. before co-founding RIOS in 2018 with fellow PARC engineers. Under his leadership, RIOS has raised $37.5M total including a $13M Series B in March 2024 co-led by Yamaha Motor Corp. and IAG Capital Partners, pioneering a Robots-as-a-Service model that shifts CapEx burden away from manufacturers and promises outcomes from day one.
Dror Liebenthal is the Israeli-born cofounder and CEO of Bold.org, a San Francisco-based platform that enables anyone — individual or company — to create and manage scholarships, fellowships, and grants at no cost. A Princeton Chemical Engineering graduate (magna cum laude, Class of 2015) who was the first in his family to navigate the US education system, Liebenthal built Bold.org after personally experiencing how a single scholarship changed his trajectory. The platform operates the Bold Foundation (501c3), has distributed millions in student scholarships, and pairs its philanthropy product with the Bold Debit Card, a fintech tool designed to help students manage their money and reduce debt.
Jason Aramburu is the cofounder and CEO of Applied Carbon, a Houston-based climate tech company building the world's first mobile, in-field biochar production machines that convert agricultural crop waste into permanent carbon storage - and improved soil - in a single pass. A Princeton-trained ecologist who first encountered biochar during field research in Panama, Aramburu has spent two decades building at the intersection of soil science, robotics, and carbon markets. Before Applied Carbon, he founded re:char (smallholder biochar in Kenya, backed by Gates Foundation) and Edyn (smart irrigation, Y Combinator W14), then invested in AI and energy startups at Baidu Ventures and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures before returning to his original mission. Applied Carbon raised a $21.5M Series A in July 2024, backed by Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, Congruent Ventures, and the Grantham Foundation, and won the $500,000 Wilkes Climate Launch Prize in September 2024.