Angela Rachidi is a senior fellow and the Rowe Scholar in opportunity and mobility studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where she studies poverty and how federal safety-net programs shape the lives of low-income Americans. A former New York City welfare official turned think-tank scholar, she has become one of Washington's most-cited voices on SNAP, the Child Tax Credit, child care, and the link between work and poverty - testifying repeatedly before Congress and arguing that programs should pull families toward employment and self-sufficiency, not away from it. A Lancaster, Wisconsin native and four-time all-conference college softball player, she runs her own research firm and works from Middleton, Wisconsin.
Alex Mashrabov is the CEO and co-founder of Higgsfield AI, a $1.3B AI video generation unicorn that went from $0 to $50M ARR in five months. A 2x ACM ICPC World Finals competitive programmer who began coding at 10, he previously co-founded AI Factory — acquired by Snap for $166M in 2020 — and later served as Snap's Head of Generative AI. Born in Andijan, Uzbekistan, and trained at Moscow's elite MIPT, he is now building Higgsfield into the infrastructure layer for AI video creation, targeting the moment when most social media video is AI-generated.
An-Yen Hu is Operating Partner and General Counsel at Benchmark, the storied Sand Hill Road venture firm. He handles the legal and operational machinery so the investing partners can focus on companies. He joined in July 2020 from Goodwin Procter, where he made partner in 2014, led the Silicon Valley office's hiring, and ran point for the underwriters on Snap's $3.4 billion IPO.
Yinan Na (also known as Steven) is the co-founder and CEO of Creatify AI, an AI-powered video ad platform that lets marketers produce, test, and optimize short-form video ads in minutes. Built on a decade of engineering at Meta and Snap, Creatify crossed $9M ARR within 18 months of launch, raised a $15.5M Series A co-led by Jeffrey Katzenberg's WndrCo, and now serves over 1 million marketers across 10,000+ teams including Alibaba.com, Comcast, and Binance. Na holds a Master's in Computer Science from Stanford and a Bachelor's in Automation from Tsinghua University.
Jacob Andreou is a tech executive who scaled Snapchat from 80 million to 363 million daily active users and $1B+ quarterly ad revenue, became one of Greylock's youngest-ever general partners at 29, and then joined Microsoft where he was elevated to EVP of Copilot in March 2026, reporting directly to CEO Satya Nadella and leading AI experience across consumer and commercial products.
Shannon Bendall is the Marketing Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where she builds marketing programs for the firm's Venture Fund and serves as a communications and brand advisor to portfolio companies at every stage. Before a16z, she was the second communications hire at Snap, shepherding the company through its advertising platform launch, the Discover content hub, and augmented reality Lenses - all while the headcount ballooned from 100 to thousands and the company went public. She is based in Los Angeles, having relocated from the East Coast over a decade ago.
Mitch Lasky is a General Partner at Benchmark Capital and one of the most successful gaming investors in venture capital history. A Harvard-educated IP lawyer turned game studio executive, he rose through Activision and took mobile gaming startup JAMDAT public before selling it to EA for $680M. At Benchmark he backed Riot Games (~$7M early investment, now $20B+), Snap (led Series A at $70M valuation, IPO'd at $24B), Discord, and dozens of other landmark gaming and consumer internet companies. A five-time Forbes Midas List honoree, LAFC co-owner, and host of the GameCraft podcast, Lasky's career is a master class in recognizing non-obvious founders before the market does.
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.
Sriram Krishnan is the Senior White House Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence under President Trump, appointed January 2025. A Chennai-born engineer turned VC, he is one of few tech operators to have held senior product roles at Facebook, Snap, and Twitter simultaneously. As a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) from 2021 to 2024, he opened the firm's first international office in London. He co-authored the American AI Action Plan and co-hosts The Aarthi and Sriram Show podcast with his wife. Named a Time 'Architect of Artificial Intelligence' in 2025.