Venture with Grace

Evan Stites-Clayton is a General Partner at HF0, a venture fund and residency program built for repeat technical founders launching AI-native startups. He was previously the co-founder and CTO of Teespring, where he helped scale the platform to over $1B in sales, empowering millions of creators and raising $65M from top-tier firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures. Recognized on Forbes 30 Under 30, Evan brings a rare blend of deep technical expertise and operator experience. Now as an investor, he focuses on helping technical builders navigate product, growth, and fundraising from day zero.Topics:From Zero to $1B: Lessons in Scaling Teams, Product, and InfrastructureFinding Product-Market Fit: Tactics That Actually Work in the Early DaysFrom Technical Founder to VC: How to Spot and Support High-Conviction Builders#Startups #Hypergrowth #ProductMarketFit #VentureCapital #AI

Rashida Hodge is Corporate Vice President of Azure Data & AI Customer Success at Microsoft, leading global efforts to scale AI-driven enterprise transformation and customer value. A 20-year veteran of IBM, she served as Global VP in Watson AI, launching commercial partnerships with firms like Salesforce and Workday. Today she brings that expertise to the board room as a director at Sonatype and Regal Rexnord, and supports deep‑tech startups as a Limited Partner at Neotribe and Operator Collective—all backed by an Industrial Engineering degree (BS/MS, NC State) and an MBA from Duke Fuqua School of Business.Topics: Enterprise AI rollouts: from pilot to global scaleStrategic AI partnerships: startups & tech giantsAI-executives shaping enterprise board strategy#EnterpriseAI#CustomerSuccess#AILeadership#TechBoards#AIStartups

Conrad Shang is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Ensemble VC. ~~~~~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 Verivend.com and see how easy it can be.~~~~~Ensemble VC is an early-stage firm pioneering a data-driven, product-first approach to venture investing. Backed by top LPs and born from scrappy, technical roots in Austin, Ensemble’s team—half of whom are data scientists—built Unity, a proprietary AI platform that helps source, select, and scale startups with precision. Conrad’s career spans product roles at Yammer (acquired by Microsoft for $1B), investing at Bain Capital Ventures, and managing a $4B portfolio at UTIMCO. He’s a Kauffman Fellow who has backed 7 unicorns, including Zoom, Carta, and Groww.Topics: AI Copilot for VCs: Inside Ensemble’s Unity PlatformHow Data Science is Changing Startup InvestingFrom Yammer to Zoom: Lessons from 7 Unicorn Bets#VentureCapital #AIinVC #StartupInvesting #FounderSupport #DataDrivenVC

Bala Sathiamurthy is the former Chief Information Security Officer at Atlassian, where he led global cybersecurity strategy and built scalable security infrastructure for products like Jira and Confluence. Previously, he served as CISO and VP of Engineering at NerdWallet, overseeing security, infrastructure, and data engineering functions. With over 25 years of experience, Bala has held senior roles at companies like Yahoo!, Microsoft, Foursquare, and Jive Software, and currently serves as an advisor to several cybersecurity startups. He is widely respected for building strong security cultures, navigating incident response, and aligning engineering with enterprise-grade security at scale.Chris Hughes is the CEO and Co-Founder of Aquia, a cybersecurity and digital transformation consultancy serving federal and defense agencies. A U.S. Air Force veteran, Chris previously served as a Cyber Innovation Fellow at CISA (the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency), where he focused on public-private efforts to secure the software supply chain. He is the author of Software Transparency and Effective Vulnerability Management, host of the Resilient Cyber podcast and Substack, and an adjunct cybersecurity professor. Chris has led security architecture, engineering, and governance efforts across government and private sectors, and actively advises security startups on modern DevSecOps practices and regulatory readiness.Topics: What Makes a World-Class CISOWhat Every VC and Founder Should Know About Security The Art of Scaling Engineering and Security Teams Together#StartupSecurity#SaaSLeadership#DevSecOps#CISOInsights#EnterpriseGrowth

Brent Bellm is the former CEO and Board Chairman of BigCommerce, where he led the company from mid-market roots to a Nasdaq-listed leader in open SaaS and composable commerce. From 2015 to 2024, he scaled ARR from $45M to $346M, delivered 17 straight quarters of revenue beats, and helped land global enterprise customers like Nestlé, Sony, and NVIDIA. Before BigCommerce, he led HomeAway through its IPO and tripled revenue as CEO of PayPal Europe. With experience at McKinsey, a Stanford BA, and a Harvard MBA, Brent brings deep insight into scaling platforms, leading through hypergrowth, and navigating global markets.Topics: How to scale a SaaS business to $300M+ ARR without burning out your teamWhat every founder should know about choosing the right product architectureLessons from leading three global companies through IPOs and rapid growth#SaaSLeadership #StartupGrowth #EcommerceStrategy #OpenSaaS #ComposableCommerce #VCInsights #FounderAdvice #ScalingTech #IPOReady

Mark Jacobstein is General Partner at Near Horizon, a hands‑on venture studio in Palo Alto that co-founds and builds AI and health-tech startups from day zero. Drawing from over 30 years of entrepreneurial experience founding and scaling companies like Small World Sports (the first online fantasy platform), Digital Chocolate, iSkoot, Guardant Health (led efforts raising over $500 million pre-IPO), Immunai, and Jimini Health, he now combines operational expertise with capital to partner deeply with founders. Mark has been integral to building 11 companies, raising over $1.3 billion, and securing eight exits—including multiple acquisitions and IPOs—positioning him uniquely to guide transformative technology ventures.Topics: How to co-found companies as a VC: inside the venture studio modelFrom raising $500M+ to backing LLM health startups: fundraising lessons across decadesWhy AI and mental health is one of the biggest (and hardest) opportunities in tech#AIHealthcare #StartupFundraising #VentureStudios #LLM #MentalHealthTech #CompanyBuilding #VCPlaybook #HealthTechInnovation #FounderAdvice

Laura Hamilton is an Investor at Notable Capital (formerly GGV Capital).~~~~~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 Verivend.com and see how easy it can be.~~~~~She leads early-stage investments in AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, and developer tools. Based in New York, Laura partners closely with technical founding teams building critical infrastructure for the enterprise, with portfolio companies including Patronus and Token Security. She is deeply engaged in the cybersecurity ecosystem and community building across AI, helping spearhead Notable’s Rising in Cyber initiative—an annual industry-vetted list developed with input from over 150 CISOs and, this year, in collaboration with Morgan Stanley. Prior to joining Notable, Laura held roles in private equity and consulting, and co-founded the FemBuild Collective, a community supporting female engineers and technical founders.Topics: Backing technical founders in cybersecurity and AI infraWhat it takes to build defensible infrastructure in the AI eraInside “Rising in Cyber 2025”#VentureCapital #Cybersecurity #AIInfrastructure #DeveloperTools

Henry Schuck is the founder and CEO of ZoomInfo, (NASDAQ:GTM) a Go-To-Market Intelligence Solution for more than 35,000 companies worldwide. The ZoomInfo platform empowers business-to-business sales, marketing, and recruiting professionals to hit their number by pairing best-in-class technology with unrivaled data coverage, accuracy, and depth of company and contact information. With integrations embedded into workflows and technology stacks, including the leading CRM, Sales Engagement, Marketing Automation, and Talent Management applications, ZoomInfo drives more predictable, accelerated, and sustainable growth for its customers. ZoomInfo emphasizes GDPR and CCPA compliance.Topics: From bootstrapped founder to IPOScaling through strategic acquisitionsLeading and growing a global SaaS company#VentureCapital #SaaS #StartupLeadership #B2BTech #Entrepreneurship

Aaron Perman is a Partner at S3 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 Verivend.com and see how easy it can be.~~~~~He works closely with Buildforce, HYAS, Hydrolix, Liquibase, Nexus, Plural, Riscosity, Stellar, Sudozi, and Upkey. He previously worked with Levelset (acquired by Procore), Liveoak Technologies (acquired by Docusign), as well as served on the boards of Invodo (acquired by CoCreativ) and Tango Health (acquired by Benefitfocus). Prior to joining S3, Aaron invested in small-cap publicly traded companies at Western Standard, a long/short equity hedge fund. Earlier in his career, Aaron spent time in the corporate strategy group at Southern California Edison and started a successful small business liquidating computer hardware. He received his BS in International Business from the University of Southern California.Topics: Navigating the Texas Startup EcosystemFrom Seed to Scale: Strategies for Sustainable GrowthThe Evolution of B2B Software and Infrastructure Tooling#VentureCapital #Startups #TexasTech #EarlyStageInvesting #ScalingStartups

Ben Kus is the Chief Technology Officer at Box, where he oversees the company’s technology vision and leads global engineering and product teams. He joined Box in 2015 through its acquisition of Subspace, a startup he co-founded focused on enterprise security. Prior to that, he held leadership roles at IBM and BigFix, where he specialized in mobile and endpoint security. At Box, Ben has played a pivotal role in transforming the company’s product into an AI-powered, secure content cloud platform trusted by 100,000+ organizations. He holds a degree in Computer Science from UC Berkeley.Topics:Scaling enterprise AI securely and responsiblyLessons from startup founder to public company CTOBuilding compliant AI platforms for Fortune 500 customers#EnterpriseAI #StartupToScale #TechLeadership #SecureAI #SaaSInnovation #AICompliance