CAMPFIRE ON THE ROAD
london, uK
67-77 CHARTERHOUSE ST, LONDON
EC1M 6HJ, UNITED KINGDOM
affinity campfire 2023
Together we explored the future of relationship intelligence, the importance of data-driven sourcing, and what dealmaking will look like next year and beyond.
build
relationships
get
answers
learn
best practices
Build
relationships
get answers
learn best practices
space is limited
come meet us at The presidio
135 Fisher Loop, San Francisco
CA 94129
agenda
ray zhou
The world of private capital has changed compared to recent years. The era of soaring valuations and the ‘one day close’ is over—investors can no longer justify risky deals based on hype and growth at all costs. The focus has shifted to sourcing deals with solid fundamentals and strong metrics with companies that are durable and have long-term growth potential. Fundraising has become more difficult, too, as capital needs to be deployed more selectively—while growing portfolio companies has also become a bigger priority as a path to recouping LP investments.
In this panel we'll learn how our panel of expert deal makers are successfully navigating today’s investment landscape and finding success in the following efforts:
- Deal Sourcing
- Fundraising
- Portfolio Company Growth
shubham goel / VIVEK RAMASWAMI / CURTIS MCKEE / NNAMDI IREGBULEM / Kelly Graziadei
Affinity’s Product & Design leadership are excited to share some of the most recent, impactful capabilities that improve your daily CRM work and enable teams to tap into the information they need as they scale.
andy bryson
Right now, it’s essential for firms to find ways to do more with less while also maintaining healthy deal flow. More and more firms are becoming hyper focused on how they can move on the right deals faster, further strengthen their most valuable relationships, and collaborate more effectively as a team.
In this breakout session specifically tailored for the operational champions of Affinity— Caroline Haun (8VC) and Nolan English (SOSV) will share insights, stories, and best practices on how they’ve enabled their firm to be more successful and efficient in their dealmaking and supporting portfolio companies.
This will be a free-flowing discussion that is open to question so please bring your ideas for the speakers and the room full of operators about Affinity’s automation, relationship intelligence, enrichment, and API/integrations.
JAMIE FRONCKOWIAK / CAROLINE HAUN / NOLAN ENGLISH
Data-driven firms are winning right now—and the most successful ones ensure this mindset is implemented across every team member throughout the organization. It’s important for General Partners to set the tone and lead by example around how data-driven insights paired with leadership intuition are key factors to your investment strategies.
In this breakout session specifically tailored for dealmakers—we’d love for you to help us lead an open discussion with fellow investment firm leaders about how you’re finding success in being a data-driven investor. We hope to create an environment to share insights, swap stories, and learn from your peers on best practices around how you’re:
- Sharing your network and ongoing context from your day-to-day to improve the team’s overall deal and outreach success
- Managing your deal flow to optimize for efficient prioritization across your teams
- Using deal data and context to operate faster without sacrificing quality or adding risk
paul ross / MAR HERSHENSON
It has become apparent that data-driven deal making will define the winners in the next phase of venture capital. With Gartner predicting that 75% of investor reviews will be influenced by AI and data analytics by 2025, many VCs are facing a creeping deadline to modernize their systems and processes now, or risk being left behind. Simultaneously, firms are being tested by a challenging deal landscape where cutting costs and doing more with less are of top priority.
In this panel, we’ll sit down with operators who have led the way on digitization to gain insights on implementation best practices, and break down the delicate balance of effectively budgeting your resources without killing your agility for more open markets.
jennie dvorak / Ryan Bateman / Diogo Henriques / Amber Quinones / Andrew Cafourek
jesse goldman / dustin deno
past conference speakers
Chad Harding
Chad Harding
Chad is a Managing Partner at PEAK Technology Partners. Chad has been advising technology companies on financing and strategic transactions for over fifteen years. Chad has executed over $90 billion of transactions over his career.
Prior to PEAK, Chad was a Senior Director of Finance at Sojern, a travel technology company, responsible for corporate development and FP&A. Prior to Sojern, Chad was a Senior Director of Investment Banking at Arbor Advisors where he advised technology entrepreneurs on M&A and capital raising transactions. Chad began his investment banking career at Lehman Brothers / Barclays Capital in New York City, executing a number of high-profile transactions during his nine years at the firm.
Chad also has startup experience, having founded SmartFunded, an online fundraising platform for public schools.
Chad holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Utah.
Nicholas Kim
Nicholas Kim
investor @ vestigo ventures
Yoram Wijngaarde
Yoram Wijngaarde
Founder of Dealroom, which was launched in 2014 in Amsterdam to provide insights and intelligence about the world's most promising companies. Top tier venture capital firms like Sequoia, Insight Partners, Balderton, Atomico, and world class corporates like Google, Amazon, Stripe, McKinsey, BCG, EY, Deloitte, Unilever, Pepsi and others use Dealroom software and data to stay at the forefront of innovation and discover the world’s most promising companies. Before founding Dealroom, Yoram was an investment banker at Lehman Brothers, Nomura Securities and NOAH Advisors in New York and London. Yoram has a cum laude Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Amsterdam.
Rachel Feely-Kohl
Rachel Feely-Kohl
Rachel Feely-Kohl joined F-Prime Capital in January 2018, where she leads the platform team for the tech fund. Rachel has spent the past four years in Chicago where she supported community growth and expansion for high-growth companies, including WeWork and Startup Institute. Immediately prior to joining F-Prime Capital, Rachel was the Head of Community for FinTEx Chicago, a FinTech industry association, where she oversaw program development and membership. She began her career working for non-profits, where she helped launched entrepreneurial-focused community programs in the US and abroad.
Rachel received her BA in Government & Politics from the University of Maryland-College Park.
Noah Breslow
Noah Breslow
Noah Breslow leads BCV’s platform team, which provides business-building support to BCV portfolio companies and designs the systems to run the firm. Noah brings experience as an engineer, early-stage entrepreneur and public company CEO to assist companies at all stages of the journey.
Eugene Lee
Eugene Lee
My move to venture capital came after my last corporate role at Pinterest, where I was hired to build their BizOps team. We started with 3000 and went up to 1200 team members before I left. As anyone who’s been a part of these massive early success stories knows, it’s both incredibly exciting and overwhelmingly exhausting. I loved it, but it definitely burnt me out.
A few years and another startup later, I came full circle and realized, having been in both roles - the banker and the builder, what I really wanted was a bit of both. I took a bit of a gamble and dedicated a year to trying to break into the VC world. When OMERS Ventures announced they were opening a US office, I shoved my foot in the door, and haven’t looked back.
Casey Rovinelli
Casey Rovinelli
My journey has landed me in a number of unexpected territories ranging from a Fortune 500 board room to a major league sports negotiation table to the corridors of Capitol Hill. What ultimately sticks with me the most are the fascinating people I’ve met along the way. Many of them operating at the peak of human endeavor.
All of this has prepared me for the absolute privilege to work at OMERS Ventures. The non-stop line of fascinating people we meet on a weekly basis is seconded only by the truly challenging and interesting work we do at the firm. I feel like I’m operating on multiple careers at once, continually learning and building. It’s the best.
Kevin Zhang
Kevin Zhang
Kevin Zhang partners with founders building the next generation of fintech and business software products. Prior to BCV, Kevin led product as the first business hire at Fundera, a financial services marketplace.
Ivan Lopez
Ivan Lopez
Ivan is a serial entrepreneur and investor who has spent his career developing technology and business solutions around the globe. He gets really excited about creating scalable solutions to complex problems delivering impact on a global scale and mentoring founders. His career spans 30 years across the USA, Europe, APAC and LATAM. He has founded 8 companies in e-commerce technology, and men’s personal care products. Prior to Antler he was with Techstars as General Manager for Americas West, APAC and LATAM. He has been in leadership roles at Amazon, Disney, Sony Pictures and Hutchison Whampoa amongst other executive roles around the globe.
Brian Smiga
Brian Smiga
Brian Smiga, co-founding partner at Alpha, is a serial entrepreneur and software developer. Prior to Alpha Partners, Brian was founder/CEO of Preclick, (sold to Smilebox), where he developed software licensed worldwide by HP, 3M, Walmart, Costco, CVS, Sandisk, and Walgreens. After starting his career at Booz-Allen, Brian co-founded and led Portfolio Software, Actioneer, and 3Path. Brian received a BA from Swarthmore College, and a Masters of Philosophy from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Brian is the founder of TEDxAsbury and a board member of the Roothbert Fund, which grants graduate student scholarships.
Rudy Burger
Rudy Burger
Rudy is a leading expert on M&A transactions within the technology sector. As the founder of Woodside Capital, he focuses on computer vision and imaging companies across multiple industry sectors.
Prior to Woodside Capital Partners, Rudy was the founding CEO of the MIT Media Lab Europe, a joint venture between MIT and the Irish government. Over the past 25 years, he founded five technology companies in the U.S., ran a European public company, and served as a senior executive for two global 500 companies. He is an effective, results-oriented professional with a proven track record in strategic planning, change management, and corporate development.
Rudy has a BSc and MSc in Electrical Engineering from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Computer Vision from Cambridge University, UK.
Andrew Cafourek
Andrew Cafourek
Andrew is currently the VP, Head of Technology at Anthos Capital where he serves as the digital officer of the firm, managing their technical infrastructure and exploring how emerging tech can evolve their internal workflows and digital toolkit. He is a technologist with deep experience in the digital product lifecycle, operational digital transformation and the technical aspects of web development. Previously, he was a Managing Partner of Lat Long, leading product development, strategy and digital transformation efforts for clients exploring expansion or reinvention. He was also the technical co-founder of Alumni Spaces, a platform that blends organizational management, web publishing, fundraising and analytics tools to power local alumni group networks for major universities such as Missouri, Clemson, Florida State, UNC and Virginia Tech. Andrew was also a part of the early team at Ripple6, which was later acquired by Gannett in 2009.
Amber Quinones
Amber Quinones
Amber joined BBG Ventures as their first Head of Platform & Operations, with a breadth of startup and community-building experience. She's a powerhouse operator, growth marketer, and Stanford grad who has spent time at startups like The Assembly and Everlane. Prior to joining BBGV, Amber led Growth & Customer Success on the founding team of the proptech startup withco, developing the company's early product and customer journey.
Kelly Graziadei
Kelly Graziadei
Kelly is a Co-Founder and General Partner at f7 Ventures. Kelly has 20 years of experience in high growth tech companies ranging from 3 employees to 200,000. She built and led go-to-market teams at AltaVista, Overture, Yahoo & Facebook, and joined Facebook in 2010 to build and scale the Mid-Market Channel in North America to over $1B in revenue. She also led Product Marketing for Facebook Ads/Commerce globally, driving $15B in revenue and launching 20+ products around the world. She is a Board Director at Payfare and previously served as an EIR at Foundation Capital and Angel Investor.
Nnamdi Iregbulem
Nnamdi Iregbulem
Nnamdi Iregbulem is a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, where he invests in early-stage software startups that enhance the productivity of technical knowledge workers. His investments include Redpanda, Materialize, GitLab (Nasdaq: GTLB), Fastly (NYSE: FSLY), and Alteryx (NYSE: AYX). A self-taught programmer and lifelong technology nerd, Nnamdi earned his undergraduate degree in economics from Yale University and his MBA from Stanford University.
Curtis McKee
Curtis McKee
Curtis is a Partner at Third Point Ventures, focusing on investments across the IT and Data Infrastructure landscapes. He is on the board of Atom Computing, Balbix, Banyan Security, and Unravel Data. Previously, Curtis was AVP and the Head of Corporate and Investor Development at Arista Networks, where he led Mergers and Acquisitions, including the Big Switch Networks and Awake Security transactions, as well as Ventures and Investor Relations. Prior to Arista, Curtis was an Investor and Corporate Development leader for Intel Capital, concentrating on Cloud, IOT, Enterprise SW, HPC, 5G, Edge/Networking and AI sectors.
He also led Operations as Chief of Staff and Technical Assistant for the Datacenter Group’s Enterprise Software Division. He joined Intel following the Company’s acquisition of Fulcrum Microsystems, where he was Head of Business Development. He began his career in engineering roles at Broadcom and Marvell. Curtis holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University.
Vivek Ramaswami
Vivek Ramaswami
Vivek Ramaswami joined Madrona in 2022 as a Partner and is based in San Francisco. Vivek partners with ambitious founders across AI, B2B software, and cloud infrastructure. Prior to Madrona, Vivek helped launch the venture capital arm of Steadfast Capital, where he led investments in Zapier, Klaviyo, Lucid, Forethought, Sendbird, Jumpcloud, Algolia, Wealthsimple, and other high-growth companies. Prior to Steadfast, Vivek was a Principal at Redpoint for five years, where he helped source or work on investments in SentinelOne, Nubank, Cockroach Labs, Hashicorp, and others. Vivek started his career in technology investment banking at Goldman Sachs, advising clients on M&A and IPO opportunities in the software and consumer internet sectors. Vivek was named to the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for Venture Capital in 2021.
Diogo Henriques
Diogo Henriques
Diogo has 15 years of experience supporting public and private investors across strategy, operations, research, and technology. Prior to BAM Elevate, Diogo was part of the COO team at Citadel Global Equities, where he oversaw day to day operations and the fund’s research process and analytics teams. Before that he was a Director at Coatue, where he led and scaled Coatue’s internal research and portfolio operations groups.
Diogo spent the first 6 years of his career at BCG, where he was a core member of the Private Equity Practice and led multiple growth equity due diligences and portfolio work in the consumer, technology, and financial services sectors. He has a Master in Business Administration from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Catolica Lisbon School of Business and Economics, in his native Portugal, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude.
Mar Hershenson
Mar Hershenson
Mar is Pear’s Founding Managing Partner. After earning a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, Mar developed a groundbreaking technique of optimizing the design of analog semiconductors. Since then, she has accrued over 13 years of founder experience, co-founding three startups in mobile/ecommerce, enterprise software and semiconductor industries and has registered 14 separate patents.
She is currently a Lecturer for Stanford University, teaching Lean Launchpad, one of the premier entrepreneurship classes at Stanford. Prior to that, she was a Consulting Professor at Stanford teaching the introductory course in Analog Circuit Design for nearly a decade. She has been recognized by MIT Technology Review as a Top Innovator Under 35, named a Champion of Innovation by Fast Company, awarded the Digital Automation Conference’s Marie R. Pistil Achievement Award, and recognized on the Forbes Midas List in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Ryan Bateman
Ryan Bateman
Ryan Bateman is chief technology officer at Sands Capital. Sands Capital is a leading global investment management firm exclusively focused on growth investing.
Since joining Sands Capital in 2011, Mr. Bateman has served as head of technology and oversees all matters relating to technology, cybersecurity and data management.
Prior to joining Sands Capital, Mr. Bateman was the director of research, sales, and trading applications at Ipreo. Mr. Bateman also served as director of equity capital markets technology at FBR Capital Markets, as IT manager of the European region for FBR International.
Mr. Bateman earned a BA in English studies from Northwestern University and an MBA in international business from the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.
Nolan English
Nolan English
Nolan English is the Director of Portfolio Services at SOSV responsible for actively developing and maintaining SOSV’s global community of 1000+ portfolio companies and their founders. Nolan and his team curate services and programming for the SOSV founder community in the form of platform tools, peer networking, events, expert content and masterclasses and strategic partnerships. Nolan works closely with SOSV’s investment teams to ensure founders have access to everything they need to successfully launch and scale their businesses from day one.
Nolan first joined SOSV as a Program Manager for Food-X in 2014, responsible for the day-to-day operations of the program and portfolio management. Prior to SOSV Nolan worked in Washington DC in the corporate meeting and events industry. Nolan holds a BA in Literature from Bard College.
Caroline Haun
Caroline Haun
Caroline is Operations Director at 8VC.
Prior to 8VC, Caroline managed operations for Formation 8. Prior to Formation 8, she worked at Highbridge Capital, in New York, as a Client Services professional specializing in loan-focused funds. Caroline began her career at San Francisco based hedge fund, PFM, L.P. as a research assistant focused on the Healthcare sector.
Caroline received her B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance from The University of the Pacific.