Mark Straub is the Co-founder and CEO of Smile Identity, the leading digital KYC and identity verification provider in Africa. He has spent much of his career trying to help people in underserved markets get access to better opportunities through technology and entrepreneurship. Mark was a venture investor for a decade, and worked with over 20 companies doing business in adtech, fintech, healthcare, and energy in markets ranging from the US and China to India and Sub-Saharan Africa. Working with Vinod Khosla at Khosla Impact, he led investments in Kopo Kopo, NeoGrowth, Milaap, Branch, and Flutterwave; and he was an investor in all three of Elon Musk’s companies during his time at DFJ.
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Amir Kabir, Partner AV8 Ventures
Amir leads Fintech and Insurtech investing at AV8 Ventures and has been one of the earliest investors in the Insurtech space. Amir has been an entrepreneur, operator and investor with over 15 years of experience, working with early and mid-stage companies on financing, partnerships and strategic growth initiatives. Prior to AV8, Amir was an investment director and founding team member at Munich Re Ventures where he lead and managed investment efforts for two of the funds and made early bets in Insurtech, Mobility and Digital Health in companies like Next Insurance, Inshur, HDVI, Spruce, Ridecell, Babylon Health etc.. Earlier Amir worked for several venture funds, including Route 66 Ventures, focusing on Fintech and Insurtech, and investing in companies such as Simplesurance and DriveWealth. He began his career in Germany as a network engineer and subsequently at Legodo AG (acquired by Open Text, OTEX (NASDAQ)), an enterprise software startup, where he held several roles in sales, business development and product management until acquisition. In 2019, Amir was ranked 11 out of 100 on Global Corporate Venture’s Rising Stars list and was named a “VC Champions Select” by All Raise. Amir lives in San Francisco and holds an MBA from Georgetown McDonough School of Business, a BS in Business Informatics from RFH Cologne in Germany and is currently finishing an MS in Law from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.
John Lunn, Founder/CEO Gr4vy
John Lunn is the Founder and CEO of cloud payment orchestration platform Gr4vy. He is a technology and fintech entrepreneur with 21 years of experience working and investing in financial services, commerce enablement, e-payments, data, security and infrastructure. Lunn worked as the Director of Technology for six years at CyberSource, the world’s first payment service provider, which was sold to Visa for $2Bn in 2010. He then helped found Passmark Security which was sold to RSA Security in 2006. In 2006, Lunn joined PayPal as the fourth employee in the UK (now 2,000+), where as Global Director of Developer and Startup Relations, he built and grew PayPal’s first Developer Relations team. In 2015, he was instrumental to the purchase of Braintree by PayPal and joined the team. In 2016, Lunn was part of the team that launched PayPal Ventures, the venture capital arm of PayPal, a $350m fund with backing from the Board. Lunn was a Board Observer for Dosh, Arkose, Raise, Acorns, Toss and many others
Hammad Aslam, Investor Susa Ventures
Hammad Aslam is an investor at Susa Ventures, where he focuses on Series B and Series C investments out of Susa’s Opportunity Fund, and specializes in fintech, supply chain / logistics, enterprise software and emerging markets. Prior to joining Susa, Hammad helped lead technology and software investments at Vista Equity Partners. Hammad also brings extensive technology M&A and capital raising experience from his time at Morgan Stanley. He graduated with honors from Princeton University, with an AB in Near Eastern Studies and is based in San Francisco Bay Area.