John Gedmark is the CEO and Co-founder of Astranis Space Technologies, a San Francisco-based aerospace company building next-generation geostationary satellites. He previously helped shape the commercial space industry as co-founder and executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, where he influenced President Obama's 2010 decision to use commercial space transportation for NASA missions - a shift worth over $10 billion to the industry. At Astranis, he has led the company from a Y Combinator startup to a $2.8 billion valuation with a $1+ billion backlog, operating a fleet of MicroGEO satellites that bring dedicated broadband to underserved regions across Alaska, the Philippines, Mexico, and beyond.
Ryan McLinko is the co-founder and CTO of Astranis Space Technologies, a San Francisco-based company building compact, software-defined geostationary satellites to bring affordable broadband to underserved regions worldwide. An MIT-trained aerospace engineer who cut his teeth on cubesats at Planet Labs and the Dream Chaser spaceplane at Sierra Nevada, McLinko co-founded Astranis in 2015 with CEO John Gedmark. The company has since launched five satellites, secured over $1.2 billion in funding including a $450M Series E in May 2026, and been named Prime Contractor for multiple U.S. Space Force programs — all while being valued at $2.8 billion.
Ignacio Belieres Montero is the founder and CEO of Epic Aerospace, a Los Altos, California-based company building orbit transfer vehicles and space tugs that move satellites from one orbit to another. A Stanford aerospace engineering graduate and Y Combinator S19 alum, he started building rockets at 16 and founded Epic Aerospace in 2017. The company's CHIMERA LEO 1 launched aboard SpaceX Transporter 6 in January 2023, and CHIMERA GEO 1 launched on SpaceX's Intuitive Machines-2 mission in February 2025, reaching 53 million kilometers from Earth. Epic Aerospace reached $4.2M in annual revenue in 2024 with a 28-person team, pioneering non-toxic hypergolic propulsion technology for cost-effective in-space transportation.
Felix Ejeckam is the Co-Founder and CEO of Akash Systems, a San Francisco-based deep-tech company that invented GaN-on-Diamond semiconductor technology - a breakthrough that enables dramatically better thermal management for both satellite communications and AI data center servers. A serial entrepreneur with two prior exits, Ejeckam holds 80+ patents and 100+ scientific publications, was named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, and led Akash to a $68.2M CHIPS Act preliminary agreement and the world's first diamond-cooled NVIDIA GPU server deployment.
Deepak Kamra is a General Partner at Canaan Partners, one of Silicon Valley's most enduring venture capitalists with over 33 years at a single firm. An Indian immigrant who grew up in Canada, he has backed landmark companies including DoubleClick (acquired by Google), Match.com, SuccessFactors (acquired by SAP), Skybox Imaging (acquired by Google for $500M), and ON24 (IPO at ~$3B in 2021 after a 22-year journey from a $12M investment). He is a passionate immigration advocate who has testified before Congress, a microfinance champion funding entrepreneurs in the Global South, a bass guitarist, avid cyclist, and world traveler who has visited over 80 countries.
Morgan Beller is a General Partner at NFX, the seed-stage venture firm known for backing network-effects businesses. Before VC, she co-founded Facebook's Libra (later Diem) digital currency project at age 25, making her one of the most consequential figures in crypto policy history. A Cornell statistics graduate, she cut her teeth at Andreessen Horowitz before stints at Medium and Facebook, where her geopolitical alarm about China's digital currency ambitions drove her to attempt something audacious: rebuild global money on a blockchain. She now backs founders in crypto, fintech, AI, and space from San Francisco.
Amber Yang is an Enterprise Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners backing highly technical founders building next-generation AI software and infrastructure. Before VC, she founded Seer Tracking - an AI startup that used neural networks to predict space debris orbits with 98% accuracy - winning the $50K Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award and landing on Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science at age 18. A Stanford CS/Physics grad with a philosophy detour at Oxford, she brings a rare trifecta of deep technical chops, founder experience, and investor instinct to the table.