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

Omar Shaya is the founder of MultiOn, an AI company that develops autonomous agents. Prior to this, he led product management for Core Product Ranking at Meta and worked on product management at the Microsoft Search, Assistant, and Intelligence (MSAI) organization. Additionally, Omar has worked as a product manager at Crealytics and LiquidM, two successful startups where he helped incubate and develop AI-based marketing automation platforms. Omar holds an MS in Management from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He also has a Computer Science background, holding BS and MS degrees with a focus on AI from Göttingen University in Germany. He holds several patents in AI applications. Besides his professional life, Omar is passionate about classical music and is a skilled classical and flamenco guitarist. He is committed to supporting Syrian refugees through education and career development programs and has worked with Jusoor, a US-based non-profit founded by Syrian expats. Topics: Key trends and challenges in the development of autonomous AI agents The potential impact of autonomous agents on various industries Strategies for personalizing AI agents for individual customers #AIEntrepreneur #AutonomousAgents #TechInnovation #ProductManagement #PersonalizedAI

Nick Adams is the co founder of Quill. Quill is a local meeting tool designed to free you to be present in meetings, and get work done fast afterward. Whether you're capturing notes from startup pitches, documenting founder updates, or organizing insights from multiple discussions, Quill makes post conversational work a breeze. With customizable templates for various roles and industries, Quill functions like a Notion for conversations, enabling users to effortlessly record, organize, and follow up on meeting content. Its powerful toolkit includes selective sharing options, automations, and deep integrations with tools like Notion and Slack. Embracing a local-first approach for enhanced privacy and user control, Quill has gained the trust of leading venture capital firms such as Lerer Hippeau and 500 Startups, making it an essential tool for professionals looking to streamline their meeting workflows and boost productivity. Prior to founding Quill, Nick was Managing Director at AME Cloud Ventures from its inception, taking thousands of meetings and investing in hundreds of startups including Zoom, where he sat on the board until IPO. Topics: Essential Components of Effective Meeting Notes The Impact of AI on the Future of Workplace Communications The Future of Meetings #MeetingNotes #AIatWork #FutureOfWork #ProductivityHacks #WorkplaceInnovation

Mark Kraynak is a Founding Partner at Acrew Capital. 🚀 This episode is brought to you by Quill Meetings. 🚀 Mark Kraynak is a technology executive, company builder and erstwhile poet/engineer. Before co-founding Acrew, Mark joined Aspect Ventures as Entrepreneur in Residence and converted to a full time investor at the end of 2017. Prior to joining Aspect, Mark spent nearly 13 years at Imperva, where he held a number of marketing, product, corporate development and strategy roles. Mark has led or co-led investments in Aembit, At-Bay, Aqua Security, Casa, CipherTrace, Coin Metrics, Edge Impulse, Nextdata, Nokod Security, Protect AI, Radiant Security, and Silverfort in the early stage and Aqua Security, Cato Networks, Exabeam and Vanta in the later stage. He has also been an advisor to Exabeam, Indegy, Kloudless, Trustar, and Aqua Security. Topics: Evolving Market Dynamics in Cybersecurity Opportunities for Early-Stage Security Companies Building Category-Defining Security Companies #CyberSecurity #MarketTrends #TechIPO #AIinSecurity #CloudNative 🚀 Today’s sponsor is Quill Meetings, the private AI meeting client that I use daily to prepare for conversations and follow-up. Whether you’re learning about a founder’s latest pivot during a coffee chat, capturing partner meeting decisions, or organizing portfolio updates from a dozen conversations, Quill thrives on the messiness of work and enables you to be your most human and creative self in every conversation. Quill is for more than just VCs with customizeable templates for dozens of roles, like Notion for conversations. Quill provides a powerful toolkit to make sure everything is organized and actionable. Share selectively, set next steps on autopilot, or keep things private for your own reference. Plus, with deep integrations into tools like Notion or Asana, managing the complexities of startup life has never been easier. Quill’s local-first approach means no bots, no cloud data—just you in control. Trusted by leading investors like Lerer Hippeau, 500 Startups, and Mosaic Ventures, Quill is designed to take your venture work to the next level. Learn more at quillmeetings.com.

Chris Picardo is a Partner at Madrona. Chris joined Madrona in 2017. As a partner on the investment team, Chris focuses on identifying, evaluating, and leading new investment opportunities and working closely with existing companies. Chris helps lead Madrona’s investments in companies innovating around the intersection of life and computer science through combining novel wet lab science with cutting-edge machine learning. He also helps lead investing activities in consumer technology and commerce, marketplaces, and Web3, focusing on how new technological innovations can create new consumer experiences and interactions with the digital world. Topics: Evolution of the "Intersections of Innovation" strategy Innovation and trends in personalized medicine and healthcare The potential impact of ML-driven approaches on the pharmaceutical industry #VentureCapital #LifeSciences #AI #BioTech #IntersectionsOfInnovation

Arvind Jain is the Co-founder and CEO of Glean ($4.6 Billion valued), the Work AI platform connected to all your data. 🚀 This episode is brought to you by Quill Meetings. 🚀 Find, create, and automate anything. Prior to Glean, Arvind co-founded and led R&D at Rubrik, one the fastest growing companies in cloud data management. Arvind also spent over a decade at Google as a distinguished engineer, where he led teams in Google’s Search, Maps, and YouTube products. Earlier in his career, Arvind held leadership positions at Akamai and Microsoft. He earned his BTech in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and his Masters in Computer Science from the University of Washington. Topics: The evolution of AI in the workplace Lessons from scaling multiple startups Building a successful AI company #AIStartup #TechInnovation #FutureOfWork #EnterpriseAI #WorkplaceProductivity __________________ 🚀 Today’s sponsor is Quill Meetings, the private AI meeting client that I use daily to prepare for conversations and follow-up. Whether you’re learning about a founder’s latest pivot during a coffee chat, capturing partner meeting decisions, or organizing portfolio updates from a dozen conversations, Quill thrives on the messiness of work and enables you to be your most human and creative self in every conversation. Quill is for more than just VCs with customizeable templates for dozens of roles, like Notion for conversations. Quill provides a powerful toolkit to make sure everything is organized and actionable. Share selectively, set next steps on autopilot, or keep things private for your own reference. Plus, with deep integrations into tools like Notion or Asana, managing the complexities of startup life has never been easier. Quill’s local-first approach means no bots, no cloud data—just you in control. Trusted by leading investors like Lerer Hippeau, 500 Startups, and Mosaic Ventures, Quill is designed to take your venture work to the next level. Learn more at quillmeetings.com.

Sumit Chauhan is the Corporate Vice President of Office Product Group at Microsoft. 🚀 This episode is brought to you by Quill Meetings. 🚀 She heads up a wide portfolio of Microsoft 365 experiences, guiding product, design, and engineering teams for both M365 Copilot and M365’s flagship applications and creator tools. Her portfolio includes M365 Copilot, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Designer as well as Microsoft 365’s video solutions. She and her team are working to evolve the way we accomplish modern productivity across our lives, with a mission to create the next generation of authoring and storytelling experiences powered by new and powerful AI services. Prior to this, Sumit led the Office Engineering team. Her multi-disciplinary team was responsible for driving radical improvements in engineering workflow. Under her leadership, the Office team revolutionized its engineering methodology, moving from three-year cycles to continuous engineering with monthly "evergreen" releases. She also drove significant improvement on the core infrastructure for legacy engineering systems. Since joining Microsoft in 1996, Sumit has held numerous engineering leadership roles and is recognized for her technical acumen and product leadership. Earlier in her career, Sumit focused on development in Excel and led the Access product through several releases. In May 2021, Sumit was recognized by Forbes in the magazine’s 30 Inspirational Women series. She is an avid supporter and board member of Pratham Seattle – Pratham is an innovative learning organization created to improve the quality of education in India. Topics: Integrating AI into everyday work Building a culture of innovation within large, established organizations Developing a successful career at an iconic tech company #TechLeadership #AI4Productivity #WomenInTech #MicrosoftInnovation #CareerGrowth __________________ 🚀 Today’s sponsor is Quill Meetings, the private AI meeting client that I use daily to prepare for conversations and follow-up. Whether you’re learning about a founder’s latest pivot during a coffee chat, capturing partner meeting decisions, or organizing portfolio updates from a dozen conversations, Quill thrives on the messiness of work and enables you to be your most human and creative self in every conversation. Quill is for more than just VCs with customizeable templates for dozens of roles, like Notion for conversations. Quill provides a powerful toolkit to make sure everything is organized and actionable. Share selectively, set next steps on autopilot, or keep things private for your own reference. Plus, with deep integrations into tools like Notion or Asana, managing the complexities of startup life has never been easier. Quill’s local-first approach means no bots, no cloud data—just you in control. Trusted by leading investors like Lerer Hippeau, 500 Startups, and Mosaic Ventures, Quill is designed to take your venture work to the next level. Learn more at quillmeetings.com.

Scott Walbrun is a venture capital investor at BMW i Ventures, BMW's independent VC fund, where he focuses on investments targeting the future of mobility, energy, supply chain, and artificial intelligence. In addition to this role, he provides workshops and coaching to hundreds of startups each year through various accelerator/incubator programs. Prior to joining BMW i Ventures, he provided M&A and capital markets advisory to technology companies and investors as a member of Jefferies' Technology Investment Banking team. He joined Jefferies after completing his MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. While completing his MBA, he worked at Kinzie Capital Partners evaluating private equity investments, as well as at the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation supporting the commercialization of science-based and deep tech companies. Topics: Intersection of AI and automotive technology The future of mobility Deep tech commercialization #VentureCapital #MobilityTech #BMWiVentures #AIinAutomotive #StartupCoaching

Amin Shaykho is the CEO of Kadama, social media star, and TED talk speaker honored on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. Shaykho is a former senior software engineer at Apple on teams like iMessage and Health. Shaykho raised $1.7M for Kadama and grew it to 2M+ users, 2.5M+ followers and 1B+ views on social media, and reached a peak App Store ranking of #2 in education. Shaykho has over 2M+ followers across his personal Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Snapchat. Topics: The future of edtech, building a successful edtech startup Startup marketing strategies leveraging social media platforms Insights on viral content creation across different platforms (TikTok, Instagram, etc.) #TechEntrepreneur #EdTechInnovation #SocialMediaInfluencer #Forbes30Under30 #AppleAlumni

Elana Gold is a partner at Red Beard Ventures (RBV), a pioneering Web3 fund with over $25M in capital, investing in blockchain consumer apps, infrastructure, gaming, metaverse, and DeFi, both in equity and tokens. She leads the RBV Syndicate, which invests in startups at any stage and sector, with over 3,900 LPs, 210+ company investments, and over $50M deployed. An advocate for women in investing, she founded The Girls Table, a platform (for men and women) boosting entrepreneurs, creators, and investors through her podcast, Newsletter, and IRL events. Her efforts have brought over 20,000 individuals into the investing space. Her work has earned speaking roles at events like VeeCon, NFT NYC, NFT LA, and Consensus. She has received Forbes 30 Under 30 and Business Insider's Rising Stars of VCs recognition. As a CPA in New York, she combines financial acumen with a passion for innovative tech and community building. Topics: Building and managing a successful syndicate Key factors in evaluating early-stage blockchain and crypto startups Predictions for the next wave of innovation coming out of LA #LATech #SiliconBeach #StartupLA #TechEcosystem #VentureCapital