Alexis Ohanian was born in Brooklyn, grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore, and has long advocated for the open internet, STEM education, and paid family leave. Alongside Garry Tan, he co-founded Initialized Capital—a seed stage venture fund with over $500 million under management and a portfolio that's valued in the tens of billions of dollars. Ohanian also famously co-founded Reddit with current CEO Steve Huffman.

Scott Cutler heads up Detroit-based StockX, which is among the fastest-growing consumer-facing marketplace startups in the U.S. Before joining the company as CEO last year, he was a top executive at eBay, overseeing its Americas business unit, which includes Canada, United States, and Latin America. Cutler has also served as the president of StubHub and spent nine years as the executive vice president at the NYSE.

Laura Deming is a venture capitalist and anti-aging scientist. Her work -- which she began at age 14 at MIT --  focuses on life extension and using biological research to reduce or reverse the effects of aging. She has been featured in Forbes's “30 Under 30” and  in “The Age of Aging," a documentary by National Geographic. She has managed The Longevity Fund since 2011. Deming was also a Thiel Fellow.

 A former designer at Palantir,  Garry Tan went on to cofound the blogging platform Posterous and,  before it was sold to Twitter in 2012,  jumped into investing as a partner at Y Combinator. Tan later teamed up with Alexis Ohanian (who also logged time with YC)  to create Initialized Capital, where their bets include OpenDoor, Coinbase, and Instacart, among others. Tan also wrote early checks to PlanGrid and HelloSign, acquired by Autodesk and DocuSign.

Eva Ho cofounded the L.A.-based seed-stage fund Fika Ventures in 2016, three years after becoming a founding general partner at Susa Ventures. Before jumping into venture capital, Ho served as an early executive at Factual, the L.A-based location data company and, before that, spent five years across both Google and YouTube as a senior product marketing manager.  In 2008, Ho also co-founded Navigating Cancer, a health startup.

Prior to launching the global venture firm Felicis Ventures, Aydin Senkut was a super angel investor. Ahead of jumping into investing, he was an executive at Google, which he joined in 1999 as its first product manager to launch the company's first international sites. Over time, he was assigned oversight of strategic partner development and account management in Asia Pacific, and left the company as its first international sales manager.

Charles Hudson is the founder of Precursor Ventures, an early-stage venture firm focused on investing in the first institutional round of what it views as the most promising software and hardware startups. Previously, he was a partner with SoftTechVC, and before that, the cofounder of Bionic Panda Games. Hudson also spent roughly six years steeped in business development, working as an exec at Gaia Interactive, Serious Business, and Google. 

Sarah McBride is a reporter with Bloomberg in San Francisco, covering venture capital and technology and, currently, some of the travails of SoftBank. Sarah joined Bloomberg in 2016 after spending more than five years with Reuters, where she also covered VC as well as election issues. She began her career with the Wall Street Journal, working in its L.A. and Hong Kong bureaus, writing on a wide range of issues, including digital entertainment. 

Erin Griffith is a New York Times journalist based in the San Francisco bureau, where she reports on technology start-ups and venture capital. Before joining The Times she worked as a senior writer at WIRED and Fortune, reporting on topics ranging from self-driving cars and social media to SoftBank. Previously she covered digital advertising for Adweek, start-ups for Pando, private equity for peHUB.com, and mergers and acquisitions for Mergermarket.

Connie Loizos is the founder of StrictlyVC, the daily e-newsletter and events series. She got her start in Silicon Valley at the original Red Herring magazine in the late '90s and has since worked for Time Inc., Dow Jones, Crain Communications, the San Jose Mercury News, and Reuters, covering the people who drive the startup industry forward. She is also the Silicon Valley Editor of TechCrunch and recently launched the weekly "StrictlyVC Download" podcast.