Connect with a Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist
VC Connect
At VC Connect entrepreneurs get an opportunity to receive direct feedback from seasoned Silicon Valley venture capitalists.
Timings: Cohort A : 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM | Cohort B: 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Register for a TiEcon Pass
Who should attend
- Entrepreneurs working full-time on their startup
- Entrepreneurs seeking advice such as team scaling, marketing, sales, fundraising, etc. Please note: This is not a formal pitch session.
How is it done
- One-hour virtual roundtable with your 1st venture capitalist; followed by a second one-hour session with a different venture capitalist
- Each virtual roundtable will have up to 3 entrepreneurs in a single one-hour session with a venture capitalist
Who are our investors
- Silicon Valley veteran VCs who have invested in and helped grow startups from early stage to exit
- Domain experts ranging from AI, Blockchain, Security, Cloud, Enterprise Applications, VR/AR, HealthTech, and more
VCs
Ashmeet is the Founder and Chief Engineer of Engineering Capital. His experience includes managing venture capital funds, serving on Boards of Directors, and helping build the industry leading products VMware ESX Server and Silicon Graphics WebFORCE. Before becoming a venture capitalist, Ashmeet was an operating executive with hands-on operating experience as a CEO and entrepreneur. Ashmeet came to venture from VMware, where he ran product management for their flagship product—ESX Server. Before VMware, Ashmeet was the Founder and CEO of Sidana Systems, Inc. He started his career at Hewlett Packard and Silicon Graphics as an engineer.
Ashmeet's previous investments include Azure (NYSE: AZRE), Netsil (acquired by Nutanix), Palerra (acquired by Oracle), Freewheel (acquired by Comcast), InQuira (acquired by Oracle), Altor (acquired by Juniper), Appurify (acquired by Google), PrivateCore (acquired by Facebook) and StackStorm (acquired by Brocade). He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Baffle, Passage.ai, Sail Internet, vFunction and Kontain. His current investments also include Rubrik, Diamanti, Kentik, Menlo Security, Nexla, Prismo Systems, SignalFx, vFunction, and YotaScale.
Ashmeet received an MBA from Wharton, MS in Computer Science from Stanford University and a BS in Computer Science summa cum laude from USC. In his spare-time he can be found planning his second trip to Mt. Everest.
Homan brings deep expertise in the application of technologies and in operations and management. Prior to Fusion Fund, he was the Co-Founder, CTO, and Director of Solar Junction Corp. (acquired 2014), a company which produces and sells world-record solar products to the terrestrial and satellite markets. Homan has 20 years experience working in a broad range of technologies, management, finance, and investor activities. Homan is active in the entrepreneur and investor communities, providing mentorship to programs like StartX and Alchemist Accelerator, and in the community with organizations like the Asian Pacific Fund, where is on the Advisory Board. Homan received his Ph.D. in Engineering from Stanford University and his B.A. in Physics from UC Berkeley.
Raghu Madabushi is a Director at National Grid Partners investing in early stage companies in the broad enterprise SW vertical. Raghu has 20+ years of experience with technology, capital markets, and IP/innovation.
He comes from SRI Ventures and GE Ventures prior to that, where he invested in deep tech and industrial infrastructure (SW, HW, and telecom). Prior to this, he managed a large portfolio of collaborative open-source technology projects while at the Linux Foundation and headed the startup investing business at Intellectual Ventures (IV) helping invest in early stage startups.
Prior to IV, Raghu held buy-side and sell-side roles at Wall Street firms (Oppenheimer & Co, Collins Stewart) and brings extensive experience in the hardware and software design space having worked in various roles including, semiconductor fabrication, chip design, systems architecture, strategy, and marketing (Texas Instruments, Intel, Cadence Design Systems).
Raghu received an MBA in Finance and Investments from Southern Methodist University, an MS in Computer Engineering from Iowa State University, and serves as a Kauffman Fellow. You can often catch him honing his mean backhand at a badminton court, with fellow investors and founders.
Neeraj Gupta is a co-founder and partner at Cervin Ventures. Most recently, Neeraj was a member of the executive team at Patni, after its acquisition of Cymbal Corporation that he founded. Previously, he held numerous engineering and product management positions at Octel and Genesys.
Neeraj has a BS in Electronics and Electrical Engineering from Punjab University, and an MSEE from the University of Alabama. He is a Kauffman fellow.
Dr Ekta Dang has been a successful Corporate Executive, Speaker and Writer in Silicon Valley for almost two decades. She is currently the Founder and CEO of U First Capital which provides Venture Capital as a Service to mid-size and large Corporations. Ekta has solid experience both in Venture Capital and on Operating side at Intel. She has driven investment deals in several areas (eCommerce, Security, IoT, etc). She is a seasoned Industry Executive with over 15 years of experience in Product, Business Development and Venture Capital. She brings a stellar network from the Venture Capital and Corporate world to the startups. She is a startup enthusiast and is a mentor at Alchemist Accelerator, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Google Launchpad, etc.
She has been a member of Hillary Clinton's Technology Policy Advisory Committee. She is an invited Speaker at several top Venture Capital/Startup conferences, like TiECon, Silicon Valley Open Doors, etc. She has a PhD in Physics and is a graduate of UC Berkeley Haas School's Venture Capital program. She has published several research papers in IEEE and other reputed international journals.
Steve is a Managing Director at Hummer Winblad. He has over 20 years of experience divided between Hummer Winblad Venture Partners (HWVP) and executive roles at HWVP portfolio companies. Steve started his tenure at HWVP in 1994, and since then was at HWVP portfolio company Extensity (IPO), back at HWVP, and then at HWVP portfolio company Akimbi Systems (acquired by VMware). At Extensity he led marketing and services teams including the company's European professional services organization leading international implementations in Europe, Asia, and North America. At Akimbi Systems he was VP of product management, services, and support. At VMware, Steve ran product management for Lab Manager, vCloud Director, and Hybrid Cloud applications. Prior to returning to HWVP Steve joined Hadoop cloud vendor Altiscale, Inc (acquired by SAP) where he was Vice President of Product Management.
Steve received a BS in aerospace engineering from MIT and an MBA from University of California, Berkeley. At Hummer Winblad, Steve has played a key role in the firm's investments in Jareva (acquired by Veritas), Knowmadic (acquired by Intellicap), Yosemite Technologies (acquired by Barracuda Networks), Five9 (NASDAQ: FIVN), Scalent (acquired by Dell), InMage (acquired by Microsoft), Bridgestream (acquired by Oracle), Sapias, Wavemaker (acquired by VMware), and Akimbi Systems (acquired by VMware). Steve currently sits on the Board of Alpharank and Stackery.
Sandhya is a Partner at Khosla Ventures and is passionate about helping founders transform industries through the use of AI/ML and other emerging technologies.
Previously, Sandhya founded and was Managing Partner of Deep Ventures, a seed investment firm focused on tackling hard problems through AI/ML. Her investments included One Concern, LunchClub.ai, Helm.ai, Forethought.ai, Fireflies.ai and Intersect Labs. Prior to Deep Ventures, Sandhya was a General Partner at Social Capital.
Prior, Sandhya was Head of Corporate Development and VP of Product at Skype. Her tech career started as the first product manager at Andiamo Systems, which was acquired by Cisco for $1.5 billion.
Sandhya ​has an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Business and an A.B. in Economics from Harvard University
Christine is a Director at NTT Docomo Ventures. NTT DOCOMO Ventures is the gateway for the startup and venture community into the NTT Group. I invest in US/Canadian startups for NTT DOCOMO's $150m fund and NTT Group's $250m fund.
She was also an Investor at Metaware Corporation, DataRobot, WaveXR, and Trifacta.
Vidya is a Principle at Sorenson Ventures. Sorenson Ventures is an investor in early-stage Enterprise and B2B software startups. We are investing out of a $110M fund in the seed through Series A stage.
She is also an Indipendednt Investor/Advisory role for vairous compaines like: Evisort, MoQuality, askPorter and more.
Previously, Vidya was Director of Product Management at Cloudera, and eMeterCorporation. She was also the Founder of FactFuel.
Ullas Naik is a General Partner at Streamlined Ventures. Streamlined Ventures is a seed-stage investment firm aimed at investing in software applications as well as the the enabling technologies and infrastructure underlying them. Our areas of interest involve the application of novel data science and component AI technologies in business and consumer use cases and work flows.
Ullas was also a Founder and General Partner of Cota Capital, Managing Director of Globspan Capital Partners, and the Managing Director of JAFCO American Ventures.
Noor is a Venture Capitalist at Clear Ventures. She was also a Senior Analyst at Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Noor was also a VP for Corporate Development at an Online SaaS platform where Investors could connect with companies - Meetyl.
She was also a Director of Research at the Compass Technology Group, and a Consultant at Firsthand Capital Management.
Damineh is an Investing Director at HorizonX Ventures, where she has also contributed as an Investing Principal, Financial Planning and Analysis Manager, and Supplier Management Operations Manager.
Along with being a part of HorizonX Ventures, Damineh is also a Kauffman Fellow, Board Observer at Matternet Inc.
She was also the Business Operations Lead at Boeing.
Gayathri is a Director Venture Capitalist at Micron Tech. Micron is a world leader in innovative memory solutions that transform how the world uses information. We have approximately 40,000 team members in 17 countries who work with the world's most trusted brands, delivering memory and storage systems for a broad range of applications and sparking countless possibilities in technology.
Before Micron, Gayathri was a Venture Partner at Impact Venture Capital, VP Product Management at Pensa Inc., Head of Product at Catalina Labs Inc., and Director of Strategy and Corporate Development and Senior Manager Strategy and Corporate Development at Dell.
Priya is a GP at Mayfield Fund. Mayfield is a global venture capital firm with $2.5 billion under management. The Firm has been championing people for more than 50 years. Since its founding in 1969, the Firm has invested in more than 500 companies resulting in 117 IPOs and more than 200 mergers or acquisitions.
Prior to which, Priya was a Board Member of: Skedulo, GO1, Workboard Inc., Element AI, and Bonsi. She has also contributed as a Principal to M12 - Microsoft's Venture Fund, a Corporate Development Deal Lead at Square, a Senior Associate at Saints Capital, and as an Investment Banking Analyst at USB.