Our Network

Doug Leone is a partner at Sequoia Capital investing in seed / Series A companies and beyond.

Ray Dalio is the Founder, Co-Chief Investment Officer and Co-Chairman of Bridgewater Associates, a global macro investment firm and the world’s largest hedge fund. Ray is the author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller, Principles: Life & Work, which shares the unique principles behind his and Bridgewater’s success.

Ray started Bridgewater over 40 years ago out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York and has been a global macro investor for nearly 50 years.

While at Bridgewater his industry-changing approaches to investing — which include the invention of risk parity, currency overlay, portable alpha and global inflation indexed bond management — prompted Chief Investment Officer magazine to write an article entitled “Is Ray Dalio the Steve Jobs of Investing?,” which compared his industry-changing inventions to those of the Apple founder. According to an industry study, Bridgewater’s hedge fund has made more money for its investors than any other hedge fund ever — an estimated $49.7 billion. Bridgewater Associates has received numerous awards, including over twenty “Manager of the Year” awards from every major financial publication, and Ray has received three “Lifetime Achievement” awards. Additionally, a long list of economic policymakers actively seek his advice, which prompted Time Magazine in 2012 to name him “One of the 100 Most Influential People in the World”.

Ray is an active philanthropist with a particular interest in oceanographic research and conservation. He is a participant in The Giving Pledge, a commitment to give more than half of his wealth to charity.

Ray believes that reality works like a machine and that principles for dealing with reality are required to be successful.

Marc Andreessen is a co-founder and general partner of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is an innovator and creator, one of the few to pioneer a software category used by more than a billion people and to establish multiple billion-dollar companies.

Marc co-created the Mosaic Internet browser and co-founded Netscape, which later sold to AOL for $4.2 billion. He also co-founded Loudcloud, which as Opsware, sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion. He later served on the board of Hewlett-Packard from 2008 to 2018.

Marc holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He serves on the board of the following Andreessen Horowitz portfolio companies: Applied Intuition, Dialpad, Honor, OpenGov, and Samsara. He is also on the board of Facebook.

An accomplished entrepreneur, executive, and investor, Reid Hoffman has played an integral role in building many of today’s leading consumer technology businesses, including LinkedIn and PayPal. He possesses a unique understanding of consumer behavior and the dynamics of viral businesses, as well as deep experience in driving companies from the earliest stages through periods of explosive, “blitzscale” growth. Ranging from LinkedIn to PayPal, from Airbnb to Convoy to Facebook, he invests in businesses with network effects and collaborates on building their product ecosystems.

Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional networking service, in 2003. LinkedIn is thriving with more than 500 million members around the world and a diversified revenue model that includes subscriptions, advertising, and software
licensing. He led LinkedIn through its first four years and to profitability as Chief Executive Officer. In 2016 LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft, and he became a board member of Microsoft.

Prior to LinkedIn, Hoffman served as executive vice president at PayPal, where he was also a founding board member.

Hoffman joined Greylock Partners in 2009. He focuses on building products that can reach hundreds of millions of participants and businesses that have network effects. He currently serves on the boards of Airbnb, Apollo Fusion, Aurora, Coda, Convoy, Entrepreneur First, Gixo, Microsoft, Nauto, Xapo, and a few early stage companies still in stealth. In addition, he serves on a number of not-for-profit boards, including Kiva, Endeavor, CZI Biohub, Do Something, Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Initiative, and the MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change. Prior to joining Greylock, he angel invested in many influential Internet companies, including Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, and Zynga.

Hoffman is the co-author of two New York Times best-selling books: The Start-up of You and The Alliance. He is also the co-author, with Chris Yeh, of the new book Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies, based on his Stanford course of the same name. Hoffman is the host of Masters of Scale, an original podcast series and the first American media program to commit to a 50-50 gender balance for featured guests.

Hoffman earned a master’s degree in philosophy from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and a bachelor’s degree with distinction in symbolic systems from Stanford University. In 2010 he was the recipient of an SD Forum Visionary Award and named a Henry Crown Fellow by The Aspen Institute. In 2012, he was honored by the Martin Luther King center’s Salute to Greatness Award. Also in 2012, he received the David Packard Medal of Achievement from TechAmerica and an honorary doctor of law from Babson University. In 2017, he was appointed as a CBE by her majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Patrick Collison is the co-founder and CEO of Stripe, a company that lets businesses and individuals accept payments over the Internet.

Angela Strange is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz where she focuses on investments in financial services including insurance, real estate & increasing inclusivity. She is currently a board observer for the following Andreessen Horowitz portfolio companies: Branch, Earnin, HealthIQ, Mayvenn, PeerStreet, and Point. Angela joined the firm in 2014.

Prior to joining a16z, Angela was a product manager at Google where she launched and grew Chrome for Android and Chrome for iOS into two of Google’s most successful mobile products. Previously, she was the director of product management and business development at Ruba.com (acquired by Google) and a senior associate partner at Bay Partners where she focused on the consumer internet sector. Prior to that, Angela was a consultant at Mercer Management Consulting in Toronto.

Angela is a proud Canadian and served as co-chair of the C100, a non-profit that bridges Canadian entrepreneurs with Silicon Valley, and on the Canadian Finance Minister Morneau’s Economic Growth Council. Angela has a Mechanical Engineering degree from Queen’s University, in Canada, and an MBA from Stanford. Angela is a world-class athlete and spent two years training professionally as a runner; she has won several marathons and achieved a seventh place national ranking in Canada.

Max Levchin is the founder and CEO of Affirm, a financial services tech company, co-founder and Chairman of Glow, a data-driven fertility company, and co-founder and general partner at SciFi VC, a private venture capital firm. All three companies were created and launched from his San Francisco based innovation lab, HVF (Hard, Valuable, Fun). Max is a co-founder of PayPal, where he served as the CTO until its acquisition by eBay in 2002.

In 2002, Max was named to Technology Review’s TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators globally as well as Innovator of the Year. In 2004, he founded Slide, a personal media-sharing service for social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, which he sold to Google in August 2010. Also in 2004, he helped start Yelp, where he was the first investor in and Chairman of the Board from 2004 until 2015. He has served on several boards such as Yahoo!, Yelp, and Evernote. Max is a serial entrepreneur, computer scientist, philanthropist and active investor in more than 100 startups.

Keith is a general partner at Founders Fund. Throughout his venture career he has led investments in DoorDash, Affirm, Forward Health, Faire, ThoughtSpot, and Stripe. He also founded Opendoor, which transforms the process of buying and selling a home.

Keith has a unique and unparalleled track record as an entrepreneur, executive and investor. over the last decade, he has forged several of the most important new social and commerce platforms. Keith began his career in the industry as a senior executive at PayPal and subsequently served in influential roles at LinkedIn and as Chief Operating Officer of Square.

As a board member, Keith guided Yelp and Xoom from inception to successful initial public offerings. Simultaneously, he also invested in other like-minded entrepreneurs with early stakes in YouTube, Palantir, Lyft, Airbnb, Eventbrite, Wish, and Quora.

Earlier in his career, Keith was a litigator at the preeminent Wall Street law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, after clerking for the United States Court of Appeals for the fifth circuit.

Keith holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Stanford University and a Juris Doctor degree with honors from Harvard University.

Jim is a managing partner and managing director of Silver Lake, which he co-founded in 1999. Silver Lake is one of the largest and most successful technology investment managers in the world. Jim has been an active advisor to and investor in the technology industries for more than 30 years.

Prior to Silver Lake, Jim was a managing director at Hambrecht & Quist, a technology-focused investment bank and venture capital firm. Jim is an active “angel investor” and advisor to several private technology companies.

As Chief Executive Officer of Darktrace, Nicole Eagan has established the company as the global leader of AI cyber defense. Her extensive career spans 25 years working for Oracle and early to late-stage growth companies. Named ‘AI Leader of the Year’ in 2017, Nicole has introduced disruptive machine learning to enterprises of all sizes. Today, Darktrace has a valuation of $1.65 billion and counts Insight, KKR, Summit Partners, and Samsung among its investors. Darktrace’s innovative approach to cyber security has won more than 100 awards and the company has been named one of WSJ’s Tech Companies to Watch, Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, and the CNBC Disruptor 50.

Michael Moritz is a partner at Sequoia Capital, which he joined in 1986. He has helped Sequoia adjust to the profound changes in global technology and was one of the co-founders of its business in China and India as well as Sequoia Global Growth, a global technology fund; Sequoia Heritage, the firm’s single pool of globally diversified, long-term assets; and Sequoia Capital Global Equities, a public market fund. Michael has represented Sequoia on the boards of a number of companies including Yahoo!, PayPal, Google, LinkedIn, and Kayak; and younger businesses such as Berkeley Lights, Charlotte Tilbury, Instacart, Klarna and Stripe. Prior to joining Sequoia, Michael co-founded Technologic Partners and was a correspondent for Time, where he was the San Francisco bureau chief.

He is the author of several books including Return to the Little Kingdom, the first major book about Apple published in 1984, and more recently LEADING with Sir Alex Ferguson, the longtime Manager of Manchester United. Michael graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1976 with a MA in History and is an Honorary Student of the College. Together with his wife, Harriet Heyman, he has made a series of major donations to educational causes. He received a knighthood from the Queen of England in 2013.

Robert Goldstein, Senior Managing Director, is BlackRock’s Chief Operating Officer and the Head of its BlackRock Solutions business. He is a member of the Global Executive Committee and co-chair of the Global Operating Committee.

As COO, Mr. Goldstein helps oversee the day-to-day global business of the firm and ensures that the organization, including its investment, client, risk and technology functions, have the necessary connectivity, coordination and operating processes.

Mr. Goldstein also leads the BlackRock Solutions business, which leverages the firm’s unique risk analytics capabilities and capital markets insights to deliver unbiased advice and expertise to companies, organizations and public institutions.

Prior to assuming the COO role in 2014, Mr. Goldstein headed the firm’s Institutional Client Business. In this role, Mr. Goldstein managed BlackRock’s institutional relationships across the globe, drove business development efforts and helped clients craft innovative solutions to meet their investment objectives.

He began his career in 1994 as an analyst in BlackRock’s Portfolio Analytics Group and later worked as a risk advisor to mortgage and insurance clients. In his more than 20 years at the firm, Mr. Goldstein has been instrumental in developing many of BlackRock’s foundational processes and capabilities, including its risk management platform and client service operation.

Mr. Goldstein was twice-named to Fortune’s “40 under 40” list and, for the past five years, he has been identified as one of the top technology entrepreneurs in the financial services industry by Institutional Investor’s “Tech 50” list. He co-authored “Nonagency Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities” in the eighth edition of The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and meetings. Mr. Goldstein serves on the Board of Trustees for the Battery Conservancy in New York and the Board of Advisors for the Hospital for Special Surgery.

Mr. Goldstein earned a BS degree, magna cum laude, in economics from Binghamton University in 1994.

Alex Rampell is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz where he focuses on investments in financial services and serves on the boards of Branch, Descript, Divvy, Earnin, FlyHomes, PeerStreet, Point, Quantopian, Transferwise, & Very Good Security.

Prior to joining a16z, he was the CEO and cofounder of TrialPay, a leading transactional advertising and payments company serving digital goods and e-commerce clients such as Facebook, Zynga, and Gap, with 100 employees and over $300M in cumulative revenue since inception. TrialPay was acquired by Visa in 2015. TrialPay also spun out another company, Yub, the first offline affiliate network, where Alex simultaneously served as CEO through its acquisition in late 2013 by Coupons.com. He also co-founded three other companies: TXN, a survey and transactional data company; Point, a real estate marketplace; and Affirm, with Max Levchin.

Alex also co-founded FraudEliminator, the first consumer anti-phishing company, which merged into SiteAdvisor and was acquired by McAfee for $75M in 2006. Prior to joining the firm, Alex had been an active angel investor (Pinterest, Bloomreach, SiftScience, Wooga, and Twice, among many others) and served as an advisor to the SV Angel fund.

Alex holds a BA in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from Harvard University.

Valentin Stalf is co-founder and CEO of N26. In 2013 he founded N26 with his longtime friend Maximilian Tayenthal. Back then already, both shared a vision of building a bank that the world loves to use.

Since the initial product launch in 2015, N26 has grown to include more than 2.5 million customers across 24 European markets — with plans to enter the US in 2019. The firm has raised more than USD 500 million from some of the world’s most well-known investors, including Insight Venture Partners, Tencent, Allianz X, Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Li Ka-Shing’s Horizons Ventures, Earlybird Venture Capital, Battery Ventures, in addition to members of the Zalando management board, and Redalpine Ventures. N26 has more than 800 employees based in in Berlin, New York and Barcelona, who are concentrated on reinventing the banking experience for the digital generation. With its full banking license, state-of-the-art technology and no branch network, N26 is redesigning banking for the 21st century. Before N26, Valentin was an Entrepreneur in Residence for Rocket Internet, an incubator and investor in online startups. There he helped to develop several companies in the mobile payments industry, including payleven and Paymill GmbH. Moreover, he worked in strategy consulting and investment banking.

Valentin has a bachelor’s degree in business administration and management and a master’s degree in accounting and finance from the University of St. Gallen. He is currently a member of the advisory board at the Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Mr Heng Swee Keat is the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance for Singapore. The Ministry of Finance manages the national budget, oversees corporate governance regulations, and supervises the prudent investment and utilisation of public funds and government reserves. Mr Heng co-chaired the Committee on the Future Economy (CFE), which charted the strategies for Singapore's next phase of growth. He chairs the tripartite Future Economy Council, which oversees the implementation of national strategies in areas such as skills and capabilities development, innovation and productivity, and industry transformation. He is also the Chairman of the National Research Foundation, which sets the direction for Singapore's research, innovation and enterprise strategies.

Before this, Mr Heng served as Minister for Education from 2011 to 2015. He drove programmes for a student-centric, values-driven education system, emphasising the holistic development of students and multiple educational pathways. While at MOE, Mr Heng also led Our Singapore Conversation, a national consultation exercise that reached out to close to 50,000 Singaporeans on their aspirations for Singapore's future. In 2015, he chaired the Singapore 50 (SG50) Steering Committee leading the celebrations for Singapore's Golden Jubilee.

Prior to entering politics in May 2011, Mr Heng was the Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), where he received the "Central Bank Governor of the Year in Asia-Pacific" Award by the British magazine The Banker. He has served in various other public service positions, including appointments in the Singapore Police Force, as the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, as the Chief Executive Officer of the Trade Development Board, and as the Principal Private Secretary to then-Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew from 1997 to 2000. In 2001, Mr Heng was awarded the Gold Medal in Public Administration, and the Meritorious Medal in 2010 for his contribution to the public service in Singapore.

Mr Heng has an MA in Economics from Cambridge University. He also holds a Masters in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Vinod Khosla is an entrepreneur, investor and technologist. He is the founder of Khosla Ventures, a firm focused on assisting entrepreneurs to build impactful new energy and technology companies. Vinod grew up dreaming of being an entrepreneur, despite being from an Indian army household with no business or technology connections. Since the age of 16, when he first heard about the founding of Intel, he dreamt of starting his own technology company.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi, Vinod failed to start a soymilk company to service the many people in India who did not have refrigerators. Instead, he came to the U.S. to further his academic studies and received a master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Eventually, his startup dreams led him to Silicon Valley, where he received a master’s degree in business administration from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Upon graduation, Vinod co-founded Daisy Systems, the first significant computer-aided design system for electrical engineers. The company went on to achieve significant revenue, profits and an IPO. Then, driven by the frustration of having to design the computer hardware on which the Daisy software needed to be built, Vinod started the standards-based Sun Microsystems in 1982 to build workstations for software developers. As the founding CEO of Sun, he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. Sun Microsystems was funded by Vinod’s longtime friend and board member John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (KPCB).

In 1986, Vinod joined KPCB as a general partner. While there, he played a crucial role in taking on Intel’s monopoly by building and growing semiconductor company, Nexgen, which eventually was acquired by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Nexgen/AMD was the only microprocessor to have significant success against Intel. Thereafter, Vinod helped incubate the idea and business plan for Juniper Networks to take on Cisco System’s dominance of the router market. He also was involved in the formulation of the early advertising-based search strategy for Excite. In addition to his many other contributions at KPCB, he helped transform the moribund telecommunications business and its archaic SONET implementations with Cerent Corporation, which was acquired by Cisco Systems in 1999 for $7.2 billion.

In 2004, driven by the need for flexibility to accommodate four teenaged children, the desire to be more experimental and to fund sometimes imprudent “science experiments,” Vinod formed Khosla Ventures to focus on both for-profit and social impact investments. His goals remain the same: work and learn from fun and knowledgeable entrepreneurs, build impactful companies by leveraging innovation and spend time with a partnership that makes a difference. Vinod has a passion for nascent technologies that have beneficial effects and economic impact on society. While he only serves on the boards of a few select companies, he works closely with most KV companies as they face transitions or key decisions.

Vinod’s greatest passion is being a mentor to entrepreneurs building technology-based businesses. He is driven by the desire to make a positive impact through scaling new energy sources, achieving petroleum independence and promoting a pragmatic approach to the environment. He also is passionate about social entrepreneurship with a special emphasis on microfinance as a poverty alleviation tool. He is a supporter of many microfinance organizations in India and Africa. He also has been experimenting with innovations in education and global housing.

Vinod also is a charter member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), a non-profit global network of entrepreneurs and professionals that was founded in 1992 and has more than 40 chapters in nine countries today. He is a founding board member of the Indian School of Business (ISB). Vinod holds a bachelor of technology degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi, India, a master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a master’s degree in business administration from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.