Venture with Grace

Colton Dempsey is a Partner at Next47. Colton joined Next47 in 2018 and is a Partner on the Palo Alto investment team. He helped lead the firm’s investments in Halcyon and Harmonic Security, Noname Security, Armorblox, DataGrail, Brilliant, Software.com, and Pando, among others. His primary areas of focus are IT infrastructure, cybersecurity, robotics, and connected devices. Colton’s interest in B2B tech began prior to Next47 while working on M&A and IPO transactions at Morgan Stanley’s Technology Group in New York. He graduated from Stanford with a BSc in Symbolic Systems, an interdisciplinary major focused on cognitive science.Topics: Evolution of IT Infrastructure InvestmentsCybersecurity Investment Thesis B2B SaaS Valuation Trends#VentureCapital #Next47 #CybersecurityInvesting #B2BTech #ITInfrastructure

Daniel Suh is a Principal at Gold House Ventures. Gold House Ventures invests sector-agnostic in industry-shifting startups, working with the best-in-class, high-growth companies to accelerate their success. We welcome founders and investors advancing Asian Pacific culture and heritage.Topics: Identifying "industry-shifting" startupsBuilding authentic community around a venture fundCross-cultural investment strategies #GoldHouseVC #VC #StartupFunding #InnovationCapital

Gaurav Bhaya is a VP & GM at Google. He is a technologist with almost 20 years of experience in building products from early stage ideas to those used by billions of people around the world. Worked in a wide variety of roles ranging from Search Products, Lead Generation, Advertising and Voice / Chat bot on Google Assistant. A keen sense of product / business understanding with the depth of engineering challenges in system design, user experience and AI/ML.Currently, he is enabling advertising to adapt to a privacy-centric future with regulatory changes (GDPR, CCPA, ePrivacy, etc.), platform changes (Apple ATT, Privacy Sandbox, etc.), and consumer expectations around protecting and safeguarding data — while meeting the growing advertiser demand for understanding budget allocation (MMMs), optimization (MTAs), and analytical insights. He has built engineering teams from scratch as well as managed scaled organizations of over a thousand individuals across product and engineering teams.Topics: Building and Scaling High-Impact Product and Engineering TeamsAI and Machine Learning in Modern Marketing AnalyticsThe Evolving Role of Data in Marketing#AdTech #AIinMarketing #DigitalAdvertising #Google #MarketingAnalytics

Kevin Jiang is the Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer at Mangusta Capital, a venture firm backing industry-specific AI startups at the application layer to drive real-world transformation. Focused on early to growth-stage companies across key sectors, the firm leverages a disciplined approach and global partnerships to support founders creating impactful, scalable technologies that optimize workflows and unlock efficiencies.Prior to starting Mangusta Capital, Kevin was part of the founding investment team at Softbank Vision Fund, leading the coverage of Software and Logistics growth equity investments in North America. Over a decade at Softbank, Kevin led the firm’s investments across marquee deals including Flexport, Shipbob, and Wiz among others, generating significant returns for investors and serving on boards to advise both strategic and financial decisions for portfolio companies including M&A and IPO considerations.Kevin has been investing for the span of his career across asset classes, bringing a uniquely disciplined financial and operational lens to venture capital investing. He was previously part of the Private Equity team at Apollo Global Management and Public Markets team at Soros Fund Management covering Technology, Media and Telecom. Kevin started his career at Goldman Sachs in the Investment Banking Division and holds an A.B. in Economics from Harvard.Topics: The evolution of AI application-layer investingThe global investment thesisInvesting in the next generation of consumer AI#VentureCapital #AIStartups #GrowthEquity #TechInnovation #FutureOfAI

Roseanne Wincek is the Co-Founder & Managing Director of Renegade Partners. Roseanne is a venture capitalist, early-stage startup founder and operator, scientist, and co-founder of Renegade Partners. In more than a decade in venture, she has gravitated toward pioneering founders tackling big, bold problems or taking on the status quo. Prior to starting Renegade with Renata Quintini in 2020, Roseanne helped high-traction companies scale as a Partner at the later-stage venture firm, IVP. She invested in both enterprise and consumer companies, including Glossier, Compass (COMP), Wise (LSE:WISE), Looker (Acquired by Google), Motive, and MasterClass, where she continues to serve on the board. Prior to her tenure at IVP, she served as a Principal at Canaan Partners, investing in companies such as MetaCloud (acquired by CSCO), Unifi Software (acquired by Boomi/Dell), and Turo. Roseanne was a PhD candidate in Biophysics at UC Berkeley, where she also earned her MA (Biophysics) and BS (Chemistry) degrees. She earned her MBA from Stanford University. Her career in technology started when she dropped out of her PhD to co-found music technology startup, imthemusic, building apps on the early Facebook platform. She also served as product manager at the life science data platform, NextBio (acquired by Ilumina). Topics: Transition from Science to VentureSourcing and Supporting Bold FoundersThe Role of Data and AI in VC#VentureCapital #Startups #TechInvesting #Entrepreneurship

Jasper Zhang is the founder of Hyperbolic. Hyperbolic is building the leading open-access AI cloud. Access inference and compute at a fraction of the cost, and build AI applications without relying on centralized infrastructures.Topics: Open-Access AI CloudThe Future of AI InfrastructureBuilding a Collaborative AI Ecosystem#AICloud #OpenAccessAI #DecentralizedCompute #Hyperbolic

Mercedes Bent is a Venture Partner at Lightspeed. Mercedes’ path to VC is a true convergence of her life experiences — a childhood surrounded by inventors, finance roles at the Federal Reserve and Goldman Sachs, managing P&Ls at two consumer startups (including growing one from $2 to $100M in revenue in 4 years), founding two startups of her own, and her long-term goal of empowering communities she cares about. She joined Lightspeed in 2019 and has led a number of investments in the LATAM region and invests in early stage consumer fintech companies that are unlocking wealth creation for underserved individuals and regions.Topics: Evolution of Consumer Fintech Investment StrategiesThe Role of AI and PersonalizationInvesting in LATAM and Multicultural Markets#ConsumerFintech #VentureCapital #FintechInvesting #LATAMFintech

Christine Yen is the Co-founder and CEO of Honeycomb.io. Honeycomb is the observability platform for teams who manage software that matters. Before founding Honeycomb, she built analytics products at Parse/Facebook, and loved writing software to separate signal from noise.Topics:Building a category-defining product in the observability spaceThe evolution of developer experience and why it matters to business outcomesData-driven decision making #ObservabilityLeadership #TechFounderJourney #DataDrivenDecisions #EngineeringToExecutive

Mo Al Adham is the founder and CEO of Frec. Frec was founded in 2021 and is based out of San Francisco. They're funded by a long list of incredible investors from companies like Google, Meta, Brex, and more. Their biggest backer is Greylock. Frec has two subsidiaries: one is an SEC registered investment adviser and the other is an SEC registered broker dealer and FINRA member. Assets are housed at Apex Clearing House. Mo is a serial entrepreneur. Before Frec, he was the first advisor of Instacart, founder of Twitvid, and a product leader at Twitter.Topics: Building in Fintech During Market VolatilityData-Driven Decision Making at an Early-Stage FintechProduct-Market Fit in Fintech#FrecFintech #StartupJourney #VCPodcast #FinancialInnovation

Maitree Mervana Parekh is an early & growth stage investor @ Acrew Capital. Maitree is a student of consumer behavior shifts and a creative. She leads investments across Health and Fintech, working closely with the firm’s investments in Cometa, Future Family, Banked, ShopShops, Creative Juice, among other unannounced companies.Prior to Acrew, Maitree was an investor at Cerity Partners Ventures (fka Touchdown Ventures), where she helped launch and manage venture capital programs on behalf of large corporations, including T-Mobile. She started her career as an investment banker at Citigroup. Maitree was named Forbes 30 under 30, Venture Capital in 2022 and is a board member at NextGen and an active member of All Raise, helping to launch the All Raise Cohort Program fostering community and mentorship for women early in their venture capital careers. Maitree graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a BA in Business Economics.Topics: Decoding Consumer Behavior in Health TechFintech Innovation at the Intersection of Consumer NeedsEvolution of fintech investments during economic uncertainty#VentureCapital #HealthTech #Fintech #StartupInvesting