Venture with Grace

Benjamin Black is the Co-founder and Managing Director of Akkadian Ventures & Raise Global. Akkadian Ventures invests in growth stage technology companies. They provide alternative liquidity solutions for entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capital funds and employees. Raise Global is the premier community for emerging fund managers and forward-thinking LPs. Topics: How to build relationships with LPs effectively Key challenges new fund managers face today Growth Stage Investment Strategy

Meagen Eisenberg is the CMO of Samsara. Samsara is the pioneer of the Connected Operations™ Cloud, which is a platform that enables organizations that depend on physical operations to harness Internet of Things (IoT) data to develop actionable insights and improve their operations. Meagen is a transformational leader, advisor, and marketer managing customer acquisition to adoption and advocacy with experience at global businesses ranging from startups to mid-market to Fortune 500. 20 successful exits since 2011 as an operator and advisor, including 3 IPOs and 17 mergers and acquisitions. She has a strong ability to optimize current business practices quickly, improving poor performance areas while developing new strategic imperatives. A forward thinker leveraging data and technology to deliver future growth and a sustainable revenue path. Topics: Marketing strategy across different company stages Evolution of B2B marketing in the IoT/industrial tech space Lessons learned from being involved in 20 successful exits

Priscilla Guevara is a General Partner of Science. Founded in 2011, Science co-founds and invests in 8-10 consumer companies per year, thematically identifying opportunities ahead of where culture and consumers are moving. Science has co-founded 3 billion-dollar companies, Dollar Shave Club ($1B Exit), DogVacay/Rover ($2.4B Exit) and Liquid Death ($1.4B current). With a deep understanding of success across distinct business models, their differentiated approach to investing lies in the ability to de-risk milestones for follow-on and exits. Continuing on their path to build an enduring institutional firm, Science Fund IV will continue its strategy of large ownership in co-founded businesses, targeting billion-dollar exits. Topics: Building Billion-Dollar Companies Identifying Consumer Trends Consumer Market Evolution

Jay Eum is Co-Founding Managing Partner of GFT Ventures. Jay brings over 20 years of extensive investment experience across both institutional and corporate venture capital firms. Jay co-founded TransLink Capital, a Palo Alto based early stage venture capital firm supporting entrepreneurs developing customer connections and partnerships in Asia. Jay was responsible for leading investments in AI, AR/VR, blockchain, cloud, and consumer technologies. Prior to TransLink, Jay was Managing Director of Samsung Ventures where he established and led the US venture capital operations for Samsung. Jay started his venture capital career at the Silicon Valley office of Vertex Management, Singapore based venture capital arm of investment firm Temasek Holdings. Jay received an MBA from Stanford University and MS/BS in Chemistry from Seoul National University. Jay serves as Chairman and Board Director of the Asia America MultiTechnology Association (AAMA). Jay is also an active angel investor and advisor to several startups. Topics: Evaluates early-stage companies in emerging tech sectors Building global tech communities Advice for founders looking to build global companies from day one

Sandy Carter is the Chief Operating Officer of Unstoppable Domains. Prior to that she served as the Vice President of AWS. Distinguished career holding leadership positions as a Chief Operations Officer, Chief Marketing, Chief Sales, Channel Chief, and Chief Product Officer working for two Fortune 100 companies – AWS and IBM. Her background is unique since very few executives have experience working in all these different c-level roles. She's been a pioneer at the forefront of AI innovation. Working at IBM, she contributed to the development of Watson ecosystem including Cloud, AI and IoT and helped participate in the introduction of the industry's inaugural business model for the AI ecosystem. She played a pivotal role in shaping the direction of the ecosystem in the AI, IoT, and Cloud focus. She is passionate about collaborating with partners and delivering value to customers. This is how she makes a difference. Serving as a top executive at AWS, she collaborated directly with c-level customers and partners. She gained invaluable insights into their Cloud, AI, and overall tech needs and challenges, leading to the development of innovative AI business solutions. She credits her amazing teams with all their success. They are the people who make everything happen. She may provide the direction, strategy, coaching, and overview, but it is the team members who produce the innovations, make the breakthroughs, and develop emerging technology like AI into new products with industry-changing reach. She's held Board of Director positions and currently sits on the Altair Board. She's truly humbled by the numerous awards recognizing her work achievements. Some of the prestigious awards include: The AI Executive Champion of the Year from WLDA, Business Transformational Leader of the Year, CNN Top 10 Women in Tech, Top 10 Leader in Responsible AI, and Most Influential Sales Leader Topics: AI's impact on business transformation Building High-Performance Teams GTM Strategy in Emerging Tech #WomenInTech #AILeadership #TechExecutive #FemaleExecutive

Eric Newcomer founded and runs the newsletter and events business Newcomer. He publishes scoops on startup deals, writes profiles of top venture capitalists, and chronicles the inner workings of Silicon Valley. He also hosts the top artificial intelligence conference the Cerebral Valley AI Summit and the financial technology conference the Newcomer Banking Summit. Topics: Insights from running the Cerebral Valley AI Summit Building a media business in the digital age Major AI deals and investments #TechJournalism #SiliconValley #VentureCapital #AIindustry

As a Wing partner, Jake’s interest and expertise centers around operationalizing AI. He is excited by the AI first transformation of businesses from infrastructure and foundation models to AI powered apps as well as tools and security software for technologists adopted in a PLG manner. Jake’s product leadership roles at Splunk and Cloudera give him an insider perspective on product-led growth and company building. He holds degrees in electrical computer engineering, computer science, and economics from Duke; a masters of systems engineering degree from University of Pennsylvania; and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Jake works with companies including Base, Cyberhaven, Human Interest, SiMa, Torii, Truera, and Vimaan. Prior to Wing, Jake was a partner at Accel until 2018, where he was the lead investor and board member in companies including Demisto, Radar, and Sumo Logic. Topics: Product-Led Growth in Enterprise Tech AI Transformation & Infrastructure Current state of AI investing - overhyped areas vs. underhyped opportunities #EnterpriseTech #AITransformation #VentureCapital #ProductLedGrowth

Rashmi Gopinath is the Co-founder & Managing Partner of BAM Corner Point. Prior to that, she served as General Partner at B Capital Group and Managing Director at M12, Microsoft’s Venture Fund. She is an experienced investing partner with a demonstrated history of investing in cutting-edge enterprise software startups as well as operating success leading business development and GTM roles for high-growth startups. Unique combination of strong technical skills, GTM acumen and venture investing in areas such as datacenter & cloud infrastructure, data & analytics, AI/ML, cybersecurity, and devops. Recognized by GrowthCap as Top 20 Software Investor for four straight years in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. Also recognized by Global Corporate Venturing in 2020 as #5 of top 50 Emerging Leaders in global CVC funds. Nominated by InformationAge and Women in IT for 2018 “Woman of the year” and “Business role model of the year”, and "Business role model of the year 2019" awards. Recognized by Forbes in an article on top female VC leaders. Topics: Enterprise Software Investment Insights Data-Driven VC AI Infrastructure Evolution #EnterpriseVC #VentureCapital #TechInvestor #WomenInVC

Sakib Jamal is a Vice President on the investment team of Crossbeam Venture Partners. Sakib was the first employee at Crossbeam and as of January 2024 has represented the firm with over 15 founders as an investor, board observer and/or director. Prior to Crossbeam, he was an investment banking analyst at J.P. Morgan’s Industrials group, and received a BSc in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. In 2023, he was named on the Crain’s New York and Forbes 30 under 30 list. Topics: Current early-stage investment landscape Networking and brand building in VC The impact of AI on traditional industries like healthcare, logistics, and finance #InvestingTrends #VentureCapital #StartupEcosystem #FinTech #ClimateTech

Dipto Chakravarty is the Chief Product Officer of Cloudera where he leads Cloudera's product and technology delivery. Most recently, he served as the head of local data engineering in Amazon's generalized artificial intelligence group. Prior to that, he led AWS's fintech cloud practice. Before Amazon, Dipto held executive positions at CA/Broadcom, IBM, Novell, and Thomson-Reuters and founded/led three private equity-backed businesses with exits. He has 12 patents issued to date, has authored 2 books, and 46 publications and book chapters, has served on the board of software companies with exits. Dipto holds a bachelor's and master's degree in computer science from the University of Maryland, business administration from Wharton Business School, and completed the General Management Program at Harvard Business School. Topics: AI & Data Architecture Evolution Product Leadership in AI Era Cloud Security & Infrastructure #ClouderaAI #DataInnovation #TechLeadership #AIStrategy #CloudComputing