Duncan Davidson, CoFounder/Managing Partner Bullpen Capital, the pioneer of Post Seed investing, an early A round setting up a super-sized round. Previously he was at VantagePoint Venture Partners, a mega-fund and one of the leaders in CleanTech. Prior to joining the dark side, he started or was involved with four startups: Covad and InterTrust, both multi-billion dollar IPOs in the ‘90s; SkyPilot, an outdoor WiFi mesh, and Xumii, one of the earliest mobile social networks. At Bullpen he is focusing on future technologies like AI, drones, IOT; as well as startups digitizing analog businesses. He is on the board of Illumeo, Verbling, Filament, Sourceeasy, Lumoid, and DoubleDutch, and an active advisor to Wag Walking, Betable and Twenty20.
Interviews
Alessandro Voto , West Coast Regional Director Consensys #smartcontracts
Alessandro Voto , West Coast Regional Director Consensys, a Brooklyn-based blockchain technology venture studio, and a research affiliate at the Institute for the Future. Alessandro connects organizations and social entrepreneurs with the San Francisco Bay Area blockchain community to build decentralized applications and services. His focus lies at the intersection of economic design, peer-to-peer technology, and social change.
Michael Gilroy, Canaan Partners NYC #svversusnycfintechvc
Michael Gilroy, Principal Canaan Partners. Michael invests in entrepreneurs building enterprise software and fintech companies. He is interested in talking to founders building the next generation enterprise tools and fintechs solving the structural issues in finance. Deeply passionate about building the entrepreneurial community in fintech, Michael launched Canaan’s FinTech Central in 2015, a quarterly event series covering trends in fintech. Previously, Michael advised technology companies with GCA Savvian and Matrix Capital. He received a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Tess Hatch, Investor Bessemer Venture Partners #svversusnycfintechvc
Tess Hatch, Investor Bessemer Venture Partners Menlo Park office. She is focused on frontier tech, specifically commercial space, machine/deep/reinforcement learning, blockchain, and quantum computing. She currently serves as board observer for Rocket Lab, Spire, Auth0, Endgame, Distil Networks, Team8, Virtru, Claroty, CyberGRX, and Illusive Networks. She holds a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan (go blue!) and a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics engineering from Stanford (go trees!). She was a mission manager at SpaceX where she worked with the government on integrating their payloads with the Falcon9 rocket. She also worked at Fictiv, a startup using 3D printing and CNC machining to democratize access to manufacturing. Tess writes a space comic, Ada Ride, which you should check out for a good laugh. Don’t be surprised if Tess asks you to go on a hike or walk rather than a typical coffee meeting – being a SoCal native she loves the sun.