Venture with Grace

Mercedes Bent is a Venture Partner at Lightspeed. Mercedes’ path to VC is a true convergence of her life experiences — a childhood surrounded by inventors, finance roles at the Federal Reserve and Goldman Sachs, managing P&Ls at two consumer startups (including growing one from $2 to $100M in revenue in 4 years), founding two startups of her own, and her long-term goal of empowering communities she cares about. She joined Lightspeed in 2019 and has led a number of investments in the LATAM region and invests in early stage consumer fintech companies that are unlocking wealth creation for underserved individuals and regions.Topics: Evolution of Consumer Fintech Investment StrategiesThe Role of AI and PersonalizationInvesting in LATAM and Multicultural Markets#ConsumerFintech #VentureCapital #FintechInvesting #LATAMFintech

Christine Yen is the Co-founder and CEO of Honeycomb.io. Honeycomb is the observability platform for teams who manage software that matters. Before founding Honeycomb, she built analytics products at Parse/Facebook, and loved writing software to separate signal from noise.Topics:Building a category-defining product in the observability spaceThe evolution of developer experience and why it matters to business outcomesData-driven decision making #ObservabilityLeadership #TechFounderJourney #DataDrivenDecisions #EngineeringToExecutive

Mo Al Adham is the founder and CEO of Frec. Frec was founded in 2021 and is based out of San Francisco. They're funded by a long list of incredible investors from companies like Google, Meta, Brex, and more. Their biggest backer is Greylock. Frec has two subsidiaries: one is an SEC registered investment adviser and the other is an SEC registered broker dealer and FINRA member. Assets are housed at Apex Clearing House. Mo is a serial entrepreneur. Before Frec, he was the first advisor of Instacart, founder of Twitvid, and a product leader at Twitter.Topics: Building in Fintech During Market VolatilityData-Driven Decision Making at an Early-Stage FintechProduct-Market Fit in Fintech#FrecFintech #StartupJourney #VCPodcast #FinancialInnovation

Maitree Mervana Parekh is an early & growth stage investor @ Acrew Capital. Maitree is a student of consumer behavior shifts and a creative. She leads investments across Health and Fintech, working closely with the firm’s investments in Cometa, Future Family, Banked, ShopShops, Creative Juice, among other unannounced companies.Prior to Acrew, Maitree was an investor at Cerity Partners Ventures (fka Touchdown Ventures), where she helped launch and manage venture capital programs on behalf of large corporations, including T-Mobile. She started her career as an investment banker at Citigroup. Maitree was named Forbes 30 under 30, Venture Capital in 2022 and is a board member at NextGen and an active member of All Raise, helping to launch the All Raise Cohort Program fostering community and mentorship for women early in their venture capital careers. Maitree graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a BA in Business Economics.Topics: Decoding Consumer Behavior in Health TechFintech Innovation at the Intersection of Consumer NeedsEvolution of fintech investments during economic uncertainty#VentureCapital #HealthTech #Fintech #StartupInvesting

Anarghya Vardhana is a General Partner at Maveron. Anarghya spends her time understanding consumer and cultural behavioral shifts, identifying the billion-dollar businesses that will emerge, and partnering with the right founders to help grow those startups into iconic consumer brands. She is particularly interested in companies improving the health and wellness of large populations and she has invested across early stages and sectors such as mental health (Two Chairs, Bend Health), women's health (Alife, Caraway), rare disease (Allstripes acquired by PicnicHealth), healthcare platforms (Goodbill), and connection and community for wellness (RecRoom, Co-Star).Prior to joining Maveron seven years ago, Anarghya was a seed investor and a product manager at several startups, notably Medable in the healthcare space. She started her career at Google and has been in the Bay Area tech scene since her undergraduate years at Stanford, where she studied Science, Technology, and Society, graduating with honors with a focus in Human Biology, and Mathematics. Anarghya was listed on Forbes "30 Under 30" for venture capital, won the Diversity Champion Awards from Forbes and JP Morgan Chase, was nominated for the NVCA's rising star award, and gathered several accolades during her time at Google. She is a Kauffman Fellow, and an active participant in All Raise and other diversity initiatives in tech and venture capital. Topics: Building iconic consumer brands in healthcareWomen's health investment landscapeThe evolution of health and wellness investments#ConsumerVC #HealthTechInvesting #MaveronVC #FemTech

Kirby Winfield is the founding GP of Ascend, a pre-seed VC fund focused on enterprise AI. The fund's flagship investment is Overland AI, which powers autonomous ground navigation for the US Defense ecosystem. Prior to Ascend, Kirby's career as a tech founder included two IPOs and two venture backed exits.Topics: Enterprise AI Investment Thesis:Defense Tech InnovationBuilding Defensible AI Startups#AIStartups #TechExits #VentureCapital #AIInvestment

Arvind Ayyala is a Partner at Geodesic Capital, focused on investments across enterprise software, fintech, healthcare and sustainable technologies. He was previously co-leading North American growth investments in similar segments, for Singapore-based EDBI. Prior to EDBI, Arvind was with Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), planning and executing the country’s economic development. He worked across Energy & Chemicals, Engineering Services, Healthcare and Technology sectors and was co-running EDB’s work in India and Sri Lanka, while based in Mumbai. Early in his career, he worked as a Sales Engineer for Philadelphia-based Load Control Technologies.Arvind graduated from NUS’ (National University of Singapore) Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering program. He also graduated on scholarship from NUS Overseas Colleges at University of Pennsylvania in technology ventures. He earned his MBA at Boston University and has CFA Level 1.Topics: Enterprise AI AdoptionCross-Border Investment PerspectivesEnterprise Software Evolution#VentureCapital #EnterpriseAI #CrossBorderInvesting #TechInnovation #AIInvestment

Andrea Lo is the Managing Partner at Main Character Capital. She is a silicon Valley native investor with 15+ years experience as a founder, investor, and startup operator in the alternative investments space. Led $100mm+ of global VC investments from pre-seed to pre-IPO, helped launch & turnaround venture style funds, and created / innovated on new financial products later adopted by financial institutions. Previously Head of Investments for a $1B foundation investing in fintech & blockchain startups & funds. Expertise in 0 to 1, startup sales, venture capital & corporate venture capital, ecosystem building, first-of-a-kind deals, fundraising/storytelling, turnarounds, GTM, new product development, vendor selection/management, and supporting founders, innovators & top performers.Topics: 1. How LPs evaluate venture funds in today's market2. Insights on fintech and blockchain from an LP perspective3. Advice for emerging fund managers#VentureCapital #LPInsights #MainCharacterCapital #StartupInvesting

Emily Yu is a Deep Tech Investor at Boost VC. Boost VC invest in Pre-seed companies in the intersection of hardware + software, across robotics, aerospace, defense, climate, BCI/HCI, bio, physical infrastructure, etc. Topics: Deep tech investment thesisEmerging trends in deep techAI robotics integration#DeepTechVC #HardwareSoftwareAI #AIAccelerators #EdgeComputing

Derek Xiao is an investor at Menlo Ventures. Derek concentrates on identifying investment opportunities across the firm’s thesis areas, covering AI, cloud infrastructure, digital health, and enterprise SaaS. Derek is especially focused on investing in soon-to-be breakout companies at the inflection stage. Derek joined Menlo from Bain & Company where he worked with leading San Francisco-based technology investors and companies spanning a broad range of industries. In one case, he advised a growth equity fund on potential investments in two rocket launch companies. That introduction to frontier tech and startups on the verge of hypergrowth sparked his desire to pursue venture capital.Derek graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard with a Bachelor’s Degree in Government. During his time on campus, he served as President of the student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. Battling strong headwinds associated with the decline of the print publication industry, Derek led the effort to return The Crimson to financial stability, bringing revenues to a decade high. Derek’s passion for media inspired him to begin his career as a journalist for Forbes. Topics: Verticalized AI ApplicationsHealthcare AI investing trendEnterprise AI Adoption Cycles#VentureCapital #AIInvestment #HealthcareAI #CloudTrends