AI Supernova Challenge

BIOGRAPHY

Laura Nguyen is a Partner at GenAI Fund, boasting over eight years of experience in technology and entrepreneurship. Her career highlights include founding and successfully exiting an education venture and leading market development initiatives in Vietnam for a global cybersecurity company. Laura has also played a pivotal role in expanding Web3 and AI businesses across Southeast Asia for Amazon Web Services (AWS). She currently serves as the Country Head for Ava Labs in Vietnam and is a founding advisor to Arcanic AI (Top 3 fine-tuned Vietnamese LLM), recognized among the top 12 startups in the AWS GenAI ASEAN Startup Accelerator Program. 

BIOGRAPHY

Kevin Jiang is the Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer at Mangusta Capital, a venture capital firm investing in Consumer and Vertical AI businesses shaping the future. Prior to starting Mangusta Capital, Kevin was part of the founding investment team at Softbank Vision Fund, leading the coverage of Software and Logistics growth equity investments in North America. Over a decade at Softbank, Kevin led the firm’s investments across marquee deals including Flexport, Shipbob, and Wiz among others, generating significant returns for investors and serving on boards to advise both strategic and financial decisions for portfolio companies including M&A and IPO considerations. Kevin has been investing for the span of his career across asset classes, bringing a uniquely disciplined financial and operational lens to venture capital investing. He was previously part of the Private Equity team at Apollo Global Management and Public Markets team at Soros Fund Management covering Technology, Media and Telecom. Kevin started his career at Goldman Sachs in the Investment Banking Division and holds an A.B. in Economics from Harvard. A child of first-generation Chinese immigrants, Kevin is a Silicon Valley native who grew up in Cupertino, California. He is an avid Tennis player, amateur golfer, and enjoys reading biographies when stuck on a plane sourcing his next unicorn deal.           

BIOGRAPHY

Ranvish is experienced go-to-market leader with over 25 years in the education and AI fields. His enthusiasm for AI shines through in his deep understanding of the industry's data and computing needs. Currently, he’s the Growth Lead for the Middle East and APAC regions at Nebius, where he happily works to meet all computing requirements and support the growth of the vibrant AI industry

BIOGRAPHY

Reda Nidhakou is the Acting CEO of VentureOne, the dynamic commercialization arm of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC). He is responsible for commercializing technologies developed by the Technology Innovation Institute in the local and international markets through the creation of successful products and technology ventures. Prior to leading VentureOne, Reda specialized in strategy and corporate development. As an advisor for ATRC, he played a key role in its incubation and strategic initiatives. Before his time at ATRC, he was the senior vice[1]president of strategy and portfolio management at EDGE Group, where he led the establishment of the group and its operating model, concluded more than 30 acquisitions, and led group-wide initiatives related to innovation, corporate development, and technology. Prior to this, he led large technology programs as a program director in a cybersecurity venture. He also spent part of his career in strategy consulting in Europe. Reda has deep expertise in advanced technologies such as AI, cybersecurity, and robotics, commercialization of deep tech, and strategic applications of technologies for both government and businesses. He is passionate about nurturing world-class tech talent that will transform the tech industry as we know it, and about creating technological solutions that make a tangible impact. Reda holds a master's degree in digital and technology management from HEC Paris as well as a master of engineering in information communication and technology from Telecom Paris.           

BIOGRAPHY

Founding General Partner of Defiance Capital, an early stage fund specialised in helping extraordinary founders disrupting industries using AI.

I previously co-founded Mindshapes (a gaming company backed by Index Ventures), Masters (a holistic training app backed by Mucker) and Midnight Runners (the world’s largest urban running community). I’ve been a full time investor for a decade. I set up and ran Sweet Capital (the King.com founders fund) as CEO and Chairman from 2015 to 2022. I've made 75 early stage investments to date and delivered top quartile returns.

To hear the stories of some of my successful portfolio founders and other superstars, check out our Defying the Odds show on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/64jMpFX25tF1cA97jDvAuV?si=409ee913aa1a4777

https://angel.co/christian-dorffer

Notable active portfolio companies: (50% have female founders)

- Wellthy (healthcare concierge, NYC)
- Peanut (social network for mums, LDN)
- The Pattern (self- and social discovery app, LA)
- Medley (group mentoring online, NYC)
- Joint Academy (digital therapeutics, Gothenburg).
- Wave Sports & Entertainment (#1 sports media on social, LA)
- Metafy (get coached by pro gamers, NYC)
- Justo (the #1 eGrocery company in Latam, Mexico City)
- Selfbook (‘Shopify’ for hotels, NYC)
- DeepMedia (deep-fake video detection, SF)

BIOGRAPHY

After 30 years of Executive Sales & Business Development experience with EMEA, USA and APAC with High-tech Startups, he is currently coaching, mentoring and training Startups, entrepreneurs and Business Angels in the EMEA region. Marcel is also an Executive Advisor to Startup Ecosystems worldwide and currently onboarding a move to the GCC region based in Doha, Qatar. Marcel leads his advisory services under his consultancy firm "Entrepreneur Avenue". Marcel is a UK citizen, bilingual in English and French with a working knowledge in Spanish, Italian, German and Arabic.
He co-founded and launched from scratch 2 major BANs : MDBAN (Maghreb Diaspora Business Angels) and MedAngels

He is an EBAN Board Member, being the largest federation of Business Angel Networks. He currently leads their worldwide corporate partnership initiatives .

Some achievements in the Corporate world:
A seasoned European Sales Executive, Marcel has substantial field experience helping IT , Deeptech and Telecom startups in the US and EMEA. Marcel has a broad range of experience in all aspects of sales, marketing, communication and management with direct experience with Fortune 500 enterprises (IBM, Nortel, Lucent, Cisco, EMC, ALU), Scale-Ups (Quantum, Andrew Networks, Pluris, Corvis, Ascend and Airespace) and Governments (France, Tunisia, Morocco, Greece).

Three major highlights from his career include helping Airespace to be the #2 WLAN in EMEA market share and positioned Cisco to be #1 WLAN vendor worldwide. He has helped start promoting Cisco VCE alliance (VMware, EMC, Cisco) and the BMC OEM relationship to Kick Start their first SP IaaS Cloud offering on a worldwide basis .He also pioneered the French ISP Internet business while leading Ascend’s insertion into FT/Orange first ISP business to include ISDNET, OLEANE and Internetway.

BIOGRAPHY

Omar is an investment professional with 12+ years of experience in VC & PE investments across the UAE and USA. Over his career, he has closed $500m+ in transactions on both the buy and sell side across various deal types such as PE buyout/M&A transactions, minority early & growth stage VC investments, VC fund of funds investments and government grants. During his career, he has also supported multiple portfolio companies in an advisory CFO capacity. He is currently the Principal at Oraseya Capital managing deal flow end to end for core investments i.e. Seed-Series B stage deals.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omar-khan-40820542/