Venture with Grace

Larry Liu is the CEO and founder of Weee!, North America's largest and fastest growing ethnic e-grocer with 5+ X growth in 2020. Larry envisions a world where people celebrate life through food, promoting the collective enjoyment and exploration of delightful, home-based food products and experiences. Established in 2015 and now valued at over $4.1 billion.

Danielle Strachman is the Founder and General Partner of 1517 Fund, a venture firm that offers grant, pre-seed, and seed funding to technology startups. With a focus on makers, hackers, and scientists operating outside traditional educational tracks, 1517 Fund champions alternative paths to innovation, encouraging individuals to pursue their passions and learn through hands-on creation of new technologies. Additionally, Danielle was a Founding Team Member and Program Director for the Thiel Fellowship. Joining just a month after the program's inception, she played a crucial role in shaping the fellowship from a nascent idea into a globally recognized initiative that challenges conventional views on education and advances technical innovation. During her tenure, she not only led the design and operations of the Thiel Fellowship but also contributed significantly to building the Thiel Foundation Summit Community, a network of over 1,000 young visionaries. Her work with the Thiel Fellowship and beyond has made significant impacts on supporting young innovators in realizing their entrepreneurial and technological potential.

Kyle Wong is currently the CEO of StartX and was previously the founder & CEO of Pixlee, a UGC and Influencer Marketing company that powers most of the customer stories seen during online shopping. He has worked with some of the world's largest brands, helping them amplify their customer stories and rethink their social commerce strategies. Under his leadership, Pixlee grew to over 100 employees, generated eight digits in recurring revenue, and raised substantial funding from prominent investors. In 2022, Pixlee was acquired by the tech unicorn Emplifi, where Kyle then served as the Chief Strategy Officer, leading their cross-sell and commerce initiatives. Besides his professional roles, Kyle is an active contributor to Forbes & Adweek, writing on topics like community-driven brands, digital marketing, and entrepreneurship. He also dedicates time to mentoring through the Stanford Startup Accelerator (StartX) and the Adweek Executive Mentorship Program and advises and invests in several VC-backed startups. Outside of work, Kyle is an enthusiastic yet self-proclaimed mediocre triathlete and fantasy football player, proudly recalling the time he won his company's Fantasy League.

Michael Houck is the founder of Megaphone and co-founder of Launch house. Launch House is an early stage venture fund for companies building the New Silicon Valley. It began as a membership club built around IRL coliving residencies in LA, NYC, Tulum, Aspen, Miami, and Lisbon.

Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts the Fintech Leaders podcast, a weekly newsletter & podcast featuring exclusive interviews with unique leaders reshaping the global financial industry.

Eric is the co-founder and CEO of Revere. Revere provides venture capital data and portfolio management solutions to asset allocators.

Emila Damjanovic is a Partner focused on Investor Relations at Lead Edge Capital. Lead Edge Capital is a $5 billion growth equity firm investing in software, internet, and tech-enabled businesses globally. The firm has invested in a number of major software and internet companies around the world, including Alibaba Group, Arrive Logistics, Asana, Azul Systems, Bazaarvoice, Benchling, Clearscore, Duo Security, Grafana, GrowthZone, Holistiplan, LeanStaffing, LiveView Technologies, Pacemate, Safesend, Signal Sciences, Tempo, Toast, Wise, and YouSign. Lead Edge has invested in more than 100 companies worldwide and has seen over 60 portfolio companies achieve an exit.

Shomik is a Partner at boldstart and has over 6 years of venture investing in enterprise software. He’s experienced all the highs and lows of the entrepreneurial journey from IPOs and acquisitions to a failed startup. And is uniquely positioned to help pre-product enterprise startups.

Siqi is the founder and CEO of Runway, an a16z funded startup enabling operators to understand their business without needing a degree in finance. As an operator and founder: Siqi was CEO of Sandbox VR (a16z), VP of Product and Growth at Postmates (acquired by Uber), CEO of Hey, Inc (Google-funded, acquired by Postmates), Head of Product at Zynga (IPO 2011), CEO of Serious Business (funded by Lightspeed, acquired by Zynga) Siqi is an investor in nearly a hundred companies like Clubhouse, Amplitude, Pipe, and Italic. Previously, Siqi worked at NASA JPL, where he was the only person to ever receive a Congressional Space Act award while in school, for his contributions to machine vision technology on the Mars Exploration Rovers.