‍Venture Scouts

Sr Product Manager

Juan is an investor at Soma Capital investing in early stage seed and series A companies. He has invested across multiple sectors including fintech, enterprise, consumer and healthcare. Prior to Soma, Juan was a Scientist where he worked on OTC (Over the Counter) drug development at Johnson&Johnson and later focused on Influenza and Oncology research at Genentech. He started his investing career at DCM and later Manchesterstory Group. Has an MBA and a background in Data Science and Biochemistry.

Engineer at Snap. Previously at Google, Spotify, and Airtime. Percussionist & Drummer. 

Jessica is on the growth marketing team at Zageno, a General Catalyst backed startup. She is also head of content for Elpha (Y Combinator S19, community of 36K+ women in tech), Harvard in Tech, and Techstars Boston. She was formerly an investor at Soma Capital and graduated with high honors from Harvard. In her free time, she loves running, biking, and hiking.

Mike is the founder of The Consumer VC, a media company that covers the inner workings of venture capital as it pertains to consumer facing startups - both physical goods and consumer technology. Through hosting The Consumer VC podcast, deal flow newsletter, summits, networking events and video series, he speaks with the top investors in consumer innovation and incredible founders with the goal of providing a resource for the ecosystem

Product manager at Facebook, Angela has built an extensive experience in product management in B2B, construction tech and health tech. Angela invests in software that disrupts antiquated industries by bringing in a simple user experience and combines it with strong customer love. Angela also cares a lot about bringing in more diverse female and POC angel investors into the ecosystem.

Todd is a lawyer-turned-CEO and founder of Legalpad, where he's focused on making the work-visa process easy to create a world where talent, not birthplace, determines opportunity. Venture capital funding has offered enormous benefits to Todd's development, and he's eager to participate in the Grishin Robotics Venture Scout Program so that he can understand and support entrepreneurship from the venture-side perspective.

Megan is the founder, advisor and investor focusing on emerging tech. She has built 4 companies, one successfully exited. She has a long track record of taking technical products to market and of serving as interim CMO for other high-growth startups. She is also a sought after mentor at Techstars, an Advisor and angel investor in several early stage companies, and a Venture Partner at Republic. Megan earned her MBA from Thunderbird in 2012 a certificate from VC Unlocked, Stanford’s invite-only investor training program for emerging leaders. 

Growth Initiatives team at Hippo Insurance, where he helps lead their smart home program and sales operations function.

Sumit is the Head of Corporate Development at Revel Transit Inc. Prior to this, he held a similar position at Fluidity, a blockchain technology company that was acquired by ConsenSys. He's also served as Head of Corporate Strategy, Business Operations, and New Market Strategy at Spotify, and has held consulting roles at Bain & Company, and technical roles at Google and IBM. Sumit received a BSc Engineering from UAlberta and MBA from NYU. 

Oscar is the co-founder of Remi, a direct-to-consumer sleep and wellness brand based in San Francisco. Prior to starting Remi, Oscar worked at venture capital firm Sinai Ventures, a $100 million fund focused where he focused on early stage consumer investments. Previously, Oscar worked at BMW’s VC arm on mobility, autonomous driving, and marketplace investments. Oscar is a graduate of NYU’s Stern School of Business.

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Anjali Naik has 15+ years of experience in launching products and operating businesses. She was most recently the VP of Operations at Kindred, an AI-powered Robotics company that operates warehousing robots at The Gap and several other apparel retailers. Prior to Kindred, she’s had experiences at Narvar as head of product, Google Shopping Express where she helped launch the service in seven cities, and Saavn, a company she co-founded, named one of the World’s 50 most Innovative Companies by Fast Company and known as the Spotify of Bollywood all over the world.

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Ali is a product lead at Pinterest where he has spent the last 5 years building products across all parts of the company, and helped Pinterest grow into a 350 million MAU business. He is also an active angel investor and leads PinAngels - the Pinterest angel investing syndicate with 250 ex/current Pinterest employees.

Andy’s latest company Wonder created the first mobile operating system capable of turning a smartphone into a gaming and entertainment console. Wonder was recently acquired by Atari. Before Wonder, Andy was an early executive and CBO at Scopely, a mobile entertainment company. Prior to Scopely, Andy was Vice President at Zynga, and an early employee and VP at Playdom, where he helped scale the company on way to an acquisition by The Walt Disney Company for $563 million. Andy is an active investor, mentor and advisor to multiple companies and venture capital funds.

James Queen is the Head of Product Partnerships at Google, where he works at the intersection of gaming, hardware, subscriptions, & Cloud, most recently with the launch of Google's Stadia service. James held previous executive roles at YouTube, Spotify, and Shyp and holds an MBA from Stanford. Outside of work, you can usually find James on a hike with his kids, reading, cooking, or playing chess.

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Max Alway-Townsend currently works on Growth at Grain.co, an early stage B2B SaaS company. Max has been investing in early stage startups for the past two years, and has invested in companies such as Feather, Luminous Computing, Jüsto, Outer and more. Previously, he ran an HR tech startup, and is currently based in DC but is frequently in between NYC and SF.

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Nandeet has been called one of “The Youngest Venture Capitalists” by Huffington Post for starting his career in VC at the young age of 18, having worked at Anthos Capital, and Science Inc, and others. He is the Managing Partner and Co-Founder at Prototype Capital, recognized for spearheading the distributed funds model. He is also the CEO and Founder of Pyur Solutions, a cpg-focused house of brands studio. Nandeet has also spent time at a myriad of Fortune 500 companies and startups including Lyft, T-mobile, Ubisoft, Dell and Samsung. He attended UCLA for a B.A. and was an Edison Scholar.

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Stine [STEE-neh] is currently the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of a new (and confidential) venture by the iconic brand Polaroid. She is also the co-founder of Trouble Inc, a work-in-progress initiative to encourage non-conformity in the modern workplace. Before that, she was Managing Director at The New York Times and before that she spent 6 years in various roles at Apple. She started her career as an early employee of Spotify. In her spare time she runs a free coaching program called “Talk Work to Me” for anyone feeling under-networked, under-mentored, or under-sponsored.

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Jimmy is currently the COO of MixerBox, a mobile entertainment startup with 313+ million downloads across its suite of applications and he is focused on continuing its growth trajectory. Over the last few years, Jimmy has helped thousands of startups with their growth strategies and fundraising as an Advisor, Angel Investor, and GM of Fundraise Concierge at Atrium. He has helped founders raise over $330 million over the last 3 years.

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