Brian is the CEO and founder of VentureOut, which he launched in 2012 while working at Gotham Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund. He started VentureOut as a vehicle to help bridge the gap between the innovators around the world and the opportunities available to them in the New York and San Francisco technology ecosystems.

Brian is also a proud advocate of the New York City's vibrant technology community, a role he plays as a speaker, a mentor, on the Board of Directors of the NYC Innovation Collective, Founding Member of NYC Tech International, a member of the FWD.us Innovation Council and as the Founder of the Chaminade Alumni Entrepreneurs Association.

Prior to VentureOut, Brian’s career has spanned venture, at Gotham Ventures, consulting, supporting early-stage tech startups in NYC, business development, at OTR Global, and sales, as the youngest institutional salesperson globally at Standard & Poor's. Brian received his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Richmond.

As a startup founder with multiple exits, He thinks there are a lot of things broken with the way that entrepreneurs approach sales and marketing in today’s complex market. His team’s focus in 2018 is to make sure they can help as many people as they can scale their businesses without running out of money. He has knowledge of various fields that is helpful for startups and also can provide insight into many areas such as Team Building & Strategic Planning, Corporate Innovation & Partnerships, Growth Hacking & Lead Generation, Marketing & Community Engagement, Seed & Venture Capital, Emerging Trends & Digital Technology.

Omri experienced Corporate Innovation and VC Analyst with a demonstrated history of working in the internet industry. He has skilled in Corporate Innovation, Accelerator, Operations Management, Cyber, AI, Retail, Sales, and Fundraising.
He is a strong business development professional with a Bachelor's degree focused in Economics & Philosophy from Columbia University in the City of New York.

Paul is an associate at HOF Capital where he leverages his technical background to build out HOF’s technology stack, which is used to source deals and test investment hypotheses.

He previously was a Software Engineer at Addepar, a Forward Deployed Engineer at Palantir., and a fellow at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Paul received his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science with a focus in Artificial Intelligence from Stanford University.

Previously, he working on sourcing post-Series A companies at Startupbootcamp. In addition, he was an associate at Silver Field Capital, a Chicago-based private equity firm. In another life, Han was an engineering lead at Walmart Labs in the Bay Area overseeing development in the eCommerce and R&D division. He’s led efforts in personalizations, adtech, and health and wellness in the engineering org. On the side, he taught coding at Hack Reactor and Redwood City School District. He is actively involved in the Chicago Booth Angels network.

Han earned a Masters in Business Administation from the The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a Masters of Engineering in Computer Science from Cornell University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley.

As a business lawyer, Joseph represents startups to publicly-held technology, life science and consumer companies, venture capital and private equity funds and investment banks in a wide range of seed and venture financings, mergers and acquisitions, IPOs and other public offerings. Joseph has represented issuers and underwriters in dozens of IPOs and follow-on public offerings involving companies in the technology, life sciences and consumer sectors, including leading investment banks such as Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, and Oppenheimer.

He is currently a partner and Co-Chair of the Venture Capital & Emerging Companies Practice of McCarter, a 400+ lawyer U.S. law firm with a global practice.

Business and financial leader with the ability develop and deliver strategic development and execution of company-wide financial policies and procedures. Distinguished, hands-on experience in driving corporate development activities, assisting startups, reorganizing financially distressed companies, and the managing the acquisition and integration process. Astute leader who adds value through proactive decision-making, business process re-engineering, and proven global leadership abilities coupled with mentoring and coaching skills.

Sam Newbold has been supporting VentureOut companies to secure US visas since 2013. He is experienced in a wide range of employment based, family based, and investment based immigration issues, working closely with the global startup and tech communities, representing cutting edge companies and talented individuals who comprise New York’s rapidly growing Silicon Alley.

Mr. Newbold also works closely with foreign investors seeking nonimmigrant or immigrant status through EB5 or E-2 investments, and he is also experienced in helping foreign business owners receive L visa status through establishing New Offices in the United States.

Zavain is driven by smart software, leveraging data and machine intelligence to scale, augment, and balance human intelligence. He invests in companies that are using machine learning and AI to augment or replace physical-world functions including biology, language, manufacturing and analysis. He looks for entrepreneurs that can use software and data to hone a philosophical position on where the world is, and how to direct it for the better.

Zavain has led Lux’s investments in Primer, a machine intelligence startup; Clarifai, which democratizes cutting edge deep neural networks; Capella, which is developing novel medicines based on computational insight applied to genomic data; Recursion which uses automation and deep learning to develop drugs for rare diseases; Tempo Automation, which applies software and automation to electronics manufacturing; Rigetti Computing, which is fabricating some of the fastest quantum chips in the world; Visla, which is bringing AI to medical diagnostics; Visor, which aims to simplify tax preparation; Computable Labs, which is building a decentralized data marketplace; and Blockstack which builds architectures to decentralize current winner-take-all centralized web components.

Previously Zavain was an investor at Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors. There he sourced and led the firm’s investments in early stage technology companies including Zymergen and BlockStream. Zavain drafted the firm’s theses in Genetics, Synthetic Biology, and the Blockchain.

Prior to VC, Zavain was a founder and computer scientist. At Discovery Engine (acquired by Twitter), he engineered machine learning and AI systems across a proprietary distributed computing framework to build web scale-ranking algorithms. Zavain was also a cofounder of Fountainhop, one of the first hyper-local social networks.

Zavain holds a BS in symbolic systems and an MS in computer science from Stanford where he was a researcher in Stanford’s AI Lab. He is currently a Lecturer at Stanford and has taught quarter long seminars in Cryptocurrencies, Artificial Intelligence and Philosophy, and Venture Capital. Current course notes can be found here.

What was your first paying job?
Selling solar panels door to door in high school. Nothing like getting chased by dogs, yelled at by annoyed home-bodies, and invited in for snacks and drinks by total strangers.

What was it like growing up?
My mom raised me and my sister. She was a graduate student working on a Master’s in CS at Cal Berkeley, where she then did a PhD in Feminist Studies. She instilled in me an insatiable curiosity, love of learning, and desire to fight for social justice and the underdog.

Brendan is Venture capital investor focused on identifying, evaluating and executing early stage investments in technology-enabled companies and supporting those businesses through business development, strategic positioning, and financial planning.

Andrew is an investor at Two Sigma Ventures. They imagine breakthroughs in the way the world approaches investment management, insurance, and related fields by following the scientific method. Their engineers and modelers develop ideas backed by information and improved by iteration. Empowered by extraordinary computing power and vast amounts of data, they build sophisticated predictive models to realize progress.

Andrew was previously an Associate at ff Venture Capital where he was responsible for managing investment due diligence for new and existing portfolio companies. Since 2008ff VC has invested in 80+ companies and created an aggregate market value exceeding $2.5 billion. He was also a Senior Consultant at Prophet, where he worked directly with executive teams at a range of clients across industries on strategic issues.

Stella serves as Senior Executive at one of the largest media groups in the world and has helped win several new businesses and new global clients for MDC’s client portfolio. Stella is a subject matter expert on the role of Digital Media in Advertising, Digital Operations and the future of the Internet.

She has experience working in global operations and business technology integration issues and has worked extensively with companies such as E*Trade and Fox to engage in a more data and technology-driven marketing approach. Stella is now based in NYC and as a self-identified polymath is exploring among other things the future of media through technological innovation.

William Ross is all about creating focused growth in nascent B2B technology markets having worked in corporate development, sales, and product management. His latest gig has him looking across AI, Blockchain, Cloud, FinTech, and Healthcare IT for opportunities to drive the inorganic growth of the IBM portfolio.

Artificial Intelligence is the biggest technology disruption of our generation. He helps companies envision their future and leverage this technology to stay ahead of the competition.

He looks at how AI can impact key aspects of the business such as acquiring and retaining customers, customizing products and services, and achieving profitability. He then works with companies to develop the right solution which, at times, can fundamentally re-shape how the business operates.

His experience includes working in the Financial, Media and Transportation sectors, and using technologies such as IBM Watson, Microsoft Azure, Google Tensorflow, H2O.ai and Intel.

If you are looking to adopt AI and are looking towards the future, He can help.

Rafael is the Head of Talent Attraction at UiPath, a global software company that develops a platform for Robotic Process Automation (RPA). On March 6, 2018, UiPath received a $153 million investment from Accel, CapitalG, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, valuing the company at $1.1 billion.

Rafael received a BA in Finance and his MBA in IT and Sustainability. Rafael has a lot of experience as a consultant, having worked at Linkedin and LML Consultant Group. He has also founded two companies of his own: OwnOut and getAchef.

Vin Tang is an investor at Samsung NEXT. Previously, he was as a machine learning engineer with Clarapath/New York Genome Center after earning his degree from Carnegie Mellon. In his spare time, he builds flying and talking machines, and mentors at NYU’s AI NexusLab, 37 Angels, and TechStars.

Steven Kuyan is Managing Director of the Future Labs at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, a seed to series A program for early stage startups. He co-founded and is responsible for managing the Data Future Lab, Digital Future Lab, AI Nexus Lab and Veterans Future Lab.

The Future Labs are a network of programs supporting entrepreneurs in technology specific verticals such as; Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data at the Data Future Lab; and Augmented/Virtual Reality, Video, Virtual Machines at the Digital Future Lab. The unique process has graduated 68 companies, 11 graduated as acquisitions totaling more $280M, and a combined total valuation of graduates over$721M. The portfolio includes leading companies like CB Insights, Clarifai, Keen Home,Bot Factory, Vettery, Tap Commerce among many others.

Prior to the Future Labs, Steven founded three ventures start up and small business ventures. Steven is an adjunct professor of Entrepreneurship at NYU and leads entrepreneurship curriculum across the Engineering School.

Sana Fathima is an Investment Manager at Lockheed Martin Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Lockheed Martin. Her focus areas include advanced AI / autonomy technology, NextGen manufacturing and materials, and IoT.  Previously, Sana worked on the investment and financial teams for the World Bank Group's $B global funds initiatives, for a leading European VC fund - Atomico, and for Goldman Sachs. She graduated with her MBA from the University of Cambridge, has a PhD background in computer vision from the University of Oxford, and a BS with high honors in engineering from The College of New Jersey.

Mina is the program director of NYU Tandon Future Labs, a series of incubators and accelerators in NYC who help technology-enabled companies accelerate growth and scale their business operations. With a unique focus on deep technology, specifically Artificial Intelligence, Mina, and the Future Labs team have built up capacity around supporting B2B companies who sell services to both enterprises and SMB’s. Through curated resources, tailored introductions, strategic guidance, Mina has supported over 100 startups, helping them navigate various challenges, such as fundraising, business development, business model optimization, hiring and more.

An active member of NY's thriving startup ecosystem since 2014, Mina has seen several new technology trends proliferate the market which has proven to be valuable when selecting and supporting companies. Through his time, he's also built up a substantial network which he uses to support the companies he works with, and those looking to become viable in the space.

Alex has over 7 years of professional experience across corporate strategy, enterprise sales and digital marketing in Sydney, Australia. Throughout his professional journey, Alex discovered his passion for digital marketing and start-ups and is excited to continue this journey with Ladder!

Josh Rochlin was an early pioneer in the New York Internet venture community, founding MyCalendar.com and serving as its CEO before selling it to Sports Huddle in 2001 (now owned by CBS).

Josh then led business development and strategy at GoAmerica (GOAM), the first wireless internet service provider (now Purple Communications). Prior to IBM's acquisition of Teckst (formerly Xtify), Josh served as its founding CEO. Prior to joining Teckst, Josh served as the Chief Administrative Officer at Marc Ecko Enterprises, where he oversaw all non-apparel businesses and ventures.

Lexie Kier is a Principal Strategist and Founder of AOK Group, a growth consultancy for startups. She advises bold brands and startups on fundraising, customer insights, branding and marketing and often takes on interim leadership roles to help with periods of intense change, entry into new markets, and expansion.

Previously, Lexie founded Cuurio, an index of startups and innovation platform helping bold brands find clarity, context, and connection. ​Cuurio helped a growing number of innovative brands and agencies (including Warner Brother, Johnson & Johnson, L'Oreal, and J. Walter Thompson) to create vibrant native mobile partnerships that activated consumers in new channels.