Startup Grind

Jennifer Tejada, who is rare in the world of enterprise startups because of her gender, but whose marketing background makes her even more of an anomaly — and an asset. She is a veteran software industry executive and business leader with over 25 years of experience, spanning mass consumer products to disruptive cloud and software solutions. She has a successful track record in product innovation, optimizing operations and scaling public and private enterprise technology companies. She led PagerDuty through a strong IPO in April 2019.In a world that’s going digital fast, Tejada knows PagerDuty can appeal to a far wider array of customers by selling them a product they can understand.PagerDuty is  helping its clients become proactive. The idea, she says, is that “if you see traffic spiking on a website, you can orchestrate a team of content marketers or growth hackers and get them in that traffic stream right then, instead of reading about it in a demand-gen report a week later, where you’re, like, ‘Great, we

Leymah Gbowee (pronounced LAY–mah, BEAU-wee)  2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist, trained social worker and women’s rights advocate. Ms. Gbowee’s leadership of the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace – which brought together Christian and Muslim women in a nonviolent movement that played a pivotal role in ending Liberia’s civil war – is chronicled in her memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers, and in the award-winning documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell. After winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Ms. Gbowee established the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa. Ms. Gbowee also serves as the Executive Director of the Women, Peace and Security Program at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Ms. Gbowee advises numerous organizations working for peace, women’s rights, youth, and sustainable development, and she travels internationally to advocate for human rights and peace and security.She has been named as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Gender Policy by Apolitical and one

Patrick Lee was born in the states—born in LA—grew up in Maryland,  went to school out in UC Berkeley.It took him nearly 10 years to graduate from college because he was too busy building companies on the side and the traumatizing years of his company.Patrick is the co-founder of Hobo Labs, a mobile gaming company. But he’s best known for being one of the founders of Rotten Tomatoes. He’s a very seasoned, serial entrepreneur. He’s been through multiple market bubbles, crashes, and company exits.The co-founder and the former CEO of Rotten Tomatoes (rottentomatoes.com), a leading entertainment website focused on movie reviews and news and one of the top 700 most trafficked sites in the world. As a serial entrepreneur, he founded six startups across three countries (US, China, Hong Kong), with four in the intersection of technology & entertainment. For the last decade, Patrick has been mentoring tech founders and been involved in various arts & humanitarian projects.   Holly Liu studied at the UC Berkely

Roy Mann is a career entrepreneur who became a coding expert at the university. He studied at Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel graduating with a degree in computer science. Besides studying at this university, he has also completed a computer-related course at Lehigh University and the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev located in the United States of America and Israel respectively. In Ben-Gurion University, he majored in Electrical engineering.Before becoming the CEO of Monday.com, Roy Mann started as a web-developer for Finjan Holdings in 1996. Later on, in May 2010, he became the Chief Technology Officer at Wix.com. it was here at wix.com that he discovered his true calling as an entrepreneur. He would, later on, venture out as the co-founder of Dapulse in 2012. This decision was based on the massive success that he alongside Eran was realizing in the development of web-based platforms.Monday.com was arrived upon to give this business a more global perspective – Monday being the start of work-w

David Gurle is a French entrepreneur and engineer, credited as one of the pioneers of IP Communications. He is currently the CEO of Symphony Communication Services, LLC.Author, inventor and visionary, David’s ideas have influenced the major trends in consumer and enterprise communications and most recently secure collaboration technologies over the past two decades. He founded and ran Microsoft’s unified communications products (Skype for Business) and as Global head of collaboration services at Thomson Reuters, introduced the first consumer-to-business federated communications to the financial services industry. After the sale of Skype to Microsoft where he was the GM of Skype’s Enterprise Business, David founded and sold Perzo before founding Symphony. David sits on the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s International Technology Advisory Panel, is regularly featured on global broadcast (CNBC, BFM, Fox News) and print media (TechCrunch, Le Monde, Wall Street Journal) and is a sought-after keynote speaker on t

Elio Leoni Sceti is founder of The Craftory, a new $375M global investment fund exclusively focused on purpose driven FMCG brands.The Craftory is a first mover at a time when the investment world is now recognising the need to look beyond profits alone. It is the first investor to focus solely on consumer brands that positively impact society and the planet. These include an $18m investment in food technology brand NotCo, who are using AI to transform the plant-based replacements for dairy products, and a further $18m in TomboyX, who are creating an innovative non-binary range of underwear.  Elio’s ambition for The Craftory is to demonstrate once and for all that you can do good by doing well as an investor. He brings a wealth of retail experience to The Craftory, having spent 20 years heading up some of the world’s biggest FMCG brands. He is the former CEO of frozen-food giant Iglo, where he radically transformed the group’s fortunes while helping turn the business into a force for good – turning Captain Bir

Leaders can change lives. Check out The Valuable 500 Hosted by Chris Joannou @DREAMPUSHERS.

Entrepreneur-turned-educator, Steve Blank is the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship. Credited with launching the Lean Startup movement, he’s changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate. Steve is the author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany, The Startup Owner’s Manual - and his May 2013 Harvard Business Review cover story defined the Lean Startup movement. He teaches at Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley and NYU; and created the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps -- now the standard for science commercialization in the U.S. His Hacking for Defense class at Stanford is revolutionizing how the U.S. defense and intelligence community can deploy innovation with speed and urgency, and its sister class, Hacking for Diplomacy, is doing the same for foreign affairs challenges managed by the U.S. State Department. 

https://draperstartuphouse.com/The inspiration for Tribe Theory was born when Vikram spent two years backpacking around the world, where he traveled to over 50 countries in six continents and stayed in amazing hostels around the world. Vikram's vision is to build a global hostel brand which provides affordable yet soulful accommodation for young startups and entrepreneurs. Tribe Theory rebranded to Draper Startup House and became part of the Draper Startup Ecosystem in 2020.Prior to building Tribe Theory, Vikram was the head of venture capital investments at REAPRA where he made investments in early stage ventures across Asia. Prior to that, Vikram was a banker at J.P. Morgan where he was an early member of several new ventures. Vikram grew up in Los Angeles where he did his undergraduate studies at the University of California, Riverside and his MBA at the University of Southern California.

Check out:Startupgrind.comTheHustle.coTrends.co 

Chad West is Director of Marketing & Comms at Revolut, a UK financial technology company that offers banking services. He previously held the same position at Rocket Internet.Alex Rodriguez Bacardit, Founder & CEO at MarsBased, a high-end development consultancy from Barcelona specialised in web and mobile applications developed with Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Angular, React and other Javascript frameworks. He is in charge of the growth of the company doing business development.He is also Director of Startup Grind in Barcelona & Andorra. For three years, he helped the expansion of the Startup Grind brand in Southwestern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Malta, Andorra, Gibraltar) as Regional Director, leading the Barcelona chapter, awarded Best Chapter of the Year in 2016. 

Since starting at Booking.com in 2002, Gillian has risen to CEO in 2016 and now ranks 37th on the Most Powerful International Women List according to Forbes. Booking.com is owned by Priceline Group (PCLN), who will change to Booking Holdings (BKNG) on February 27th, This reflects Booking.com’s importance to the umbrella company since their acquisition in 2005.

Justin Kan is an internet entrepreneur. He is best known for founding Kiko, the first AJAX web calendar; Justin.tv, a live video streaming platform; Socialcam, a mobile video sharing app (acquired for $60mm by Autodesk in 2012); Twitch, a video game streaming platform (acquired by Amazon for $970mm); and Exec, an on demand maid service (acquired by Handybook in 2014). He is currently a partner at the seed fund Y Combinator. He graduated from Yale University with a degree in Physics and Philosophy.

Payal is the Executive Chairman & Founder of ClassPass and the Artistic Director of The Sa Dance Company. Payal has been a “dancetrepreneur” since the age of 3 when she started training in Indian classical and folk styles of dance. It was her passion for dance, entrepreneurship, and making the world a more active, happy place that led to the founding of Classpass. ClassPass is a membership program for fitness classes across multiple gyms and studios, making working out more engaging, accessible, and affordable. Mollie Glick is a book agent at Creative Artists Agency. Glick works in the New York office and represents many top authors and thought leaders.  

As the founder CEO of BGF since it was set up in 2011, Stephen is responsible for the overall management and strategic direction of the company. BGF has grown from 1 to 14 offices across the UK and Ireland, with nearly £2bn invested and a team of 170, becoming in the process the most active growth capital investor in the UK. Stephen has extensive experience as an investor. Prior to BGF, he was one of the founding partners of the global private equity firm CCMP Capital (formerly JP Morgan Partners), and before that, Managing Director of Barclays Private Equity and Henderson Ventures, which he also co-founded. In 2013, Stephen was appointed an advisor to the UK Government regarding the establishment of the British Business Bank and in 2017, served as a member of the Industry Panel advising HM Treasury on the Patient Capital Review. In 2018, Stephen was appointed a member of the first Council of Innovate UK, which forms an integral part of UK Research and Innovation. Stephen has served as an independent director

After studying journalism Ruud Hendriks (1959) started his career as a DJ on board legendary pirate station Radio Caroline. At the age of 20 he got his first opportunity as a TV-reporter and with public broadcaster Veronica. During a 9-year period Ruud anchored many Dutch TV programs mainly on news, current-affairs and sports.He initiated the first non-stop Newsradio format in the Netherlands and several innovative TV formats.In the late eighties Ruud became a co-founder of Sky Radio and Radio 10. In 1989 he wrote the business plans for TV stations RTL4 and RTL5 and became their first program director. Under his tenure RTL became the market leading TV broadcaster in the Netherlands.In 1992 Ruud became President of NBC Europe in London and transformed Superchannel into NBC Superchannel and finally into CNBC Europe.Back in the Netherlands where he became an executive member of TV-production company Endemol Entertainment. When Ruud joined in 1994 the company operated in 3 countries, when he left in 2001 Endemol

Alex and Anthony Zaccaria, are the Founders of Linktree, the Australian tech platform giving users the ability to connect followers to their entire online ecosystem — not just one feed. Founded in 2016 and the first tool in market of its kind, Linktree helps users to share more, sell more, curate more and grow more. It’s become the front door to the online world of more than 3 million users worldwide (including the likes of Alicia Keys, Jamie Oliver and Chelsea Handler) and an invaluable tool for brands, influencers and celebrities online.Just like Stripe and Slack before them, Linktree created a tool that many people didn’t know they even needed, and subsequently a new industry off the back of that.The Melbournian Zaccaria brothers, Alex and Anthony originally set out to solve a pain point for the music industry - Instagram only allows one link in a user’s profile.What started as a fix for #linkinbio, has grown into a multi-platform tool for connecting followers beyond a single social media channel – it link

Sara Mauskopf is the CEO and co-founder of Winnie, a platform for modern parents. Moms & dads use the website or mobile apps to browse fun activities nearby, find quality childcare, or get advice in real-time on any parenting topic. Winnie is growing fast with over 1M users in 10K cities across the United States. International Best-Selling Author Lisa Q. Fetterman is the founder and CEO of Nomiku, the first home sous vide immersion circulator machine on the market. Lisa has been featured in Wired, MAKE, and Forbes, and was named on Forbes, Inc, and Zagat Survey’s 30 Under 30 lists for her pioneering work in the food space. Lisa has worked at some of the top restaurants in the country including Babbo and Jean-Georges in New York and Saison in San Francisco. She lives in San Francisco where she and her husband-cofounder have brought manufacturing back to the states with their new Wifi-Nomiku device.  

Startup Grind Global Conference 2019 About the Speaker: Pedro Franceschi is Co-Founder of Brex — the first of its kind corporate card for startups. A Brazilian entrepreneur, Pedro built Pagar.me — the Stripe of Brazil — along with his co-founder Henrique Dubugras. At Pagar.me, Pedro was responsible for all technology and operations, scaling the company to over 100 people and establishing it as a leader in the Brazilian payments ecosystem. 

Chris Dixon is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, where he's spent the past five years as an active seed and previously worked at eBay. He is also a venture-stage investor. Previously, Chris was the co-founder and former CEO of two startups, SiteAdvisor and Hunch. Chris has been a website prolific seed investor, cofounding Founder Collective, a seed venture fund, and making a number of personal angel investments in various technology companies. Sonal Chokshi is Editor in Chief at Andreessen Horowitz, aka "a16z", which she joined in early 2014. Among other things, this includes building and showrunning the popular a16z Podcast, which she grew in listenership more than 10X; assigning and editing pieces such as "When One App Rules Them All" on the case study of WeChat and China, which was selected in the New York Times' Sidney Awards 2015 as one of the best long-form essays; leading production of the a16z Crypto Canon; and many