TechCrunch is partnering with Matrix Partners for February’s Include Office Hours Program. Partners Ilya Sukhar and Anoushka Vaswani will be meeting with underserved and underrepresented founders in San Francisco. Submit your application here.
Recognizing the gaps in the tech community, TechCrunch launch the Include program in 2014. Aimed at underserved and underrepresented founders, TechCrunch Include leverages the TC network to facilitate opportunities to diverse founders in the community.
Include Office Hours are a part of this effort. Each month TechCrunch Partners with a high profile VC or angel in San Francisco and New York. Selected companies meet individually with each partner to gain valuable guidance and advice. Office Hours with Matrix Partners will take place on February 22nd from 1-4pm PT.
Underserved and underrepresented groups include (but are not limited to) LGBTQ, Latino/a, Black, Female Founders, and veterans.
Let’s meet our Matrix Partners for Include Office Hours:
Ilya Sukhar
Prior to joining Matrix in 2016, Ilya worked on three startups, all of which were acquired.
Most recently, he was the co-founder and CEO of Parse, a cloud platform for mobile developers that was acquired by Facebook in 2013. In addition to running Parse as a semi-independent subsidiary, Ilya led the teams responsible for all of Facebook’s developer-facing products and worked on Messenger. He’s an active angel investor and was a part-time partner at Y Combinator. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Computer Science from Cornell University.
Ilya invests across a variety of sectors, but is particularly interested in products that leverage hard technical underpinnings to become indispensable to consumers or developers. He’s excited to work with hackers who are building mission-driven and engineering-centric companies. Read more about Ilya on his website and watch some of his talks here.
Anoushka Vaswani
Anoushka joined Matrix in 2015. She is actively involved with the firm’s investments in Lever, Inflection and GOAT and serves as a Board Observer for ACME Technologies and PayRange. Prior to Matrix, Anoushka was at McKinsey & Co., focused on companies in technology, media and payments. She helped lead McKinsey’s fast-growing technology initiative, managing engagements with pre-IPO technology companies, and worked with Facebook on their internet.org initiative. Prior to McKinsey, Anoushka worked at Goldman Sachs and advised companies on mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts and debt and equity offerings.