6:00pm - Welcome Reception
6:45pm - Panel
7:30pm - Networking
CircleUp, Co-Founder & CEO
Ryan is the CEO and co-founder of CircleUp, the investment platform using machine learning and data to find, invest in and support innovative, early-stage consumer brands. Ryan started CircleUp after nearly seven years of investing experience in consumer product and retail-focused private equity. His background exposed him to many great consumer and retail businesses too small to obtain funding through the customary private equity channels, so he founded CircleUp to make funding available to this end of the market, inspired by these often-overlooked opportunities.
Top Tier Capital, Managing Director
Lisa is a Managing Director and member of the Investment Committee at Top Tier Capital Partners. She leads the fund Investment Team focusing on manager selection, due diligence and investment monitoring of Top Tier’s primary investments. Leveraging her 25 years of experiences, Lisa is particularly interested in helping up-and-coming micro funds structure themselves for success in the future, including strategic fundraising, thoughtful portfolio construction, effective capital deployment and management succession. When she is not advising our GPs and LPs, Lisa is supporting diversity within private equity with the intent that the profile of venture firms mirrors those who are benefiting from the capital deployed by those firms. Lisa graduated from the University of San Francisco with a B.S. in applied economics and an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business.
Social Capital, Partner
Canaan, Partner
Michael invests in entrepreneurs building enterprise software and fintech companies. He is interested in talking to founders building the next generation enterprise tools and fintechs solving the structural issues in finance. Deeply passionate about building the entrepreneurial community in fintech, Michael launched Canaan’s FinTech Central in 2015, a quarterly event series covering trends in fintech. Previously, Michael advised technology companies with GCA Savvian and Matrix Capital. He received a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
