VCs take on the Autonomous Market

Speakers from Lux Capital & Bessemer Venture Partners.

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Join us for a fireside chat with two of the top VCs investing in the autonomous driving market.

Shahin @ LuxUmair @ BVP

Shahin Farshchi @ Lux Capital

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Shahin empowers entrepreneurs aiming to accelerate humanity towards a brighter future through feats of engineering. He is passionate about artificial intelligence, robots, space, cars, and engines—pretty much anything you might find in an episode of Star Trek.

He led Lux’s investments in Silicon Clocks (NASDAQ:SLAB), which shrank electronics by baking bulky quartz crystals into silicon chips; SiBeam (NASDAQ:SIMG), which aims to eliminate wires from living rooms by introducing full-HD wireless connectivity; Planet, which is launching the world’s largest fleet of Earth-imaging satellites; Plethora, which is rolling out a fleet of robotic machine shops; Flex Logix, making chips that can reprogram themselves; Nervana, the first full-stack platform for machine intelligence; and Scaled Inference.

Previously, Shahin co-founded Vista Integrated Systems, which built wireless vital sign monitors based on a neural interface technology he developed during his PhD at UCLA. Shahin also developed hybrid electric vehicles for GM in Detroit, worked as a software developer in several Silicon Valley startups, and researched new techniques for semiconductor manufacturing. He earned his Bachelor’s in EECS at UC Berkeley.

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Umair Akeel @ Bessemer Venture Partners

Chief technology officer in residence (CTO-IR) Umair Akeel is an operating partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. Umair brings 15 years of experience in technology development and leadership to Bessemer, focusing on software-as-a-service and enterprise mobile startups. He is also passionate about the future of big data and developer tools.

Umair loves the process of building and growing products, teams and organizations, and as CTO in residence, he works closely with BVP-funded companies as an advisor. Interestingly, he’s been in their shoes before, having worked at two BVP-funded companies: he was Eloqua’s chief architect through its IPO and subsequent acquisition by Oracle (where he served as VP of product development), and earlier, he worked as a software engineer for Trigo Technologies—a company founded by BVP partner Byron Deeter—until it was acquired by IBM (where he served as a senior architect).

Umair is a lifelong maker, and his compulsion to “build, break and hack” is a trait that extends beyond his workday and as the CTO-in-the-Akeel-residence, Umair provides 24/7 tech support to his wife and kids on all the bespoke machines on the home network!