Meet Graduates of the 5th cohort of Venture Scouts
We are excited to welcome a new generation of angel investors!
Our Venture Scout Community is now sixty people strong and consists of industry experts, current or future angel investors and founders. We learn a lot from them and value their inputs both at the stage investment and during the ongoing startup journey.
Our experience and proximity with large consumer markets such as consumer social apps, online entertainment, gaming, food, education, team productivity, and collaboration provide a strong foundation for our graduates, allowing them the opportunity to fast-track their success. We aim to create the most relevant and comprehensive curriculum for those who want to build their brand and strong network within the investing community.
We learn a lot by bringing together this group of people who generously share their knowledge with us and each other. These folks have helped us lay the foundation to build a strong community, and we hope to keep expanding the program in 2022.
Remember these folks and reach out to them if you are raising or need advice:
If you are interested in the program, please apply here.
Nick Straughn Sr. Product Manager at Unity. Nick is a product leader specializing in research, strategy, innovation, interaction design, and monetization. He is the newly appointed Senior Product Manager of the Sports & Live Entertainment division at Unity Technologies. He studied economics & consumer psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and holds a Master’s degree in HCI & Design from the University of California-Irvine. His expertise encompasses product strategy, experience design, design research, & branding. His interests include mentoring, athletics, live performances, animation, & game design.
Roshane CampbellGlobalBusiness Development at Google. Roshane is originally from Kingston, Jamaica, but moved to the US in 2002. He studied Economics at Harvard and received his MBA from Wharton. Roshane worked in finance for 5 years (2 years at UBS then 3 years at AQR Capital) before pivoting to tech following his MBA. He's worked at Amazon (Product) and Uber (Ops). Currently, Roshane is on the Smart Home Business Development team at Google.
Sahitya Jampana Product Manager at Pandora. Sahitya graduated from Georgia Tech with a Computer Engineering degree. After trying out consulting and a much more technical role, she realized Product Management was her perfect fit. As a Product Manager, Sahitya is especially interested in education, therapy, AV and health spaces. In her free time she loves to read, nerd out on films, dance and paint.
Deevy BhimaniProduct at Roblox. Deevy is currently a Product Manager at Roblox. He studied data science at UC Berkeley in 2021 with a domain emphasis in Urban Science. Among other things, Deevy was previously a Partner at Rough Draft Ventures and Director at Cal Hacks leading their accelerator and sponsorship teams. In his free time Deevy likes to explore new roads on his motorcycle, follow Formula 1 (go Ric & Seb!), hunt for the best latte in SF, and play tennis.
Kate Rowe Product Manager at Airbnb. Kate is a PM at Airbnb on the Real Estate team, where she focuses on building and scaling b2b2c tech products supporting Airbnb hosts in apartment buildings & the management of those buildings. She previously worked in strategy consulting, focused on Private Equity due diligences in the consumer, CPG, education, & tech spaces. Stanford GSB grad & Dartmouth undergrad. Always working on her cookie dough game.
Gabriel Tudela Global Director at Kavak. Gabriel was born in LA and raised in Peru. He’s spent the last 6 years in tech companies working across Mobility (Uber, Bird), Proptech (Lamudi) and E-Commerce (Kavak), where he currently works as a Director of New Revenues. He’s previously founded a Fintech startup and his day-to-day hobbies include Surfing, Boxing, Reading and Salsa Dancing. Gabriel holds a bachelor's degree in Business Engineering from Universidad del Pacífico in Peru, as well as an MBA from Quantic, and other Executive program certificates.
Alina LukProduct at Figma. Alina is currently a product manager at Figma, formerly a product lead at Instagram and Facebook. Before her product life, she lived and built a beef jerky company in China called STOKES. Outside of work, Alina loves rock climbing, teaching senior yoga, and reading philosophy and modern Chinese literature.
Rafi Tanzim SyedCo-Founder & CEO at Fuego. Rafi is the Co-founder and CEO of Fuego, a venture backed startup building a marketplace that helps creators launch their own consumer brands by connecting them with artisans worldwide. Rafi has formerly worked on autonomous vehicles and AI at NVIDIA and Adobe Research and was also part of aUToronto, the autonomous driving team at U of T which won the GM/SAE Int'l AutoDrive Challenge two years in a row.
Divya ShroffSr. Product Marketing Manager at Momentive-AI. Divya is a marketing strategy, consumer insights, and innovation professional with 10 years of experience across consumer technology, beverage alcohol, and CPG companies. As a Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Momentive (aka SurveyMonkey), Divya identifies customer needs, launches new products, and develops Momentive's portfolio of products. Prior to Momentive, Divya identified a 10 year innovation pipeline, helped build new products such as Auros and Cuvee Sauvage, and supported marketing for brands such as Kim Crawford, Ruffino, and Corona at Constellation Brands.
Teddy JungreisCo-Founder & COO at Flutter. Florida native, Teddy is a serial entrepreneur and consumer expert. He is currently working on a mix of things, including a Knotel-backed hospitality group, creator platform, startup advisership, and business podcast. Before, Teddy co-founded a dating app startup backed by strategic angels, Tinder executives, and other Silicon Valley veterans called Flutter. After graduating from Stanford, he worked at Facebook, consulting top eCommerce advertisers.
Tanay JaipuriaProduct Manager at Instagram. Tanay is a product manager at Instagram where he works on creator monetization. Prior to that, he worked on Ad Products and News feed at Facebook and as a consultant at McKinsey. Outside of work, he writes a weekly newsletter about the business of technology and enjoys playing poker, soccer, strength training and baking.
Kasey LuckFounder of Luck & Co. Kasey is the Founder & CEO of Luck & Co, an agency helping 7- and 8-figure e-commerce brands maximize their email and SMS revenue. Kasey likes to geek out on: entrepreneurship, marketing, e-commerce & DTC, email & sms, retention, running a distributed team, remote work, team culture, and is starting to get her feet wet in crypto & NFTs. Kasey's based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Besides email, she loves travel, dance, and tea.
Drew LevinHead of Product at Zynga. Drew is a product leader at Zynga. He's worked in mobile gaming for six years in a mix of product and analytics roles. Before that, he worked in political campaigns and elections, where he worked with a wide array of campaigns and PACs to optimize resource allocations across field and media.
Pily LarreaGrowth at Google. Born and raised in an entrepreneurial environment in Puerto Rico, Pily has always been very passionate about entrepreneurship and more specifically, its impact in the LATAM region. She currently works at Google as an Account Manager within the Financial Services Sector. Pily received a Bachelor of Arts from the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Science from Wharton. She loves supporting entrepreneurs and tapping into startup-related programs within and outside of Google.
Brian TsienProduct Manager at Meta. Brian is a PM in the Meta (FB) Ads world. He has spent time building products and developing strategy for the ad targeting and optimization organization. Prior to being a PM, Brian completed his MBA and spent six years as a leader in the US Army. During his free time, Brian loves to play Ultimate frisbee and go on hikes at national and state parks.
Christiana RosalesMBA Intern at Newlab. Christiana studied Mechanical Engineering at MIT and worked at an early-stage electric vehicle company for ~5 years before joining the building technology team at an engineering consulting firm. She currently pursues an MBA at Columbia to learn about the critical factors that determine the success or failure of technologies on the market. Interested in climate tech, urban tech, industry 4.0, and AR/VR.
If you are interested in joining the program and becoming part of the next generation of entrepreneurs and angel investors, please apply here.