Venture Capital Panel: Funding for AI (Artificial Intelligence) Startups
Details
The deadline to register and pay online is:
2 pm Th 3/8
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"Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence) exhibited by machines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine). In computer science (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science), an ideal "intelligent" machine is a flexible rational agent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_agent) that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of success at some goal.[1] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence#cite_note-Intelligent_agents-1) Colloquially, the term "artificial intelligence" is applied when a machine mimics "cognitive" functions that humans associate with other human minds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mind), such as "learning" and "problem solving". -- Wikipedia
Our distinguished panel will discuss the current state of funding for AI (artificial intelligence) startups and what to expect throughout 2018.
Please come with questions and comments.
(This is not a pitch event, so no startups will be pitching to the panel.)
If you are an AI startup and would like space on a demo table for the networking portion of the event, please send an email message to:
Put this in the subject header:
Th 3/8 AI Startup Demo Table
Agenda
6:00 pm to 7:00 pm Check In, Food, Networking Reception
7:00 pm to 8:30 pm Panel Discussion, Q & A
8:30 pm to 9:00 pm More Networking
About the Panelists:
(More Panelists TBA)
Shahin Farshchi is a partner at Lux Capital, a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park. Shahin empowers entrepreneurs aiming to accelerate humanity towards a fantastic future through feats of engineering. He is passionate about artificial intelligence, robots, space, cars, and engines.
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 Labs, 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; a stealth driverless car company, 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.
Fay Hazaveh is an investor at Norwest Venture Partners where she focuses on early to late stage venture investments across a wide range of sectors at Norwest, with an emphasis on enterprise technology. She is actively involved with Norwest portfolio companies Socrates.ai, Bluecore, Prevedere and SnapRoute. Norwest Venture Partners is a leading Silicon-Valley based venture capital and growth equity investment firm managing $7.5 billion in capital.
Prior to joining Norwest, Fay helped launch Hewlett Packard Ventures, the venture capital arm of Hewlett Packard Enterprise with $100M annual committed capital. At Hewlett Packard Ventures, Fay was responsible for sourcing and evaluating new enterprise technology investments as well as facilitating partnerships between portfolio companies and HPE. While at Hewlett Packard Ventures, Fay helped lead investments in a variety of companies across the cloud, data center, big data and security sectors including Mesosphere, Thoughtspot, Adallom, Hexadite and Safebreach, among others.
Previously, Fay spent time at BMO Capital Markets in their M&A Investment Banking Group. In this role, she worked on a number of transactions across the technology, retail and business services sectors.
Fay holds a bachelor’s degree in music performance from the Jacobs School of Music, and a minor in business from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, where she graduated with honors and highest distinction.
Ashish Aggarwal invests in early stage companies in Robotics, Connected Devices, AI/ML, and Frontier Technologies across the complete stack at Grishin Robotics. Before that, Ashish led strategic corporate acquisitions, investments, and divestitures for Opera Software where he oversaw transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Ashish also worked in marketing analytics for consumer and enterprise products at Dell in Austin Texas. At Yahoo! Ashish built large-scale enterprise infrastructure for advertising products. He led service-engineering teams to design dev-ops systems and architected complex advertising systems. He has also worked as an investor for OCA Ventures, a venture capital fund based in Chicago Illinois.
Ashish is a Special Advisor for Mind The Bridge Foundation, a non-profit that runs programs to support all actors in entrepreneurial ecosystems. He led the selection of growth stage companies as part of Startup Europe Partnership, an integrated pan-European platform to help the best startups emerge from these local ecosystems and scale-up.
Ashish actively mentors entrepreneurs from various accelerator programs across the world. Ashish has lived and worked in the US, China, UK, and India, and has conducted business globally. He started two companies for the Indian market, one in e-commerce and the other in social live TV space. Ashish also has been an Editor for YourStory.com
Prashant Fonseka is a Principal at CrunchFund, where his primary responsibilities include portfolio company advisement and decision-making on fund investments, with secondary roles in due diligence and market analysis prior to fund investment.
A key part of the CrunchFund team, Prashant’s wide-ranging interests in deep technologies such as AR and AI have served the team well in making informed decisions on investments in complex, rapidly-advancing markets.
His ability to foresee business opportunities ahead of his peers has served him well his entire professional career, which actually began in high school where he created several startups with substantive profits and revenue.
A Magna Cum Laude graduate of Claremont McKenna College, Prashant was first a corps member at Teach for America and later became a mathematics teacher before jumping into the world of venture capital at CrunchFund. His ability to clearly communicate the essential nuances of business and technology make him an in-demand speaker both at CrunchFund portfolio companies and at external events.
About the Moderator:
Greg Chin is a partner a the law firm of Mintz Levin in San Francisco. Greg has nearly 20 years of experience representing public and private companies in complex transactional and general corporate matters. He focuses his practice on emerging growth industries — most notably cleantech, life sciences, and digital health — and regularly represents venture capital firms and investment banks that support emerging growth companies.
Greg has closed hundreds of deals for cleantech, life sciences, and technology clients. He has represented public and private targets and acquirers in mergers and acquisitions valued from under $1 million to over $1 billion, represented both issuers and investors in hundreds of venture capital financings valued from under $1 million to several hundred million dollars, and represented both issuers and underwriters in public and private offerings.
He regularly serves as outside general counsel, advising start-ups and emerging growth companies on their business plans as well as company formation issues, and counseling public companies with regard to disclosure obligations and SEC compliance issues.
Prior to joining Mintz Levin, Greg was a partner in the Silicon Valley offices of two global law firms. He was co-founder of one prominent firm’s cleantech practice and served as global co-chair of its cleantech industry group. Before he launched his legal career, Greg worked in business development and marketing for an emerging growth company in Japan, and wrote a column in Japanese about Silicon Valley news.
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Venture Capital Panel: Funding for AI (Artificial Intelligence) Startups