Alumni Spotlight is pleased to announce The Top 100 Stanford Alumni in Technology of 2021. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford University has long served as a hub for technological innovation. From Google’s preeminent co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, to social media gurus Kevin Systrom and Evan Spiegel, to GPU and semiconductor leader Jensen Huang, and edtech giant Jeff Maggioncalda, among many others, Stanford has consistently produced top talent across tech verticals that are transforming the way we live and work. The alumni selected for this year’s award thrived in Stanford’s highly competitive environment, either in an undergraduate or graduate capacity, bringing to bear the best-in-class education they received with their own talent upon graduating to bring disruptive technologies to market.
This year’s awardees were selected for their ability to pioneer industry-transforming products and services, to contribute valuable insights to their fields, and to guide highly productive organizations. Across enterprise software, financial technology, biotech, education, retail, and other key areas, they have recognized and fulfilled distinct business and consumer needs. Through their dedication to their companies and industries, many have earned chief executive positions and founded elite organizations at the forefront of innovation, demonstrating Stanford’s ability to recognize and foster exceptional talent. These alumni have also made significant philanthropic contributions, serving on the boards of charitable organizations and even returning to Stanford in professorial or advising capacities to inspire the next generation of tech leaders. Please join us in recognizing the achievements of The Top 100 Stanford Alumni in Technology of 2021.
1. Larry Page
Company: Google
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Larry Page is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Google, a business that needs no introduction. He and his partner, Sergey Brin, first came together on a Stanford project, the PageRank algorithm, which ended up being the founding technology for what would later become Google. Page is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also the recipient of the Marconi Prize, marking his achievements in communications and information technology.
2. Sergey Brin
Company: Google
Title: Co-founder
Sergey Brin is a Russian-born entrepreneur and computer scientist responsible for the co-founding of Google in 1998. His historic research, conducted with Larry Page, has resulted in the most popular search engine in existence. He is ranked number 13 on Forbes’ Billionaires list and is a recipient of the Marconi Prize in engineering. Brin also runs a charity organization named The Brin Wojcicki Foundation. He was the president and CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, before stepping down in 2019. Brin earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Maryland.
3. Pat Gelsinger
Company: Intel
Title: Chief Executive Officer
Pat Gelsinger serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Intel, the titan of computer processor and microchip technology. Intel stock has risen by roughly 33% year-to-date, driven by constant semiconductor demand, new investment plans, and the introduction of Gelsinger. Prior to Intel, he was the CEO of VMware, a Dell Technologies strategically aligned business. Previously, Gelsinger led Dell EMC as president and chief operating officer. Gelsinger was Intel's first chief technology officer and the architect of the original 486 processor. He earned an Associate of Arts degree in electronics from Lincoln Technical Institute and a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Santa Clara University. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from William Jessup University.
4. Jensen Huang
Company: NVIDIA
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Jensen Huang co-founded NVIDIA in 1993 and has since served as President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the board of directors. With his guidance, NVIDIA has become a leading visual computing company and a mobile and high-performance computing go-to. Huang held a variety of positions from 1985 to 1993 at LSI Logic Corp., a computer chip manufacturer, and spearheaded the company’s system-on-a-chip strategy. Previously, he was a microprocessor designer at Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., a semiconductor company. Huang earned his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State University.
5. Kevin Systrom
Company: Instagram
Title: Co-founder
Kevin Systrom is the Co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer of the fifth largest global social media platform, Instagram. From the ground up, Systrom found talent across engineers, designers, and analytics specialists to build Instagram into what it is today—a $100 billion company with 600 million monthly users. Before creating Instagram, he worked at Nextstop, a recommendation-based start-up that was later acquired by Facebook. He was also previously employed at Google where he worked as a corporate development associate and product marketing manager.
6. Aneel Bhusri
Company: Workday
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
As Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Workday, Aneel Bhusri has helped countless companies with their financing, HR, and planning needs since 2005. He is also on the board of trustees at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and an advisory partner at Greylock Partners, a leading venture capital firm. He was previously senior vice president at PeopleSoft, where he was responsible for product strategy and business development, and a corporate finance analyst at Morgan Stanley. Bhusri earned his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Brown University.
7. Reed Hastings
Company: Netflix
Title: Chief Executive Officer
Reed Hastings is the Chief Executive Officer of home video streaming mainstay Netflix, which logged a record 32 million subscribers last year. Paving the video service’s path to success from his start as its chairman, Hastings concurrently sat on the boards of Facebook and Microsoft. He previously founded and served six years as CEO for Pure Software, which made tools for software developers. Hastings was appointed president of the California State Board of Education from 2000 to 2004. He is currently on the board of several educational organizations including CCSA, Dreambox Learning, KIPP Foundation, the Pahara Institute, and the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley. Hastings earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in math from Bowdoin College.
9. Lily Sarafan
Company: Home Care Assistance
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Lily Sarafan is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Home Care Assistance (HCA), where she has led the company since 2005. HCA is consistently recognized as a best-in-class healthcare company, and Lily as a featured expert on digital health and the future of aging. An active Stanford alum, Lily serves on the Stanford Board of Trustees, the Freeman Spogli Institute Council, and the Stanford Undergraduate Education Cabinet. She was appointed to the California Governor’s Alzheimer's Task Force in 2019. She has been named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Women Health Care Executives’ Woman of the Year, and a Silicon Valley 40 Under 40. Lily is a member of Young Presidents' Organization, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.
10. Evan Spiegel
Company: Snapchat
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Evan Spiegel has innovated the social media realm as the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Snapchat. Snapchat, which has over 200 million users, is a photo-sharing social media app with a timed-delete feature and a variety of filters. He first developed the original concept for the app at Stanford with fellow student Bobby Murphy. Spiegel is also the Co-founder of Snap Foundation, a non-profit organization that helps the under-represented youth of Los Angeles. He was ranked on the Forbes 400 with $4 billion in Wealth list.
11. Paul Davison
Company: Clubhouse
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Paul Davison is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Clubhouse, an audio-only social networking application that boasts more than 10 million active users each week. The app, gearing up for a possible Android launch this summer, has jumped from a $1 billion valuation in January to a projected $4 billion through current investor engagement. Davison had already made a splash in the applications market by founding location-based service Highlight, which was acquired by Pinterest in 2016. Before that, he was the vice president of database start-up Metaweb, which was acquired by Google in 2010. Davison began his career at consulting firm Bain & Company as a senior associate and completed Google internships between degrees.
12. David Vélez
Company: Nubank
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
David Vélez is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Nubank, a Brazilian financial technology company that has revitalized the banking industry in the country. Vélez has steered Nubank to a $25 billion valuation and a customer base of 35 million over eight years. The company recently announced a $135 million investment to expand its services into Mexico. Before founding Nubank, he was with Sequoia Capital as the partner in charge of Latin American investments. Prior to that, Vélez worked in investment banking and growth equity at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and General Atlantic.
13. David Baszucki
Company: Roblox
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
David Baszucki is the founder and CEO of Roblox. His vision is to build a platform that enables shared experiences among billions of users.
Every day, tens of millions of people from around the world come to Roblox to play, learn, work, and socialize in millions of immersive, user-generated digital experiences—often referred to as a metaverse. David believes the metaverse is the future of social interaction and is building Roblox as a safe, civil, and diverse community—one that fosters creativity and positive relationships.
Previously, David founded Knowledge Revolution, where he and his brother Greg created “Interactive Physics,” a leader in educational physics and mechanical design simulation software. David graduated from Stanford University as a General Motors Scholar in Electrical Engineering.
14. Jeff Maggioncalda
Company: Coursera
Title: Chief Executive Officer
Working as the acting Chief Executive Officer at Coursera, Jeff Maggioncalda is dedicated to improving the lives of many by providing accessibility to free or inexpensive online courses. Coursera currently has over 46 million users worldwide. He is also a current board member of Silicon Valley Bank. Maggioncalda previously founded Financial Engines, a financial management company, where he worked as acting CEO for nearly 19 years before moving on to Coursera.
15. Vlad Tenev
Company: Robinhood
Title: Co-founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer
Vlad Tenev, the Co-founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Robinhood, is a first-generation immigrant from Bulgaria. Robinhood, which traces back to 2012, is a zero-commission brokerage dedicated to democratizing the finance system. The company, currently valued at $40 billion, recently made headlines for its handling of the GameStop short squeeze. Tenev has co-founded two other New York-based enterprises: trading company Celeris and Chronos Research, which sold low-latency software to hedge funds. Tenev earned his master’s degree in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles.
16. Baiju Bhatt
Company: Robinhood
Title: Co-founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer
Baiju Bhatt is the Co-founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Robinhood, the fastest growing brokerage in the world. Robinhood, started with Vlad Tenev in 2012, is a user-friendly brokerage app meant to even the playing field for day traders. The company has snowballed in value, presently sitting at $40 billion, and has gained additional notoriety for its role in the GameStop short squeeze. Bhatt co-founded two other companies with Tenev: high-volume trading company Celeris and low-latency software merchant Chronos Research.
17. John Krafcik
Company: Waymo
Title: Chief Executive Officer
John Krafcik recently stepped down as Chief Executive Officer of Waymo, a transportation technology company focusing on autonomous commercial vehicles. Krafcik will continue to work with Waymo in an advisory capacity, overseeing deployments of Waymo One and Waymo Via. Their flagship product, the Waymo Driver, has travelled tens of millions of miles on public roads across 25 U.S. cities using its autonomy functionality. Krafcik was previously the president of TrueCar, and preceding that, filled the dual role of president and CEO of Hyundai Motor America. Krafcik earned his master’s degree in management from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
18. Forrest Li
Company: Sea
Title: Founder, Chairman, and Group Chief Executive Officer
Forrest Li is the Founder of e-commerce firm Sea and has served as its Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer since its origin in 2009. Sea’s IPO in October 2017 was the largest U.S. public listing ever by a Southeast Asian technology company. Li is a member of the board of directors of the Singapore Economic Development Board. He has also served as an independent non-executive director of Shangri-La Asia Limited, a leading global hospitality group, since 2019. He previously held positions in multinational corporations such as Viacom Media Networks, Corning, and Motorola. Li earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering from Shanghai Jiaotong University.
19. Shing Chow
Company: Lalamove
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Shing Chow founded Lalamove in 2013 and oversees the strategic direction of the Hong Kong-based delivery technology company as its Chief Executive Officer. The on-demand logistics group has enjoyed a surge of profits, as the last year saw orders triple due to increased demand for safe delivery services. Chow is a board advisor for Compass Offices, the largest business office provider in Hong Kong. In addition to Lalamove, he also founded Lattice Investment Partners, Hong Kong Skin Centre, and Amigo Spa and Beauty. Chow preceded his entrepreneurial pursuits with a senior associate consultant position at Bain & Company. Chow earned his Bachelor of Science degree in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles.
20. Paulo Rosado
Company: OutSystems
Title: Chief Executive Officer
Paulo Rosado is the Chief Executive Officer of OutSystems, a low-code application development service. Rosado has spent his 20-year tenure leading OutSystems from its start-up phase into an international leader in the delivery of enterprise web and mobile applications. Previously, Rosado was executive VP of global marketing at Altitude Software, a CRM company present in 32 countries. Before joining Altitude, he co-founded Intervento, an e-business software infrastructure company, acting as its CEO until the company was successfully sold in 1999. Rosado earned a computer engineering degree from Universidade Nova, Lisbon.
21. Sanjit Biswas
Company: Samsara
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Sanjit Biswas is the Co-founder and CEO of Samsara, an industrial-scaled IoT (Internet of Things) customer satisfaction optimizer with 20,000 organizations in its portfolio. Biswas was formerly the CEO and co-founder of Meraki, where he managed day-to-day operations from inception through the $1.2 billion buyout by Cisco in 2012. He is a current board member of ThousandEyes and Highfive Technologies. Biswas has been recognized as a TR35 honoree by MIT Technology Review, and a technology pioneer by the World Economic Forum. He earned his Master of Science degree in computer science and electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
22. Serge Saxonov
Company: 10X Genomics
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
As Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of 10X Genomics, Serge Saxonov has grown a company which builds a combination of hardware, software, and chemistry products centered around accelerating biology and disease research and application. Through his diligence, he has led research that is being utilized by some of the top global research and pharmaceutical companies worldwide. Leading up to this point in his career, Saxonov has applied his expertise to being the VP of applications at QuantaLife and being a fundamental first employee at 23andMe. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in applied math at Harvard.
23. Rachel Carlson
Company: Guild Education
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Rachel Carlson is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Guild Education, which helps employers design and offer education-as-benefit programs. Their programs provide employees individualized pathways to degrees and credit for on-the-job training. Prior to Guild Education’s foundation, Carlson was the founder, CEO, and board chair of Student Blueprint. Earlier in her career, she worked with The Parthenon Group and as a director for American Honors. Carlson was selected as one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for Education in 2017.
24. Prashant Tandon
Company: 1mg
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Prashant Tandon is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of 1mg Technologies, an e-pharmacy firm with presence across e-diagnostics and telemedicine services. In six years, he has molded 1mg into an online healthcare giant, boasting an estimated 37 million app downloads, 345 million monthly page views, and over 160 million annual engagements. Tandon previously founded the online health retailer HealthKart and worked in corporate finance as a senior associate for McKinsey. He earned his Bachelor of Technology degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
25. René Lacerte
Company: Bill.com
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
René Lacerte founded Bill.com and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Lacerte has expanded the cloud-based payment software company during his 15-year tenure to cover over three million network partners and move $60 billion annually. Previously, Lacerte co-founded payroll programmer PayCycle and spent 6 years as its CEO before a final year as CFO. Lacerte honed his instincts for compensation technology innovation as senior project manager of payments and bill presentment at Intuit. He began his career at his parents’ payroll firm, CertiData Corporation, where he was VP of operations and development.
26. Nima Ghamsari
Company: Blend
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Nima Ghamsari is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Blend, a digital consumer banking platform featuring connected infrastructure and mortgage services on advanced cloud technology. Ghamsari helms the company’s corporate and product strategy, and this year has seen Blend close a $300 million Series G funding round and acquire insurance provider Title365. Before Blend, Ghamsari was an engineer for the commercial group at Palantir Technologies in its earliest stages, and personally advised its CEO.
27. Tim Chen
Company: NerdWallet
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Tim Chen, a former hedge fund equity analyst, is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of personal finance management company NerdWallet. Chen recently announced that his company would transfer $2 million of its capital to Self-Help Federal Credit Union, which serves low-income customers. Chen’s experience in finance includes being a member of the board for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling and the Advisory Board for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Previously, he was an investor at Perry Capital and JAT Capital Management, following work as an equity research associate.
28. Michael Broukhim
Company: FabFitFun
Title: Co-founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer
Michael Broukhim co-founded FabFitFun, a lifestyle membership service focused on women, and serves as its Co-Chief Executive Officer. Broukhim is helping make a name for the company, already steeped in e-commerce with its subscription box offerings, in the digital retail space. FabFitFun now has more than 500 employees and generates roughly $300 million in annual revenue. Broukhim’s idea for the company started with his media company, Charlie. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, where he was awarded the Thomas T. Hoopes Prize for outstanding research and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in social studies.
29. Seth Sternberg
Company: Honor
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Seth Sternberg is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Honor, a San Francisco-based non-medical service agency that assists elderly citizens with day-to-day tasks, enabling them to live independently for longer. His perseverance in building this business has successfully brought Honor to over 800 cities all over the U.S. Prior to Honor, Sternberg was the product management director for the Google+ platform at Google. His first company, Meebo, operated successfully for seven years before being acquired by Google. Sternberg earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and international relations from Yale University.
30. Jack Conte
Company: Patreon
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Jack Conte is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Patreon, the crowdfunded subscription content service. Patreon raised $155 million in its latest funding series, led by Tiger Global Management. The company’s recent valuation has skyrocketed to $4 billion, as the content creation economy continues to surge. Building Patreon from the ground up as his first business venture, Conte had extensive experience as a creative artist, and performs with his wife in the San Francisco-based musical duo Pomplamoose.
31. David Rogier
Company: MasterClass
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
The Founder and Chief Executive Officer of MasterClass, David Rogier is the man behind the ubiquitous educational streaming platform. MasterClass has flourished amid COVID-19 lockdowns, and the company is raising new funding led by Fidelity at a $2.5 billion valuation. Rogier created MasterClass in 2015 and has scaled the online learning tool into an international phenomenon, with intimate access to a stable of world’s experts. Last year saw Rogier named as one of the most influential leaders in media and entertainment on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list and as one of Hollywood’s New Leaders in Variety. Rogier earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Washington University in St. Louis.
32. Chih-Han Yu
Company: Appier
Title: Chief Executive Officer
With his years of accumulated experience in the fields of artificial intelligence and social mobile app development, Chih-Han Yu has been the Chief Executive Officer of Appier for nearly 9 years. As CEO, Yu overlooks and manages the progression of a business centered around applying AI, digital marketing, and data mining to connect businesses with customers more effortlessly. Before his time at Appier, Yu worked as the CEO of Plaxie, a game studio specializing in role playing games (RPGs). He was also a key researcher at Harvard Medical School for a study involving orthotics systems. Yu earned his Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from National Taiwan University. He later earned his PhD in computer science from Harvard University.
33. Othman Laraki
Company: Color
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Othman Laraki is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Color, a medical technology company building public health infrastructure and using genomics for population health. Previously, Laraki co-founded Mixer Labs and developed its GeoAPI platform, a powerful location engine for developers. After the company was acquired by Twitter in 2009, he served as the social media network’s VP of products and helped expand its user base to over 200 million accounts. Before this, he spent several years at Google, where he developed front-end products, including the Chrome browser. Laraki is a long-time investor and advisor to leading companies such as Pinterest, AngelList, Slack, and Instacart, and serves as a board member for ESI Group and Frontier Medicines. He earned his Master of Business Administration degree in financial engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
34. Adena Hefets
Company: Divvy Homes
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Adena Hefets is the Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer of Divvy Homes, a fractional real estate platform with the goal of easily achievable home ownership. At the beginning of the year, Divvy announced a $165 million funding round at a valuation of $1.6 billion and a 500% increase in monthly sign-ups since March 2020. Hefets was previously a product manager at Square, where she helped build and grow Square Capital, a merchant cash advance platform with over $2.5 billion in outstanding loans. Prior to joining Square, Adena was part of the large-cap buyout team at TPG, a private equity firm. Hefets earned her Bachelor of Science degree in policy analysis and management from Cornell University.
35. James Peng
Company: Pony.ai
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
James Peng is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Pony.ai, a company that builds AI technology for autonomous driving vehicles. His contribution to AI vehicle technology has earned his company a space in U.S. and Chinese markets. Previous to starting his own company, Peng spent four years at Baidu USA, one of which he served as the chief architect of the autonomous driving division. He also spent seven years as a software engineer at Google. Peng earned his Bachelor of Science degree from Tsinghua University and his Master of Science degree from the University of Buffalo.
36. Matt Barnard
Company: Plenty
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Matt Barnard is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Plenty, the indoor farming company building a network of field-scale indoor farms to transform the agricultural process. By shortening the farm-to-table journey, Barnard plans to shift the industry to a reliable, predictable, and resource-efficient model. Before Plenty, he was president and COO of Whalen & Company, a specialty engineering firm, and founded Search Fund Capital, a single-industry private equity fund. Barnard earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and Bachelor of Music degree in music performance from Northwestern University.
37. Josh Giegel
Company: Virgin Hyperloop
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Josh Giegel is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Virgin Hyperloop, a transportation technology company dedicated to commercializing the Hyperloop, a high-speed vacuum train variant. The company, established in mid-2014, has also seen Giegel fill the roles of chief technology officer, president and senior vice president of engineering, and VP of design and analysis. His launching pad for a career in this industry was an internship in thermal and fluid system design at NASA’s Glenn Research Center. Giegel earned his Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Penn State University.
38. Austin Russell
Company: Luminar Technologies
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Austin Russell is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Luminar, an autonomous vehicle sensor and software company. A LIDAR industry pioneer for self-driving vehicles, Russell founded Luminar in 2012, and has grown it into a 400-employee operation that partners with many leading international automakers. Russell applied for his first patent at age 13 and became an independent researcher at the Beckman Laser Institute 3 years later. He was honored as a Thiel Fellow, named to MIT’s list of 35 Innovators under 35, and listed as an industry leader in Forbes’ 30 under 30 in Manufacturing and Industry.
39. Jeffrey Smith
Company: Smule
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Jeffrey Smith is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of 12-year-old company, Smule, a social media network for music and musicians, which includes apps like Smule, Ocarina, Magic Piano, and AutoRap. Smith’s platforms form a web of creation in the musical sphere, allowing people to sing, write music, and upload performances. In the past Smith has been an assistant consulting professor and guest lecturer at Stanford’s Department of Music, and co-founder of Simplify Media. He also funded and ran security software company Tumbleweed for 10 years before stepping down as CEO.
40. Aly Orady
Company: Tonal
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Aly Orady is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tonal, an in-home exercise technology start-up. Tonal’s 2020 sales surged as customers looked for ways to build better workout routines at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tonal has raised $450 million in investment funds for unprecedented demand, and Orady is working up to an IPO. Orady founded Pano Logic in 2006, serving as CTO and overseeing core technology development, architecture, and patents. He began his career at Hewlett-Packard’s Computer Systems Laboratory designing super-computers, followed by technical leadership roles at a series of start-ups, including Kealia (now Sun/Oracle). Orady earned his Bachelor of Engineering degree from McMaster University.
41. Dan Preston
Company: Metromile
Title: Chief Executive Officer
Dan Preston serves as Chief Executive Officer for Metromile, a pay-per-mile vehicle insurance company that licenses its technology platform to insurance companies around the world through its Metromile Enterprise initiative. Metromile has been voted a Best Place to Work by Glassdoor and the Phoenix Business Journal. Preston originally joined Metromile in 2013 as CTO before moving to CEO a year later. Previously, he was the co-founder and CTO of AisleBuyer, a mobile retail innovator acquired by Intuit in 2012. Preston earned his Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Brandeis University, where he received the Michtom Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Computer Science.
42. Andrew Feldman
Company: Cerebras Systems
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Andrew Feldman is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Cerebras Systems, a pioneer in high performance compute for Artificial Intelligence. Prior to Cerebras, Feldman was Co-founder and CEO of SeaMicro, the inventor of the micro-server category of energy efficient servers. SeaMicro was sold to AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) in 2012. Feldman currently serves on the board of directors at Natron Energy and on the advisory board of more than a dozen startups. He is a frequent keynote speaker and guest lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
43. Shan-Lyn Ma
Company: Zola
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Shan-Lyn Ma is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Zola, an innovative wedding company that combines customer service prowess with modern technology solutions. Ma launched Zola in 2013, and now the company carries over 500 diverse brands and serves around half a million couples. Ma’s tweaks to the industry standard included premier all-in-one wedding registries, free wedding websites, and customizable checklists. She was previously the chief product officer of jewelry merchant Chloe + Isabel. Prior to that, Ma worked in mobile as Gilt Groupe’s first product lead and created the Gilt Taste division. She earned her Bachelor of Commerce degree in marketing from the University of New South Wales.
44. Matin Movassate
Company: Heap
Title: Founder and Chairman
Matin Movassate is the Chairman and Founder of Heap, a software which automates data analytics and allows companies to get more clear-cut data from their customers. Movassate has been the CEO of this company for over 8 years, running operations, securing funding, and servicing clients in the state of California. Before his time at Heap, Movassate was a product manager at Facebook where he helped technically develop and launch a number of successful products. While still in college, he interned at both Google and Mozilla.
45. Gene Berdichevsky
Company: Sila Nanotechnologies
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Gene Berdichevsky is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of material technology company Sila Nanotechnologies. Sila recently announced a partnership with automaker BMW to develop silicon-based anode technology. Prior to Sila, he was an early joiner at Tesla Motors, where he worked as principal engineer on the ingenious Roadster battery, a mass-produced, automotive lithium-ion battery system. He has co-authored 42 patents and four academic publications. Berdichevsky has been named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list, the MIT Technology Review 35 under 35, and was a recipient of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans.
46. Nick Weaver
Company: eero
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Nick Weaver has been developing high-quality, reliable WiFi technology for over seven years as the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of WiFi system, eero. His realm of experience has also crossed over into the world of investing. He’s worked at Menlo Ventures as an investor, as well as McKinsey & Company as a business analyst. During his time at Stanford, he was the CEO of Stanford Student Enterprises, where he helped build the foundation of StartX, an entrepreneurial group.
47. Jagdeep Singh
Company: QuantumScape
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Jagdeep Singh founded battery technology company QuantumScape in 2010 and has since served as its Chief Executive Officer. QuantumScape, which started trading publicly last November, has recently qualified for the second half of an investment totaled at $200 million from Volkswagen AG, for solid-state lithium-metal cell testing and other product development. Singh also founded and was the CEO of networking solutions provider Infinera, following his time at Lighter Networks and AirSoft in the 1990s. Singh earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Maryland, College Park and his Master of Business Administration degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
48. Dave Vasen
Company: Brightwheel
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
The Founder and Chief Executive Officer of children’s education software company Brightwheel, Dave Vasen has specialized in business development and strategy positions across multiple industries for two decades. As Amazon’s head of Kindle product and business development, Vasen launched the K-12 Education initiative. Prior to that, he consulted Fortune 100 companies as a senior associate for Bain & Company. At Cisco Systems, he helped establish and grow technology education centers in the developing world to empower local populations. Vasen has served as president for his youth program charity, The Robert Vasen Foundation, since 2007. Vasen earned his Master of Business Administration degree in entrepreneurial management from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
49. Brian Barnes
Company: M1 Finance
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Brian Barnes is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of M1 Finance, an automated brokerage offering a modern approach to managing an investment portfolio. Since its foundation in 2015, M1 has grown to nearly 100,000 funded customers, and has reached around $4 billion of assets under management. A $75 million Series D funding closed in March 2021, and Barnes hopes to use the capital to include other forms of borrowing and loan diversification in the M1 Finance platform.
50. Matthew Pohlson
Company: Omaze
Title: Co-founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer
Matthew Pohlson, the Co-founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Omaze, has built the U.S.’s leading for-profit online crowdsourcing platform to handle over $130 million of user-led charity fundraising. Omaze was included in Fast Company’s 2020 list of Most Innovative Companies. In the same publication, it was named the #1 company for positive societal impact. Pohlson was previously an executive producer for the Clinton Foundation’s “Decade of Difference” concert series and created the Fox Television programs “Ricky and Ravi” and “Prius and Leo.” Pohlson earned his Master of Business Administration degree from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
51. Roham Gharegozlou
Company: Dapper Labs
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Roham Gharegozlou is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Dapper Labs, a blockchain game producer. His company recently raised $305 million in a funding round led by Coatue, including investments from Michael Jordan and Kevin Durant. In 2018, Dapper Labs was spun out of venture studio Axiom Zen, of which Gharegozlou was founder and CEO. In his six years there, Gharegozlou grew the company to 80 team members and spun out four independent businesses, including Routific and ZenHub. Prior to founding Axiom Zen, he was a program director for the Arab American outreach non-profit organization TechWadi.
52. Honor Gunday
Company: Paymentwall, Terminal3, FasterPay
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
As the Founder of three companies in current operation, Honor Gunday has delved into the world of payment technology throughout his career. His companies, Paymentwall, Terminal3 and FasterPay are three different payment platforms ranging from gaming commerce, credit card processing, bank transfers, and alternative payment methods. His companies operate globally, spanning over 20 countries and four continents. His previous start-ups are Rofo, a real estate search engine, and OutCubator, a technology service. Gunday has also spent two years as program manager at Expedia.com.
53. Spandana Nakka
Company: Sleek
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Spandana Nakka is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sleek, which brings dynamically priced priority lanes at over 20k+ venues, Sleek was featured in the 50 most promising AI companies by Forbes. Nakka is also an angel investor, investing in the fintech and SaaS fields for over seven years. She was featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Consumer Technology list. Nakka previously spent four years at Google, working as a product manager, and then later in the business development sector there. She earned her Master of Science degree in engineering from Stanford University.
54. Manu Sharma
Company: Labelbox
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Manu Sharma is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Labelbox, a training data platform for building AI applications. His San Francisco-based company helps customers manage and organize data so that they can effortlessly build AI programs. Prior to this, Sharma worked as a product manager at Plant, where he overlooked and managed a fleet of satellites in earth’s orbit. He has valuable experience in the sphere of engineering and manufacturing drone technology, being previously employed at DroneDeploy. Sharma is a certified private aircraft pilot, and received his Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
55. Ashvin Kumar
Company: Tophatter
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
As Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tophatter, Ashvin Kumar helped create a mobile shopping marketplace that utilizes AI to create personalized shopping, which often works in a bidding format. Kumar successfully expanded the business to two offices in Shanghai and San Francisco and gathered a collective $35 million in investments. Before this endeavor, Kumar was the CEO of Blippy, a social media platform for discovering new products. He also held the role of chief architect and VP of engineering at Affinity Circles.
56. Ray Zhou
Company: Affinity
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Ray Zhou is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Affinity, a San Francisco-based software company founded in 2014. Affinity’s role is analyzing data across emails, calendars, and third-party sources, and utilizing AI technology to prioritize important business connections and discover new opportunities. His company has raised over $40 million in investments as a result of his professional diligence and is projected to keep growing as AI utilization grows progressively more popular. Zhou was also part of a research study for the University of California, Davis centered around genomics.
57. Reid Hoffman
Company: Greylock
Title: Partner
Reid Hoffman is a partner at the Greylock firm, a private investment firm that helps entrepreneurs build companies. With his guidance, Greylock has successfully included companies like LinkedIn, Airbnb and Facebook in its portfolio. As a result of his partnership, Hoffman serves as a board member at over a dozen companies, including Microsoft, Apollo, Coda, Magical Tome, and Convoy. Prior to this position, Hoffman was an original co-founder of LinkedIn, the social media network for career professionals, dedicating nearly a decade to this venture. He earned his Master of Studies degree in philosophy from Oxford University and holds an Honorary Doctorate from Babson College.
58. Daphne Koller
Company: Insitro
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Daphne Koller is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Insitro, a company using artificial intelligence to transform drug discovery. She was previously the co-founder, co-CEO, and president of Coursera for five years, and also chief computing officer of Calico, an Alphabet company in the healthcare space. Prior to Coursera, Koller was the Rajeev Motwani Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University for an 18-year tenure. Koller was recognized as one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2012. She was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, and elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the International Society of Computational Biology. Koller received her post doctorate degree in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.
59. Armaan Ali
Company: Human Capital
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Armaan Ali is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Human Capital, a venture capital firm catering specifically to engineers. The San Francisco-based firm invests in the innovation and project developments of engineers, enabling them to start their own companies. Previous to this, Ali worked on the investment team of General Catalyst Partners, another venture capital firm. During his time at Stanford, he co-founded and led the Stanford Social Entrepreneurial Students’ Association to encourage the entrepreneurial ecosystem amongst his peers.
59. Baris Akis
Company: Human Capital
Title: Co-founder and President
Baris Akis is the Co-founder and President of Human Capital, a venture firm with more than $500 million in assets under management that invests in and helps build engineering teams for engineering-centric startups. Akis sets the organization’s strategic vision and helps ambitious entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life. As a trained software engineer, he has a deep understanding of the potential of ambitious engineers and brings this perspective to all of Human Capital’s strategic decisions. As a student, he started and sold a web-development automation business and co-founded and led the Stanford Social Entrepreneurial Students’ Association. Akis has had a passion for supporting ambitious people since he was young, which led him to build a national non-profit in partnership with the United Nations to help high school students develop critical professional and communication skills. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Stanford University.
60. Kayvon Beykpour
Company: Twitter
Title: Head of Consumer Product
Kayvon Beykpour is the Head of Consumer Products for social media giant Twitter. He was the CEO and co-founder of the live broadcast app Periscope, and Twitter’s 2015 buyout landed him an integral role in its social networking product research group. Beykpour previously grew the mobile division of Blackboard from a five-person start-up to a team of over 100 during his time as a senior executive there. Blackboard was formed following the acquisition of Beykpour’s original start-up, Terriblyclever Design, which laid the groundwork for an interoperable app in higher education.
61. Trevor Martin
Company: Mammoth Biosciences
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Trevor Martin is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mammoth Biosciences, a company which specializes in creating a platform to aid in therapeutic and diagnostic application of this sect of DNA sequencing. Under his leadership, the company has been working on creating the world’s first disease detection platform which utilizes CRISPR technology. He previously worked as an undergraduate researcher at the Storey Lab at Princeton University, conducting quantitative biology experiments. Martin’s work earned him recognition on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 List in 2019. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in molecular biology from Princeton University.
62. Andrew Adams
Company: Headway
Title: Chief Executive Officer
Andrew Adams is the Chief Executive Officer of Headway, a mental health marketplace helping Americans find the right therapist, without the hassles regularly associated with the act. His role in leading Headway has resulted in a one-of-a-kind behavioral health network, with funding from leading venture capital firms nationally. His previous experience has had him working in software development for companies like Spring and Amazon. He also spent a short time working at SoftBank Capital, overseeing the investment process.
63. Joe Lonsdale
Company: 8VC
Title: Founder
With ample experience in the entrepreneurial realm, Joe Lonsdale is the Founder of technology investment firm, 8VC, the Co-founder of Palantir Technologies, and of Addepar, a wealth management and analytics platform where he serves as Chairman. Lonsdale also serves as a board member and advisor for Thorn, a non-profit focusing on ending child-trafficking. He co-founded OpenGov, a cloud-based software for government budgeting. Before helping establish his first company, Palantir, Lonsdale worked in PayPal’s finance division and served as an early executive at Clarium Capital.
64. Sam Hodges
Company: Vouch Insurance
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Sam Hodges is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vouch Insurance, a digital insurance provider that focuses on supporting start-ups. Hodges has a long history of entrepreneurship and is now an associate for multiple investment firms such as Endurance Companies and Waterman Ventures. Before Vouch, Hodges co-founded the U.S. division of Funding Circle, and transitioned from managing director to chairman. In 2016, he was appointed to a two-year term on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Trade Advisory Council. Both Bloomberg Business Investors and San Francisco Business Times 40 Under 40 have recognized Hodges for his achievements. Prior to his Stanford education, Hodges attended Brown University.
65. Ooshma Garg
Company: Gobble
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Ooshma Garg is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of food delivery service Gobble. Her decade-old company is designed to provide 15-minute gourmet meal kits, with 3-step instructions for busy professionals with a health-priority. Garg’s passion and energy in the business field is reflected in her ventures since the beginning of her career. Before this venture Garg was the CEO and founder at Anapata, which helped match students with jobs, primarily in the legal field. This company was sold to LawWerx in 2010, and the capital helped fund her current endeavor in the food delivery realm.
66. Christina Cacioppo
Company: Vanta
Title: Chief Executive Officer
Christina Cacioppo is the Chief Executive Officer of Vanta, a security monitoring and compliance provider with over 1,000 high-profile corporate clients. Cacioppo was brought to San Francisco by Dropbox, and while working in product management, she helped bring Dropbox Paper to market and built tools to streamline the associated programming. Before that, Cacioppo co-founded Nebula Labs and worked on the investment team for Union Square Ventures. As a research intern, Cacioppo participated in humanitarian missions to Thailand and Rwanda.
67. Eric Ly
Company: Hub, KarmaCheck
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Eric Ly’s repertoire is an impressive history of successfully founded businesses, the two current ones being KarmaCheck and Hub, where he also serves as Chief Executive Officer. KarmaCheck is an AI-driven background check platform designed to help employers find the right candidates for the job. Ly’s other company, Hub, is a blockchain protocol to create a greater level of trust when making online transactions. Ly helped develop and run many companies, notably being a co-founder of LinkedIn, and running Presdo, an event app platform, for nearly twelve years. Ly earned his Master of Science degree in media arts and sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
68. Lukas Biewald
Company: Weights & Biases
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Lukas Biewald is aiming to enhance the AI world through his work as Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Weights & Biases, a software manufacturer that uses machine learning to analyze model performance and track experiments. His experience in machine learning spans throughout his career, working as the founder and CEO of Figure Eight, formally known as CrowdFlower, as well as serving as the relevance engineer at Yahoo. While at Stanford, he was a research assistant in Daphne Koller’s research group in Stanford’s AI Lab.
69. Gina Bianchini
Company: Mighty Networks
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
As the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Mighty Networks, Gina Bianchini has helped many creators successfully market their wares and services. First founded as Mightybell in 2011 and rebranding to Mighty Networks in 2016, her SaaS company focuses on marketing and branding of start-up brands. Prior to Mighty Networks, Bianchini worked as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Andreessen Horowitz. She was also CEO and co-founder of Ning, a platform for creating social networking websites, where she helped reach 100 million users over 300,000 networks.
70. Sanjay Dastoor
Company: Skip
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Sanjay Dastoor has spent the last decade perfecting easy transportation solutions, currently serving as the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Skip, a scooter service which sets up hubs in cities and rents electric scooters to diversify transportation potential. Before this venture, Dastoor had previously founded and worked as the CEO for Boosted, a company which produced state-of-the-art electric longboards. He has previously worked as an instructor at Stanford, teaching and assembling courses for high school students. Dastoor earned his Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
71. Andrew Peterson
Company: Signal Sciences
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Andrew Peterson is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Signal Sciences, a SaaS platform that provides security monitoring and defense solutions for web applications. Peterson went to bat for the $825 million sale of Signal Sciences to Fastly, and now he heads the Fastly security department. He was previously the group product manager of international growth at Etsy. Prior to Etsy, Peterson was a health information management officer at the Clinton Foundation, before which he was a senior product specialist at Google. Peterson currently sits on the Forbes Technology Council.
72. Jesse Leimgruber
Company: NeoReach
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Jesse Leimgruber is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of NeoReach, an online marketing platform that leverages social media influencer support for new brands. He also co-founded Bloom Protocol, a top #100 iOS lending app, and is a partner for Alchemist Accelerator, a B2B start-up investment firm. Leimgruber is a guest lecturer for multiple universities and earned a Thiel Fellowship in 2016. Leimgruber was an Eagle Scout, founded Rage Hats, and co-founded consulting agency Rank Executives when he was still in high school.
73. Alexander Ratner
Company: Snorkel AI
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Working as the Chief Executive Officer at the company he helped found, Alexander Ratner has utilized his vast knowledge in AI to see Snorkel AI grow in the industry. His software company started as a Stanford AI Lab research project and grew into a high-level interface for machine learning and data management. Ratner also works as an assistant professor at the University of Washington in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering where he teaches data science and machine learning. Ratner earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in physics from Harvard College.
74. David Selinger
Company: Deep Sentinel
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
As Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Deep Sentinel, David Selinger is dedicated to pioneering AI-based home protection services. He is presently an advisor at several companies, including Rainforest Connection, GridCure, Notarize, and Opus 12. He was also the founder of RichRelevance, a global leader in omnichannel personalization, as well as Redfin, a real estate marketplace. He has been involved with many projects serving the underprivileged, including founding MyTwoFrontTeeth.org and serving on the board of directors at The Family Giving Tree.
75. Brian Acton
Company: Signal
Title: Co-founder
Brian Acton is the Co-founder of Signal, a private communication and encrypted messaging app. Acton created Signal with the intention of creating a completely private and free way for people to communicate without risking their private data. He and his wife run Sunlight Giving, a foundation for funding low-income families. He also helped establish Acton Family Giving and Solidarity Giving. Before starting Signal, Acton was co-founder of another communication app called WhatsApp, which sold to Facebook in 2012 for $19 billion. He also has experience as an infrastructure engineer at Yahoo in its early years.
76. Maurice Werdegar
Company: Western Technology Investment
Title: Partner and Chief Executive Officer
For the last 20 years, Maurice Werdegar has worked as Investment Partner and Chief Executive Officer of the oldest and largest U.S. venture debt firm, Western Technology Investment. There he looks for early-stage companies to assist with funding and help build businesses. He is a present trustee at multiple Stanford establishments as well as the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He has experience in investment banking, fund management, and venture capital, and has also acted as CEO of Blue Chalk Cafe and Left at Albuquerque, a chain of restaurants in the southwest.
77. Russ Heddleston
Company: DocSend
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Russ Heddleston is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of DocSend, a service for secure document transfer and tracking that was recently acquired by Dropbox for $165 million. The trio of Dropbox, HelloSign, and DocSend is now a combination of unique features for managing end-to-end document workflows and has retained DocSend’s 17,000 customers. Heddleston was previously a product manager at Facebook, where he arrived via the acquisition of his start-up Pursuit.com. He was awarded a Leader in Tech fellowship and earned his Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School.
78. Prerna Gupta
Company: Hooked
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
As Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Hooked, Prerna Gupta has developed a mobile media platform designed to redefine storytelling. The app is targeted to teenagers, and combines flash fiction, audio stories, and narrative videos to create engaging entertainment. With her hard work, Gupta has over 50 million monthly users, with a specific grasp on the Gen Z population. Prior to the development of this app, Gupta worked on the board of directors at computer software company, Smule. She is also an author, most recently working on a sci-fi fantasy trilogy which takes place in a futuristic Silicon Valley.
79. Maneesh Sethi
Company: Pavlok
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Maneesh Sethi is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Pavlok, a wearable device company for building healthy habits and changing behavior through positive and negative reinforcement. He also works as Editor-in-Chief of the Hack the System blog about productivity, business, travel, and hacking. He is the author of four books, including an international best-seller, all of which focus on teaching teenagers different levels of software programming. Sethi is currently studying for his master’s degree in clinical psychology from Harvard University.
80. JoeBen Bevirt
Company: Joby Aviation
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
JoeBen Bevirt is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of aerospace design company Joby Aviation. Joby kicked off the year with a $620 million Series C funding, led by Toyota Motor Corporation. Bevirt plans to use the capital generated to fund the launch of passenger service, which is expected to begin in 2024. Joby has also acquired Uber Elevate and merged with Reinvent Technology Partners in recent months. Bevirt founded Joby, Inc. in 2005 following six years as president of Velocity11. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Davis.
81. Evan Singer
Company: SmartBiz Loans
Title: Chief Executive Officer
Evan Singer is President and CEO of SmartBiz Loans and leads the strategic, operational and tactical activities of the company. The company has helped banks process more than $4 billion in loans, serving over 20,000 businesses and supporting 300,000 jobs. Evan has broad experience in both financial services and consumer industries. He has held leadership positions as Chief Revenue Officer at Milton’s Baking, President at Purity Organic, and General Manager at Align Technology. He started his career at Procter & Gamble and earned his undergraduate degree in Public Policy from Stanford University.
82. David Merrill
Company: Elroy Air
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
As Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Elroy Air, David Merrill uses his expansive computer science background to manufacture autonomous aircraft systems, bringing air transport potential to even the most remote locations. He is also a venture partner at Lemnos, a venture capital firm based in San Francisco. In the past, Merrill has served as vice president of enabling technology at 3D Robotics. He also worked at a hardware manufacturing company, Sifteo, which he helped found and served as president of. Merrill earned his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
83. Sheel Tyle
Company: Amplo
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Sheel Tyle is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Amplo, a venture capital firm. He is also a member of the board of directors for Andela, recently named the #1 most innovative company in Africa by Fast Company. As an angel investor, Tyle has put money into the Series A funding of Casper, Flutterwave, Mark43, Robinhood, and others. He is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper and was on the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2013. In 2016, Tyle was part of the U.S. delegation with President Obama on his historic visit to Cuba. He earned his Juris Doctorate degree from Harvard Law School.
84. Christopher Nguyen
Company: Arimo
Title: President and Chief Executive Officer
Christopher Nguyen is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Arimo, an artificial intelligence and big-data machine learning enterprise. Nguyen has extensive experience in engineering, earning the Google Founders Award. He is also an acting board member at Fulbright University Vietnam, a liberal arts and science/engineering institution in Vietnam. He has founded and run multiple international companies and was the engineering director at Google for two years before his pursuits at Arimo. Nguyen earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.
85. Bobby Lee
Company: Ballet
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Bobby Lee, a dominant presence in the cryptocurrency market, is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ballet, a start-up meant to normalize market use of Bitcoin by increasing accessibility and transparency. Lee is a member of the Bitcoin Foundation’s Board of Directors and co-founded BTCC, China’s first Bitcoin exchange. He was previously VP of China e-commerce technology at Walmart, CTO and SVP of BesTV New Media, and spent eight years as a senior engineering manager at Yahoo! Lee earned his Master of Business Administration degree from China Europe International Business School.
86. Tanya Van Court
Company: Goalsetter
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Tanya Van Court is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Goalsetter, a family-oriented savings and money management app. The app is designed to help American families save money and teach children money management skills. Van Court is also Board President for the Institute of Play, a member of the President's Advisory Council at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and volunteers for a Brooklyn-based preschool preparatory program. In the past, Van Court led many program operations at Nickelodeon’s Nick Jr. and Noggin networks, as well as providing digital strategies, social media and marketing guidance, and editorial assistance.
87. Brian Sze
Company: Assembled
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Brian Sze is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Assembled, an operating system for modern customer support teams. Since its 2018 inception, Sze has scaled his company from 30 employees to over 500. Assembled recently secured $16.6 million in a Series A funding. Sze was previously an early member of the technology company Stripe, working as head of business operations and support tools. In the early days of his career, Sze was a member of the analytics team for Obama for America ’08, and practiced investment banking with RBC Capital Markets.
88. Geoffrey Woo
Company: HVMN
Title: Co-founder and Executive Chairman
Co-founder and Executive Chairman of HVMN, Geoffrey Woo is an innovator in the field of health supplements and metabolism performance research for those following a ketogenic diet. HVMN develops and manufactures food and beverages to support the diet. He is also the Co-founder of EAG, an influencer and creator marketing agency which matches influencers with up-and-coming brands. Woo was previously the CEO and Co-founder of Glassmap, which was later acquired by Groupon and incorporated into its interface.
89. Elise Smith
Company: Praxis Labs
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Elise Smith has dedicated her efforts to increasing accessibility and inclusion in the workplace through the immersive learning service she helped found, Praxis Labs, where she is the Chief Executive Officer. A Miller Social Change Leadership Award recipient, Smith has also invested time as a senior analyst at NewSchools Venture Fund, a nonprofit philanthropy group that aids in the gradual transformation of public education. Her years of dedication expand beyond the realm of workplace experience, as she has spent years volunteering her time at various organizations focused on bridging the gap in national diversity. Smith earned her bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College.
90. Peter Thiel
Company: Clarium Capital
Title: Founder and President
Peter Thiel is an American venture capitalist and businessman, currently working as the President of Clarium Capital, an investment and hedge fund firm he founded in 2002. He is also the chairman and co-founder at American software company Palantir, a board member at Facebook, a partner at the Founders Fund, and the chairman at venture capital companies Valar Ventures and Mithril Capital. Thiel is perhaps best known for founding PayPal, serving as CEO of the company until its sale to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.
91. Stephen Russell
Company: Prism Skylabs
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Prism Skylabs, Stephen Russell is approaching two decades of experience in video intelligence technology. He is the founder of Prism Insight Fund, a venture capital fund for ethical technology, and the acting director of Climb High Foundation which helps fund underprivileged women in developing countries. As a Silicon Valley veteran, Russell has excelled as an inventor, with over a dozen patents, and was an early investor in multiple successful endeavors including Uber, Ring, and JW Player.
92. David E. Weekly
Company: Medcorder
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
As Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Medcorder, David E. Weekly has innovated an app which allows users to record and decipher their consultations at a doctor’s office, so that they never miss any information pertaining to their health. He also serves as an investor and board observer at Blue Atlas Robotics in Denmark. Before creating his own company, Weekly served as a head of product and datacenter software at Google, and as product manager at Facebook. He has worked in many parts of the software industry as an architect and engineer.
94. Tracy Chou
Company: Block Party
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Tracy Chou has been pushing diversity in the field of tech since the start of her career, now acting as the Chief Executive Officer of her own start-up dedicated to solving online harassment problems, Block Party. The app she developed works to block unwanted users across platforms to help combat internet bullying. She has been named to Forbes’ Tech 30 under 30 list. Along with being the current Co-founder and Advisor for many projects like #MovingForward, The Arena, and Project Include, Chou also spent a large chunk of her career as an engineer and tech lead at Pinterest.
95. Nicolas Vandenberghe
Company: Chili Piper, KosmoTime
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Nicolas Vandenberghe is the current Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of two operating companies. The first, Chili Piper, is a reworking of his first company Floating Apps, and offers an advanced routing and scheduling solution for revenue management teams. KosmoTime, Vandenberghe’s other company, is a calendar app that is designed to keep users on task and organized with their daily schedules. He has previously founded and operated a number of software companies including Delean Vision and RedCart Technologies, both of which were later acquired. Vandenberghe earned his Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from Ecole Polytechnique in France.
96. Ophir Gottlieb
Company: Capital Market Laboratories
Title: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Ophir Gottlieb is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Capital Market Laboratories, which specializes in creating visualization tools for retail and institutional investment. Gottlieb's experience prior to founding Capital includes working as an option market maker on the NYSE ARCA exchange floor, as managing director of client services for Livevol, and as the managing director and product manager of quantitative research for GMI Ratings. He invented the Forensic Alpha Model (FAM) and co-invented the Accounting and Governance Risk Model (AGR), both purchased by MSCI. Gottlieb earned his Bachelor of Science degree in quantitative economics and decision systems from the University of California, San Diego, and his Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Southern California.
97. Gideon Yu
Company: San Francisco 49ers
Title: Co-owner
Gideon Yu is the current Co-owner and former president of the San Francisco 49ers football franchise, where he was the first president of color in the National Football League. He is also a lead investor and board member at Square. Yu is the former chief financial officer for social media giants Facebook and YouTube, the first two companies to ever reach a billion active users. Yu earned his Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School.
98. Tim Kendall
Company: Moment
Title: Chief Executive Officer
Tim Kendall is the Chief Executive Officer at Moment, a mobile app designed to help people monitor and cut down on their mobile screen time and use their phone in healthier ways. Kendall is also a board member at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and venture partner at Tidemark, a venture capital firm. His previous experience includes six years at Pinterest, the last three of which were spent as acting president of the company. He also spent several years at Facebook as the director of monetization.
99. Mae Jemison
Company: BioSentient Corporation
Title: Chief Executive Officer and President
Dr. Mae Jemison is the Chief Executive Officer and President of BioSentient Corporation, which commercializes NASA’s space-age technology to create health devices to treat various ailments. She is also the current principal of 100 Year Starship, a Dorothy Jemison Foundation of Excellence project which focuses on exploring the viability of human space travel. Dr. Jemison was the first African American woman to travel to space, aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992. She holds nine honorary doctorates and has founded multiple organizations and companies over the years, including The Earth We Share, an international science camp for children. Dr. Jemison received her Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree from Cornell Medical College.
100. Robert Zangrillo
Company: Dragon Global
Title: Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer
As Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Dragon Global, Robert Zangrillo has spent nearly a decade as the face of the private venture capital and real estate investment firm. His impressive investment track record includes Facebook, Uber, and Twitter, among others. Over the past 25 years, Zangrillo has been a prominent figure in the internet community, as a venture capital investor, active executive director, and advisor to high-growth companies. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Vermont.