EP160 StepStone Group Partner Seyonne Kang Seyonne Kang is a Partner at StepStone Group. As of September 30, 2024, StepStone was responsible for approximately $682 billion of total capital, including $176 billion of assets under management. She is a member of the private equity team, focusing on venture capital and growth equity investments. Prior to StepStone, Ms. Kang was a partner with Greenspring Associates, a venture capital and growth equity investment firm that merged with StepStone in 2021. Before that, she spent seven years in investment management with a focus on private capital. Before moving into investment management, Ms. Kang spent about a decade on Wall Street in institutional equities where she served in a variety of functions, including software stock research and distribution of IPOs, follow-on offerings and convertible financings. Ms. Kang earned an AB with honors from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley. You can learn more about: 1. Evaluation framework for first-time fund managers 2. How emerging managers can build credibility with institutional LPs 3. Advice on building long-term LP relationships from scratch

Nikhil Sachdev joined Insight Partners in 2020 as a Managing Director. In his role, he works with companies in the software and fintech ecosystems starting at Series A and well beyond. He invests through a global lens, partnering with founders close to his homebase in California and stretching across the US into Europe, India, SE Asia and Latin America. He began his career advising technology companies at Goldman Sachs, where he was an investment banker focused on cloud and mobile. His start in the investing world came at private equity firm Bain Capital, where we took an operational lens to investing and partnering with companies. He developed a passion for how businesses can play a positive role in helping better the world. This passion led him to Harvard Business School, where he had a chance to spend his summer working with the founder of a Sequoia-backed startup, which sparked his interest in technology and inspired him to pursue a career in venture capital. After HBS, he joined Altimeter Capital, a long/short equity hedge fund that was scaling a venture capital practice. As a Partner at the firm, he led investments in multiple venture and growth stage private companies across the SaaS, DevOps, cloud infrastructure, Internet marketplace, gaming, and social media categories. At Insight, he has the privilege of working with founders and teams who imagine how technology can better the world and are actively building category-defining and enduring businesses. Silicon Valley is his home although he is traveling often. Topics: Key metrics to evaluate AI companies versus traditional SaaS The moats and defensibility of different AI companies Key patterns across successful AI companies

Mo Islam is a Partner at Threshold Ventures. He focused on enterprise and frontier technologies. He sits on the boards of Benepass, EdgeQ, Elementary Robotics, Freeform, OpsLevel, Yellowbrick Data, and several stealth companies. He has also been involved with Threshold's investments in Atomwise, Imagen, Mythic, and Upside Foods. Mo was on the technology team at In-Q-Tel, where he conducted technical diligence on behalf of the CIA. Mo also held engineering roles at Lockheed Martin, the National Science Foundation, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Mo is an author in a chapter addressing the disruption of employment by the rise of automation and artificial intelligence in Disrupting Unemployment: Reflection on a Sustainable, Middle-Class Economic Recovery. Mo graduated with a BS in electrical engineering, with interdisciplinary honors in international security studies, and an MBA from Stanford University.​ In 2018, Mo was named to Business Insider’s list of Silicon Valley biotech stars. He was also featured in the 2017 Forbes 30 under 30 Venture Capital list. Topics: Emerging trends in enterprise software and developer tools AI's transformative potential across industries Enterprise technology investment strategies

Ihar Mahaniok, Founder and Managing Partner, is an immigrant engineering leader turned investor. Ihar grew up in Belarus, where he studied Computer Science. He has over 20 years of experience building code, ML models and engineering teams for startups and conglomerates, including Google & Meta. As an angel investor, Ihar invested in 150+ startups. Companies he has backed at seed include unicorns such as Instacart, PandaDoc, People.ai, Airbyte, and Jeeves. Evaluates technical talent and engineering culture as an investor Emerging ML/AI opportunities Key lessons and challenges moving from engineering to investing

Benjamin Black is the Co-founder and Managing Director of Akkadian Ventures & Raise Global. Akkadian Ventures invests in growth stage technology companies. They provide alternative liquidity solutions for entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capital funds and employees. Raise Global is the premier community for emerging fund managers and forward-thinking LPs. Topics: How to build relationships with LPs effectively Key challenges new fund managers face today Growth Stage Investment Strategy

Meagen Eisenberg is the CMO of Samsara. Samsara is the pioneer of the Connected Operations™ Cloud, which is a platform that enables organizations that depend on physical operations to harness Internet of Things (IoT) data to develop actionable insights and improve their operations. Meagen is a transformational leader, advisor, and marketer managing customer acquisition to adoption and advocacy with experience at global businesses ranging from startups to mid-market to Fortune 500. 20 successful exits since 2011 as an operator and advisor, including 3 IPOs and 17 mergers and acquisitions. She has a strong ability to optimize current business practices quickly, improving poor performance areas while developing new strategic imperatives. A forward thinker leveraging data and technology to deliver future growth and a sustainable revenue path. Topics: Marketing strategy across different company stages Evolution of B2B marketing in the IoT/industrial tech space Lessons learned from being involved in 20 successful exits

Priscilla Guevara is a General Partner of Science. Founded in 2011, Science co-founds and invests in 8-10 consumer companies per year, thematically identifying opportunities ahead of where culture and consumers are moving. Science has co-founded 3 billion-dollar companies, Dollar Shave Club ($1B Exit), DogVacay/Rover ($2.4B Exit) and Liquid Death ($1.4B current). With a deep understanding of success across distinct business models, their differentiated approach to investing lies in the ability to de-risk milestones for follow-on and exits. Continuing on their path to build an enduring institutional firm, Science Fund IV will continue its strategy of large ownership in co-founded businesses, targeting billion-dollar exits. Topics: Building Billion-Dollar Companies Identifying Consumer Trends Consumer Market Evolution

Jay Eum is Co-Founding Managing Partner of GFT Ventures. Jay brings over 20 years of extensive investment experience across both institutional and corporate venture capital firms. Jay co-founded TransLink Capital, a Palo Alto based early stage venture capital firm supporting entrepreneurs developing customer connections and partnerships in Asia. Jay was responsible for leading investments in AI, AR/VR, blockchain, cloud, and consumer technologies. Prior to TransLink, Jay was Managing Director of Samsung Ventures where he established and led the US venture capital operations for Samsung. Jay started his venture capital career at the Silicon Valley office of Vertex Management, Singapore based venture capital arm of investment firm Temasek Holdings. Jay received an MBA from Stanford University and MS/BS in Chemistry from Seoul National University. Jay serves as Chairman and Board Director of the Asia America MultiTechnology Association (AAMA). Jay is also an active angel investor and advisor to several startups. Topics: Evaluates early-stage companies in emerging tech sectors Building global tech communities Advice for founders looking to build global companies from day one

Sandy Carter is the Chief Operating Officer of Unstoppable Domains. Prior to that she served as the Vice President of AWS. Distinguished career holding leadership positions as a Chief Operations Officer, Chief Marketing, Chief Sales, Channel Chief, and Chief Product Officer working for two Fortune 100 companies – AWS and IBM. Her background is unique since very few executives have experience working in all these different c-level roles. She's been a pioneer at the forefront of AI innovation. Working at IBM, she contributed to the development of Watson ecosystem including Cloud, AI and IoT and helped participate in the introduction of the industry's inaugural business model for the AI ecosystem. She played a pivotal role in shaping the direction of the ecosystem in the AI, IoT, and Cloud focus. She is passionate about collaborating with partners and delivering value to customers. This is how she makes a difference. Serving as a top executive at AWS, she collaborated directly with c-level customers and partners. She gained invaluable insights into their Cloud, AI, and overall tech needs and challenges, leading to the development of innovative AI business solutions. She credits her amazing teams with all their success. They are the people who make everything happen. She may provide the direction, strategy, coaching, and overview, but it is the team members who produce the innovations, make the breakthroughs, and develop emerging technology like AI into new products with industry-changing reach. She's held Board of Director positions and currently sits on the Altair Board. She's truly humbled by the numerous awards recognizing her work achievements. Some of the prestigious awards include: The AI Executive Champion of the Year from WLDA, Business Transformational Leader of the Year, CNN Top 10 Women in Tech, Top 10 Leader in Responsible AI, and Most Influential Sales Leader Topics: AI's impact on business transformation Building High-Performance Teams GTM Strategy in Emerging Tech #WomenInTech #AILeadership #TechExecutive #FemaleExecutive

Eric Newcomer founded and runs the newsletter and events business Newcomer. He publishes scoops on startup deals, writes profiles of top venture capitalists, and chronicles the inner workings of Silicon Valley. He also hosts the top artificial intelligence conference the Cerebral Valley AI Summit and the financial technology conference the Newcomer Banking Summit. Topics: Insights from running the Cerebral Valley AI Summit Building a media business in the digital age Major AI deals and investments #TechJournalism #SiliconValley #VentureCapital #AIindustry