Ev Williams

Ev is co-founder of Blogger, Twitter, and Medium. For the last twenty years, he has helped shape the modern internet.

Starting in January 1999, Ev co-founded Pyra Labs, which created the blog-publishing service Blogger (and coined the term “blogger”) and was acquired by Google in early 2003. He then co-founded Odeo and Obvious Corp, which gave birth to Twitter in 2006. Ev was Twitter’s co-founder, lead investor, and former CEO.

In 2011, Ev, along with Biz Stone and Jason Goldman, restarted Obvious Corp and began a mix of start-up investing and incubation. His investments have included Beyond Meat (IPO May 2019), Blue Bottle Coffee (acquired by Nestle), and others. Ev co-founded Obvious Ventures in 2014 with James Joaquin and Vishal Vasishth.

Ev started Medium, in 2012 and served as CEO until 2022. He is currently the Chairman of Medium.

Ev grew up on a farm in Clarks, Nebraska.

About Obvious Ventures

Founded: 2014  |  HQ: United States | Stage: Seed-Growth

Mar Hershenson

Mar is Pear’s Founding Managing Partner. As Pear’s co-founder and managing partner, Mar brings operational and technical expertise to the investment team.

After earning a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, Mar developed a groundbreaking technique of optimizing the design of analog semiconductors. Since then, she has accrued over 13 years of founder experience, co-founding three startups in mobile/ecommerce, enterprise software and semiconductor industries and has registered 14 separate patents.

Mar is based in the Bay Area and holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. She has been recognized by MIT Technology Review as a Top Innovator Under 35, named a Champion of Innovation by Fast Company, awarded the Digital Automation Conference’s Marie R. Pistil Achievement Award, and currently #29 on the Forbes Midas List.

About Pear VC

Founded: 2013  |  HQ: United States  |  Stage:  Seed-Growth

Max Levchin

Max Levchin is Founder and CEO of Affirm, a financial services technology company, co-founder and Chairman of Glow, and co-founder and general partner at SciFi VC. All three companies were created and launched from his innovation lab, HVF. Max is a serial entrepreneur, computer scientist, philanthropist and active investor in more than 100 startups.

Max was one of the original co-founders of PayPal, where he served as Chief Technology Officer until its acquisition by eBay in 2002. In 2004, he founded Slide, which he sold to Google in 2010. Also in 2004, he helped start Yelp, where he was the first investor and Chairman of the Board from 2004 until 2015. He has served on several boards including Yahoo!, Yelp and Evernote.

About Affirm

Founded: 2012  |  HQ: United States |  Funding: IPO | Industry: Fintech

Kate Ryder

Kate Ryder is Founder and CEO of Maven, the largest virtual clinic for women’s and family health. Maven offers virtual care and services across fertility, maternity, and pediatrics, and operates the largest women’s and family health telehealth network globally. With Maven, employers and health plans can see improved maternal outcomes, lower costs, and attract and retain more parents in the workforce. Maven has raised more than $200 million in capital from investors, including Sequoia Capital, Oak HC/FT, Dragoneer Investment Group, and Lux Capital.

Kate founded Maven in 2014, reimagining healthcare for women and families from the ground up after seeing first hand how the lack of access to care impacted those starting a family and returning to work as new parents. Prior to founding Maven, Kate worked in venture capital and as a journalist, writing for The Economist from Southeast Asia, New York and London and for The New Yorker. In 2009, she worked with former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, helping him write his memoirs about the financial crisis.

Kate has been named to Fortune’s 40 Under 40 and to Fast Company’s “Most Creative People.” Kate received her B.A. from the University of Michigan and her MSc from the London School of Economics. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and three children.

About Maven Clinic

Founded: 2014 |  HQ: United States  |  Funding: $287m |  Industry: Healthcare

Doug Leone

Doug Leone is Partner at Sequoia Capital. He focuses on software investments aimed at the enterprise market. He is a Director of ActionIQ, Cyera, Island, Nubank, strongDM, Trade Republic, and Wiz. Doug was involved with Sequoia’s investments in numerous companies including Aruba (ARUN), Hyperion/Arbor Software (HYSL), Infinity International (SDS), International Network Services (ALU), Medallia (MDLA), MedExpress, Netezza (NZ), Plangrid (ADSK), Rackspace (RAX), RingCentral (RNG), and ServiceNow (NOW).

Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 1988, Doug held sales and sales management positions at Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Prime Computer. Doug holds a BS in mechanical engineering from Cornell University, an MS in industrial engineering from Columbia University and an MS in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

About Sequoia

Founded: 1972  |  HQ: United States  |  Stage: Seed-Growth

Emmett Shear

Emmett Shear is the CEO and Co-Founder of Twitch, an interactive live streaming service for content spanning gaming, entertainment, sports, music, and more. At any given moment, on average, more than 2.5 million people come together from all over the globe to interact around this distinct form of entertainment that is created by the shared interactions of millions.

Prior to launching Twitch in 2011, Mr. Shear co-founded live streaming service Justin.tv in 2007. He is also a part-time partner at venture capital firm Y Combinator where he advises startups on product and strategy. Mr. Shear graduated from Yale University in 2005 with a degree in Computer Science.

About Twitch

Founded: 2011 |  HQ: US  |  Industry: Streaming

Edith Harbaugh

Edith Harbaugh is Co-founder and CEO of LaunchDarkly, the leading feature management platform. LaunchDarkly serves 2,000+ global customers like IBM, Atlassian, and Intuit.

Edith has more than 15 years of experience in engineering, product, and marketing with both consumer and enterprise startups, including TripIt and Concur. She is co-host of “To Be Continuous”, a podcast on software trends.

She holds two patents in deployment. Edith earned a B.S. in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College.

About LaunchDarkly

Founded: 2014  |  HQ: United States |  Funding: $330m | Industry: Software

Nikolay Storonsky

Nik is the Co-founder and CEO of Revolut. The mission of Revolut is to transform the way we spend and transfer money abroad. Launched in 2015, Revolut is one of the Europe’s highest ever valued tech companies.

Since its inception, Nik has put Revolut on the path to becoming the world’s first truly global bank, changing the way we do all things money. Prior to launching Revolut, Nik worked as an equity trader.

About Revolut

Founded: 2015 |  HQ: United Kingdom  |  Funding: $1.7bn |  Industry: Fintech

Sanna Marin

Sanna Marin is Prime Minister of Finland, appointed in December 2019. Sanna is the third female Prime Minister of Finland and the youngest prime minister in Finland’s history. Sanna will be taking the Slush stage with Eerika Savolainen, CEO of Slush.

Since 2006, Sanna has been actively engaged in politics. Sanna was elected to Parliament for her first run in 2015 and in August 2020, Sanna was elected as Chair of the Social Democratic Party. Previously, Sanna also served as Minister of Transport and Communications in Rinne Government. She is a member of the Tampere city council, which she chaired from 2013–2017.

Sanna lives in Tampere and Helsinki with her husband and their daughter. She holds a Master’s degree in Administration Sciences from the University of Tampere.

Olivier Pomel

Olivier is Co-founder and CEO of Datadog, the monitoring platform for cloud applications. Datadog went public in 2019, reaching a market cap of nearly $60bn at its height.

Prior to founding Datadog, Olivier Pomel built data systems for K-12 teachers as a VP, Technology for Wireless Generation, where he grew the development team from a handful of people to close to 100 of the best engineers in New York until the company’s acquisition by News Corp.

Before Wireless Generation, Olivier held software engineering positions at IBM Research and several internet startups.

About Datadog

Founded: 2010  |  HQ: United States | Industry: Enterprise Software

Julianna Lamb

Julianna Lamb is the Co-Founder and CTO of Stytch. Stytch is the platform for user authentication. Prior to founding Stytch, Julianna was a software engineer at Plaid and Strava and a product manager at Very Good Security.

Julianna and her co-founder Reed McGinley-Stempel both worked on fraud and authentication at Plaid. They were frustrated with the tools out there for developers when it came to building user authentication. To solve this, they built Stytch, a developer-first platform that focuses on passwordless authentication to help companies elevate both their security and user experience.

Julianna graduated from Standford University with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with History as a minor.

About Stytch

Founded: 2020 |  HQ: United States  |  Funding: $126m |  Industry: Enterprise software

Andrey Khusid

Andrey is Founder and CEO of Miro, the world’s most popular visual collaboration platform, funded by leading investors like Accel, Iconiq and others. Miro has more than 1400 employees in 11 offices across the globe, over 30 million registered whiteboarding fans. It is used by 99% of Fortune 100 companies for brainstorming & ideation, research & design, agile ceremonies and much more.

Prior to Miro, Andrey was Founder of Vitamin Group, an award-winning creative agency.

About Miro

Founded: 2011  |  HQ: United States  |  Funding: $476M  |  Industry: Enterprise Software

Amrapali Gan

Amprapali Gan is CEO of OnlyFans. She oversees OnlyFans’ mission to revolutionize creator and fan connections by building the world’s safest social media platform where creators can maximize control over and monetize their content. Before taking over as CEO, Gan served as Chief Marketing and Communications Officer as OnlyFans experienced exponential growth. Gan is focused on leading OnlyFans and providing unparalleled opportunities for its community.

Gan’s background is with rapid growth companies and fast-moving consumer industries. She was Head of Brand Communications with unicorn Quest Nutrition, and worked for Red Bull Media House. More recently, she helped launch the first cannabis restaurant in the US as Vice President of Marketing.

She currently resides in Miami with her rescue dog, Fox.

About OnlyFans

Founded: 2016 |  HQ: United Kingdom  |  Funding: – |  Industry: Social Media

Matthew Prince

Matthew Prince is Co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. Cloudflare’s mission is to help build a better Internet. Today, the company runs one of the world’s largest networks, which spans more than 275 cities in over 100 countries.

Matthew is a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, winner of the 2011 Tech Fellow Award, and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Center for Information Technology and Privacy Law.

Matthew holds an MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a George F. Baker Scholar and awarded the Dubilier Prize for Entrepreneurship. He is a member of the Illinois Bar, and earned his J.D. from the University of Chicago and B.A. in English Literature and Computer Science from Trinity College. He’s also the co-creator of Project Honey Pot, the largest community of webmasters tracking online fraud and abuse.

About Cloudflare

Founded: 2009  |  HQ: United States |  Funding: IPO| Industry: Enterprise Software

Linnéa Kornehed

Linnéa Kornehed is Co-founder and CMO of Einride, a Swedish company focusing on all-electric autonomous transport vehicles. Their mission is to design and develop intelligent technologies for movement. Einride has worked with several companies such as Coca-Cola, Oatly, Lidl and Electrolux, helping them switch to sustainable transport.

Einride has been recognized as one of the world’s most innovative companies according to Fast Company.

Prior to founding Einride, Linnéa worked as a Business Solutions Consultant at Forefront Consulting. Linnéa has twice been on Forbes’ prestige list of Europe’s hottest entrepreneurs and is also a TEDx speaker.

About Einride

Founded: 2016  |  HQ: Sweden  |  Funding: $152M  |  Industry: Transportation

Sebastian Siemiatkowski

Sebastian is Co-founder and CEO of Klarna. In 2005, Sebastian Siemiatkowski co-founded Klarna in order to provide safe and smooth online payments.

With Sebastian as Chief Executive Officer, Klarna has been on a mission since then to revolutionize the retail banking industry, meeting the changing demands of consumers by saving them time and money while helping them be informed and in control of their personal finances. Sebastian has overseen the company’s rapid global growth with Klarna now operating across 45 markets. Klarna is a fully licensed bank with over 150 million active consumers and 400,000+ merchant partners.

Sebastian holds a master’s degree from the Stockholm School of Economics.

About Klarna

Founded: 2005  |  HQ: Sweden | Industry: Fintech

Max Rhodes

​​Max is Co-founder and CEO of Faire. As a former small business owner, Max is passionate about the positive impact of local commerce on society, and has made it his mission to help independent retailers and brands build thriving businesses and grow stronger communities.

Prior to co-founding Faire, Max was Founding Member at Square Capital and Early Product Lead at Square, where he worked on Cash App, a product that helped more than 230,000 merchants access capital to grow their businesses.

Max holds a BA in history from Yale.

About Faire

Founded: 2017  |  HQ: United States  |  Funding: $1.5bn  |  Industry: E-Commerce

Garima Kapoor

Garima Kapoor is the Co-founder and COO at MinIO. Prior to this role, Garima served as the company’s CFO. Garima is an active investor and advisor to emerging technology companies in Silicon Valley.

Garima holds a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Accounting and Finance from Nirma University, a Masters in Economics from Banasthali Vidyapith, and a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Delhi University.

About MinIO

Founded: 2014 |  HQ: United States  |  Funding: $146m |  Industry: Enterprise software

Peter Fenton

Peter Fenton has served as one of the 5 equal General Partners at Benchmark Capital since 2006.

He currently serves on the boards of 12 private companies including Docker, Sorare, Airtable, CockroachDB, Clickhouse, Robocorp, and previously served on the boards of Twitter, Yelp, Elastic, Cloudera, Zendesk, New Relic, Zuora, Quip, Zenly, SpringSouce, and Jboss.

About Benchmark

Founded: 1995  |  HQ: United States | Stage: Seed-Growth

Nadia Singer

Nadia Singer is Chief People Officer at Figma, where she leads the people and talent teams.

Before joining Figma, she led recruiting for the Pete Buttigieg 2020 campaign. Prior to that she worked in venture capital and at Quora.

About Figma

Founded: 2012 |  HQ: United States  |  Funding: $333M |  Industry: Enterprise Software

Jay Kreps

Jay Kreps is a co-founder of Confluent and has served as CEO since its founding in September 2014. Prior to founding Confluent, Jay spent seven years at LinkedIn, where he was one of the original creators of Apache Kafka and served as an engineer, engineering manager, and software architect from 2009 to 2014.

He holds a Masters Degree in Computer Science from UC Santa Cruz.