Venture with Grace

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

As a Wing partner, Jake’s interest and expertise centers around operationalizing AI. He is excited by the AI first transformation of businesses from infrastructure and foundation models to AI powered apps as well as tools and security software for technologists adopted in a PLG manner. Jake’s product leadership roles at Splunk and Cloudera give him an insider perspective on product-led growth and company building. He holds degrees in electrical computer engineering, computer science, and economics from Duke; a masters of systems engineering degree from University of Pennsylvania; and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Jake works with companies including Base, Cyberhaven, Human Interest, SiMa, Torii, Truera, and Vimaan. Prior to Wing, Jake was a partner at Accel until 2018, where he was the lead investor and board member in companies including Demisto, Radar, and Sumo Logic. Topics: Product-Led Growth in Enterprise Tech AI Transformation & Infrastructure Current state of AI investing - overhyped areas vs. underhyped opportunities #EnterpriseTech #AITransformation #VentureCapital #ProductLedGrowth

Rashmi Gopinath is the Co-founder & Managing Partner of BAM Corner Point. Prior to that, she served as General Partner at B Capital Group and Managing Director at M12, Microsoft’s Venture Fund. She is an experienced investing partner with a demonstrated history of investing in cutting-edge enterprise software startups as well as operating success leading business development and GTM roles for high-growth startups. Unique combination of strong technical skills, GTM acumen and venture investing in areas such as datacenter & cloud infrastructure, data & analytics, AI/ML, cybersecurity, and devops. Recognized by GrowthCap as Top 20 Software Investor for four straight years in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. Also recognized by Global Corporate Venturing in 2020 as #5 of top 50 Emerging Leaders in global CVC funds. Nominated by InformationAge and Women in IT for 2018 “Woman of the year” and “Business role model of the year”, and "Business role model of the year 2019" awards. Recognized by Forbes in an article on top female VC leaders. Topics: Enterprise Software Investment Insights Data-Driven VC AI Infrastructure Evolution #EnterpriseVC #VentureCapital #TechInvestor #WomenInVC

Sakib Jamal is a Vice President on the investment team of Crossbeam Venture Partners. Sakib was the first employee at Crossbeam and as of January 2024 has represented the firm with over 15 founders as an investor, board observer and/or director. Prior to Crossbeam, he was an investment banking analyst at J.P. Morgan’s Industrials group, and received a BSc in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. In 2023, he was named on the Crain’s New York and Forbes 30 under 30 list. Topics: Current early-stage investment landscape Networking and brand building in VC The impact of AI on traditional industries like healthcare, logistics, and finance #InvestingTrends #VentureCapital #StartupEcosystem #FinTech #ClimateTech

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