Venture with Grace

Adam Besvinick is the Founder and Managing Partner at Looking Glass Capital, a pre-seed venture firm. Previously, he invested in Series A and later companies at Anchorage Capital Group, and before that, he was a pre-seed and seed investor at Deep Fork Capital. Prior to joining Deep Fork, Besvinick was the first business hire at Wanelo, leading partnership and monetization efforts. Before starting at Wanelo, he graduated from Harvard Business School, during which he worked part-time for Lowercase Capital, Gumroad, and a couple other early stage companies. He also used to co-lead By/Association, an angel investor group, which made three investments, including Transfix.io. Prior to entering business school, Besvinick was a telecom investment banker at Jefferies and graduated cum laude from Duke University in 2009. Topics: - Innovations in climate tech - The digital health revolution - Building a successful venture capital firm #ClimateInvesting #HealthTech #EmpowermentVC #ImpactVC #GreenTech

Keith is a Partner at Pear. Previously, Keith was an early-stage investor at Bessemer Venture Partners and a consultant at BCG, where he advised B2B, consumer, and energy companies on growth, strategy, and M&A. At Pear, Keith focuses on B2B applications including vertical software, enterprise software, and marketplaces. Additionally, he leads Pear’s roadmap on emerging XR/AR/VR and spatial computing platforms. Keith is originally from Arizona and is based in Palo Alto. He holds a BA in English from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Topics: 1. Analytics-Driven Investing in the Tech World 2. Navigating the Next Wave of Enterprise Tech Innovation 3. The Secret to Startup Succes #VentureCapital #B2BSoftware #StartupInvestor #ARVRInnovation #EnterpriseTech

Daniel Faierman is a partner at Habitat Partners, an early stage venture capital firm based in New York that focuses on Pre-Seed to Series A investments in consumer and software companies. After playing division one tennis at Yale, Daniel gained deep operating experience at multinational consumer brand enterprises such as PepsiCo and AB InBev across finance, brand strategy, and innovation. With a major passion for health and wellness, Daniel's VC journey commenced at Selva Ventures. He later attended the Stanford GSB, where he launched his own investing entity, Vitality Ventures, building it to over 400 LPs and still actively deploying today. Prior to joining Habitat Partners, Daniel led finance at GSB-founded startup Forum Brands. Daniel splits most of his time at Habitat between CPG and B2B SaaS with a focus on commerce enablement and marketing/advertising technology. Topics: - Insights on pre-seed to Series A investing strategies in the current market - Balancing CPG and B2B SaaS investments in early-stage ventures - Lessons in scaling a venture capital fund's investor network #VentureCapital #StartupInvesting #EarlyStage #ConsumerTech #SaaS

Abe Murray is a General Partner leading Deep Tech & Robotics investments and incubations at AlleyCorp. Abe has more than 20 years of engineering experience, having spent time as a product and engineering leader in various roles at Alphabet, where he launched Play Books and Magazines at Android, built the Verily Life Science product teams and Boston office, and shipped several AI/ML and computer vision products across Google while building the Google Research product management team. Before that, he founded a Web 2.0 startup and worked on unmanned aerial vehicles in the defense industry. Topics: - Current trends in Deep Tech and Robotics investing - The intersection of Robotics and Climate - Consumer applications of AI and robotics #DeepTech #Robotics #AIInvesting #ClimateInnovation #VentureCapital

Sakib Dadi is a partner at Stage 2, spending most of his time investing in infrastructure software companies. Prior to Stage 2, Sakib was an investor at Bessemer Venture Partners for almost a decade where he partnered with companies including LaunchDarkly, Guild Education, Sila Nanotechnologies, Intercom, PagerDuty, Prefect, Basis Theory, Optimal Dynamics, Appwrite, Litify, Coder.com, Syndio, Arcion, Periscope Data (acq'd by Sisense), Okera (acq.d by Databricks), npm (acq'd by GitHub), .Sakib received his Bachelor’s degrees in Materials Science & Engineering and Economics, as well as a Master’s in Materials Science & Engineering, from the University of Pennsylvania. Topics: 1. Current and emerging trends in the infrastructure software space 2. The future of developer tools 3. Data infrastructure and analytics #InfrastructureSoftware #VCInsights #TechInvesting #DevTools #CloudTech

Buddy Arnheim is a Founding Partner at Lobby Capital. For more than 25 years, Buddy has been funding, building, and advising a panoply of early stage technology companies ranging from: consumer facing services like OpenTable, TicketsNow, Trulia, Quizlet, HotelTonight, and Mystery Science; to FinTech / InsureTech platforms like Hippo Insurance and Lively HSA; to enterprise solutions like Cloudera, Box, and SentinelOne; as well as hardware and deep tech businesses like Skydio, R-Zero Systems, Level Home and SpinLaunch. Buddy has been involved in the launch of dozens of ventures across the technology spectrum. Prior to Lobby Capital, Buddy founded and ran the Perkins Coie’s Emerging Company and Venture Capital Practice, managed Orthogonal Ventures, an early stage investment fund, and co-managed a late stage venture investment fund, Hut8 Ventures. Buddy has also been an operator and innovator in the robotics, computer vision and aerospace domains. He was the co-founder of solar-powered atmospheric satellite company, Titan Aerospace, which was acquired by Google in 2014, and an early advisor to SpinLaunch. Buddy holds a BS with a concentration in finance from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a JD from the University of Illinois, where he teaches a course on entrepreneurship. Topics: 1. The intersection of law and venture capital in the tech industry. 2. The future of robotics and computer vision in various industries. 3. Insights on aerospace innovations and investments #VentureCapital #TechInnovation #StartupFunding #FinTech #DeepTech

Saaya Nath is a Partner at Jump Capital. She joined Jump Capital in 2020 and leads new venture capital investment opportunities. Prior to joining Jump, Saaya worked as a strategy consultant at Boston Consulting Group, where she spent time in the Private Equity practice and across a variety of strategy and operations projects. Saaya attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, earning a BS in Computer Engineering. Her areas of interest: Enterprise SaaS, AI Tooling, Workflow Automation, and Future of Work. Topics: 1. Trends in Enterprise SaaS 2. The evolution of AI tooling for businesses 3. Key factors in evaluating early-stage tech companies #VentureCapital #EnterpriseSaaS #AITooling #WorkflowAutomation #FutureOfWork

Saanya Ojha is a Partner at Bain Capital Ventures where she leads growth stage investments in cloud infrastructure, cyber security, and the developer ecosystem. Previously, she was a Partner at Coatue focused on growth investments after having started her career as a Hedge Fund analyst at Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, a long/short fundamental equity fund. A career investor, she is driven by the fundamental question of what makes a good business and has experience investing across stages, verticals, and geographies. Originally from India, she now lives in San Francisco but has lived and worked across New York, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Topics: - The evolution of cloud infrastructure and its impact on businesses - Current trends and future predictions in cybersecurity investments - The developer ecosystem: Key players and emerging opportunities #VentureCapital #TechInvesting #CloudInfrastructure #Cybersecurity #WomenInVC

Brian D. Huber is a fund partner at Gunderson Dettmer. Brian supports venture capital and growth equity fund managers on all aspects of the fund lifecycle. Brian has significant experience advising fund managers on issues related to fundraising, GP management, and economics, including the tax and structuring aspects of fund formations and investments globally. He helps clients navigate complex issues in the evolving legal and regulatory landscape, such as the impact of recent tax reform on investment and organizational decision-making. Mr. Huber also has significant experience advising fund managers and investors in connection with secondary purchases and sales of fund interests. Brian has spoken extensively on tax reform issues affecting the fund industry, including with regard to carried interest, the impact on tax exempt U.S. and non-US investors, and international tax structuring. He is an active member of the ABA Business Law Section’s Private Equity and Venture Capital Committee and previously served as co-chair of the board of directors for the Massachusetts LGBTQ Bar Association. Brian has also participated as a delegate at the National LGBT Bar Association’s Affiliates Congress Annual Meeting. Topics: 1. Key considerations for fund managers throughout the fund lifecycle 2. Key legal considerations for first-time fund managers 3. Lessons learned from complex fund formations and investments #VentureCapital #FundManagement #InvestorRelations #VCLaw #FundFormation

Retired Amazon Vice President, LinkedIn Top Voice, 70+ patents; led global teams of 800+, now Executive Coach and course creator focused on helping leaders grow to true executives. Topics: 1. Strategies for effective global team management. 2. Adapting corporate experience to entrepreneurial ventures. 3. Building a personal brand after a high-profile corporate career. #ExecutiveLeadership #AmazonAlum #LinkedInInfluencer #PatentInnovator #TechToCoach