Venture with Grace

Andrew Chau is the co-founder and CEO of Boba Guys Inc., the revolutionary bubble tea company that has fundamentally changed how people view boba and tea culture in America. Starting from a shared passion for quality milk tea and a mission to elevate the boba experience with fresh, premium ingredients, Andrew and co-founder Bin Chen launched Boba Guys in 2011. What began as a single San Francisco location has grown to 24+ locations, making Boba Guys one of the most recognizable premium bubble tea brands in the United States.Topics: How to build a premium brand in a commoditized marketMaintaining brand authenticity while scalingTechnology integration in traditional retail#AndrewChau #BobaGuys #ConsumerBrands #FoodTech

James Flynn is a Partner at Sequoia Capital focused on post-Series A investments across the tech landscape. Prior to that he was a growth equity investor at General Atlantic. Sequoia helps daring founders build legendary companies from idea to IPO and beyond. We aim to be the first true believers in tomorrow’s most valuable and enduring businesses. We partner with a few outliers each year and go all-in, providing them with the hands-on help required at every stage of the company building journey. Our expertise comes from 50 years of working with legendary founders like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Jan Koum, Adi Tatarko, Brian Chesky, Jensen Huang, Anne Wojcicki, Eric Yuan, Patrick Collison, Julia Hartz, and Sebastian Siemiatkowski. In aggregate, Sequoia-backed companies account for more than 25% of NASDAQ's total value. Since our inception, the vast majority of the money we invest has been on behalf of nonprofits and schools like the Ford Foundation, Mayo Clinic and MIT, which means most of the returns we generate benefit these great causes.Topics: How Sequoia identifies "outliers" - what specific signals or patterns indicate a company could become truly legendaryHow AI is reshaping investment thesis across different verticals beyond just AI companiesThe evolution of founder needs from Series A to IPO - how support requirements change at each stage#VCPodcast #SequoiaCapital #VentureCapital #StartupFunding

Vikram Chatterji is the co-founder and CEO of Galileo. Galileo is the leading platform for enterprise GenAI evaluation and observability. Our comprehensive suite of products support builders across the new AI development workflow—from fine-tuning LLMs to developing, testing, monitoring, and securing their AI applications. Each product is powered by our research-backed evaluation metrics. Today, Galileo is used by 100s of AI teams from startups to Fortune 50 enterprises, including Twilio, Comcast, and HP. Topics: Making generative AI reliable for enterprise adoption and trustDiagnosing and reducing hallucination in large language modelsMeasuring and improving generative model performance at scale#AI #GenerativeAI #MachineLearning #EnterpriseAI #AIEthics

Shaun VanWeelden is the Managing Director at Mercor, where he leads efforts to reshape how talent connects with work, using AI-led approaches to deeply assess candidate expertise. Prior to Mercor, Shaun held a key role at OpenAI leading their human data operations team within research, supporting critical initiatives around human feedback for AI training. Before OpenAI, he spent time at Scale AI, where he served as Director of Computer Vision Engagements and Field Engineering, managing global teams delivering high-quality annotated data for the automotive, robotics, and technology sectors. Shaun is passionate about bridging the gap between technical and interpersonal skills and has a track record of building strong teams.Topics: The Future of AI-Powered RecruitingManaging Global Remote TeamsEnterprise AI Implementation Challenges#AIRecruiting #TalentTech #HumanData #AITraining #ComputerVision

Dan O’Connell CEO of Front. Front is the AI-powered customer service platform that helps companies deliver smarter, safer automation without sacrificing quality. We put humans in control of AI to ensure every customer interaction is handled by the best resource, whether that’s AI, a human agent, or both. More than 9,000 companies, including Uber Freight, Navan, and Stripe, trust Front to scale exceptional service, streamline team collaboration, and gain insights that improve customer experience every day. Prior to that he was the CRO and board member of Dialpad. Topics: AI & Customer Service EvolutionScaling & Go-to-Market StrategyProduct & Platform Strategy#VCPodcast #AICustomerService #FrontApp #StartupCEO

Jiaona Zhang ("JZ") is the Chief Product Officer at Laurel. She has led product organizations at Linktree, Webflow, Airbnb, WeWork, Dropbox, and Pocket Gems. Prior to her career in product, she worked as a management and private equity consultant. In addition to her work, she advises and invests in start-ups. JZ received her BA from Yale University in Economics.Topics: How product leadership differs across company stageBuilding and scaling product organizations through hypergrowth phasesWhere product management heading in an AI-first world#VCPodcast #ProductLeadership #CPO #StartupLife #TechLeadership

Lauri Moore is a Partner at Bessemer’s Silicon Valley office, where she focuses on early-stage opportunities in data, AI, developer tools, and related infrastructure. With a unique background spanning research, data science, product management, and investing, Lauri is a passionate ally and coach for entrepreneurs, collaborating with them to tackle the inevitable challenges of company building. Before joining Bessemer, Lauri was a Partner at Foundation Capital. She also co-founded a company that automated top-of-funnel screening using voice AI, leveraging one of the earliest (and ultimately not good enough) externalized BERT models in 2018. Lauri has held product leadership roles at LinkedIn and worked in data science and product across several startups. Her career began at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the Research & Statistics Group, although her first job was as a figure skating coach. Lauri graduated from Columbia College, Columbia University, where she studied Mathematics, Economics, and History. She also holds an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where she was an Arbuckle Leadership Fellow.Topics: The Future of Developer ToolsThe New AI Stack in Data ML and InfrastructureData as the New Code#VentureCapital #AI #DataInfrastructure #DeveloperTools #Startups

sands of enterprise companies globally.  Sparked by his vision and focus to use AI technology to bridge the gap between humans and machines, today Umesh is recognized as an enterprise AI pioneer. Uniphore’s Business AI Cloud, launched in 2025, is among the first enterprise-grade AI platform purpose-built to unify data, knowledge, models, and agents in a way that’s truly usable, scalable, and secure for business. Known for his grit as a leader, his passion for customers and his deep understanding of technology, he is called upon to guide some of the world’s largest brands through their digital transformation. Umesh’s strong portfolio of patents serves as a testament to his innovative thinking and commitment to advancing AI technology.     As an international business leader, Umesh has been recognized with many awards including ‘40 under 40’ Bright Young Business Leaders in the Economic Times, ‘Next Generation Leader’ by Time Magazine, and previously, as an ‘Innovator Under 35’ by MIT Tech Review.  Umesh values mentorship and spends time working with the next generation of entrepreneurs through StartUp Connect, a nonprofit organization that helps young founders scale their businesses, creating more economic opportunities.  Umesh is an alumnus of Jaypee Institute of Information Technology and an accomplished speaker and highly sought-after presenter. Topics: The role of emotion AI in enterprise applications Building AI products that large enterprises actually adopt and pay forHow to evaluate which AI capabilities to build in-house vs acquire#EnterpriseAI #ConversationalAI #BusinessAI #AgenticAI #ZeroDataAI

Lars Leckie is a Managing Director at Aspenwood Ventures. Prior to his career in venture capital, Lars was a co-founder of AutoFarm (now Novariant), a company focused on GPS and robotics. Lars was in charge of strategy, product marketing, business development, and building the sales team across three continents. While Lars spends less time programming now, he started his technical career coding and hacking computer games. He is the holder of several US patents. Lars has a Masters of Science (Engineering) from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of business. He also holds an Engineering Physics degree from Queen’s University (with Honors). Lars previously sat on the board of the SIIA (Software Information Industry Association) Piston, and PLUMgrid, and is a founding charter member and previous co-chair of the C100 (Canadians in the Silicon Valley).Topics: Investing in GPS, robotics, and automationThe patent portfolio game Building sales teams across three continents#VCPodcast #VentureCapital #TechInvesting #StartupStories

Sara Choi is a Partner at Wing VC. Sara brings her experiences as a former founder and product leader to her collaborations, investing in and supporting founders early on their entrepreneurial journeys, often at inception. Sara partners with founders of transformative tech companies working to shape the future of medicine and healthcare. Prior to co-founding Airfox, acquired in 2017, Sara was head of product at Ciao Telecom, where she co-founded a new wireless carrier. Sarabegan her career at Google, leading teams as YouTube’s media lead and Google Partners’ product marketing lead. Sara holds a BA in biological anthropology from Harvard University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Sara began and continues to run the Harvard Founder Network, a community of Harvard-affiliated CEOs. In addition to the companies below, Sara also works with a number of unannounced companies.Topics: The ideal team composition for bio x data startups Assessing technical risk when biology meets AI/automationHow to balance moonshot science bets with more predictable automation plays #BioTech #HealthTech #AIAutomation #DigitalHealth #EnterpriseSoftware