John Waldmann is the founder and CEO of Homebase, the team-management app built for the people who run local businesses - restaurants, salons, retail shops and the hourly teams behind them. Started in 2014 after watching a childhood friend drown in paper schedules and his sister juggle unpredictable bartending shifts, Homebase now serves more than 150,000 businesses and 3.8 million workers, processing hundreds of millions of shifts a year with scheduling, time clocks, payroll, messaging and earned-wage access. A Stanford GSB grad who once sold tuxedos and started his first online business at 13, Waldmann is an unapologetic believer in accountability over consensus, 'operating velocity,' and the idea that AI will create more small business owners, not fewer.
Kourosh Zamani is the Co-Founder of Laurel, the AI-native time platform automating timesheet creation for professional services firms. Starting as Ping Inc. in 2016 alongside co-founder Ryan Alshak - a fraternity brother from UC Berkeley - Kourosh shepherded the company from bootstrapped startup through five funding rounds to a $100M Series C in June 2025, with investors including IVP, Google Ventures, Alexis Ohanian, and Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI). Before building Laurel, he ran VP of Business Development at Bailard Inc. and founded the Young Professionals of San Francisco, a non-profit that grew to 8,000+ members. His career arc from investment management to COO to Head of Sales to Strategic Partnerships lead mirrors the evolution of Laurel itself: from scrappy time-tracking app to a platform processing over $5B in gross market value for 100+ enterprise clients.

Rushi Patel is the Co-Founder and COO/CRO of Homebase, the all-in-one workforce management platform serving 100,000+ small businesses and 2+ million hourly workers. With a background spanning McKinsey, KKR, and Microsoft, Patel co-founded Homebase in 2014 alongside John Waldmann to give local business owners - restaurants, retailers, and service businesses - the same quality workforce tools that enterprise companies take for granted. Under his leadership, Homebase has raised $198M in funding including a $60M Series D in April 2024, and grown to 1,900 employees while generating approximately $180M in annual revenue.
Ryan Alshak is the CEO and co-founder of Laurel, an AI-powered time platform that automates timekeeping for lawyers, accountants, and consultants. A former corporate litigator who billed $650 an hour while manually recording every six minutes of his day, Alshak founded the company in 2018 under the name 'Time by Ping' after experiencing firsthand the absurdity of high-value professionals tracking their own time by hand. Laurel raised a $100M Series C in June 2025 at a $510M valuation, backed by IVP, GV, DST Global, Alexis Ohanian, and Kevin Weil, bringing total funding to over $149M.
Santi Bibiloni is the Co-Founder and CEO of COR, an AI-powered project profitability platform built for creative agencies, consulting firms, and professional services. Born in Buenos Aires and now based in San Francisco, he bootstrapped his first agency Balloon Group to 400 clients across 12 countries before pivoting to solve the profitability problem he lived firsthand. COR has raised ~$7.9M, grown 9% month-over-month, and counts Ogilvy, BBDO, and McCann among clients in 38 countries — backed by unicorn founders and the board member who built DoubleClick.