Clayton Bryan is a Partner at 500 Global. Clayton has spent time at some of the most innovative companies in Silicon Valley. He has built expansive online communities, scaled marketplace businesses, and facilitated million dollar deals. At Yahoo he worked on award winning products. Later, at Payvment, he helped a team pioneer a new set of tools that started the social commerce movement. With Diversity as a guiding principle, Clayton has spent the entirety of his career within venture capital focused on supporting underrepresented founders. In 2016, Clayton and four others launched a non-profit organization, Transparent Collective, tasked with coaching and connecting underrepresented founders with investors. Companies to have gone through Transparent Collective's program have raised tens of millions of dollars in early stage financings. Clayton has invested in over 40 companies, including Butlr, EMTECH, Public Goods, EcoCart, Printify, Silk+Sonder, and JusticeText,r. He Received a Bachelors of Arts in Political Economy from The University of California, Berkeley and his Masters of Business Administration from The Stern School of Business at New York University. Topics: Building a successful startup community Key lessons from scaling marketplace businesses Early-Stage Investment Trends Globally #VentureCapital #CommunityBuilding #500Global #StartupMentoring #FounderSuccess

James Mumma is a Founding Partner Nomad Ventures. Nomad Ventures is an early stage venture fund focused on strong network effect businesses and marketplace solutions including Fintech, peer-to-peer economy, and the transformation of archaic industries. Investments include: Alt, Autopilot, Minoan, Cameo, Lunch Payments, Ink, Zoe Financial, Returnmates, Aquifer Motion, Packsmith, Bezel, Thermal, Beacon, Stonks, and others. Topics: Lessons learned from marketplace investments Evaluates potential network effects at the earliest stages How AI is reshaping traditional service industries #VentureCapital #NetworkEffects #FintechInnovation #MarketplaceVC #IndustryDisruption James Mumma is a Founding Partner Nomad Ventures. Nomad Ventures is an early stage venture fund focused on strong network effect businesses and marketplace solutions including Fintech, peer-to-peer economy, and the transformation of archaic industries. Investments include: Alt, Autopilot, Minoan, Cameo, Lunch Payments, Ink, Zoe Financial, Returnmates, Aquifer Motion, Packsmith, Bezel, Thermal, Beacon, Stonks, and others. Topics: Lessons learned from marketplace investments Evaluates potential network effects at the earliest stages How AI is reshaping traditional service industries #VentureCapital #NetworkEffects #FintechInnovation #MarketplaceVC #IndustryDisruption

Ian Park is a Partner at Primer Sazze. Prior to joining the firm, Ian invested in startups and VC funds at KIC, one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds. He also spent time at VMG Partners and Bertram Capital identifying and reviewing investment opportunities using A.I. He started his career in consulting at BRG and McKinsey & Company. As an aspiring economist, Ian studied mathematics and economics at University of Minnesota and pursued Ph.D. in economics at Boston College where he earned a master’s degree. Recognizing the growing importance of data and A.I., he obtained a master’s degree in computer and information technology from University of Pennsylvania. Ian was selected as Venture Capital's Rising Star in 2024 by Venture Capital Journal. He also writes one of the largest VC/Startup newsletters in Korea. Topics: The future of AI-driven venture capital Evaluating early-stage companies Bridging Korean and US startup ecosystems #VentureCapital #AIinVC #StartupInvestor #KoreanVC #CrossBorderVC #TechInvestments

Aidan Madigan-Curtis is a Partner at Eclipse. As an investor, board member, public company executive and entrepreneur, Aidan’s career has centered around the innovation and transformation of critical industries. As a Partner at Eclipse, Aidan invests across core, disruptive themes in today's world including geopolitical disruption, supply chain dislocation, energy transition, manufacturing onshoring, and industrial autonomy. She sits on eight corporate boards spanning defense and industrial sectors and a broad array of technologies, including IoT, computer vision and AI, autonomy and robotics. Aidan leverages her previous experience as an executive at Samsara (NYSE “IOT”), as a manufacturing lead of the first AppleWatch, and as an investor at the world’s largest hedge fund, to underwrite, accelerate, and partner with entrepreneurs towards building scalable, high-growth, generational businesses in physical industries. Aidan is one of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women of 2023, is a co-teacher of the Stanford Technology Venture Program, and has an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a Master’s Degree from Stanford University. Topics: The intersection of technology and traditional industries The future of industrial autonomy and robotics Lessons learned from scaling hardware products #VentureCapital #TechInnovation #IndustrialAutomation #IoT #AI

Susannah is a Partner at AlleyCorp, focused on investments in a range of tech categories, with an emphasis on B2B and consumer marketplaces. She has invested in and incubated marketplaces across a diverse range of industries from global logistics to the creator economy. In addition to investing, Susannah is deeply involved with AlleyCorp’s incubation process, dedicating substantial time to supporting portfolio companies at their earliest stages. Prior to AlleyCorp, Susannah was Director of Strategy & Operations at Artsy, where she was on the leadership team for 4 years. Susannah graduated from Princeton, where she was captain of the women’s varsity rowing team. Topics: The Future of Digital Commerce & Creator Economy Differences between traditional venture capital and the incubation model The current state of auto lending innovation #VentureCapital #StartupStudio #CompanyBuilding #InvestorInsights #FutureOfVC

Jihong Kim is a venture capitalist at Samsung Ventures and has led both financial and strategic investments in software, digital media, and services. Noteworthy exits include SentinelOne (NYSE: S), Couchbase (NASDAQ: BASE), BigCommerce (NASDAQ: BIGC), Raxium (acquired by Google), ClassPass (acquired by Mindbody), Centrify (acquired by Thoma Bravo), Pluto.tv (acquired by Viacom), Fetch Robotics (acquired by Zebra Technologies), and Loom.ai (acquired by Roblox). He works closely with multiple business units across Samsung in mobile, consumer electronics and enterprise software sectors in order to identify and build strategic partnerships. Before joining Samsung Ventures, Jihong worked as a research analyst in a global long-short equity hedge fund. Prior to that, he advised enterprise clients in business strategy and execution as a management consultant at PwC. He began his career as a software engineer in Lucent Technologies and also held technical positions at early-stage tech start-ups. Jihong holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering and computer science from UC Berkeley and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Topics: Impact of AI/ML on enterprise software Due diligence process for deep tech investments Future of consumer electronics and mobile technology #CorporateVC #SamsungVentures #VentureCapital #TechInvestments #StartupLife #DeepTech

Dave Anderson is the founding partner of Beat Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm investing in companies that use AI to enhance humans in overlooked legacy industries. Early checks into Ziva Dynamics (acq. by Unity), Bipi (acq. by RBI), AEYE (NASDAQ: LIDR), Common Sense Machines, Drishti, Operant AI, Volur, Stack AI, Oxen AI, Bitpart AI, Bolo AI, Middleware, Hireguide, Treehouse, Fishtail, Clockwork, Safe, Mentorcam, Dropverse, Truewind, Athenic AI, Universal Hydrogen, Carbice, Nauto, Metawave, Realtime Robotics, May Mobility, Skip, Clubhouse, Firefly, and SoftDrive. Featured in Crain’s Detroit Business 20 in their 20s, Huffington Post, Blac Magazine, and ABC’s 20/20. Harvard MBA, Michigan Engineer. Erasmus Elsner is the founder of Sand Hill Road, which is a maker studio that builds, advises and invests in Seed/Series A startups. Partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs in infrastructure, cloud, open-source, devops and ML/AI at the earliest stages of the climb. Topics: Early-Stage Investing Trends Overlooked Industries and Applied AI Keys to Building and Scaling a Successful VC Firm #VentureCapital #AI #Fintech #InvestmentTrends #AugmentedIntelligence #CommunityBuilding

Ben Huh is the founder of Orange Fund. Orange Fund is the seed-stage venture investing partner of the Orange DAO, a community of more than 1,000 experienced tech founders working in crypto. He is also the former CEO of The Cheezburger Network, which at its peak in 2010 received 375 million views a month across its 50 sites. Topics: The intersection of AI and blockchain technology Evolution of Internet Culture Managing large online communities #CryptoVC #Web3Future #OrangeDAO #BlockchainInnovation #SeedStage

Suman Natarajan is a Principal at B Capital’s San Francisco office, where she invests in startups powering the enterprise, across domains such as cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, DevOps, data and ML/AI, and B2B SaaS. Previously, she was a Senior Vice President at Citi Ventures and an investor at Intel Capital, where she drove investments in companies such as Cribl, Tessian, Snyk, Styra, Nylas, Transmit Security, Immersive Labs, Netskope, Verodin (acq. by FireEye), and Kenna Security (acq. by Cisco). Prior to becoming an investor, Suman worked in product, product marketing, and strategy roles on Intel’s wearables and emerging market teams, on Symantec’s enterprise mobile security group, and at Strata Decision, a health analytics startup. She started her career in investment banking at JP Morgan. Suman received her MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and her BA in Economics and South Asian Studies from the University of Chicago. An avid traveler and novice scuba diver, Suman is also passionate about dance and enjoys classes in modern dance and classical Indian styles. Topics: The GPU Cloud Landscape Through an Investor's Lens From Growth At All Costs to Strategic Scaling Dev Tools as the Foundation of Modern Software #GPUCloud #EnterpriseAI #TechInfrastructure #NVIDIA #CloudComputing #AIInfrastructure

John Frankel is a Partner at ff Venture Capital. He is passionate about working with founders that are building the big businesses of tomorrow. He founded ff Venture Capital in 2008 to work with founders who share this vision, which has since funded over 150 seed and early-stage companies that have in turn created thousands of jobs and impacted the lives of millions. While ff Venture Capital’s investments span a number of industries, John is currently fascinated by applied artificial intelligence, encompassing drones, robotics, and financial services technology. Over the years, John has served on the boards of over sixty companies as well as the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, to help in further fostering the New York City ecosystem. Topics: Lessons learned from serving on the boards of over sixty companies The challenges and opportunities in seed and early-stage investing Challenges and advantages of managing a geographically diverse investment portfolio #VentureCapital #GlobalInvesting #StartupEcosystem #TechInnovation #AITrends