Paul Lee is the CEO and co-founder of Patlytics, an AI-native platform for patent workflows used by law firms and corporate IP teams. He previously spent a decade in venture capital as a partner at Tribe Capital and Global Founders Capital, and started his career under Peter Thiel at Mithril Capital. In April 2026, Patlytics closed a $40M Series B, and Lee was named to the IAM Strategy 300 Global Leaders list.
Applied Brain Research (ABR) is a Waterloo, Ontario AI hardware company spun out of the University of Waterloo's Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience. It builds brain-inspired chips and software that run real-time AI - full-vocabulary speech recognition, text-to-speech and sensor processing - directly on edge devices at power levels measured in milliwatts. Its patented state-space models and the Legendre Memory Unit power the TSP1 Time Series Processor, which ABR calls the world's first single-chip solution for full-vocabulary speech recognition, doing the work of cloud voice AI while consuming 10 to 100 times less power.
Jitesh S. Ghai is the President and CEO of Hyland, the Thoma Bravo-owned content services and intelligent automation company based in Westlake, Ohio. A University of Waterloo electrical engineer who began his career building hardware, Ghai spent 14 years at Informatica reshaping it into a cloud and AI leader before stepping into Hyland's top job in May 2024 to push the firm deeper into agentic AI and unstructured content.
Chris Best is the co-founder and CEO of Substack, the subscription newsletter platform that has paid out hundreds of millions of dollars to independent writers. A systems engineer turned serial entrepreneur, Best previously co-founded Kik Messenger, scaling it to 300 million users before pivoting to rewrite the economics of media. Substack - which he launched in 2017 with Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Sethi - has grown to over 5 million paid subscriptions, raised $213M in total funding including a $100M Series C in 2025, and minted more than 50 creators earning over $1 million annually on the platform.
Hussein Fazal is the Co-Founder and CEO of Super.com, a financial super app serving everyday Americans with savings, credit building, travel bookings, and cashback rewards. Previously, he co-founded AdParlor, a Facebook ad optimization platform acquired by AdKnowledge in 2011 after scaling to $100M+ in revenue. At Super.com (formerly SnapTravel), he has grown the platform to 30+ million users and $200M+ ARR, raising over $261M in total venture funding, with backing from Steph Curry, Harley Finkelstein, and institutional investors including iNovia Capital and Lion Capital.
Derek Ting is the co-founder and CEO of TextNow, the Waterloo-based company he started in 2009 at age 19 with classmate Jon Lerner while studying computer engineering at the University of Waterloo. What began as a scrappy solution to outrageous carrier text messaging fees has grown into the only U.S. mobile provider offering unlimited talk, text, and free essential data on a nationwide 5G network. The TextNow app has been downloaded more than 200 million times worldwide, making Derek one of the most consequential quiet disruptors in American telecommunications - building a profitable, venture-light company that serves millions of users who can't afford traditional phone service.

Arif Janmohamed is a Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners with over 16 years backing enterprise AI, cloud infrastructure, and SaaS companies. A University of Waterloo computer engineering graduate and Wharton MBA, he has been the first institutional check behind companies like Netskope (Nasdaq: NTSK, IPO 2025) and Navan, and was on the Moveworks board from Day 1 through its $2.85B acquisition by ServiceNow in 2025. A Canadian with Ismaili-East African roots, fluent in French, and a self-taught ice hockey player, Arif blends deep technical fluency with a founder-first philosophy - often describing himself as part coach, part psychologist to the entrepreneurs he backs. As of early 2026, he is stepping back from day-to-day Lightspeed duties to launch a new early-stage investment firm.

Wes Bush is the founder and CEO of ProductLed, the world's leading education company for product-led growth (PLG). Author of two foundational PLG books - 'Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself' (2019) and 'The Product-Led Playbook' (2024) - Bush has helped 400+ SaaS companies collectively generate over $1 billion in self-serve revenue. After being fired from Vidyard for advocating product-led strategies over sales-led ones, he turned that conviction into a global movement, building a 15,000+ member community and coaching SaaS founders to scale from $100K ARR to 8+ figures.