Raphael Schaad is a Swiss designer-engineer and Visiting Partner at Y Combinator who built three generation-defining products: iA Writer (the minimalist writing app), Flipboard (the original social magazine), and Cron (acquired by Notion in 2022). Raised in the Swiss Alps, trained at MIT Media Lab, he brings a rare combination of technical depth and design taste that has made him a go-to mentor for founders navigating the AI era.
Lucian Todea is a Romanian-born serial entrepreneur and early-stage investor who built Soft32 from a $3/month passion project into one of the world's largest software distribution platforms, co-founded MultiversX (formerly Elrond) - a pioneering layer-1 blockchain - and now serves as Partner at 2048 Ventures in New York, where he has invested in 200+ companies including Anthropic, Perplexity, Chainalysis, Suno, and Kraken. An Ironman finisher and relentless builder, Todea embodies the conviction that technology exists not for its own sake, but to improve and enrich human lives.
Rachel Lyubovitzky is a serial entrepreneur who has founded four B2B technology companies and exited three of them, generating approximately $12 billion in combined exits with her co-founders. She is the CEO, co-founder, and Chairwoman of Setuply, an AI-powered client onboarding and lifecycle management platform, and a Partner at 2048 Ventures, a pre-seed and seed stage VC firm. With a Wharton Executive MBA and a computer science background from Brandeis University, she bridges deep technical fluency with executive leadership - having built and sold companies in HR tech, benefits automation, and search. She is also a Forbes Technology Council member, a published author, and has visited more than 60 countries.
Asheem Chandna is a General Partner at Greylock Partners, one of Silicon Valley's most storied venture firms, where he has spent over two decades backing category-defining companies in cybersecurity, enterprise software, and AI. Since joining Greylock in 2003, he has never lost capital on a single investment he led - a streak spanning Palo Alto Networks, AppDynamics (acquired by Cisco for $3.85B), Rubrik (IPO 2024), Abnormal Security, and Wiz. A Mumbai-raised engineer who cut his teeth at Bell Labs and scaled marketing at Check Point Software from $10M to $550M in revenue, Chandna brings an operator's instinct to early-stage bets, often writing checks before a deck exists. Named to the Forbes Midas List nine times, he is among the most respected cybersecurity investors in the world.
Jenny Lefcourt is a General Partner at Freestyle VC, a San Francisco-based seed-stage venture capital firm with $565M+ AUM. A serial entrepreneur who dropped out of Stanford GSB to co-found WeddingChannel.com (backed by Kleiner Perkins), she later co-founded Bella Pictures before transitioning to venture capital in 2014. She has since backed iconic companies including Airtable, Patreon, BetterUp, and Intercom, earned spots on the Forbes Midas Seed List and Forbes 50 Over 50, and co-founded All Raise, the nonprofit accelerating female founders and funders in tech.
Niko Bonatsos is a Greek-born, Stanford-educated venture capitalist who spent 15 years at General Catalyst building one of Silicon Valley's strongest seed-stage consumer investment track records - backing Snap, Discord, Mercor, ClassDojo, and Dubsmash before most people knew they existed. In January 2026 he left General Catalyst to co-found Verdict Capital with Michael Fertik, targeting a $300M fund focused on seed/Series A investing in consumer and AI, with a particular contrarian bet on consumer AI being underappreciated in an enterprise-saturated market.
Pejman Nozad is the Founding Managing Partner of Pear VC, a $800M+ AUM seed-stage venture firm he co-founded in 2013. Born in Tehran, he arrived in Silicon Valley in 1992 with $700 and no English, worked as a car washer, lived in a yogurt shop attic, then became the top Persian rug salesman on University Avenue in Palo Alto — selling $8M in a single year to the Valley's most powerful VCs and founders. Those relationships became deal flow. He backed Dropbox, DoorDash ($1.9M seed → $440M), AppLovin, and Andy Rubin's pre-Android company Danger. Forbes ranked him #1 on its Midas Seed List three consecutive years (2023, 2024, 2025). He has no CS degree, no MBA, and never worked in tech — yet built one of the highest-performing seed funds ever and joined the board of Sheffield United FC in 2025.
Eric Paley is a serial entrepreneur turned seed-stage venture capitalist who co-founded Founder Collective in 2008, building it into one of the world's highest-performing seed funds with investments in Uber, The Trade Desk, Airtable, and 20+ unicorns. Before VC, he co-founded Brontes Technologies — a 3D dental imaging startup spun out of MIT — and sold it to 3M for $95 million in 2006. A perennial Forbes Midas List honoree (ranked as high as #9 globally and the world's top-ranked seed investor), he became known for his unusually candid critiques of venture capital excess. In June 2025, he left Founder Collective to serve as Massachusetts Secretary of Economic Development under Governor Maura Healey, overseeing a 700-person agency focused on housing affordability, business competitiveness, and the AI innovation economy.
Gigi Levy-Weiss is a General Partner and co-founder at NFX, a San Francisco-based pre-seed and seed venture capital firm managing $875M+ across 577+ portfolio companies with 25 unicorns. A former Israeli Air Force attack helicopter pilot turned serial entrepreneur, he co-founded Playtika (sold to Caesars for ~$180M; later valued at $4.4B), served as CEO of 888 Holdings (a London-listed online gaming company), and made 150+ angel investments before co-founding NFX in 2015. Known for combining military-grade rigor with a warm, self-deprecating sense of humor, he leads NFX's Israel office and focuses on gaming, bio, space, and generative AI.
Gili Raanan is an Israeli cybersecurity pioneer turned venture capitalist who invented CAPTCHA, co-created the world's first Web Application Firewall, and then built Cyberstarts — a seed-only VC that turned $54M into over $1B and backed Wiz, the $32B cloud-security juggernaut acquired by Google in 2025. A decade in IDF Unit 8200, two successful exits, nine years as a Sequoia Capital Israel GP, and $1.4B+ in capital raised makes him arguably the most influential figure in the Israeli cyber startup ecosystem.
Nina Achadjian is a Partner at Index Ventures, one of the world's leading VC firms, where she invests at seed, venture, and growth stages with a focus on AI, robotics, software for hardware, and vertical SaaS. A Harvard-educated former bond trader and Google AdSense leader, she founded HIVE Ventures — the first seed fund for Armenian entrepreneurs — before joining Index. Her portfolio includes Anthropic, ServiceTitan (IPO 2024), Gong, Physical Intelligence, and 20+ other companies. Known for backing category-defining vertical software companies years before they become mainstream, she sits on 24+ company boards.
Pete Flint is a British-born serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist who co-founded Trulia, the real estate search platform that sold to Zillow for $3.5 billion in 2015. Before that, he was part of the founding team at lastminute.com, which IPO'd in London and sold for $1.1 billion. He is now General Partner at NFX, a seed-stage VC firm built around the thesis that network effects drive 70% of all technology value creation. He was awarded an OBE in 2021 for services to entrepreneurship.
Saar Gur is a General Partner at CRV (Charles River Ventures), one of Silicon Valley's oldest venture firms, where he has backed some of the most iconic consumer and SMB software companies of the past decade. Before turning investor, he co-founded BrightRoll, the video ad network that Yahoo acquired for $640 million. Known for betting early on 'weird' ideas before the world caught up, his portfolio includes DoorDash (seed in 2013), Patreon, Ring, Dropbox, Airtable, Mercury, and Niantic. He has ranked on the Forbes Midas List (#22 in 2023), taught at Stanford's StartupGarage, and summits mountains with founders for fun.
Katie Jacobs Stanton is the Founder and General Partner of Moxxie Ventures, a San Francisco-based seed-stage venture firm managing $95M+ across three funds. A former VP of Global Media at Twitter, Director of Citizen Participation at the Obama White House, and State Department innovation advisor, she built her reputation deploying technology at the intersection of government, media, and social change - including spearheading the Haiti earthquake text-donation platform that raised $40M in days. Co-founder of #Angels, a collective that has placed capital in 120+ companies, she now backs outlier founders across enterprise software, climate tech, and vertical AI.
Kevin Hartz is a Silicon Valley serial founder and venture investor who co-founded Eventbrite (NYSE: EB) and Xoom (acquired by PayPal for $1.1B), made seed-stage bets on PayPal, Airbnb, Uber, Pinterest, Palantir, Square, Stripe, and Slack, and now runs A* Capital — a $300M early-stage fund that bets heavily on teenage founders. His career spans 30+ years of building and backing transformative tech companies from Berkeley to the world stage.
Austin Rief co-founded Morning Brew in 2015 as a college sophomore after cold-emailing a classmate about a PDF newsletter. He helped grow it from a campus PDF to a 5-million-subscriber media company with $70M+ revenue before Axel Springer bought it outright. He served as CEO from 2021 to 2025, then stepped back to Executive Chairman while building Oceans Talent (an offshore staffing platform at $15M ARR) and Rief Ventures, a seed fund with 16+ investments including enterprise AI unicorn WRITER.
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.
Phin Barnes is a co-founder and Managing Partner of The General Partnership (TheGP), a $300M seed-stage VC firm built on a 'sweat equity' model that pairs capital with embedded operational talent. Before TheGP, he spent 13 years at First Round Capital rising from unpaid intern to General Partner, co-created the Dorm Room Fund, and backed companies like Notion. His pre-VC career included scaling AND1 sneakers from $15M to $225M and founding one of the first fitness video games for Xbox and PlayStation 2 - making him one of the few investors who can say they've run a shoe brand, shipped a console game, and written the check.
Ullas Naik is the Founder and General Partner of Streamlined Ventures, a Palo Alto-based seed fund with $325M+ AUM across 8 funds and 200+ portfolio companies. A Mumbai-born immigrant who cold-called his way onto Wall Street 40 days straight, he went on to back AppLovin and DoorDash at seed stage before either company had a name anyone recognized - a combined market cap now exceeding $170B. With 21 unicorns and 3 decacorns in his portfolio, he operates as a solo GP with a reputation for being a 'founder whisperer' who brings candor, empathy, and conviction to early-stage investing.
Julian Shapiro is a Canadian-born entrepreneur, deeptech seed investor, and prolific writer who built a career that spans open-source animation engines, growth marketing agencies, and a Y Combinator-backed startup. He founded Demand Curve, the largest growth marketing education platform for startups, and now runs Julian.capital, a deeptech seed fund writing $500K-$2M checks into robotics, chips, energy, medtech, and biotech. His free handbooks at julian.com - covering writing, startups, fitness, and audio - are read by over a million people annually. He co-hosts the Brains Podcast with Courtland Allen and was previously VP of Marketing at Webflow.
Nihal Mehta is a serial entrepreneur turned seed-stage venture capitalist and Co-Founder & General Partner at ENIAC Ventures, one of New York's leading seed funds. Known as the 'Human Rolodex,' Mehta has backed early investments in Uber, Airbnb, AdMob (acquired by Google), and SwiftKey (acquired by Microsoft) while building a reputation as a founder-first investor who connects people without keeping score. He founded Pitch & Run NYC, a community blending startup pitches with morning runs, and hosts the Human Unicorn Podcast. A UPenn dual-degree graduate who once filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in his 20s, Mehta channels that hard-won empathy into backing the next generation of founders through ENIAC's $160M sixth fund.
Nikhil Basu Trivedi is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Footwork Ventures, a San Francisco-based early-stage VC firm with $400M+ under management across two funds. A Princeton molecular biology graduate turned venture capitalist, he previously spent eight years at Shasta Ventures where he backed Canva, ClassDojo, Frame.io, and The Farmer's Dog. He writes the 'Next Big Thing' newsletter on Substack with 18,000+ subscribers, publishes public investment theses before backing founders, and built his career on a 'traction-first' philosophy and obsessive focus on founder learning velocity. An Indian-American from a family with deep public service roots, he co-founded Artsy as a Princeton sophomore and has been a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree.