Founder and CIO, Bronze Investments
Before founding Bronze Investments, Stephen DeBerry was a partner at Kapor Capital. Before Kapor, DeBerry worked as an investment director at Omidyar Network, the investment firm started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam.
In his career, DeBerry has backed startups like Chromatik, Formlabs, SendHub and CardMunch, the mobile app for business cards LinkedIn acquired.
Bronze Investments has taken no outside funding and has an undisclosed number of employees.
Founder and CEO, Creadio
Will Lucas founded brand marketing technology company Creadio back in 2003. Two years ago, he launched Classana, an educational resource discovery engine. To date, Classana has raised $26,500 in grant money.
Lucas is also the organizer behind TedXToledo, which is now in its second year.
Creadio is a bootstrapped startup with fewer than 10 employees.
CEO, Formspring
Ade Olonoh is the co-Founder and CEO of Formspring, a social network that helped people find out more about each other.
Prior to founding Formspring, Olonoh founded online form building Formstack. Formpsring has taken $14.3 million in funding and has about 12 employees. In 2013, Spring.me acquired Formspring's assets and rebranded it.
Founder and CEO, Proclivity
Sheldon Gilbert, the founder and chief executive of Proclivity Media, a company that specializes in digital advertising technologies.
Founded six years ago, Proclivity uses a retailer's e-commerce data to best predict and match companies with ad placements that will bring in the most sales.
Proclivity has raised $8.82 million in funding and has eight employees.
Co-founder, MoviePass
Stacy Spikes' MoviePass is one of the most exciting things to happen to the movie business in a while. It's essentially Netflix for movies still playing in theaters.
Before co-founding MoviePass, Spikes was a long-time marketing executive who recently delved into the tech world. He's considered one of the leaders of film entertainment marketing. Before starting MoviePass, Spikes founded the Urbanworld Film Festival, which is now the largest of its kind in the world. Urbanworld has premiered more #1 films than any other North American Film Festival, including Sundance and Tribeca.
MoviePass has taken $1.5 million in funding and has 12 employees.
Co-founder, MoviePass
Hamet Watt is a former entrepreneur in residence at True Ventures. Before co-founding MoviePass alongside Stacy Spikes, he founded full-service media buying platform NextMedium, and health app bLife.
MoviePass has taken $1.5 million in funding and has 12 employees.
CEO, The Resumator
Don Charlton has changed the way hiring gets done online.
During the most recent presidential election, both President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney used The Resumator to handle all of the job applications coming in.
Before founding The Resumator, Charlton established himself as an award-winning interactive designer.
The Resumator has taken $2.98 million in funding and has 44 employees.
Founder, Sustainable South Bronx, Startup Box: South Bronx
Majora Carter recently opened up a new startup incubator and tech education center in South Bronx to foster entrepreneurship.
"There is a dramatic shortage of engineering talent in the U.S. labor force, and we want to fill that gap with people who could otherwise end up in the criminal justice and welfare systems," she previously told Fast Company. She says most of the talent in the South Bronx either leaves or doesn't get "nurtured into something positive."
In 2010, Carter was touted as one of the 100 most creative people in business. She's also a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster.
Startup Box is a non-profit organization.
Founder and CEO, Fresh Sessions
Dan Miller is one of the people responsible for developing the business model of BlackGirlsCode, an organization geared getting more diverse women involved with technology.
But now Miller is on to his own project, Fresh Sessions, a soon-to-be launched startup that will help musicians access top-notch recording studios.
Fresh Sessions is currently bootstrapped and is gearing up to launch this year.
Founder and CEO, PitchTo
Wayne Sutton founded PitchTo to help investors make smarter decisions and entrepreneurs perfect their pitches.
Before founding PitchTo, Sutton was a partner at the NewMe accelerator where he advised startups in product development and customer acquisition strategies, among other things. Sutton has more than 10 years worth of experience in Internet technology, and has advised numerous startups, including Tioki, Gokit, and StockofU.
Sutton also recently teamed up with AT&T to try to make a difference in Silicon Valley by inspiring students in Oakland, Calif. to improve their digital literacy. In April 2013, Sutton helped organize one of the city's first food hackathons.
PitchTo is currently bootstrapped with fewer than 10 employees.
Founder, BlackGirlsCode
Kimberly Bryant wants to ensure that young black girls have the opportunity to learn how to code. In 2011, Bryant founded BlackGirlsCode, a six-week program that teaches basic programming concepts, and gives underrepresented youths the chance to learn about robotics, and a wide range of other technological concepts.
Before founding BlackGirlsCode, Bryant spent about decade in biotechnology where she held several management roles at companies including Genentech, Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, and Merck.
BlackGirlsCode, which was founded in 2011, has five employees.
Founder, Walker and Company
Early Foursquare employee Tristan Walker launched his own startup, Walker and Company, in December 2013 to better serve the African-American community.
The first brand, Bevel, sells premium razors and shaving cream geared toward black men. Walker has already snagged $2.4 million from Upfront Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel, Collaborative Fund, Sherpa Ventures, and the William Morris agency’s Charles King. Walker and Company is still relatively small and employs five people.
Founder and CEO, MetaLayer
Serial entrepreneur Jon Gosier is the mastermind behind data analysis startup MetaLayer, global innovation consultancy Appfrica, and non-profit organizations HiveColab and Abayima.
Gosier is a senior fellow at TED who has given talks on topics including the democratization of data platforms and social currency.
MetaLayer has raised $45,000 to date and has two employees.
Associate, Kapor Capital
Brian Dixon joined Kapor Capital after he interned there for two summers.
Kapor Capital is particularly focused on startups that address a lack of access and opportunity for underserved communities, or those that are trying democratize a huge sector.
Kapor Capital is the VC firm that has backed startups like Alltuition, ClassDojo, and SendHub. It employees fewer than 10 people.
Founder, CEO at NewMe Accelerator
NewMe is an accelerator geared toward minorities. It was featured in CNN's Black in America: The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley in 2011.
Benton launched NewMe alongside co-founder Wayne Sutton. Prior to NewMe, Benton launched BlackWeb2.0, an online publication for African-Americans interested in technology and new media.
NewMe employs 7 people.
Founder and CEO, CyberSynchs
CyberSynchs is a multi-million dollar tech firm that specializes in universal data transfer and synchronization.
Last year, Winbush launched AW3 Media, a company designed to develop, produce, and broadcast original programming. He plans to debut "Project Entrepreneur," a documentary series focused on finding the next great entrepreneur.
CyberSynchs employs two people.
Board of directors, Dropbox
Earlier this month, online storage startup Dropbox added Condoleezza Rice to its board of directors.
As the former Secretary of State, and an advisor the NSA, having someone like Rice as a liaison to Washington D.C. could be very helpful to Dropbox.
At the same time, though, her history as an official in Bush Administration is stirring up controversy.
Dropbox has raised over $1 billion to date and employs 698 people.
Analyst, Union Square Ventures
Before joining USV in 2012, Watson worked at Organizing for America, Trendrr, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Gilt Groupe.
Now he works alongside prominent tech executives like Brad Burnham, Fred Wilson, and Albert Wenger.
Union Square Ventures employs 12 people.
Founder, Pathbrite
As an education tech founder, it's not always easy to get schools and institutions on board, mostly due to a bunch of bureaucracy. That's why Pathbrite founder Heather Hiles is so impressive. Last year, Pathbrite raised an additional $4 million led by testing behemoth ACT, with participation from Rethink Education for its e-portfolio product for students.
As of March 2013, Pathbrite was in more than 100 universities and school districts. Stanford, for example, purchased 1,000 licenses for students in its design, education, and engineering schools. And as of September 2013, more than 400 schools have used Pathbrite's new learning platform.
Pathbrite has raised $8 million in total to date and employs 16 people.
Partner, Collaborative Fund
Kanyi Maqubela has worked in consumer technology since 2006. But he's quickly climbed up the ladder from a serving as a field director at solar leasing and sales company One Block Off the Grid to a venture partner at Collaborative Fund.
Maqubela joined Collaborative Fund as entrepreneur in residence in 2011, and became a full-time partner in December 2012. Collaborative Fund employs 10 people and has backed startups like Kickstarter, TaskRabbit, Lyft, and Codecademy.
CEO, LearnStreet
During Lo Toney's two-year stint as general manager at Zynga, Zynga saw its web bookings increase by over 150%. Toney also led Zynga's Casino and Poker strategy and sponsored two acquisitions to further drive game development.
Toney stepped down from Zynga in October 2012, after working there for three years. In February 2013, LearnStreet named Toney as its new CEO. LearnStreet offers online classes to learn how to code.
LearnStreet has raised $1 million to date and employs nine people.
Co-founder, Ampush
Chris Amos is the co-founder and chief marketing officer at Ampush, a social technology company that helps brands with Facebook ads.
Last year, Facebook awarded Ampush a grand prize in its Preferred Marketing Developer Innovation Competition.
Ampush has fewer than 107 employees.
Partner, SoftTech VC
Charles Hudson has his hands in both sides of the tech business, both as a founder at Bionic Panda Games and now an investor at SoftTech Ventures.
Previously, Hudson founded Social Gaming Summit, one of the leading conferences in the free-to-play games space. He was also the VP of Business Development for Serious Business, a company that Zynga later acquired in 2010.
SoftTech employs eight people.
Founder and Managing Partner, Base Ventures
Moore has invested in nearly two dozen startups, including TracksBy, Ecomom, and Socialcam. He was also among the first investors to finance Zappos, a shoes and apparel company that sold to Amazon for $1.2 billion.
Moore spent 15 years in investment banking at Merrill Lynch before pursuing his entrepreneurship. In 2010, he co-founded FlickrLaunch, a digital streaming platform on Facebook for feature-length movies.
Today, Moore continues to support and invest in startups through his firm Base Ventures, which employs fewer than 10 people.
COO, AirPush
As chief operating officer at Airpush, Inman Breaux is responsible for the mobile ad platform's operations. Airpush is a mobile ad platform used to monetize mobile applications. Prior to AirPush, Breaux worked as head of business development at mobile ad company Adenyo.
Founded in 2010, the company employees about 200 people. In July 2013, the bootstrapped startup was on pace to hit between $130 to $150 million in revenue that year. Last October, Airpush snapped up Hubbl for $15 million to bring native ads to mobile.
Investor Board Member, Venture For America
Sarah Kunst got her start in the tech industry working at Apple under Path founder Dave Morin. Before becoming a retail innovations investor at Mohr Davidow Ventures, Kunst ran business development & product at fashion app Kaleidoscope, a startup backed by Y Combinator, 500 Startups, SV Angel and Start Fund backed.
In December 2013, Kunst became an investor board member at Venture For America, a program designed to help talented college graduates gain experience in the startup world.
Venture For America employs fewer than 10 employees.
Engineering Manager, Pinterest
Makinde Adeagbo is something of an engineering superstar, bouncing between major tech companies. He spent 3.5 years at Facebook, and became one of the go-to engineers to improve the site speed and overall performance.
Next, he got snapped up by Dropbox, where he helped improve sharing on the Dropbox platform with things like Dropbox Links, which lets anyone share and preview any file in someone's Dropbox from the Web. In July 2013, he left the huge cloud storage company to become Pinterest's engineering manager.
Pinterest has raised $562.5 million in funding to date and employs fewer than 500 people.
President and CEO, Rapid7
Enterprise IT security provider Rapid7 appointed Corey Thomas as its new CEO in October 2012. Rapid7's software scans an organization's IT infrastructure, like routers, hubs, databases, and web applications in order to find security holes and then patch them.
Prior to joining Rapid7, Thomas held leadership positions in the Microsoft Server and Tools division. To date, Rapid7 has raised $61 million in venture funding and employs fewer than 500 people.
Chairman, Saama Technologies, Inc
Kenneth Coleman is a long-time tech veteran, having held numerous executive positions at technical computing company SGI, video game company Activision, and Hewlett Packard.
Coleman also previously founded enterprise software company ITM, which was acquired by BMC software.
Saama Technologies employs fewer than 1,000 people.
COO, TaskRabbit
After working at Google for nine years and eventually Google Ventures as an entrepreneur-in-residence, Stacy Brown-Philpot became TaskRabbit's first-ever COO. TaskRabbit is a San Francisco-based startup that runs an online marketplace for outsourcing errands and tasks.
While at Google, Brown-Philpot held several senior-level finance positions in which she was responsible for managing the company's revenue in certain verticals.
TaskRabbit has raised $37.7 million to date and employs fewer than 50 people.
CEO and co-founder, ThinAir
Prior to founding storage startup ThinAir, Tony Guada served as the CEO of Bitcasa, an infinite online storage startup.
Gauda launched Bitcasa at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference back in 2011. Gauda previously engineered fraud protection systems at Mastercard.
To date, Bitcasa has raised $19.5 million from venture capital firms such as Horizon Ventures, Andreessen-Horowitz, and First Round Capital. The company employs fewer than 2,000 people.
ThinAir, on the other hand, employs fewer than 10 people.
Founder and CEO, SocialCam
Michael Seibel has two successful startups under his belt: live video streaming service Justin.tv and social video app SocialCam.
In 2012, Seibel and his startup SocialCam got acquired for $60 million by 3D design software company Autodesk just 18 months after launching.
Seibel's success has recently earned him a spot as a part-time partner at Silicon Valley's most prestigious accelerator, Y Combinator.
Autodesk, the company that bought SocialCam, is publicly traded and employs fewer than 10,000 employees.
Director of product management, Yahoo
Erin Teague worked as the growth product manager for the mobile-only social network Path for two years and is responsible for the company's astounding user growth in 2013. In the spring, the app was growing by 1 million new users per week. It hit the 10-million-user mark in April. She worked on the product team at Twitter for two years before joining the Path team.
Last fall, she joined Yahoo with a director of product management role.
Yahoo is currently valued at around $36.9 billion and employs more than 10,000 people.
VP and Managing Director of Software and Services, Intel Capital
Lambert joined Intel Capital, Intel's global investment and M&A firm, back in 1997. She started as a product marketing manager and eventually worked her way up to a corporate position of vice president. Before that, Lambert held an executive role at Intel's Desktop Products Group, where she was responsible for the Pentium II and III processing systems.
She's invested in and helped exit companies including VMWare, Financial Engines, OpenFeint, and MySQL.
Intel Capital employs fewer than 500 people.
Director of Strategic Partnerships, Facebook
Ime Archibong is the guy in charge of Facebook's music and video strategy. Archibong manages Facebook's relationships with companies like Spotify, Beats Music, Rdio, Hulu, and Netflix.
Archibong joined Facebook back in 2010. Before that, Archibong worked at IBM in its business development department, where he handled the licensing of IBM's technology.
Facebook is currently valued at $158 billion and employs fewer than 10,000 people.
CEO, MetricStream
Shellye Archambeau came on board with enterprise software provider MetricStream in 2002 as its chief executive officer. Archambeau also holds a board position at media and marketing firm Arbitron and Verizon Wireless.
In her career, Archambeau has held several executive roles at companies including Arbitron, Loudcloud, NorthPoint Communications, and Inc. In 2000, Internet World named her one of the top 25 "Click and Mortar" executives in the country.
MetricStream has raised $65 million to date and employs fewer than 5,000 people.
Content Business Developement, Google
Ducard is responsible for developing partnerships between YouTube and film, TV, and new media companies. Under Ducard's leadership, YouTube launched YouTube Live, started offering movie rentals from Paramount Pictures, and partnered with ABC News, Al Jazeera English, BuzzFeed, and other news organizations for presidential election coverage back in 2012.
Before joining Google in 2010, Ducard served as the senior vice president of digital distribution at Paramount.
Google has raised $25 million to date and has over 10,000 employees. It's currently valued at $359 billion.
Senior Vice President, Security Business Group, Cisco
As SVP at Cisco, Chris Young is responsible for the software company's global security business. He is also responsible for driving the company's cross-portfolio security strategy, architecture and internal security platforms.
Before joining Cisco in 2011, Young served as Senior Vice President and General Manager at VMware, where he led development and marketing for desktop virtualization, consumer, and end-user offerings.
Cisco is valued $120.4 billion and employs more than 10,000 people.
Managing Director, Google
As managing director at Google, Torrence Boone is responsible for leading advertising growth throughout North America. Prior to joining Google in 2010, Boone served as CEO of ad startup Enfatico.
Google has raised $25 million to date and has over 10,000 employees. It's currently valued at $359 billion.
President, PubMatic
McDonald joined digital media platform PubMatic in October 2011, bringing with him more than two decades of experience at media companies like Time and CNET.
With $76 million funding in the bank, advertising company PubMatic is expected to be gearing up for an initial public offering. The IPO, which could happen later this year, would reportedly value the company at $1 billion. PubMatic currently employs fewer than 500 people.
CEO, Virtual Instruments
During John Thompson's senior year at Florida A&M University, he joined IBM as a sales representative. He ended up staying for 28 years, and eventually rose to become general manager of IBM Americas.
In 1999, Thompson got an offer from Symantec that he couldn't turn down: the chance to be president and chief executive officer of the cloud security giant. He eventually retired in 2009, but started investing in early-stage startups.
Cloud computing startup Virtual Instruments was one of them. In 2009, Thompson joined Virtual Instruments' board of directors, and stepped in as CEO in 2010. He only intended to stay for a few months, but investors would only finance the company if Thompson stayed on board as CEO.
Virtual Instruments has raised $66.5 million to date and employs fewer than 500 people.
Chief Legal Officer, Google
When Edward Snowden leaked documents revealing the NSA is allegedly tapping Google's servers and private networks, David Drummond, the company's chief legal officer, expressed his outrage and urged the need for dramatic reform in government intelligence policy.
In the wake of Snowden's many revelations, major tech companies have been put under a microscope, and Google has taken the lead in being as transparent as possible about government requests for user info.
Getting the public to regain trust in the Web and and major tech companies like Google isn't an easy task, but Drummond is tackling it valiantly, insisting that trust is to encourage innovation.
Google has raised $25 million to date and has over 10,000 employees. It's currently valued at $359 billion.
Vice President of Smart TV Services, Samsung
As head of Samsung's smart TV division, Ty Ahmad-Taylor is tasked with developing content and applications for Samsung's TV platform. Prior to joining Samsung, In Ahmad-Taylor founded real-time sports aggregator service FanFeedr in 2008. In 2012, Samsung acquired FanFeedr and Ahmad-Taylor came on board with Samsung.
Before starting FanFeedr, Ahmad-Taylor was the senior vice president for strategy and product development at MTV Networks' Music & Logo Group. Prior to MTV, Ahmad-Taylor a held executive roles at Comcast.
Samsung is valued at $181,840.93 billion and has more than 10,000 employees.
CEO, Infor
Charles Phillips made a big comeback last year. In fact, he's quietly becoming the "Steve Jobs" of business software.
In 2013, Infor hit almost $2.8 billion in revenues, up from $2.2 billion when Phillips first joined the company. Prior to joining Infor, Phillips served as a captain in the Marines, a computer programmer, a managing director at Morgan Stanley, and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's No. 2 guy.
Infor has more than 10,000 employees.
Co-founder and Chairman, World Wide Technology
David Steward co-founded World Wide Technology, one of the largest African-American owned business in the country, back in 1990.
WWT is a systems integration company that helps large and private companies plan and deploy relevant IT products and solutions.
Today, WWT has an annual revenue of $6 billion and more than 2,400 employees worldwide.
Head of Human Resources, Apple
In February 2014, Apple appointed Denise Young Smith to lead its worldwide human resources division. Smith replaced Joel Podolny, who now focuses full-time on Apple University.
Smith previously led Apple's human resources for its retail operations, which employed 42,8000 of the company's 80,300 workers in the last fiscal year.
Apple is currently valued at $471.5 billion and employs more than 10,000 people.
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