I host a top VC podcast called Smart Venture Podcast (SVPpro.com). Past guests include C-level/VPs of Google, Meta, Amazon, Sephora, Dunkin' Donuts, Chipotle, Pepsi, Instagram, Deloitte, Reddit, Lyft, etc. Managing Partners of top funds (many were featured on the Forbes Midas List) and unicorn founders (founders of Craigslist, Square, Loom, Cruise, etc.) Venture with Grace is my new spin-off series that features top LPs, GPs, solo GPs, Angel Investors, top AI founders, and other experts in tech and business to cover specific domain expertise.
Watch this Live on LinkedIn/ YouTube: Grace Gong
Deedy is a principal at Menlo Ventures focused on early-stage investments in AI/ML, next-generation infrastructure, and enterprise software. Having been an engineer and product leader at both a successful startup and large public companies, Deedy is well-equipped to help technical founders navigate how to build and scale enduring tech companies.Deedy has been a company builder for many years and believes that a fantastic product—not just tech—is what attracts and retains users. Before joining Me...
Chungin "Roy" Lee and Neel Shanmugam are the founders behind Cluely AI, a startup that recently secured $5.3 million in seed funding to develop their "real-time coaching" technology that provides suggestions through a hidden overlay during professional interactions. Their project began at Columbia University where they created Interview Coder, which later evolved into Cluely—now generating over $3 million in annual recurring revenue. Roy and Neel describe their technology as ...
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 Tech...
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" startups Building authentic community around a venture fund Cross-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 advertisin...
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 ...
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 i...
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 Cloud The Future of AI Infrastructure Building 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 re...
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 space The evolution of developer experience and why it matters to business outcomes Data-driven decision making #ObservabilityLeadership #TechFounderJourney #Dat...
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 Inst...
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 ...
Anarghya Vardhana is a General Partner at Maveron. Anarghya spends her time understanding consumer and cultural behavioral shifts, identifying the billion-dollar businesses that will emerge, and partnering with the right founders to help grow those startups into iconic consumer brands. She is particularly interested in companies improving the health and wellness of large populations and she has invested across early stages and sectors such as mental health (Two Chairs, Bend Health), women's ...
Kirby Winfield is the founding GP of Ascend, a pre-seed VC fund focused on enterprise AI. The fund's flagship investment is Overland AI, which powers autonomous ground navigation for the US Defense ecosystem. Prior to Ascend, Kirby's career as a tech founder included two IPOs and two venture backed exits.Topics: Enterprise AI Investment Thesis: Defense Tech Innovation Building Defensible AI Startups #AIStartups #TechExits #VentureCapital #AIInvestment...
Arvind Ayyala is a Partner at Geodesic Capital, focused on investments across enterprise software, fintech, healthcare and sustainable technologies. He was previously co-leading North American growth investments in similar segments, for Singapore-based EDBI. Prior to EDBI, Arvind was with Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), planning and executing the country’s economic development. He worked across Energy & Chemicals, Engineering Services, Healthcare and Technology sectors and was co...
Andrea Lo is the Managing Partner at Main Character Capital. She is a silicon Valley native investor with 15+ years experience as a founder, investor, and startup operator in the alternative investments space. Led $100mm+ of global VC investments from pre-seed to pre-IPO, helped launch & turnaround venture style funds, and created / innovated on new financial products later adopted by financial institutions. Previously Head of Investments for a $1B foundation investing in fintech & block...
Emily Yu is a Deep Tech Investor at Boost VC. Boost VC invest in Pre-seed companies in the intersection of hardware + software, across robotics, aerospace, defense, climate, BCI/HCI, bio, physical infrastructure, etc. Topics: Deep tech investment thesis Emerging trends in deep tech AI robotics integration #DeepTechVC #HardwareSoftwareAI #AIAccelerators #EdgeComputing...
Derek Xiao is an investor at Menlo Ventures. Derek concentrates on identifying investment opportunities across the firm’s thesis areas, covering AI, cloud infrastructure, digital health, and enterprise SaaS. Derek is especially focused on investing in soon-to-be breakout companies at the inflection stage. Derek joined Menlo from Bain & Company where he worked with leading San Francisco-based technology investors and companies spanning a broad range of industries. In one case, he advised a gr...
Jordan Viniar is a Partner at Prudence. Prudence is an early-stage venture firm investing in technology companies leading the global transformation of the built world. The firm invests across multiple verticals, including real estate, construction, infrastructure and energy/climate adaptation. Prudence is headquartered in New York City.Topics: The evolution of built world technology Climate adaptation technologies Real estate technology beyond proptech #BuiltWorldTech #VentureCapital #PropTech #...
Eylul Kayin is a Partner at Gradient. Prior to Gradient, Eylul was an investor with NEA and Softbank, where she backed a number of category-defining companies including Brex, Cato, Chime, Claroty, Digits, Eargo (NASDAQ: EAR), Ethos, Flexport, Material Bank, Neotract (acquired by Teleflex) and Revelle Aesthetics (incubation). Eylul started her career at Morgan Stanley and has a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Mathematics from Columbia University.Topics: Enterprise AI investing strategy Frontli...
Elizabeth Weil is the Founder & Managing Partner at Scribble Ventures. She believes that passion and pushing boundaries drive success, whether it is investing in founders building with world-changing ideas, transforming a startup into a Fortune 500 company, or running ultramarathons. She is a super-connector, and with her infectious enthusiasm she leaves everyone more energetic than she found them. With more than 2 decades in venture capital and technology companies, Elizabeth is a relations...
Simon Tiu joined Vertex Ventures US in 2024, focusing on AI-native enterprise software and cybersecurity investments. Prior to joining Vertex Ventures, Simon worked at Qatalyst Partners, where he was a core member of the Enterprise Software team. During his tenure, he provided strategic and financial advice to senior management and boards of leading technology companies across ~$100B of announced M&A transactions.Notable deals Simon contributed to include:Splunk’s $29.6B sale to CiscoAfterpa...
Yash Patel joined Titanium Ventures in 2014 and leads TV’s consumer (esports/gaming, fintech, ecommerce) and vertical SaaS tech investing effort. Yash has sourced and led TV’s investments in BigCommerce (Nasdaq: BIGC), Snapchat (NYSE: SNAP), OpenGov (acquired by Cox Enterprises), Skillz (NYSE: SKLZ), Super.com, Swish Analytics, Document Crunch, Mobile Premier League, Omaze, Sleeper, Team SoloMid (tsm.gg), FitOn, and Singular, amongst others. He is particularly interested in products that can rea...
Rob co-founded a new company in 2024 called Eternos.life, which launched the world's first AI legacy service enabling people to create a lifelike AI of themselves to pass their knowledge down to future generations.Previously, Rob was the Founder of LivePerson, Inc. (LPSN: NASDAQ ), and was its Chief Executive Officer from 1995 to 2023. He was the guiding force behind the company’s vision of creating meaningful connections between brands and consumers. Rob’s interests extend beyond his busine...
Miles Deamer is a VP at Crossover VC, where he allocates capital to both early-stage emerging managers as well as select direct investment opportunities. Miles has spent more than a decade in Silicon Valley designing and implementing business strategies in the fintech and proptech verticals. Prior to joining Crossover, Miles spent seven years as an early employee of multiple venture-backed startups including Kiavi, Sundae, and AlphaFlow, where he led teams in capital markets, operations, and bus...
Feyza Haskaraman is a principal at Menlo Ventures, Feyza focuses on soon-to-breakout consumer, fintech, and enterprise SaaS companies. Prior to Menlo, Feyza worked as an engineer at various companies in different growth stages, including Nucleus Scientific (now Indigotech), Fitbit, and Analog Devices. Her exposure to a wide range of tasks and opportunities led Feyza to grow curious about the way companies operate. Feyza pursued a career in business management when she joined McKinsey & Compa...
Tatyana Mamut is the Founder and CEO of Wayfound.ai. Wayfound helps business coordinate, supervise, align, and improve their GenAI Agents in one place. Prior to that, she was the SVP of New Products at Pendo leading the creation of the Adopt family of products. Before that she she was CPO at Nextdoor, creating a product-led growth strategy which drove a 60% increase in engagement while driving down abusive and toxic content on the platform. She also led the Local Business revenue line and consol...
Sabrina Farmer, CTO of GitLab, shares insights from her career, from Google to GitLab, discussing engineering leadership, AI's impact on developer productivity, and managing technical talent. She covers GitLab's business model, the future of coding with AI, and strategies for structuring engineering teams. Farmer also emphasizes the importance of understanding customer needs and adapting quickly to technological advancements.
Andrew Blum is the Co-Founder and COO at HumanX, the preeminent event dedicated to accelerating enterprise AI adoption - backed by Primary, Foundation Capital, and FPV. Previously, he served as Researcher-in-Residence at Primary Venture Partners, where he built out the incubation program and helped launch venture-scale businesses. Topics: Community building as a catalyst for AI innovation Insights from bridging the AI hype-reality gap Enterprise AI adoption timeline - where we are and what's...
Casber Wang is a Partner at Sapphire Ventures where he is focused on security, enterprise infrastructure, and data and analytics. Born in China to parents who were both small-business entrepreneurs, Casber is familiar with and excited by the founder’s journey. Casber is on the boards of Cyera, Huntress, JumpCloud, Rewst, StarTree, and Zesty. Prior to Okta’s acquisition, he was also a board observer at Auth0. He also helped lead Sapphire’s investments in Glean and Weights & Biases. For his wo...
