TechChill Riga 2023

Dr. Melissa Sassi

Chief Penguin, IBM Z - IBM

Dr. Sassi is IBM Z’s Chief Penguin, heading up Student & Entrepreneur Experience worldwide within the Z division of IBM. Dr. Sassi is also the Founder of the IBM Hyper Protect Accelerator, an early-stage startup program helping founders to build & scale through business & technical enablement. She has 100 startups in her portfolio. Dr. Sassi is the Founder & CEO of MentorNations, a youth-led nonprofit venture that has enabled tens of thousands of young people to code in twelve countries. Her research for her doctorate focuses on the digital inclusion of underserved & underrepresented communities & its ties to enabling economic empowerment, quality education & healthcare outcomes. 

Mantas Mikuckas

Co-Founder & COO at Vinted | Angel Investor

Co-founder and COO at Vinted, a social marketplace for pre-loved clothing, that has taken the spot as Lithuania’s first tech unicorn. He is an angel investor to many other Lithuanian tech startups like Trafi, Interactio, Pixevia and Qoorio, and has previously served as Founding Partner at Practica Capital.

Agate S. Freimane

General Partner at Norrsken VC

Agate is a General Partner at Norrsken VC, Europe’s largest impact venture capital fund focused on investing in rapidly scaling early stage start-ups that use technology to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges while building highly profitable businesses. She started her career in finance working in investment banking and private equity at Citigroup and Morgan Stanley in London and New York. She then started her start-up journey and was one of the first employees at BrickVest, a London based fintech start-up. In her free time she is most passionate about education and co-founded Bright Mentors, an edtech charity in London.

Patricia Allen

Head of Content

Originally from Belfast and now based in Barcelona, Patricia has a real passion for how shared ideas across communities and cultures can bring new initiatives and innovations for the future.

Rytis Vitkauskas

Partner

Rytis is a partner at Lightspeed. Joining in 2019 to help build out the firm’s European presence and global platform. He’s been part of the European tech scene as either entrepreneur, venture or angel investor for over a decade.

Martin Tajur

Angel Investor, Co-Founder of Pipedrive

Martin Tajur is an angel investor with B2B SaaS business experience. He cares about how products look, feel and talk. Form and function are equally important, one defines the other. He worked at Skype between 2005—2008 both as a designer and as web front-end engineer. In 2010, he co-founded Pipedrive and helped form its product design, then worked in development and software architecture on a senior level as the CTO. Since 2016, he has been doing angel investing and helping 30+ startups get off the ground and grow 🚀

Gultan Asgarli

Business Analyst | Inskillz & Co-founder

Gultan is a Business Analyst at Financial Crime Intelligence, Investigation & Analytics department at Nordea, the largest financial services group in the Nordic region and one of the biggest banks in Europe. Also, she is the co-founder of Inskillz, a community that supports game-based learning in various areas, and creates educational board games on different topics, starting from gender equality and ending with very niche games for product managers, marketers, UX/UI designers, etc.

Timmu Toke

CEO, Ready Player Me

Timmu Tõke is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ready Player Me. The company is building a cross-game avatar platform for the metaverse, used by 1500+ companies.

Lubomila Jordanova

Co-founder and CEO of Plan A

She is also the co-founder of the Greentech Alliance, a community of 1000+ startups which are connected to over 500+ advisors from VC, media and business.

Prior to Plan A, she worked in investment banking, venture capital and fintech in Asia and Europe. She was recently announced as Marshall Fund Fellow for 2021, 100 Top Women in Germany 2020 (Focus Magazin), Top 50 Women in Tech in Germany 2021 (Handelsblatt).