Dipto Chakravarty is the Chief Product Officer of Cloudera where he leads Cloudera's product and technology delivery. Most recently, he served as the head of local data engineering in Amazon's generalized artificial intelligence group. Prior to that, he led AWS's fintech cloud practice. Before Amazon, Dipto held executive positions at CA/Broadcom, IBM, Novell, and Thomson-Reuters and founded/led three private equity-backed businesses with exits. He has 12 patents issued to date, has authored 2 books, and 46 publications and book chapters, has served on the board of software companies with exits. Dipto holds a bachelor's and master's degree in computer science from the University of Maryland, business administration from Wharton Business School, and completed the General Management Program at Harvard Business School. Topics: AI & Data Architecture Evolution Product Leadership in AI Era Cloud Security & Infrastructure #ClouderaAI #DataInnovation #TechLeadership #AIStrategy #CloudComputing

Amy Cheetham is a Partner at Costanoa Ventures. Before joining Costanoa, she ran North American sales strategy and operations at Zuora, a public enterprise software company. Prior to that, she spent three years investing in growth stage technology companies at Summit Partners, where her investments included Podium, InfoArmor (acq. AllState), and onXmaps. She began her career on Wall Street, working at JP Morgan where she spent time as a technology investment banker and as a cash equities trader focused on biotechnology and financial services. Topics: Key metrics for early-stage vertical SaaS companies Building financial infrastructure for global SMBs How AI is changing the automation landscape #FinTech #VerticalSaaS #CrossBorderPayments #GlobalPayroll #EnterpriseAutomation

Thomas Jueng is a Managing Director at Samsung Ventures America. He joined Samsung Ventures in 2012 and focuses on investments in mobile platform, AI, IoT, digital media & content, and enterprise solution.Prior to joining Samsung Ventures, Thomas worked in Benex investment, a private equity in Korea. Before Benex investment, he worked at SK Telecom in global strategy planning team and investment team. Thomas led deals in the US, China, Vietnam, and Korea mainly focusing on mobile and internet. Before SK Telecom, Thomas worked at a RF repeater system company, MTI Co., Ltd. as a RF, S/W engineer. Thomas also co-founded two start-ups, a social network service website, win520.com in Beijing, China, and an outdoor digital signage company, Intercity Networks in Korea and he was an early member of Chinese mobile device company, Xiaomi. Thomas earned his M.B.A. at the Wharton School and received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University. Topics: 1. New DB for AI 2. Compound AI 3. New device with and for AI #SamsungVentures #VentureCapital #AIinvesting #AIdatabases

Dr. Matanya Horowitz is the founder and chief technology officer of AMP, a company he built with the objective of transforming the world’s waste from a liability to an asset for society. He developed and commercialized AMP’s breakthrough AI platform and robotics systems, which automate the identification and sorting of recyclables from mixed material streams, pioneering the use of AI in the waste industry and providing waste operators with a reliable source of sustainable diversion. EY named Horowitz an Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2021 Mountain Desert Region Award Winner. He was also recognized as one of MSW Management’s Innovators of 2021 and among the 2021 “Grist 50,” and Fast Company named him one of 2020’s “Most Creative People in Business. He was Waste360’s “2019 Innovator of the Year” and included on the publication’s annual “40 Under 40” list. Under his leadership, AMP has received numerous awards and international recognition, including CNBC’s “Disruptor 50,” Fast Company’s “World’s Most Innovative Companies," and Cleantech Group’s North American Company of the Year. Topics: How AI is Revolutionizing Waste Management & Recycling Centers Building Game-Changing Deep Tech in Conservative Markets Creating Environmental Impact Through Robotics & AI #AIinnovation #robotics #recycling #climatetech

Andrew Van Nest is a Managing Partner and tenured early stage investor who focuses on B2B Enterprise SaaS, DevOps, Data Infrastructure and AI/ML. Prior to working with Exceptional Capital, Andrew co-founded Artisanal Ventures and was an investor at Blumberg Capital. He spent time at William Blair as an investment banker and as Director of Business Development at Crunchyroll. Andrew holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a Master’s from Boston College. He played D1 basketball in college and overseas professionally. Topics: DevOps and Data Infrastructure Investment Thesis Decision-making parallels between athletics and startup investing The Future of Developer Tools #VentureCapital #B2BSaaS #DevOps #TechInvesting

Venky Veeraraghavan is the Chief Product Officer at DataRobot. Prior to that, he was the VP of Product Management at Microsoft. As Chief Product Officer at DataRobot, Venky Veeraraghavan drives the definition and delivery of the DataRobot Enterprise AI Suite. Venky has twenty-five years of experience focusing on big data and AI as a product leader and technical consultant at top technology companies (Microsoft) and early-stage startups (Trilogy). Topics: Product Leadership in AI Companies Enterprise AI Adoption Evolution of AI/ML Platforms #EnterpriseAI #AITrends #ProductLeadership

Elizabeth Yin is a co-founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund, a pre-seed fund for software entrepreneurs. Previously, Elizabeth was a partner at 500 Startups where she invested in seed stage companies and ran the Mountain View accelerator. In a prior life, Elizabeth co-founded and ran an adtech company called LaunchBit (acq 2014). Elizabeth has a BSEE from Stanford and an MBA from MIT Sloan. Elizabeth has reviewed over 20k startup pitches from around the world in the last few years and has helped numerous portfolio founders raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Her work and writing on startup fundraising has been featured in numerous publications including TechCrunch, Forbes, Huffington Post, BetaKit, and more. Topics: The Hidden Patterns Behind Winning AI Startups The Secret Sauce Behind Successful Angel Communities Building a Modern VC Platform: Lessons from Hustle Fund #VCInsights #StartupFunding #HustleFund #AIStartups #VentureCapital

Simon is a Partner at Cathay Innovation. He leads the US investment efforts at Cathay Innovation, a global venture capital firm managing over $2.5B AUM. He focuses on software, fintech, digital healthcare, and consumer investments based in the US. Prior to joining Cathay Innovation, Simon spent four years at VMware as a Manager in the Strategy & Corporate Development team, focusing on investments, M&A, and strategy. Before joining VMware, he was at UBS in the Investment Banking division as part of the Technology group, advising on M&A and equity + debt capital raises. Simon was a UC Regent and Chancellor’s Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and holds both a B.S. in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business and a B.A. in Operations Research and Management Science. In 2020, Simon was named 40 Under 40 Rising VC Stars by Venture Capital Journal. Topics: AI Investment Landscape IPO Market & Future of Exits Evolution from AI tools to integration #VentureCapital #GlobalVC #CathayInnovation #AI

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