Startup Grind Europe

Cal Henderson is the co-founder and CTO of Slack. He is a world-renowned expert, author, and speaker, having led the technical development of Flickr from its founding, and authored the best-selling O’Reilly book “Building Scalable Websites”. Cal has a Computer Science degree from the University of Central England, where he was named Alumni of the Year in 2015.

Luciana Lixandru focuses on consumer internet, software and marketplace businesses. She helped lead Accel’s investments and ongoing work in Avito, Catawiki, Wallapop, Deliveroo, Algolia, Doctolib and Vinted, and was previously an investor at Summit Partners. Luciana is from Romania and graduated from Georgetown University.

Miguel McKelvey is the Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of WeWork, where he directs all architecture, design, and construction activities. Miguel is a multi-disciplinary designer and entrepreneur with diverse experience in architectural design, construction management, and web development. Prior to WeWork, Miguel created the design framework and led the national retail roll-out for American Apparel (170 stores), and was involved in the early-stage development of several companies, including Green Desk, Barre3, Versation, and English, Baby! Miguel earned his BA (Architecture) from the University of Oregon.

David joined JUST EAT in March 2006 to launch its UK business, and was appointed Chief Executive Officer in January 2013.

David led JUST EAT in the UK from startup to becoming Europe’s largest technology stock market floatation in a decade when it listed on the London Stock Exchange in April 2014.

Beginning his career in 1998 with Coca-Cola Enterprises, David enjoyed a variety of senior sales roles and won the prestigious Account Manager of the Year award while managing Coca-Cola’s key national restaurant customers in the UK.

David holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Law and Business from Middlesex University Business School.

In 2014, David was named Entrepreneur of the Year at the Investor Allstars Awards, and was listed as one of the London Evening Standard’s top 1,000 influential people in the same year. More recently, he was also named as one of Britain's most influential people in the Debrett's 500 2015.

David is also a Partner at 83North – a global venture capital firm.

Martha is founder and executive chair of Doteveryone.org.uk, a charity fighting for a fairer internet. In April 2016 she was appointed as a non executive director of Twitter. Martha became a crossbench peer in the UK House of Lords in March 2013. In March 2014 she was appointed Chancellor of the Open University. Martha co- founded and chairs LuckyVoice, revolutionising the karaoke industry. She is a non executive director of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Creative industries federation, the Scale Up Institute and the Open Data Institute. Martha is a Patron of AbilityNet, Reprieve, Camfed and Just for Kids Law. In 2013 Martha was awarded a CBE. In 1998 Martha co-founded Europe’s largest travel and leisure website, lastminute.com with Brent Hoberman. They took it public in 2000 and sold it in 2005. 

Tom is a General Partner of GV (Google Ventures), based in London. GV has $2.4bn under asset management; Tom's investments include Lemonade.com, Cambridge Epigenetix, Oxford Sciences Innovation, Weaveworks and Currency Cloud. Previously, while leading IDEO's startup efforts globally, he founded OpenIDEO, IDEO’s open innovation platform that has over 150,000 users from more than 170 countries. The platform allows a global community of users to tackle challenges for social good. Tom has also been an Angel Investor in 21 startups; his seed investments include MileIQ (exited to Microsoft), Divimove (exited to Freemantle), GoCardless, Cliqz (exited to Burda), Smarkets, Llustre (exited to Fab), Massive Health (exited to Jawbone), LostMyName, Nested, Tray.io and MoveGuides. Tom's TED talk on design has been viewed over 1 million times, he has been recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and is featured in WIRED UK’s Top 100 Digital Power Brokers and the Evening Standard list of London’s 1000 Most Influential People. Tom earned a first class bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Bristol, an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he received the Baker Scholar Award of high distinction and an Honorary Doctorate in design from University of the Arts London.

Uri Levine is a passionate serial entrepreneur and disruptor. He co-founded Waze, the world's largest driving traffic and navigation app, with more than 250M drivers around the globe, which was acquired by Google on June 2013 for more than $1.1 billion. After Waze, he co-founded and is active chairman at FeeX, which addresses the biggest secret in the world, $600B of financial fees that no-one knows they are paying. FeeX allows users to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars in their retirement savings and long term investment plans. Levine focuses mainly on consumer services, with an agenda of “create a lot of value to a lot of users”, like saving money, time and empower them - in other words, doing good and doing well. In addition to FeeX, Levine is also co-founder and board member in several startups: - Chairman and first Investor at Zeek – a marketplace for unused store credit. Addressing $100B of loss store credits every year. - Member of the board and godfounder of Roomer - a marketplace for non-refundable hotel reservations, a $20B annual loss. - Founder, Chairman and 1 st investor at FairFly, which addresses the biggest secret in the travel industry. What happened to airfare AFTER the booking. FairFly monitors the airfare of your own itinerary after you made reservation and allows you to rebook the same flight or a better flight once price drops. - 1 st Member of the board of Moovit, which is like Waze but for public transportation, and today, serves about 50M passengers in more than 1,000 cities around the globe. - Founder, Chairman and the 1 st investor at Engie, which deals with our frustration and helplessness at the mechanics, with an app that connects to the car computer, running diagnostic before and gathers quotation before we go to the mechanic, and empowers the driver. - Mentor and investor at SpamOff, which fights SMS Spam through an automatic tool that recognizes spammers and empowers users to file law suits against them. - Member of the supervisory board at HERE, location cloud company, which enables digital mapping and real-time location applications for consumers, vehicles, enterprises and cities. Uri is also working on couple of new startups, which follow the same theme – creating a lot of value to a lot of users, all in the consumer space. Uri has been in the high tech business for the last 30 years, half of them in the startup scene, and has seen everything ranging from failure, middle success and extreme success. Uri is also a world-class speaker on subjects like: entrepreneurship, disruption, evolution vs. revolutions of markets and startups.

Bibop Gabriele Gresta, global expert in finance, transportation and media, specializes in mass market community building and project design. He is a world-renowned speaker, featured at the World Economic Forum, United Nations, Ted Talks, among others, focused on transportation and human mobility. He is also a respected activist in Transhumanism and Ethical Entrepreneurship.

In 2014 Gresta partnered with Dirk Ahlborn, CEO and co-founder of Jump Starter, Inc. as COO and Chairman for Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. Now, as Chairman, he coordinates a team of 800+ professionals in 40+ countries- the first on the globe to begin development of the Hyperloop.

Dame Stephanie Shirley BSc, CEng, FREng was born in Germany and arrived in Britain in 1939 as a five year old unaccompanied refugee on the Kindertransport. She started her software company on the dining table with what would now be $100. It was a social business – a company of women, a company for women – that went public in 1996. When it de-listed in 2007, it employed 8,500 people – men and women, which is as it should be – and was valued at nearly three billion dollars. Since her nominal retirement, she has founded four charities and taken each into sustainability; she is enjoying investing her hard earned wealth in IT (her professional discipline) and autism (her late son’s disorder).

Nigel Eccles is co-founder and CEO of FanDuel, the fantasy sports company that is redefining sports entertainment. Nigel oversees the strategic direction of FanDuel, catapulting the company from five employees with a developing user base, to employing more than 300 people in two countries with over six million registered users.

Taavet Hinrikus is co-founder and CEO of TransferWise. Prior to starting TransferWise, Taavet was Skype’s director of strategy until 2008, starting as its first-ever employee. One of the World Economic Forum's Tech Pioneers, Taavet is an adviser to the Prime Minister of Estonia on the digital agenda. He’s also a mentor and angel investor; his investments include Tweetdeck, Mendeley, OMGPOP, Property Partner, Sunrise, Improbable and Mapillary.

Lars is the creator of LEGO’s global success on Social Media and Video platforms. Based in London with teams in the US, Denmark, Shanghai and Singapore. Lars is driving the well known and innovative toy company's social media & video strategy and execution. He has been developing the company's social media engagement from scratch and created a global organization. When he began in the company there wasn’t even an official LEGO page. In 2015 Adweek scored LEGO as the number one brand on Social Media and YouTube in the toy industry. Lars has been named as one of the 25 most Innovative and influential marketers in Europe by the Holmes Report. He holds and BA and MA in Digital Media Science and a HD in Innovation and Organizational Strategy.

Ilya Fushman is a Partner at Index Ventures. A former academic with both an operating and venture capital background, he is passionate about the frontiers of cutting-edge technologies and helping the next wave of startups and entrepreneurs build global businesses. Prior to joining Index, Ilya was the head of product at Dropbox. As one of Dropbox’s first 75 employees, he helped build and run the company’s business and corporate development functions, before taking on a product leadership role and building out Dropbox, Dropbox for Business and the developer platform. Before Dropbox, he was a principal at Khosla Ventures and the Director of Technology at the solar cell startup Solar Junction. 

A deep technologist, Ilya holds a PhD in Applied Physics and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, where he worked on quantum computing and biophysics and a B.S. in Physics from Caltech. Ilya holds a number of patents in the fields of software, photonics, and electronics. He currently lives in San Francisco and enjoys kitesurfing and skiing in his spare time.

Ambarish Mitra is the CEO and co-founder of Blippar, the leading augmented reality browser using artificial intelligence and computer vision to give people more from the world they see. He has grown Blippar from 3 cofounders to 250+ employees with offices in UK, USA, India and Singapore.

Saul is a Partner at LocalGlobe, a new seed fund focussed on helping London's most ambitious founders build game changing businesses. Saul was a Partner at Index Ventures from 2007 until 2015. In 2012 David Cameron appointed Saul to be the UK's first tech envoy to Israel and a Technology Business Ambassador. Saul is serial entrepreneur with two decades of experience building and exiting companies in the US, Israel and Europe. 

Matt heads up Google’s business and operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa - helping consumers and businesses make the most of the digital opportunity. Joining Google in 2007 to help build its business in the UK, he became MD of Google UK two years later. In 2011, he was promoted to VP of Northern and Central Europe, before taking over as President of Business and Operations in EMEA in 2014. Matt is a non-executive director of Sainsbury’s, and a Trustee of charity The Media Trust. Matt has had a long career in media and marketing, joining Google from the newspaper industry, where he led commercial and digital operations at the biggest UK publisher. He previously worked at management consultancy McKinsey. He has an MBA from London Business School, an MA from Cambridge and won silver medals for Cambridge in several Boat Races. He was also a member of the British rowing team and has won medals in eights and fours at the World Rowing Championships and represented Great Britain at the Olympics. In 2014, he was appointed a Steward of Henley Royal Regatta and he still rows regularly, though more slowly. Matt lives in London, near the Thames, with his wife, teenage sons and small dog. 

Phin Mpofu is a globally connected entrepreneurship evangelist, inspired by how it can be used as a force for good. He is Startup Grind's Community Evangelist for EMEA helping the local Chapter Directors build incredibly helpful, dynamic and well-connected communities for their ecosystems. He is himself a Chapter Director for Startup Grind Thames Valley and spearheads the hyper-local #RDGUK Office Hours initiative.

His commitment to helping entrepreneurs was recognised in 2016 by the Centre for Entrepreneurs. He was listed on The Maserati 100, the annual list which recognises entrepreneurs who are generously giving their time and resources to support the next generation of young entrepreneurs. Phin is a Fellow of the Centre for Entrepreneurs.

Rajesh Agrawal is the Deputy Mayor of London for Business. Born in India, Rajesh moved to London in 2001. As an entrepreneur he founded RationalFX in 2005, and Xendpay in 2014, both companies utilising technology to reduce the cost of international money transfer for businesses and individuals. Rajesh is passionate about promoting entrepreneurship and creating opportunities for young people. He was appointed Chair of Oxfam’s Enterprise Development Programme in 2015 and has been a Patron of the Prince’s Trust for many years. As Deputy Mayor Rajesh aims to be a strong voice for London’s business community, protecting jobs and growth, and ensuring that the capital remains the most open and attractive place to do business in the world.

Jon Reynolds is co-founder and CEO of SwiftKey, the award-winning company making it easy for everyone to create and communicate on mobile. SwiftKey’s smart keyboard apps for Android and iPhone learn from each user to accurately autocorrect and predict their next word. SwiftKey technology features on more than 300m devices worldwide, and in April 2016 SwiftKey was acquired by Microsoft. Jon co-founded SwiftKey in 2008, aged 22. He has an MA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, an Advanced Diploma in Management Accountancy, CIMA, and began his career as a government civil servant. Jon was named ‘Young Tech Entrepreneur of the Year’ at the Europioneers. SwiftKey has been named the hottest startup in London by Wired magazine and one of the most innovative mobile businesses in the world by Fast Company.

Carolina is a Partner at Atomico based in London. She works on sourcing, evaluation and due diligence of global investments. Carolina focuses on fintech, consumer / retail, and marketplaces. She works with several of Atomico portfolio companies including Lendinvest, Farmdrop and Uniplaces, and sits on the boards of Gympass, Chemist Direct and Bebestore. Having interned at Atomico during her MBA, Carolina then moved to London as acting COO of an e-commerce start-up, leading daily operations across product management, business development and marketing, before joining Atomico's team on a permanent basis. Prior to her MBA, Carolina was at private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners, where she worked on multiple buyout opportunities across sectors, including the global credit bureau TransUnion. Carolina has a Bachelor of Science degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. She is not afraid to admit her healthy obsession with martial arts movies, spicy food, and her Havanese puppy, Lola. Carolina is a native Brazilian and US citizen, fluent in Portuguese, Spanish as well as proficient in French. She loves good wine and is progressing through her sommelier qualifications in her free time.

Ilyas Khan is the CEO of Cambridge Quantum Computing, a leading quantum computing company that was founded in 2014. A fellow of St Edmund’s College at the University of Cambridge, Ilyas is also the Leader in Residence at the Judge Business School where he was one of the founders of “Accelerate Cambridge”, the highly regarded and successful business accelerator programme that is focused on the technology sector. Ilyas is also the Chairman of The Stephen Hawking Foundation.

Claire worked as a Paediatrician in London before specialising in Clinical Genetics. She has degrees in Pathology and Medicine as well as a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge. At Ada she is responsible for overseeing medical affairs and for working with clinicians and patients to ensure our products are tailored to their needs.

Edward Roussel is Chief Innovation Officer at Dow Jones. Since assuming this role in May 2015, Mr. Roussel has taken responsibility for identifying areas of new opportunity for the company, with a particular focus on mobile innovation. Mr. Roussel joined Dow Jones in June 2013 as head of product, overseeing the advancement of the company’s consumer and Professional Information Business products. During this time, he led the redesign of The Wall Street Journal’s suite of digital products, including WSJ.com, iOS apps (Apple Watch and iPad), the Android app, newsletters and the technology website, WSJD.

Before joining Dow Jones, Mr. Roussel worked at the Telegraph Media Group in London for seven years. As Executive Editor, Digital, Mr. Roussel headed the Telegraph’s website and digital development. He played a key role in reorganizing the newsroom to place digital journalism at its core, introducing new media such as video, e-books and a Flipboard afternoon newspaper. During his tenure, the Telegraph saw record-breaking digital growth and won awards for Consumer Website of the Year and Digital Publisher of the Year by the U.K. Association of Online Publishers. From 1992 to 2004, Mr. Roussel worked as a journalist at Bloomberg, where he served as bureau chief in Brussels, Paris and London. In his final role at Bloomberg, Mr. Roussel oversaw global financial coverage, leading a team of more than 130 reporters and editors in New York, Europe and Asia.

TD Lowe is a Partner at 42Phi Ventures and is Founder of EnovationNation Inc. TD serves as faculty at Southern Methodist University and has served as a guest instructor at Stanford University’s School of Engineering. In addition to being a Politico Ambassador, she is an economist and self-taught developer who draws on her passion for innovation and her experience in technology, finance and strategy as driving forces to enhance, influence and educate the world on the power of innovation. 

TD has worked in Technology, Strategy, Finance and Venture Capital at several Fortune 50 companies and smaller firms. During her tenure, TD assumed key roles as a leader in corporate innovation, finance, product marketing, contract negotiations, and technical development. Her passion for innovation and entrepreneurs has served as a catalyst for her work with Startup Grind’s Startup Exhibition.

Punit Aggarwal is Head of Entrepreneur Development at Google where he focuses on coaching acquired founders, developing leadership talent and also teaching courses to enhance executive presence, emotional intelligence and wellbeing. Previously, Punit led Google’s global team of 20+ Leadership Talent Acquisition professionals. Punit holds a BA in Economics with honors from the University of Manchester and an MBA from the University of Southern California. A London native, he and his wife reside in Northern California.

Reggie Bradford brings more than 20 years of experience to his role as Senior Vice President, Startup Ecosystem & Accelerator at Oracle. In his current role, he is focused on driving Oracle’s global startup initiatives and leading the expansion of its Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator program, as well as championing Oracle’s vision to become the global leader in Cloud Computing. He also serves as a thought leader speaking and writing about Entrepreneurism, Cloud, Internet of Things, Globalization, Data Visualization, Artificial Intelligence and other emerging technologies. Prior to joining Oracle, Bradford was the founder and CEO of Vitrue, the global leader in cloud-based social marketing and management. Vitrue was acquired by Oracle in May 2012 and is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oracle. Prior to Vitrue, Bradford held executive management positions at TANDBERG Television, N2 Broadband, and WebMD. Over the course of his career, Bradford has received a number of industry accolades recognizing his success as an entrepreneur and Internet visionary, including Business Insider’s 2014 Most Influential People in Cloud Computing; Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Distinguished Entrepreneur Award in 2013; Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2012. Bradford currently serves on the board of directors of Integrate, a cloud-based marketing and media services provider; Mana Health, a healthcare technology startup which helps physicians glean trends from patient medical record data; and Persado, a marketing technology startup which provides marketers with an automated copywriting software that generates persuasive language to their target audience. Bradford received a BBA in Finance from the University of Georgia and an MBA from Emory University. He serves on numerous advisory boards including Felix Capital of London. Bradford resides in London with his wife Holly and their children.

Saalim Chowdhury is a VC and Entrepreneur in Residence at 500 Startups. Based in London and working globally, he has particular interests in Fintech, AI/ML, 'People Tech' and Marketplaces. He works with portfolio startups on applied machine learning, consumer decision making and enterprise sales. A startup veteran and technical founder, his notable ad-ventures include ScanSafe (acq. for $183m by Cisco) and Skillbridge (acq. by A16z-backed unicorn, Toptal). For his sins his career started at BCG and he's known for his love of dogs and mediocre puns. 

Raj Mukherjee joined Indeed as Senior Vice President of Product in July 2016. In this role, he leads the day-to-day operations of our global Product team, grows our core products and drives new product innovation in support of the company’s mission—”together, we help people get jobs.” Prior to joining Indeed, Raj served as SVP of Product at GoDaddy and was responsible for helping their 14 million customers build successful businesses online. Previously, he worked on the Enterprise Platform team at Google—leading the product management for Domains for Google Apps and Google Drive for Enterprises—and he was also Senior Product Manager within the Online Services division at Microsoft. Raj earned his joint MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and Columbia Business School, and he has a bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering from India.

Having taught meditation for 20+ years, Josette, has led courses globally from Japan, India, UK, and America. Her meditation courses encompass a variety of tailored formats ranging from Corporate settings at Apple and Twitter, to High School students in inner cities, including South Central Los Angeles. Josette holds a BA in English Literature & Mass Communications from the University of Berkeley and an MS in Education from the University of Southern California.

Thorold Barker is Editor, Europe, Middle East and Africa, for The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires overseeing the combined editorial resources of the newspaper and newswire. Mr. Barker joined the Journal in 2008 when he relaunched Heard on the Street as a global commentary and analysis product, covering business, finance and macro-economics. Before joining the Journal he worked at the Financial Times in London and New York, having begun his career at Bain & Company, a global business and strategy consulting firm.

Dr. Becky Sage, CEO at Interactive Scientific Ltd, has led the company as they developed Nano Simbox, and immersive digital tool that is changing the face of science education and science research, through which she has been recognised as a National Women in Innovation winner, a WISE finalist and a change-maker in education. Becky believes in connecting the full scientific ecosystem to the societal challenges that are underpinned by science research and developing a more diverse work force with the scientific skills, confidence and intuition to build a healthy, sustainable future.

Stu Woo covers tech, media and telecom in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Based in London, he also writes about politics and occasionally about sports. Mr. Woo previously covered sports from New York and politics and technology from the San Francisco bureau. A San Francisco native and Brown University alum, Mr. Woo joined The Wall Street Journal in 2008.

Director at Startup Grind London. Founding Partner at IPM Growth, a VC company investing in top tech companies from Central & Eastern Europe. Board member at Matsuko.com, Advisory board at Tachyum.com, Acquisition Committee at Tate (REEAC). 

Founder of BrainTrust, a think-tank helping top tech CEOs and founders in Central Europe scale globally. Ex-Orange, ex-Reebok. Marian was featured in New Europe 100 (organised by Financial Times, Google, Respublica and Visegrad Fund), the list of outstanding challengers who are leading world class innovation from Central and Eastern Europe.

CEO & Founder at MarsBased and Barcelona Chapter Director at Startup Grind. MarsBased is a 20-people full-remote development consultancy from Barcelona specialised in web and mobile applications developed with Ruby on Rails, Python and Javascript frameworks. Àlex runs the sales/marketing area and is in charge of communications & growth of the company. His background in consulting & development (ex-Deloitte, ex-VASS) and his international profile helps him with the technical and the business perspective. He is also a business angel, investing over 30 in B2B tech companies, a mentor at SeedRocket and a partner in the Itnig Fund One.

In his spare time, he podcasts at Foc a Terra and leads a punk rock band called RES!

Megan is a General Partner at Spark Capital, where she invests in growth-stage companies, including Slack, Glossier, and Niantic. She was formerly a partner at Kleiner Perkins. Prior to becoming an investor, Megan led the product development organization at Square and spent seven years at Google building Google Maps.

Miguel McKelvey is the Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of WeWork, where he directs all architecture, design, and construction activities. Miguel is a multi-disciplinary designer and entrepreneur with diverse experience in architectural design, construction management, and web development. Prior to WeWork, Miguel created the design framework and led the national retail roll-out for American Apparel (170 stores), and was involved in the early-stage development of several companies, including Green Desk, Barre3, Versation, and English, Baby! Miguel earned his BA (Architecture) from the University of Oregon.

Scott spent almost 10 years as a nightclub promoter in New York City before leaving to volunteer on a hospital ship off the coast of Liberia, West Africa as a volunteer photojournalist. Returning home to New York City two years later, he founded the non-profit organisation charity: water in 2006.

Turning his full attention to the global water crisis and the world’s 663 million people without clean water to drink, he created public installations and innovative online fundraising platforms to spread international awareness of the issue.

In ten years, with the help of more than one million donors worldwide, charity: water has raised over $225 million and funded over 21,000 water projects in 24 countries. When completed, those projects will provide over 6.4 million people with clean, safe drinking water.

Scott was recently recognized in Fortune Magazine’s 40 under 40 list, the Forbes Magazine Impact 30 list and was recently #10 in Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business issue. He is currently a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.

Luciana Lixandru focuses on consumer internet, software and marketplace businesses. She helped lead Accel’s investments and ongoing work in Avito, Catawiki, Wallapop, Deliveroo, Algolia, Doctolib and Vinted, and was previously an investor at Summit Partners. Luciana is from Romania and graduated from Georgetown University.

Will Shu, co-founder and CEO of Deliveroo. Will is on a mission to transform the way the world thinks about takeaway. He founded Deliveroo in August 2013 after becoming fed up with London's poor quality and slow food delivery options. Prior to starting the company, he worked in banking at Morgan Stanley, ESO Capital and SAC Capita. Deliveroo is now in over 50 cities across the world and has attracted $200m worth of investment from some of the world's leading investors, including Index Ventures, Accel and DST Global.

Dhiraj Mukherjee is one of the cofounders of the music identifying service, Shazam. He completed his Master's at Stanford University in 1997 and currently serves as the Head of Banking Innovation for Virgin Money in the United Kingdom. Prior to starting Shazam, Mukherjee worked in consulting for Bain & Company and as a Project Manager for Viant Corp.

Derek Andersen ​is the Founder & CEO of Startup Grind, a 400,000 person entrepreneurial community with 200 chapters in 85 countries run by more than 1,000 volunteers. Startup Grind's mission is to help every entrepreneur in the world. It's core values are giving before you take, helping others first, and making friends. Derek Andersen spent four years in product management at Electronic Arts working on games like The Godfather, Burnout, The Sims 3, and Mirror’s Edge. He left EA in 2009 to start Vaporware Labs, a product incubator which mostly failed but built products including Commonred which was acquired by Income.com in 2012, and Startup Grind. After running Startup Grind as a side project for 2 years, Derek turned his full attention to scaling it from 3 chapters to 200 chapters today. In 2015 Startup Grind will host 1,200 events for 75,000 entrepreneurs. He currently lives in Palo Alto, California but has lived eight years outside the U.S. in France, Germany, Switzerland, New Zealand, and the Cook Islands.