Geeks Of The Valley

Raj comes with a deep background across payments, tech and Web3 in a multitude of roles - operator, investor and consultant.

Raj's Past Experience:

• Ex CEO, OYO Vacation Homes, a top 3 specialist vacation rental business (fully owned sub of OYO).
• Ex Global Head of Investments and M&A for PayU, a Prosus Company (Prosus is a leading listed global technology investment company). Made investments globally across fintech companies including in Payments, Credit, Remittances and Crypto / Blockchain.
• Ex McKinsey Partner serving banks, insurance companies, payments players and asset managers across the Asia Pacific. Leader of McKinsey’s Payments practice across the Asia Pacific.

Raj's Social Media

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raj-kamal-488a908/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/OneRajkamal

Burak Büyükdemir is a well-known investor, startup ecosystem builder, author, and founder. He is the founder of Etohum, a leading accelerator and seed investor organization in Turkey, as well as the founder of Startup Istanbul and Startup Turkey. Through these programs, he has supported and invested in over 100 startups, providing training, mentorship, and seed investment to help them grow and develop. He is known for his work supporting the global startup ecosystem and has a strong global network of contacts in the startup world. In addition to his work with startups, Burak has also written a book about the founding stories of internet startups in Turkey and has served as a part-time lecturer at Istanbul Technical University and Bahcesehir University.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/burakbuyukdemir/
• Pitch Burak: https://airtable.com/shr8X5VdR7JTJ7X3q

Ryo Umezawa is a Partner leading Antler’s expansion into Japan. Prior to Antler, Ryo was a Principal at East Ventures, Japan, an early stage venture capital firm. As a serial entrepreneur, Ryo founded two companies, including AllCoupon Japan (acquired), and was Japan’s country manager for companies such as Tinder, Homeaway (Expedia Group) and Hailo. Ryo spent 10 years in the Philippines prior to studying International Business and Economics at Sophia University in Tokyo. Ryo has been selected as a Leader of Tomorrow at the 40th + 44th St. Gallen Symposium, as well as one of the first members of World Economic Forum, Global Shapers Community (GSC) in its Tokyo hub.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryoumezawa/

ロング：

10年間のフィリピン滞在を経て、2007年上智大学・比較文化学部卒業。在学中の2005年からインターンとしてジェイ・シードに参画し、複数の投資先企業で事業立ち上げやマーケティング業務に携わる。2008年から株式会社トラフィックゲート（現リンクシェア・ジャパン株式会社）にてiPhoneのアドネットワーク事業やアプリプロデュースを経験したあと起業。その後スタートアップや上場企業の顧問や株主として累計30社＋に携わり、グローバルスタートアップタクシー配車アプリの日本法人HAILO株式会社の代表取締役社長、バケーションレンタル事業を展開しているNASDAQ上場企業HomeAwayの日本支社長、ソーシャルマッチングアプリ最大手のTinder日本支社長、East Ventures株式会社にてPrincipalを務め、現在はグローバル投資ファンドAntlerのパートナー・Antler株式会社の代表取締役、クリエイターニンジャ株式会社の代表取締役社長、株式会社nommocの取締役。

ライフワークとしては2010年及び2014年にSt. Gallen SymposiumにLeaders of Tomorrowに選出、続く2011年には世界経済フォーラム（World Economic Forum：通称ダボス会議）グローバルシェイパーズコミュニティ（Global Shapers Community）日本の若手リーダーに選出され活動。

ショート：

10年間のフィリピン滞在を経て、2007年上智大学・比較文化学部卒業。在学中の2005年からインターンとしてジェイ・シードで事業立ち上げやマーケティング業務に携わる。2008年から株式会社トラフィックゲート（現リンクシェア・ジャパン株式会社）にてアドネットワーク事業やアプリプロデュースを経験後に起業。タクシー配車アプリの日本法人HAILO株式会社代表取締役社長、バケーションレンタル事業HomeAway日本支社長、マッチングアプリTinder日本支社長、投資ファンドEast VenturesのPrincipalを経て、2022年グローバル投資ファンドAntlerのパートナーに就任。

Faisal is a Pakistani-American entrepreneur and investor. He is the Founder & General Partner of Zayn Venture Capital (Formally Zayn Capital), a leading US & Cayman domiciled venture capital fund, investing in early-stage tech ventures in Pakistan. He is considered to be one of the most prolific investors with the most number of notable investment calls in Pakistan. His track record includes: Haball, NayaPay, PostEX, Bookme.pk, Abhi Finance, AdalFi, Bazaar-tech, KTrade, SnappRetail, Laam.pk,Krave Mart, GrocerApp, Truck It In, Savyour, Roomy.pk, Bagallery, Trellis Housing Finance, Tazah, Zaraye and Colabs.Faisal was also a founding partner of Lakson Venture Capital before creating Zayn VC. He built the Lakson Fund from the ground up as Managing Partner and Executive Director, attaining one the highest TVPIs in Pakistan in just 3 years. Along with his early notable investments in Bitcoin and Ethereum, his substantial expertise in venture capital and private investing has given him a thorough grasp of blockchain technology and global macroeconomics, which he applies to his investment decisions.Faisal has an MBA from Oxford University, joint Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Michigan State University USA. He has also been an investor in Hedge Funds, Venture Capital Funds and an active Angel Investor for over 15 years. Faisal is a limited partner of the Silicon Valley-based Venture Capital Fund 500 Startups.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/faisal-aftab-93a8b3129/

Ben Harburg is a Managing Partner at MSA Capital, a global investment firm with over $2 billion in assets under management. Mr Harburg also leads MSA Novo, the emerging markets focused franchise of MSA. Ben has significant investment and operations experience in the Greater China, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. He sits on Boards of Directors of various private and public companies, as well as those of foundations such as the National Committee on US China Relations, the Asian Cultural Council, and the Carnegie Endowment’s China Center. He was a Neubauer Scholar at Tufts University (where he studied International Relations), a Fulbright Scholar at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (where he was based in the Department of Islamic Sciences and Oriental Philology), and the first native born American admitted to Tsinghua University Peoples Bank of China School of Finance elite EMBA program. His passion is football and he is a co-owner of Cádiz Club de Fútbol, a team playing in Spain’s First Division (La Liga).

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-harburg/
• Website: https://benharburg.com/

Mike Jarmuz… or Muzz…  is a General Partner at Lightning⚡️Ventures and is focused on investing in Bitcoin companies. His goal is to evangelize and demystify early-stage investing to plebs and whales alike. He is super passionate about educating founders and operators on strategies to fund their projects and believes everyone should invest in technology companies (not just the suits) and that investing in Bitcoin companies is possibly the best thing someone can do to complement their HODL position.

Mike is a lifelong entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in a broad range of industries. Lover of all small businesses! He has personally owned a retail clothing store, flower shop, bar, cafe, and, music venue. He also has related experience in healthcare technology, event management, ticketing, nightlife, venue/theatre operations, talent buying, concert & music production, sound engineering, lighting design, catering, travel, tour management, e-commerce, screen-printing, merchandising, real estate, transportation, grassroots marketing, personal finance, marketing, and business consulting.

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-jarmuz-573b5658/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/MikeJarmuz
• Website: https://vida.page/mikejarmuz

Former investment banker (@ SCB) turned CorpDev (@ RedMart - acq) turned founder & CEO (@ Eatsy) and VP, Growth & Ops (@ CoinMarketCap - acq). Shaun most recently led Spartan Labs, a $100M Web3 venture-building studio. He is excited about solving growth and strategy challenges while building high-performing teams. He has operated through almost every stage: from founding, seed, series A all the way through acquisition - from idea to tens of millions in revenue. Furthermore, Shaun is an angel investor and advisor, focused on Web3, NFT, blockchain gaming, crypto, defi, marketplaces, fintech and B2B SaaS.

Follow him for more regular updates on his journey in Web3:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/shaunhengcj
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunheng/

Dave joined Facebook in 2007, and worked on Product and Operations at Facebook until 2017. While there, he learned from world class builders, thinkers, and operators how to scale technologies and businesses to billions of users.More recently, he was the CEO of Wavechat, a social audio company. After Wavechat, he was a fellow in the On Deck Angel Investing and On Deck Investing fellowships, where he refined his skills in the public and private markets.

• Website: https://davegoldblatt.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-goldblatt-40138129/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/davegoldblatt

Timothy Ryan is an experienced entrepreneur and angel investor. He most recently was a GP, leading a seed stage Venture Capital fund through AngelList called MLC Ventures, that focused on bringing seed capital to tech founders.He was also responsible for negotiating term sheets with founders and other co-investors that ranged from $100k - $500k+, securing equity for $20M+ valuations.Prior to that his experience as a founder was established with product creation, operations, and go-to-market launches.He founded a health tech startup that was acquired, and was involved in Web3 / cryptography working with Ledger & Trezor and helped to launch an exchange called DCEX that was funded by Ripple Labs.He was also one of the founding team members for Zepp Labs, a sports wearable startup that achieved a peak of $15M ARR, and raised over $40M+ in VC funding.Timothy graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management from San Francisco State University and an MBA in Global Finance from IAE Nice in France.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tpr11/

Jiho built his career working with South Korean tech giant SK Planet and ecommerce unicorn Coupang as lead product manager. Jiho is also well connected to Silicon Valley becoming the first Korean to be accepted into the 500 Startups accelerator program in 2010 and went on to co-found Soomgo, a Y-Combinator portfolio company(#153 of top YC portfolio companies) recently valued at over $500m. Jiho’s most recent venture was blockchain startup BxB which was acquired by the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange; Binance in 2020.

• Website: http://jiho.co
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ibreakshit/

Adrian Lai is the founder of Newman Capital, a principal investment firm focused on private equity and venture capital investment with significant presence in Web3. Newman is an investor in influential companies such as Reddit, Epic Games, SpaceX, Dapper Labs & Kraken. It has also invested in Web3 funds such as Bitkraft, Shima Capital, Republic and Metaweb. Newman is also actively investing in early-stage Web3 startups with 20+ portfolios. Adrian previously served as the co-founder of Liquefy, an institutional blockchain solution with presence in Hong Kong & The Middle East. Adrian began his career at BlackRock with experience in Sales & Marketing, Fintech & ESG Investment. He worked with chairpersons and board members from 100+ listed companies across Asia on corporate governance, corporate actions, cybersecurity, and climate change risk. Adrian was a Columnist at SCMP on blockchain technology and a commentator for Wall Street Journal & CNN.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-lai/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/melo151962

Rak is a Principal at Bain Capital Ventures, which manages over $6b and was an early investor in companies like LinkedIn, Docusign, Docker, and Redis Labs. Rak leads early-stage investments in cybersecurity and developer infrastructure companies. Before investing, he was a product manager at Atlassian, where he led the identity management tool Atlassian Access.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rakgarg/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/rak_garg

Venture veteran turned crypto enthusiast, Allen has participated in the making of over a dozen renowned TMT unicorns, start-ups and blockchain projects across the globe since 2012 and is an investor in 50+ startups globally, including a dozen unicorns till date. As a VC, he has invested $100m across frontier technologies, ranging from autonomous driving, health-tech, fin-tech to blockchain. As an operator, he has co-founded, scaled, spun-off, merged, sold multiple award-winning companies. As an advisor, he has helped multiple start-ups to secure investment, M&A and partnership. Allen holds a B.B.A in CUHK.

Now the Co-founder & CEO of web venture studio Everest Ventures Group (EVG), Allen was is an early investor & advisor to metaverse unicorns Animoca, Dapper Labs, Immutable, The Sandbox, and many more. 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allenngg/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/realAllenNg

Austin is CEO of Pacaso and co-founded the company to make the dream of second home ownership a reality for more people after experiencing the profound effect it had on his own life. Pacaso is Austin’s second startup. In 2009, he founded dotloop in his hometown of Cincinnati, a company that created software to seamlessly manage real estate transactions. Zillow acquired dotloop in 2015, and Austin continued to run dotloop as a Zillow executive until 2018. Austin started selling real estate at the age of 18 and worked in residential and commercial real estate for a decade. Austin enjoys running, mountain biking and flying. He lives in Napa, CA with his wife Angela and their son.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinallison/

Daphne is the Co-Founder and CEO of Dedoco– a Digital Document Management-as-a-Service that focuses on protecting data privacy and document security for companies, leveraging on blockchain technology.

Set up in 2020, Dedocois now transacting thousands of documents every month across Government, Banks, FIs, Professional Services, Real Estate, Tech platforms. The company is also ISO-certified and IMDA-accredited for Singapore government procurement. Globally, they have offices and teams in US, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam.

On the thought leadership front, Daphne is a regular speaker and advisor on the applications of blockchain for enterprise cloud and solutioning. In 2021, she was listed on SG100 Women in Tech and other previous accolades including was #3 in Top 10 Women in Fintech (APAC), Top 100 Women in Fintech 2019-2020, and honouree at the Spirit of Enterprise (SOE) Award 2019. Currently, she is a Professional Council Member of Global Fintech Institute; and also sits on the Board of SGTechas its Lead for Web3/Blockchain Workgroup.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daphne-ng-dedoco/

Olivier Dang is the Global Chief Operating Officer for the Wholesale Digital Office of Nomura. He supports the development and implementation of the digital strategy of Nomura’s Wholesale business. Olivier has been at Nomura since 2010 and held various roles in Corporate Strategy and Business Management. 

Prior to this, he was a Management Consultant at McKinsey in London and he started his career as an entrepreneur building a mobile internet company in France. He holds a MSc in Telecommunications from Chalmers University of Technology, an engineering degree from the Institut Superieur d’Electronique de Paris and a M.B.A. from the London Business School. Olivier is based in Zurich.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivier-dang/

Laura Gaviria Halaby is a scale-up and business development expert with entrepreneurial background and ample experience in leadership roles in venture capital and tech.

Her current role as Operating Lead for the US$8 billion SoftBank Latin America Funds focuses on delivering operation support to the portfolio companies to accelerate their growth.

She also leads scalable knowledge programs for SoftBank such as the SoftBank Group Operator School (SBOS), which has upskilled over 8000 professionals in over 50 countries around the world. Internally SBOS for Founders and Leaders bring industry experts to share best practices on how to solve needle moving challenges on areas such as Strategy, People, Marketing, Web3, Cybersecurity, among others.

Laura is also a member of the Fintech / Crypto Action Board for the City of Miami; is an investor and active mentor for early and growth stage startups and serves in the Board of Banco Sol in Bolivia.

Prior to joining SoftBank, she was the Global Head of Fintech Acceleration for Citibank where she accelerated the implementation and launch of new digital products. Leading programs included Citi Mobile Challenge, Citi Tech for Integrity Challenge and Data Science Challenge. Her work at Citi gave her exposure to global fintech landscape working across Asia, EMEA and LatAm.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lgh/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lalisgaviria

Neil has served as an analyst, researcher, inventor, lecturer and, in his words, the father of many forgettable slides of glossy funnels and Venn diagrams. A witness to and participant in billion-dollar successes, and instructive failures, all in the pursuit of building indestructible customer relationships through digital media. A key player in the executive rallying cry to be more “data driven.”

As Google’s Chief Measurement Strategist, Neil has had the privilege to lead more than 2,500 engagements with the world’s biggest advertisers. His efforts have helped these companies acquire millions of customers, improve conversion rates by more than 400 percent and generate billions in incremental revenue. Immensely proud of the degrees he’s earned from Purdue University and UCLA, Neil returned to academia in 2018 as a Senior Fellow at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His first book, Converted: The Data-Driven Way to Win Customers’ Hearts was published in 2022 by Penguin Random House.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilhoyne/

Adrian Garcia-Aranyos is the President of Endeavor, a global community of high-impact entrepreneurs present in ~40 markets with a rules-based venture arm, Endeavor Catalyst, which is a leading VC investor in most emerging markets. he joined Endeavor in 2014 as Founding Managing Director of Endeavor Spain. Prior to that he held several executive roles at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co; The Economist Newspaper Group; and CM Capital Markets in Madrid.

Since 2004, Mr. Garcia-Aranyos serves as board member at Thune Eureka, an industrial engineering firm specializing in capital goods and focused on deep-sea energy components, paper industry parts and defense mechanisms. Additionally he is also an advisor at Bankuish, Cermer, Creditas, CodeOp, Founder Nest, Legal Army, Microwd, and Valiu, among others.

He obtained his BA in Political Science from Universidad Complutense de Madrid and has an MA in Trade & Commerce from CECO-ICEX. Plus a series of certificates from IEB, Kellogg, IESE & Harvard.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-garcia-aranyos-32871b3/

Jehan Chu is co-Founder and Managing Partner at Kenetic, a blockchain Venture Capital and cryptocurrency trading firm based in Hong Kong. A former front-end developer, he started investing in cryptocurrency in 2013 and has invested and supported over 100 projects. Jehan founded the Ethereum HK community (2014), co-Founded the Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong (2014) and founded the Hyperledger HK community (2016).

Jehan serves as co-Chairman of the Hong Kong Fintech Association Blockchain Committee, is enrolled in the Kauffman Fellows Program, is a Fellow of the Singapore University of Social Science and member of the Global Patrons Board of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He also sits on the Board of Para Site Art Space and is co-Founder and Board member of Social Alpha Foundation, a blockchain/social impact non-profit. Jehan holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and MA from Hong Kong University.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jehanchu/

Jason Della Rocca is a game industry entrepreneur, funding advisor, and cluster expert. He specializes in business/partnership development, pitching/funding, and ecosystem/cluster development. As the co-founder of Executions Labs, he was a hands-on early stage investor to over 20 independent game studios from North America and Europe. Between 2000-09 he served as the executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), and was honored for his industry building efforts with the inaugural Ambassador Award at the Game Developers Conference. In 2009, Jason was named to Game Developer Magazine’s “Power50,” a list which profiles 50 of the most important contributors to the state of the game industry. As a sought after expert on the game industry, Jason has lectured at conferences and universities worldwide.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasondellarocca/

As the Managing Director of Strategic Venture Partnerships at Honda Innovations, Dennis leads Honda’s global open innovation initiatives and strategic partnerships with startups. Before joining Honda, he worked in early-stage venture capital building bridges between technology upstarts in Silicon Valley and multinational corporations. Early in his career, he spent eight years in Japan working in a variety of sectors including banking and international civil service.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennisclarkjr/
• Auto News: https://www.autonews.com/commentary/next-step-mobility-startups

Anthony Scaramucci is the Founder and Managing Partner of SkyBridge Capital. He is the author of four books: The Little Book of Hedge Funds, Goodbye Gordon Gekko, Hopping Over the Rabbit Hole (a 2016 Wall Street Journal best seller), and Trump: The Blue-Collar President.

Prior to founding SkyBridge in 2005, Scaramucci co-founded investment partnership Oscar Capital Management, which was sold to Neuberger Berman, LLC in 2001. Earlier, he was a vice president in Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs & Co.

In 2016, Scaramucci was ranked #85 in Worth Magazine’s Power 100: The 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. In 2011, he received Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year – New York” Award in the Financial Services category. Anthony is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), vice chair of the Kennedy Center Corporate Fund Board, a board member of both The Brain Tumor Foundation and Business Executives for National Security (BENS), and a Trustee of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Foundation. He was a member of the New York City Financial Services Advisory Committee from 2007 to 2012.

In November 2016, he was named to President-Elect Trump’s 16-person Presidential Transition Team Executive Committee. In June 2017, he was named the Chief Strategy Officer of the EXIM Bank. He served as the White House Communications Director for a period in July 2017.

Scaramucci, a native of Long Island, New York, holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Tufts University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anscaramucci/
• Website: https://www.skybridge.com/

Ben Narasin is the Founder and General Partner of Tenacity Venture Capital, a pre-Series A venture fund. Immediately previously, Narasin wes a full time investor and Venture Partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), one of the worlds largest and oldest traditional venture firms. A prolific entrepreneur and highly regarded early-stage investor with three decades of company-building expertise, Narasin has focused on emerging technologies and new markets throughout his investment career. With a portfolio comprising key early successes in some of today’s fastest growing sectors, such as fintech, digital marketplaces, mobile and connected devices. His overarching focus in seeking new investments is, in his words, “to find founders whho make me say wow.”

Narasin is a 25-year entrepreneur and 10-year early-stage investor. His knack for spotting emerging trends led him to make seed investments in companies like Dropcam, Lending Club, TellApart, Kabbage and Zenefits. Before NEA, Narasin served as a General Partner at Canvas Ventures, and was prior to that was President of TriplePoint Ventures, the equity arm of TriplePoint Capital, where he oversaw the firm’s seed funding investment activities.

Narasin’s path to investing is rooted in entrepreneurship. He founded several consumer companies before launching his investing career, including Fashionmall.com, one of the first e-commerce companies, which he founded in 1993 and led to a successful IPO in 1999. Narasin frequently writes and speaks about technology and investing, as well as food and wine, a lifelong passion. He holds a B.A. in Entrepreneurial Studies from Babson College.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennarasin/
• Website: https://pitch-ben.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/BNarasin

A Tsinghua University Schwarzman Scholar and Masa Son fellow, Wilfried Buiron is the Founder & CEO of Singapore-based, Zaapi an ecommerce enablement startup backed by Flash Ventures aiming to democratize access to ecommerce for Southeast Asian MSMEs. Prior to founding Zaapi, Wilfried spent time at McKinsey & Company and multiple Chinese startups and founded a successful D2C watch brand, Atelier Wen between Beijing and Hong Kong.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilfried-buiron/
• Website: https://www.zaapi.com/

Moses Lo is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Xendit, a financial technology company that he alongside others started in 2015. Moses' leadership has led Xendit to prestigious awards such as the CNBC Upstart 100 and The Best Payments Initiative by The Asian Banker in 2018. With Asia's Forbes 30 under 30 in his pocket, it is without a doubt that we will be seeing Xendit slowly transform the payments industry under his leadership.

Moses earned his bachelor’s degree from University of New South Wales, Sydney majoring in finance & information systems management. Then, he kick started his career as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group before obtaining his MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. During his studies, he briefly experience working at Amazon as a retail business development.

Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs, Moses has always had a dream of starting his own business and building an organization that has a massive positive impact. At Xendit, Moses believes that together he could contribute to building Indonesia’s digital infrastructure by

providing the best payment solutions in Indonesia and Southeast Asia.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moseslo/

Colin is Co-founder and CEO at LayerCI, a company which helps software developers efficiently review changes to websites. He graduated with a triple major (math, stats, computer science) from the University of Toronto and has worked as a tech executive for five years.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinchartier/
• Website: https://layerci.com/

Herston is a Managing Partner of 1982 Ventures – the leading seed fund focused on fintech in Southeast Asia. He is responsible for setting the strategy and direction of 1982 Ventures. He is active in investments, portfolio management and investor relations. He has sourced and led investments into Brick, Fundiin, Homebase, Go Zayaan and Wagely.

Prior to founding 1982 Ventures, he was a Principal at tryb Group in Singapore and created and executed their early stage investment strategy. He led investments into Alami, a leading Indonesian Islamic Finance Platform, Gradana, a pioneer in Proptech in Indonesia and managed the investment into Maria Health, a Philippines-based insurtech. Additionally, Herston managed tryb’s growth equity investment (Chinsay) which led to new senior management team based in Singapore and strengthening of the firm’s Singapore presence. He previously held board observer roles at Alami and Gradana.

Before entering the private equity and venture capital industry, Herston was a Banker at The Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon) with nearly a decade of global financial services experience. As the Head of Southeast Asia based in Singapore, he executed the first single-listed U.S. ADR listing (NASDAQ) from Southeast Asia and has led numerous deals throughout Asia-Pacific.

He spent 5 years in Hong Kong covering the Asia-Pacific market, including Korea, and built their advisory platform for Asian clients. He has advised unlisted, pre-IPO and listed companies on U.S. capital markets, investor relations and market access. He has extensive experience in supporting tech companies and their advisors with respect to strategy, IPOs and US listings. He also co-founded a global fintech company (Closir) which connects institutional investors to emerging markets.

Herston began his career in New York where he focused on connecting international companies with institutional investors, advisory and macro-economic research.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/herston/
• Website: https://1982.vc/

Jay is a managing partner at Leonis Capital, an early stage venture capital fund that invests in AI-first companies and the automation economy. Previously, Jay is a Partner at T Fund (fka TCL Ventures), a global CVC arm by TCL Corp, one of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world. Jay is also responsible for helping define TCL’s strategic roadmap as well as corporate's M&A and partnerships. Prior to that, Jay was a Senior Director / Partner at Walden Venture Capital, one of the pioneer venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, with a global presence in Asia and Israel. Prior to Walden, Jay was a Principal at Granite Ventures (ex- H&Q venture group), a premier San Francisco based VC firm that manages over $1 billion AUM.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayzhaolinkedin/
• Newsletter: https://nexttrillion.substack.com/
• Website: https://www.leoniscap.com/

With over 2 million followers on Linkedin, Eric Sim, CFA, is one the most followed thought leaders on career and life skills. Eric is the founder of Institute of Life (www.iol.life) whose mission is to train young professionals to be successful at work and in life. Previously when he was based in Hong Kong, Eric served as a managing director at UBS Investment Bank and as an Adjunct Associate Professor of Finance at Hong Kong University of Science of Technology. Today, he teaches at Queen’s University (Canada) and Renmin University in Beijing. A sought-after keynote speaker, Eric has spoken in London, Beijing, Bahrain and New Delhi but these days he is hosting rooms on Clubhouse app. 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simeric/
• Website: http://iol.life/

Sarah Chen’s career spans across venture capital (VC) and innovation, in Asia and the US. She is Co-Founder of The Billion Dollar Fund for Women and Beyond The Billion. Previously, she pioneered a corporate venture capital unit within $13Bn publicly traded Asian conglomerate, Sime Darby, investing in later-stage biotechnology companies. Since then, she has been at the forefront of multiple-million cross border investments, structuring and executing commercialization plans for her portfolio companies. Named Forbes 30 Under 30, she is a recognized speaker and adviser on VC/innovation and women in leadership, having been featured among others on Der Spiegel, the Wall Street Journal, and at the United Nations. 

Sarah currently sits on multiple boards including 131 & counting, a bipartisan effort backed by Bloomberg Government and Holland & Knight to fete the unprecedented number of women serving in the House and Senate in the US and encourage more qualified women to run for office; and Lean In Malaysia, which she co-founded, a platform accelerating women into leadership, recognized as the voice of credibility for professional women issues in Muslim- majority Malaysia. Sarah holds a Bachelor of Laws, LL.B (Hons.) from King’s College London.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahchenglobal/
  
• Website: http://www.sarah-chen.com/
  
• Company Website: https://beyondthebillion.com/
  

Ben Narasin is a Venture Partner at NEA. A prolific entrepreneur and highly regarded early-stage investor with three decades of company-building expertise, Narasin has focused on emerging technologies and new markets throughout his investment career. With a portfolio comprising key early successes in some of today’s fastest growing sectors, such as fintech, digital marketplaces, mobile and connected devices. His overarching focus in seeking new investments is, in his words, “to find founders who make me say wow.”

Narasin is a 25-year entrepreneur and 10-year early-stage investor. His knack for spotting emerging trends led him to make seed investments in companies like Dropcam, Lending Club, TellApart, Kabbage and Zenefits. Before NEA, Narasin most recently served as a General Partner at Canvas Ventures, and was previously with TriplePoint Capital, where he oversaw the firm’s seed funding investment activities.

Like many of NEA’s partners, Narasin’s path to investing is rooted in entrepreneurship. He founded several consumer companies before launching his investing career, including Fashionmall.com, one of the first e-commerce companies, which he founded in 1993 and led to a successful IPO in 1999. Narasin frequently writes and speaks about technology and investing, as well as food and wine, a lifelong passion. He holds a B.A. in Entrepreneurial Studies from Babson College.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennarasin/
• Website: https://pitch-ben.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/BNarasin

Dr. Lewis Pinault is an Airbus Ventures Partner based in Tokyo, managing Airbus Ventures’ activities in the Asia Pacific region. Advising and supporting Airbus innovation projects for over a decade, Lewis also designed and led incubator and innovation centers for the UK Government’s Digital Catapult, EDS, Shell, and others, building from his own mid-career experiences as a NASA researcher trying to link startups to large corporates. Previously, Lewis was a Financial Institutions Partner at Coopers & Lybrand in Singapore and Hong Kong, beginning his early consulting career at The Boston Consulting Group in Tokyo. His lifelong passions for exploring the oceans and space seeking the most advanced technologies available first brought him to Asia as an engineer and corporate planning analyst with Nihon Kokan.

Lewis earned his Bachelor of Science degree at MIT, completed an MSc at London School of Economics as a Fulbright Scholar, and was a NASA Space Grant Fellow at the University of Hawaii, where he completed his juris doctorate in international law and planetary geophysics.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lewispinault/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lewispinault
• Astra's Launch: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/02/rocket-startup-astra-to-go-public-astr-via-spac-at-2point1b-valuation.html