Global Investor Summit

BIOGRAPHY

Chris is an author on Chinese economics/AI, investor and economist focused on backing game changers in energy transition. Chris leads AMYP Ventures, a Piëch family-owned VC with a global investment mandate in the mobility sector, sustainability, and CO2 reduction.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-rynning-31217b3/

BIOGRAPHY

BIOGRAPHY

Mike Xu is the Global Partner of Fosun Group and Co-Chairman & CEO of Fosun Capital.

His focus is on investments in the TMT sector . He is also the Investment Leader for Fosun in China’s Guangdong Great Bay Area.

During his tenure at Fosun, Mike has led the investment and the subsequent SSE STAR Market IPO of Espressif Systems, one of the world’s leading fabless IoT semiconductor companies and currently serves as a Board Member. Mike has also led the early-stage investment in Delhivery, the largest e-commerce and logistics company in India, as well as the investment in HeHe Technology (CCT), China’s leading business AI & Big Data company.

Prior to Fosun, Mike served as the Division General Manager at Microsoft China, the Co-Founder of Wicresoft, Head of Greater China Research Operations at Nielsen, and was the Vice President at Bertelsmann–Arvato China. With 17 years of extensive management experience and hands-on entrepreneurial experience in Asia-Pacific and North America, Mike is a proven experienced investor with a deep knowledge of the IT industry.

Mike received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Fudan University and an EMBA from Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis. After graduation, Mike has held various positions including serving as the Director of the EMBA program at the Olin School of Business and Fudan University, the MBA mentor at both Fudan University and East China Normal University, a member of The China Democratic League Shanghai Division, and a software trade development consultant at the Shanghai Municipal of Economy and Informatization. Mike was nominated as one of the “Outstanding Investors” by Silicon Valley Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum (SVIEF) and one of “The Most Popular Financial Investors on LinkedIn in Greater China”.

BIOGRAPHY

Mads is the co-founder and Managing Partner of SuperSeed - a London-based venture capital firm.

He is a successful entrepreneur and operator who has worked for two decades building and growing tech businesses.

At SuperSeed, Mads helps ambitious founders build great companies from the early stages. Prior to SuperSeed, Mads was an entrepreneur, taking Sefaira (a software company) from inception in 2009 to exit in 2016. Before that, he was a business executive at IBM.

Mads is passionate about the craft of building great tech companies. He has invested in and served on the board of more than 20 fast-growing technology businesses and is the author of multiple US technology patents.

Mads holds a degree in International Business from Copenhagen Business School and an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France and Singapore.

He lives in London with his wife and four daughters.

BIOGRAPHY

BIOGRAPHY

As a General Partner at OpenOcean, Ekaterina is passionate about breakthrough next-generation technologies. For over fifteen years she has been investing in AI, quantum, data infrastructure, disruptive B2B software platforms and cybersecurity across the globe, having lived in Silicon Valley, several countries in Europe and Latin America. Her heart is in creating category-defining leaders such as GraphCore, MySQL, and TrueCaller. Before OpenOcean, Ekaterina was a Managing Director at US$500M Samsung Catalyst Fund in Europe. Previously, she has led investments for EMC/Dell, Siemens, and family offices. Ekaterina orchestrated the creation of some of the first e-commerce and disruptive tech platforms, and started her first tech venture at the age of seventeen.

BIOGRAPHY

BIOGRAPHY

Luis Shemtov is a co-founder of Lunar Ventures. Luis started as an entrepreneur at an early age, later transitioning through online marketing, product management, and software sales before relocating to Berlin from Israel in 2016. In 2017, seizing the opportunity to support Eureopan early-stage deep tech ventures, Luis co-founded Lunar Ventures: a VC firm boasting a team consisting diverse technical Ph.Ds, software engineers, and startup operators. Lunar harnesses its unique 'technical-turned-VC' team to accelerate European pre-seed and seed startups in deep tech areas such privacy-enhancing technologies, AI infrastructure, and other realms. Additionally, Lunar publishes "StateOfTheFuture.xyz," covering over 100 emerging technologies Lunar monitors, reflecting Lunar's continuous commitment to cutting edge technologies.

BIOGRAPHY

McKeever “Mac” Conwell II is a software engineer by trade and was a former DOD contractor with a top-secret clearance. He was a two-time founder with an exit and a failure. Next Mac moved on to the venture capital world via the Maryland Technology Development Corporation as part of their Seed Investment Team. During his four years there, Mac amassed experience leading an initiative to create the first and only, at the time, state-backed pre-seed fund for women and minorities in the country; known as the Builder Fund. Mac went on to found RareBreed Ventures in 2020 which was mostly raised on Twitter.

BIOGRAPHY

Saloni Bhojwani is Co-Founder and Partner at Pink Salt Ventures, the UK’s first VC fund dedicated to female-led technology companies. Saloni has been angel investing in female-led businesses since 2019, and was previously an Investor at Founders Factory, where she led 12 investments across consumer and B2B. Saloni is a former start-up operator, scaling a seed-stage startup from 5 to 50 FTEs, and started her career in strategy consulting. She holds a B.A. in Economics from Tufts University, and an MBA from London Business School.

BIOGRAPHY

Oscar Farres is Head of VC - Digital Economy at the European Investment Fund (EIF) in Luxembourg, the largest investor in European VC funds. At EIF, Oscar and his team invest in VC funds focused on the digital transformation of the economy from seed to growth and across all European countries.

Prior to joining the EIF, Oscar was a VC investor in Spain targeting internet and software start-ups. Before becoming a VC investor, Oscar co-founded Kineto Project, a technology start-up in the fitness space, and Witur, an on-line marketplace for local travel experiences.

Oscar holds an Electronics Engineering degree from Universitat Ramon Llull and an MBA degree from IESE Business School and MIT.

BIOGRAPHY

Sharif El-Badawi is the Chief Executive Officer of the newly established Dubai Future District Fund, an evergreen venture fund of funds and direct investment vehicle of the emirate of Dubai. The fund is anchored by Dubai Future Foundation and the Dubai International Financial Centre to invest in the Future of Finance and Future Economies with the aim of bolstering economic development in Dubai, the UAE and the broader region.   

Previously, he co-founded and managed Plus Venture Capital (+VC), a leading seed stage investment firm in the Middle East and North Africa region, investing across sectors from seed to growth within the region and diaspora. Before that he was a founding managing partner of the first US-based venture capital firm with a dedicated fund for the MENA region and was the most active venture capital investor in MENA during its investment period from 2017-2020. In his role, he managed the 500 Startups MENA fund, 500 Falcons, which invested in over 180 startups across 15 countries. 

In addition, Sharif serves on the board of San Francisco Bay Area based non-profit TechWadi where he was the chairman of the board from 2015-2019 helping build meaningful bridges between MENA startups and Silicon Valley. He also serves on several advisory boards for startups, organizations and governments in the MENA region and Silicon Valley.

Prior to his career in investing, Sharif was the Partner Lead to VCs and Startups at Google where he worked with top tier VCs and their most promising startups on strategies that bring all of Google to their businesses. Before joining the Global Partnerships team, he spent 5 years leading performance advertising strategy and solutions for Google's largest customers in North America covering Mobile, Search and Display ads. 

He joined Google through the $750m acquisition of AdMob, the world’s leading mobile advertising network. Before AdMob, Sharif was a technologist and serial entrepreneur having founded or co-founded several companies in the Consumer Internet and B2B space over a twelve year period starting in 1998. 

Sharif earned his Master of Business Administration from University of California, Irvine Merage School of Business and his Bachelor’s of Science in Neuroscience from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2018, he relocated from his home state of California to Dubai with his wife and three children.

BIOGRAPHY

Owen Reynolds is leading both direct startup and VC fund investment operations at Luxembourg-based Teklas Ventures. As the venture arm of the family office associated with automotive supplier Teklas, the direct investment focus is on industrial tech with sector diversification built into the fund investment strategy. Before Teklas, Owen helped build out two portfolios at Expon Capital, investing into Seed to Series B companies across Europe. He was also previously a US Federal Economist within the DoE, the co-founder of a sustainable construction company in Peru, and a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nicaragua.

BIOGRAPHY

Ben Prade is a Partner at GP Bullhound and joined the firm 6 years ago to help build the asset management group.

Before this he started his career at Savills Asset Management, gaining extensive trading experience across a range of listed market financial instruments. 

He went on to become CEO of Maple Group, London. Managing trading desks specialized in equities, equity derivatives, fixed income, structured lending, credit products and treasury.

Ben is now passionate about helping technology entrepreneurs build the companies of the future, bringing together capital and financial market know-how to build a platform to support growth stage technology companies globally.

BIOGRAPHY

Dany co-founded BECO Capital in 2012 and is a Managing Partner where he focuses on overall strategy for the firm and leading investments. Dany is a Kauffman fellow and is a board member of the Dubai Chamber Digital Economy, steering policy to drive innovation in Dubai. He is a successful serial entrepreneur and investor, co-founding Bayt.com, the Middle East’s largest job site, and other notable exits in the business support services sector. Dany holds a BSc in Management Sciences from UCL.

BIOGRAPHY

Jessie is an investor at Upshot Ventures, driving the fund's investments in fintech and digital health. Upshot is a Silicon Valley based seed / early-stage venture capital fund. The firm invests in industry transformative, globally scalable technologies. Via Fund I, CSC Upshot Ventures, the team has scaled over 30 unicorns from the earliest stages, including Notion, Boom Supersonic, Mercury, etc.    

Prior to Upshot, Jessie garnered extensive experience in the financial sector at both MUFG and JPMorgan. At MUFG in New York, she covered US Private Placements (USPP), focusing on corporate and project bond issuances for global clients across a variety of sectors. Notable transactions include the first ESG-linked USPP issuance and a $500M USPP issuance for one of the largest distributed generation solar portfolios. At JPMorgan, she worked in a variety of roles, including coverage of structured debt and corporate banking for the North American subsidiaries of multinational corporations with headquarters in China, India, and the Middle East. 

Having moved multiple times between the US and Asia throughout her life, Jessie has developed a passion for bridging global markets. Her unique perspective fuels her dedication to foster innovation and drive impact through the strategic allocation of capital.

Jessie holds an MS in Finance from MIT and a BS in Business Administration and BA in Economics from UC Berkeley.