Venture with Grace

Dan O’Connell CEO of Front. Front is the AI-powered customer service platform that helps companies deliver smarter, safer automation without sacrificing quality. We put humans in control of AI to ensure every customer interaction is handled by the best resource, whether that’s AI, a human agent, or both. More than 9,000 companies, including Uber Freight, Navan, and Stripe, trust Front to scale exceptional service, streamline team collaboration, and gain insights that improve customer experience every day. Prior to that he was the CRO and board member of Dialpad. Topics: AI & Customer Service EvolutionScaling & Go-to-Market StrategyProduct & Platform Strategy#VCPodcast #AICustomerService #FrontApp #StartupCEO

Jiaona Zhang ("JZ") is the Chief Product Officer at Laurel. She has led product organizations at Linktree, Webflow, Airbnb, WeWork, Dropbox, and Pocket Gems. Prior to her career in product, she worked as a management and private equity consultant. In addition to her work, she advises and invests in start-ups. JZ received her BA from Yale University in Economics.Topics: How product leadership differs across company stageBuilding and scaling product organizations through hypergrowth phasesWhere product management heading in an AI-first world#VCPodcast #ProductLeadership #CPO #StartupLife #TechLeadership

Lauri Moore, a Partner at Bessemer, brings a wealth of experience in AI, data, and product management. She dives into the future of developer tools and the complex landscape of enterprise AI, highlighting the important gap between prototypes and production. Lauri emphasizes the need for evaluation tooling linked to AI workflows and the evolving role of metadata in data governance. She also shares insights on building authentic relationships with founders and the significance of community engagement in assessing open-source projects.

sands of enterprise companies globally.  Sparked by his vision and focus to use AI technology to bridge the gap between humans and machines, today Umesh is recognized as an enterprise AI pioneer. Uniphore’s Business AI Cloud, launched in 2025, is among the first enterprise-grade AI platform purpose-built to unify data, knowledge, models, and agents in a way that’s truly usable, scalable, and secure for business. Known for his grit as a leader, his passion for customers and his deep understanding of technology, he is called upon to guide some of the world’s largest brands through their digital transformation. Umesh’s strong portfolio of patents serves as a testament to his innovative thinking and commitment to advancing AI technology.     As an international business leader, Umesh has been recognized with many awards including ‘40 under 40’ Bright Young Business Leaders in the Economic Times, ‘Next Generation Leader’ by Time Magazine, and previously, as an ‘Innovator Under 35’ by MIT Tech Review.  Umesh values mentorship and spends time working with the next generation of entrepreneurs through StartUp Connect, a nonprofit organization that helps young founders scale their businesses, creating more economic opportunities.  Umesh is an alumnus of Jaypee Institute of Information Technology and an accomplished speaker and highly sought-after presenter. Topics: The role of emotion AI in enterprise applications Building AI products that large enterprises actually adopt and pay forHow to evaluate which AI capabilities to build in-house vs acquire#EnterpriseAI #ConversationalAI #BusinessAI #AgenticAI #ZeroDataAI

Lars Leckie is a Managing Director at Aspenwood Ventures. Prior to his career in venture capital, Lars was a co-founder of AutoFarm (now Novariant), a company focused on GPS and robotics. Lars was in charge of strategy, product marketing, business development, and building the sales team across three continents. While Lars spends less time programming now, he started his technical career coding and hacking computer games. He is the holder of several US patents. Lars has a Masters of Science (Engineering) from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of business. He also holds an Engineering Physics degree from Queen’s University (with Honors). Lars previously sat on the board of the SIIA (Software Information Industry Association) Piston, and PLUMgrid, and is a founding charter member and previous co-chair of the C100 (Canadians in the Silicon Valley).Topics: Investing in GPS, robotics, and automationThe patent portfolio game Building sales teams across three continents#VCPodcast #VentureCapital #TechInvesting #StartupStories

Sara Choi is a Partner at Wing VC. Sara brings her experiences as a former founder and product leader to her collaborations, investing in and supporting founders early on their entrepreneurial journeys, often at inception. Sara partners with founders of transformative tech companies working to shape the future of medicine and healthcare. Prior to co-founding Airfox, acquired in 2017, Sara was head of product at Ciao Telecom, where she co-founded a new wireless carrier. Sarabegan her career at Google, leading teams as YouTube’s media lead and Google Partners’ product marketing lead. Sara holds a BA in biological anthropology from Harvard University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Sara began and continues to run the Harvard Founder Network, a community of Harvard-affiliated CEOs. In addition to the companies below, Sara also works with a number of unannounced companies.Topics: The ideal team composition for bio x data startups Assessing technical risk when biology meets AI/automationHow to balance moonshot science bets with more predictable automation plays #BioTech #HealthTech #AIAutomation #DigitalHealth #EnterpriseSoftware

Meera is a Partner at Redpoint Ventures. She is passionate about empowering individuals in both their personal and professional lives. Having joined Redpoint in 2022, she supports the firm’s early-stage software and consumer investing efforts. Prior to joining Redpoint, Meera began her investing career at Obvious Ventures, and Obvious’ mission-driven approach is a theme that is evident in the many of the companies she’s been privileged to partner with at Redpoint. Prior to investing, Meera spent time across Morgan Stanley’s Equity Trading division and Technology Investment Banking division where she supported consumer internet and software companies through their transition to the public markets. Meera holds a BS in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University and remains active in the Stanford community through her involvement as a member of the university’s Alumni Equestrian Team and as a Board Member of Stanford Professionals in Finance. She is also a Kauffman Fellow and an active member of All Raise.Topics: The AI Investment LandscapeHow AI is Transforming Legacy Industries The Future of Fintech, ConTech, and Consumer Apps#EarlyStageVC #ConstructionTech #Fintech #SustainabilityTech

Maria Palma is a General Partner at Freestyle Capital. While she is a generalist investor, most of her recent time and investments have been in AI both at the app and infrastructure level. She loves being involved in start-ups and enjoys the challenge of creating real value and changing industries that are broken. She finds it constantly inspiring, humbling and mostly, a ton of fun. Prior to Freestyle, she was a General Partner at Kindred Capital, a seed and early-stage venture firm focusing on European technology companies. In the past three years she has led investments in companies like Fung, Lottie and Dunia. She’s recently been spending a lot of her time in AI infrastructure and made personal angel investments in companies like Lovable, .txt and Clusterfudge. Prior to Kindred, Maria was a Principal at RRE Ventures in New York where she spent time on the investment side (investing in companies such as Ladder, Moov, Novo, Mobot, Lightning Labs and Pattern), and also built out their platform efforts. Building defensible moats in AI applicationsTrends and opportunities in AI infrastructure investingAdvice for founders seeking funding in the AI space#venturecapital #VCpodcast #startup #AI #ArtificialIntelligence

Keshia Theobald-van Gent is a Partner at BDev Ventures. She previously served as the Sr. Director of the United States at German Accelerator where she led teams in NYC and Silicon Valley to help high-potential European startups enter the US. And, as the Director of Strategic Partnerships at GSVlabs, where she connected the world’s largest companies to the global startup community, accelerated new products, and generated real ROI through digital innovation. She holds an M.A. from the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and has lived and worked in the US, Asia, and Europe. Topics: Go-to-market playbooks for international startups entering the USTrends and opportunities in B2B software investingSupports B2B SaaS founders from early traction to scale#venturecapital #venturecapitalist #vc #startups #entrepreneurship #funding

Shimrit Ben-Yair serves as the Vice President and General Manager of Google Photos and Google One. She has worked on various different products at Google, including on Google Docs sharing, Google Groups, YouTube Kids, and YouTube Community. Earlier in her career, Ben-Yair was the first product manager on Google+, contributing significantly to its early development. She holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Mathematics from Tel Aviv University and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.Topics: Lessons from building and leading Google Photos & Google One at global scale.How AI is shaping the future of digital photo storage, search, and storytelling.Lessons for aspiring product leaders on career navigation inside Big Tech.#GooglePhotos #GoogleOne #ProductManagement #Leadership #AI #TechInnovation