Top 50 Manufacturing Angel Investors in United States in November 2024

Mark Cuban is the founder of Fireside, Chairman and Founding Partner of AXS TV, and the Owner of Dallas Mavericks. He previously worked at Broadcast.com as a Co-Founder. Mark Cuban attended the Indiana University Bloomington.

Mark Cuban is the founder of Fireside, Chairman and Founding Partner of AXS TV, and the Owner of Dallas Mavericks. He previously worked at Broadcast.com as a Co-Founder. Mark Cuban attended the Indiana University Bloomington.

Jackson Moses currently serves as the Founder and Managing Partner of Silent Ventures, an early-stage venture firm that invests in exceptional founders building unrivaled aerospace, defense, and national security startups. He also founded and manages Silent Capital, a private syndicate that provides its members exclusive access to leadingmulti-stage defense and frontier tech deals. Additionally, Jackson serves as a Senior Advisor to the founding teams of Castelion and Privateer Space.Before founding Silent Ventures, Jackson founded and served as VP of Partnerships at MainStreet: the first tech company to make R&D tax credits accessible to startups and SMBs via industry-leading workflows and integrations. As a founding executive, he was responsible for developing go-to-market strategies, building a world-class sales organization, managing business development initiatives, and scaling annual revenue to over $30M. To date, MainStreet has employed hundreds of people and helped 2,000+ startups claim over $150M in tax savings, collectively extending their runway by centuries.Before founding MainStreet, Jackson founded and served as Chairman & CEO of Spectrum Labs (enterprise AIaaS), which was acquired by ActiveFence after last being valued at $137M. Spectrum Labs pioneered multimodal LLMs, specifically a series of proprietary GPT foundation models, designed to make digital communities more profitable for Fortune 500 owners, marketers, influencers, and their users. Its customer base spanned gaming, dating, and social media, and included Tencent (TCEHY), Pinterest (NYSE: PINS), Grindr (NYSE: GRND), Yik Yak, Wildlife Studios, and The Meet Group, among others.Before founding Spectrum Labs, Jackson worked in sales (Lynda.com), customer operations, and executive recruiting at LinkedIn (acquired by Microsoft). Before this, he worked as a Market Research Analyst at Cisco where he evaluated industry trends, new investment opportunities, and emerging threats to Cisco’s core business lines. Having raised $120M+ across his two companies, Jackson actively advises startups, venture firms, and family offices on private-sector aerospace and defense tech trends, investment opportunities, and capital allocation strategies. He serves as a Venture Partner to several large firms and has sourced deals for 8VC, a16z, Airbus Ventures, Tribe Capital, Quiet Capital, Susa Ventures, Lavrock Ventures, First In, Cubit Capital, and defense primes.Jackson holds two B.A. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley where he studied Economics, with a concentration in monetary policy, and Political Science, with a concentration in game theory.

Dylan Taylor is a global business leader, commercial astronaut, thought leader and philanthropist. Currently, Dylan serves as Chairman & CEO of Voyager Space, a multi-national space exploration firm focused on building the next generation of space infrastructure for NASA and other global space agencies.Dylan has been recognized by HarvardUniversity, SpaceNews, the BBC, the Financial Times, Pitchbook, CNBC, CNN and others as having played a seminal role in the growth of the private space industry. As an early-stage investor in more than 50 emerging space ventures, including Axiom, Kepler, York, Astrobotic, LeoLabs, Relativity, and Planet, Dylan is widely considered the most active private space investor in the world.Dylan’s technical background, global business experience and unbridled passion for space make him a unique figure within his industry. As a thought leader and futurist, he has written many popular pieces on the future of the space industry for Forbes, FastCompany, Newsweek, SpaceNews, The Space Review, and Space.com. As a speaker, Dylan has keynoted many of the major space conferences around the world and has appeared regularly on Bloomberg, Fox Business, and CNBC.Dylan has extensive global business experience as both a board director and CEO in several industries, including advanced electronics, finance and real estate. He previously served as a Director for UMB Bank, a Fortune 500 company based in Kansas City and as a mutual fund director for the Jackson Funds where he oversaw assets of $8B across 130 distinct funds. He has also served in the roles of CEO, President and Board Director for multinational companies like Prudential PLC, Honeywell, Colliers and Jones Lang LaSalle. Dylan was recognized as a Fortune 1000 CEO with P&L responsibility in excess of $3B and operations encompassing 15,000 employees in over 60 countries. In addition, Dylan has participated in 4 IPOs over the course of his career. Dylan is a leading advocate of space manufacturing and the utilization of in-space resources to further space exploration and settlement. In 2017, he became the first private citizen to manufacture an item in space when the gravity meter he co-designed and commissioned was 3D printed on the International Space Station. The historic item is now housed in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.Dylan is an explorer of note. On December 11th, 2021 Dylan became just the 606th human to go to space as part of the crew of Blue Origin’s NewShepard Mission 19. Accordingly, Dylan earned his commercial astronaut wings with the FAA and his universal astronaut wings from the Association of Space Explorers.He is also one of only a handful of humans to have descended to the deepest part of the world’s oceans, Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench as part of the Limiting Factor Expedition in July of 2022. In that mission, Dylan descended with pilot Victor Vescovo to a depth in excess of 10,800 meters (35,500 feet) into an area of the Mariana Trench that had never been visited by humans. Dylan is the youngest human to have been to the deepest part of the world’s oceans and crossed the Karman line into Space. Dylan has been a member of the Explorers Club since 2014.Dylan maintains an extensive philanthropic impact on the space industry. In 2017, Dylan founded the nonprofit and social movement, Space for Humanity, which seeks to democratize space exploration and develop solutions to global issues through the scope of human awareness to help solve the world’s most intractable problems. Space for Humanity has successfully sent two citizen astronauts to space via Blue Origin including both the first Mexican-born woman (Katya Echazareta), and first African-born woman (Sara Sabry). Building upon his passion and support for the space industry, Dylan serves as a strategic advisor for both the Archmission and the Human Spaceflight Program and is a co-founding patron of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, which promotes the growth of commercial space activity. Additionally, he is also a leading benefactor to the Brooke Owens Fellowship, Patti Grace Smith Fellowship and Mission: Astro Access.Dylan is the founder and Chairman of Multiverse Media, an integrated global media company focused on science and technology, with an emphasis on space. Multiverse is the parent company of the popular space philosophy website 2211.world as well as the Ad Astra Dinners, a Jeffersonian-style dinner series featuring some of the world’s leading influencers discussing the future of humanity in space. Another subsidiary of Multiverse Media, Multiverse Publishing, publishes books by leading authors including Frank White, Isaac Asimov and Gerard K. O’Neill. Multiverse is also the executive producer of the documentary film, The High Frontier and the forthcoming film, Fortitude. For his influence as a global leader and his commitment to creating a positive impact on the world, Dylan has been honored with numerous personal and professional accolades in recent years. The World Economic Forum recognized Dylan as a Young Global Leader in 2011 and a full member of the World Economic Forum in 2014. That same year he was named a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. In 2020, Dylan was recognized by the Commercial Spaceflight Federation with their top honor for business and finance, following in the footsteps of 2019’s inaugural winner, the late Paul Allen and subsequent winners Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.Dylan Taylor earned an MBA in Finance and Strategy from the Booth School of Business at University of Chicago and holds a BS in Engineering from the honors college at the University of Arizona, where he graduated Tau Beta Pi and in 2018 was named Alumnus of the year. He is also a graduate of the Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century program at Harvard University.Dylan and his family reside in Denver, Colorado where he is active locally with Colorado Concern and the Colorado Spaceport. In his spare time, Dylan enjoys hiking, competing in triathlons and spending time outdoors. As a weekend warrior athlete, Dylan has more than 25 top ten finishes and 25 age group wins to his credit, and he regularly interviews world class athletes whom have shown extraordinary resilience as the host of the Legendary Podcast. He is married to legal expert, consultant and author Gabrielle V. Taylor with whom he has two teenage daughters.

Kevin Moore has 10 years experience as an angel/opportunity investor and operator. Prior to that, he has over 15 years of progressive technology i-banking, corp dev, and CFO experience at startups and $Bn corporates.

Lauren DeLuca is a Founder and Managing Partner of Motivate Venture Capital, a Chicago-based Pre-Seed and Seed investor.He co-founded a family of niche FinTech firms and was an active Angel investor. In 2012, he co-founded Sailfish Systems, a managed services and market data provider for trading firms, banks, and hedge funds. Sailfish merged withVictory Networks in 2013 to serve clients across the US and Europe. The combined business was ultimately sold to QuantHouse, a Paris-based trading technology provider, in 2017.He co-founded Oxford Intelligence Partners at the beginning of 2015, a boutique stock market-analytics firm. Clients included many Fortune 500 companies before a successful exit to Q4 Inc., a Toronto-based strategic acquirer serving 1000+ clients. His personal Angel portfolio spans a multitude of B2B/B2C verticals and contains over thirty early- and growth-stage businesses, including Chime, HomeChef, TradingView, Appcast, Popular Pays, DeskPass and PostProcess Technologies. He received my MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame where he graduated Cum Laude in 2001.

Daren was the Founder and CEO of InboxDollars, an online marketing company that connects consumers and advertisers in a way that benefits both. He founded the company as a Freshman in college in 2000 and bootstrapped the company to more than $25 million in annual revenues. InboxDollars was acquired by Prodege in 2019. Daren is active in the MNstart-up community as an investor, advisor and mentor.

Wei Guo, the founding partner of UpHonest Capital, is an active angel investor in Silicon Valley, focusing on early-stage cross-sector investments. He founded Wei Fund in 2015 and UpHonest Capital Fund I in 2016, invested in well-known companies such as Hims&Hers(NYSE: HIMS), Vicarious Surgical(NYSE: RBOT), Knightscope (NASDAQ: KSCP), Checkr,Lime, Boom, Rescale, Dialpad and more. Since 2015, he has invested in over 400 Silicon Valley startups, over 76 companies with valuations greater than 100 million USD, and 23 portfolio companies that have successfully exited.

Nitesh Banta is the Co-Founder & CEO at B12.

Paul Buchheit co-founded social network aggregator FriendFeed, along with three other former Google employees. He is also an investor in FriendFeed and participated in a $5 million Series A round in February 2008.He was the 23rd employee at Google, where he created Gmail and implemented many of its innovative features. He developed the originalprototype of Google AdSense, and was responsible for Google's famous "Don't be evil" motto in a meeting.

Lior Ron is senior director at Uber since it acquired Otto, which he co-founded along with Claire Delunsay and Don Burnette. Prior to this Lior worked as the product lead for Google's local efforts. He has spent the last 12 years innovating in the geo industry where he was the CTO of the Israeli Intelligence mapping and search unit,product manager at Yahoo, founder of a geo search startup and in the last 4 years part of the Google geo leadership team. He holds an MBA from Stanford GSB, BSc and MS from the Technion – the Israeli institute for technology. He’s also involved in the emerging private space industry as an investor and advisor for few startups as well as product lead for Google's space products (sky, moon)

Leonardo DiCaprio is an American actor and film producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and nine Golden Globe Awards. He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Aviator (2004), and has been nominated by the Screen Actors Guild, Satellite Awards, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Acommitted environmentalist, DiCaprio has received praise from environmental groups for his activism. At the 2007 Oscar ceremony, DiCaprio and former Vice President Al Gore announced that the Academy Awards had incorporated environmentally intelligent practices throughout the planning and production processes, and on July 7, 2007, DiCaprio presented at the American leg of Live Earth.

Taavet Hinrikus is co-founder and CEO of TransferWise. Prior to starting TransferWise, Taavet was Skype’s director of strategy until 2008, starting as its first-ever employee. One of the World Economic Forum's Tech Pioneers, Taavet is an adviser to Prime Minister of Estonia on the digital agenda. He’s also a mentor and angel investor; hisinvestments include Tweetdeck, Mendeley, OMGPOP, Property Partner, Sunrise, Improbable and Mapillary.

Christian Dahlen is a business angel. He provides expert capital and venture advice to B2B SW startups in Silicon Valley and in Germany. He is a member of the Band of Angels, Silicon Valley's oldest seed funding organization. Christian was a VP at SAP and held various roles in business strategy and operations. Prior to SAP, he was theGeneral Manager for the Internet and phone business of Kabel Deutschland (KDG), Germany's largest cable operator. He joined KDG from Excite@Home, and before that was with McKinsey & Co.

blah - teh software was teh busted and they didn't want to fix it or hire someone to fix it, odd folks, these.

Bill Gates is the Co-chair of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He attended Harvard University.

Jason Calacanis is the Founder and CEO of Inside.com and Launch. He previously worked at Weblogs as a Co-Founder and CEO. Jason Calacanis attended Fordham University.

Ozzy Akay

Advisory CTO and Angel Investor

Josh Buckley is the CEO of Product Hunt.

Bill Gates is the Co-chair of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He attended Harvard University.

Joanne Wilson has had many careers. She started out in retail, eventually moving to the wholesale arena. She then transitioned to the media side of the technology world, before once again reinventing herself as an investor. She is currently an active angel investor with a portfolio of over 90 companies such as Food52, Sweeten, Vengo, Nestio, Phinand Phebes, Makers Row, Clutter, and Union Station. She has been involved in numerous real estate transactions from beginning to end and continues to make investments in that world. She is also an investor in a few restaurants in the New York area. In addition to these endeavors, Joanne has been involved in various education projects and served as chairperson at Hot Bread Kitchen, non-profit committed to increasing access to the culinary industry for woman and minority entrepreneurs. She also sits on the board of The Highline. Joanne has maintained her very popular blog, www.gothamgal.com for over 11 years and has recently take her talents to the airwaves on her podcast, ""Positively Gotham Gal"". She loves to bake, cook, throw a good party, travel, read, collect art, do the crossword and stay on top of what's happening around the globe and in NYC.Her most successful venture is being married to her best friend, Fred and raising their three kids- Jessica, Emily and Josh

Luigi Bajetti is the managing partner and founder of Lombardstreet Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm in Menlo Park, California.Luigi is a serial entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in the tech and internet industries, with a wealth of knowledge and expertise in building and scaling startups.As a full-time investor since2013, he has been leveraging his experience and insights to identify and support the next generation of Silicon Valley founders. With a passion for backing game-changing technologies and a talent for spotting emerging trends, Luigi has a proven track record of success in identifying groundbreaking startups. He has invested almost always at the earliest possible stage of seed in 20+ US startups valued at over $30 billion combined, including 8 that have since become unicorns.

Michael E Marks is the Founding Managing Partner at Celesta Capital. Prior to that, he was the CEO and founder of Katerra. He was also the founding partner of Riverwood Capital, a Menlo Park-based private equity firm. Prior to establishing Riverwood, he was a partner and senior advisor at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. in 2006 and 2007.Priorto KKR, Michael spent 13 years as CEO and then chairman of Flextronics International Ltd., building it into one of the largest technology companies in the world.He is a director of The Melt, Enjoy, H20.ai, and Berkeley Lights.

David Hodge is the CEO at Standard Fleet

Monica Nassif

Travis Deyle is the CEO and co-founder of Cobalt Robotics. He is an acclaimed scientist and technologist with extensive experience and academic publications in robotics, RFID, and sensing technologies.He obtained his PhD in Robotics from Georgia Tech, where he was a founding member of Prof. Charlie Kemp's Healthcare Robotics Lab. A coretenet of the lab was “deploy robots to real environments and interact with real people.” He builts some of the first mobile robots capable of operating in real homes, including his own. Enabled by long-range radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags -- an internet of things (IOT) technology -- he used these robots to demonstrate useful healthcare tasks such as robot-mediated medication delivery, fetching and retrieving tagged objects, and helping older adults and people with motor impairments with activities of daily living.

Charles is a business and product leader with 20 years of experience building, advising and investing in category-defining platform companies.Most recently Charles served as Chief Operating Officer at Temporal Technologies, the leader in durable execution systems where he built and led all the company’s go-to-market and product functions whilecreating the category and launching the commercial product. In less than 3 years Temporal grew its users, customers, revenues and value by 20-100 times.Prior to Temporal Technologies, Charles spent nearly 10 years building Cloudera first as the product leader and subsequently as general manager for Cloudera’s 3 high growth business units. As the longest serving member of the leadership team, Charles helped Cloudera grow from a pre-product startup with less than $10 million in funding to a multi-product public company with nearly $800 million in ARR. Charles has advised or invested in other notable platform companies and investors including Airbyte, Baseten, Huggingface, Streamsets and Y Combinator.Charles has an undergraduate degree from Carleton College and a master’s from MIT and lives in San Francisco.

Connor Theilmann is the Chief Business Officer at ServiceTitan. Previously he was an investor at Accel in Palo Alto. He attended The Wharton School for Accounting and Finance & the Penn Engineering School for Computer Science.

Stanton Green Senior Director Blumberg Capital. He attended Dartmouth College.

Video creator on TikTok who became known for his mix of comedy and vlog content while occasionally implementing the slow-motion effect. He has accrued more than 9 million fans. He frequently collaborates with Jaden Hossler, Anthony Reeves, and Payton Moormeier, amongst others.

An accomplished venture investor, company advisor, and entrepreneur, Chris manages a portfolio of over seventy consumer web, mobile, and wireless technology start-ups as well as an array of mature enterprises through his holding company, Lowercase Capital. He is partnered in this venture with his wife, Crystal English Sacca. While primarily knownfor its investments in seed and early stage technology companies like Twitter, Uber, Instagram, and Kickstarter, Lowercase has quietly grown to be one of the larger venture funds in the United States.

Marc Tarpenning is a member of the advisory board at Clearpath Robotics , a manufacturer of unmanned vehicles for industrial research and development applications. He also provides services as an advisor to many other companies. Previously, he was a mentor at Greenstart.Marc is a Venture Partner at Spero Ventures. He was previously anentrepreneur in residence at Mayfield Fund before he joined Greenstart. Prior to that, he co-founded and served as the vice president for engineering at Tesla Motors. He also held executive positions at Packet Design, NuvoMedia, and Gemstar-TV Guide.Tarpenning holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in San Francisco, California, United States.

Mr. Rowan is the CEO and a co-founder of Apollo Global Management, LLC and Managing Partner of, inter alia, Apollo Management, L.P. Mr. Rowan currently serves on the boards of directors of Apollo Global Management, LLC, Athene Holding Ltd., Caesars Entertainment Corp. and Caesars Acquisition Co. He has previously served on the boards of directorsof the general partner of AP Alternative Assets, L.P., AMC Entertainment, Inc., Beats Music, Cablecom GmbH, Culligan Water Technologies, Inc., Caesars Entertainment Operating Co., Countrywide PLC, Furniture Brands International, Mobile Satellite Ventures, LLC, National Cinemedia, Inc., National Financial Partners, Inc., New World Communications, Inc., Norwegian Cruise Lines, Quality Distribution, Inc., Samsonite Corporation, SkyTerra Communications Inc., Unity Media SCA, Vail Resorts, Inc. and Wyndham International, Inc.Mr. Rowan is also active in charitable activities. He is a founding member and Chairman of the Youth Renewal Fund and a member of the Board of Overseers of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Mr. Rowan also serves on the boards of directors of Jerusalem Online and the New York City Police Foundation. Mr. Rowan graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business with a BS and an MBA in Finance.

Jordan Noone is the Co-Founder and General Partner of Embedded Ventures. He attended the University of Southern California.

Before co-founding Flatiron, Nat was Co-Founder and CEO of Invite Media, an advertising technology company based in NYC. Invite Media built the industry's first enterprise advertising platform for buying and optimizing online media in real-time. Invite Media was acquired by Google in 2010. Prior to Invite Media, Nat started numerousinternet companies and also worked at Say Media and First Round Capital. An active angel investor, Nat has invested in over 30 technology startups throughout the country, including Bell Biosystems, Breakthrough, Care at Hand, DocPhin, Doctor Evidence, Genomera, Meddik, Oscar, and Predilytics. Nat earned a Bachelor of Science degree cum laude in Economics with concentrations in Entrepreneurship and Marketing from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In his spare time, Nat is an avid golfer and tries to trick trout with fake bugs.

Greg Schroy manages Locke Mountain Ventures. He was a Co-founder of nTopology.

Josh Jones is a Partner HMC INQ and Founder of Did I Err Productions. He is a former Co-Founder & CTO at DreamHost.

Sahil is the founder and CEO of Gumroad.Gumroad exists to help every creative earn a living selling the stuff they make directly to their audience.Previously, he was early at Pinterest — a service that lets users collect, organize, and share the things they are into — and worked on turntable's mobile apps.He designs and buildsproducts for fun and profit.

Steven Lurie is the founder of Team Builder Ventures, which helps founders build and scale world-class teams. The fund invests in the Series A rounds of enterprise software and consumer Internet start-ups led by the top venture capital funds.Previously, Steven was at Zynga for over 4 years and was a member of the company’s Executive Staff. Mostrecently, he was the head of the International group after leading Studio I (India), a game group in Bangalore. Steven was the head of Zynga’s Mobile group before moving to India.Before Zynga, Steven was CEO of Advice Company, one of the Web’s leading legal and insurance advice sites, and worked at several venture-backed start-ups in executive roles and in venture capital. Steven received his JD from Harvard Law School and BA from Stanford University.

David E. Weekly is the Head of The Capital One Lab of Capital One. He previously worked at Medcorder as a Founder and CEO. David E. Weekly attended Stanford University.

Mark Pincus is the founder and Executive Chairman of the Board of Zynga. He has served as our Chairman from April 2007 to March 2016 and the company's Executive Chairman since March 2016. He previously served as Chief Executive Officer from April 2007 to July 2013 and from April 2015 to March 2016, and as Chief Product Officer from April2007 to April 2014. In 2014, he founded superlabs, a San Francisco-based product lab focused on developing products that connect and empower people, which was acquired by Zynga in 2015. Pincus also founded Zynga.org in 2009, a non-profit organization dedicated to using social games for social good.From 2003 to 2007, Pincus served as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Tribe.net, a company he launched and one of the first social networks in the industry. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Chairman of Support.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPRT), a help desk automation software company he founded, and he served as Chief Executive Officer and President from December 1997 to July 1999. From 1996 to 1997, he served as Chief Executive Officer of FreeLoader, Inc., a web-based news company he founded.Pincus also made founding investments in Napster, Twitter, and Facebook.Pincus graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is an angel investor in multiple Silicon Valley startups and regularly gives lectures to aspiring entrepreneurs.

Fabrice Grinda is among the world’s leading Internet entrepreneurs and investors.He has over $300 million in exits and 150 angel investments. Fabrice has served as CEO for three multinational companies and has an impressive track record as an early investor in Alibaba, Lending Club, Delivery Hero and Brightroll.Fabrice is currentlyinvesting in startups and building companies through FJ Labs, which he cofounded with business partner Jose Marin. Fabrice is also co-founder and executive chairman of Beepi, a next generation used car marketplace. Beepi recently raised $60 million in series B funding.Prior to FJ Labs and Beepi, Fabrice was co-founder and co-CEO of OLX, one of the largest websites in the world with over 200 million unique visitors per month. The company operates in 40 countries and has over 1,200 employees. OLX is the largest classifieds site in India, Brazil, Pakistan, Poland, Ukraine, Portugal and many other emerging markets.Before OLX, Fabrice was co-founder and CEO of Zingy, one of the largest wireless media companies in the Americas. Fabrice successfully grew the business to $200 million in sales in four years.Fabrice started his entrepreneurial journey in 1998, at 23, when he co-founded and was CEO of Aucland. Soon after, Aucland grew into one of the largest auction sites in Europe. Before his entrepreneurial endeavors, Fabrice worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company.Fabrice holds a BA in Economics from Princeton University. He graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1996, and was awarded the Halbert White prize, given to the most distinguished economics student, as well as The Wolfe Balleisen memorial prize, awarded for best thesis.In his free time, Fabrice likes to travel the world, kitesurf, play tennis, and blog about his personal and professional life at www.fabricegrinda.com.

Scott Belsky joined Adobe as Chief Product Officer, Executive Vice President - Creative Cloud in 2017.Scott Belsky is an entrepreneur, author, and investor. Scott co-founded Behance in 2006, and served as CEO until Adobe acquired Behance in 2012. Millions of people use Behance to display their portfolios, as well as track and find top talent acrossthe creative industries. After Behance's acquisition, Scott served as Adobe's Vice President of Products, rebooting Adobe's mobile product strategy and leading Behance until 2016 when he became a full-time venture capitalist as a General Partner at Benchmark. Scott returned to his love for the creative world, and building products and teams full-time, as Chief Product Officer and EVP of Creative Cloud, at Adobe in late 2017. He continues to work with Benchmark as a Venture Partner, as well as several other early stage venture firms. Scott also manages a portfolio of over 150 private companies from his early investments and product advisory roles in companies including Pinterest, Uber, Carta, Flexport, Airtable, sweetgreen, and many others in the early stages.Scott is also the author of the bestselling books Making Ideas Happen and The Messy Middle (Portfolio Imprint, Penguin Books, April, 2010 and Oct 2018, respectively).Scott is also the founder of the 99U conference for leaders in the design world, and is an advocate for technology and community initiatives that empower creative people and help businesses leverage the creative potential of their people. In 2010, Scott was also included in Fast Company's list of "100 Most Creative People in Business."Prior to founding Behance, Scott helped grow the Pine Street Leadership Development Initiative at Goldman, Sachs & Co. Scott was especially focused on organizational improvement and strengthening relationships with clients. Scott serves on the Advisory Board of Cornell University's Entrepreneurship Program and is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. He attended Cornell University as an undergraduate and received his MBA from Harvard Business School. Scott and his family live in New York City and San Francisco.

David Spector is an entrepreneur. He founded and runs ThirdLove with his wife, Heidi Zak.They received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2019 for Northern California. ThirdLove has grown to become the third largest online intimate apparel brand in the US behind VS and Aerie (as ranked by NPD). Before starting the company, David was a partner atSequoia Capital focusing on e-commerce, analytics, and consumer internet investments. A graduate of Tulane University where he earned his BA and his MBA from MIT Sloan.

Kevin Ryan is the Founder and CEO of AlleyCorp. He previously worked at MongoDB as a Founder and Chairman. Kevin Ryan attended Yale University.

Bradley Horowitz is an Advisor and Vice President of Product Management at Google. Most recently he helped create Area 120, Google's incubator for internally-sourced innovation. He's led a large number of products, programs and initiatives at Google - including Google for Startups, Google Photos, Gmail, Google Voice, blogger, and GoogleNews.Before joining Google in February 2008, Horowitz was Yahoo's vice president of Advanced Development where he drove the acquisitions of Flickr and MyBlogLog, launched the Brickhouse incubator and developed new products like Yahoo! Pipes. Additionally, he was responsible for the company's initiative to open up its platform which included overseeing the Yahoo Developer Network (YDN).Previously, he was co-founder and CTO of Virage, where he oversaw the technical direction of the company from its founding through its IPO and eventual acquisition by Autonomy.Horowitz was a PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab. While at the Media Lab, he worked on a number of topics related to computer vision, graphics and image processing, which resulted in a patented new technique for the recovery of structure, motion and camera parameters from video sequences.Horowitz holds an MS in Media Science from MIT and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Michigan.

Bryan Rosenblatt (born July 4, 1989 in New York, New York, United States) is an American Venture Capitalist and entrepreneur. He is a Partner at Craft Ventures, a venture firm with over $2 billion AUM started by David Sacks. He is also a founder of Riverside Ventures, which he started in 2017, and a former executive at Reddit and Twitter. Hepreviously worked at Reddit as the Head of Sales. Bryan Rosenblatt attended the University of Connecticut School of Business and Charles University.

Kay Hong is the CEO at Proenza Schouler.

Russell Westbrook is the current Founder and CEO of Russell Westbrook Enterprises.