Andy Ballard is the CEO and co-founder of Wiser Solutions, Inc., the San Mateo-based omnichannel retail intelligence platform he built through the 2017 merger of Quad Analytix and Mobee. A Harvard undergrad and Stanford MBA, Ballard spent nearly a decade at Hellman & Friedman where he sat on the boards of DoubleClick, Getty Images, Internet Brands, and Catalina Marketing before launching Quad Analytix in 2012. Today he leads a 510-person company that tracks billions of online and in-store data points for over 750 global brands and retailers, while also serving on the boards of Domino's Pizza and Etsy, and running Figtree Partners, his software-focused investment firm.
Deren Baker is the CEO of Flywheel Ventures, the innovation arm of Flywheel Commerce Network - now part of Omnicom Group after a landmark $835 million acquisition in 2023. A serial operator with deep roots in digital commerce analytics, Baker has led transformative companies including Jumpshot (which tracked 160 billion monthly clicks) and Edge by Ascential. He is a recognized thought leader in ecommerce strategy, retail media, and data-driven advertising, with bylines in Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and Entrepreneur Magazine.
John Yang is the co-founder and CEO of Treez Inc., the enterprise cannabis retail commerce platform he built from a single dispensary's pain point into a company processing over $4 billion in annual transactions across 600+ retail locations. A Shanghai-born, Reno-raised technologist who grew up troubleshooting computers in his father's shop, Yang applied a decade of Fortune 500 consulting experience to one of America's most underserved retail sectors, raising $76.7M in funding and turning Treez into the backbone of cannabis retail operations in over a dozen states.
Will Salcido is the Co-Founder and CEO of Bedrock Analytics, an AI-powered CPG data analytics platform that transforms syndicated and retailer data into compelling sales stories for consumer goods manufacturers. A Cornell-trained economist who cut his teeth at Nestlé, Novartis, Ghirardelli, and Lindt & Sprüngli across 12 countries, Salcido bet half his 401(k) on the idea that data storytelling - not raw dashboards - was the missing link between CPG brands and retail shelf space. Today, Bedrock tracks over $100 billion in CPG sales monthly, serves clients across 350+ product categories, and runs a multi-model AI stack using ChatGPT, Claude, and Llama to automate insight generation at scale.