Venture with Grace

Maria Palma is a General Partner at Freestyle Capital. While she is a generalist investor, most of her recent time and investments have been in AI both at the app and infrastructure level. She loves being involved in start-ups and enjoys the challenge of creating real value and changing industries that are broken. She finds it constantly inspiring, humbling and mostly, a ton of fun. Prior to Freestyle, she was a General Partner at Kindred Capital, a seed and early-stage venture firm focusing on European technology companies. In the past three years she has led investments in companies like Fung, Lottie and Dunia. She’s recently been spending a lot of her time in AI infrastructure and made personal angel investments in companies like Lovable, .txt and Clusterfudge. Prior to Kindred, Maria was a Principal at RRE Ventures in New York where she spent time on the investment side (investing in companies such as Ladder, Moov, Novo, Mobot, Lightning Labs and Pattern), and also built out their platform efforts. Building defensible moats in AI applicationsTrends and opportunities in AI infrastructure investingAdvice for founders seeking funding in the AI space#venturecapital #VCpodcast #startup #AI #ArtificialIntelligence

Keshia Theobald-van Gent is a Partner at BDev Ventures. She previously served as the Sr. Director of the United States at German Accelerator where she led teams in NYC and Silicon Valley to help high-potential European startups enter the US. And, as the Director of Strategic Partnerships at GSVlabs, where she connected the world’s largest companies to the global startup community, accelerated new products, and generated real ROI through digital innovation. She holds an M.A. from the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and has lived and worked in the US, Asia, and Europe. Topics: Go-to-market playbooks for international startups entering the USTrends and opportunities in B2B software investingSupports B2B SaaS founders from early traction to scale#venturecapital #venturecapitalist #vc #startups #entrepreneurship #funding

Shimrit Ben-Yair serves as the Vice President and General Manager of Google Photos and Google One. She has worked on various different products at Google, including on Google Docs sharing, Google Groups, YouTube Kids, and YouTube Community. Earlier in her career, Ben-Yair was the first product manager on Google+, contributing significantly to its early development. She holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Mathematics from Tel Aviv University and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.Topics: Lessons from building and leading Google Photos & Google One at global scale.How AI is shaping the future of digital photo storage, search, and storytelling.Lessons for aspiring product leaders on career navigation inside Big Tech.#GooglePhotos #GoogleOne #ProductManagement #Leadership #AI #TechInnovation

Dr. Samir Menon is the Founder and CEO of Dexterity, Inc., a robotics company building autonomous systems with human-like dexterity to transform logistics, supply chain, and warehousing operations. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University, where his research pioneered simulation models and control theory to study the human musculoskeletal system. With deep expertise in robot control, dynamics, modeling, simulation, and haptic interfaces, Samir has been recognized with two Stanford School of Engineering Fellowships and a Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship. He holds a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, where he was a university merit scholar.Topics: Building robots with human-like dexterity for industrial applicationsScaling a robotics company from research to real-world deploymentThe future of automation in logistics and supply chain#Robotics #Automation #AI #SupplyChainTech #DeepTech

Nick Linck is the Founder of The Residency. The Residency is a program that is designed for entrepreneurs, builders, and creators who want to take control of their life and turn their ambitious dreams into reality. The program is unique in that it offers the social experience of college with a revamped version of the traditional educational experience. we provide housing in locations all around the world so that our residents can live and work side-by-side with ambitious peers. we provide coaching and introductions to a network that help guide residents towards their own version of success.Topics: How Gen Z founders and creators approach career building differently.Challenges and opportunities in running a globally distributed housing and coaching program.The growing market for alternative learning and founder-focused communities.#Entrepreneurship #FounderLife #AlternativeEducation #StartupCommunity

Russ Heddleston is the CEO of Distill, having previously founded and sold DocSend for $165 million with $15 million raised, scaling it to over $40m in ARR. Previously, he started and sold an HR tech startup Pursuit to Meta. Russ holds a BS and MS in Computer Science from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard. His work on identity at Meta and his passion for intuitive product design drive his commitment to Distill.Topics: Designing products for virality in enterprise SaaSStructuring teams for speed without sacrificing qualityHiring in the early vs. growth stages#StartupExits #SaaSFounders #VentureCapital #AcquisitionStrategy #ScalingStartups

Roman Chernin is the Chief Business Officer and co-founder of Nebius, an AI-focused cloud infrastructure company. He is responsible for driving the company’s business strategy and growth. Roman's career spans over 20 years in the tech industry, with 12 of those years spent at Yandex, one of Europe's largest technology companies. He began his journey at Yandex leading the Search platform and later became CEO of the Geoservices business unit in 2016.Topics: Evolution of AI-Focused Cloud InfrastructureBuilding partnerships in the AI ecosystemAI Trends and Enterprise Adoption#AI #CloudInfrastructure #VentureCapital #TechLeadership

Snehal Antani is CEO & co-founder of Horizon3.ai, a cyber security company that pioneered the use of AI to autonomously conduct penetration testing. Prior to Horizon3, Snehal served as the first Chief Technology Officer for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). As a member of the Commander’s executive team, he led data analytics, cloud/edge computing, and cybersecurity initiatives. Prior to serving within US Special Operations, Snehal was CTO & SVP at Splunk, held multiple CIO roles at GE Capital, and started his career as a Software Engineer at IBM. Topics: Building trust in AI security solutions for enterprise adoption.Challenges of productizing AI for a high-stakes industry like cybersecurity.Emerging cyber threats in the AI era#CyberSecurity #AI #PenTesting #VentureCapital #Startup #Leadership

Sunil Rao is the Founder and CEO of Tribble, an AI-powered platform aimed at streamlining and automating go-to-market workflows for enterprise teams. With a technical foundation as a former software engineer at SAP, Rao rose to leadership roles at Salesforce—including VP and GM of Consumer Goods—before launching Tribble in April 2023. Drawing on experience in both engineering and enterprise sales, he drives Tribble’s mission to integrate AI into sales, marketing, and product management, enabling organizations to scale their expertise more efficiently in an increasingly complex technological landscape.Topics: AI-powered platforms for go-to-market workflow automationStreamlining enterprise sales and marketing processesIntegration of AI in sales, marketing, and product management#AI #GoToMarket #SalesAutomation #MarketingTech #EnterpriseAI

Emily Bennett is a Partner at Owl Ventures. ~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Verivend. If you’re a GP or LP looking to simplify the capital raising and deployment process, Verivend is here to help. Trusted by over 800 funds and managing more than $2 billion in transactions, Verivend offers a secure, streamlined payments platform designed specifically for private capital markets. Say goodbye to manual reconciliation and repeated follow-ups - raise and deploy capital faster and with greater transparency. Ready to make your fund operations smoother? Visit https://bit.ly/3GrB4Qj and see how easy it can be. ~~~~~Emily brings a strong foundation driving product strategy for technology and media companies to the Owl team. Prior to receiving her MBA, Emily served as Product Marketing Manager for News Integrity at Facebook, implementing products and scaled initiatives to help curb misinformation and better incentivize high quality news across the platform. Previously, she was Product Manager for video at the New York Times, where she drove product strategy for immersive streaming experiences, and worked on growth product strategy for the artist-facing platform at Spotify. Emily’s passion for education stems from her early teachers, many of whom she remains in touch with today, who instilled in her a strong belief that high quality education is the most powerful means to generate opportunity. Emily graduated from Middlebury College with a Bachelor of Science degree, magna cum laude, in Neuroscience, where she was actively involved in music and creative writing. Emily received her MBA from Harvard Business School.Topics: Sourcing and evaluating early-stage EdTech and AI startupsTrends and opportunities in the global EdTech sectorNavigating challenges and achieving product-market fit in EdTech#VentureCapital #EdTech #Startups #AI #Entrepreneurship #Investing