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Featured Guests
Founders Boost
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.
The program takes no equity and charges no fees and the dedication of our gifted program leaders and mentors.
Isabelle Bart - RevHub OC
Isabelle is passionate about empowering individuals of all backgrounds to create innovative and impactful enterprises. In her role of executive director of RevHubOC, Isabelle oversees the operations of the incubator program and manages RevHubOC’s partnerships and network. Her professional experience includes more than 20 years in healthcare and nonprofit sectors, working in leadership, business-planning, and marketing strategy for companies such as Abbott and the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses where she led digital transformation initiatives, resulting in unprecedented growth in membership and revenue. Isabelle has been a strong supporter of entrepreneurs as an innovation advisor and expert-in-residence at UCI Beall Applied Innovation, a board member of the Beall Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and an advisor for the OCTANE nonprofit accelerator. Isabelle has been an advocate and volunteer for many local nonprofit organizations, serving on the board of Child Creativity Lab and Cancer Kinship. She holds a Master’s in Business Administration from ESSEC Business School in Paris, France.
Andy Wilson - Alliance for Socal Innovation
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.
How Technology Shifts in Light of Pandemic Pressures
"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
Andrea White-Kjoss - LB Accelerator
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.
Future of Entrepreneurship at Universities
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 Sanders - F10 Incubator & Accelerator
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 - Wedbush Ventures
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 Maranhao Rocha - Brex
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 . She attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where she studied economics under the leadership of her thesis advisor and mentor to Sheryl Sandberg, Larry Summers. The daughter of a sugar mill supervisor, Larissa is the first person in her state to attend the university. At Harvard, she served as President of Eliot House and President of The Brazil Conference - where she interviewed and engaged with countless world leaders - including Warren Buffett.
Christian Peverelli - WeAreNoCode
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.
Jim Cooper - Braid Theory
Jim Cooper has had over 20 years of startups, market research, market intelligence and competitive analysis experience. He has assisted companies enter the United States market, and has helped many other companies entering markets further afield. He is CTO of Braid Theory, an early-stage startup advisory and consulting group located in Los Angeles. He also created a consultancy, Conscientia Research, and as a full-service Market Research business its goals are to make businesses successful and competitive by employing research to understand markets, so a business doesn't have to rely on assumptions about how a market works.
Yair Vardi - Fusion LA
Yair Vardi is a founding partner of Fusion LA, the first accelerator for Israeli start-ups in Los Angeles. Fusion LA’s vision is to support a long-term bridge of innovation between the LA & Israeli tech ecosystems. Prior to co-founding Fusion LA, Vardi oversaw US-Israel technology and innovation partnerships at the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles.
Howie Diamond - Alpha Bridge Ventures
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.
Kelly Perdew - Moonshots Capital
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. He is a co-founder & Managing Partner at DuMont Project - a consultative agency that helps accelerate the growth of direct to consumer brands. Prior to DuMont Project he was the CEO of Fastpoint Games, a venture-backed leading developer of live data-driven games for the fortune 500 brand set.
Paul Orlando - USC Incubator
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. Paul teaches Feasibility Analysis, Growth Hacking, and the Digital Startup Launchpad. Before USC, he co-founded AcceleratorHK, Hong Kong's first startup accelerator, which recently had a portfolio exit. Previously, he co-founded a startup that developed new communication technology and won at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon. He wrote the book Startup Sacrilege about thriving outside the tech hubs. Paul's work has been featured in media including Forbes, TechCrunch and the Wall Street Journal.
Len Lanzi - SAM Preccelerator
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. In his capacity at LAVA, Len works with the LAVA board of directors to direct the strategic plan and organize educational and informational programs within the venture funded startup ecosystem in the greater Los Angeles region.
Howard Ko - Morpheus Ventures
Howard is primarily focused on sourcing new investments and working with Morpheus portfolio companies. He currently serves on the Board of Tagnos and DarkLight. Howard was previously with Mission Ventures, a leading Southern California venture capital firm focused on software and semiconductor investments. Prior to Mission, he was with Salomon Smith Barney in their Technology Investment Banking Group where he was involved with public and private financings and M&A. Howard holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from UCLA and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Carey Ransom - OC4 Venture Studios
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 Driscoll - 500 Startups
Patrick manages operations for 500 Startups’ multiple Venture Capital Unlocked programs in partnership with universities, governments, corporations, and other institutions. In this role he oversees program coordination; communication with partners; recruitment and vetting of participants; preparation; and best practice creation. He is experienced in investor/lender education, curriculum design, strategic planning, and program management. He has a MA in Global Finance, Trade, and Economic Integration and a BA in International Relations and Business Management and speaks Spanish and Senegalese Wolof.
Dean Kline - Penn Venture Partners
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 Stodder - Startup Boost
Matt is an experienced executive and advisor to companies across multiple industries. He coaches startups (early-to-growth stage) as a partner of Evolution Services Corp., a boutique executive coaching, leadership training and culture development firm.
Matt also 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.
Brett Munster - Sway Ventures
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. Prior to joining Sway Ventures, Brett ran day-to-day operations for a financial services company, where he oversaw a portfolio of distressed assets that grew to over $2 billion. Brett began his career at zAthlete.com, a sports social networking startup that he launched during his final semester at UC Berkeley and sold in 2009. Soon after, Brett launched his second start-up Visual Icon, a platform designed to help bring Hollywood content online. He also holds an MBA from the University of Southern California where his focus was on entrepreneurship and technology commercialization.
Brandon Maier - LvlUp Ventures
Brandon Maier is the founder of Lvlup Ventures and has extensive experience building financial and marketing strategies for startup companies. Prior to launching Lvlup, Brandon was a Founder and Managing Partner of Quake Capital, an industry-leading accelerator and investment firm with offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Austin. Under Brandon’s tenure and leadership at Quake, their portfolio companies raised over $100 million, including $25 million raised directly from Quake’s fund. Quake was named one of Forbes’ Top-Ten VCs and highlighted by CrunchBase for making the second-most investments in female-led startups (2018).
Anna Barber - Techstars LA
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 - Moore ventures
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.
Karl Alomar - M13
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 - i(x) investments
Christine Harada is President of i(x) investments. Ms. Harada has over 20 years of success in leading government and management consulting organizations. She previously served as the Federal Chief Sustainability Officer for the United States during the Obama administration. In this role, she provided oversight for all sustainability-related initiatives across the federal government in energy, fleet, and acquisitions-game-changing improvements that added to our nation’s clean energy future.
She has extensive expertise in business strategy and translating that into operational excellence. Concurrently, she is a Fellow with the Los Angeles CleanTech Incubator. In addition, she is a member of the board of directors of Novume Solutions and the Millennium Institute.
Ms. Harada holds an MA, International Studies and an MBA, Finance, respectively, from the Lauder Institute and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She also holds an MS Aeronautics/Astronautics and a BS Aeronautics/Astronautics, respectively, from Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Rick Smith - CrossCut Ventures
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 co-founding CrossCut, Rick was a managing director at an early-stage venture capital firm based in Santa Monica, California, with over $500 million under management. Prior to that, he was a managing director at SunAmerica, Inc., where co-founded SunAmerica Ventures, a $750 million fund focused on both direct investments and investments in other venture funds. Rick began his career as a corporate attorney, working five years at the Los Angeles office of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy, a New York-based firm. He graduated from the University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign, with a degree in finance. He also graduated from Harvard Law School.
Chris Hill - Comcast Ventures
Chris holds a diverse range of investment and consulting experience in areas including SaaS, consumer marketplace, entertainment, and real estate technologies. His limitless view of the connected world comes from curiosity and deep-rooted industry connections in the Los Angeles startup ecosystem. Prior to joining Comcast Ventures, Chris served as Principal at Siemer & Associates where he focused on digital media and software startup transactions. He spent his early career as SVP at IMT Capital where he identified growth opportunities and implemented the M&A due diligence process for the firm. In 2013, he was appointed by California’s governor to join the State of California Workforce Investment Board. He received his B.A. in History from Yale.
Kat Yalung - Bixel Exchange
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.
Minnie Ingersoll - TenOneTen Ventures
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. Minnie started her career as an early product manager at Google where she co-founded the Access team; a cross-functional product, policy, and engineering team that spun off Google Fiber. After 11+ years, she left Google to begin her own entrepreneurial journey as the co-founder and COO of Shift, an online marketplace for used cars. Minnie learned a lot of lessons hiring hundreds of employees and scaling a $100M+ business. In her spare time, she hosts the LA Venture podcast, volunteers for local government, surfs baby waves, and raises baby people.
Brian Horner - Tech Coast Angels
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. Last year, TCA invested $15 million across 57 companies, matching similar amounts in 2017 and years prior, making it the largest angel investment group in the US. In addition to angel investing, Brian also trades energy futures for a commodities hedge fund. Prior to joining TCA, Brian spent 10 years in the investment banking industry in New York. Brian received an MBA from UCLA Anderson.
Mark Linao - AET Fund
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.
Ed Lee - HelloAdvisr
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. Previous to this, Ed was the Go-To-Market (GTM) manager for LG Electronics Europe where he worked with senior leadership across 14 subsidiaries and 20 markets to develop and implement initiatives to increase revenue and profitability growth. Ed received an MBA from Oxford University, double Masters of Science (MSc) from the London School of Economics and a BA from the University of California, San Diego.
Miki Reynolds - Grid110
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.
Shawn Sheikh - Pivot CMO
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. He is currently an Entrepreneur in Residence at Guthy Renker and an advisor at several early stage startups. He loves discussing all things strategy and growth, particularly with regards to helping companies achieve and maintain profitability.
Elaine Russell - PLG Ventures
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.
First, she was an early employee at Tiny Prints up until they were acquired by Shutterfly in 2011 for $333m. After, she moved to Chicago to be VP of Product for Storeplacer, a company with a SaaS social commerce product and then co-founded two B2C companies. The last company she founded was called Little Key, an on-demand marketplace for parents to find and book kids’ classes and activities, acquired in 2016 by Dabble.
Laurent Grill - Luma Launch
Laurent is an Entrepreneur turned Venture Capitalist who works with start-up founders to successfully build scalable teams, strong company cultures and disruptive products. Laurent believes that there is a fundamental need for additional support in the early stage ecosystem in Los Angeles and other budding technology hubs around the US and globally. This desire to support these growing tech communities led him to his current role as the Lead Investor at Luma Launch, a pre-seed to seed corporate venture and accelerator. Luma Launch is focused on early-stage startups at the convergence of evolving technology and content markets, capitalizing on internal and external resources to create successful products.
Drew Leahy - Hawke Ventures
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. Three-time entrepreneur and inventor, Drew was previously the Chief Marketing Officer and Co-founder of SnapSuits.com, a tech-forward men’s fashion e-retailer. He leveraged his seasoned product team, based in Colombia, South America, to achieve an 8x ROI with powerful technology and marketing. Drew was also previously Entrepreneur in Residence at memBrain in Los Angeles, working with tech and entertainment angel investors Ken Hertz and Liz Heller. He hails from Brighton, MI, graduated from the University of Michigan, and was awarded 2010 Ross School of Business Entrepreneur of the Year.