Casey Aylward joined Accel in 2022 and focuses on early-stage investments in cloud-native infrastructure, open-source software, and security companies. Prior to joining Accel, Casey worked at Costanoa Ventures, an early-stage enterprise fund, where she led and incubated several investments in developer tools, data infrastructure, and security. Before investing, Casey was a software engineer at Pinterest where she worked on commerce, collaboration, and core products. Casey joined Pinterest via an acquisition of a former Accel portfolio company, URX, where she was also a software engineer. Casey graduated from Dartmouth College and is from Palm Beach, FL.
Nikhil Basu Trivedi is Co-Founder & General Partner at Footwork, an early-stage focused venture firm in San Francisco investing its first $175M fund. Nikhil was previously a Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, where he led the firm’s investments in Athelas, Canva, ClassDojo, Color, Frame.io, Imperfect Foods, Lattice, and The Farmer’s Dog. He started his career on the investing team at Insight Partners and on the founding team at Artsy. Nikhil graduated from Princeton University with a degree in molecular biology, and serves on the board of trustees of his high school alma mater, Menlo School.
Peter Beck
Founder & CEO, Rocket Lab
Peter Beck is the founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Engineer of Rocket Lab, a Nasdaq-listed leading launch and space systems company opening access to space to improve life on Earth. Rocket Labโs capabilities span the space economy, including satellite design and manufacture, industry-leading spacecraft software and components, and reliable launch services. Under Mr. Beckโs leadership, Rocket Labโs Electron launch vehicle has become the most successful small launch vehicle globally and Rocket Lab satellite subsystems have featured on more than 1,700 missions. Rocket Lab technology enables some of humanityโs most ambitious space missions, including complex interplanetary science missions, national security programs, and vast commercial constellations.
Since founding the company in 2006, Mr. Beck has grown Rocket Lab into a global organization of 1,800 people across the United States, Canada and New Zealand. Today, Rocket Labโs launch vehicles, satellites and space systems are relied upon by a range of global mission partners including NASA, the United States Space Force, DARPA, the National Reconnaissance Office, and a broad range of commercial satellite and constellation operators.
Navin Chaddha is managing partner at Mayfield, an early-stage venture capital firm with a 50+ year track record.
Heather Doshay
Partner, People & Talent, SignalFire
Dr. Heather Doshay is Partner, People + Talent at SignalFire, the first venture capital firm built like a technology company to better solve for the needs of founders. In this role, she uses nearly 20 years of operating and teaching experience to expertly guide startups to success. Prior to SignalFire, Heather held executive operator roles such as VP People at Webflow and RainforestQA, led Candidate Marketplace at Hired, and taught Organizational Leadership at the University of San Francisco.
Denise Dresser is the CEO of Slack. For over 20 years, Denise has spearheaded business transformations within many of the worldโs largest and most innovative companies. At Slack and as a part of Salesforce, Denise leads the team of Slack technologists, product innovators, marketers, communicators, and customer success professionals who are grounded in Slackโs mission to make peopleโs working lives simpler, more pleasant, and more productive. Denise previously served as President of Accelerated Industries Sales at Salesforce, leading the distribution and go-to-market strategy for some of Salesforceโs most strategic accounts and for the companyโs industry-leading cloud solutions. Prior to Salesforce, she was a sales leader at Oracle. Denise graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a member of the Ad Council Board of Directors, a passionate mentor to future women leaders and top talent, and the executive sponsor for ALSForce, a Salesforce equality group focused on raising awareness about ALS. Denise is based in San Francisco and is the mom to two amazing teenage boys.
Andy Dunn is an entrepreneur, author, and investor. Dunn co-founded the menswear ecommerce brand Bonobos in 2007, and served as the companyโs CEO for its first ten years, pioneering the digitally native brand movement. Bonobos was the first American brand launched to scale using e-commerce. The companyโs inventory-free store model, called guideshops, redefined what an offline retail experience can be in the digital era. A decade after its founding, Bonobos was acquired for $310 million. In 2022, Dunn published a memoir. In it, he lifts the veil on the mental health demons heโd been privately battling as he built Bonobos. Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind chronicles his journey at the intersection of entrepreneurship and bipolar disorder. Published by Penguin Random House, the book was named one of the most anticipated books of the year by Forbes and was an Amazon Editorโs Choice in 2022. Dunnโs latest venture is called Pie. Currently in beta, the mantra of the company is โmore social, less media.โ As an angel investor and a founder of Red Swan, a seed stage venture capital fund, Dunn has backed over 100 startups, including Warby Parker, Coinbase and Hinge. Dunn chairs the board of Monica + Andy, an organic baby apparel brand, and serves on the board of RaisedBy.Us, a social giving not-for-profit. Dunn received his B.A. at Northwestern University and M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He lives between Chicago and Rio de Janeiro with his wife and their son. He is a Cubs fan.
Rebecca Gevalt
Managing Partner, Dcode Capital
Rebecca Gevalt is Managing Partner at Dcode Capital which invests alongside leading venture firms in commercially-successful, high-growth technology companies that can dramatically improve the US government. The venture fund launched from Dcode, the partners’ affiliated advisory firm based in Washington, DC, that aims to create a technologically superior federal government. Previously as Dcodeโs tech Managing Director, Rebecca built and operated the stage-agnostic accelerator program, scaling venture-backed tech into the federal market. She also launched Dcodeโs government business to teach government stakeholders how to find and contract with nontraditional tech companies. Prior to Dcode, Rebecca worked at the CIA for more than a decade, and for some of those years, she worked with In-Q-Tel to bring novel tech startups into the national security space. She holds a BS from Tulane University.
Dayna Grayson is Co-founder and General Partner of Construct Capital, an early stage venture firm that invests in extraordinary founders building technology to transform the most foundational industries of our economy from manufacturing to mobility. Dayna was one of the first venture capitalists to turn her attention to transforming these sectors of our economy through software based models. She backed companies creating new advances in manufacturing, automation, and vertically integrated consumer brands. During her time as a partner at NEA (2012-2020), she was the lead investor from the earliest stages and was on the board of companies including Desktop Metal (2015 – today), Tulip (2017 – 2020), Onshape (acqd by PTC) (2013-2019), and Framebridge (acqd by Graham Holdings) (2014-2020) among others. She also led investments in Guideline, Formlabs, Evenly and Neuralmagic. At Construct, along with her co-founder Rachel Holt, Dayna is exclusively focused on early stage investments and investing behind the accelerating changes in foundational industries that together make up half our economyโs GDP are failing to meet customer expectations. Some of their investments include Copia, Veho, Hadrian, The Rounds, and Verve Motion. Dayna started her career in product development and led design efforts at Blackbaud [BLKB], the leading global provider of software to nonprofit organizations, as the company grew to over $130 million in revenue and completed a successful public offering and was an investor at North Bridge Venture Partners from 2007-2012. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia (Systems Engineering) and Harvard Business School, where she serves as a venture partner today.
Topher is the cofounder/CEO of Albedo, the first space company to commercialize the new orbit regime of VLEO (very low earth orbit). Albedo’s satellites will capture imagery at a resolution that today can only be obtained by planes/drones, enabling applications across defense/intelligence, utilities, agriculture, insurance, and energy industries. Prior to Albedo, Topher was an engineer at Lockheed Martin working on national security space programs.
Rebecca Hu
Co-Founder, Glacier
Rebecca is the founder and CEO of Glacier, a recycling startup building AI and robotics to help recyclers, brands, producers, and government agencies measure and improve recovery rates for their highest-priority recycled commodities. Rebecca is a Waste360 40 Under 40 winner and a mentor for the Google Circular Economy Accelerator. She has spoken at several leading industry conferences, including the Plastics Recycling Conference, the National Recycling Congress, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition conference, and the Near Future Summit. Prior to founding Glacier, Rebecca was a consultant at Bain & Company and advisor to several early- and growth-stage startups. Glacier works with several recyclers across the US, major brands including Amazon and Colgate-Palmolive, and government agencies including the City of Phoenix and Michigan Department of Environment. Glacier’s circularity work has been featured in several leading publications, including CBS, NBC, Inc., Axios, and TechCrunch.
“Roger is the CEO of Comprehensive.io, a compensation management startup. He is also the creator of Layoffs.fyi.
Previously, Roger co-founded Human Interest, a digital 401(k) provider used by over 20,000 businesses.”
Will focuses on early-stage investments in protocol layer infrastructure, DeFi applications, and software products. Before leading investments, Will supported the firmโs research function and built quantitative risk software for the trading business. Prior to joining the firm, he worked on data science for the Ethereum protocol FOAM. He holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Architecture from Stanford University. Will has led several investments for Galaxy since 2019, including Aleo, Axelar, Celestia, Centrifuge, Gensyn, and Risc Zero.
Renata Quintini
Co-Founder and Managing Director, Renegade Partners
Renata is a venture capitalist, futurist, and co-founder of Renegade Partners. Over the past 15 years, she has invested in founding teams transforming the trajectory of humanity through technology. Prior to launching Renegade with Roseanne Wincek in 2020, Renata specialized in early-stage deep technology investments as a Partner at Lux Capital. She previously served as General Partner at Felicis Ventures, where she worked closely with companies unlocking new markets and business models, including Dollar Shave Club ($1B acquisition by Unilever), Bonobos (acquired by Walmart), Planet (micro satellites), and Cruise Automation ($1B acquisition by GM). Before becoming a venture capitalist, Renata helped manage Stanford Universityโs endowment, investing in both private equity and venture capital funds. She earned her MBA and LL.M (Master of Law in Law, Science, and Technology) degrees from Stanford University, and her JD law degree from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. She is a CFA charterholder. Renata is also a three-time state champion black belt in karate, Bossa Nova guitar player, and Brazilian immigrant.
Naveen Rao, PhD is the Vice President of Generative AI at Databricks and a recognized leader in the generative AI field. Naveen was formerly the CEO and co-founder of MosaicML, an AI company acquired by Databricks in 2023 that enables organizations to develop state-of-the-art large AI models with their own data. Before founding MosaicML, Naveen was the CEO and co-founder of Nervana Systems, the first hardware startup for modern deep learning. After Nervana was acquired by Intel Corporation in 2016, Naveen became Intel’s Head of AI and led Intelโs AI program, which he then grew into its own division. Prior to Nervana, Naveen held various AI research, design, and architecture roles. He holds a PhD in Computational Neuroscience from Brown University and a BSEE in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Duke University.
Elliott Robinson is a Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners where he leads the growth investment practice and is primarily focused on cloud software investments. He is currently a board member for Coactive AI, Databook, Hinge Health, Hyperscience, Imply Data, Netlify and Render.
Even establishes True Anomalyโs strategic objectives and aligns resources for their execution. Prior to co-founding True Anomaly, Even served as an Air Force officer, leading interdisciplinary teams of space operators, scientists, and engineers to develop and evaluate the performance of military systems and tactics designed to protect U.S. and allied space assets. Even is the author of six seminal texts that serve as foundational doctrine and training for U.S. military space operations. He was a major contributing author of the U.S. Space Forceโs inaugural Spacepower: Doctrine for Space Forces. He has held leadership positions in space system developmental and operational test, training, spacecraft operations, and joint fires. In these roles, he provided key insights into the practices needed to successfully deploy space security satellites and supporting infrastructure.
Even establishes True Anomalyโs strategic objectives and aligns resources for their execution. Prior to co-founding True Anomaly, Even served as an Air Force officer, leading interdisciplinary teams of space operators, scientists, and engineers to develop and evaluate the performance of military systems and tactics designed to protect U.S. and allied space assets.
Even is the author of six seminal texts that serve as foundational doctrine and training for U.S. military space operations. He was a major contributing author of the U.S. Space Forceโs inaugural Spacepower: Doctrine for Space Forces. He has held leadership positions in space system developmental and operational test, training, spacecraft operations, and joint fires. In these roles, he provided key insights into the practices needed to successfully deploy space security satellites and supporting infrastructure.
Matt Rogers is the CEO and co-founder of Mill. Mill has built an entirely new system to prevent waste, starting with food. The company has created a practical and impactful way to take steps at home that are good for your kitchen and our planet.
Matt is also the co-founder of Incite.org, a values-based investor that provides catalytic capital and guidance for world positive start-ups, non-profits, and activists. Heeding the call to address the climate crisis, Matt leads Incite.orgโs investments in climate solutions as well as nonprofits and advocacy groups advancing climate policy.
Prior to Incite, Matt was the co-founder of Nest, where he built the team that created the first machine learning thermostat and the leading brand for the connected home. Before Nest, Matt started his career at Apple, building the software team for 10 generations of the iPod. He was one of the first engineers on the original iPhone and was involved in the development of 5 iPhone generations, and the first iPad. Matt earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Carnegie Mellon University.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Managing Director, Insight Partners
Outside of work, Jon plays soccer in NYC intramural leagues, enjoys reading, struggles to learn guitar, and is an unabashed Philadelphia sports fan.
Spenser Skates is the CEO and co-founder of digital analytics leader Amplitude (Nasdaq: AMPL). He co-founded the company in 2012 to help organizations build better products through data, taking the company public via a direct listing in September 2021. Skates previously worked as an algorithmic trader at DRW Trading Group and graduated with a B.S. in Bioengineering from MIT where he was the back-to-back champion of Battlecode, MITโs largest programming competition.
Natalie Sportelli is a Director at Bullish, an early-stage consumer venture capital firm and brand consultancy based in New York. Before investing at Bullish, she was employee number four at Thingtesting, a discovery and review platform for consumer brands backed by Forerunner Ventures. She has worked in journalism as an Associate Editor at Forbes editing the Under 30 franchise, and also served as a Director at early-stage venture capital firm Lerer Hippeau.
Luis Villa
General Counsel and Co-Founder, Tidelift
Luis Villa is co-founder at Tidelift and board member at Creative Commons and OpenET. During his career, he has been a top open source lawyer, a programmer, and a community leader. In previous roles, he has worked in the legal departments at the Wikimedia Foundation and Mozilla, and served on community-elected boards at the Open Source Initiative and GNOME Foundation.
Alexandr Wang is the founder and CEO of Scale AI, the data platform accelerating the development of artificial intelligence. Alex founded Scale as a student at MIT at the age of 19 to help companies build long-term AI strategies with the right data and infrastructure. Under Alex’s leadership, Scale has grown to a $7 billion valuation serving hundreds of customers across industries from finance to model builders to U.S. government agencies.
Tamar Yehoshua
Chief Product Officer, Slack
Tamar Yehoshua oversees product strategy and development, design, and research at Slack.
Previously, Tamar was a Vice President at Google holding product and engineering leadership roles on Googleโs most important products, including Search, Identity and Privacy. Prior to that, Tamar was the Vice President of Advertising Technologies at Amazonโs A9.
Tamar has a BA in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and an MSc in Computer Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Elizabeth Yin is a founder and general partner of Hustle Fund, a pre-seed venture capital fund that invests in hilariously early software startups across the U.S., Canada and Southeast Asia.
Sangeen Zeb
General Partner, GV (Google Ventures)
Sangeen is a general partner at GV, focusing on high-growth AI and enterprise investments. He works with both early and late-stage startups, and his investments include Chronosphere, Courier, Lacework, and Medallion. Before joining GV in 2021, Sangeen was an investor with Founders Circle Capital, where he helped lead the firm’s investments in Attentive, Algolia, Cohesity, Confluent (IPO), Databricks, Segment (acquired by Twilio), Robinhood (IPO) and UiPath (IPO). He spent over five years at Centerview Capital, where he sourced investments in Affirmed Networks (acquired by Microsoft) and Sauce Labs (acquired by TPG) and began his investment career at Summit Partners. Sangeen holds a B.S. in Economics and an MBA from the Wharton School.
Ben Zhao
Professor of Computer Science, University of Chicago
Ben Zhao is Neubauer Professor of Computer Science at University of Chicago. He completed his Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley (2004), and B.S. from Yale (1997). He is a Fellow of the ACM, and a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, MIT Technology Review’s TR-35 Award (Young Innovators Under 35), USENIX Internet Defense Prize, ComputerWorld Magazine’s Top 40 Technology Innovators award, IEEE ITC Early Career Award, and Faculty awards from Google, Amazon, and Facebook. His work has been covered by many media outlets including New York Times, CNN, NBC, ABC, BBC, MIT Tech Review, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and New Scientist. His current research focuses on mitigating the harms of misused AI through development of tools like Glaze and Nightshade. He has published over 190 articles in areas of security and privacy, machine learning, networking, and HCI. He served as TPC (co-)chair for the World Wide Web conference (WWW 2016) and ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC 2018), and on the Steering Committee of IEEE Conference on Secure and Trustworthy Machine Learning (SaTML).
Dan Lorenc is co-founder and CEO of Chainguard, a leading software supply chain security company. Dan has been working on and worrying about containers since 2015 as an engineer and manager at Google. He started projects like Minikube, Skaffold, and Kaniko to make containers easy and fun, then got so worried about the state of OSS supply-chains he helped found the Tekton and Sigstore projects to make it easier to build and use containers securely; as well as SLSA a leading framework for software security and supply chain integrity. He has been involved with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, chaired the Continuous Delivery Foundation technical oversight committee, and sits on the governing board for the Open Source Security Foundation.
Drew Taggart
Producer, The Chainsmokers & Investment Partner, MANTIS Venture Capital
Grammyยฎ Award-winning and Billboard Chart topping artist/producer duo, The Chainsmokers, have evolved into a dominating musical force with a diverse repertoire of songs that have led them to become one of musicโs hottest recording artists.
Comprised of Alex Pall and Drew Taggart, their signature sound deftly reaches across indie, progressive and pop realms and has seen them develop some of the biggest breakthrough songs over the course of the last few years. Now in 2020,
The Chainsmokers are currently working on their next chapter of music for their fourth full length album while simultaneously focusing on charitable and business ventures. From donating 20,000 N95 masks to hospitals in New York City and Las Vegas at the peak need for PPE during the pandemic to donations for charities aiding in wildfire relief in Australia and fighting for equal rights across the globe, Alex and Drew are always looking for ways to give back to causes that hit close to home.
Most recently, The Chainsmokers were featured on the cover of Forbes for their entrepreneurial achievements as well as being named by Forbes as the highest paid DJs in the world. Using their ability to identify trends, Drew and Alex have built a track record as seasoned angel investors.
Following their passion for supporting other brilliant entrepreneurs, they joined forces with a seasoned investment team, led by tech investors and entrepreneurs Milan Koch and Jeffrey Evans, to form a new venture capital firm called Mantis. Mantis Venture Capital invests in Seed & Series A consumer companies within the industries of Media & Entertainment, Fintech, and Health & Wellness that focuses on the Gen Z and Millennial population.
Alex Pall
Producer, The Chainsmokers & Investment Partner, MANTIS Venture Capital
Grammyยฎ Award-winning and Billboard Chart topping artist/producer duo, The Chainsmokers, have evolved into a dominating musical force with a diverse repertoire of songs that have led them to become one of musicโs hottest recording artists.
Comprised of Alex Pall and Drew Taggart, their signature sound deftly reaches across indie, progressive and pop realms and has seen them develop some of the biggest breakthrough songs over the course of the last few years. Now in 2020,
The Chainsmokers are currently working on their next chapter of music for their fourth full length album while simultaneously focusing on charitable and business ventures. From donating 20,000 N95 masks to hospitals in New York City and Las Vegas at the peak need for PPE during the pandemic to donations for charities aiding in wildfire relief in Australia and fighting for equal rights across the globe, Alex and Drew are always looking for ways to give back to causes that hit close to home.
Most recently, The Chainsmokers were featured on the cover of Forbes for their entrepreneurial achievements as well as being named by Forbes as the highest paid DJs in the world. Using their ability to identify trends, Drew and Alex have built a track record as seasoned angel investors.
Following their passion for supporting other brilliant entrepreneurs, they joined forces with a seasoned investment team, led by tech investors and entrepreneurs Milan Koch and Jeffrey Evans, to form a new venture capital firm called Mantis. Mantis Venture Capital invests in Seed & Series A consumer companies within the industries of Media & Entertainment, Fintech, and Health & Wellness that focuses on the Gen Z and Millennial population.
Aeva Black
Pitch at Disrupt 2024
Apply to pitch and be a part of the Startup Battlefield 200 at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt 2024.