Peter DiLaura is the CEO and Board Director of Helicore Biopharma, a San Mateo biotech building long-acting antibody-peptide conjugates that go after obesity by neutralizing the GIP hormone in the bloodstream rather than blocking its receptor. With nearly three decades of company-building behind him - CEO roles at Initial Therapeutics and Second Genome, business and strategy chief at Sonoma Biotherapeutics, and time as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Third Rock Ventures - he is the operator brought in to turn a $65M Series A and a clinic-ready antibody into medicines that aim for quarterly dosing and better-quality weight loss.
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.
Narvar is a San Mateo-based enterprise SaaS platform that owns the 'post-purchase' moment for retailers - the stretch between checkout and a customer's next order. Its software powers order tracking, delivery notifications, returns, exchanges and fraud prevention for 1,500+ brands including Sephora, Gap, Patagonia, Home Depot, Levi's and Sonos, and has handled billions of consumer interactions across 38+ countries.
Chase Kim is a startup founder who spent years deep inside Sendbird, the messaging infrastructure company powering conversations for DoorDash, Reddit, and Hinge, where he led the forward deployment team during Sendbird's critical 2024 pivot into AI agents for customer experience. In 2026, he co-founded Light Anchor (YC P26) with Sangha Park to build fully autonomous e-commerce brands run entirely by AI agents, betting that the future of consumer business is capped by compute, not headcount.
Satoshi Sugie is the Co-founder and CEO of WHILL, a San Mateo-based personal mobility company that has reimagined the electric wheelchair as a design-forward consumer product. Drawing on his automotive design background at Nissan, Sugie co-founded WHILL in 2012 with a mission to redefine how people perceive and use mobility devices. Under his leadership, WHILL has grown to 350 employees, expanded to 30+ countries, raised over $153 million in funding, and deployed nearly one million autonomous rides at airports worldwide including Tokyo's Haneda, Rome Fiumicino, and Narita. Named to Silicon Valley Business Journal's 40 Under 40 in 2017 and recognized by TIME Magazine's 50 Best Inventions, Sugie's approach treats mobility not as a medical necessity but as an aspirational lifestyle product.
Bobby Bahl is the founder and CEO of teleSys Software, Inc., a San Mateo-based telecommunications software company he established in 1997. With over 40 years of industry experience, he led the deployment of the first SS7 signaling network in the United States at Sprint and managed the creation of Equal Access, the nation's first long-distance network. Under his leadership, teleSys has grown into a global provider of carrier-grade multi-generation signaling solutions, with 400+ installations serving 100+ operators across 80+ countries supporting more than 1 billion active subscribers.
Paul McCabe is the CEO of JetBrains Americas, Inc., the North American subsidiary of JetBrains - the Czech developer tools company behind IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, Kotlin, and dozens of other IDEs and tools trusted by over 11 million developers worldwide. With a career spanning Logitech, Symantec, Miro Computer Products, and WebGain, McCabe brings over three decades of enterprise software sales and operations experience to one of the most influential developer tooling companies on the planet. He also co-founded Chronon Systems, a Java time-travel debugging startup, and has been steering JetBrains' Americas business since November 2015.
Ray Villeneuve is the CEO and Board Director of BriteCore, a cloud-native policy administration platform built for mid-size property and casualty insurers and MGAs. Appointed in September 2021 alongside a $20M Series C close led by Warburg Pincus, Villeneuve brings 30+ years of B2B enterprise technology leadership spanning storage (NetApp, Auspex), predictive analytics (MonoSphere/Quest), machine learning (Skytree), AI-powered eCommerce (Reflektion), and industrial AI (Quartic.ai). At BriteCore, he is repositioning the company as the modern core system of choice for the underserved mid-market insurance segment, driving awards recognition (FinTech Breakthrough 2025 Best P&C InsurTech Solution, Top 100 Software Companies 2024), growing to 100+ insurer clients, and building AI-native capabilities including agentic workflows and MCP-standard integration.
Herman Yang is the CEO and co-founder of Upscale AI, an AI-native platform that lets e-commerce brands create, run, and optimize performance TV ads on streaming channels. A Stanford CS grad with an MBA from Harvard Business School, Yang spent over a decade reshaping mobile advertising at AdMob (acquired by Google) and MoPub (acquired by Twitter, then AppLovin), before stints at Facet Data, Chatgrid, and Moloco. In May 2025, he emerged from stealth with $5.5M in seed funding - backed by Nvidia Ventures, M12, Eniac, and others - to democratize what was once a $100K-minimum medium: streaming TV ads, rebuilt from scratch for performance marketers.
Tarun Gaur is the Founder and CEO of qikfox Cybersecurity Systems, a San Mateo-based startup building what it calls the world's first browser with integrated decentralized identity and quantum-resistant cryptography. With 24+ years spanning Microsoft, Deloitte, and HP - and one successful exit (Tringapps, 500 employees, acquired 2018) - Gaur launched qikfox in 2019 after his mother was scammed online. Backed by Tim Draper with $1.1M in seed funding, qikfox charges $180/year for an invite-only premium browser targeting everyday consumers who want safety, security, and privacy baked into the foundation - not bolted on as an afterthought.