Peter DiLaura is the CEO and Board Director of Helicore Biopharma, a San Mateo biotech building long-acting antibody-peptide conjugates that go after obesity by neutralizing the GIP hormone in the bloodstream rather than blocking its receptor. With nearly three decades of company-building behind him - CEO roles at Initial Therapeutics and Second Genome, business and strategy chief at Sonoma Biotherapeutics, and time as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Third Rock Ventures - he is the operator brought in to turn a $65M Series A and a clinic-ready antibody into medicines that aim for quarterly dosing and better-quality weight loss.
Ross Kennedy is the Global Vice President of AI Startups & Emerging Growth at Microsoft, based in New York. With two decades of experience scaling technology organizations from startup to hyperscale, he leads Microsoft's efforts to help AI startups innovate, grow, and become market makers. Before Microsoft, he was a key force behind Google Cloud's expansion from $5.8B to over $30B in revenue, leading the global Strategic Deal Pursuit division for four years. Earlier, he scaled Liferay's international operations from 200 to 900 employees across 30+ countries. His guiding philosophy: culture beats strategy.
David 'Dave' Ripley is Co-CEO of Kraken, one of the world's largest and longest-running cryptocurrency exchanges. He joined via Kraken's 2016 acquisition of Glidera, a bitcoin wallet service he co-founded, and rose from COO to CEO to Co-CEO as Kraken expanded aggressively — completing $1.5B acquisitions, raising $800M in 2025, and filing confidentially for a U.S. IPO. A former BCG principal and electrical engineer turned crypto operator, Ripley has shepherded Kraken from a 50-person startup to a 2,600+ employee global exchange while navigating major SEC enforcement actions and a shifting regulatory landscape.
Deren Baker is the CEO of Flywheel Ventures, the innovation arm of Flywheel Commerce Network - now part of Omnicom Group after a landmark $835 million acquisition in 2023. A serial operator with deep roots in digital commerce analytics, Baker has led transformative companies including Jumpshot (which tracked 160 billion monthly clicks) and Edge by Ascential. He is a recognized thought leader in ecommerce strategy, retail media, and data-driven advertising, with bylines in Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and Entrepreneur Magazine.
Daniel Bessonov is the co-founder and CEO of Avora, a Y Combinator- and CRV-backed AI platform that deploys intelligent agents for dental operations - automating clinical documentation, coaching providers on case acceptance, and following up with patients. Before Avora, he architected core payment features at Ramp, built UAV encryption at Anduril, and led product intelligence at Wispr AI. A Penn M&T graduate (CS + Finance), he became a Top 25 App Store developer at age 14 and has spent the decade since compressing complex AI problems into products clinicians actually use.
Aaron Sisto is the Co-Founder & CEO of Chronicle Studios, a content intelligence platform that uses proprietary agentic AI to help creators launch and scale global IP franchises. A PhD quantum chemist turned deep-tech investor turned entertainment entrepreneur, Sisto blends hard science and pop culture instincts in a company that raised an oversubscribed $11.6M seed round in 2025 backed by Patron and Point72 Ventures. Previously a partner at First Spark Ventures and Director of Engineering at Schmidt Futures, he co-founded Chronicle alongside entertainment veteran Chris deFaria, former president of DreamWorks Animation.
Steve Blank is the father of modern entrepreneurship - a Silicon Valley serial founder who retired the day before his company E.piphany's 1999 IPO, then spent the next two decades teaching the world that startups aren't small versions of big companies. His Customer Development methodology and Lean LaunchPad curriculum, adopted by the NSF as I-Corps, have trained 9,300+ scientists, launched ~1,400 startups, and raised over $3 billion. A Vietnam-era Air Force veteran who never finished college, Blank now teaches at Stanford, advises the U.S. Navy, and co-directs Stanford's Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation - applying startup thinking to national defense.
Casey Winters is a co-founder and CEO of SuperMe, an AI-native professional network backed by Greylock and Reid Hoffman. He is one of the most respected growth and product operators in Silicon Valley, having scaled Grubhub from 40,000 customers in 3 cities to 3 million users in 1,000+ cities, then led Pinterest's growth from 40 million to 400 million users, and later served as CPO of Eventbrite through a pandemic that wiped out the live events industry. A longtime Reforge program partner and prolific writer at caseyaccidental.com, Winters is known for first-principles thinking, blunt contrarianism, and a deep aversion to cargo-cult growth frameworks.
Scott Leese is a 6x sales leader, 5x founder, 3x author, and one of the most authentic voices in B2B sales. He scaled six consecutive early-stage startups from near-zero to $25M+ ARR, survived nine surgeries and beat opioid addiction, and turned those experiences into a consulting empire, a Costa Rica surf-and-sales retreat, and three bestselling books. Based in Austin, Texas, he now runs Scott Leese Consulting, Surf and Sales, GTM United, Thursday Night Sales, and Milos Ventures - a new venture fund investing in AI, robotics, and cleantech.
Todd Goldberg is a San Francisco-based tech entrepreneur, angel investor, and art collector who sold his event ticketing startup Eventjoy (YC W14) to Ticketmaster in 2014, then co-founded Todd & Rahul Capital with Superhuman's Rahul Vohra - deploying $50M+ across 120+ startups including Mercury, Superhuman, Clearbit, and Supabase. He also co-founded Curated, a $30M+ NFT art fund backed by Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, and continues to ship indie products like Mailjoy, a bootstrapped direct mail platform.
Scott Belsky is an entrepreneur, author, and prolific angel investor best known for founding Behance - the world's leading platform for creative professionals - which he sold to Adobe for ~$150M in 2012. After serving as Adobe's Chief Product Officer and later Chief Strategy Officer (overseeing growth from $19B to $170B+ market cap), he departed in January 2025 to become a Partner at A24, the acclaimed indie studio, where he is founding A24 Labs. He is the author of two bestsellers - 'Making Ideas Happen' and 'The Messy Middle' - and publishes the 'Implications' newsletter on design, tech, and product strategy. With 282+ angel investments including Uber, Pinterest, Airtable, Notion, and Ramp, Belsky is one of the most active design-focused investors in tech.
Ryan Selkis is the co-founder and former CEO of Messari, the leading crypto intelligence and research platform. Known by his pseudonym 'Two Bit Idiot,' he broke the news of the Mt. Gox hack in 2014 that shook the crypto world, helped build CoinDesk and the Digital Currency Group, and spent six years publishing Messari's annual 'Crypto Theses' - the most widely read forecasting reports in the industry. He stepped down as Messari CEO in July 2024 amid political controversy, but remains an advisor and one of crypto's most influential voices.
Scott Galloway is a serial entrepreneur, NYU Stern professor, five-time New York Times bestselling author, and one of the most outspoken voices in business and tech. Known for his unfiltered analysis of Big Tech, wealth inequality, and generational economics, he built and sold L2 Inc to Gartner for $155 million, co-hosts the Pivot podcast with Kara Swisher, writes the Webby Award-winning No Mercy / No Malice newsletter, and reaches millions through his Prof G Pod. His books - from The Four to The Algebra of Wealth - have made him a trusted, provocative guide to navigating capitalism in the 21st century.