Dave is a geek, investor, former software developer & entrepreneur, occasional blogger and internet marketing nerd. He lived in Silicon Valley for over 25 years and is passionate about startups & entrepreneurship. He invested in hundreds of companies all over the world.

Dave is the founding partner of 500 Startups (http://500.co), a global seed-stage VC fund & accelerator with ~$180M under management. They have invested in hundreds of companies across 50+ countries including: Twilio, SendGrid, Credit Karma, MakerBot (acq'd by SSYS for $400M), Wildfire Interactive (acq'd by GOOG for $350M), and Viki (acq'd by Rakuten for $200M).

Butch is President of QBO Innovation Hub, a public private partnership recently launched to nurture, mentor and prepare startups for exit. It is stage agnostic and will intervene opportunistically during the seed capital, Series A and pre-IPO stage by linking companies with retired senior executives for mentoring and local and foreign funders. He is also President of the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation, a private sector disaster management organization that includes many of the major business groups and recently won the Prince of Wales Business in Community UPS International Disaster Relief award. PDRF is the model for the UN’s Connecting Business Initiative. He is concurrently president of Pacific Global One, an aviation firm. Previously, he worked with a municipal bond insurance company in New York.

Prior to joining the bond firm, Butch was First Vice President and Special Assistant to the chairman of Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) and president of the PLDT Smart Foundation. He served as Vice President, Communications for TLC Beatrice International, a leveraged buyout and multinational food company in New York and Paris. He has worked with several New York public relations firms.

A graduate of Ateneo de Manila University, Butch has an M.A. in Journalism and Communications from the University of Florida. He was a recipient of the College of Journalism’s Alumnus of Distinction award in 2000. He returned to UF in 2003 as the Freedom Forum Distinguished Visiting Professor.

Alice leads Product Partnerships in Southeast Asia for Facebook, based in Singapore. In her role, she works closely with developers in the region to help them build, grow, and monetize their products leveraging the Facebook Platform and Internet.org.

Prior to Facebook, Alice was a product marketer and strategist for a large multinational agribusiness as well as a management consultant. In the startup space, she has worn many hats, including co-founder, business development, venture capitalist, and marketing. She earned her MBA from Harvard Business School and her bachelor degrees from The University of Texas at Austin.

"A speaker at the 1st GOAB about the State of Digital Marketing in Asia, Robin's been in sales for 30 years and digital marketing for 18. He owned and sold two successful European digital marketing agencies before moving to Anda, Bohol.

He's a digital marketing consultant with significant experience of coaching and training in business development/digital marketing for large organisations AND start ups.

He splits his time between running ANDAKIDZ charity and consulting."

"Miguel is the Country Manager of Payoneer Philippines, a leading cross-border payments company for small businesses and professionals worldwide. Founded in 2005 and based in New York, Payoneer is venture-backed, profitable and ranked in the top 100 of Inc. 5000’s Financial Services companies.

Miguel has been involved in financial services technology since 2003 with global solution providers such as FIS, SunGard and GFG Group (now Wirecard). He has worked with banks, mobile payment operators and payment schemes (Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay) across South East Asia to deliver card, mobile and cross border payment solutions for consumer and business-to-business (B2B) payments.

Miguel graduated from Ateneo De Manila University with a Bachelor of Science in Management Engineering."

Ari Lopez has worked in various industries since graduating from De La Salle University in 2005, bringing with him a wide array of experiences. He has seen work in the non-profit/NGO sector, the business process outsourcing industry and other corporate services firms, and the academe, returning to his alma mater as a member of the university’s administration.

After obtaining his Executive Masters in Business Administration degree from the Asian Institute of Management, he entered the consulting scene by joining Hybridigm Consulting Inc., the premier and pioneering biotechnology consulting firm in the Philippines, founded by World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, Maoi Arroyo.

Micah is the Community Rockstar at the country's leading coworking space, A SPACE Philippines. She works magic in different gatherings and community collaborations.

Ben Skelton is a Developer and Startup all-rounder. He left the corporate world in the UK to embark on riskier, more interesting SaaS startups in South East Asia, currently the newly released trustmystaff.com. In 2012 he broughttechtalks.ph to Bohol, now an active community. He can serve as a reference for attendees who fall in love with the Province and wish to set up shop here.

The neophyte senator authored the Go Negosyo Law, the first pre-poor and inclusive growth bill in the 16th Congress, and passed the Philippine Lemon Law to protect consumers against the sale of defective vehicles. With increased momentum, Senator Aquino passed four more laws in 2015, including the landmark legislation - the Philippine Competition Act - set to revolutionize the playing field for businesses, particularly for MSMEs and startups.

Prior to being elected as Senator, he became the youngest head of a government agency at age 25 when he was appointed as the Chairperson of the National Youth Commission. He co-founded the multi-awarded social enterprise, The Hapinoy Program. He has been named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in 2006, one of the Asian Social Entrepreneurs of the Year in 2011, and one of the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World in 2012.

Senator Aquino graduated with summa cum laude honors from the Ateneo de Manila University with a degree in Management Engineering.

"Nikki is currently heading the Business Development sector of Save ‘N Earn Wireless. Her new team serves as the innovation and tinkering lab of the 20-year old enterprise.

Her team’s passion is to continually create and innovate new ways to reach people, merging their current retail with online to create a seamless customer experience."

Joshua Lat serves as the Director for Software Development & Engineering of Deal Grocer. For the past couple of years, he has been sharing his knowledge in several conferences and meetups around the country to discuss working solutions to common problems in startups and web development.

Chef on Demand
Sitting with three other friends, Bryan opened the idea of a shared economy and the on-demand market. He focused particularly on the food industry, and with the constant push of his mentor from Silicon Valley, a crude food-on-demand service was born, which later was then more popularly known as Chef on Demand: Gourmet food made by chefs, delivered to you on demand. After Chef on Demand grew its traction, Bryan gained funding from 500 Start-ups, a Silicon Valley company that did funding for start-ups such as Grab, Carousel, Dollar-beard club and KFit.

Beginning RGC
About six years ago, Bryan saw the potential in web engineering teams and that building products were expensive, but there was a way to manage this expense. In order to form the team for the engineering and development, he then created a Development house that would offer web and mobile development services while creating internal products. This lead to the birth of Code Republiq. However Bryan was not content with merely creating a dev house that can create websites and mobile apps. He knew he was missing a vital piece in the whole puzzle. He needed ideas to get the websites and mobile apps their traffic and users. Partnering with a Digital Creative, Bryan put up together Creative Republiq, the digital marketing and creatives leg in his bigger vision. The final piece of this bigger vision eventually fell into place when Bryan sought specialists in production for photography and videography who he later partnered with to create: Pandesal Productions.

With each studio focused on their core specialty: Code Republiq for web and mobile development, Creative Republiq for creatives, design, branding and Social Media, and Pandesal Productions specialising in Video, photo and animation, RGC, Republiq Group of Companies was born.

Despite being a small group, RGC has already provided service and partnership for brands such as Kidzania, Bo's Coffee, and Aboitizland to name a few. Bryan considers RGC not necessarily at the level of major agencies in the country, however he finds it an advantage because the small group allows a certain level of flexibility to adapt to numerous changes in the market especially for tech.

RGC is a synergy of studios that can bring ideas from initiation, development, production, and deployment. RGC Is a brand incubator. With RGC, you dream it, they make it happen.

Imran is the founder and CEO of Stamford Advisors and PushDocs. He provides professional advise on the formation of companies in Singapore as well as overseas. He also assists clients in structuring their business, manage corporate compliance, taxes and immigration into Singapore.

Beyond Stamford Advisors, Imran used to be an Executive Committee member of the Young Entrepreneur Network in the Indian Chamber (""YEN@SICCI"") and a Representative in the Young Business Leaders Association in the Singapore Business Federation (""YBLA@SBF""). He was the branding brain child of the Red Pill Program, which aims to take entrepreneurs and small business to the next level.

Imran is the founder and CEO of Stamford Advisors and PushDocs. He provides professional advise on the formation of companies in Singapore as well as overseas. He also assists clients in structuring their business, manage corporate compliance, taxes and immigration into Singapore.

Beyond Stamford Advisors, Imran used to be an Executive Committee member of the Young Entrepreneur Network in the Indian Chamber (""YEN@SICCI"") and a Representative in the Young Business Leaders Association in the Singapore Business Federation (""YBLA@SBF""). He was the branding brain child of the Red Pill Program, which aims to take entrepreneurs and small business to the next level.

Jojy Azurin graduated from UP Diliman in 1985 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He is a veteran entrepreneur who has worked with a lot of entrepreneurs as founder, CEO, or Director of a long list of businesses: Open Systems Philippines, Data Matrix Corp., American Data Exchange Corp, BusinessSummaries.com, Continental Asia Regional Director, Freelancer.com, SparePartsAsia.com, AsiaPixel.com, Hiring.ph, Derusni.com, Manila Founder Institute, and 1000 Angels.

Jojy is currently the CEO of Horsepower.ph, which he co-founded with Diego Jose Ramos and Kit Sumabat in 2015. Horsepower.ph provides benefits to over 2,000 self-employed and OFW customers including healthcare, free legal, accounting and tax consultations, online payments of benefits, and a telemedicine platform where they can consult with Philippine-based doctors.

The case study for today’s panel is Printers2Go.PH, an e-commerce site which Jojy co-founded with his childhood friend Nelson Lim in 2013. They decided to sell printers and projectors online to meet the growing demand for mid-to-high range equipment that was not being efficiently served by the traditional distribution channels.

In just over 2 years, Printers2Go.PH has already generated revenues of over US$2.5M. They plan to expand to Indonesia and Malaysia, to further accelerate growth.

In 2007 I established Triple i Consulting Inc. whose core competencies lay in Regulatory Compliance and Consulting for the following sectors; Food and Drug, Environmental, Accounting and Finance, and Corporate Compliance.

Facing a growing demand from an existing client base in January of 2013 I founded Salarium Ltd which is tackling the global payroll industry. With thousands of users already on board in the Philippines we are beginning our international expansion next year.

Besides Triple i Consulting and Salarium, I spend a small percentage of my time working on various companies and projects, sitting on the board of and mentoring start ups.

Mark is an art director, illustrator and writer whose work has been exhibited at Tokyo Designers' Week. His works were included by Luerzer's Archive compendium of 200 Best Illustrators Worldwide from the years 2009 to 2012. He was a recipient of the Merit of Excellence from the Department of Science & Technology (Philippines) for contributions to digital design. He was also a finalist at the Philippine Graphic Fiction Awards, judged by New York Times best-selling author Neil Gaiman. Has worked for non-profit organizations, game design companies and publishing firms. Most of all, he co-founded the award-winning illustration and design studio Happy Garaje, servicing clients from the Philippines, Dubai, the Netherlands and USA.

I'm now the Developer Evangelist at SMART.com.ph - check out SMART's APIs at http://developer.smart.com.ph - I'm also a startup evangelist for IdeaSpaceFoundation.org and co-founded SMARTDevNet (SMART Developer Network) - the Philippines fastest growing developer community as of 2014 with Jim Ayson.

Jay is a serial tech entrepreneur, a coder, and a soccer player.

He is currently co-founder and CEO of Ruby development shop PROUDCLOUD, co-founder and CTO of healthtech startup MEDIFI, and the founder and CEO of LAUNCHGARAGE, an innovation hub based in Manila.

In 2002, he founded Wi-Fi hotspot network Airborne Access, which was acquired by PLDT in 2008.

As a regular speaker at local and international forums on the South East Asian startup ecosystem, and holding roles as director, advisor, and mentor in various tech startups, Jay is considered to be one of the pioneers and thought leaders of the Philippine tech startup scene.

I've been leading Ruby on Rails engineering teams for many years and have successfully launched a couple of startups and dozens of internal and client products.

A ruby developer, I invent webtoys. I take CTO roles.

I focus on high quality, test driven, well designed projects only. I'm open for collaboration on new things. I'm interested on new and cutting-edge technologies but delivery and quality is more important for me.

I've been focusing on Ticketbase.com recently.

I run MashupGarage, a new startup that focuses on high-end product development and technical leadership. Recently: TicketBase, LawAdvisor. If you have a great app idea, talk to me.

I also own Proudcloud, a Ruby on Rails service company with about 30+ Ruby on Rails engineers. We help you build your products and your team.

A reluctant manager with a dislike for offices has lead a rockstar team to create the Philippines’ most innovative and successful coworking brand. London-born, Manila-resident, Matthew has worked worldwide for 20 years in brands, media and start-ups, supporting what he describes as the “innovation community: a global tribe of awesome”.

Jerry felt that he wasn't a bright enough to be hired when he graduated, so he decided to start a company to chart his own success or failure. He co-founded Titanium Technologies in 2001 with two engineering classmates from the University of Santo Tomas.

Titanium first provided custom client-server solutions to local businesses to transform them into technology-enabled enterprises at a time when there were no viable solutions designed for mid-sized companies. In 2001, Titanium pivoted and launched the Philippine's first Filipino web-based SaaS solution focused on HR + Payroll automation. Today, Titanium has more than 200 customers ranging in size from 7 to 7,000 employees, and expect a 25% annual increase in their user headcount during the next 5 years.

Jerry bought out his co-founders when they decided to part ways in order to preserve their friendship, rather than test it in anticipation of the really difficult ""re-startup"" years after the pivot to SaaS.

Jerry learned programming using dBase, which most young people today have never even heard of. He has worked under the radar all these years and is happy to now crawl out of his cave to finally meet and learn from all of you!

Rio Palabrica-Ilao graduated with honors in Ateneo de Manila University in 2001, with a degree in Management Engineering. After graduation, she worked in Procter & Gamble Finance, where her stellar performance got her assigned to P&G subsidiaries in Singapore and Japan to handle global brands like SK-II and Pantene. In 2009, at the height of her career, she resigned to help her husband manage a growing retail business.

In 2012, upon noticing the business shift towards mobile devices, she and her husband Jerry founded MobileOptima to develop products for SME businesses. This led to the development of TARKIE, a workforce management and productivity tool that provides companies with 360-degree visibility on the activities of their field teams.

TARKIE now has more than 1,000 users in large clients such as Bounty Fresh, Silka Papaya, Ever Bilena, Fortune Care, etc. TARKIE also won the 2016 IdeaSpace competition and aims to quadruple its user base over the next 3 years.

Despite her busy schedule, Rio still finds time to tutor her 3 young children.

On any given day, RJ Ledesma is hosting an event, taping a segment for his TV show, overseeing the operations of his food markets, and writing his weekly column.

As an entrepreneur, RJ is the co-founder of the Mercato Centrale of night food markets and EnterPH, a company that assists foreign businesses and start ups set up their business in the Philippines.

As an events and tv host, RJ is currently the host of Bloomberg TV’s Bright Ideas - a show that features start up companies, and ANC’s Philippine Realty TV . He is also a sought after events and wedding host, moderator for business events and a motivational speaker. RJ was recognised as Best Male Emcee in the 25th Aliw Awards.

As a writer and editor, RJ has a lifestyle columnist for the Philippine Star since 2005. His award-winning column Pogi from A Parallel Universe comes out every Wednesday. He is the author of six best-selling books, three of which are National Book Award Finalists. He is a UP National Writers Workshop and Silliman University Writers Working fellow.

RJ is the Honorary Consul of Monaco to the Philippines. He graduated with a double degree in Applied Economics and Business Management from De La Salle University and a Masters in Real Estate Development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Gian is CEO and Co-founder of InnoVantage, a startup dedicated to bringing collaboration and productivity solutions to businesses worldwide. A graduate of the Ateneo de Manila University, Gian began his career in the corporate world, starting in support and eventually moving up to project management, software development director and then CIO, for various multinationals such as HP, Unilever, Efficio and Montpac. He has then founded 3 tech companies before embarking on his latest endeavor, InnoVantage. In his spare time, Gian loves to read, build lego sets, spend time with his wife and daughter and tend to his 11 cats.

A journalist for at least 30 years, I built on the discipline of traditional journalism and embraced what technology offers: social media, crowdsourcing and big data.

Author of "FROM BIN LADEN TO FACEBOOK: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism" and "Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of al-Qaeda's Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia"

I'm interested in seeing how the combination of broadcasting, the Internet, social media and mobile phone technology can be used for social change.

Patrick “Patch” Dulay is a startup enabler. He is the founder and CEO of The Spark Project, an online crowdfunding platform for passion-driven Filipino projects.

As a lifelong learner and teacher, his passion for education and entrepreneurship inspires him to serve entrepreneurs by providing them access to tools that help accelerate their business ideas to reality. He’s an experienced resource speaker and facilitator on various topics like crowdfunding, social entrepreneurship, business model canvas, lean startup, innovation and design both here and abroad. He’s been conducting workshops and mentoring entrepreneurs young and old since 2013.

As an innovation and program consultant, he has worked with Ayala Land Inc. in mounting IDEA’YALA, the flagship youth challenge of the Ayala Malls crowdsourcing innovative ideas that shape the mall of the future.

He served as the Entrepreneurship Committee head of the World Economic Forum initiated Global Shapers Community Manila hub for 2015, and is one of 4 Filipino delegates chosen to be part of the Economic Empowerment cohort of the Young South East Asian Leaders Initiative Professional Fellows Program (YSEALI PFP) for Spring 2016.

JM Mariano is the founder of Bigbag Fresh, an online grocery currently operating in Pampanga, Philippines. He manages virtual teams and specializes in eCommerce online selling and helps online sellers setup their store and source their products from manufacturers.

Raymond is the Co-founder, President, and Chief Operating Officer of Xurpas since 2001. He is responsible for the day-to- day, and overall business operations from, finance, human resources, carrier relationship management, marketing, product conceptualization, design, and go-to- market strategies. He is the overall head of the mobile consumer, and enterprise business units of Xurpas, which spans 6 companies and 900 employees. Under his leadership, Xurpas grew from a start-up to become the biggest technology company in the Philippines, which listed in the Philippine Stock Exchange now valued at over P31 billion. Raymond is also a key investor relations officer in Asia, North America, and Europe. Before Xurpas, he was a senior programmer at iAyala, where he developed and deployed the first mobile internet site of the Philippines back in 2000. His career started with Integrated Microelectronics Inc. (IMI) where he worked as a programmer.

Mr Tong, who currently serves as the Investment Director of Infocomm Investments Pte Ltd (IIPL), has held top management positions in multinationals, SMEs, startups and non-profits, across a variety of industries, from enterprise software to distribution. Prior to joining IIPL, he was the Managing Partner (Asia Pacific) for Wassax Ventures, a US-based private VC specialising in Biotech, VR, AR and Energy Storage.

Eddie is a venture partner with 500 Startups, the world's most active early stage VC firm based in Silicon Valley. He is focused on investing in Vietnam's next great tech startups as well as helping develop 500 Startups' offerings in corporate innovation and startup ecosystem development. His efforts have been covered by Bloomberg, BBC, the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, and various regional outlets. In 2015 he was recognized as one of Forbes Vietnam's 30 Under 30, and in 2016 he was selected as 1 of 50 Global Shapers to attend the World Economic Forum's flagship conference in Davos. Prior to 500 Startups, he had experience in strategy and finance for companies & clients ranging from startups to Fortune 500 corporations, primarily in the technology, media, telecommunications sectors but also financial services, manufacturing, and energy. He received degrees from Harvard University and Yale University, and serves on the global Board of Directors of the Harvard Alumni Association.

Earl is currently the Board Advisor for the Science and Technology Advisory Council in New York. He is also the Program Manager for Corporate Data at the world’s largest hedge fund and an active advisor to emerging market start-up companies.

Prior for moving to the NY-area, in his aim to support emerging market innovation, Earl spent 4 years in Southeast Asia. Earl co-founded the IdeaSpace Foundation, a non-profit incubator and accelerator based in Manila with $12M in funding. He was also the Vice President of Corporate Development and Innovation at Smart Communications, the Philippine’s largest mobile provider with 70 million subscribers. He was a Business Incubation Manager at Cisco’s Emerging Technologies Group in Silicon Valley. He also was a Senior Systems Engineer at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems in Los Angeles. He worked in VC firms H&Q Asia Pacific in Manila and Investor Growth Capital in Menlo Park.

Earl obtained a B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering, Summa Cum Laude, from Boston University, a Masters in Systems Engineering from Cornell University, an Executive Leadership Program from HarvardKennedy School and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Alex Kayanan is an engineer, entrepreneur, and a professional manager. His career spans across different industries and sectors, but he is most in his element leading an underdog team against great odds.

Alex received a Mechanical Engineering degree from the Colorado School of Mines in the US. He spent five years leading troops around the world as a US Army Officer. He then jumped into several hotspots in the Middle East as a government contractor before being invited to the Philippines to head the international engineering office for a US publicly traded company.

Having fallen in love with the Philippines, he became an entrepreneur and stood up a construction management firm in Makati. After six gut-wrenching years, the company closed down, giving Alex invaluable experience in a variety of business subjects. He spent a year as a management consultant at a BPO while contemplating his next step before being introduced to PhilDev and taking up the fight against poverty.

Vitaly M. Golomb is the Global Startup Evangelist and Investor at HP Ventures. He is a Silicon Valley-based serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and acclaimed designer. Vitaly is a contributing writer to TechCrunch and author of the upcoming book: Accelerated Startup – The New Business School.

Prior to joining HP Ventures, Vitaly took three companies from idea to exit. He founded Keen Systems (Acquired by Aleyant), an award-winning ecommerce software company and creator of the award-winning “Print is Big” campaign. Vitaly was also the Executive Producer of the Startup AddVenture conference across seven countries. He has served as an advisor, consultant, and board member to a number of companies, including: Rimac Automobili (world’s fastest electric car), Breathometer (SharkTank), SenStay, Zite (Acquired by CNN), Topicmarks (Acquired by Tagged), NewsBasis (Acquired by PR Newswire), SpeedDate.com (Acquired by IAC), and others.

Vitaly grew up in Cupertino and has been involved with startups since his teenage years. He holds a degree in Computer and Video Imaging and has guest lectured at Stanford, UC Berkeley, St. Mary’s and other universities around the world on entrepreneurship, innovation, and design.

Vitaly is passionate about improving society by nurturing entrepreneurship travels to over 20 countries every year as a keynote speaker, and is a consistently top-ranked mentor at a number of startup accelerator programs in US, Europe, and Asia. He consults and teaches workshops to the next generation of entrepreneurs, as well as enterprises and governments fostering innovation.

Jon Cholak is a venture investment professional who serves as a start up mentor at Plug & Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, CA. Jon is also on the venture investment team at USAA; with nearly $500M in committed capital, Jon manages direct investments in Software, Security, IoT, Consumer, and Financial Services technology companies. Jon represents USAA on the boards of directors for Roostify, Robin Systems, CafeX Communications, Automatic Labs and PrecisionHawk. Jon previously served on the board of Saffron Technology (acquired by Intel in October 2015).

Prior to joining USAA, Jon worked for Intel Corporation and Deloitte Consulting, LLP. While at Intel, Jon managed a portfolio of early-stage internal ventures designed to provide non-core organic revenue growth. During his tenure at Deloitte Consulting, Jon worked with numerous private and public sector clients concentrating on strategic management, process reengineering, and systems modernization and integration.

Jon holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems and International Business from New York University, an MBA from The University of Texas at Austin.

Dan Clarke is the Founder and CEO of Disruptient, a leading SEO & Digital marketing agency in South East Asia, based out of Singapore, with clients across Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

With over a decade’s experience in the industry – and a career spanning Europe, The Middle East, and Asia – prior to founding disruptient, Dan was the head of SEO for Middle East & North Africa in Dubai. He worked at two of the largest global media agencies, with clients including HSBC, Nissan, and Adidas.

Before that, Dan worked with Rocket Internet in Berlin heading up Groupon’s international expansion ahead of the company’s $17.8 billion public listing on the New York stock exchange in 2011.

Vitaly M. Golomb is the Global Startup Evangelist and Investor at HP Ventures. He is a Silicon Valley-based serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and acclaimed designer. Vitaly is a contributing writer to TechCrunch and author of the upcoming book: Accelerated Startup – The New Business School.

Prior to joining HP Ventures, Vitaly took three companies from idea to exit. He founded Keen Systems (Acquired by Aleyant), an award-winning ecommerce software company and creator of the award-winning “Print is Big” campaign. Vitaly was also the Executive Producer of the Startup AddVenture conference across seven countries. He has served as an advisor, consultant, and board member to a number of companies, including: Rimac Automobili (world’s fastest electric car), Breathometer (SharkTank), SenStay, Zite (Acquired by CNN), Topicmarks (Acquired by Tagged), NewsBasis (Acquired by PR Newswire), SpeedDate.com (Acquired by IAC), and others.

Vitaly grew up in Cupertino and has been involved with startups since his teenage years. He holds a degree in Computer and Video Imaging and has guest lectured at Stanford, UC Berkeley, St. Mary’s and other universities around the world on entrepreneurship, innovation, and design.

Joshua Lat serves as the Director for Software Development & Engineering of Deal Grocer. For the past couple of years, he has been sharing his knowledge in several conferences and meetups around the country to discuss working solutions to common problems in startups and web development.

Tim is a semi-retired systems engineer that took a break from software engineering to explore the human aspects of software development. Now working as the Director Of Stack Overflow Communities, Tim focuses on making sure that Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange continue to grow with the communities that they serve, while finding new ways to serve them. When he's not working, Tim is a dad and husband, a world citizen and is very likely to try whatever it is that you're eating.

Edgar Ilaga is the Chief Technology Officer of SkyEye, a startup focused on the development and application of remotely piloted systems (commonly known as drones) to solve problems in geodesy, engineering, agriculture and forestry, and humanitarian affairs.

Prior to joining SkyEye, he worked as an Information and Communications Technology for Development consultant for various nonprofits, where he focused on the creation and adoption of free and open source software and resources for disaster management.

Haifa is a software developer and tech community leader. She serves as Executive Director for DevCon Philippines (DevConPH), a national volunteer organization promoting collaborative growth and competence among developers in the Philippines. DevConPH regularly hosts campus tours, code camps, conferences, hackathons and various initiatives in partnership with different technology groups.

Haifa is also a Project Manager for Direct Works Media (DWM), a US-based tech consulting company focused on mobile and web solutions. Prior to DWM, she was an iOS developer at NMG, a development and outsourcing shop based in Makati. She has BS degree in Computer Science from Ateneo de Cagayan - Xavier University.

Rosario Juan is an entrepreneur and a digital marketing strategist for various small and medium enterprises. She is one of the co- founders of TweetupMNL, a meetup community for social media enthusiasts that conducts regular ""tweetups"" and annual Social Media Day events. She was appointed Lead for Google Business Group, Makati chapter and is one of the lead volunteers behind the #rescuePH initiative.

In 2013, Ros was chosen to participate in the International Visitor Leadership Program of the U.S. Department of State as the Philippine delegate for its “ASEAN: Connecting Sustainable Communities through New Media” track. She was also the former Social Media Director for Movent, a Group M company and the country's first and largest fully-integrated digital advertising agency.

Ros operates Commune, a café in Manila’s central business district, Makati. Commune proudly serves only Philippine coffee and has become a community hub in its area.

Richard is with RTI International, a non-profit research and technical services company headquartered in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA. He is currently the Research and Industry Partnerships Manager of the STRIDE (Science, Technology, Research and Innovation for Development) Program of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). His portfolio of activities under the STRIDE program brings about effective collaborations between industry and academe toward more innovative products and companies in the Philippines. He also provides technical oversight of industry-academe research and development grants funded by USAID through STRIDE.

He was an adjunct professor of Chemistry at Ateneo de Manila University, directing undergraduate thesis research into solid state pharmaceutical materials. Prior to this he was a Principal Scientist with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in North Carolina; serving on various pharmaceutical research and development teams. Projects include drug compounds for respiratory, metabolic, oncology, and viral therapies from pre-formulation to Phase 2 clinical trials. While at GSK he also directed research into using nanotechnology techniques to study drug substances and delivery systems; and has authored analytical protocols and regulatory submissions for GSK.

Richard has a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Georgetown University in Washington DC, and has authored peer-reviewed scientific papers and presentations in the United States. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry at the Ateneo de Manila University.

Oko is a Regional Director in APAC, Startup programs of Techstars.

Oko is an active founder and a community builder. He has cofounded and helps run several startups in Asia.

Oko has received a bachelors degree in Finance from Portland State University before continuing onto a masters degree in Engineering Technology Management but decided to return home to Mongolia. He then received his MBA in Mongolia. When he is not working, he can be found on Squash courts or on long-haul Motorbike rides in Asia.

- Program Manager with over 15+ years of public service experience providing project management and supervision

- Possesses strong multi-tasking skills, with ability to simultaneously manage various programs and projects

- With comprehensive experience on ICT regional development and program implementation

- With extensive networking linkages with the ICT industry and local ICT organizations across the country

Currently with the DICT as Program Director for eInnovation, he has actively served in the public sector for ICT development as part of the Commission on ICT and the Department of Science and Technology - ICT Office since 2007.

He started his career in the IT industry in 1975 as a Systems Trainee at NCR Philippines. In the course of his extensive involvement in the industry, he has worked for multinational companies like Fujitsu, WeServ, Siemens-Nixdorf, Comparex Germany and Unisys Australia in various executive positions.

He joined the Philippine Computer Society in 1990 and served as President in 2004-2005 and was the President of the PCS Foundation in 2005-2006. He also served as a member of the Executive Committee of the Southeast Asia Regional Computer Confederation in 2004-2005.

Mr. Ibrahim served as Chair of the APEC Electronic Commerce Steering Group(ECSG) from 2011-2012 after having Chaired the Paperless Trading Subgroup of ECSG for 2 years. He also served as the ASEAN TELSOM Leader of the Philippines from 2009-11.

He was a member of the Board of Advisers of the De La Salle University College of Computer Studies and the University of the Philippines Information Technology Development Center (UPITDC). Currently, he is a Trustee and President of the University of the Philippines System Information Technology Foundation (UPSITF). He is also serving his 9th term as member of the Technical Panel for Information Technology Education (TPITE) of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED).

He did his B. S. Major in Chemistry at the Far Eastern University and Ateneo de Manila University Graduate School of Business for his post graduate studies. He completed a Public Sector Executive Program on Innovative Government at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of the National University of Singapore.

During the 2012 International ICT Awards organized by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, he was given the ICT Individual Contributor Award for his contributions to the growth of the Philippine IT-BPO Industry. He was also recently named as one of the Ten ICT Industry Movers and Shakers for the period 2002-2012 and recipient of the Boards’ Choice as Government Champion, both given by the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP).

Nora Terrado is the Undersecretary of the Industry Management Group of the Department of Trade and Industry. Before entering the civil service, Usec. Terrado was the Country Manager of Headstrong Philippines and Vice President for IT Services and Capital Markets of Genpact Philippines.

As an IT pioneer and industry leader in the Philippines with a solid track record in leading successful change programs for global clients, Usec. Terrado has significantly made solid contribution in the Ease of Doing Business (EODB) initiatives. She was the Chair for the 2015 APEC Women and the Economy Fora. She was also among the 2014's 100 Influential Filipina Women (FWN100TM).

Usec. Terrado is an alumnus of the University of Asia and the Pacific for her graduate studies in business economics and the University of Saint La Salle for her degree in Commerce. She is a Certified Public Accountant.

"Partying made easy" has been the main objective of Guestlist.ph since it was founded by Ron Baetiong in 2009 when he was still an Entrepreneurship student from the University of Santo Tomas. The tech startup which now boasts of 24,000 members first underwent several challenges before receiving seed funding from Kickstart Ventures, Inc., a wholly-owned incubator and investment subsidiary of Globe Telecom.

"Since Filipinos love to have fun and celebrate, none has figured out that there is an untapped three billion market in the nightlife industry. We are thankful for Kickstart's mentorship and funding support which brings Guestlist nearer to its full potential," Baetiong said.

"Yosuke Fukada is the CEO - YOYO Holdings Pte. Ltd. - a mobile technology startup that specializes in driving traffic for advertisers & direct clients for increasing market share for brands and partners & with a vision of providing free internet to its users. A 8-year veteran of the competitive world of mobile platforms and developing new markets in the tech industry, he is best noted for his expertise in innovative solutions, market entry & penetration strategies.

With his deep and enriching understanding of customer insights and innovative problem solving approach, Yosuke is responsible to drive initiatives delivering superior mobile experience across all customer touch points like product design, UI, UX, & most importantly being with the user’s & client’s heart.

Yosuke has Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Engineering and a Master of Business Administration, all from Osaka University."

"Mario is a true global professional with extensive experience in leadership, strategy, innovation and international expansion.

Mario has built, managed and trained sales and operations teams across Africa (Angola & Nigeria) and the APAC region (Papua New Guinea, Macau, Angola, Nigeria, Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Hong Kong)

Under Mario's leadership, Easy Taxi (Rocket Internet-backed company) become Asia's biggest taxi application with operations in 9 countries and counting.

Mario also established and manage regional and global partnerships with top tech companies like We Chat, Waze, Line and Xiaomi as well as top local partners among Malls, Telecom Operators and big brands in the FMCG space.

With more than 6 years in the region, Mario is passionate about building and training sales, marketing and operations teams across Asia and fostering entrepreneurship throughout various speaking events he had performed across the region and around the globe.

Mario is also passionate about empowering and enabling people, developing businesses and supporting companies and institutions all around the world. Driven by success he strongly believes that we are in the era where relationship is the key to stand out and excel in today's competitive business environment."

"Frank Denbow is a entrepreneur of Jamaican & Guyanese decent from New Jersey. Founder of StartupThreads, Frank works to help companies create and ship custom apparel to their top customers and leads. As a curator for the StartupDigest and facilitator for StartupWeekend, Frank works to help support entrepreneurs in various communities to find jobs, connect with other founders, and get feedback.

Passionate about Computer Science education, Frank is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon Computer Science (2008) and interned in a programming capacity at Apple. Frank is also on the board for the Academy for Software Engineering, a computer science focused high school in New York."

"Lawyer Jocelle Batapa-Sigue is a three-termer councilor of the City of Bacolod responsible for promoting Bacolod to become a Center of Excellence for Information and Communications Technology-Business Process Management (ICT-BPM in the Philippines) in 2013.

She lead local stakeholders in 2004 as a new councilor to develop strategies to attract ICT-enabled jobs and opportunities to the countryside, and saw the city moved from 5th in 2009 to 3rd in 2012 in the annual Top Next Wave Cities in the Outsourcing and Off-shoring Industry of the Philippines from 2009 to 2012 and from No. 100 in 2010 to currently No. 85 City in the Tholons International Top 100 Cities in the World for Outsourcing.

Today she plays a vital role as founder, former president and current trustee in charge of eGovernance of the National ICT Confederation of the Philippines (NICP), a network of more than 50 ICT Councils created in various cities and provinces in the country. She leads NICP's annual search for best eGovernance practices for local government units.

In 2013, she was awarded as Philippine Individual ICT Contributor of the Year Awarded by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines and IT-Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP) for her contribution to inclusive growth by providing mentorship to new ICT councils.

She is the 2012 Eisenhower Fellow of the Philippines in the Eisenhower Fellowships Multi-Nation Program with her fellowship focused on ICT, ICT startups, animation and game development and health care information management. She currently leads the management of the technology business incubation center of Negros Occidental."

"Stephanie Caragos is the President & CEO of the 16 year running IT Company, Syntactics, Inc. and is the founder of letIThelp.org, a social enterprise that envisions in helping young Filipinos hone their skills in IT and increase their chances of getting stable and profitable jobs.

She is a speaker and mentor in various Online Marketing, Web, ICT and ICT businesses related seminars and talks and works tirelessly in finding innovative ways of marketing online for clients. She is also a staunch supporter of Filipino Small and Medium Enterprises as she continues to develop products and services that would benefit SMEs as well as help them increase their success rate in using technology in business.

Stephanie is currently the president of the CDO ICT Business Council and works with the members and stakeholders in the city in promoting ICT to support more startups and create more jobs in the city. She recently completed her Eisenhower Fellowship and was awarded as the Douglas Dillon Named Fellow for the year 2016."

"Promoting the growth of e-commerce in the Philippines since 1997. Janette Toral is the site owner of DigitalFilipino.com. She partnered with Asian Institute of E-Commerce and AIE College to offer the Certified E-Commerce Specialist, Entrepreneur, and Professional Program.

Co-founder of i-Metrics Asia-Pacific Corporation generating the monthly E-Commerce Intensity Index & E-Commerce Maturity Scorecard. Monitoring B2B volume & Internet user behaviour.

She is a Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Product Owner.

She participated in the IVLP or International Visitors Leadership Program 2011 (individual program) sponsored by the U.S. Embassy. Featured as 1 of the 6 women innovator at the APEC Women and Economy Summit 2011, San Francisco, USA.

She got recognized as Champion of Philippine Internet and E-Commerce Hall of Fame Award given by Asian Institute of E-Commerce in 2010; Globe Tattoo Digital Elder Award 2009; E-Services E-Champion Awards 2008 - Policy and Legal Category by the Department of Trade and Industry / CITEM / Board of Investments; International Schools Cyberfair Ambassador Award 2004 and 2002 given by Global Schoolnet USA; World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS) Philippines Awards 2003 E-Learning Category for her E-Commerce Workshop Online.

Janette, as former technical consultant / executive director of the Congressional Oversight Committee for the E-Commerce Law, was instrumental for the creation of policies in the area of consumer protection (value added services, e-commerce, electronic banking), data privacy for the private sector, & acceptance of electronic payment in government.

As founding president of the Philippine Internet Commerce Society, she was instrumental for the passage of the Y2K Law and E-Commerce Law. She retired in 2002. Other organizations she served as board member in the past were the Philippine Computer Emergency Response Team (PH-CERT) and Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP).

"Joey Gurango started his IT career way back in 1982, when he got a job with Apple Computer as a product support engineer for the Lisa computer, the predecessor to the Macintosh. Then in 1986, he worked as a programmer at Microsoft on version 1.0 of Excel for Windows. He moved back to the Philippines in 1991 to start his own software company called Match Data Systems, which he sold to Great Plains Software in 1999 and was acquired by Microsoft in 2003. He worked as a Microsoft executive between 1999 and 2003, first as the Managing Director for the business solutions software development team, then as the Asia-Pacific Regional Director for Products and Services.

He is currently the CEO and CTO of Gurango Software, an award-winning global provider of Human Capital Management solutions, serving over 500 customers in 15 different countries. In addition to leading Gurango Software, Joey has co-founded or mentored several start-ups, co-founded the SPRING.ph LaunchPad program, and has been President of the Philippine Software Industry Association (2013-2014). He is currently an Independent Director of Xurpas Inc. and Managing Director of Kation Technologies.

Joey’s advocacy is to grow the Philippine software industry to become a major contributor to nation-building."

"A graduate of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA with a Bachelor of Business Administration (Finance & CIS), Ashran started his career in the Oil & Gas sector with Petronas MITCO. He is a well-known figure in the local and regional entrepreneurship ecosystem and has led many organizations namely; Chairman, New Entrepreneurs Foundation (myNEF); Chairman, myHarapan; President, Malaysian Association of Bumiputera ICT Industry & Entrepreneurs (NEF); and Deputy Chairman, Global Innovation & Entrepreneurship Foundation. In addition, he also served as an Advisory Board Member to Malaysian SME Development Academy (MASMED) as well as a Board Member for SME Corp.

In 2011, Ashran co-founded Joota, a social content networking site. Joota secured private investments of USD2.1mil, with patent and distribution partners in the USA. His recent initiatives include creating an accelerator for the creative sector via comics – ComicXcel and a new ASEAN regional award for start-ups – Rice Bowl Start-up Awards.

Ashran was appointed as the CEO of MaGIC in May 2016."

"Diane is the Executive Director of IdeaSpace. She is responsible for managing the foundation’s flagship incubation and acceleration program. Prior to IdeaSpace, Diane served as Executive Assistant to the Head of Strategy for First Pacific Company Ltd where she gained exposure in closing deals, M&As and strategy management.

Diane also brings her experience in people and government relations, and manufacturing which she gained from previous roles in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and in the semiconductor manufacturing industry as manager of Analog Devices Philippines’ Total Quality Management Program.

​She took her undergraduate studies in B. A. Organizational Communication (cum laude) from the University of the Philippines – Manila, where she focused her research papers and thesis on team cohesion."

Khailee Ng loves creating tech startups. As an entrepreneur he has founded an ecommerce site Groupsmore (acquired by Groupon) and media company Says.com (acquired by Catcha Group). Khailee is managing partner of Silicon Valley's most active seed venture capital firm. The firm has done over 1,600 investments in 50 countries, of which he has led 110+ investments in Southeast Asian tech startups, including Grabtaxi, HappyFresh, Carousell, Bukalapak and other regional champions. As every industry continues to be disrupted by new technology and evolving consumer behavior, Khailee and 500 Startups specialize in looking for patterns of business opportunity and investing in entrepreneurs who will realize them. His investment activity and industry opinions are featured by Bloomberg, TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, and Fortune, and the 500 Startups portfolio of companies have collectively raised over $10Billion USD.

Mr. Jojo Flores is the Co-Founder of Plug and Play Tech Center , a Silicon Valley based technology startup accelerator, which he started in January 2006. He is involved in the overall strategic planning and his immediate focus is on building strategic alliances in the Philippines and other reigns of South East Asia. In the Philippines, Jojo is Co-Founder & COO of Launchgarage, which started operations in March 2016. Patterned after Plug and Play, Launchgarage is an incubator co-working space, accelerator, and investor for tech startups in the Philippines and the ASEAN region.

Dr. David Hall is the Chief of Party for the USAID Science, Technology, Research, and Innovation for Development (STRIDE) Program. He has more than 30 years of professional experience specializing in engineering, science, and technology. He is experienced in the start-up, funding, accreditation, and management of new university programs and centers. He has served as Dean of Computing and Engineering at universities in the United Kingdom and in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). He has also served as the Director of the Appropriate Technology Center at Kenyatta University in Kenya. More recently, he was Chief of Party for the USAID/Liberia Excellence in Higher Education for Liberian Development (EHELD) Project. In universities, he has supervised 6 research PhDs, has 50 publications and has generated or managed grant and private-sector funding in excess of US$30 million.

Mark is an entrepreneur and a tech co-founder of Caresharing. A global software company building a secure online platform for implementing electronic health records of patients. A company with teams in Amsterdam and Cebu, and customers in Netherlands and in Japan.

He is a computer programmer by profession, a mountain biker, a trail runner, and a parent. His interest is in: Software, Technology, Startups, and everything outdoors.

He is passionate about using technology and software in helping solve the world’s biggest problems in healthcare and education.

"Jun Sa-a is the Managing Director of the Cebu Educational Development Foundation for Information Technology or CEDFIT. He is the immediate past President of the Cebu City National Science High School Alumni Foundation Inc. He also sits as one of the Trustees in the European Chamber of Commerce Visayas . He is now the Chairman of Regional Technical Education Skills and Development of TESDA Region 7. Currently, he is actively organizing and helping EMC’s Academic Alliance Program grow all over the Philippines. He is an active member of the Visayas ICT Cluster and has contributed in the successful implementations of the cluster’s projects. He is currently the ICT/BPM Chairperson of the Cebu Business Month and has handled the chairmanship since 2012.

He is currently the President of the National ICT Confederation of the Philippines or NICP, a confederation consisting of more than 40 ICT Councils all over the Philippines.

He is actively promoting Cebu and other cities outside of Metro Manila as an ICT/BPM location for new or expanding companies."

"Steve D. Benitez is the founder and CEO of Bo's Coffee. He spearheads the movement for homegrown coffee in the Philippines. He is also the enthusiastic supporter of Philippine brilliance, supporting local talent, artistry and ingenuity. Because of his belief in the Filipino's capacity, he reinvented Bo's Coffee to be a platform for startup businesses and social enterprises.

He was also the former President of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Philippine Charter, a global business network of over 10,000 business owners in over 40 countries.

With an advanced education in business and ""a passion for coffee"", Mr. Benitez immersed himself in every aspect of the specialty coffee business to learn everything possible about its art and science. He attended multiple seminars, conferences, and exhibitions on the business, to add to his deepening knowledge of it from the ground up.

He aims to make Bo's Coffee succeed in the global market, bringing with him his pride for homegrown coffee, tradition and values. Bo's Coffee now has 80 stores all over the Philippines. It is currently celebrating its 20th year in the industry."

"Jamie heads up muru-D Singapore, a startup accelerator backed by Telstra. He is an experienced strategist within the telecoms, media and technology sector, with strong transaction experience.

Before joining muru-D, Jamie held a number of executive roles at Telstra including General Manager, Corporate Strategy and Director of Strategy for Telstra Media Group (FOXTEL, Sensis and Digital Media). He has advised multiple CEOs and Boards on market entry / exit strategies as well as billion dollar acquisitions and divestments.

Prior to joining Telstra, Jamie worked as a management consultant and is co-founder of Pisces Group, a Fintech business which delivers electronic loan application processing, mortgage data solutions, and broker business software in Australia"

Constantin is Managing Director of Zalora in the Philippines. Zalora is Asia's leading online fashion destination with localized Ecommerce sites across South-East Asia, and part of Global Fashion Group. Prior to Zalora, Constantin worked for Rocket Internet with stints at Zalando in Berlin and Lamoda in Moscow. He graduated in Business Administration from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.

"Raphael Francis is a proud Cebuano technopreneur. He is the Chief Technology Officer of Upteam Corporation, a worldwide supplier of authentic, curated and pre-owned high-end brands. He serves as a consultant to the management services company Penbrothers, business SaaS company Yewusoftware and was a founding member of AVA.ph, the Philippine’s first curated marketplace for premium brands. He also served as the CTO of Techforge Solutions, an IT firm that launched various brands, enterprises and online ventures.

“Sir Rafi” has genuine enthusiasm for effective mentoring. He comes from a family of teachers and educators, and was a professor himself at the Sacred Heart - Ateneo de Cebu and La Salle College of St. Benilde.

As co-leader of the AWS User Group Philippines since 2013, he regularly answers questions, gives advice and organizes events for the AWS community."

Koichi Saito is the Founder and General Partner of KK Fund, leveraging his experience in the internet sector, finance expertise and investment experience at PE and VC fund.

He previously worked at IMJ Investment Partners as Director and responsible for IMJ's startup investments across Southeast Asia such as iMoney, Bukalapak and Zipmatch.

Prior to IMJ, Koichi worked at Private Equity Fund founded by George Soros, and was engaged in several corporate and hotel acquisitions.

Koichi holds a MBA degree from IE business school in Spain.

David Brown is a co-founder and Managing Partner of Techstars.

David is a serial entrepreneur who has founded three startups and been involved with two others. He is one of the original founders of Pinpoint Technologies, Inc. which is now part of ZOLL Medical Corporation and provides solutions to the emergency medical services market. He was President of the company from founding through over $50M per year in revenue and over 250 people.

David later co-founded Techstars along with David Cohen, Brad Feld, and Jared Polis. He has been an investor and advisor to Techstars since inception. In 2013, he joined Techstars in a more active role as Managing Partner.

David has a B.Sc. degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. As a ski instructor in the past, David still enjoys hitting the slopes on a good powder day.

Since 2009, Marc has focused on building startup communities around the world through experiential programming, primarily Startup Weekend which has reached over 300k individuals in over 130 countries to date. He and the community behind Startup Weekend helped create the world's largest pre-accelerator, Startup Next as well as helped encourage access to startup activities in over 400 communities around the world with Startup Digest. Just this year, Marc and his team at UP Global were acquired by Techstars which completed the vision of providing stage appropriate resources for entrepreneurs across their entire journey, from idea to exit.

Timothy “Scott” Case, or T. Scott Case is a technologist, entrepreneur and inventor, and was founding CTO of priceline.com, the "Name Your Own Price" Internet service. At the Walker Digital Invention Laboratory, he helped build a portfolio of intellectual property, and he is a named inventor on dozens of U.S. patents including the underlying portfolio for priceline.com.

In March 2011, he became founding CEO of the Startup America Partnership (TechStars) focused on building strong startup communities throughout the United States. In 2013, he co-founded Main Street Genome (acquired by Dining Alliance) to leverage data to make small businesses everywhere work smarter through data science and software technology tools.

In 2006, he joined the Malaria No More team to inspire individuals and institutions to end deaths caused by malaria. He also serve as the Chairman of Network for Good, a national nonprofit that has distributed more than $1.4 billion to 100,000 nonprofits.

Danielle Morrill is a co-founder and the chief executive officer of Mattermark, a data platform for venture capital companies to quantify signals of growing and potentially lucrative startups.

Prior to that, Morrill was a co-founder and the chief executive officer of Referly Inc., Director of Marketing at Twilio, community manager at Pelago, Editor in Chief at Seattle 2.0, and business analyst at Expeditors International.

Chris McCann started and runs the community program at Greylock Partners, a top tier VC fund. Previously he was the founder of the media company StartupDigest (acquired in 2012).

Epi Ludvik Nekaj is the Founder & CEO of Crowdsourcing Week. In 2008, he created Ludvik + Partners - one of New York’s hottest boutique virtual ad agencies built on a 100% crowdsourcing model. Epi Ludvik is one of the pioneers in the crowdsourcing ad space, an industry expert and thought leader in entertainment advertising - including public relations, event production, experiential marketing, consumer advertising and digital marketing. Epi Ludvik earned a BS in Advertising & Marketing from the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC and has been a serial entrepreneur since graduation. His varied and global experiences throughout his career have taken him across the US and Asia, where he honed his skills in advertising and media with high-profile clients and power brands.

"Joe started his life and education in Texas but began his IT career in the Silicon Valley. In 1995 he worked at Netscape developing some of the first e-commerce applications during the early days of the Internet. His next venture took him to NetGravity and his second classic Internet IPO. After that, Joe enjoyed building several startups from the ground up in the role of the technical executive responsible for the company IP and managing engineering groups. His most recent thriving venture was Iris Data Services, which landed on the “Forbes 500 Fastest Growing Companies in the US” list, and was recently acquired by EPIQ Systems (NASDAQ: EPIQ), for $134M.

In 2006, Joe began using cloud services and virtualisation to create the infrastructure for Iris Data Services as the Director of Technical Services. Later, he worked with several enterprises developed on the cloud, including building his own company, IndexMedia, that successfully exited in the Australian market. Today, he continues to work with startups providing technical expertise and angel investment support and was recently the Entrepreneur in Residence for the muru-D Singapore cohort #1."

Arnaud Bonzom is Director of Corporate Innovation at 500 Startups. He is helping large corporations across the world to engage with startups.

Prior to joining 500 Startups in 2015, he has been an assistant director and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at INSEAD.

He has spent the last 7 years between large corporations, startups and venture capital.

"Seasoned brand strategist specialising in communications, creative storytelling & content marketing. Founder of a Singapore-based content strategy firm, Frame 316. Robert has produced content for Microsoft, Pfizer, Standard Chartered & Randstad employing a story-centric approach which focuses on human experience rather than product or service features.

He has extensive experience in content design for inbound marketing which includes conceptualising, execution & distribution of intelligent content for lead generation and customer acquisition.

His storytelling skills have landed him international recognition such as placing second in the APEC Video Contest 2015 and semi-finalist for Our Good Story Asia 2014 and Our Better World Story of the Year 2015."

Currently designing and developing a wide variety of websites, online tools - and having a lot of fun doing it. CSS & JS have really brought Philip McKay back to several of his passions: interactive visualizations; clean apps that make sense; and prototypes to increase communications between design staff and developers.

Christina Laskowski is an advisor and management consultant to consumer and technology companies who seek her expertise in strategy execution, business development and market positioning. Her background includes 16 years as a boutique investment and M&A banker where she helped raise more than $2.0 billion serving more than 100 growth clients; and three years in equity research as a member of the founding branded consumer research team at Hambrecht & Quist in San Francisco.

In addition to working closely with clients, Christina serves as President of the Science & Technology Advisory Council (STAC) - Silicon Valley, a 501(c)3 focused on cultivating holistic entrepreneurship. In this role, Christina played a critical and leading role in the formation of a tech focused entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Philippines which has now led to a cross border knowledge transfer platform between the SF Bay Area and the Philippines. Her community work extends to local non-profit organizations (Global Filipino Network, Philippine American Writers & Artists) and academic institutions in the SF Bay Area where she serves as an active advisor. Her diverse professional background has led to invitations to participate in Consumer Tech, Asia and Emerging Markets focused conferences including Geeks on a Beach where she hosts the women in tech breakfast each year.

The Filipina Womens Network presented Christina with the 100 Most Influential Filipinas in the US award -- Pioneers category in 2011. In 2010, she received the Golden Heart award from the Philippine President.