Paolo is a global tech entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience. He has founded 6 companies, invested in over 100, and advised countless, including being an LP in 8 funds. He has raised over $300M across startups and funds. Paolo received 10 career awards, and 4 of his companies had an exit. His latest company Evensi, the world's largest events platform, was acquired by Events.com and is preparing for a Nasdaq IPO by the end of 2023, following a recent $100M raise. Paolo is actively involved in M&A and Corporate Development, assisting companies with global scaling, fundraising, and achieving successful exits.
For three decades, creative teams and business leaders have sought the provocative vision and mentorship of Maria Giudice. After founding the pioneering experience design firm Hot Studio that was famously acquired by Facebook in 2013, she has been leading global teams at Autodesk and wrote four design books, including “Rise of the DEO: Leadership by Design," and “Changemakers: How Leaders Can Design Change in an Insanely Complex World." Maria’s mission today is to build the next generation of creative leaders and unlock the potential hidden in executives and the people they lead.
Shawn Flynn is a seasoned mid-market investment banker and distinguished podcast host. With a rich background as a successful business owner in Beijing, Shawn returned to Silicon Valley, where he immersed himself in the dynamic startup ecosystem. He has held diverse roles, from Head of Incubation for an AI-focused incubator to President of the second oldest Angel group in the Valley. Leveraging his extensive experience across various business stages and sectors. Shawn currently serves as Principal at a premier middle market investment bank, specialising in mergers and acquisitions, growth capital raising and secondaries.
Nisha Phatak is the Co-Founder and COO of Lion Pose, a clinical skincare company headquartered in San Francisco and selling in Sephora stores across the U.S. Lion Pose participated in a Y Combinator startup incubator programme and raised $3M in the seed round. Prior to Lion Pose, Nisha acted as interim COO at Great Jones Cookware, and was VP of Operations at Huggable, an online infant formula company. Prior to her focus in operations, Nisha led major strategic partnerships at Indiegogo and Box, and was an Equity Research Analyst covering consumer technology and e-commerce.
Ajit is the Managing Director of Silicon Valley-based Artiman Ventures and serves on the Board of Directors of several Artiman portfolio companies in healthcare and data science. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the School of Medicine at Stanford and serves on the Board of Trustees of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Foundation. Additionally, he is on the Board of Directors of Cadila Pharmaceuticals, Sofie Biosciences and Summer Bio. Before this, he served as the Global CEO of Siemens Oncology and Siemens Imaging Systems.
With over 20 years of experience, Arianna is a designer, business leader, and advisor focused on the intersection of brand and product. Currently, Arianna is Director of Product Creative at Meta, working to bring the Meta brand to billions of people. She is the Co-Founder of the design conference In/Visible Talks and venture arm In/Visible Ventures, Board President of the non-profit Creativity Explored, and a contributing writer for Co.Design, 99u and Forbes.
Matthias is currently driving the acceleration of Roku’s device business, making it the leading streaming platform in the US, Canada and Latin America. Before Roku, Matthias spent 7 years at Apple in various retail leadership roles, expanding Apple’s global direct-to-consumer footprint – both online and in physical retail. Prior to that, he tripled the online business of Jawbone, an early pioneer in digital health. His formative years in digital commerce were 9 years at eBay, where he first laid the product foundation for eBay Germany’s stellar growth and then, after relocating to the US, managed eBay's global product roadmap across 30+ local marketplaces.
Leslie Witt is the Chief Product and Design Officer at Headspace who has a deep wealth of experience in customer-driven innovation and an unwavering commitment to improving people's lives. Before joining Headspace and focusing on mental health, Leslie was focused on improving financial outcomes as Head of Design at financial software company Intuit. Before this, she was the Head of Financial Service Innovation at IDEO where she worked with a wide array of partners, including financial institutions, fin-tech giants, payment providers, retailers, non-profits, foundations and the public sector, counting Visa, Wells Fargo, MetLife, the Gates Foundation, the CFPB and the World Bank among her clients.
Sandeep has 25+ years of user research-driven innovation, conceptual and detailed design of physical and digital products for a wide range of companies in the consumer and enterprise domains. He is currently leading the global design team at Oracle for CX Marketing and CX Commerce portfolio of products.
Rhi Bell is the VP of UX Design for Google Search, having previously led Search Ads. Rhi has been passionate about design, UX, and the power of the internet since the early days, starting with the BBC's early efforts into digital and later leading design for Zynga, where they launched Words With Friends. Rhi went on to build and scale the UX team at NerdWallet before coming to Google, where they've been ever since. From working on Zynga pivot's to mobile-first, social gaming to helping NerdWallet make finance more accessible to a younger generation, Rhi's creative focus has centred on driving home a user-centric, empathetic view within product organisations and elevating the craft of design.
Ethan Eismann is the Senior Vice President of Design at Slack, where he leads an organisation focused on crafting products that help make people’s working lives simpler, more pleasant and more productive. Prior to Slack, Ethan led Airbnb's design team focused on home-sharing, which was responsible for the majority of Airbnb's revenue and the core Airbnb experience. Before that, Ethan was the Head of Design at Uber and Head of Commerce Design at Google, where he led teams in designing and launching a number of transportation, shopping, travel and payment product experiences.
Rachel is the SVP and Chief Design Officer for PayPal. She joined at a pivotal moment in the company’s history to reinvent experiences across all surfaces, foster a culture of creativity and innovation, and help define the future of commerce and payments. She is responsible for the design strategy and execution at scale across all end-to-end experiences for consumers, merchants, developers, and employees globally. Previously, Rachel was the SVP and Global Head of Design at Expedia Group, leading their Experience Design organisation — shaping product cultures that connect people and make technology more human.
Charles has more than 20 years of experience in product design and design leadership, leading teams to conceptualise, design and develop product experiences for a number of innovative and award-winning products. Prior to joining Unity, he served as the Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Copper Studios. Charles has also held design management positions at Microsoft, Apple Inc. and Pinnacle Systems. Charles focuses on fostering product experiences that are purposeful, efficient, elegant and delightful and seeks collaborative environments where design is not the end result, but a methodology and practice that produces great products.
Alastair Simpson is a leader and mentor, serving as the VP of Design at Dropbox. In this role, he leads the talented and diverse design team at Dropbox across Brand, Product Design, Writing and Research. He loves working with multi-disciplinary teams to solve complex business and customer challenges. Prior to Dropbox, Alastair was Head of Design at Atlassian for six years where he helped scale the design team from 20 to over 250 employees, a company from 900-5000 employees as well as through a successful IPO. He’s also worked with other large brands, start-ups and scale-ups across the US, UK, Europe, Australia and South East Asia.
Kirill is the Co-Founder of Human, a global decentralised ID registry for all of humanity. He is a 3x founder who, at the time was the youngest solo founder funded by a Y combinator startup incubator programme, building a social app with 15 million installs when he was 16.
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