E-Pal · Hurun US Under30s 2022

Source：Hurun Report

Author：Hurun Report

IssueTime：2022-11-10

The Hurun Research Institute, together with E-Pal, today released its inaugural E-Pal · Hurun US Under30s 2022, a list of America’s 291 most outstanding young entrepreneurs aged 30 or under.

E-Pal · Hurun US Under30s 2022

Celebrating the US’s outstanding young entrepreneurs

291 young entrepreneurs make the inaugural Hurun Young US Entrepreneurs 2022

(10 November 2022, Los Angeles) The Hurun Research Institute, together with E-Pal, today released its inaugural E-Pal · Hurun US Under30s 2022, a list of America’s 291 most outstanding young entrepreneurs aged 30 or under.

Between them, these entrepreneurs have founded 201 business, including 18 unicorns – companies with valuations of more than US$1 billion – and more than 148 with investment of US$1 million or more.

Amongst the E-Pal · Hurun US Under30s with the biggest impact are Andy Fang, 30, and Stanley Tang, 30, who set up DoorDash, which today has a market cap of US$18 billion.

Others include Henrique Dubugras, 26, and Pedro Franceschi, 26, who five years ago set up Brex, which today has a valuation of US$12 billion. Brex started out as a credit card for startups, expanding to offer finance solutions.

Michael Krakaris, 26, sold his start-up Deliverr, a San Francisco-based e-commerce fulfillment firm, to Shopify for US$2.1 billion in May 2022. The youngest billion-dollar business was set up by Kylie Jenner, 25. In total 25 of the 2022 E-Pal · Hurun US Under30s have built billion-dollar businesses.

“It’s mind-boggling to see the impact of these Under30s. The average size of their businesses was worth just under US$100 million, although that brought up by the 20-plus billion-dollar business. If they can build a business that size before they are 30, then imagine how big they can grow it to by the time they are Elon Musk and Jess Bezos’ ages.” said Rupert Hoogewerf, Hurun Report Chairman and Chief Researcher.

To qualify for inclusion on the list, entrepreneurs had to be aged 30 or under in Nov 2021.

The top sector for the companies was business management solutions (33 companies – 16% of the total), reflecting the huge number of opportunities the digital economy is creating to overhaul and disrupt existing businesses.

Exemplifying this trend is Germany-born Laura Behrens Wu, founder and CEO of Shippo, a shipping platform for merchants and e-commerce platforms to automate their paperwork, track, handle returns and other shipping-related tasks. Established in 2014, it has raised more than $154 million in funding to date and has a valuation of more than $1 billion.

The next most popular sector was financial services (26 companies – 13.8%), followed by health care (22 companies – 10.8%) and media and entertainment (14 companies – 6.9%).

By state, California is home to the headquarters of 87 of the companies – 42% of the total – reflecting its role as the US’s leading location of technology innovation. In second place was New York, with 38 headquarters, 19% of the total. Massachusetts, with 11, is the only other state to host the headquarters of more than 10 companies on the list.

By city, San Francisco (43 companies -- 22% of the total) and New York (32 – 16%) are by far the two biggest magnets for US-based entrepreneurs. Third-placed Los Angeles is home to 12 (6%), and fourth-placed Chicago has 8 (4%).

“The US’s two great commercial centres – California on the West Coast and New York and its surrounding region on the East Coast – continue to be America’s dominant entrepreneurial hubs. With their fantastic universities, access to essentially unlimited finance and hugely rich talent pools, they continue to be the best locations for launching and scaling world-beating new companies,” said Hoogewerf.

Of the 291 entrepreneurs, 256 went to university in the US, either at undergraduate or graduate level. A total of 30 had attended Stanford University, 15 had been to University of California, Berkeley and 12 had been to Harvard University.

“World-class universities are of critical importance to a successful start-up ecosystem. Stanford underpinned Silicon Valley’s early success, and today we are seeing deeper engagements of top universities with successful start-ups that – in turn – are fostering new generations of talent,” said Hoogewerf.

Brown, with 11 representatives, is the only other university to have more than ten names on the list. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California, Los Angeles both have nine.

With at least 14% of the entrepreneurs are known to have been born outside the US, entrepreneurs from around the world also continue to come to the US and find success.

“The US remains a magnet for the world’s most ambitious young entrepreneurs,” said Hoogewerf. “There’s still nowhere else with the same appeal and openness to talented outsiders. And that’s one of the key reasons why we can expect innovation to be key driver of the US economy in the coming decades,” said Hoogewerf.

Among the names on the list born outside the US are Brazil-born Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi, owners of financial services firm Brex, valued at more than US$12 billion, Hong Kong-born Stanley Tang, one of the co-founders DoorDash, the US’s largest food-delivery company, and Alex Bouaziz and Wang Shuo, the France- and China-born duo behind San Francisco-based fintech Deel.

Of the 291 entrepreneurs, 78% are men, 22% are women.

They are 26 years old on average, having set up their companies five years ago.

“The E-Pal · Hurun US Under30s is a celebration of the most successful young entrepreneurs in the country, the most likely to unleash the growth hoped for by the new government. I hope the names on the list inspire further generations of ambitious young entrepreneurs.”

“A successful start-up ecosystem requires role models, both individuals, such as those from the Hurun Rich Lists, and companies, such as those from the Hurun 500 most valuable companies series. If a city or country can attract the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and companies to set up shop there, that will have a roll-on effect. Entrepreneurship is infectious and cities with lots of rolemodels are likely to attract the brightest and best young entrepreneurs. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.”

“The role of investors is evolving to mentorship and scale-up opportunities, rather than just providers of cash. The world’s leading venture capitalists are building ecosystems with their portfolios, hugely attractive to the world’s fastest-growing start-ups. Being able to say you have one of the top venture capitalist brands as an investor adds significant credibility to a start-up.”

“Hurun Report is committed to promoting entrepreneurship through its lists and research. Hurun’s ‘startup series’ has four main components. It begins with the Hurun Under30s Entrepreneurs to Watch, a list of the top entrepreneurs aged 30 or under. Next up are two ‘future unicorn’ lists: Hurun Cheetahs, most likely to ‘go unicorn’ within five years and currently with a valuation of between US$300 million and US$500 million, and Hurun Gazelles, most likely to ‘go unicorn’ within three years and currently with a valuation of between US$500 million and US$1 billion. The Hurun Global Unicorn Index is the pinnacle of the world’s start-ups.”

“For every successful start-up you see, there are thousands of failed companies, as well as a new generation of future unicorns coming through. I hope this list of the US’s most successful young entrepreneurs can help the next generation find role models for their startups.”

“We are living in an era where new technologies are changing our lifestyles and spending habits, creating opportunities for the new generation of entrepreneurs. 2021 was officially the most successful year for start-ups ever. There are today more than 1,000 known unicorns, practically double the number from the year before.”

E-Pal CEO Brian stated, “We are honored to co-publish E-Pal · Hurun US Under30s 2022 with Hurun Report. As the Chinese economy continues to advance, it is evident that Chinese companies and their business models are shaping the world with its unstoppable force. E-Pal combines western culture with a business model that has already shown great product-market-fit in China to form a welcoming platform that cultivates the best from all cultures. Headquartered in the USA, E-Pal will lead the way for other Asian-led start-ups as we navigate through post-covid world, cultural conflicts and recession. E-Pal hopes to bridge and unify the younger generation all over the world, and ultimately, spread love and peace to every corner of the earth.”

The E-Pal · Hurun US Under30s 2022 by numbers

291 individuals from 201 companies.

By Location

By sector being disrupted

Billion-dollar businesses

25 of the E-Pal · Hurun US Under30s already have a billion-dollar business under their belts, led by 30-year-olds Andy Fang and Stanley Tang of DoorDash, which today has a market cap of US$18bn.

Also high on the list are Brazil-born duo Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi who created Brex as a credit card for startups in 2017. Now, offering finance solutions to companies of all sizes, its total funding stands at $1.5 billion and its valuation at $12.3 billion. Earlier, Dubugras and Franceschi started their first company, fintech Pagar.me, in 2013, when they were 16. They sold it three years later, putting the processed into Brex.

The youngest names on our list, Samir Vasavada and Runik Mehrotra, secured unicorn status for their New York-based fintech in 2021, when they were just 21 and 20 years old respectively.

Alexandr Wang, now 25, is unicorn veteran. After founding Scale AI in 2016, he secured it a billion-dollar valuation just three years later. Funding for the AI data-labelling company now stands at more than $600 million, including backing from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Index Ventures and Accel.

Austin Russell founded Luminar Technologies, an auto sensor development firm, after receiving $100,000 from Peter Thiel in 2012. A Nasdaq listing in December 2020 gave him a net worth of $2.7 billion as of 2021.

France-born Alex Bouaziz and China-born Wang Shuo co-founded Deel to help companies manage and pay remote work forces Boosted by Covid-19, the San Francisco-based firm has now secured funding of more than $600 million, hitting a vauation of $1.25 billion in April 2021. Deel was #7 on the Y Combinator 2022 Top Companies list.

Matt Marcus and Sam Aarons are co-founders of fintech company Modern Treasury, a payment operations platform. Its technology has attracted investors including Benchmark, Y Combinator, Salesforce and the holding company of Silicon Valley Bank, with total funding at $183 million and a valuation of $2.1 billion.

Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah are the co-founders of OpenSea, a peer-to-peer crypto and NFT assets´ marketplace. OpenSea has raised over $472 million since it was launched. In July 2022, the New York City-headquartered company had a valuation of $13 billion.

Palmer Luckey founded Oculus VR, developer of the Oculus Rift virtual reality head set, in 2012. Five years later he sold the company to Facebook for $3 billion. In 2017 he launched defence technology company Anduril Industries, which so far has received funding of nearly $700 million for its sensors and drones.

Ryan Breslow is CEO and co-founder of Bolt, an online checkout system that has raised more than $970 million to date. He is also active in digital currencies having started the Stanford Bitcoin Group and Beam currency. Based in Miami, he studied computer science at Stanford University before dropping out.

Singh Rajput Kuldeep founded digital therapeutics company Biofourmis in Singapore in 2015. Now based in Boston, Biofourmis produces wearable technology that allows patients to be cared for remotely in their home. His company became a unicorn with a valuation of $1.3 billion after raising $300 million in April 2022.

Israel-born Roey Eliyahu moved to Silicon Valley aged 22 after working in the Israeli army's cybersecurity arm. There he launched Salt Security, a cybersecurity firm that uses big data and artificial intelligence to detect attacks and find vulnerabilities in APIs. After Salt Security added $140 million in funding in February 2022, on top of the more than $130 million funding it had previously raised, the company's valuation jumped to $1.4 billion.

Software engineer David Hsu founded Retool in 2017 to provide companies with a fast and easy way to build internal online tools. The San Francisco-based company became a unicorn in July 2022, gaining a valuation of $3.2 billion after raising $45 million and taking its total funding past $140 million, thanks to has attracted more than $76 million in funding, with investors including Sequoia Capital and Stripe co-founders John and Patrick Collison.

Czech-born Jan Bednar is the founder of Shipmonk, a Fort Lauderdale-based e-commerce logistics fulfilment company. Founded in 2014, it has secured funding of $365 million, and revenues in 2020 of $140 million, twice the amount of 2019, and in early 2022 a valuation of $1 billion.

Michael Krakaris is co-founder of Deliverr, a San Francisco-based e-commerce fulfillment firm that works with Internet marketplaces including eBay, Amazon, Shopify and Walmart’s online store. After raising more than $490 million in funding for its machine-learning optimisation technology, it was acquired by Shopify for $2.1 billion in May 2022.

Timothy Hwang is CEO and Gerald Yao is chief strategy officer of FiscalNote, a Washington, DC-based firm that uses AI and other tools to analyse governments. Established in 2013, it raised more than $625 million before listing on the New York Stock Exchange in August 2022.

Germany-born Laura Behrens Wu is founder and CEO of Shippo, a shipping platform for merchants and e-commerce platforms to automate their paperwork, track, handle returns and other shipping-related tasks. Established in 2014, it has raised more than $154 million in funding to date and has a valuation of more than $1 billion.

Ross McCray is CEO and co-founder of VideoAmp, a platform that provides measurement and optimization tools for advertisers and publishers across traditional TV, digital and streaming media. Founded in 2014, the company has now raised more than $456 million to date and has a valuation of $1.45 billion.

Education

Of the 291 entrepreneurs:

1 is still at high school

2 dropped out of high school

20 are known to have dropped out of university

21 completed degrees at universities outside the US and then didn’t study in the US

25 either didn’t go to university or there is no information about the university they went to

Of the 256 who went to university in the US at either undergraduate or graduate level, Stanford’s alumni were head and shoulders more than the rest. Next came alumni from the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard and Brown.

Youngest

101 are 25 or under, of which 12 are aged 21 or under. Two are still teenagers. The youngest is Alina Morse, 17, who set up Liquid OTC, the maker of Zolli Candy and other sugar-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan and non-GMO candies, which she founded aged just 9, and are now available in 25,000 outlets in the US. The other is Isabel Bercaw, 18, who set up with her sister, Caroline, 20, Da Bomb Bath Fizzers, which today has sales of US$20 million.

Russia-born Dmitry Dolgopolov, 21, and India-born Kesava Kirupa Dinakaran, 21, co-founded of San Francisco-based Luminai, that has raised nearly US$20 million to helps companies automate internal workflows.

Not born in US

At least 40 of the names on the list (more than 14% of the total) were born outside the US.

Appendix – Full List of E-Pal · Hurun US Under30s 2022

Sam Aarons of Modern Treasury

Matt Marcus and Sam Aarons are co-founders of fintech company Modern Treasury, a payment operations platform. Its technology has attracted investors including Benchmark, Y Combinator, Salesforce and the holding company of Silicon Valley Bank, with total funding at $183 million and a valuation of $2.1 billion.

Casey Adams of MediaKits.com

Casey Adams and Kieran O’Brien co-founded MediaKits, a a software as a service (SAAS) company aimed at helping athletes and influencers promote themselves through social media platforms. Launched in early 2021, it has secured $1.4 million in funding to date.

Femi Adebogun of Path/ScholarMe

Nigeria-born Femi Adebodun founded Path (still also known by its original name, ScholarMe) to help students find funding and other sources of support for their school and university costs. Since it was established in 2018, the company has attracted more than $6.7million in funding.

Selom Agbitor of Mad Rabbit Tattoo

Oliver Zak and Selom Agbitor are co-founders of Mad Rabbit Tattoo, a maker of tattoo aftercare products to help individuals take care of their tattoos and prevent tattoo fading. Its products including balms, sunscreens, and soothing gels. To date it has raised $6.5 million in funding.

Gaurav Aggrawal of Immuna

Spandana Nakka and Gaurav Aggarwal, both born in India, co-founded Sleek in 2019. The company, an AI platform, allows venues to price and offer priority lanes, according to real-time demand. Sleek raised $9 million before beng acquired by Snackpass in November 2021. In 2022, Aggarwal founded Immuna, a risk mitigation platform for crypto investors.

Baris Akis of Human Capital

Baris Akis and Ali Armaan are co-founders of Human Capital, a venture firm that works with engineers to start and build engineering companies and create training grounds for future engineer-founders. The company has $1.2 billion of assets and annual revenues of $2.7 million.

Kaitlyn Albertoli of Buzz Solutions

Vikhyat Chaudhry and Kaitlyn Albertoli founded Buzz Solutions to apply AI for fault detection and predictive analysis of power grids. India-born Chaudry, the company’s COO and CTO, has a Master’s degree in civil and environmental engineering from Stanford University. Albertoli, its CEO, has a Stanford degree in international relations and psychology.

Preston Alder of Neighbor.com

Preston Alder, Colton Gardner and Joseph Woodbury are the co-founders of Neighbor.com, a Lehi, Utah-based a platform that allows people to find or rent out storage. Since its establishing in 2017, it has raised more than $65.7 million to date, with investors Andreessen Horowitz.

Aziz Alghunaim of Nash

Aziz Alghunaim and Mahmoud Ghulman are co-founders of Nash, a Y Combinator-backed same-day last-mile delivery marketplace established in 2021, that has raised nearly $28 million in funding. Alghunaim, who previously worked at Palantir, also runs Tarjimly, a not-for-profit tech platform that enables refugees to connect with volunteer translators.

Armaan Ali of Human Capital

Alison Wang of KaratDAO

Alison Wang, 26, is the co-Founder of KaratDAO. Based in the Los Angeles, its pre-seed round raised $500,000 with $15 million valuation leaded by Uphonest Capital, Onepiece Capital and Longling Capital. It is at seed round raising $30 million now. KaratDAO creates a complete behavior picture for Web2 and Web 3.0 users.

Amani Al-Khatahtbeh of muslimgirl.com

Amani Al-Khatahtbeh is founder of Muslim Girl, a media portal set up n 2009 to raise awareness of Muslims in the US. In March 2017, she launched Muslim Women’s Day, to celebrate Muslim women and to raise their voices.

Katherine Allen of Flo Recruit

Katherine Allen and Atreya Misra are the co-founders of Flo Recruit, an Austin-based firm with a recruiting-event management platform that supports virtual interviews. The Y Combinator-backed company’s funding stands at $3.3 million.

Jason Alvarez-Cohen of Popl

UCLA graduates Jason Alvarez-Cohen and Nick Eischens are the creators of Popl, a device that establishes a digital connection with other devices using near field communications (NFC) technology. Launched in 2020, Popl has raised $2.4 million of funding from Y Combinator and other investors.

Maxine Anderson of Arist

Michael Ioffe, Maxine Anderson and Ryan Laverty co-founded Massachusetts-based Artist to deliver online learning via text messages, in 2019. Since then, the platform has expanded to include lessons delivered through WhatsApp, Slack and Microsoft Teams. Backed by Y Combinator and investors including Craft Ventures, Acadian Ventures and GFC, its successful completion of a $12 million series A funding round in mid-2022 raised its total funding to date to more than $16 million.

Mackenzie Andrews of Nanodropper

Mackenzie Andrews, Allisa Song, Jennifer Steger and Elias Baker are the founders of Rochester-based Nanodropper, a company that makes an FDA-approved eyedrop bottle adapter that reduces the volume of eyedrops and so saves medication costs. It has raised $1.9 million to date.

Asaf Avidan Antonir of Onyx

Asaf Avidan Antonir and James Sha co-founded Onyx, a digital personal fitness platform, in 2018. After receiving funding of $1 million from Afore Capital, the company was acquired by Bangalore-based Cure.fit for shares valued at $12.7 million in January 2021.

Adelle Archer of Eterneva

Adelle Archer is the CEO and co-founder of Eterneva, an Austin-based consumer technology company that transforms cremation ashes into diamonds. Eterneva has raised nearly $18 million in funding.

Andrew Ashur of Lucid Drone Technologies

Andrew Ashur, David Danielson and Adrian Mayans are the co-founders of Lucid Drone Technologies, a Charlotte-based make of cleaning and disinfectant drones for tasks such as cleaning buildings or applying sanitation chemicals. It has raised around $2.5 million via Y Combinator.

Alex Atallah of OpenSea

Alex Atallah is the CTO and co-founder of OpenSea, a peer-to-peer crypto and NFT assets´ marketplace. Atallah graduated from Stanford University in 2014, with a bachelor of science degree in computer science. After graduating, he worked at Palantir Technologies, Zugata and BlockRize, among other companies. In July 2022, he announced he would be leaving OpenSea in August 2022 to explore new ventures. OpenSea has raised more than $420 million since it was launched. It is valued at $1.5 billion The company is headquartered in New York City.

Elias Baker of Nanodropper

Akilesh Bapu of DeepScribe

Akilesh Bapu and Matthew Ko cofounded DeepScribe to allow doctors to use AI vocice technology for data entry tasks and so free up more time to focus on patients. Based in San Francisco, the company has raised more than $37 million to date.

Max Baron of Saturn Technologies

University of Pennsylvania classmates Max Baron and Dylan Diamond, co-founded Saturn to launch a mobile app for high-school students to coordinate their schedules and connect with the people. Established in 2018, its funding stands at $44 million.

Chad Becker of Yogi

Gautam Kanumuru and Chad Becker co-founded Yogi to help brands unlock insights from reviews and ratings using AI-powered customer feedback analytics. To date, the company has secured US$2.4 million funding.

Jan Bednar of ShipMonk

Czech-born Jan Bednar is the founder of Shipmonk, a Fort Lauderdale-based e-commerce logistics fulfilment company. Founded in 2014, it has secured funding of $365 million, and revenues in 2020 of $140 million, twice the amount of 2019, and - as of February 2022 - a valuation of $1 billion.

Laura Behrens Wu of Shippo

Germany-born Laura Behrens Wu is founder and CEO of Shippo, a shipping platform for merchants and e-commerce platforms to automate their paperwork, track, handle returns and other shipping-related tasks. Established in 2014, it has raised more than $154 million in funding to date, and as of June 2021 had of a valuation of more than $1 billion.

Alex Beller of Postscript

Alex Beller and Adam Turner are co-founders of Postscript, an SMS marketing platform focused on Shopify stores. Established in 2018, the Scottsdale-headquartered company’s total funding rose to $106 million after it raised $65 million in June 2022.

Caroline Bercaw of Da Bomb Bath Fizzers

Sisters Caroline Bercaw and Isabel Bercaw co-founded of Da Bomb Bath Fizzers, a maker of handmade bath products, when they were in middle school. Now aged 20 and 18 respectively, their company’s annual revenues stand at $20 million.

Isabel Bercaw of Da Bomb Bath Fizzers

Michael Bloch of Pillar

Michael Bloch is co-founder of Pillar, a fintech company that helps people manage their student loan debt. Pillar, founded in 2018, had raised $7 million in seed funding before being acquired by Acorns in 2021. Bloch is now leading crypto and web3 investing at New York-based Quiet Capital.

Dean Bloembergen of Owner.com

Adam Guild is co-founder and CEO of Owner.com, an online ordering, delivery and marketing platform for restaurants. Guild, who dropped out of high school, is a Thiel fellow, launched the company with Dean Bloembergen, previously co-founder & CTO of Marble Technologies, a maker of self-ordering kiosks for cashier-free checking out at restaurants. A $15 million funding round in March 2022 brought total funding raised by the company to nearly $30 million.

Sam Bobley of Ocrolus

Sam Bobley is co-founder and CEO of Ocrolus, a document automation platform for financial businesses. Bobley founded Ocrolus in 2014 after graduating the University of South Carolina.The company, which has a valuation of more than $500 million, has raised $127 million in funding to date. Its clients include PayPal, Brex, SoFi, and Plaid.

Chen Bailin of UFA Youth Exchange

Chen Bailin is the founder of UFA Youth Exchange. A joint venture between the University of Michigan, the University of Southern California, and the University of Hong Kong. UFA aims to provide a platform for financial practice and exchange for Chinese university students around the world, and encourage them to practice what they know and promote what they do to help cultivate complex talents in the financial industry.

Alex Bouaziz of Deel

France-born Alex Bouaziz and China-born Shuo Wang co-founded Deel to help companies manage and pay remote work forces Boosted by Covid-19, the San Francisco-based firm has now secured funding of more than $600 million, hitting a vauation of $1.25 billion in April 2021. Deel was #7 on the Y Combinator 2022 Top Companies list.

Caleb Boyd of Molten Industries

Caleb Boyd co-founded Molten Industries with Kevin Bush in 2021 to develop a company that can decarbonize heavy industry. The Stanford, California-based company has recevied one round of early stage venture capital funding to date.

Ben Breitenbucher of Blue Line Battery

Benjamin Breitenbucher is a co-founder of Blue Line Battery, a Whitewater, Wisconsin, maker of rechargeable lithium-ion power systems for use in industrial applications. Since its establishment in 2018, it has raised more than $5 million in funding.

Ryan Breslow of Bolt

Ryan Breslow is CEO and co-founder of Bolt, an online checkout system. He is also active in digital currencies havingstarted the Stanford Bitcoin Group and Beam currency. Based in Miami, he studied computer science at Stanford University before dropping out.

Brian Xiong of E-Pal

Graduated from UC Berkeley, Brian Xiong established Wuxiadream LLC in 2017, a Chinese Fantasy Novel translation platform. Wuxiadream LLC was finally acquired by webnovel.com (owned by Tencent). In 2020, Brian and his co-founder Norris Wang and Yuanzhe Li founded E-Pal, a game freelancing platform. E-Pal raised its seed round of $3.5 million led A16z and A round of $8 million from Galaxy Interactive and other venture capitals.

Justin Bureau of Jour

Maxime Germain, Bobby Giangeruso and Justin Bureau launched Brooklyn-headquartered Jour, a journaling app aimed at helping people improve their mental well-being, in 2018. In September 2021, they sold it to French digital health insurance platform Alan for $20 million. At that point, the Jour app had been downloaded 2 million times.

Marco Burgarello of Bundle

Marco Burgarello is co-founder and head of growth at Bundle, a mortgage marketplace. The company anonymously matches homebuyers with top local loan officers. Backed by CFV Ventures, Charlotte Angel Fund, SuperAngel Fund and Allied Venture Partners, it has raised $850,000 in seed funding.

Kevin Bush of Swift Solar

Kevin Bush is a co-founder and VP product of Swift Solar, a San Carlos-based developer of lightweight solar panels. Established in 2018, it has raised $15.2 million funding to date. In 2021, Bush co-founded Molten Industries, a startup aimed at decarbonizing chemical and other heavy industries.

Jennifer Campbell of Tagomi

Jennifer Campbell is co-founder and CEO of Tagomi, a cryptocurrency trading platform. Established in 2018, it had secured more than $40 million in funding by 2020, when it was acquired by Coinbase, the US’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.

Canghai (Victor) Ji of Manta Network

Victor, CPA, Cofounder of Manta Network, which is a web3 privacy hub raised at 500m valuation from top tier investors. Victor received his MPA/Economics Master from Harvard Kennedy School. He previously served as the Chair of Harvard Kennedy School Blockchain PIC. Researcher of Belfer Center Think Tank. Before Harvard, he was the executive partner of BitBlock Capital and venture partner of PrimeBlock Ventures.

Daniel Carballo of Encora Therapeutics

Daniel Carballo is co-founder of Encora Therapeutics, a developer of affordable, non-invasive neurostimulation devices for people with movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. The company has raised $1.7 million from investors including Innospark Ventures.

James Carnes of Iconic Air

James Carnes and Kyle Gillis are co-founders of Iconic Air, a SaaS platform providing emissions mapping and analytics to help businesses in the energy sector decarbonize. Iconic Air’s backers include Future Founders, the US Air Force and Country Road Angels Network. The company has received funding of more than $5 million to date.

Ryan Chan of UpKeep Maintenance Management

Ryan Chan is CEO and founder of UpKeep, a facilities management system for building maintenance teams. Set up in 2016, the company has annual revenues of around $5.8 million and has raised over $48 million in funding to date.

Vikhyat Chaudhry of Buzz Solutions

Jonathan Chen of Nitra

Jonathan Chen co-founded Fiscalnote with Timothy Hwang. In 2021 he went on to launch New York-based health-care financial services business Nitra, which has already secured $16 million in backing.

Sheridan Clayborne of Lendtable

Thiel fellow Sheridan Clayborne and Mitchell Jones are co-founders of Lendtable, a San Francisco-based company that helps people claim benefits they are entitled to. Founded in 2020, its funding totals $24 million after the company closed an $18 million Series A funding led by O1 Advisors in November 2021.

Aaron Coles of Drift Net Securities

Aaron Coles is founder of Chicago-headquartered Drift Net Securities, a provider of hardware and softwares security solutions for schools. Established in 2018, the company has secured more than $7 million funding to date.

Adrienne Cooper of Moonlight Roller

Adrienne Cooper is founder of Moonlight Roller, a roller-skating retail chain headquartered in Chattanooga that also organizes roller-skating events. The company, which had revenues of around $5 million in 2020, plans to open its first rink in 2022.

Thibault Corens of Presso

Nishant Jain and Thibault are the co-founders of Presso, an Atlanta-based robotic dry-cleaning firm that has developed a kiosk that can clean a garment in five minutes. Established in 2017, it has raised $4 million in funding to date.

Conrad Cornell of Press Sports

Conrad Cornell, CEO, and Drew Williams, CMO, are co-founders of Press Sports, a sports-driven social network that brings together athletes, fans and scouts to find new talent. The company has raised $2.3 million of funding to date.

Jason Cui of Jemi

Annie Hwang and Jason Cui are co-founders of creator web tool Jemi, which allows artistes and other creatives to have personalised websites for selling goods and experiences directly to their fans. Both Harvard University graduates, their business has raised $2 million through Y Combinator.

Arnav Dalmia of Cubii

Shivani Jain and Arnav Dalmia are co-founders of Cubii, makers of elliptical trainers and their associated apps and fitness tracker. The Chicago-based company has raised $1.3 million in funding. In July 2022, Jain and Dalmia also launched The 81 Collection, a fund that invests in under-invested sectors of the economy.

David Danielson of Lucid Drone Technologies

Francis Davidson of Sonder

Francis Davidson and Lucas Pellan co-founded Sonder, a tech-driven hospitality company that manages short-term rentals. Originally based in Montreal, Sonder is now headquartered in San Francisco. Its total funding stands at more than $500 million and its valuation at $1.3 billion.

Foster Davis of Scythe Robotics

Thiel fellow Foster Davis is co-founder of Scythe Robotics, a Colorado-based maker of autonomous lawnmowers for commercial uses. Founded in 2018, Scythe has raised $28.8 million in funding, with investors including Inspired Capital Partners, Zigg Capital, and True Ventures.

Kelsey Davis of CLLCTVE

Davis Kelsey is founder and CEO of CLLCTVE, a Los Angeles-based platform and marketplace that helps creators present their portfolios to potential clients. In September 2021 it was selected to be part of the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund. Its funding stands at more than $120,000.

Jack DeFuria of Parade

Cami Téllez and Jack DeFuria co-founded underwear brand Parade to target Gen Z. Set up in 2019, the company is now valued at $140 million after a series B funding round in September 2021 raised $20 million and brought its total funding to more than $36 million.

Honghao Deng of Butlr

Honghao Deng and Jiani Zeng, both born in China, are co-founders of Butlr, a people-sensing platform spun off from MIT´s Media Lab in 2018. Deng attended Tianjin University before moving to the US to study design computation at Harvard University. He developed his idea for Butlr while working at Airbnb. Zeng attended MIT, studying engineering, management and design. A $20 million funding round in July 2022 brought the company’s total backing to $28 million.

Danish Dhamani of Orai

Dylan Diamond of Saturn Technologies

Kesava Kirupa Dinakaran of Luminai

Dmitry Dolgopolov and Kesava Kirupa Dinakaran are co-founders of Luminai (formerly DigitalBrain), a San Francisco-based that helps companies automate internal workflows that has raised nearly $20 million in funding to date. Russia-born Dolgopolov, met India-born Dinakaran at a hackathon in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Dmitry Dolgopolov of Luminai

Apoorva Dornadula of Viralspace

Apoorva Dornadula and Michelle Lu co-founded Viralspace.ai along with Hiro Tien to apply visual intelligence technology for brand marketing. Launched in Stanford, the company joined with Smartly.io, though will continue to operate independently.

Mackenzie Drazan of MiResource

Mackenzie Drazan is co-founder of MiResource, an online platform that connects mental health-care professionals with patients. In 2021 MiResource raised $3 million in seed funding.

Henrique Dubugras of Brex

Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi created Brex as credit card for startups in 2017. Now, offering finance solutions to companies of all sizes, its total funding stands at $1.5 billion and its valuation at $12.3 billion. Earlier, Dubugras and Franceschi started their first company, fintech Pagar.me, in 2013, when they were 16. They sold it three years later.

Wesley Eames of Trace.com

Wesley Eames is founder and CEO of Trace.com, a freelance genealogy marketplace, a provider of family-hisotry documentation in both physical and online forms. Trace.com has raised $1.6 million from investors including Techstars Ventures and Campus Founders Fund. Eames is also founder of After.com, a low-cost cremation service, owns MeetMindFul, an online dating site, and Tales.com, a private podcast company.

Sophia Edelstein of Pair Eyewear

Sophia Edelstein and Nathan Kondamuri co-founded Pair Eyewear in 2017 to sell customisable glasses to children. Its range now extends to adults. A $60 million series B funding in December 2021 brought total investment in the company to more than $73 million.

Will Edwards of Firehawk Aerospace

Will Edwards is co-founder and CEO of Firehawk Aerospace, a hybrid rocket engine design and manufacturing company. Its products include a 3D printed fuel. In April 2022, Raytheon invested an undisclosed amount of series A funding in Firehawak, adding to the $2.5m funding the company had previously secured. Edwards is a finance graduate from the University of Arkansas.

Nick Eischens of Popl

Roey Eliyahu of Salt Security

Israel-born Roey Eliyahu moved to Silicon Valley aged 22 after working in the Israeli army’s cybersecurity arm. There he launched Salt Security, a cybersecurity firm that uses big data and artificial intelligence to detect attacks and find vulnerabilities in APIs. After Salt Security added $140 million in funding in Feburary 2022, on top of the more than $130 million funding it had previously raised, the company’s valuation jumped to $1.4 billion.

Joshua Elizetxe of Snow Cosmetics

Joshua Elizetxe is CEO and founder of Snow Cosmetics, an Arizona-based maker of teeth-whitening systems.

Ahmed Elsamadisi of Narrator AI

Egypt-born Ahmed Elsamadisi is the founder of Narrator, a customer data analytics platform. Established in 2017, it has attracted $13.6 million of funding, including Y Combinator.

Crystal Evuleocha of Kiira Health

Nigeria-born Crystal Evuleocha is co-founder of Kiira Health, an artificial intelligence-supported virtual health clinic offering telemedicine services for women. Established in 2018, it has raised $4 million in funding to date.

Andy Fang of DoorDash

Doordash, the US’s largest food-delivery company, was founded in 2013 by Hong Kong-born Stanford University graduate Stanley Tang with Andrew Fang, Tony Xu and Evan Moore. Backed by $2.5 billion of funding, it was floated on the NYSE in December 2020.

Chris Fernandez of EnsoData

Chris Fernandez, Nick Glattard and Sam Rusk, all graduates of University of Winsconsin-Madison, co-founded EnsoData in 2015. The company, which has secured funding of more than $31 million, uses AI to analyze data collected from sensors on the human body to diagnose health conditions.

Vicente Fernandez of Sportsmanias

Vicente Fernandez is founder and CEO of Sportsmanias, a sports information and marketing company. Founded in 2014, the company took its total funding to $10.5 million to date.

Stacey Ferreira of Forge

Stacey Ferreira is a serial entrepreneur. Currently Director, New Formats at GameStop, she previously co-founded online bookmark vault and password manager MySocialCloud.com with her brother, selling it when she was 20, then co-founded schedule management platform Forge, which was acquired by WorkJam in 2020.

Dylan Field of Figma

Dylan Field dropped out of Brown University to start Figma with Evan Wallace in 2011. He became a Thiel fellow in 2012. Field is now Figma’s CEO, with Wallace its CTO. Figma is a design and prototyping platform for teams who build products together.

Devin Finzer of OpenSea

Devin Finzer is the co-founder of OpenSea, a peer-to-peer crypto and NFT assets´ marketplace. Finzer graduated from Brown University in 2013 with a bachelor of science degree in computer science. After graduating, he worked at Pinterest, before founding ClaimDog, a company that finds if a business owes money to its clients. The company was acquired by Credit Karma in 2016. OpenSea has raised over $472 million since it was launched. In July 2022, its valuations was $13 billion The company is headquartered in New York City.

Brandon Foo of Paragon

Brandon Foo and Ishmael Samuel are co-founders of Paragon, a platform that company helps companies develop and integrate software without having to write code. Backed by Y Combinator, it has raised around $16 million since it was established in 2019.

Jack Forbes of Kopa

Jack Forbes and Courtney Sabo are co-founders of Kopa, an online home rental marketplace offering 20,000 units across cities, including San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Chicago. The Y Combinator backed company has raised $1 million inseed funding to date."

Pedro Franceschi of Brex

Patrick Frank of PatientPartner (Rightdevice)

Patrick Frank and George Kramb are the co-founders of PatientPartner, an online patient advocacy services that helps people make medical decisions about their treatment. Established in 2017, the San Diego-based company has raised $2 million in funding from Alethea Capital.

Aaron Froug of Grifin

Bo Starr and Aaron Froug are co-founders of Grifin, an investing app that allows its users to invest in companies whose goods they buy. The Tampa-based company has secured $12 million in funding to date.

Colton Gardner of Neighbor.com

Rashida Gayle of Twenty Six Entertainment

Since Rashida Gayle launched Twenty Six Entertainment in 2020, she has earned more than $10 million for the leading American football and soccer players she represents.

Maxime Germain of Jour

Mahmoud Ghulman of Nash

Aziz Alghunaim and Mahmoud Ghulman are co-founders of Nash, a Y Combinator-backed same-day last-mile delivery marketplace established in 2021, that has raised nearly $28 million in funding. Ghulman is also co-founder of Naissance Technologies, a Saudi Arabia-based industrial automation business.

Bobby Giangeruso of Jour

Tommy Gibbons of Hempitecture

Tommy Gibbons co-founded in 2018 Hempitecture, an Idaho-based public benefit corporation that manufactures bio-based, easy to use and affordable building materials. Gibbons attended the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, where he majored focused on education and economic policy.

Kyle Gillis of Iconic Air

Laurence Girard of Fruit Street

Laurence Girard is founder and CEO of Fruit Street, a New York-based digital wellness and telemedicine platform that for diabetes prevention and weightloss. Established in 2012, it has raised more than $15 million in funding to date.

Nick Glattard of EnsoData

Carson Goodale of FanFood

Carson Goodale is co-founder of FanFood, a concession management and mobile food ordering platform for sports and other live events. The Chicago-based startup has raised $3.4 million in funding from investors including Hype Capital and Phoenix Capital.

Prajit Gopal of Looped

Prajit Gopal, Benjamin Kornick, Pranav Maddi and Sandeep Peddada are the co-founders of Looped, a New York City-based livestreaming event service offering music concerts, comedy and other entertainment. It has raised $7.7 million to date.

Adam Guild of Owner.com

Helen Guo of Schoolyard Snacks

Helen Guo and Dylan Kaplan are the co-founders of Schoolyard Snacks, an online-only maker and seller of low carbohydrate keto snacks. Set up in 2018, it has raised $5 million in funding from Lyra Growth Partners.

Paritosh Gupta of Orai

Paritosh Gupta co-founded speech-coaching app Orai in 2017 with his Drexel University classmates Danish Dhamani and Aasim Sani. The Philadelphia-headquartered company aims to make people more confident in meetings and presentations. It has raised $2.4 million. Gupta is also CEO of Copycat, a software startup that helps developers build user interfaces faster.

Nick Hamburger of Quevos

Zack Shreier and Nick Hamburger are co-founders of Quevos, a maker of low-carbohydrate snacks. Quevos has raised nearly $2 million in seed funding.

Dakota Hendrickson of Filti

Dakota Hendrickson is co-founder of nanofiber filter startup Filti. Originally set up to make high-quality air filters for homes, it added facemasks as Covid-19 struck, earning $2 million in revenues in its first 45 days of operation.

Noah Hill of Lura Health

Noah Hill and Daniel Weinstein are co-founders of Lura Health, a medical device company based in Massachusetts. Lura Health’s products include the world’s first wearable sensor for salivary diagnostics and other oral-care devices. Founded in 2017, the company has raised $2.5 million and also received a National Science Foundation grant of $256,000.

Emily Hochman of Wellory

Emily Hochman is the founder and CEO of Wellory, a wellness app with the mission to encourage healthy eating in an accessible manner. She studied art history at Bucknell University. Emily is currently based in New York City.

Philip House of Amper Technologies

Akshat Thirani and Philip House were among the co-founders of Amper Technologies, a developer of sensors and software with which manufacturers can monitor equipment and staff. Established in 2016, the company has raised $14.8 million in funding to date.

David Hsu of Retool

Software engineer David Hsu founded Retool in 2017 to provide companies with a fast and easy way to build internal online tools. The San Francisco-based company became a unicorn in July 2022, gaining a valuation of $3.2 billion after raising $45 million and taking its total funding past $140 million, thanks to has attracted more than $76 million in funding, with investors including Sequoia Capital and Stripe co-founders John and Patrick Collison.

Viveka Hulyalkar of Beam Impact

Viveka Hulyalkar and Alex Sadhu co-founded Beam Impact, a customer engagement platform that helps brands reach and retain young people by passing a percentage of their spending on to non-profits. Established in 2017, Beam took its total funding past $15m when it raised $13.2m in April 2022.

Sabera Hussain of Fuzzbuzz

Sabera Hussain, Everest Munro-Zeisberger and Andrei Serban, all students at Canada’s University of Waterloo, co-founded Fuzzbuzz in 2018 to build a business that automates software security. Now operating our of Redwood City, Fuzzbuzz, a Y Combinator-backed firm, has received $2.9m in funding.

Timothy Hwang of FiscalNote

Timothy Hwang is CEO and co-founder of FiscalNote, a Washington,DC-based firm that uses AI and other tools to analyse government. Established in 2013, it has raised more than $625 million before listing on the New York Stock Exchange in August 2022.

Annie Hwang of Jemi

Michael Ioffe of Arist

Mohammed Kumail Jaffer of Gather

Mohammed Kumail Jaffer and Phillip Wang are co-founders of video chat platform Gather. In November 2021, the company announced it a $50-million series-B funding round, bringing total financing of the company to $76 million.

Shrenik Jain of Marigold Health

Shrenik Jain and Ravi Shah are the co-founders of Marigold Health, a Boston-based company that uses chat support groups to offer support and treatment for people with mental health and substance use problems. It has raised more than $10 million in funding to date.

Nishant Jain of Presso

Shivani Jain of Cubii

Yelitsa Jean-Charles of Healthy Roots Dolls

Yelitsa Jean-Charles founded Healthy Roots Dolls in 2014 because of her belief that believe that there was a lack of positive representation for young Black girls. The company was launched off the back of a Kickstarter campaign that raised $50,000, leading to $500,000 in grants and $1.1 million of investment.

Kylie Jenner of Kylie Cosmetics

Model Kylie Jenner founded Kylie Cosmetics in 2015. Four years later she sold a majority stake to New York-based Coty Inc. for $600 million. Estimates of her net worth vary between several hundred million dollars and more than a billion.

Pavle Jeremic of Aether Biomachines

Pavle Jeremic founded Aether Biomachines to develop a platform that uses machine learning to analyse automated experiments using enzymes to create new compounds. The company has received $11.5 million in seed funding to date.

Xuan Jiang of Run The World

China-born Xuan Jiang and Xiaoyin Qu area co-founders of virtual event platform Run The World. Set up in 2019, the Mountain View-based company has attracted funding of $15 million, with investors including Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz.

Mitchell Jones of Lendtable

Wyatt Jozwowski of Demio

Wyat Jozwowski is the co-founder of Demio company, a webinar platform acquired in early 2021 by Banzai. Demio is Jozwowski´s second startup. He launched with $500,000 secureed from the sale of his first buisness, Drip Apps, a marketing automation tool acquired by Leadpages in 2016.

Joe Kahn of Karuna Health

South Africa-born Joe Kahn and Yasyf Mohamedali are co-founders of Karuna Health, a San Francisco-headquartered company that helps patients navigate the US health-care system. Founded in 2018, Karuna had more $5 million funding before it was acquired by Commure in March 2021. since then, Kahn has continued as a a technology entrepreneur and investor at New York-based Thrive Capital.

Rohit Kalyanpur of Optivolt Labs

Thiel fellow Rohit Kalyanpur is CEO and co-founder of Optivolt Labs, a company that integrates solar charging with devices. After raising $8.2 million in a seed funding round in May 2022, the Burlingame-based company has raised more than $10 million since it was established in 2017.

Athena Kan of Dreambound

Athena Kan and Brandon Wang, a 2020 Thiel fellow, co-founded of Dreambound (formerly known as Ladder) to build upward mobility for jobseekers. Backed by more than $4m of seed funding, the San Francisco-based company helps people start new careers and earn more money.

Gautam Kanumuru of Yogi

Dylan Kaplan of Schoolyard Snacks

Jordan Kearns of Medley Thermal

Joran Kearns is founder of Medley Thermal, a supplier of energy generation mangement systems. Medley Thermal has raised more than $300,000 in grants and other funding to date.

Haley Marie Keith of MITO Material Solutions

Haley Marie Keith and her husband Kevin Keith are the co-founders, an Oklahoma-based maker of chemical additives for polymer composite manufacturers. It has raised nearly $7 million in funding to date.

Kevin Keith of MITO Material Solutions

Diane Keng of Breinify

Diane Keng started three businesses by 20. Her fourth, Breinify, is an AI platform that helps consumer-oriented e-commerce business identify, predict and personalise customer interests. In May 2021, Breinify raised $11 million in a funding round led by Gutbrain Ventures and PBJ Capital.

Abby Kircher of Abby’s Better

Kircher Abby founded Abby’s Better in 2015 when she was 15. Her Charlotte-based snack brand makes healthy, gluten-free, peanut-free, plant-based snacks. In 2020, she raised $1 million from investors, among them professional basketball player Kevin Love and supermodel Kate Bock.

Anton Klingspor of Indicina Ventures

Anton Klingspor is the founder and general partner of Indicina Ventures, a Generation Z targeted venture capital firm that funds and provides other resources to businesses started by young people.

Matthew Ko of DeepScribe

Sandeep Konam of Abridge AI

Sandeep Konam co-founded and is CTO of Abridge AI, a Pittsburgh-headquartered company that uses audio to document and process doctor-patient conversations. In 2022 it secured $12.5m series A funding, to add to the$15 million seed funding it had previously raised in 2020, for engineering, product development and improvement of the company’s machine-learning technology.

Nathan Kondamuri of Pair Eyewear

Benjamin Kornick of Looped

Hamel Kothari of Brigit

Hamel Kothari co-founded Brigit, an app that collects data on users’ financial history to help them manage their money better. Launched in 2017, it has raised $113 million in funding to date.

Michael Krakaris of Deliverr

Michael Krakaris is co-founder of Deliverr, a San Francisco-based e-commerce fulfillment firm that works with Internet marketplaces including eBay, Amazon, Shopify and Walmart’s online store. After raising more than $490 million in funding for its machine-learning optimisation technology, it was acquired by Shopify for $2.1 billion in May 2022.

George Kramb of PatientPartner (Rightdevice)

Chirag Kulkarni of Medly Pharmacy

Chirag Kulkarni is co-founder of Medly Pharmacy, a Brooklyn-based digital pharmacy platform that offers free, same-day prescription delivery. It has raised $100 million to date.

Easton LaChappelle of Unlimited Tomorrow

Easton LaChappelle founded Unlimited Tomorrow when he was 17. Based in Rhinebeck, the company creates customised prosthetic devices for amputees. It has raised $4.7 million to date, with recent investors including Neue Fund and Prime Movers Lab.

Michael Lai of Tinycare

Michael Lai founded Tinycare in San Francisco in 2018 to build a network of micro-childcare centers serving pre-school children. The company has received VC backing of $1m.

Jasper Lau of 8090 Partners

Jasper Lau is co-founder and managing partner of 8090 Partners, a private investment partnership of industry-leading families and self-made entrepreneurs. Since founding 8090 Partners, Lau has invested more than $200 million and manages 18 technology portfolio companies.

Ryan Laverty of Arist

Christian Lawrence of Rise Modular

Christian Lawrence is founder and CEO of Rise Modular, a Minneapolis-based company construction business that uses prefabricated parts and technologies to build low-cost housing and other buildings. Backed by private funds, revenues were forecast to reach $35 million in 2021.

Kimberlie Le of Prime Roots

Kimberlie Le and Joshua Nixon are the co-founders of Prime Roots, a Berkeley-based company that produces plant and protein-based food products. Since its establishment in 2017, Prime Roots has raised $18.5 million, including backing from True Ventures and IndieBio.

Alex Le Roux of ICON

Alex Le Roux is the co-founder and CTO of ICON, an Austin, construction technology company that uses 3D printing, robotics, software and advanced materials. Le Roux studied mechanical engineering at Baylor University.

Michael Leahy of Busy Co

Jamie Steenbakkers (COO) and Michael Leahy (VP of operations) are co-founders of Busy Co., a personal hygiene company founded in 2018 that manufactures wipes made from biodegradable materials. Busy Beauty has raised $3.9 million of seed funding to date.

Hugo Leandri of Brimstone Energy

Hugo Leandri is co-founder of Brimstone Energy, a Berkeley-based company that is developing a process to produces low-cost carbon-negative Portland cement. Founded in 2019, in 2022 it received $55 million in a pre-revenue round led by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

David Lee of King Children

David Lee and Sahir Zaveri co-founded King Children in 2017. The Brooklyn-based company uses facial scans and 3D printing technology to make customized eyewear. The company has received $2 million of seed funding to date.

Jun Sup Lee of Nabis

Jun Sup Lee and Vince Ning are the co-founders and co-CEOs of Nabis, a San Francisco-based cannabis wholesale online marketplace. Founded in 2017, it has raised a total of $46 million in funding.

Sun Lee of Minti

Sun Lee and Wally Sajimi are co-founders of Minti (known until 2021 as Endorsify), a cryptocurrency platform that prices user-generated content using machine learning. In mid-2021 the company raised $1 million in pre-seed funding.

Rebecca Liebman of Learnlux

Rebecca Liebman co-founded LearnLux in 2015 to provide financial guidance to ordinary people. The company has received more than $7 million in fuinding to date and served more than several hundred thousand individuals.

Alexander Liegl of Tenet Energy

Alexander Liegl founded Tenet in early 2021. Until December 2021, he had been CEO of of Layer1 Technologies, a San Francisco-based company he had co-founded as a turnkey Bitcoin mining data centre backed by $50 million of Peter Thiel’s money. In June 2022, Tenet secured seed funding of $18 million.

Yang Liu of End Game Interactive

Yang Liu and Luke Zbihlyj co-founded End Game Interactive in 2019 to create online video games. The company has secured total funding of $15 million to date.

David Miro Llopis of ManiMe

Jooyeon Song - born in South Korea - and David Miro Lopis - born in Spain - are the co-founders of ManiMe, a Stanford-based beauty-tech company that uses 3D scanning technology to offer ready-to-wear, fitted manicures. The company has raised $8.7 million to date.

Michelle Lu of Viralspace

Rachel Luba of Luba Sports

Rachel Luba is a former gymnast and the founder of Luba Sports, a sports marketing agency focused in baseball and softball players. Luba graduated in 2013 from UCLA, where she majored in communications and in 2016 from Pepperdine University, where she became a lawyer. Luba Sports´ clients have secured contracts with MLB league teams, worth over $150 million.

Palmer Luckey of Oculus VR, Anduril Industries

Palmer Luckey founded Oculus VR, developer of the Oculus Rift virtual reality head set, in 2012. Five years later he sold the company to Facebook for $3 billion. In 2017 he launched defence technology company Anduril Industries, which so far has received funding of nearly $700 million for its sensors and drones.

Kevin Lyman of Enlitic

Kevin Lyman founded Enlitic to apply AI to the analysis of x-rays, CT scans and MRIs. Since its establishment in 2018, the company has raised more than $40 million and twice been named one of MIT Technology Review’s 50 Smartest Companies.

Pranav Maddi of Looped

Asad J. Malik of Jadu AR

Pakistan-born Asad Malik works with artificial reality and holograms and AR to make interactive media. His company, Jadu AR, has developed an interactive hologram app that allows people to make clips of themselves with musicians and artists thay they can share on social media. Backed by $46 million of funding follwoing a $36-million series A rounding in April 2022, the company is now expanding the scope of its AR products.

Jack Mallers of Zap Solutions

Jack Mallers is the founder of Zap Solutions, a bitcoin crypto wallet business based in Chicago. Initially launched to handle payments for cannabis, it then broadened its based, with Mallers now one of crypto’s most recognised figures. To date, the company has raised funding of more than $18 million.

Matt Marcus of Modern Treasury

Jamie Marshall of SnackPass

Thiel fellow Jamie Marshall and Kevin Tan are co-founders of Snackpass, a social food ordering platform that also builds social connections between friends. Boosted by a funding round of $70 million in mid-2021, the Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz supported firm’s total backing now stands at more than $95 million, and its valuation at more than $400 million.

Kevin Martin of unspun

Kevin Martin is Co-founder and CTO of unspun, a San Francisco-based apparel company that uses 3D scans and robotics to manufacture customised jeans on-demand. The company has raised $4.7 million to date, with investors including the US’s National Science Foundation.

Michael Martocci of SwagUp

Michael Martocci is the founder of SwagUp. an API-platform creator of swag packs, that also handles storage and fulfilment, run out of Miami. Annual sales now stand at more than $10 million.

Adrian Mayans of Lucid Drone Technologies

Ross McCray of VideoAmp

Ross McCray is CEO and co-founder of VideoAmp, a platform that provides measurement and optimization tools for advertisers and publishers across traditional TV, digital and streaming media. Founded in 2014, the company has raised more than $456 million to date and has a valuation of $1.45 billion.

Ann McFerran of Glamnetic

Thailand-born Ann McFerran, 27, is the founder and CEO of Glamnetic, a Miami-based company that sells magnetic eyelashes. Founded in 2019, its annual revenues now top $50 million. It is self-funded.

Runik Mehrotra of Vise

Samir Vasavada and Runik Mehrotra co-founded Vise as highschool students. The New York-based company uses AI and data from financial providers, such as Bloomberg, to create tailored portfolios for clients of investment advisers.

Chai Mishra of The Essential

Chai Mishra is the founder and CEO of The Essential (previously known as Move), an online, membership-based supermarket. After paying an annual subscription, customers can buy goods directly from producers. The Y Combinator-backed firm has raised $13 million to date.

Atreya Misra of Flo Recruit

Rafayel Mkrtchyan of PlayEngine

Rafayel Mkrtchyan is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of PlayEngine - the most automated and data-driven B2B betting software for bookmakers worldwide. Rafayel was born in Martuni, Armenia, and grew up in both Yerevan and the San Francisco Bay Area. Rafayel attended UC Berkeley where he majored in Computer Science. In 2019, he co-founded PlayEngine with his college roommate, participated in Berkeley Skydeck's startup program, and raised $700,000 in a pre-seed round.

Brandon Moak of Embark Trucks

Alex Rodrigues and Brandon Moak founded Embark Trucks after studying at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario. The company, headquartered in San Francisco, develops self-driving semi trucks. The company has attracted more than $317 million in investment and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Yasyf Mohamedali of Karuna Health

South Africa-born Joe Kahn and Yasyf Mohamedali are co-founders of Karuna Health, a San Francisco-headquartered company that helps patients navigate the US health-care system. Founded in 2018, Karuna had more $5 million funding before it was acquired by Commure in March 2021. Mohamedali is continuing his entrepreneurship as co-founder and CEO of Sym, a workflow automation platform set up in 2020.

Jose Montero of Blue

Jose Montero is co-founder, CEO and president of Blue, developer of a near-field communication smart card that allows users to share contact information contactlessly. Blue has raised $1.8 million in funding since its establishment in 2016.

Alina Morse of Liquid OTC

Alina Morse is CEO and co-founder of Liquid OTC, the maker of Zolli Candy and other sugar-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan and non-GMO candies, which she set up when was just nine years old in 2005. Still at high school, her products are now available in 25,000 outlets in the US, including Walmart stores.

Evan Moskal of Courant

Monish Sabnani and Evan Moskal are co-founders of Courant, a New York-based tech company manufacturing wireless charging solutions for mobile devices. Sabnani attended high school in Hong Kong and then moved to Washington D.C., where he graduated from finance and entrepreneurship from Georgetown University. Moskal is a graduate of NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Courant has 100 employees and annual sales of $6 million.

Ashley Moy of Cast21

Ashley Moy is CEO and co-founder of Cast21, a Chicago-based developer of medical orthopedic products for treating fractures and joints. To date, the company has received backing of $2.4 million.

Patrick Mrozowski of Point Card

Patrick Mrozowski co-founded Point Card in 2018 to offer a debit card that provides high rewards and benefits for everyday spending. He previously founded and sold Crumbs, an early crypto app, at age 20.

Lucas Muller of Ethos Medical

Cassidy Wang and Germany-born Lucas Muller are co-founders of Ethos Medical, a developer of a real-time ultrasound-basee instrument guidance system for spinal access treatments. Ethos Medical has raised $1.2 million in funding to date.

Everest Munro-Zeisberger of Fuzzbuzz

Spandana Nakka of Pump

Spandana Nakka and Gaurav Aggarwal, both born in India, co-founded Sleek in 2019. The company, an AI platform, allows venues to price and offer priority lanes according to real-time demand. Sleek raised $9 million before beng acquired by Snackpass in November 2021. In 2022, Nakka launched her next venture, Pump

Vince Ning of Nabis

Jun Sup Lee and Vince Ning are the co-founders and co-CEOs of Nabis, a San Francisco-based cannabis wholesale online marketplace. Founded in 2017, it has raised a total of $46 million in funding.

Joshua Nixon of Prime Roots

Philippe Noël of Whist

Philippe Noël and Ming Ying co-founded Whist (formerly Fractal) to use the cloud as a source of high-power applications for ordinary users. Their main focus is a privacy protecting browser.

Kieran O’Brien of MediaKits.com

Elliot O’Connor of Frontier

British-born O’Connor has secured $2.8 million of funding for Frontier, a recruitment platform which has been used by Burger King, Deel and other clients. His first start-up was Code at Uni, which helped students develop the skills to find jobs in the tech world.

Tade Oyerinde of Campuswire

Tade Oyerinde is the founder of Campuswire, a New York-based provider of online university courses. Founded in 2016, it has raised $3.6 million funding to date.

Siddharth Pandiya of Kona

Corine Tan, Siddharth Pandiya and Andrew Zhou are co-founders of Kona, a Techstars company that helps managers take care of remotely working staff. The company’s total funding stands at $4m to date.

Delane Parnell of PlayVS

Delane Parnell founded Los Angeles-based PlayVS to develop high-school and college esports. Now the US’s leading amateur esports platform, its funding tops $100m, while its valuation is in the $100m-500m bracket.

Ben Pasternak of Simulate

Australia-born Ben Pasternak founded biotechnology company Simulate to develops sustainable nutrition. Its first product is plant-based “chicken” nuggets. Since its establishment in 2018, it has raised more than $57 million in funding, most recently a $50 million round led by venture firm Seven Seven Six that valued the company at $250 million.

Jack Pawlik of Dripos + LineLeap

Jack Pawlik is co-founder two companies: LineLeap, a mobile app handling entry to and ordering for bars and nightclubs that has raised $13.5 million in funding since its establishment in 2016, and Dripos, a developer of point of sale and other software for fast-service restaurants, that has raised $6.4 million in funding sinces its establishment in 2019. Y Combinator has backed both businesses.

Sandeep Peddada of Looped

Lucas Pellan of Sonder

Bryan Perla of Little Elf Products

Bryan Perla founded Little Elf Products, a company that manufactures a gift-wrapping tool to ease the process of wrapping gifts. Perla attended Stanford University, where he majored in product design. Annual sales stood at $900,000 in 2021, and its valuation was $1 million.

Vanessa Pham of Omsom

Sisters Vanessa Pham and Kim Pham co-founded food brand Omsom to sell ready-to-use sauce pouches with Asian flavours. Established in 2019, the company has raised $2 million to date.

Kim Pham of Omsom

Sisters Vanessa Pham and Kim Pham co-founded food brand Omsom to sell ready-to-use sauce pouches with Asian flavours. Established in 2019, the company has raised $2 million to date.

Nicolas Pinkowski of Nitricity

Nicolas Pinkowski and Jay Schwalbe are the co-founders of Nitricity, a Stanford-headquartered energy company that produces nitrogen fertilizer using zero-carbon emissions renewable energy sources. In June 2022, Nitricity raised $20 million in new funding, bringing its total funding to date to nearly $27 million.

Xavier Pladevall of Index

Childhood friends in the Dominican Republic, Xavier Pladevall and Eduardo Portet both went to university in the US then co-founded Index, an IT business that lets companies put together dashboards to track business performance. Headquartered in San Francisco, it has raised $2.6 million in funding, including backing from Y Combinator, Google and Slack.

Eduardo Portet of Index

Jai Pradeesh of DeepSource

Jai Pradeesh and Sanket Saurev co-founded DeepSource in Bengaluru in 2018 to develop software that could automatically find and fix bugs in code. Now based in San Francisco, the company has raised funding of $2.8 million to date.

Xiaoyin Qu of Run The World

Kuldeep Singh Rajput of Biofourmis

Singh Rajput Kuldeep enrolled at Johns Hopkins University to do his PhD. He followed his professor to Singapore where he founded his own digital therapeutics company Biofourmis in 2015. Now based in Boston, Bioformis produces wearable technology that allows patients to be cared for remotely in their home. His company became a unicorn with a valuation of $1.3 billion raised $300 million in April 2022.

François Reihani of La La Land Kind Café

François Reihani is founder of La La Land Kind Café, a chain of eight coffee shops in Dallas and California, where foster youth can learn to work and become self-sustaining. Reihani attended the University of Southern California and the Southern Methodist University before founding non-profit La La Land in 2019.

Alex Rodrigues of Embark Trucks

Christelle Rohaut of Codi

Christelle Rohaut founded California-based company Codi to offer daytime workspaces in private homes for people to work remotely. Established in 2018, its latest round of funding - $16 million in September 2022 - brought its total funding to past $40 million.

Jack Roswell of Perennial

Jack Roswell, Alex Zhuk and David Schurman are co-founders of Perennial (formerly Cloud Agronomics), a Boulder, Colorado based verification platform for soil-based carbon removal. The company has raised $24.5 million in funding to date.

Sam Rusk of EnsoData

Austin Russell of Luminar Technologies

Austin Russell founded Luminar Technologies, an auto sensor development firm, after receiving $100,000 from Peter Thiel in 2012. A Nasdaq listing in December 2020 gave him a net worth of $2.7 billion as of 2021.

Monish Sabnani of Courant

Courtney Sabo of Kopa

Alex Sadhu of Beam Impact

Wally Sajimi of Minti

Shashank Samala of Heirloom

Samala Shashank founded Heirloom in 2020 to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using mineralization processes. Previously co-founder of Tempo Automation, developer of electronics manufacturing softwarefactory in San Francisco.

Ishmael Samuel of Paragon

Joshua Sanchez of Floatme

Joshua Sanchez is CEO and co-founder of FloatMe, a financial wellness platform that offers wage advances, overdraft protection and other services. Based in San Antonio, a $16.2 million series A funding round conducted in February 2022 brought its total funding to hjust under $50 million.

Aasim Sani of Orai

Drexel University classmates Danish Dhamani, Aasim Sani and Paritosh Gupta co-founded speech-coaching app Orai in 2017. The Philadelphia-headquartered company aims to make people more confident in meetings and presentations. It has raised $2.4 million. Sani is also co-founder, with Gupta, of of Copycat, a software startup that helps developers build user interfaces faster.

Sanket Saurav of DeepSource

Christine Schindler of PathSpot

Christine Schindler and Dutch Waanders co-founded PathSpot to develop handscanners that can protects food service and health-care companies from contaminants. PathSpot has raised a total of $10.6 million in funding over 4 rounds.

David Schurman of Perennial

Jay Schwalbe of Nitricity

Michael Selden of Finless Foods

Michael Selden is CEO and co-founder of Finless Foods, an Emeryville-headqartered firm that uses cellular biology to produce seafood. After raising $34 million in March 2022, Finless Foods’ funding stands at $41 million.

Andrei Serban of Fuzzbuzz

Greg Sewitz of Magic Spoon

Gregory Sewitz is the co-founder of Magic Spoon, a maker of high protein, low carb cereal for adults. Headquartered in New York, Magic Spoon raised investment of $85 million in June 2022 to take its total funding to just under $100 million. Sewitz previously co-founded Exo, a food maker using insect protein.

James Sha of Onyx

Rohan Shah of Extend

Rohan Shah is co-founder of Extend and head of its Business Development & Partnerships arm. He is also an investing partner at Shah Capital Partners. A former product manager at BCG Digital Ventures, he also was founder and CEO of career platform Within. Shah has a BSc from Stanford University.

Ravi Shah of Marigold Health

Naomi Shah of Meet Cute

Naomi Shah, who graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University, is founder of Meet Cute, a romantic-comedy studio that produces 15-minute-long podcasts. The company has released more than 450 episodes to date. Its funding to date stands at $9.3 million.

Heather Shen of Praxis Labs

Heather Shen is co-founder of Stanford-based software company Praxis Labs, a virtual reality corporate training company. Following a funding round in October 2021, it has now raised more than $18 million of backing.

Brandon Shin of Polymail

Brandon Shin is the co-founder of Polymail, an e-mail application developed for macOS and iOS. Before developing the e-mail platform, Shin earned a bachelor´s degree in biopsychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Los Angelse-based Polymail has raised more than $800,000 in seed funding and reports average annual sales of about $470,000.

Zack Shreier of Quevos

Zack Shreier and Nick Hamburger are co-founders of Quevos, a maker of low-carbohydrate snacks. Quevos has raised nearly $2 million in seed funding.

Wang Shuo of Deel

Kush Singh of Hitch

Kush Singh founded Hitch, an Austin-based company, to provide affordable shared rides between cities. Since its establishment in 2017, the company has raised around $1 million in venture capital funding. It currently serves cities in Texas and Oklahoma.

Benjamin Smith of DISCO (also Top Tier Fitness & Top Tier Columbia)

Benjamin Smith founded Disco, a science-backed skincare brand for men, in 2019. Based in Austin, the company has raised $4.9m.

Erin Smith of FacePrint

Thiel fellow Erin Smith is the founder and developer of FacePrint, an AI tool designed to detect and monitor Parkinson’s disease and commonly misidentified neurological disorders. The platform developed by Ms. Smith uses video technology and early-stage facial expression indicators to identify the neurological disorders.

Jooyeon Song of ManiMe

Allisa Song of Nanodropper

Bo Starr of Grifin

Jamie Steenbakkers of Busy Co

Jennifer Steger of Nanodropper

Benjamin Stern of Nohbo

Thiel fellow Benjamin Stern is founder and CEO of Nohbo, an R&D company developing eco-friendly, cost-effective alternatives to plastic. It has raised $3 million to date.

Tate Stock of Go Chirp (formerly Chirp)

Tate Stock is the founder and CEO of Chirp, a Utah-based maker of back-pain-relief products. Established in 2015, Chirp has raised about $1.5 million in funding and now has an estimated valuation of $36 million.

Kevin Tan of SnackPass

Corine Tan of Kona

Stanley Tang of DoorDash

Cami Téllez of Parade

Akshat Thirani of Amper Technologies

Naman Trivedi of WattBuy

Naman Trivedi is co-founder and CEO of WattBuy, an electricity management platform that helps homeowners save money on ther electricity bills. Headquartered in New York, in October 2021 it raised $10 million in additional series A investment, bringing its total funding to more than $16 million.

Jason Troutner of Teal Bio

Jason Troutner is the founder and CTO of Teal Bio, a maker of respirators for healthcare workers. Before Teal, he co-founded Cast21, also a health care products maker, with Ashley Moy. Teal has raised $3 million in funding to date.

Adam Turner of Postscript

Samir Vasavada of Vise

Slater Victoroff of Indico

Slater Victoroff is founder and chief technology officer of Indico Data, a process automation platform that uses deep learning and artificial intelligence to offer a range of business services, including contract analysis, regulatory compliance, audit reporting and customer support automation. It has raised more than $30 million in funding to date. In August 2022, he also became VP of research at Neo Cybernetica, a company exploring breakthroughs in cybnetic technology.

Dutch Waanders of PathSpot

Sam Walder of Trala

Sam Walder is CEO and co-founder of Trala, a music education app based around teaching people the to play the violin. Based in Chicago, after closing a funding round in December 2021, investment in the company has totaled $6.9 million to date.

Alexandr Wang of Scale AI

Alexandr Wang founded Scale AI in 2016, taking it to Unicorn status three years later. Funding for the AI data-labelling company now stands at just over $600 million, including backing from Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Index Ventures and Accel.

Miranda Wang of Novoloop

Jeanny Yao and Miranda Wang co-founded Novoloop (formerly BioCellection) to apply a chemical they had developed that cuonverts previously unrecyclable plastic waste into biosurfactants used in the textile industry. In June 2022 they secured funding of $21.9 million series A funding.

Brandon Wang of Dreambound

Anna Wang of Searchlight

Twin sisters Anna Wang and Kerry Wang are the co-founders of Searchlight, a human resources intelligence platform that uses behavioral reference data. Backed by Y Combinator and Accel among others, the company has raised $19.5 million in funding to date after raising $17 million in December 2021.

Kerry Wang of Searchlight

Phillip Wang of Gather

Cassidy Wang of Ethos Medical

Nate Washington of Qoins

Nate Washington and Christian Zimmerman co-founded fintech company Qoins in 2016 to create a personal finance platform for underrepresented communities. It has raised $3.8 million of funding.

Daniel Weinstein of Lura Health

Wesley Xia of Huobi Global

Wesley Xia - founder of colabs stuido, former Huobi innovations SVP, a serial entrepreneur in blockchain, global strategy officer for Nanome ($50M Start-Up) + Former Investment Director at Value Net Capital, which yields over 150x return over the course of the past 3 years.

Will Zhang of Fintelics Technology

Will Zhang, founder of Fintelics and Fire Wolf Labs, emerging technology solutions consultant. Specialize in blockchain, cloud native apps, game development (web2+web3). The company grew to multi million dollars in annual revenue within a few years without any external investments, and branched off to several product subsidiaries such as gamefi studio, blockchain saas, and socialfi applications.

Drew Williams of Press Sports

Ryan Wilson of The Gathering Spot

Ryan Wilson is CEO and co-founder of The Gathering Spot, a by-invitation-only private membership club for creators, disruptors and entrepreneurs. The company’s funding totals $5 million to date.

Zachary Wise of Emotive

Shortly after graduating from University of Southern California in 2018, Zachary Wise and Brian Zatulove founded text-message marketing business Emotive. After revenue grew nearly 500% in 2020, the company raised $50 million in early 2021, giving it a valuation of more than $400 million.

Tyler Wittman of Precision NDT

Tyler Wittman is founder, president and CEO of Precision NDT, a Carlsbad, New Mexico-based provider of asset inspection services. Established in 2016, it had revenues of more than $25 million in 2019.

Trinity Wofford of Golde

Trinity Mouzon Wofford founded Golde in 2017 when she was 23 to sell tumeric and other health-based foods and related products. Though Golde has received three rounds of funding, Wofford has preferred to grow the company organically, scaling with trusted partners.

Joseph Woodbury of Neighbor.com

Brian Wyrwas of Finless Foods

Brian Wyrwas is co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Finless Foods, an Emeryville-headqartered firm that uses cellular biology to produce seafood. Wyrwas runs lab operations at the company, which after raising $34 million in March 2022 now has total funding at $41 million.

Gerald Yao of FiscalNote

Gerald Yao is chief strategy oficer, head of ESG and co-founder of FiscalNote, a Washington,DC-based firm that uses AI and other tools to analyse government. Established in 2013, it has raised more than $625 million before listing on the New York Stock Exchange in August 2022.

Jeanny Yao of Novoloop

Ming Ying of Whist

Philippe Noël and Ming Ying co-founded Whist (formerly Fractal) to use the cloud as a source of high-power applications for ordinary users. Their main focus is a privacy protecting browser.

Yuanzhe Li of Epal

Yuanzhe Li picked up on the trend of game industry and founded E-Pal, a game freelancing platform. It was founded in 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic helped his business expand tremendously. E-Pal raised its seed round of $3.5 million led A16z and A round of $8 million from Galaxy Interactive and other venture capitals.

Oliver Zak of Mad Rabbit Tattoo

David Zakariaie of Senseye

David Zakariaie is CEO and co-founder of Senseye, a neurotechnology firm that develops eye-tracking systems capable of delivering cognitive insights. investors in Senseye include Altara Ventures and Wavemaker Partners. Its funding stands at $8 million to date.

David Zamarin of DetraPel

David Zamarin founded DetraPel at 15 to find innovative solutions to environmental and health effects from manufactured products. DetraPel’s coatings stem from research conducted during evening classes taken when he attended the University of Pennsylvania part-time as an undergraduate. In 2018 he was a contestant on business show Shark Tank. DetraPel has raised $1.25 million and forecast $12 million revenues for 2021.

Brian Zatulove of Emotive

Sahir Zaveri of King Children

Luke Zbihlyj of End Game Interactive

Yang Liu and Luke Zbihlyj co-founded End Game Interactive in 2019 to create online video games. The company has secured total funding of $15 million to date.

Jiani Zeng of Butlr

Zexie Yang of Multiverse Capital

Zexie Yang has founded Multiverse Capital. Since 2019, Multiverse has been firmly on the path of cutting-edge value investment, helping to build a bridge of value flow between many investors and companies with great growth potential. It has invested in a number of internationally renowned future financial products and projects, including FOFBANK, Global Cash and Joybit, and has helped institutional investment users reap an average return of over 100x. Today, Multiverse operates in more than 20 countries around the world and serves over 150 institutional investors.

Eddy Zhong of Leangap

Eddy Zhong is founder of Leangap, an incubator for high school startups launched in 2017. Before founding Leangap, Zhong co-founded Blanc Watches, a wearables company, acquired by China´s Powstar for $1.2 million. Zhong attended the University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute (UM-SJTU JI), where he majored in computer science.

Andrew Zhou of Kona

Alex Zhuk of Perennial

Christian Zimmerman of Qoins

Nate Washington and Christian Zimmerman co-founded fintech company Qoins in 2016 to create a personal finance platform for underrepresented communities. It has raised $3.8 million of funding.

2022 Hurun America U30 Future Star

Wei Jiusheng is the CEO of the Gerton Asset Management, Inc., his personal equity plus options accounted for 75% of the company. In 2016 fundraised 30 million RMB, 2017 fundraised 200 million RMB, $100 million in assets under management in 2020, $500 million in assets under management in 2021. $25 million in profits generated in 2022.

Kai Chen, 23, is the co-founder of MPCVault, a self-custodial Web3 treasury management tool which is used by many VCs and businesses. He previously co-founded Purplebox, a marketplace for buying and selling authentic collectibles, and Erupture, an angel investing network based in UC Berkeley.

Min Wang is the founder of Titanium Extensive Venture Limited. The company is fully owned by the founding team and managed by a GP with an investment management committee that operating mainly in WEB3 project investment, and has invested in over 70 projects.

Sam Thapaliya, 24, is the Co-founder of Zebec.io and Eclipse.builders. Based in the SF and NY. Zebec is a continuous settlement protocol on Solana building its own blockchain. Eclipse is enabling modular Rollup solutions on on Cosmose and Celestia.

Jason Xiangjun Li, 26, is the co-founder of MPCVault, a Web3 custody and treasury management tool which is used by many VCs and businesses. He graduated from UC Berkeley Computer Science Magna Cum Laude, and with High Honors from the Haas School of Business. Before starting MPCVault, he served as a Fintech consultant for banks and consulting firms and sold his previous company – a cryptocurrency exchange back in 2018. He's also the co-founder of LoopChat. MPCVault Raised $3.1 million from Youbi Capital, the founding partner of Fenbushi Capital, Uphonest Capital, Cipholio Ventures, Tess Ventures, and many more.

STARSEED.io is a Dynamic NFT protocol + web3 website builder for creators, was founded by Yi (Cynthia) Cao. Backed by Arthur Hayes (BitMEX), Anatoly Yakovenko (Solana), Nick Jarjour (Billboard 40/40; Hipgnosis Songs Fund), Jaeson Ma (OP3N, 88 Rising), it will close the seed round in Jan, 2023.

Hu Zhongkai is the founder of Monster Tribe. Monster Tribe is an education-based enterprise that focus on the three cores of reading, exercise and positive thinking, guiding members to develop and adhere to good habits of a game-based growth community. Monster Tribe is aiming to enable more people to face life in a better state.

About E-Pal

E-Pal, backed by world renowned venture capitals such as A16z and Galaxy Interactive, is one of the largest social platforms dedicated to gamers around the world with 1.5 million users. On E-Pal, users can pay a small fee to hire a selection of hand-vetted service providers to play with them, thus ensuring their gaming experience is immaculate. Each month, E-Pal helps hundreds of thousands of gamers from all over the worlds to find friends and perfect teammates.

About Hurun Inc.

Promoting Entrepreneurship Through Lists and Research

Oxford, Shanghai, Mumbai, Sydney

Established in the UK in 1999, Hurun is a research, media and investments group, which generated 8 billion views on the Hurun brand in 2021 – mainly in China and India – on the back of providing lists and research reports.

Best-known today for the Hurun Rich List series, ranking the most successful entrepreneurs in China, India and the world, Hurun’s other key properties include the Hurun 500, a ranking of the world’s most valuable companies, and the Hurun Start-up series, a comprehensive listing of the world’s start-ups and outstanding young entrepreneurs.

The Hurun Start-up series begins with the Hurun U30s, an award recognizing the most successful entrepreneurs under the age of thirty, and is today in ten countries. Next up are Hurun Cheetahs, start-ups with a valuation of between US$300mn to US$500mn, most likely to ‘go unicorn’ within five years. Hurun Global Gazelles Index recognizes start-ups with a valuation of US$500mn to US$1bn, most likely to ‘go unicorn’ within three years. The culmination of the start-up series is the Hurun Global Unicorn Index. You can see links here: Hurun Global Unicorns on and the Hurun Global Gazelles as well as the Hurun Global VCs.

Hurun has been hosting the Hurun U30s Awards in China since 2017 and this year is with 10 countries, including China, India, US, Canada, Germany, Spain, South Korea, UAE, Australia and the UK. Hurun U30s events include London on Oct 17, Sydney on Oct 20, LA on Nov 10, Shanghai on Nov 18, Boston on Jan 12 and Abu Dhabi on Jan 23-25.

Hurun hosted high-profile events in the last couple of years across China and India, as well as London, Paris, New York, LA, Sydney, Luxembourg, Istanbul, Dubai and Singapore.

Hurun provides research reports co-branded with some of the world’s leading financial institutions, real estate developers and regional governments.

For further information, see www.hurun.net or www.hurun.co.uk

For media inquiries, please contact:

Hurun Report

Porsha Pan

Tel: +86-21-50105808*601

Mobile: +86-139 1838 7446

Email: porsha.pan@hurun.net

Grace Liu

Tel: +86-21-50105808

Mobile: +86 136 7195 4611

Email: grace.liu@hurun.net

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