Venture with Grace

Mercedes Bent is a Venture Partner at Lightspeed. Mercedes’ path to VC is a true convergence of her life experiences — a childhood surrounded by inventors, finance roles at the Federal Reserve and Goldman Sachs, managing P&Ls at two consumer startups (including growing one from $2 to $100M in revenue in 4 years), founding two startups of her own, and her long-term goal of empowering communities she cares about. She joined Light...

Christine Yen is the Co-founder and CEO of Honeycomb.io. Honeycomb is the observability platform for teams who manage software that matters. Before founding Honeycomb, she built analytics products at Parse/Facebook, and loved writing software to separate signal from noise.Topics:

• Building a category-defining product in the observability space
• The evolution of developer experience and why it matters to business outcomes
• Data-driven...

Mo Al Adham is the founder and CEO of Frec. Frec was founded in 2021 and is based out of San Francisco. They're funded by a long list of incredible investors from companies like Google, Meta, Brex, and more. Their biggest backer is Greylock. Frec has two subsidiaries: one is an SEC registered investment adviser and the other is an SEC registered broker dealer and FINRA member. Assets are housed at Apex Clearing House. Mo is a s...

Maitree Mervana Parekh is an early & growth stage investor @ Acrew Capital. Maitree is a student of consumer behavior shifts and a creative. She leads investments across Health and Fintech, working closely with the firm’s investments in Cometa, Future Family, Banked, ShopShops, Creative Juice, among other unannounced companies.Prior to Acrew, Maitree was an investor at Cerity Partners Ventures (fka Touchdown Ventures), where sh...

Anarghya Vardhana is a General Partner at Maveron. Anarghya spends her time understanding consumer and cultural behavioral shifts, identifying the billion-dollar businesses that will emerge, and partnering with the right founders to help grow those startups into iconic consumer brands. She is particularly interested in companies improving the health and wellness of large populations and she has invested across early stages and sect...

Kirby Winfield is the founding GP of Ascend, a pre-seed VC fund focused on enterprise AI. The fund's flagship investment is Overland AI, which powers autonomous ground navigation for the US Defense ecosystem. Prior to Ascend, Kirby's career as a tech founder included two IPOs and two venture backed exits.Topics:

• Enterprise AI Investment Thesis:
• Defense Tech Innovation
• Building Defensible AI Startups

#AIStartups #TechE...

Arvind Ayyala is a Partner at Geodesic Capital, focused on investments across enterprise software, fintech, healthcare and sustainable technologies. He was previously co-leading North American growth investments in similar segments, for Singapore-based EDBI. Prior to EDBI, Arvind was with Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), planning and executing the country’s economic development. He worked across Energy & Chemicals, E...

Andrea Lo is the Managing Partner at Main Character Capital. She is a silicon Valley native investor with 15+ years experience as a founder, investor, and startup operator in the alternative investments space. Led $100mm+ of global VC investments from pre-seed to pre-IPO, helped launch & turnaround venture style funds, and created / innovated on new financial products later adopted by financial institutions. Previously Head of ...

Derek Xiao is an investor at Menlo Ventures. Derek concentrates on identifying investment opportunities across the firm’s thesis areas, covering AI, cloud infrastructure, digital health, and enterprise SaaS. Derek is especially focused on investing in soon-to-be breakout companies at the inflection stage. Derek joined Menlo from Bain & Company where he worked with leading San Francisco-based technology investors and companies s...

Jordan Viniar is a Partner at Prudence. Prudence is an early-stage venture firm investing in technology companies leading the global transformation of the built world. The firm invests across multiple verticals, including real estate, construction, infrastructure and energy/climate adaptation. Prudence is headquartered in New York City.Topics:

• The evolution of built world technology
• Climate adaptation technologies
• Real estate tec...

Eylul Kayin is a Partner at Gradient. Prior to Gradient, Eylul was an investor with NEA and Softbank, where she backed a number of category-defining companies including Brex, Cato, Chime, Claroty, Digits, Eargo (NASDAQ: EAR), Ethos, Flexport, Material Bank, Neotract (acquired by Teleflex) and Revelle Aesthetics (incubation). Eylul started her career at Morgan Stanley and has a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Mathematics from Col...

Elizabeth Weil is the Founder & Managing Partner at Scribble Ventures. She believes that passion and pushing boundaries drive success, whether it is investing in founders building with world-changing ideas, transforming a startup into a Fortune 500 company, or running ultramarathons. She is a super-connector, and with her infectious enthusiasm she leaves everyone more energetic than she found them. With more than 2 decades in v...

Simon Tiu joined Vertex Ventures US in 2024, focusing on AI-native enterprise software and cybersecurity investments. Prior to joining Vertex Ventures, Simon worked at Qatalyst Partners, where he was a core member of the Enterprise Software team. During his tenure, he provided strategic and financial advice to senior management and boards of leading technology companies across ~$100B of announced M&A transactions.Notable deals ...

Yash Patel joined Titanium Ventures in 2014 and leads TV’s consumer (esports/gaming, fintech, ecommerce) and vertical SaaS tech investing effort. Yash has sourced and led TV’s investments in BigCommerce (Nasdaq: BIGC), Snapchat (NYSE: SNAP), OpenGov (acquired by Cox Enterprises), Skillz (NYSE: SKLZ), Super.com, Swish Analytics, Document Crunch, Mobile Premier League, Omaze, Sleeper, Team SoloMid (tsm.gg), FitOn, and Singular, among...

Rob co-founded a new company in 2024 called Eternos.life, which launched the world's first AI legacy service enabling people to create a lifelike AI of themselves to pass their knowledge down to future generations.Previously, Rob was the Founder of LivePerson, Inc. (LPSN: NASDAQ ), and was its Chief Executive Officer from 1995 to 2023. He was the guiding force behind the company’s vision of creating meaningful connections betwe...

Miles Deamer is a VP at Crossover VC, where he allocates capital to both early-stage emerging managers as well as select direct investment opportunities. Miles has spent more than a decade in Silicon Valley designing and implementing business strategies in the fintech and proptech verticals. Prior to joining Crossover, Miles spent seven years as an early employee of multiple venture-backed startups including Kiavi, Sundae, and Alph...

Feyza Haskaraman is a principal at Menlo Ventures, Feyza focuses on soon-to-breakout consumer, fintech, and enterprise SaaS companies. Prior to Menlo, Feyza worked as an engineer at various companies in different growth stages, including Nucleus Scientific (now Indigotech), Fitbit, and Analog Devices. Her exposure to a wide range of tasks and opportunities led Feyza to grow curious about the way companies operate. Feyza pursued a c...