startup-funding
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Osama AbouElkhir and the unexpected value of a warm meeting
From a Dubai conference booth to a $5 million funding round, TachyHealth’s co-founder has kept making room for a conversation. His public story also has room for a Father’s Day cookie.
Aniket Singh Rajput and the Art of Taking a Step Back
He left doctoral research to start Neuroglee, then moved its headquarters from Singapore to Boston. Along the way, Aniket Singh Rajput has made a case for a quieter kind of founder: one who thinks before he moves.
Troy Stovall and the art of the second attempt
From Bell Labs to Maryland’s startup economy, Troy LeMaile-Stovall has built a career around a practical conviction: people can learn, plans can change, and a useful introduction can alter what happens next.
Peter-Paul Van Hoeken and the price of admission
After a career in European banking, Peter-Paul Van Hoeken came to Canada and found two groups waiting on opposite sides of the same door: companies needing capital and people wanting to invest. FrontFundr is his attempt to bring them into the same room.
Bill Clark and the price of an open door
A credit risk manager saw small businesses struggling to find capital. His answer became MicroVentures, where smaller checks opened a different route into private-company investing.
Scott Nissenbaum and the six-month job that lasted eleven years
A venture-capital internship became an eleven-year education. A forest-carbon startup put the lessons to work. Now Scott Nissenbaum helps Philadelphia entrepreneurs navigate the distance between a promising idea and the money to build it.
Emma Off and the distance between an idea and a company
A Cincinnati deal lawyer received an unexpected invitation to lead CincyTech. Her next chapter puts founders, private capital and the future of her hometown at the same table.
Simon Glass
Simon Glass is the founder and CEO of Qodeo, a UK and US based platform that uses proprietary algorithms to match entrepreneurs with venture capital and private equity firms - with a deliberate focus on diverse, regional and female founders who sit outside the traditional venture network. A Cambridge BA, MA and MBA who trained in corporate finance at London Business School, Glass spent years in venture capital (including Amadeus Capital Partners, the first backer of ARM), banking, academia and media before building Qodeo to end what he calls the needle-in-a-haystack approach to finding investment. The platform now tracks tens of thousands of organizations and connects 20,000+ entrepreneurs with 7,400+ investors across multiple markets.
Giulianna Crivello
Giulianna Crivello is the Founding General Partner of DSH Ventures, the pre-seed investment arm of Draper Startup House — the global co-living and coworking network for entrepreneurs backed by legendary VC Tim Draper. A 2018 valedictorian from Sierra Nevada College, she went from research analyst in Nevada to directing investments across 14 countries in her first year at DSH Ventures. She co-manages the fund with Vikram Bharati and has facilitated over 215 investor introductions to startups spanning the US, Singapore, India, and beyond, while helping build Draper Startup House into a presence spanning 25 embassies across 5 continents.
Jennifer Vancini
Jennifer Vancini is Co-Founder and General Partner at Mighty Capital, one of Silicon Valley's few woman-owned venture capital firms. With 20+ years in technology investments and M&A, she co-founded Mighty Capital in 2017 alongside SC Moatti, leveraging a network of 600,000+ product leaders to identify breakout B2B tech startups early. The firm's track record includes six IPOs in eight years - including early bets on Amplitude and Groq - and the April 2026 close of a $91M Fund III, triple its predecessor. Before VC, Vancini built a career spanning enterprise BD roles at Certicom, Symbian, Nokia, and Telefónica, culminating in a family investment office that returned 15x cash-on-cash before she co-founded Mighty Capital.
Ran Ding
Ran Ding is a General Partner and Co-Head of the Growth Equity team at Norwest Venture Partners, one of the most active multi-stage venture and growth equity firms in the world. The son of Chinese immigrants who came to America when he was three years old, Ran joined Norwest in 2011 as the third member of its growth equity team and was elevated to General Partner in February 2024. He focuses on B2B software and tech-enabled services companies across AI, data, SaaS, fintech, and marketplaces, partnering with founder-led businesses scaling from double-digit to triple-digit revenues. A two-time GrowthCap Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investor honoree, he has overseen 10+ successful exits and holds board seats at 8+ portfolio companies. Beyond finance, he spent his twenties producing music that accumulated roughly two million YouTube views and once hit a game-winning shot at Madison Square Garden.
Tom Goodrich
Tom Goodrich is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Corner Ventures, a Palo Alto-based venture capital firm spun out of DAG Ventures in 2018. With more than three decades of investing and private equity experience, Goodrich leads Corner's biotech investment portfolio - including notable exits like Armo Biosciences (acquired by Eli Lilly) and Arresto Biosciences (acquired by Gilead Sciences). Before Corner Ventures, he co-founded DAG Ventures in 2004 and Duff Ackerman & Goodrich in 1991, and earlier in his career worked at Bechtel Investments, served as a consultant to Bank of America's chairman, and helped build Dimensional Corporate Finance with backing from Xerox. He holds an A.B. from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Pat Grady
Pat Grady is co-steward of Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley's most legendary venture capital firms. Since joining Sequoia in 2007 at age 24 as the youngest hire in the firm's history, he has led growth-stage investments in generational companies including OpenAI, ServiceNow, Snowflake, and Zoom - a portfolio exceeding $250 billion in combined market capitalization. A Wyoming native who worked as a roofer to pay for college, Grady now shapes the future of technology as co-leader of Sequoia alongside Alfred Lin, focusing heavily on AI and enterprise software innovation.
Carolynn Levy
Carolynn Levy is Managing Director of Legal and Partner at Y Combinator, the world's most successful startup accelerator. She revolutionized early-stage venture capital by creating the SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) in 2013, a five-page document that replaced complex convertible notes and now powers roughly 90% of pre-seed deals. Before joining YC in 2012, she spent over a decade at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati representing Silicon Valley startups and investors. Working alongside her husband Jon Levy, YC co-founder Jessica Livingston, and CFO Kirsty Nathoo, she has guided thousands of founders through legal fundamentals and helped shape the modern startup funding landscape.