FinTech Silicon Valley

Marvin Liao is an Investor-Operator, executive coach and formal advisor to several large Family Offices. Marvin is a Partner at Rolling Fund Diaspora.vc, Manages the Angel Fund Sukna Global & a Board member at Game Groove Capital, an International Gaming Holding Company. He was previously a Partner at Venture Capital Fund 500 Startups, running the SF based accelerator program as well as investing in Seed stage start ups.  He has invested in over 414 Pre-seed & Seed stage startups during the 6 years spent there. Marvin also spent 10.5 years at Yahoo! as an executive with extensive operating experience expanding businesses across Asia, Europe, Latin America and the United States in his career at the company. Marvin presently serves on the Investment Committees/Advisory boards of several Venture Capital funds. He also mentors at numerous accelerator programs around the world.

Ramneek is the Founder and Managing Partner of PruVen Capital, an independent, returns driven firm created in partnership with Prudential Financial as the single limited partner. Our first fund is a $300M multi stage investment vehicle designed to focus on verticals including Insurance, Financial Services, Healthcare IT/Tech/Data, Real estate/Proptech, Asset/Wealth Management and Enterprise IT. Prior to founding PruVen, Ramneek was the Co-founder of the venture investing efforts at Citi. At Citi Ventures, he led investments in over 25 companies across fintech & digital commerce space that represent over $180B in market value. Some of his notable investments included Square (NYSE: SQ), Jet.com (Acq by Walmart for $3.3B), DocuSign (NASDAQ: DOCU), Honey (Acq by Paypal for $4B), Grab (NYSE: GRAB), Datarobot, Feedzai, Homelight & Zum. Prior to Citi Ventures, Ramneek was a partner at Battery Ventures, where he led the build out of their investment practice in India and before that he held various product development roles at PMC Sierra and TiVo. He is also an angel investor and has had the opportunity to partner with founders thru early investments in companies like Robinhood (NASDAQ: Hood), CheckR, Ipsy, Vicarious, Maxxa and Gridspace. Ramneek received a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, where he graduated at the top of his class and an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. 

SC Moatti is the Founding Managing Partner of Mighty Capital; the Founding CEO of Products That Count, the most influential product acceleration platform; and a lecturer at Stanford and Columbia Universities. Prior, SC built products that billions of people use at Facebook and Nokia. Andrew Chen, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, called SC “a genius at making products people love.” SC serves on the boards of public and private companies, earned a master’s in electrical engineering, a Stanford MBA, and is a Kauffman Fellow. For more information, visit Mighty.Capital. Mighty Capital is an early-growth Silicon Valley venture capital (VC) firm. We deliver exceptional returns by investing in great products that are also great businesses, like Airbnb, MissionBio and Amplitude. Founders and other VC firms invite us to invest because we help our portfolio companies sell faster, hire top talent, and generate liquidity, by giving them exclusive access to the original and most influential product acceleration platform, Products That Count. Amplitude calls us the “best value for the dollar invested." 

Rui Zhang, CFA, CICPA, is the CoFounder/Managing Partner of gumi Cryptos Capital. Mr. Zhang has both Economics and Computer Science educational background, and has two years banking and four years consulting firm experience in his early career. In late 2013, Mr. Zhang co-founded Zenith Group Holdings in Shanghai, China (a virtual idle technology development and operation company), and raised Seed and Series A rounds for the company, which was later successfully acquired by Bilibili. Since May 2016, Mr. Zhang has served as the Vice President of gumi Inc and took charge of all overseas investments of gumi Group, including the gaming investment in US and Europe, VR Fund and the VR/AR incubation programs in Seoul and Helsinki. At the beginning of 2018, he took charge of and succeeded in co-founding and raised gCC Fund I.

David Orban was an early adopter of Bitcoin in 2010 and Ethereum at its launch in 2014. He is the Managing Advisor for the blockchain advisory firm, Beyond Enterprizes. Orban serves on the Faculty of and acts as Advisor to the Singularity University, at the NASA Research Park. He is the author of Something New, on artificial intelligence, available in English, Italian, and Spanish. As a speaker, Orban has given over 100 talks worldwide. He is a mentor for the Thiel Fellowship, a Scientific Advisory Board Member for the Lifeboat Foundation, and an Advisor to the Institute of Ethics and Emergent Technologies. He was the Chairman of the Board, and is an Advisor to Humanity+, promoting scientific advancement and emerging innovation for social impact. David Orban’s personal motto is “What is the question I should be asking?” to help build a better world.

After living & doing business in 5 countries, Pemo offers advice on Learning about Culture when starting a business in a foreign country.  Pemo Theodore is a Media Publisher & Event Producer and a great people connector..  She is Founder/CEO Silicon Valley TV which has served the San Francisco Bay Area for 11 years! She has produced Silicon Valley Events for Investors & Startups for 9 years. Pemo loves to video interview venture capitalists & founders to engage the human behind the success stories.. She has been Executive Producer of FinTech Silicon Valley for 5 years, organizing twice monthly FinTech talks & panels in San Francisco & Palo Alto. She believes in learning through a great discussion with experts in the domains. Pemo has a talent to bring the right people together and is an incredible networker.  Pemo’s events have been seen as supporting Venture Capitalists & Angels in sourcing great deal flow from startups who attend her events. Many founders have received funding through meeting investors at her events. Her favored medium is visual media and she has built up a great body of work of videos of panels & interviews in Silicon Valley startup ecosystem.  Pemo is based in Silicon Valley & has been involved in online business for 16 years.  She has been in small business for 47 years in Silicon Valley, Ireland, London, Canada & Australia.  In 2010 Pemo published a free ebook (the findings of 1 year research from VCs, angels & women founders) “Why are Women Funded Less than Men? a crowdsourced conversation”

Derek Zanutto is General Partner CapitalG where he focuses on investments in enterprise software. Derek has led a number of investments at CapitalG, including Armis, Collibra and Dataiku, and he serves on multiple boards of directors. Prior to joining CapitalG, Derek helped lead technology investments for 10 years at TPG, Hellman & Friedman and GIC, including investments in Uber, Airbnb, Lynda.com and CAA. Derek started his career at Morgan Stanley. Derek holds an AB from Harvard College and an MBA with High Distinction from the Harvard Business School where he graduated as a Baker Scholar.

Patricia Nakache invests in early-stage consumer and business tech startups with current investments including Bevi, EAT Club, Life House, Side, thredUP, and Turo, and previous investments in Care.com (CRCM), LoopNet (LOOP), PayScale (acq. Warburg Pincus), and Sabrix (acq. Thomson Reuters), among others. Patricia is a board member of the National Venture Capital Association and a Lecturer in Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business where she teaches Startup Garage. She earned an M.B.A from Stanford University and an A.B. from Harvard University. 

Tim Draper is a top global venture capitalist, having founded Draper Associates, DFJ and the Draper Venture Network, a global network of venture capital funds. He is a leading spokesperson for Bitcoin, Blockchain, ICOs and cryptocurrencies. In promoting entrepreneurship, he created Draper University of Heroes, a residential and online school based in San Mateo, Ca to help extraordinary people accomplish their life missions. Tim Draper received a Bachelor of Science from Stanford University with a major in electrical engineering and a Master of Business Administration from the Harvard Business School.

At Sorenson Ventures, Ken has partnered with entrepreneurs in market leading companies such as CyCognito (attack surface security), Openpath (access control), Octarine (cloud security), CloudKnox (authorization management),  NS8 (anti-fraud), Bridgecrew (codified cloud security), Kenna (risk management), Paperspace (machine learning) and SupportLogic (customer support platform). Before joining Sorenson, Ken was Managing Director at Intel Capital and VP at Intel Corporation. Leading the software and security groups at Intel Capital, Ken invested in several companies including AtHoc (Blackberry), Prolexic (Akamai), DocuSign (IPO), Forescout (IPO), AlienVault (AT&T), Venafi, Vectra Networks, Gigya (SAP), and BrightEdge among many others.  Prior to Intel Capital, Ken was a founding general partner at Opus Capital. While at Opus, he served on the boards of Spock Networks (Intelius), Transpond (Webtrends), Supersecret (Knowledge Adventure), Alert Enterprise, Jivox, and TrustedID (Equifax). Previously, Ken was a Senior Associate at both Lightspeed Venture Partners and Battery Ventures. Before business school, Ken worked at Radius, Claris Corporation (the software subsidiary of Apple), and RealNetworks, where he held various sales, marketing, finance, and business development positions.  Ken received an MBA from Harvard Business School and holds a Bachelor of Science in economics from the Wharton School of Business. He is a Kauffman Fellow.