technology
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Peter Rex and the education of an impatient landlord
Before Peter Rex built software for property owners, he slept in vacant apartments and did the repairs himself. His route from those floors to Austin runs through a debt crisis, a suitcase full of questions, and a stubborn belief that the people doing the work should have a chance to own it.
Syed Zaidi and the work after the sale
From home security to outdoor remodeling and Alloy Roofing, Syed Zaidi has built a career around the distance between winning a customer and delivering the job. His operating philosophy starts where the sales celebration ends.
Lex Fridman makes room for the long answer
An AI interview show became a media business by widening the guest list and keeping the conversation long. Its useful trick: make hours of attention easy to enter, leave, and revisit.
Business school. Now taking calls.
The Prof G Pod turned a professor’s office hours into a media business, with Frasier as its unlikely inspiration. Its useful lesson is knowing which questions deserve a show of their own.
CENE knows someone you should meet
For Canadian founders entering Boston, the first useful product may be an introduction. CENE turns the experience of Canadians already there into a network newcomers can actually use.
The Bank That Would Rather Have One Client Than a Hundred
Founded by dealmakers who left Morgan Stanley and TPG, Incentrum Group built a merchant bank around a contrarian idea - take fewer clients, own the advice, and put your own money where your counsel is.
The Private-Equity Firm That Wants the Family Photo to Stay on the Wall
Brightstar Capital Partners sells control without the scorched-earth script. Its pitch to founders is patient capital, an operator’s toolkit and a place at the table after the papers are signed.
Andrea Johnston
Andrea Johnston is a seasoned revenue and operations executive with over 30 years of building high-growth businesses across SaaS, consumer tech, and marketplace platforms. After a decade at OpenTable — rising from VP of Western Region Sales to Chief Operating Officer — she led global revenue at Corel/Alludo, joined Truckstop as Chief Revenue Officer in 2024, and is now CEO at Franki, the video-led restaurant discovery and rewards app that is rewriting how 25,000+ monthly users find their next great meal. Johnston is a go-to-market architect, board advisor to multiple tech startups, and speaker at the 2025 Khosla Ventures CEO Summit.
Hanz Panther
Hanz Panther is listed as Co-Founder and CEO of NewCo, a business-event production company built around an 'inside-out' festival format that swaps the convention-hall stage for the open doors of working companies. Operating at the intersection of media, publishing, and live events, NewCo turns cities into temporary campuses where the public walks into real offices instead of watching keynotes. Panther's public footprint is thin, but the role places him inside one of the more distinctive experiments in how modern business gatherings are produced.
Dawn Klinghoffer
Dawn Klinghoffer is Vice President of HR Business Insights at Microsoft, where she leads people analytics for one of the world's largest technology companies. A mathematics major from Bucknell University who started as an actuary in Hartford, Connecticut, she joined Microsoft's fledgling people analytics team in 2003 and spent over 25 years turning HR data into strategic decisions. Her most recognized contribution: replacing the industry's standard 'employee engagement' metric with 'employee thriving' - a framework adopted by Microsoft in 2022 that has influenced HR practices globally and was published in Harvard Business Review.
Avital Cohen
Avital Cohen is Vice President of Marketing at Microsoft, based in Beverly Hills, California. With a legal education from Cardozo School of Law and prior experience as a Marketing Manager at Facebook, she has built a career at the intersection of technology and strategic brand communication. At Microsoft - a company generating over $281 billion in annual revenue and employing 228,000 people globally - she drives marketing strategy across one of the world's most influential technology portfolios, spanning cloud computing, AI, productivity software, and enterprise solutions.
Anand Tharanathan
Anand Tharanathan is Group Vice President and Global Head of Product Research and Insights at ServiceNow, where he leads end-to-end user research and AI trust initiatives for one of enterprise software's fastest-growing platforms. With a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology, an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School, and a career that runs from Honeywell's aerospace labs through Facebook to the frontier of enterprise AI, he bridges rigorous science and product craft at scale. His current focus on building trust in generative AI systems puts him at the intersection of human factors research and the most pressing question in enterprise technology.
Arun Maini
Arun Maini, known online as Mrwhosetheboss, is the UK's largest tech YouTuber with over 22 million subscribers and 8+ billion views. Born in Nottingham to Indian-origin parents, he turned down a PricewaterhouseCoopers offer after earning a First Class Economics degree from the University of Warwick to pursue YouTube full-time. He holds a Guinness World Record for the largest smartphone replica, has won two Streamy Awards for Technology, and is recognized globally for his witty, authentic reviews of smartphones and gadgets. He married Dhrisha Mehta in June 2024 and the couple are expecting their first child in August 2026.
Dagogo Altraide
Dagogo Altraide is the creator and narrator behind ColdFusion, a YouTube channel with over 5 million subscribers known for deep-dive documentaries on technology, science, and business history. Born in Mumbai to Nigerian parents and raised across multiple countries before settling in Perth, Australia, Altraide built ColdFusion from a 2007 smartphone review channel into one of the internet's most respected educational documentary platforms - all while remaining largely faceless on screen. He is also a published author, music producer (under the alias Burn Water), and co-host of the Through The Web Podcast.
Linus Sebastian
Linus Sebastian is the co-founder and Chief Vision Officer of Linus Media Group (LMG), the Canadian digital media company behind Linus Tech Tips - one of YouTube's most-watched technology channels with 16+ million subscribers and 9.2+ billion views. A college dropout who turned a side gig filming product videos for computer retailer NCIX into a media empire, Sebastian built LMG into a ~120-person company operating multiple YouTube channels. Known for his ADHD-fueled energy, hands-on gear reviews, and the occasional on-camera equipment drop, he stepped back from the CEO role in 2023 to focus on creative vision while his wife Yvonne Ho co-runs the business.
Amit Dayal
Amit Dayal is Vice President and General Manager of Adobe's Digital Advertising, Learning, and Publishing Business - a portfolio that puts him at the intersection of AdTech, streaming media, and enterprise e-learning. With 30+ years of product leadership spanning Sequent Computer Systems, Oracle, Motorola, Yahoo, Samsung Electronics, and multiple Silicon Valley startups he co-founded or built PM functions from scratch, Dayal brings a rare depth of engineering-to-executive experience to one of tech's most creative companies. Based in Bengaluru, India, he leads strategy, product management, technology, marketing, and sales for Adobe Primetime and related platforms serving major media and entertainment companies globally.
Danielle Sadick
Danielle Sadick is an Area Vice President of Strategic Enterprise - Digital Media at Adobe, based in New York City. She leads enterprise-level digital media sales strategy, working with some of the world's largest organizations to adopt Adobe's creative and digital media solutions. Her career spans over a decade in digital advertising and media, progressing from assistant media planner at Neo@Ogilvy through programmatic trading roles before joining Adobe, where she has steadily advanced from account executive to vice president. She specializes in connecting enterprise clients with Adobe's expansive creative and marketing technology ecosystem.
Don Beckinsale
Don Beckinsale is Vice President of International Marketing at Microsoft, one of the world's largest technology companies. Based in the Mysore division of Karnataka, India, he leads international marketing strategy across Microsoft's vast product ecosystem - spanning cloud services, enterprise software, AI, and consumer products. Operating at the intersection of global technology leadership and regional market execution, Beckinsale is part of the team driving Microsoft's presence in high-growth international markets.
Douglas Pearce
Douglas Pearce is Corporate Vice President of Product Management for M365 Copilot Growth at Microsoft, where he leads the strategy to bring AI-powered productivity tools to hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Based in the Seattle area, he has spent over two decades at Microsoft, previously heading product management for Office Growth and Fundamentals before pivoting to spearhead the company's flagship AI copilot initiative across Microsoft 365.
Duncan Egan
Duncan Egan is Vice President of Enterprise Marketing at Adobe, leading the Digital Experience business across Asia Pacific and Japan from Sydney. A Silicon Valley transplant who grew up near Adobe's founders, he has spent 25+ years driving marketing-led growth at enterprise software companies including ServiceNow, Oracle, Taleo, and TIBCO - helping build the playbook for B2B marketing in the Asia-Pacific region before the rest of the world caught up.
Erin Wieland
Erin Russell Wieland is a Program & Communications Lead at Microsoft, serving in the Office of the EVP & CRO for Global Enterprise Sales in Seattle. With over a decade at the intersection of consulting and technology, she built her career from Bridge Partners Consulting - where she rose from Consultant to Manager over seven years - to Microsoft, where she has led readiness, communications, and social strategy for some of the company's largest commercial partner and sales organizations. Her work on the first-ever digital Microsoft Inspire conference earned her a Delivering Success Award, and she has also received the Microsoft Gold Club Award for extraordinary individual performance. She operates at the nerve center of Microsoft's enterprise revenue engine, translating complex organizational priorities into programs and communications that land across thousands of field sellers and partners worldwide.
Hassan Al Shouli
Hassan Al Shouli is a senior communications and strategic business executive at Microsoft's CEMA (Central Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa) President Office, based in the UAE. With nearly two decades of career experience, he has shaped Microsoft's presence across the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and broader MEA region through executive communications, multi-channel campaigns, and leadership engagement. Before Microsoft, he spent years in the fast-moving MENA digital market at dubizzle and analytics consultancies. He holds an MBA from Cass Business School (now Bayes) and a BSc in Electronics, Engineering, and Communications from the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport.
Jackie Walsh
Jackie Walsh is a Senior Vice President of Media at Microsoft, based in Boston, Massachusetts. Operating within one of the world's largest technology companies - with $281 billion in annual revenue and 228,000 employees - she leads at the intersection of enterprise technology and media. Her role places her inside Microsoft's vast ecosystem spanning cloud infrastructure, AI services, productivity tools, and advertising platforms including Microsoft Advertising, MSN, and Xbox media properties.
Jacqueline Ramos
Jacqueline Ramos is a seasoned Executive Business Administrator at Microsoft with over 25 years of experience, currently supporting the COO, CMO for Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa (CEMA), and VP for Global Partner Solutions (GPS) in the EMEA region. Based in Dubai, UAE, she has built her Microsoft career from the ground up - starting as an Executive Assistant to the Gulf Services Director in 2008, rising through roles in business operations, and eventually becoming an executive-level administrator supporting some of the company's most senior regional leaders. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of San Jose-Recoletos in the Philippines and has leveraged her technical grounding alongside exceptional organizational and leadership skills to become one of Microsoft's most trusted operational connectors across its vast Middle East and global operations.
James Howell
James Howell is VP of Windows Marketing at Microsoft, leading the company's push to define the AI PC era. Based in Woodinville, Washington, he has been at the forefront of marketing Copilot+ PCs and positioning Windows 11 as the platform for on-device AI. He has been a key Microsoft spokesperson on the AI PC transition, championing Copilot+ as a new hardware category and appearing in press and video series including 'Innovators Powered by Best Buy' to evangelize what AI can do for everyday PC users.
Jason Paul
Jason Paul is Vice President of GeForce Platform Marketing at NVIDIA, where he has worked since 2003. Over more than two decades, he has led the marketing and launch of every major GeForce GPU generation, pioneered NVIDIA's SHIELD gaming ecosystem, championed GameWorks VR, and now spearheads the company's consumer AI push connecting RTX hardware to over 100 million Windows users. Educated at UCLA and Stanford (MBA), Paul sits at the crossroads of gaming hardware, software platforms, and the emerging era of on-device AI.
Jon Alexander
Jon Alexander is a technology professional at Google, one of the world's most influential technology companies. Based in Woodinville, Washington, he works within Google's vast ecosystem spanning cloud infrastructure, AI, software development, and internet services. His LinkedIn handle 'jonpalexander' and presence on Twitter reflect an individual embedded in the cutting edge of modern technology, operating from one of the Pacific Northwest's growing tech communities near Seattle.
Jonathan Manalo
Jonathan Manalo is VP of Growth at Microsoft, operating from Central Luzon, Philippines. In this role he drives commercial expansion across one of the world's most influential technology companies - a company whose annual revenue exceeds $281 billion and whose technologies power enterprises from startups to sovereign governments. Based in the Philippines, Manalo sits at the intersection of Microsoft's deep enterprise portfolio - Azure, Microsoft 365, Copilot, and Dynamics 365 - and the rapidly digitizing Southeast Asian market.
Joshua Christensen
Joshua Christensen is the AVP of Customer Growth at Adobe, based in Salt Lake City, Utah. With a career spanning nearly two decades in enterprise software sales and business development, he has grown from frontline sales roles at companies like Workfront to senior leadership at one of the world's largest digital media and marketing technology companies. He holds an MBA from Westminster College and a BASc from the University of Utah, combining formal business education with deep SaaS industry expertise. Colleagues describe him as a results-driven leader who genuinely invests in developing the people around him.
LaSandra Brill
LaSandra Brill is Vice President of Global Digital Marketing at NVIDIA, one of the most influential technology companies in the world. Leading a team of 185+ people, she oversees data strategy, CRM, media, corporate social, marketing automation, NVIDIA.com, analytics, and NVIDIA's own AI marketing strategy. With 20+ years in tech marketing across Cisco and Symantec, she has been recognized as a Top 50 Influential Digital Marketer and Top 25 Women Who Rock Social Media. Beyond her work at NVIDIA, she is a published children's book author - her 2017 book 'Let's Be Friends' promotes inclusion for children with Down syndrome - and serves on the boards of LuMind IDSC Foundation, Special Olympics, and Abilities United.