Apoorva Pandhi is a Managing Director of Zetta Venture Partners. Apoorva loves the complexity and thrill of the 0 to 1 startup phase and feels fortunate to work with deeply technical and product-centric founders. He finds them tackling the hardest challenges in AI/ML, data infrastructure and cloud-native infra. As a Managing Director at Zetta, he is excited to partner with founders who are ready to push through and beyond the complex chaos of this early stage to unleash greater potential and market impact. Apoorva's fascination for complex problems is rooted in his love for math and statistics as his mother, a mathematician, always challenged him, pushing him beyond his comfort zone. This led him to explore technology as the next frontier, starting with an engineering degree from IIT Delhi. Over the years, Apoorva has experienced this frenzied energy, firsthand. He has been in the trenches with early stage engineering-first startups in different modalities. He first met with several engineering-first companies as an investor at Lightspeed Ventures and then Foundation Capital. He has invested in data and ML infra companies like Outerbounds (OSS metaflow), Electric Sheep, Motherduck (OSS DuckDB), Tabular (OSS Iceberg), and Fennel, amongst others. He was also a co-founder of his own company, Funnl Labs, in the NLP/ML space and a GTM/sales leader at Quid. In addition to his undergrad from IIT, Apoorva holds an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Topics: The "0 to 1" phase in technical startups The evolution of data infrastructure Unbundling the data stack #AIInvesting #DataInfrastructure #AIEngineering #VentureCapital #MLOps

Mike Mangini is a partner at SignalFire. Mike joined SignalFire in 2016 to lead the Executive and Technical Talent teams, focused on developing relationships inside and outside the portfolio, and improving SignalFire’s proprietary Talent Tools. Prior to SignalFire, Mike led special projects executive recruiting initiatives for Facebook (2015–16), partnering directly with the senior leadership team to execute key strategic talent assignments and acquisitions. Mike joined Facebook from True Search where he was a Partner (2013–15), leading client engagements for venture-backed technology companies across multiple stages. Operating in the same capacity, Mike was a Principal at Ignition Talent Group (2010–13) which merged practices with True. As a retained recruiter, Mike completed over 50 assignments at the VP, CxO, EIR, XIR and Board levels. Mike began his entrepreneurial career in 2002, where he was Founder & CEO of National Sports Exchange – an award winning Fantasy Sports company – acquired by ProTrade (Citizen Sports), which went on to later be acquired by Yahoo! Mike is a Bentley University graduate, earning a degree in Finance, and was a 4-year varsity soccer letterman. He lives with his wife and two kids in San Francisco, where their favorite past times are discovering new places to eat treats and pretending the Mission is one giant playground. Topics: The impact of AI and data-driven approaches on recruiting The evolution of VC talent platforms Common traits among successful startup executives #VCPodcast #SignalFire #TalentInTech #StartupRecruiting #ExecSearch

Somesh Dash is a General Partner at IVP. He has been an investor at IVP for 19 years, where he focuses primarily on growth investments in enterprise software, consumer and digital health companies. He led or actively participated in IVP's investments in Accompany Health, Aledade, Amplitude, Brex, Business Insider, Datadog, Discord, Expanse, H1, Hello Heart, Humu, Lime, Klout, Lyra Health, Perplexity, Pindrop Security, Pure Storage, Qubole, Rubrik, Snap, SoundCloud, Tanium, Thrive Global, Uber, Uproxx, Walker and Company, and Whisper. Outside of his work with IVP, he also serves as a board member of the Advisory Council at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business (GSB) and the US India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF). He is a life member of the Council of Foreign Relations and on the Advisory Board of Malaria No More. Topics: Decision-making process for growth-stage investments Evaluates opportunities across different sectors (enterprise, consumer, digital health) Evolution of enterprise software and SaaS business models #VentureCapital #IVP #SomeshDash #StartupInvestor #GrowthEquity

Aseem Datar is a Vice President at Microsoft building the next generation computing business. Most recently he was a Partner at Madrona Venture Group investing in Enterprise companies. Aseem scales businesses and is a seasoned operator. Prior to Madrona, Aseem spent over 17 years at Microsoft, working in a wide variety of roles from a developer writing deep installer level code to building and creating business models for Office 365. Aseem also has global sales experience, led growth for SaaS and hardware businesses, and was most recently the GM/COO for Microsoft Cloud where he grew the business from its early days to over $20B ARR. Aseem brings deep experience creating cutting edge services and platforms and bringing them to market. His background in Cloud, AI/ML, SaaS, Commerce & Payments, Devices & OS means he is interested in a broad set of startup businesses. Aseem holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Washington. He was also a Research fellow at the Applied Physics Lab before earning an MBA from the University of Washington. While at Microsoft, he also pursued his executive education from the Harvard Business School. He is a Seattle 40 under 40 honoree and has published a thesis on e-commerce for IEEE. Aseem is also the recipient of the coveted Microsoft CMO Award for leading growth in emerging markets for both devices and SaaS and has worked to pass legislation in Washington State dealing with student aid programs. Topics: Future of Enterprise Computing Building Global SaaS Businesses Technical Leadership Journey #TechLeadership #MicrosoftCloud #VentureCapital #Enterprisetech #CloudComputing

Adeyemi (“Ade”) is co-founder & Managing Partner at Base10 Partners. Before Base10, Ade had a successful career as an entrepreneur and investor. Ade was the co-founder and CEO of Tuenti (The “Spanish Facebook” which was acquired by Telefonica in 2010 for $100M), co-founder and CEO of Identified (“AI for HR” acquired by Workday in 2014) and a founding investor of Cabify (the largest ridesharing company in Latin America currently valued at over $1B). While at Workday, Ade led the launch of Workday Ventures, the first fund focused on Applied AI for Enterprise Software and was VP of Technology Strategy. Ade is originally from Spain and half Nigerian. He holds an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He also holds a J.D. in Law and a M.S in Economics from Icade University in Spain and studied a certificate on Machine Learning at Stanford. Ade was named to the Forbes Midas List in 2023 and 2024. Topics: Key lessons from founding multiple successful companies Views on Applied AI and Enterprise Software Perspective on overlooked markets and opportunities #VentureCapital #Base10Partners #TechEntrepreneur #SpanishTech #AI

HEMANT MOHAPATRA is a partner with Lightspeed Venture Partners India. He focuses on global SaaS, Enterprise Infrastructure, and frontier / deep tech areas such as crypto, space/satellite, AR/VR and more. Lightspeed has offices in Silicon Valley, India, China, Israel, Europe and South East Asia, with companies such as SnapChat, Byju's, OYO Rooms, Affirm, Docker, Nutanix, AppDynamics, Mulesoft and many more in our portfolio. Prior to that, he was a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a VC firm based in the silicon valley and investor in Facebook, Twitter, AirBnb, Zynga, Foursquare, Coinbase, Medium and more. He joined a16z after almost 5 years at Google doing strategic partnerships deals (e.g. NetApp, EMC, Verizon, TATA) and investments (e.g. Avere series E, acqd by Microsoft) for the Google Cloud platform team. Before a16z and Google, he was an Engineer & Product Manager at AMD, a micro-processor firm. Topics: Investing Trends in SaaS, Enterprise Infrastructure, Crypto, and Spacetech Insights on differences between startup ecosystems in India, Silicon Valley, and other markets The future of enterprise infrastructure #VentureCapital #DeepTech #StartupInvestor #TechVC #LightspeedVP

Gary is a partner investing in technology and healthcare companies out of our San Francisco office. He represents Polaris on the boards of Quantcast, SimplyInsured, FloQast, Faro Health, Qstream, Foresight, and Livara, and he also works with Wellthy, Naked Poppy, Falkonry, and Novi. He previously served on the board of CliQr (Cisco) as well. Previously, Gary was the CEO of oDesk (now UpWork, NASDAQ; UPWK), the world’s largest online workplace. He guided the company to industry leadership through a merger with Elance while serving as a leading voice for the future of work and the emerging online work industry. Before oDesk, Gary was the Chief Revenue Officer for Intellibank, responsible for all channels and go-to-market operations. Before Intellibank, he was a business unit executive for IBM’s Rational Software Product Group. Gary joined IBM after the acquisition of Rational Software, where he held several senior management positions. Before Rational, Gary held several sales, management, and leadership positions with Pure Software. Gary is a thought leader on marketplaces, sales leadership, the future of work, how best to lead effective teams, and the rise of the “freelance economy.” His commentary has appeared in various publications, including Forbes, TechCrunch, and The Washington Post. And he’s appeared on TV and radio outlets, including CNBC, BBC, Bloomberg TV, National Public Radio (NPR), and the Fox Business Network. In addition, Gary is a mentor and coach at several accelerators, including Alchemist and StartX. Topics: Building the First Global Remote Work Platform Investing in Healthcare Tech's Digital Future Tech Sales Leadership to Venture Investing #TechSales #VentureCapital #B2B #SiliconValley

Eliot is General Partner @ boldstart ventures, day one true believer for dev first crypto infra and saas founders. Eliot’s investments include Divide (acquired by Google), Replicated, Preact (sold to Spotify), SecurityScorecard, Rapportive (acquired by LinkedIn), Snyk, BigID, Front, Kustomer, Superhuman, Catalytic, Blaze (acq. by Akamai), Look.io (acquired by LivePerson), GoInstant (acquired by Salesforce), TrulyWireless, YHat, Handshake, WeVR, Techstars (NYC), and Amplify.LA. He previously co-founded Penny Black, a private venture-investment firm where he led a range of investments, including Anchor Intelligence (sold to Comscore), Spinback (acquired by Buddy Media), Bare Snacks (acq by PepsiCo), Ekso Bionics (NASDAQ: EKSO), Klout (acq. by Lithium), IndieGoGo. Prior to Penny Black, Eliot founded Templates.com, an online software retailer that was acquired 2002. He subsequently worked at the Permal Group, a multi-billion dollar global fund of hedge funds (acquired by Legg Mason in 2006). Eliot is a graduate of Georgetown University with post-graduate study at Columbia University. Topics: Key factors driving investment in AI infrastructure for enterprises Trends in cybersecurity AI The role of AI in enhancing enterprise software solutions #AIInvesting #EnterpriseAI #VentureCapital #SaaS #DeveloperFirst

David Booth is an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) & investor at Blackbird. That means he gets to both sit on the investments team in NZ — on the lookout for ambitious Kiwis doing their life's work, wherever in the world they may live today; and also build cool stuff... in his case communities, products you'll be seeing more of soon. He's a community builder at heart, and gets a kick out of making connections. For nearly 7 years he did this at extreme scale as CEO of On Deck — where they've helped 1000+ companies get started, find their first customers, hires, and investors, and raise over $2bn. He stepped back to Chairman in Jan '24 to make way for a new chapter - for him, and for the company. Previously, he's carved out a career and professional expertise at the intersection of product, investment, and law/legal ops. He led investment operations at AngelList in ~2014/15, international growth & product at Carta in 2017, worked with some of the world's most innovative investors and incubators in between. He's made over 300 investments as a GP of On Deck's venture funds, scout for VC firms, angel investor and fund LP. Topics: Key lessons from building global startup communities How community building influences investment decisions Rising sectors in the NZ ecosystem #NZtech #StartupNZ #KiwiFounders #DeepTech #CleanTech #VentureCapital

Raghu Ravinutala is the CEO and Co-Founder of Yellow.ai, a global leader in generative AI-powered customer service automation. The entrepreneurial bug had been conceded deep inside him for long before he co-founded Yellow.ai in 2016, with a vision to make customer and enterprise interactions more effective and effortless. Since its inception, Raghu and his team have successfully expanded Yellow.ai’s presence across North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America with 1000+ customers in 85+ countries. Previously, Raghu worked for 16 years with leading tech companies such as Texas Instruments, and Broadcom across leadership roles in Engineering, Product Management and Business Development both in the Bay Area and India. He has been recognised as one of the Top 50 SaaS CEOs 2023 by The Software Report and the CX Leader of the Year at the CX Awards 2022. Topics: The Future of Enterprise Software Key Insights into AI's Role in Customer Experience How to Build a Successful AI Startup #EnterpriseSoftware #AI #CustomerExperience #StartupSuccess