Entrepreneur First

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Nuno Sebastião is CEO and co-founder at Feedzai, the world’s market-leading digital solution in fighting online fraud and the fourth Portuguese unicorn, where he has worked full-time since 2010, from before its official launch. Since 2018, he has also been a senior advisor at Feedzai’s investor, the US-based VC Oak HC/FC. Prior to Feedzai, Sebastião was a product manager at the European Space Agency in Germany from 2006–10, where he led the development of the Satellite Simulation Infrastructure. Previously, he was Founder and CEO at his first startup, a company pioneering software validation for the aerospace sector, for just under two years, and worked as a consultant at Critical Software and Deloitte, for a total of three years.Sebastião holds two MBAs, one from London Business School and the other from UCLA, and completed his undergraduate studies in computer science at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. 

Brij Sahi is CEO and co-founder at Swiss biotech SwissDeCode, which applies DNA testing to food traceability, He has worked there full-time since April 2016. Since 2011, Sahi has also been an adjunct professor at Webster University in Geneva, teaching Business Policy, Strategic Management and Leadership. He is also a Swiss-based private investor in unnamed companies.From 2000–2008, Sahi worked at airline IT and telecommunications company SITA in both Singapore and Switzerland, where he reached the role of VP working in sales and marketing. He previously worked for two-and-a-half years in the area of sales and marketing at GAMECO, an aircraft maintenance and services company in China. Sahi started his corporate career at British Airways, where he spent over 11 years in marketing and business development.  Sahi holds an MBA from Cass Business School in London and a first degree in air transport engineering from City University, London. 

Born in 1968, Jerry Yang is a Taiwanese-American billionaire computer programmer. After co-creating the Yahoo internet navigational guide in 1994, he co-founded the company Yahoo! Inc in 1995 with David Filo while both were studying at Stanford University. Yang did not complete his PhD in electrical engineering to become an entrepreneur “selling internet advertising”.Yang was Yahoo! CEO for almost two years until 2009, rejecting Microsoft’s takeover offer of $47.5bn in 2008. He eventually left the board in 2012 when he resigned due to strategic disagreements such as whether to sell all or part of the company. In 2016, Yahoo! completed the sale of its core operating business to Verizon for $5bn. Yang was also a board member of the Alibaba Group from 2006 to 2012. Yang met Jack Ma in 1997 when Ma was working as a government-employed tour guide. The former English teacher gave him a tour of the Great Wall of China. Ma went on to found Alibaba a few months after meeting Yang.After leaving Yahoo!, Yang founded AME Cloud Ventures to invest in multiple tech startups. As of November 2020, Yang’s net worth was valued at $2.3bn. In 2017, he and his wife pledged $25m to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the largest gift in the museum's history.

Kaszek Ventures is an Argentinian VC co-founded in 2011 by Hernan Kazah and Nicolas Szekasy, both hailing from Latin America’s e-commerce success story MercadoLibre. Starting with $95m, the VC made its first investment in Brazilian fintech, Nubank. The VC now has over 159 investments and has managed 21 exits. It mainly focuses on B2C solutions, mobile, healthcare technology, retail and media.The most recent Kaszek investment is in Latin America’s leading crypto platform Bitso, co-leading Bitso’s $62m Series B round with QED Investors. Managing partner Szekasy has also joined Bitso’s board. Existing shareholders Coinbase Ventures and Pantera Capital joined the Bitso round.In 2019, Kaszek raised two new funds securing a total of $600m to invest in later-growth stage companies to tap into Latin America’s rapidly maturing tech ecosystems. The rollout of 4G has also helped to speed up the adoption of new technologies across the region, according to Kazah.

Beyond Investing is a Geneva-based firm investing in early-stage venture capital and equity growth startups mainly in European developed markets. With average investments of €200,000, the firm’s core investment strategy focuses on sustainability with an investment period lasting 5–10 years.The impact investor targets innovative startups involved in vegan, cruelty-free and plant-based alternatives; biotechnologies, foodtech, new materials, clothing and lifestyle sectors. Successful portfolio foodtechs include Mosa Meat, BlueNalu and Shiok Meats.With a team of vegan finance professionals in the US and Europe, Beyond Investing listed the first US Vegan Climate ETF (VEGN) on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2019. The ETF tracks Beyond Investing’s US Vegan Climate Index which covers an index of 495 of the largest-capitalization companies in the US stock market. The ethical investment option aims to exclude stocks in companies with activities that are not aligned with its vegan-themed, cruelty-free and fossil-fuel-free investing ethos.

The British F1 racing driver and five-time FIA Formula One World Champion Lewis Hamilton has started to promote veganism and sustainable lifestyles, investing in several technology startups that develop solutions in that field.In 2019 he launched  Neat Meat, the British vegan fast casual chain, in collaboration with The Cream Group, UNICEF Ambassadors and early investor in Beyond Meat Tommaso Chiabra. More recently he participated in a Series D funding round backing NotCo, the first Chilean unicorn selling plant-based food and beverage products across Latin America and the US.Hamilton is actively fighting to promote sustainable and eco-friendly practices across industries. In 2019 he also pushed Mercedes-Benz to discuss the possibility of including animal-free interiors in their cars. On that he said: I want to be part of a system that is going to help heal the world and do something positive for the future.”

Roger Federer, the Swiss 20-times Grand Slam tennis champion, has turned into an angel investor while planning his professional life beyond and after his tennis sports career.In 2019, he invested in On, the Swiss running shoe manufacturer for an undisclosed funding amount. Federer currently has no formal role in the company but he’s actively involved in its R&D and product development. “I feel like I can give input on any of the lines, the shoes, anything moving forward. I can give my opinion on anything and On can either take it or leave it. I feel like [with] a major brand like Nike, that's literally impossible. It just wouldn't work,” he has said.More recently, Federer participated in a Series D funding round backing the first Chilean unicorn NotCo, which sells plant-based food and beverage products across Latin America and the US. 

She Wei graduated from Tsinghua University with a master's in Computer Science in 2006 and has since worked for IBM, CDL and HP Labs China. He joined Miaozhen Systems at the end of 2011, where he developed a series of B2B products for brands and advertisers. She joined MININGLAMP Technology as co-founder and CTO in 2013; led development of DataInsight (MININGLAMP's data mining platform); and headed the algorithm team, which served clients in the sectors of finance, homeland security and manufacture. A serial entrepreneur, he co-founded game media platform Ye Zizhu in 2003.

Ivan Nikolas Tambunan is a lawyer-turned-entrepreneur who co-founded the P2P lending site Akseleran. After graduating from Universitas Indonesia in 2009 with a Bachelor's in Law, Ivan worked as an associate at AFS Partnership, handling various corporate law cases in civil and criminal courts. He left in 2011 for a short stint at the Makarim & Taira S law firm. In 2012, he joined Allen & Overy as a transactional banking lawyer. Before he left Allen & Overy in 2017, he advised various clients, including the Artha Graha Group and Macquarie. He and his co-founders started developing Akseleran in 2016 and launched an early version in March 2017.Ivan earned a Master's degree in Law & Finance from Queen Mary University of London. His thesis was on the topic of crowdfunding and became part of the inspiration behind establishing Akseleran.

Vladimir Lupenko is a professional accountant, serial entrepreneur and angel investor. Lupenko’s latest entrepreneurial project is Impress, an invisible aligners company using a hybrid model of remote patient monitoring and in-person visits. The startup, headquartered in Barcelona but operating in several European countries, is regarded as one of the fastest-growing telemedicine companies in Europe.Originally from Russia, Lupenko holds a master’s in Economics from the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. In 2005 he studied Corporate Finance at the Vienna University of Business and Economics. His professional career started as a Consultant in KPMG Russia in 2005, which he left two years later. Since 2007 he is also the co-founder of FCG, a corporate finance and M&A advisory firm in Russia and since 2013 he is also the non-executive co-founder of CarPrice one of the largest second-hand car marketplaces in Russia and Japan. In 2015, he co-founded AKTIVO a technology-backed real estate platform in Russia.

Lewis Dunnigan is a researcher turned entrepreneur based in Australia. After earning a master’s degree in Chemical Engineering and working as a researcher at the University of Edinburgh in the UK, Dunnigan returned to Australia. He had a brief stint as a visiting researcher and earned his PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Adelaide.During his PhD, Dunnigan was a part of Philip Kwong’s research laboratory. His PhD project involved developing a system to generate activated charcoal and renewable energy from biomass. In 2017, Dunnigan, Kwong, and fellow PhD student Ben Morton decided to commercialize this technology and established a spin-off company called Bygen, which developed a low-cost, novel way to make activated carbon more sustainably using various forms of agricultural waste. Dunnigan is now the CEO of Bygen.

Currently based in London, French national Pierre Yves Paslier completed a master’s in materials science and engineering from INSA in Lyon in 2010. In 2012, he went on to complete a master’s in industrial and product design at the Royal College of Art in London. He also studied innovation design engineering at Imperial College.After graduating in 2014, Paslier and university alumnus Rodrigo García González co-founded Skipping Rocks Lab that was pivoted as Notpla in 2019. Both are co-CEOs of the UK-based startup that develops compostable and edible packaging material made of seaweed and other plants.Before becoming an entrepreneur, Paslier worked as a packaging engineer for L’Oréal from 2010 to 2012. He has been invited to speak at TEDx conferences in Athens and Warwick to share his experience and innovative projects in packaging and product design. In 2020, he became an industrial advisory board member at Imperial College London Dyson School of Design Engineering. In 2019, he also became a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Hub.

María Eugenia García founded her first business in 2013, dedicated to the import and export of education materials. After a stint in Hong Kong, she closed the business and focused on developing the MenteLista platform to follow her passion for neuroscience and how it can be used to enhance children's learning.She had previously managed the Andalusian Center of Technology and Innovation (CITIC) for 11 years. She had also worked as a senior consultant at BAE Systems. She has a computer science degree from Salamanca Pontifical University and a master's in Business Administration from San Telmo International Institute.

Christopher Mortensen is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at UK-based Modulous, the first end-to-end generative design and delivery solution for affordable, sustainable and modulized housing, where he has worked since 2018.  Before that, he worked for two years as technical director at engineering, sustainability and energy consultancy Hydrock. Previously, he was at Atelier Ten for ten years working as a senior engineer, an environmental design consultant, a building services engineer and a lighting designer. Mortensen’s previous posts were all in his native US: as a mechanical project engineer at Oregon-based Interface Engineering 2004-8, as a mechanical designer at Philadelphia-based Associated Engineering Consultants, and as an assistant hut master at the Appalachian Mountain Club. He holds an Executive MBA from Cass Business School in London and also studied Blockchain in 2018 at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School Mortensen is a keen public speaker and, in 2017, gave a TedX talk on ’Beyond Sustainable Design.’

Gianpaolo Rando is CTO and co-founder at Swiss biotech SwissDeCode, which applies DNA testing to food traceability. He has worked there full-time since April 2016. Prior to this, Rando gained significant experience working in the field of genomics. He spent three years prior to SwissDeCode’s foundation trialing his DNA food testing technology in his startup BeerDeCoded and assisted in the launch of a compact DNA laboratory at Bento Bio in London. He previously spent almost three years at the University of Geneva in research, co-inventing a technology for ink to change color in response to a specific DNA sequence. His earlier position at the University of Lausanne as a post-doctoral fellow in genomics saw him lead a nine-man team for three and a half years, discovering the hormone that prepares newborns to lactate. Rando’s first post was at Trangenic Operative Products, leading animal research there. Italian-born Rando holds a PhD in biotechnology and pharmacology from the University of Milan as well as a qualification in data science. 

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