Ryo Umezawa is a Partner leading Antler’s expansion into Japan. Prior to Antler, Ryo was a Principal at East Ventures, Japan, an early stage venture capital firm. As a serial entrepreneur, Ryo founded two companies, including AllCoupon Japan (acquired), and was Japan’s country manager for companies such as Tinder, Homeaway (Expedia Group) and Hailo. Ryo spent 10 years in the Philippines prior to studying International Business and Economics at Sophia University in Tokyo. Ryo has been selected as...
Jul 31, 2023•26 min•Season 4Ep. 12
Faisal is a Pakistani-American entrepreneur and investor. He is the Founder & General Partner of Zayn Venture Capital (Formally Zayn Capital), a leading US & Cayman domiciled venture capital fund, investing in early-stage tech ventures in Pakistan. He is considered to be one of the most prolific investors with the most number of notable investment calls in Pakistan. His track record includes: Haball, NayaPay, PostEX, Bookme.pk, Abhi Finance, AdalFi, Bazaar-tech, KTrade, SnappRetail, Laam...
Jul 17, 2023•28 min•Season 4Ep. 11
Dennis currently serves as Investment Director at Zeon Ventures, a newly-formed, early stage venture capital firm investing across materials, sustainability, climate and health. Zeon Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of Zeon Corporation, a global leader in elastomers, polymers, and specialty chemicals. Prior to joining Zeon, Dennis was at Honda for close to a decade spearheading the company's corporate venturing and open innovation activities. While at Honda, Dennis co-founded Honda ...
Jun 20, 2023•21 min•Season 4Ep. 10
Ben Harburg is a Managing Partner at MSA Capital, a global investment firm with over $2 billion in assets under management. Mr Harburg also leads MSA Novo, the emerging markets focused franchise of MSA. Ben has significant investment and operations experience in the Greater China, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. He sits on Boards of Directors of various private and public companies, as well as those of foundations such as the National Committee on US China...
May 22, 2023•59 min•Season 4Ep. 9
Mike Jarmuz… or Muzz… is a General Partner at Lightning⚡️Ventures and is focused on investing in Bitcoin companies. His goal is to evangelize and demystify early-stage investing to plebs and whales alike. He is super passionate about educating founders and operators on strategies to fund their projects and believes everyone should invest in technology companies (not just the suits) and that investing in Bitcoin companies is possibly the best thing someone can do to complement their HODL position...
Mar 13, 2023•30 min•Season 4Ep. 8
Former investment banker (@ SCB) turned CorpDev (@ RedMart - acq) turned founder & CEO (@ Eatsy) and VP, Growth & Ops (@ CoinMarketCap - acq). Shaun most recently led Spartan Labs, a $100M Web3 venture-building studio. He is excited about solving growth and strategy challenges while building high-performing teams. He has operated through almost every stage: from founding, seed, series A all the way through acquisition - from idea to tens of millions in revenue. Furthermore, Shaun is an a...
Feb 20, 2023•28 min•Season 4Ep. 7
Dave joined Facebook in 2007, and worked on Product and Operations at Facebook until 2017. While there, he learned from world class builders, thinkers, and operators how to scale technologies and businesses to billions of users.More recently, he was the CEO of Wavechat, a social audio company. After Wavechat, he was a fellow in the On Deck Angel Investing and On Deck Investing fellowships, where he refined his skills in the public and private markets. Website: https://davegoldblatt.com/ LinkedIn...
Jan 15, 2023•44 min•Season 4Ep. 6
Jiho built his career working with South Korean tech giant SK Planet and ecommerce unicorn Coupang as lead product manager. Jiho is also well connected to Silicon Valley becoming the first Korean to be accepted into the 500 Startups accelerator program in 2010 and went on to co-found Soomgo, a Y-Combinator portfolio company(#153 of top YC portfolio companies) recently valued at over $500m. Jiho’s most recent venture was blockchain startup BxB which was acquired by the world's largest cryptocurre...
Dec 18, 2022•56 min•Season 4Ep. 5
Adrian Lai is the founder of Newman Capital, a principal investment firm focused on private equity and venture capital investment with significant presence in Web3. Newman is an investor in influential companies such as Reddit, Epic Games, SpaceX, Dapper Labs & Kraken. It has also invested in Web3 funds such as Bitkraft, Shima Capital, Republic and Metaweb. Newman is also actively investing in early-stage Web3 startups with 20+ portfolios. Adrian previously served as the co-founder of Liquef...
Nov 28, 2022•30 min•Season 4Ep. 4
Rak is a Principal at Bain Capital Ventures, which manages over $6b and was an early investor in companies like LinkedIn, Docusign, Docker, and Redis Labs. Rak leads early-stage investments in cybersecurity and developer infrastructure companies. Before investing, he was a product manager at Atlassian, where he led the identity management tool Atlassian Access. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rakgarg/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/rak_garg
Nov 07, 2022•31 min•Season 4Ep. 3
Venture veteran turned crypto enthusiast, Allen has participated in the making of over a dozen renowned TMT unicorns, start-ups and blockchain projects across the globe since 2012 and is an investor in 50+ startups globally, including a dozen unicorns till date. As a VC, he has invested $100m across frontier technologies, ranging from autonomous driving, health-tech, fin-tech to blockchain. As an operator, he has co-founded, scaled, spun-off, merged, sold multiple award-winning companies. As an ...
Oct 09, 2022•37 min•Season 4Ep. 2
David Siegel is the CEO of Meetup, the largest platform for finding and building local communities. He has 25 years of experience as a technology and digital media executive leading organizations through innovative product development, rapid revenue growth, and digital traffic acceleration. Prior to joining Meetup, David was CEO of Investopedia and, before that, President of Seeking Alpha. David holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics & Economics and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania. He...
Sep 19, 2022•38 min•Season 4Ep. 1
Austin is CEO of Pacaso and co-founded the company to make the dream of second home ownership a reality for more people after experiencing the profound effect it had on his own life. Pacaso is Austin’s second startup. In 2009, he founded dotloop in his hometown of Cincinnati, a company that created software to seamlessly manage real estate transactions. Zillow acquired dotloop in 2015, and Austin continued to run dotloop as a Zillow executive until 2018. Austin started selling real estate at the...
Aug 28, 2022•30 min•Season 3Ep. 17
Daphne is the Co-Founder and CEO of Dedoco– a Digital Document Management-as-a-Service that focuses on protecting data privacy and document security for companies, leveraging on blockchain technology. Set up in 2020, Dedocois now transacting thousands of documents every month across Government, Banks, FIs, Professional Services, Real Estate, Tech platforms. The company is also ISO-certified and IMDA-accredited for Singapore government procurement. Globally, they have offices and teams in US, Aus...
Aug 07, 2022•26 min•Season 3Ep. 16
Olivier Dang is the Global Chief Operating Officer for the Wholesale Digital Office of Nomura. He supports the development and implementation of the digital strategy of Nomura’s Wholesale business. Olivier has been at Nomura since 2010 and held various roles in Corporate Strategy and Business Management. Prior to this, he was a Management Consultant at McKinsey in London and he started his career as an entrepreneur building a mobile internet company in France. He holds a MSc in Telecommunication...
Jul 24, 2022•17 min•Season 3Ep. 15
Hassan Ahmed is an experienced operator and investor in web3 and fintech. He is currently the Regional Director of Southeast Asia at Coinbase, the largest crypto platform in theworld. Prior to this, Hassan served a dual role at GoTo Group as Chief Executive Officer of Coins.ph , the leading crypto brokerage in the Philippines, and Head of Strategy for Gopay in Indonesia. Prior to moving to Singapore, Hassan was based in New York as Director of Finance & Operations at eToro USA, where he was ...
Jul 03, 2022•47 min•Season 3Ep. 14
Laura Gaviria Halaby is a scale-up and business development expert with entrepreneurial background and ample experience in leadership roles in venture capital and tech. Her current role as Operating Lead for the US$8 billion SoftBank Latin America Funds focuses on delivering operation support to the portfolio companies to accelerate their growth. She also leads scalable knowledge programs for SoftBank such as the SoftBank Group Operator School (SBOS), which has upskilled over 8000 professionals ...
Jun 13, 2022•35 min•Season 3Ep. 13
Neil has served as an analyst, researcher, inventor, lecturer and, in his words, the father of many forgettable slides of glossy funnels and Venn diagrams. A witness to and participant in billion-dollar successes, and instructive failures, all in the pursuit of building indestructible customer relationships through digital media. A key player in the executive rallying cry to be more “data driven.” As Google’s Chief Measurement Strategist, Neil has had the privilege to lead more than 2,500 engage...
May 01, 2022•36 min•Season 3Ep. 12
Over the last few years, bemyfriends co-CEO Steve Seo has established himself as one of the leading authorities in the global fandom business. A serial entrepreneur, Seo joined bemyfriends in January of 2022 after serving as the CEO of beNX (now known as Weverse Company) and as a technical advisor for HYBE Corporation. It was in those roles that Seo oversaw the launches of Weverse, the official fan community of K-pop supergroup BTS, and its e-commerce platform, Weverse Shop. The platform that Se...
Apr 11, 2022•14 min•Season 3Ep. 11
Phillip An is the Co-founder and COO of Homebase, one of Southeast Asia’s leading Proptech companies. Homebase ( www.homebase.com.vn ) provides revolutionary products made accessible that empower homeowners to buy, sell, and own homes in ways that work best for themselves. Homebase is backed by leading investors and partners around the world (YC, Goodwater Capital, Partech Ventures, etc), with the most recent $30M round of equity and debt funding announced in 2021. Prior to starting Homebase, Ph...
Mar 20, 2022•25 min•Season 3Ep. 10
Adrian Garcia-Aranyos is the President of Endeavor, a global community of high-impact entrepreneurs present in ~40 markets with a rules-based venture arm, Endeavor Catalyst, which is a leading VC investor in most emerging markets. he joined Endeavor in 2014 as Founding Managing Director of Endeavor Spain. Prior to that he held several executive roles at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co; The Economist Newspaper Group; and CM Capital Markets in Madrid. Since 2004, Mr. Garcia-Aranyos serves as board memb...
Feb 28, 2022•20 min•Season 3Ep. 9
Eva is a General Partner at Fika Ventures, an early stage fund investing in companies that leverage the power of data as a core component of their business model. Prior to Fika, Eva was a founding GP at Susa Ventures. She is a serial entrepreneur and founder, with a company experience portfolio including Applied Semantics (AdSense), Factual, Google, Youtube and Navigating Cancer. She is active in the non-profit sector, serving on the boards of California Community Foundation and UCLA Technology ...
Feb 06, 2022•37 min•Season 3Ep. 8
Bridger Pennington is the founder of 2 investment funds that have done over 217 deals in the last 4 years. He has started helping others launch their own funds through Investment Fund Secrets, an online program with over 4,000 students designed to help them start investment funds without working on Wall Street or having an Ivy League degree. Bridger has spoken on stage to thousands of people across the United States and is determined to help entrepreneurs scale their businesses through launching...
Jan 09, 2022•45 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Jehan Chu is co-Founder and Managing Partner at Kenetic, a blockchain Venture Capital and cryptocurrency trading firm based in Hong Kong. A former front-end developer, he started investing in cryptocurrency in 2013 and has invested and supported over 100 projects. Jehan founded the Ethereum HK community (2014), co-Founded the Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong (2014) and founded the Hyperledger HK community (2016). Jehan serves as co-Chairman of the Hong Kong Fintech Association Blockchain Committ...
Dec 19, 2021•34 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Jason Della Rocca is a game industry entrepreneur, funding advisor, and cluster expert. He specializes in business/partnership development, pitching/funding, and ecosystem/cluster development. As the co-founder of Executions Labs, he was a hands-on early stage investor to over 20 independent game studios from North America and Europe. Between 2000-09 he served as the executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), and was honored for his industry building efforts with...
Nov 28, 2021•33 min•Season 3Ep. 5
In this episode of Geeks of the Valley , we chat with Kenan Saleh and Faizan Bhatt y, the dynamic co-founders of Halo Cars , a startup that reimagined outdoor advertising by integrating data and digital technology into rideshare vehicles. Their fresh take on out-of-home ads caught the attention of Lyft, leading to an acquisition and the birth of Lyft Media. The conversation kicks off with a relaxed post-COVID life update from New York, then dives into how the duo identified a gap between online ...
Nov 09, 2021•24 min•Season 3Ep. 4
As the Managing Director of Strategic Venture Partnerships at Honda Innovations, Dennis leads Honda’s global open innovation initiatives and strategic partnerships with startups. Before joining Honda, he worked in early-stage venture capital building bridges between technology upstarts in Silicon Valley and multinational corporations. Early in his career, he spent eight years in Japan working in a variety of sectors including banking and international civil service. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedi...
Oct 09, 2021•28 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Danielle is a cofounder and general partner of 1517. She has worked with young entrepreneurs for about a decade. In 2010, during the founding of the Thiel Fellowship, Danielle joined to lead the design and operations. She's worked with some of the most prestigious founders like Vitalik Buterin and Ritesh Agarwal. Previous to her work with Peter Thiel, Danielle founded and directed Innovations Academy in San Diego, a K-8 charter school serving 400 students, with a focus on student-led project bas...
Sep 19, 2021•51 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Anthony Scaramucci is the Founder and Managing Partner of SkyBridge Capital. He is the author of four books: The Little Book of Hedge Funds , Goodbye Gordon Gekko , Hopping Over the Rabbit Hole (a 2016 Wall Street Journal best seller), and Trump: The Blue-Collar President . Prior to founding SkyBridge in 2005, Scaramucci co-founded investment partnership Oscar Capital Management, which was sold to Neuberger Berman, LLC in 2001. Earlier, he was a vice president in Private Wealth Management at Gol...
Aug 29, 2021•28 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Miko is a General Partner with Gumi Ventures , a US $30M investment fund focused early stage blockchain startups and a cofounder of crypto exchange Evercoin . Miko ignited his passion for open source software 25 years ago as chief Evangelist for the Java Language and Platform at Sun Microsystems. Since then he has been building open source software startups in Silicon Valley including raising over $50 million in venture capital for developer platform companies such as Gradle and financial infras...
Aug 23, 2021•49 min•Ep. 5
