Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders

John Felts is the co-founder and CEO of Cruz Foam, which produces bio-benign foam and eco-friendly alternative packaging solutions that power key industry leaders to be the catalyst for a cleaner environment. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Toby Corey, Felts shares how his engineering studies and career led him to launching a startup, and offers advice for new tech entrepreneurs learning how to pitch to investors and build scalable solutions.

Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

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Kristen Fortney is the co-founder and CEO of BioAge Labs, a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing a pipeline of treatments to extend healthy lifespan by targeting the molecular causes of aging. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Toby Corey, Fortney discusses strategies for reducing risk along the path to developing world-changing therapies.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

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Alfred Lin is a partner at Sequoia Capital, where he focuses on consumer and enterprise investments and co-leads Sequoia’s early-stage investment business in the United States and Europe. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Lin offers advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and early-stage founders who want to identify worthwhile ideas and seed excellence in their startups.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

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Jorge Rios is the founder and CEO of Bridgefy. Bridgefy’s technology helps millions of people around the world use mobile apps without an internet connection, through Bluetooth-based mesh networks for mobile. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Rios shares how his company’s success is rooted in a distinctly international approach to entrepreneurship.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

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Patrick Schmitt and Jenny Xia Spradling are the co-founders and co-CEOs of FreeWill, a social venture that has helped charitable organizations generate more than $5 billion in new planned gifts, stock gifts, and qualified charitable distributions. In this conversation with lecturer Toby Corey, Schmitt and Spradling discuss how they’ve built values such as kindness into their company from the beginning, and how entrepreneurs can use their company’s values and mission to drive fundraising and growth.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

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Irma Olguin, Jr. is the CEO and co-founder of Bitwise Industries, a startup founded in Fresno, California that aims to create diverse tech workforces that can reinvigorate underestimated cities across the United States. Morgan Simon is a founding partner of Candide Group, which works with families, foundations, athletes, and cultural influencers who want their money working for justice. She is also the author of Real Impact: The New Economics of Social Change. In this conversation with Stanford associate professor Chuck Eesley, Olguin and Simon discuss how impact investors can help a startup grow and how impact-driven organizations can shape the technology sector into a force for equity and social change.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

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Ranjay Gulati is the Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor of Business Administration and the former unit head of the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. He is an expert on leadership in turbulent times, and his latest book, Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies (Harper Collins, February 2022), shows how companies can embed purpose to deliver impressive performance benefits that reward customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, and communities alike. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Gulati discusses strategies for articulating a deep purpose and infusing it into company actions and culture.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

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eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

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Russ Altman is the Kenneth Fong Professor of Bioengineering, Genetics, Medicine, Biomedical Data Science and (by courtesy) Computer Science at Stanford University. His primary research interests are in the application of computing to problems relevant to medicine. Kim Branson is a senior vice president and Global Head of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at GSK, where he leads the GSK.ai team, a group of nearly 100 machine learning researchers and engineers who are pioneering the application of AI to drug discovery and development. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer and STVP Director of Principled Entrepreneurship Jack Fuchs, Altman and Branson discuss how ethics and principles can shape innovation at the intersection of AI and drug development.  

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

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LEARN MORE

eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

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A lawyer, public policy expert, and tech entrepreneur, Paola Santana is the founder and CEO of GLASS, a software ecosystem using artificial intelligence to power high-performing governments. Her work includes engaging with The White House, the United States Congress, the FAA, and NASA to enact regulatory frameworks for new transportation technologies, and developing public infrastructure projects in Latin America. Previously, she co-founded the autonomous drone pioneer Matternet. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Santana traces her unique path into entrepreneurship and shares her passion for solving difficult systemic challenges.

Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

--------------------

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

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eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

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Alongside his wife Crystal, Chris Sacca built Lowercase Capital into an extraordinarily successful VC firm, leveraging very early-stage investments in transformational technology companies like Twitter, Uber, Instagram, and Stripe. He retired in 2017, but came out of retirement to head up the science and investing team at Lowercarbon Capital, which is pursuing ambitious solutions to the climate crisis through innovation in energy, building materials, transportation, food, industrial chemicals, reforestation, and more. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Sacca discusses how he found such success in early-stage investing, and explains why he thinks we’re entering a golden age of tech-driven climate solutions.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

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Payal Kadakia is the founder of ClassPass, the health and wellness app that ​​connects users to fitness classes and other health-positive experiences in 30 countries worldwide. Kadakia is also the founder and artistic director of The Sa Dance Company. Kadakia’s first book, LifePass: Drop Your Limits, Rise to Your Potential, is forthcoming in February 2022. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, she discusses reconciling her dual identities as a business leader and a dancer and her belief that we are our most successful when we bring our whole selves to work.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

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eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

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Jessica McKellar is the founder and CTO of Pilot, an accounting firm powered by software that has raised more than $160 million in venture capital funding. She also founded Zulip, a group collaboration tool that was acquired by Dropbox in 2014, and Ksplice, which was acquired by Oracle. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Emily Ma, McKellar discusses her 15-year journey founding three startups with her co-founders, as well as her passion for creating opportunities for the previously incarcerated.

Josh Giegel is the co-founder of Virgin Hyperloop, a company dedicated to making hyperloop transportation a reality. Giegel founded the company in 2014, when hyperloop was an idea on a whiteboard in a garage. A little over two years later, Virgin Hyperloop built a full-scale prototype. Previously, at SpaceX, Giegel led the successful testing of six different rocket engines. He then shifted to leading research activities at Echogen Power Systems. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Emily Ma, Giegel shares his entrepreneurial story and explains how his personal mission statement shaped each step of the journey.

Alexandr Wang is the founder and CEO of Scale AI. He founded Scale while at MIT at the age of 19, after recognizing that he could accelerate companies’ abilities to deploy AI by combining a machine learning-powered data labeling system with human insight to ensure that models are trained on high-quality, trusted datasets. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Emily Ma, Wang discusses the essential role of high-quality data in building powerful, useful, and unbiased AI and machine learning systems.

Sara Menker is the founder and CEO of Gro Intelligence, which uses data, analytics, and forecasting models to inform companies involved in the agricultural supply chain and organizations impacted by climate change. Hans Tung is a managing partner at GGV Capital, focusing on early-stage investments across the global digital economy. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Emily Ma, Menker and Tung discuss the skills, tactics and technologies needed to solve complex, systemic challenges.  

James Joaquin is the co-founder and managing director of Obvious Ventures, leading the team’s investments focused on plant-forward approaches to food (like Beyond Meat), “good for you” consumer goods (like Olly), and companies at the forefront of how people find and do their best work (like Incredible Health). Joaquin has been working in venture capital since 2007. Prior to investing, he served as president and CEO of Xoom.com and president and CEO of Ofoto, and co-founded When.com. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer and STVP director of principled entrepreneurship Jack Fuchs, Joaquin discusses his commitment to “world positive investing” and his belief that many highly successful 21st century businesses will be devoted to solving the world’s biggest problems. 

Juliet Anammah is the chairwoman of Jumia Nigeria and the Chief Sustainability Officer of Jumia Group, the largest e-commerce platform in Africa and the first African tech startup to be listed on the NYSE. She previously served as the CEO of Jumia Nigeria for more than 4 years, overseeing the growth and transition of Jumia Nigeria from online retail to a full digital ecosystem that included marketplace, logistics and payments services. In this conversation with Darius Teter, executive director of Stanford Seed, Anammah explores the challenges of building a marketplace business in Africa as well as the huge untapped potential of e-commerce on the continent.

Daphne Koller is the CEO and founder of insitro, a machine learning-enabled drug discovery company. Previously, she was a professor of computer science at Stanford University for 18 years, co-founder and co-CEO of Coursera, and the Chief Computing Officer of Calico, an Alphabet company in the healthcare space. She received the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2004. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Koller examines the key turning points in her diverse and innovative career, and speaks about how she searched for the opportunities that would have the greatest impact on the world. 

It’s understandable that, amid a flurry of pitch meetings and rejections, founders might find themselves mystified about what venture capital investors want. However, according to Bessemer Venture Partners operating partner Jeff Epstein, it’s actually very simple: They want to see a business that has the potential to grow exponentially, some evidence of traction, and a concrete plan for further de-risking the enterprise. As you de-risk the enterprise, he explains, you create opportunities for larger fundraising rounds.

Reshma Saujani is the founder of Girls Who Code and the Marshall Plan for Moms, and is the author of the forthcoming book Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (and Why It's Different Than You Think). She has spent more than a decade building movements to fight for women and girls’ economic empowerment, working to close the gender gap in the tech sector, and most recently advocating for policies to support moms impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Saujani discusses the root causes of the gender gap in tech and explores what companies and individuals still need to do to make the field more fair and equitable.