We're thrilled to announce the launch of our brand-new series, "VC Unfiltered," hosted by our founding partner, Lucas J. Pols. This exciting series promises to deliver candid conversations and invaluable insights from industry leaders and experts in venture capital and startup ecosystem.
For our first episode, we are honored to feature Ilya Strebulaev, the esteemed David S. Lobel Professor of Private Equity at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Professor Strebulaev, along with co-author Alex Dang, has recently released the highly acclaimed book, "The Venture Mindset: How to Make Smarter Bets and Achieve Extraordinary Growth.
Tim Tiemann is the Managing Director of the CSUN Innovation Incubator. He holds graduate degrees in science (Immunology) and business (Finance and Marketing). He has worked for over 15 years with Fortune 500 companies such as Bayer and Motorola, and over 10 years launching and managing start-up ventures. He has experience in technology licensing, IP, and raising equity investment.
FoundersBoost is a global pre-accelerator program with a mission to lead pre-seed stage startups towards Accelerators, Investment, and Revenue. The program provides high quality one-on-one mentorship and large global network to help accelerate the growth of startups accepted.
Andy is a leader in the Southern Californian innovation ecosystem and has started, led or invested in more than two dozen tech start-ups. In addition to leading the Alliance as Executive Director, he serves on the City Council for the City of Pasadena and he is a founder of Innovate Pasadena, which is dedicated to advancing the Eastside of Los Angeles as a vibrant innovation center for deep tech.
Previously, as founder of Momentum Ventures, an early stage tech accelerator and venture fund, he personally led more than a half dozen SoCal tech start-ups and invested in almost a dozen others. He previously held senior executive roles (President, SVP Product, CIO, COO) at Overture Services/Yahoo!, RiverOne, Bowne & Co and RR Donnelley & Sons. He has extensive board experience in not-for-profit and community organizations such as Pacific Oaks College, Pasadena Heritage and STEAMCODERS. He is a regular speaker at entrepreneurs’ events and business schools and was named one of the 50 Most Innovative Men in the San Gabriel Valley. Andy holds an engineering degree with honors from Dartmouth College and received his MBA with a concentration in operations and technology management from Harvard Business School.
Andrea is an accomplished senior executive, serial entrepreneur, advisor, board member, startup mentor, and thought leader with more than 20 years of business success in diverse industries and verticals. She is passionate about creating successful companies and making existing ones better. Companies led by Andrea have generated double and triple-digit growth, every year, for the last 15 years of her career.
Through her work in her companies and mentoring startups, she has built a network of entrepreneurs, angel investors, family offices, accelerators, early stage VC, high net worth individuals, and service provider partners, and has significant experience sourcing quality technology startup companies and participating in due diligence processes. In addition, Andrea has served as a guest lecturer, giving presentations at global conferences, universities, and councils.
"How Technology Shifts in Light of Pandemic Pressures: a Bridge Between Past, Present, and Future"
This panel discussion is to recap the negative and positive impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on technology and the innovation landscape in 2020. We have several guest speakers who will discuss the disease’s massive impact on their industries
This week's special episode of Startup 2.0 is brought to you by Moonshot House. Moonshot invited a few champions from Harvard University, Oxford university Innovation, USC, LMU, MIT and Stanford to have a casual, collaborative dialogue around the virtual table.
James is the Deputy Head and Start-up Coach for the F10 Incubator and Accelerator in Zurich. He also works as an investment analyst for the F10 Investment Ag Previously, James co-founded PBF Solutions, a fintech firm that helps financial services product providers to acquire and on-board new customers and raise savings and investments deposits. PBF helped raise over £4 billion for its clients and was acquired by Raisin GmbH in 2017. Prior to PBF James worked in the alternative investment space and financial consulting.
Petra Griffith launched Wedbush Ventures to foster the next generation of technology companies solving big market problems. Having built many firsts - the first online printing software, first fitness wearable, first native ads - and ushered a bank into the age of technology, Petra understands the strategic and creative mindset necessary to narrow in on a product’s core features for successful market fit.
Her past leadership to product, strategy, marketing, and operations teams at established and startup organizations like Netflix, Yahoo!, and 24 Hour Fitness makes Petra a coveted product strategy ally to entrepreneurs ready to scale innovation.
Larissa was the first employee at Brex — the first of its kind credit card for startups. She was deeply involved in the early iterations of the company, working on everything from recruiting an international workforce to developing sales strategies, structuring and scaling the customer support team to expanding Brex to other early stage tech hubs outside of the Bay Area .
I'm a serial entrepreneur and digital strategist with over 12 years experience building startups, running accelerators and consulting for fortune 500 companies and celebrities. As a trainer, I served as the co-director of a startup program that has helped over 100 startups go on to raise over 40M in funding and get into accelerators like Techstars, YCombinator and 500 Startups. I'm also a specialist in no-code and workflow automation.
Lover of tacos, travel and the great outdoors.
Yair Vardi is a founding partner of Fusion LA, the first accelerator for Israeli start-ups in Los Angeles.
Howie works to identify and evaluate promising early-stage technology and consumer centric companies. He conducts diligence on all potential investments as well as helps quarterback general operations and strategy for ABV.
Howie delivers expertise in many facets of business while bringing a hard core entrepreneurial perspective. Howie was previously on the founding team of a Y-Combinator backed biotech startup called Immunity Project and is currently a mentor at 500 Startups and Runway Innovation Hub.
He was a featured judge on Season 2 of Gimlet Media’s thepitch.vc podcast.
Paul Orlando focuses on getting startups to succeed. As Director of the USC Incubator, he works with businesses founded by USC students, alumni, and faculty. Incubator startups have been funded, run crowdfunding campaigns, shipped product, and have been acquired.
Kelly is the Managing General Partner of Moonshots Capital - an early stage VC fund that invests in early stage technology companies and leans in heavily in veteran founded companies.
Howard is primarily focused on sourcing new investments and working with Morpheus portfolio companies. He currently serves on the Board of Tagnos and DarkLight.
Leonard M. Lanzi has over 30 years of organization management and fund development experience. He has been serving as the Executive Director of the Los Angeles Venture Association since 2007.
Technology entrepreneur, executive, investor, and board member, Carey has started, grown and/or led nine B2B and consumer technology companies during startup and growth phases. He's held senior-level roles for companies that have collectively raised over $250M in venture capital and achieved $1B+ in enterprise value.
Patrick manages operations for 500 Startups’ multiple Venture Capital Unlocked programs in partnership with universities, governments, corporations, and other institutions.
Dean Kline is co-founder, fund manager and managing director for Penn Venture Partners, a venture capital firm. He is also a managing member of the fund’s general partner. In addition, Kline is a board director for several companies: Corporate University Xchange, the Harrisburg Senators, Journal Publications, Probity MT, and Thermacore.
Matt works specifically and extensively in the Los Angeles startup community as co-director of Startup Boost/Los Angeles, a startup pre-accelerator that educates, mentors and propels early stage companies.
As Principal at Sway Ventures, Brett Munster focuses most of his investment activities on the seed and earlier stages for the fund. In addition to evaluating new investments, Brett’s responsibilities include coordinating the due diligence process across all investment opportunities for the fund, monitoring performance of the fund and modeling portfolio allocation, and working directly with many of Sway’s existing portfolio companies.
Brandon Maier is the founder of Lvlup Ventures and has extensive experience building financial and marketing strategies for startup companies.
Anna Barber is the Managing Director of Techstars LA and a partner in The Fund LA. She's a serial entrepreneur, former corporate lawyer, McKinsey consultant and lifelong New Yorker who is also firmly #LongLA.
Melinda Moore is the Co-Founder of TuesdayNights. She is an entrepreneur, investor, advisor and global speaker with over 20 years of experience, and two exits (STV Communications and LovingEco). Melinda is the author of How to Raise Money: The Ultimate Guide to Crowdfunding and has raised over 100 million via equity crowdfunding.
She served as the Senior Vice President for Entertainment Media Ventures. Her work has been widely recognized by Digital LA (Top 50 Digital Women in 2015), the Green Business Bureau and the National Association of Women Business Owners’ Hall of Fame. Melinda serves on the Board of A Sense of Home and has a B.A. from UCLA.
I’m inspired every day by the creativity and boldness of strong founders. Seeing founders achieve the impossible, simply because they don’t live within traditional limits, always excites and inspires me. After exiting China Export Finance, I took 3 years and focused on working with a portfolio of young technology companies to help them along the journey to build their businesses.
During that time, I was exposed to both inspiring talent and a wide set of challenges that really opened my eyes—to the unique nature of every business, yes, but also to the problems and solutions they often had in common.
Working with these founders not only grounded me as a mentor, but also provided me with countless insights and significant growth that prepared me for my tenure at Digital Ocean, where I was able to leverage my 20 years of experience and build the company from the ground up—ultimately reaching 500+ employees and over $200M in revenue.
I’m thrilled to be able to share this playbook of knowledge and experience with M13’s partner entrepreneurs, across every stage of growth.
Christine Harada is President of i(x) investments. Ms. Harada has over 20 years of success in leading government and management consulting organizations.
Rick Smith is a Co-Founder and Managing Director of CrossCut Ventures. CrossCut is an early-stage venture capital with over $200 million under management.
Prior to HelloAdvisr, Ed was a Director of Simon-Kucher & Partners, a global management consulting firm with more than 30 offices worldwide and widely recognized as the global leader in pricing. He advised clients on pricing, sales effectiveness and marketing strategy while working in a range of sectors including retail/ecommerce, B2B services, consumer goods, marketplace/platform and private equity
Shawn is an experienced founder and entrepreneur focused on early stage growth. Shawn previously founded Solve (Y Combinator S17), notably growing the business from $0 to $70K MRR in 3 months, before selling it last December.
Mark is a Partner at the AET Fund, and early stage fund of Akatsuki Inc focused on the future of media and entertainment. Prior to AET Fund, Linao was a senior multi-disciplined engineer at aerospace and defense firm Raytheon. He has also worked at the Rubicon Project and Amazon. After that, Linao was an Associate at Technicolor Ventures eventually transitioning to Director of Corporate Development and Strategy at Technicolor.
Elaine is a Partner with PLG Ventures focused on early stage tech investing in Southern CA. She started her career in investment banking at JPMorgan in NYC and worked in M&A within the CPG industry before receiving her MBA at Kellogg. Elaine then spent the past 10 years working within the startup industry in San Francisco and Chicago.
Chris holds a diverse range of investment and consulting experience in areas including SaaS, consumer marketplace, entertainment, and real estate technologies.
Drew Leahy is the Managing Partner and Cofounder of Hawke Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund that focuses on consumer and technology that powers consumer.
Minnie is a long-time Silicon Valley product leader and operations executive with experience building and scaling impact through elegant technical solutions and great teams. She recently moved back to LA after 20+ years in the Bay Area and is excited to be a part of the growing tech ecosystem of Southern California.
Kat Yalung is the Director of Bixel Exchange’s Startup LAunch Program, a Small Business Development Center (SBDC) in partnership with the Small Business Administration. Bixel Exchange is the Center of Innovation and Technology at the second largest Chamber of Commerce in the United States, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. Bixel Exchange believes in an inclusive tech ecosystem reflected in Los Angeles’ workforce and entrepreneurs. She leads the development and implementation of Bixel Exchange’s core business advisory services, helping foster more than 250 tech startups each year as an impact driven incubator.
Miki Reynolds is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Grid110, an early stage startup accelerator and community development organization. She has 15 years of experience working in tech, ranging from digital marketing and creative services to software development and e-commerce.
Laurent is an Entrepreneur turned Venture Capitalist who works with start-up founders to successfully build scalable teams, strong company cultures and disruptive products.
Brian is an active angel investor and board advisor to several seed stage companies in LA. He is President of Tech Coast Angels LA Chapter and is currently in charge of both their VC outreach program and their new sidecar investment fund. During his time with TCA he has screened over 300 companies and met with several hundreds more.