It's the startups that make winters hot

Ray Chan

CO-FOUNDER & CEO

Ray Chan is the CEO and co-founder of 9GAG, the leading online community that connects people with shared interests.
Ray launched 9GAG with his co-founders in 2008 as an experimental project that focused on helping people discover and discuss what’s new, popular and fun on the internet. Nowadays 9GAG has a global audience of more than 80 million and a strong presence on social media including 23 million Facebook fan, 11 million Instagram followers, and 4 million Twitter followers.

Cassie Kozyrkov

CHIEF DECISION SCIENTIST

As Chief Decision Scientist at Google Cloud, Cassie Kozyrkov advises leadership teams on decision process, AI strategy, and building data-driven organizations. She works to democratize statistical thinking and machine learning so that everyone – Google, its customers, the world! – can harness the beauty and power of data. She is the force behind bringing the practice of Decision Intelligence to Google and she has personally trained over 15,000 Googlers in machine learning, statistics, and data-driven decision-making. Before her current role, she served in Google’s Office of the CTO as Chief Data Scientist. Prior to joining Google, Cassie worked as a data scientist and consultant. She holds degrees in mathematical statistics, economics, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. When she’s not working, you’re most likely to find Cassie at the theater, in an art museum, exploring the world, or curled up with a good novel.

Joshua Slayton

FOUNDING CTO

Joshua is the founder of CoinList, the platform for initial coin offerings (ICOs) and other crypto-financial services. Since its inception in mid-2017, CoinList has run many of the top ICOs, including the $250M Filecoin ICO. Previously Joshua was Founding CTO at AngelList, the world’s largest platforms for startups to fundraise and recruit.

Chris Brown

ACCELERATION MANAGER

Chris came into the startup world via Eastern Europe, where he lived for a much of the last 15 years. While there he worked in acceleration in Estonia and started a microfund in Hungary. Upon returning to the US, he ran the NYU Data Future Labs program in New York and was the lead for IBM’s Global Entrepreneur Program for the East Coast. He’s been left for dead in the desert in Jordan, pulled a corpse out of a plane crash in Oregon, and stumbled onto Korean television.

David Ryan Polgar

TECH ETHICIST & FOUNDER

David Ryan Polgar is a pioneering tech ethicist who paved the way for the hotly-debated issues around Facebook, privacy, ethical design, digital wellbeing, and what it means to be human in the digital age. He is often featured in the media, including CBS This Morning, Fast Company, SiriusXM, CNN.com and many others. David is the founder of All Tech Is Human, an initiative to better align technology with the human interests of users, along with the co-host of the podcast & NYC live show Funny as Tech. He is a frequent writer (Quartz, IBM thinkLeaders, Dell Perspectives) and global speaker (3-time TEDx, The School of The New York Times, The Next Web). David is currently working on a digital citizenship class–for adults. He is an advisor for Hack Mental Health and #ICANHELP.

Oscar Kneppers

FOUNDER

Rockstart Founder Oscar Kneppers is a successful serial entrepreneur and a celebrated internet publisher – launching several cross-media brands since 1998 focused on new media, innovation and technology.

After selling his media businesses Oscar founded Rockstart in 2011.

Rockstart, ‘The Global Startup Machine’, helps startups be more successful in their first 1,000 days through funding and mentorship, community and office space  and startup events  in over 25 cities across Europe.