Charles Hudson is the Managing Partner and Founder of Precursor Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on investing in the first institutional round of investment for the most promising software and hardware companies.

McKeever "Mac" Conwell II is the founder and managing partner of RareBreed Ventures. Mac is a former software engineer and two-time founder. One of Mac's companies failed, the other went on to a successful exit. Learn more about Mac by listening to this interview.

Clara is co-founder and Managing Partner of the Urban Innovation Fund, a venture capital firm that invests in the future of cities. The fund provides seed capital and regulatory support to entrepreneurs solving our toughest urban challenges – helping them grow into tomorrow’s most valued companies.  

In 2008, I left a lucrative career to start a company, everlater.com. On my journey, I taught myself how to code, built the product, raised two rounds of venture financing, went through two significant pivots, hired and fired teams, thrived, stumbled, thrived again and ultimately sold the company to AOL. I get what it's like and what it takes to start and scale a company. 

In 2015, I joined Techstars as Managing Director for the accelerator in Boulder. In that role, I discovered that I'm more passionate as coach than player. Since then, I've dedicated myself to helping other entrepreneurs succeed and have worked with over 200 founders directly as an investor, mentor and friend. I honor and respect the bravery of entrepreneurs and feel privileged to help on the amazing journey of making a dream a reality. I bring love, trust and loyalty to the teams I get to work with, helping them set and hit audacious goals. Friends and founders describe me as ambitious yet humble. Kind, supportive, loyal and earnest. A hard worker who’s not afraid to push and set high expectations. 

Because people are the most important thing, I spend a lot of time helping the entrepreneurs I work with become the best versions of themselves, so they can do their best work at the most important times. I'm also a details guy and enjoy helping with the product, operations, UX, and analytics of a business. 

I see my role as doing whatever I can to help a company get to product/market fit, set the early work cadence and culture and ultimately source and bring in the capital needed to scale. 

I'm deeply committed to the Colorado startup ecosystem. I'm from Boulder, and was supported on my entrepreneurial journey by so many people in this community (big thanks to the Techstars and Foundry Group leaders and all the mentors and founders I've been lucky to learn from). I believe it's my mission to continue helping it grow into the best place to start a company. 

When I’m not working, you can find me enjoying time outdoors. Living in Colorado, it feels so easy to do! My wife Pam and I stay busy teaching our young boys to bike and ski, going for a hike or bike commuting all over town.

We like investing at the seed stage because it allows us to have the greatest impact. Founders need help and support and we love being the first call - we are both entrepreneurs first, investors second. We love thinking through strategy, figuring out distribution, helping companies hire, and helping founders raise the next round. We roll up our sleeves and try to be the biggest cheerleaders and most trusted partners for our companies.

I’m also on the investment committee for the Catalyst Fund, an initiative to support entrepreneurs building financial solutions for the underserved in India, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, and South Africa.

As a product leader, Morris is passionate about building high performing teams and creating profitable products that delight customers.

At Tinder, Morris built the revenue team and led the creation of multiple blockbuster hits including Tinder Gold and Boost. These products broke industry records and helped increase the Match Group market cap by $8B+.

Charlie has a reputation for being early to identifying important companies.  Nick Bilton identifies him as an influence on early Twitter investors in his book, Hatching Twitter.  Dennis Crowley credits him as having helped kick off the first funding of Foursquare before other VCs had said yes.  At First Round Capital, he helped source the firm's investments in Singleplatform (sold to Constant Contact), Moat (Sold to Oracle) and GroupMe (sold to Skype).  Charlie discovered GroupMe at the hackathon where the service had been built.  He also sourced investments in Backupify (which was an idea he had tweeted to the founder, a friend of his), Moat, chloe + isabel, and Refinery29.  

Working in venture capital since 2001, he apprenticed his way through the asset class with analyst roles on the original Union Square Ventures team as well as at the General Motors pension fund--a long time limited partner in many top tier funds.  

Charlie is one of only a dozen individuals to be named to Business Insider's 100 Most Influential People in NY Tech five or more times. He served on the founding board of the New York Tech Meetup and is one of the group's first 100 members. He was recently named to City & State Magazine’s Tech Power 50.  His blog, This is Going to Be BIG!, is one of the ten most widely read VC blogs in the country and over 13,000 people read his weekly NYC tech newsletter. He has spoken at SXSW and Techcrunch Disrupt.

Charlie bikes to work, has done four Ironman 70.3s, four marathons, and founded the kayaking program in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The longest he has consecutively been outside of the five boroughs of New York City is three weeks.

About Brooklyn Bridge Ventures (From BBC Website)
Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, the first VC fund founded in Brooklyn, NY, is the most accessible early-stage partner for startups in NYC. We foster a thriving community both online and offline open to founders and innovative professionals of all backgrounds. 

BBV manages approximately $30 million and counting across three funds, leading or co-leading investments of up to $400,000 in New York City pre-seed and seed companies that have yet to raise $750,000 in prior rounds. Conversations often start pre-product and pre-deck and no warm intros or other systematic barriers prevent us from engaging with the community. Pitches and outreach generally start by e-mail or via a calendar request. 

Co-founded Afore Capital, one of the largest venture funds ($124M) dedicated to super early stage investments. No investment is "too early" for Afore, and in fact, we prefer to get involved as early as possible and help the company get to the next stage where traditional VCs can get involved. If you think we could be a fit for your startup, please find a warm intro and we'd love to chat!

Previously, I made 26 seed-stage investments including Cruise Automation (acq by GM for $1B+), Firebase (acq by Google) and Dia & Co (Series A Sequoia Capital) through Founder Collective.

I was one of the first Product Managers for Android (led the Nexus product line); joined the platform when we had less than 1M total users (today >2.5B). I was recognized with the Founders Award, highest employee achievement award at Google, for my contributions to Android.

Also co-founded Polar in 2007, leading native ads platform.

On the heels of the events of the Summer of 2020, Kathryn created Genius Guild, a business creation platform that uses the venture studio model (Lab & Venture Fund) to invest in Black entrepreneurs building scalable businesses that serve black communities and beyond. Pre-launch, Kathryn and Genius Guild raised over $5MM in investment from a number of partners including Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company founded by Melinda Gates, Impact Seat, an investment company led by serial investor Barbara Clarke, First Close partners, and individual investors such as Andrew Bosworth (Facebook).

In April 2020, Kathryn founded The Doonie Fund with a $10,000 personal donation, to encourage other black women entrepreneurs to continue to build their businesses in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis. One Medium post, a few emails and 6 weeks later, the fund grew to over $150,000, providing micro investments to over 1500 Black women-owned businesses.

Kathryn is the founder of digitalundivided, a groundbreaking social enterprise focused on creating a world where women own their work. Kathryn started digitalundivided after selling her company, The Budget Fashionista, the pioneering lifestyle media company. Her research, “#ProjectDiane”, drew widespread buzz for disrupting the dialogue around women of color and tech entrepreneurship. She grew the organization from a simple idea to a dynamic organization with a seven figure budget, 20+ staff, and two offices. After eight years as CEO, she stepped down to become the first black woman business author at Portfolio/Penguin Books.

A Yale-trained Epidemiologist, Kathryn has received numerous honors and awards including the Echoing Green fellowship, Eisenhower Fellowship, Entrepreneurs Magazine’s “Woman to Watch”, Grace Hopper ABIE award, Marie Claire’s 10 Women to Watch, Ebony Power 100, Black Enterprise “40 under 40” list and more.

A White House Champion of Change and a past member of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE) appointed by the Obama Administration, Kathryn was honored by the Borough of Manhattan with the “Kathryn Finney Appreciation Day”. She has also received an Honorary Doctorate from Mount Holyoke College and was inducted into both the African-American Alumni Hall of Fame at Rutgers University and Spelman College’s “Game Changers Academy.”

Elizabeth has reviewed over 20k startup pitches from around the world in the last few years and has helped numerous portfolio founders raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Her work and writing on startup fundraising has been featured in numerous publications including TechCrunch, Forbes, Huffington Post, BetaKit, and more.

Chris McCann is a general partner at Race Capital, entrepreneur, and community builder. Prior, Chris founded and led the community program at Greylock Partners, a San Francisco based venture capital firm with $3.5 billion under management which led investments in Facebook, LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Coinbase, among others. Chris has an angel portfolio of over twenty investments within the fintech and blockchain verticals including: Binance, Solana, Serum, among others.

Before he joined the firm, he was the co-founder and CEO of StartupDigest – of the earliest technology focused publications – which he grew from zero to over one million subscribers before being acquired by Techstars. He was an early advisor for the Thiel Fellowship & StartX at Stanford University. He also writes a newsletter covering the fintech & tech sectors and reaches 15,000 entrepreneurs, engineers, and investors on a weekly basis.

A Little More On Kojo (from the Matrix website)

I grew up in Accra, Ghana’s commercial capital known for its bustling street markets. My mother was an entrepreneur who ran a small retail business. She was the first entrepreneur I worked with. From her, I learned that doing what you love leads to persistence and ultimately, success.

In college, I fell in love with math and computer science. I was drawn to programming as a way to turn imagination into reality. I bought in fully to the promise of technology as a tool to solve hard problems. Espresso-fueled late-night coding sessions were common. That and squash round robins were the twin pillars of my college years.

After college, I turned down a corporate job to join a startup called Sirona as the first employee and founding engineer. After building our initial product and early engineering team I took on the challenge of building out a product organization as Head of Product. At Sirona, we built managed cloud infrastructure and machine learning workflows for radiology clinics. Building critical infrastructure and innovating with our users every day was a highlight of my career.

My startup experience at Sirona gave me a deep appreciation for the founder journey and influenced how I approach investing. I look for founders who radically challenge the status quo and have the self-awareness to chart a practical path to their vision.

In 2016, he joined Canal Partners (2016-2020), a multi-family office specializing in growth capital opportunities, after working at seed-stage venture fund Tallwave Capital as an Associate (2015-2016). During his five-year tenure at Canal Partners, he was jointly responsible for software investing. In addition, he was one of two lead partners for seven investments, serving on the board of directors of 6 companies. Mr. Paul left Canal Partners in 2020 to focus his time on his other investment interests, including DWP Capital.

David started DWP Capital in January of 2021. This investment vehicle focuses on investing in Seed and early Series A stage companies technology companies.

David received his B.A. from Springfield College in 2009 (Cum Laude) and his MBA from Northeastern University in 2013. He is a Trustee of the Linda Tuero Foundation and a Board Member of Social Venture Partners Phoenix. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with his wife, Stacy.

Amy's Bio
Before joining Costanoa, I ran North American sales strategy and operations at Zuora, a public enterprise software company. Prior to that, I spent three years investing in growth stage technology companies at Summit Partners, where my investments included Podium, InfoArmor (acq. AllState), and onXmaps. I began my career on Wall Street, working at JP Morgan where I spent time as a technology investment banker and as a cash equities trader focused on biotechnology and financial services.

She is also a founder and board member of Delivery Associates, the leading public sector advisory firm implementing technology and large-scale reform worldwide. 

Constantly curious, she has invested in and advised funds, companies, and entrepreneurs who are building companies behind trends that are obviously the future. She has lived and worked globally, including in London, San Francisco, Lagos, and Lahore. Katelyn grew up in Minneapolis and now can frequently be found in New York City and Seattle.

Previously, she co-founded and served as the Managing Director of Pearson Ventures (prior PALF), a $65M venture fund that invests in global EdTech companies. At Pearson, Katelyn served on the board of SPARK schools, APEC schools, Avanti, HarukaEDU, and Omega Schools. She also co-founded the Global Schools Forum, a trade organization for private schools in emerging markets. Katelyn also led the strategy and implementation of Pearson’s global efficacy agenda and was on the founding team of the FT125 Club, a division of the Financial Times. 

Katelyn is a member of Duke University's Learning Innovation Advisory Council, helping Duke imagine the future of learning both on-campus and online.

Katelyn started as a consultant at McKinsey in San Francisco, serving technology companies and large financial institutions. She worked on credit market sustainability with the World Economic Forum and presented at the Annual Meeting in Davos in 2011.

James Cham is a Partner at Bloomberg Beta, a firm focused on investing in the future of work. James invests in companies working on applying machine intelligence to businesses and society. He’s currently invested in companies like Orbital Insight (satellite imaging), Primer (analyst tools), Domino Data Labs (AI model management), and AppZen (expense management). James speaks and writes on the implications of AI for companies, including a landscape of machine intelligence companies (https://t.co/jnBX6Wdr5R). In the past, he's been involved in investments with companies like LifeLock, LinkedIn, Twilio, DropCam (now Nest), and Skybox Imaging. James was previously an investor at Bessemer Venture Partners and Trinity Venture Partners, a management consultant at The Boston Consulting Group, and a software developer. He has an M.B.A. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was an undergraduate in computer science at Harvard College. He currently resides in Palo Alto with his family and children.

Amber Yang is an investor at Bloomberg Beta, where she invests in companies at the pre-seed and seed stages working on machine intelligence, robotics, data infrastructure, and developer tools. In the past, she founded Seer Tracking, a startup working on creating a sustainable space environment by predicting satellite collisions with space debris, which led her to be named Forbes 30 Under 30. She did her master’s and undergraduate degree in computer science from Stanford University and spent a quarter abroad studying philosophy at Oxford University. While she was in college, she was an investment partner at Dorm Room Fund and a fellow at 8VC. She is based in San Francisco and writes about tech and philosophy on Twitter and Substack.