Venture with Grace

Manish Patel is the founder of Nava Ventures. He led teams that have designed, developed, and scaled products with global impact, from enterprise advertising systems like AdWords to consumer experiences like Google Maps. Prior to that, he was a GP at Highland Capital Partners. Highland has raised over $3B in committed capital and invested in more than 270 companies, resulting in category-defining businesses across consumer and enterprise technology. Investments include companies such as Rent the Runway, 2U, Catalant, Harry's, Malwarebytes, nuTonomy, Clearbanc, Scopely, ThredUP, and Turbonomic.Topics:

• Enterprise AI adoption
• Bridging traditional industries with AI
• The future of work and automation

#VentureCapital #AgTech #EnterpriseAI #GoogleToVC

Anna Sarnek leads Cyber Startup and Venture Capital Business Development at AWS, working at the intersection of investors, startups, and the CISO community. With 15+ years of experience and a technical background, she excels at identifying unique go-to-market opportunities in enterprise IT and cybersecurity. At SecurityScorecard, she single-handedly built the Cloud Partnership program, achieving 8x marketplace growth, securing a record 6-day deal cycle, and earning recognition at re 2022. Previously Head of Technology Alliances at RSA, Anna's strategic vision and partnership expertise drives innovation across the cybersecurity ecosystem.Topics:

• Strategic partnerships as growth accelerators for early-stage companies
• Navigating the cybersecurity ecosystem
• Translating technical innovations into enterprise-ready solutions

#CyberBD #StartupGrowth #CloudPartnerships #VCStrategy #CISO

Tim Shi is the Co-founder of Cresta (1.6B+ Valuation). Backed by top investors (sequoia, greylock & a16z), they are building AI agents to transform customer experiences. Tim dropped out of Stanford PhD program in 2017 to change the nature of work with AI, starting with copilots and expanded into a full platform of augmentation, automation and insights. In 2019, Cresta started deploying a GPT-2-based generative AI system in production for Fortune 500 customers. Their work is featured in the recent National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) on the impact of GPT on boosting productivity.Topics:

• The Evolution of AI in Customer Experience
• Measuring AI's Business Impact
• The Future of Work with AI

#AIInnovation #CrestaAI #CustomerExperience #GenerativeAI

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 Menlo, he was on the founding team of Glean, where he went from engineer to engineering manager, then to creator and product lead of Glean Assistant, an AI-powered digital workplace assistant (and a significant portion of the company’s revenue). During his tenure, he helped the company grow from fewer than 10 employees to over 300, and from having no product to a $2.2 billion valuation.Topics:

• Emerging trends in enterprise AI infrastructure
• AI Monetization Strategies
• Identifying AI's Next Wave

#EngineerToVC #AIInvestors #ProductStrategy #ScalingStartups #TechnicalFounders

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 the natural progression of productivity aids, drawing parallels to how calculators and spell-check were once considered disruptive but are now standard. Roy leads the company's business strategy and product vision, while Neel applies his technical expertise to develop the platform's algorithms and user interface, as they expand their AI assistant's capabilities from technical interviews to sales calls and everyday conversations.Topics:

• The Evolution of Professional Assistants
• Digital Natives Rebuilding Work Culture
• The Future of Human-AI Collaborative Interfaces

#AICoaching #InvisibleTech #RealTimeAssistant #FutureOfWork

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 Technology Group in New York. He graduated from Stanford with a BSc in Symbolic Systems, an interdisciplinary major focused on cognitive science.Topics:

• Evolution of IT Infrastructure Investments
• Cybersecurity Investment Thesis
• B2B SaaS Valuation Trends

#VentureCapital #Next47 #CybersecurityInvesting #B2BTech #ITInfrastructure

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 advertising to adapt to a privacy-centric future with regulatory changes (GDPR, CCPA, ePrivacy, etc.), platform changes (Apple ATT, Privacy Sandbox, etc.), and consumer expectations around protecting and safeguarding data — while meeting the growing advertiser demand for understanding budget allocation (MMMs), optimization (MTAs), and analytical insights. He has built engineering teams from scratch as well as managed scaled organizations of over a thousand individuals across product and engineering teams.Topics:

• Building and Scaling High-Impact Product and Engineering Teams
• AI and Machine Learning in Modern Marketing Analytics
• The Evolving Role of Data in Marketing

#AdTech #AIinMarketing #DigitalAdvertising #Google #MarketingAnalytics

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 investment team at Softbank Vision Fund, leading the coverage of Software and Logistics growth equity investments in North America. Over a decade at Softbank, Kevin led the firm’s investments across marquee deals including Flexport, Shipbob, and Wiz among others, generating significant returns for investors and serving on boards to advise both strategic and financial decisions for portfolio companies including M&A and IPO considerations.Kevin has been investing for the span of his career across asset classes, bringing a uniquely disciplined financial and operational lens to venture capital investing. He was previously part of the Private Equity team at Apollo Global Management and Public Markets team at Soros Fund Management covering Technology, Media and Telecom. Kevin started his career at Goldman Sachs in the Investment Banking Division and holds an A.B. in Economics from Harvard.Topics:

• The evolution of AI application-layer investing
• The global investment thesis
• Investing in the next generation of consumer AI

#VentureCapital #AIStartups #GrowthEquity #TechInnovation #FutureOfAI

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 invested in both enterprise and consumer companies, including Glossier, Compass (COMP), Wise (LSE:WISE), Looker (Acquired by Google), Motive, and MasterClass, where she continues to serve on the board. Prior to her tenure at IVP, she served as a Principal at Canaan Partners, investing in companies such as MetaCloud (acquired by CSCO), Unifi Software (acquired by Boomi/Dell), and Turo. Roseanne was a PhD candidate in Biophysics at UC Berkeley, where she also earned her MA (Biophysics) and BS (Chemistry) degrees. She earned her MBA from Stanford University. Her career in technology started when she dropped out of her PhD to co-found music technology startup, imthemusic, building apps on the early Facebook platform. She also served as product manager at the life science data platform, NextBio (acquired by Ilumina). Topics:

• Transition from Science to Venture
• Sourcing and Supporting Bold Founders
• The Role of Data and AI in VC

#VentureCapital #Startups #TechInvesting #Entrepreneurship