Entrepreneurship

Dr Ekta Dang is the Founder and CEO of U First Capital which provides Venture Capital as a Service to mid-size and large Corporations. Through U First Capital, Ekta has invested in some category leading companies like Thoughtspot, Pensando, Rubrik, Dataminr, Cornami, H2O.ai, Uniphore etc. U First Capital provides innovation services to well known corporations such as Hitachi High Tech, JTB, Master Card, Dow Dupont, Omnicell, Nissho Electronics etc She is also an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at the University of California San Diego Chancellor's office and on the Grants Approval Committee of the University of California Davis. Ekta has solid experience both in Venture Capital and on the Operating side at Intel. She has been a successful Corporate Executive, Speaker and Writer in Silicon Valley for almost two decades. She brings a stellar network from the Venture Capital and Corporate world to the startups. She has been a mentor at Alchemist Accelerator, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Google Launchpad, etc. She was a content chair at Tiecon in 2020. She has been a member of the US- level 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.

An entrepreneur, analyst, and consultant, the focus of Shannon's work is solving complex business challenges with the right balance of technology and process. As a part-time CTO/COO for his clients, he selects technology and aligns development plans and resources with the growth of the business.

Shannon's career has spanned many industries and touched on all aspects of the application of technology. From working in a warehouse configuring servers in the middle of a Chicago summer to managing projects for a Swiss bank. He has worked for early stage startups and some of the largest firms in the world. Sectors he has worked in include entertainment, fintech, telecommunications, law firms, enterprise software, and consumer internet products.

An active networker and event organizer, he has founded and organized multiple monthly networking events in Chicago and San Francisco and facilitated and organized many Open Space events including BarCamps and Hackathons. As a writer, he has contributed to many technology blogs as well as had an active presence online for over 20 years."

Kanu Gulati is a Partner at Khosla Ventures, and focuses on investments in Enterprise Applications and Infrastructure (that leverage ML, Deep Learning, NLP, Language Models, and more), Robotics and Autonomous Systems, and Hardware Acceleration. She has led and helps manage Khosla Ventures' investments in companies including PolyAI, Zordi, Mimica, Lexion, Zendar, NoMagic, WaveOne, Korbit, Analog Inference, Rosebud, and more.

She has over 10 years of operating experience as a research scientist at Intel and Cadence, and was founding / early engineer at startups including OmniSci (hardware-accelerated data analytics), Nascentric (fast-circuit simulation tool, acquired by Cadence), and Atrenta (predictive analytics for design, acquired by Synopsys).

Kanu has co-authored 3 books, has authored 35+ peer-reviewed publications with 650+ citations, and holds a US patent. She has PhD & Master's degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Texas A&M University, and a Bachelor's in Computer Engineering from University of Delhi. Kanu completed her MBA at Harvard Business School, where she was President of the annual Venture Capital and Private Equity Conference. Her Erdős number is 3."