Sovato is a Santa Barbara health-tech company building the first comprehensive, system-agnostic platform for remote robotic surgery and procedures - what the industry calls telesurgery. Co-founded by surgical-robotics pioneer Yulun Wang and healthcare strategist Cynthia Perazzo, Sovato lets a skilled surgeon operate a robotic system from hundreds or thousands of miles away, aiming to extend top surgical care to patients regardless of where they live. The company has raised $41M across its rounds and helped enable the longest-distance telesurgery ever completed.
Valentin Ruest is the co-founder and US co-CEO of Classtime, a Zurich-born edtech company building a formative and summative assessment platform used by educators and learners in more than 90 countries. A University of St. Gallen and Harvard-trained economist who once ran mortgages at a Swiss fintech, he traded banking for classrooms, splitting his life between Santa Barbara and Zurich while teaching personal finance in public schools and arguing that software should help teachers decide, not decide for them.