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KATIE BOFSHEVER

Design Partner, GV

As VP of Digital Media at GV, Katie Bofshever crafts innovative and creative solutions for the digital space, specializing in minority consumers.

2:00 PM

Opening Credits & Welcome Coffee

Enjoy a fresh cup of coffee before the presentations. We’ll be handing out pamphlets that outline this evening’s details.

List Item

Clear your calendar - It's going down! Bedford V2 kicks off on April 20th, and you're invited to take part in the festivities.

Lindsay Selvitelle is a host of exceptional ability. Studies show that a vast majority of guests attending events by Lindsay have been known to leave more elated than visitors to Santa's Workshop, The Lost of Continent of Atlantis, and the Fountain of Youth.

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The Event
About
Contact
RSVP

The Future Founders Conference is a virtual
event for women who aspire to become
startup founders and want to learn from inspiring, successful entrepreneurial women. Whether you
are curious about launching your own startup or are in the early stages of building one, you’ll walk away with the knowledge to define your own path.


November 
18
, 
2020
 |  
9:00am
 - 
5:00pm 
PST
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The world needs more women-led companies.

The one-day, virtual event will feature talks and panels with YC partners, our alumnae, and other founding women, followed by open sessions with experts. Speakers will share tactical advice and their honest account of what it’s like to find co-founders, leave corporate jobs, pitch investors, and scale their companies.


Attendance is free, but entry is not guaranteed. You are required to apply to attend. If you are approved to attend, you will receive a confirmation email within 2 weeks of applying.

Speakers

Jess Lee

Co-founder, Polyvore

Jess is an investor at Sequoia Capital. Prior to that, she was co-founder & CEO of fashion app, Polyvore (acquired by Yahoo in 2015) and a product manager for Google Maps. Jess is also a founding member of All Raise, a non-profit dedicated to improving diversity in the tech industry.  Jess has a B.S. from Stanford in Computer Science and loves manga, drawing, bacon, and cosplay.

JESSICA LIVINGSTON

Co-founder, Y Combinator

Jessica Livingston , is a co-founder of Y Combinator and the author of Founders at Work (2007), a book of interviews with startup founders. She was previously VP of marketing at investment bank Adams Harkness. She has a BA in English from Bucknell.

tracy young

Co-founder, PlanGrid

Tracy Young co-founded PlanGrid, construction productivity software, in 2011 with Ralph Gootee, Antoine Hersen, Kenny Stone and Ryan Sutton-Gee. PlanGrid grew from 5 co-founders to 450 people, and helped build over 1m construction projects around the globe before it was acquired by Autodesk in 2018 for $875m. Prior to PlanGrid, Tracy helped build hospitals in the Bay Area.

ANu hariharan

 

Partner, Y Combinator

Anu Hariharan is a Partner with the YC Continuity Fund. Previously, Anu was an investment partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where she worked actively with the management teams of portfolio companies including Airbnb, Instacart, Medium, OfferUp and Udacity. Prior to this, Anu was a Principal at BCG's Private Equity Practice and was a senior software engineer at Qualcomm. 

Erika Hairston

Co-founder, Edlyft

Erika Hairston is the co-founder and CEO of Edlyft, a paid support platform that helps college students and adult learners through CS courses, by pairing them with inclusive mentors, online group tutoring and personalized study tools. Prior to Edlyft, Erika interned as a Software Engineer at Facebook and then became a Product Manager at LinkedIn Learning.

Adora Cheung

Partner, YC and Co-founder, Homejoy

Adora Cheung is a Partner at YC. She was cofounder and CEO of Homejoy, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2010. Before that, she ran product at Slide. She has a bachelor’s in computer science from Clemson University and is an economics PhD dropout at the University of Rochester.

Kat Mañalac

Partner, Y Combinator

Kat Mañalac was Chief of Staff to Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of reddit, before joining YC as its Director of Outreach. Prior to that, Kat was at WIRED Magazine where she managed brand and strategy. Kat has a BS in Communications from Northwestern University.

Cadran Cowansage

Founder and CEO, Elpha

Cadran Cowansage is the CEO & Founder of Elpha, an online community dedicated to accelerating the careers of women in the tech industry. Before founding Elpha, Cadran was a Lead Software Engineer at Y Combinator, and before that a Senior Software Engineer at MongoDB. She holds a Masters in Biomedical Informatics from Columbia University and an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Biology from Colby College.

ROSE afriyie

Co-founder and CEO, mRelief

Rose Afriyie grew up in the Bronx, where she saw the importance of food stamps, earned a master’s in public policy at University of Michigan. She got into technology because she believes writing software is a superpower that people of color and women should have exposure to and mRelief's tech unlocks food benefits for families so they can spend less money on food and more money on realizing other economic opportunities. She is continuing the tradition of Johnnie Tillmon and other Welfare Warriors advocating for families to access food with dignity.

Sonal Chokshi

Editor in Chief, a16z

Sonal Chokshi built the editorial operation at a16z, including showrunning the influential a16z Podcast. Before that, she was a senior editor at Wired, where she built the leading expert opinion & ideas section, and was one of the first mainstream media editors to feature nascent tech trends. Prior to that, Sonal led content and community at Xerox PARC for several years. She did her graduate work in developmental and cognitive psychology at Columbia University's school of education (where she also worked on multiple NSF grants around early numeracy and teacher professional development) and undergrad at UCLA.

Christina Cacioppo

Co-founder and CEO, Vanta

Christina Cacioppo is a co-founder and the CEO of Vanta, a YC-backed security and compliance startup. She was previously Dropbox Paper's lead PM and cofounded a mobile startup; she started her career in venture at Union Square Ventures. 

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins

Co-founder and CEO, Promise

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins is an American social justice advocate and businesswoman. Ellis-Lamkins is the co-founder and CEO of Promise, a California-based company reworking the bail system.

LEX ROVNER

Co-founder and CEO, 64-x

Lex Rovner is the co-founder and CEO of 64x Bio, a biotechnology company building a platform to engineer cells with enhanced properties for advanced biomanufacturing and therapeutics applications.

kirsty Nathoo

Partner, YC

Kirsty Nathoo was previously an audit manager at PwC based in Cambridge UK, where she audited tech and biotech companies ranging from startups to public companies. She has an MEng in electrical and information sciences from Cambridge, and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Pamela Valdes

Co-founder and CEO, Beek

Pamela is co-founder and CEO of Beek, an app where Latinos listen to the best podcasts, audiobooks, and audio series in Spanish. Pamela is passionate about audio, distribution, product, growth and surfing. 

carolynn levy

Partner, YC

Carolynn Levy was previously at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, where she helped hundreds of startups with legal questions. She has a BA in political science from UCLA and JD from the USF School of Law, and is a member of the State Bar of California.

Joan Degennaro

Community Manager, YC Startup School

Joan DeGennaro is currently the Community Manager of Y Combinator’s Startup School. Before working for YC, Joan held a number of positions at startup companies. She was a director at SHRI, a nonprofit organization building toilets in rural India that convert human waste into energy. Joan went on to work at another YC portfolio company, Deepgram, as their Head of Operations. Most recently, she worked at Oscar Health Insurance on the Network Partnerships team. 

Nicole cadman

General Council, YC

Nicole Cadman was previously a lawyer at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and Akin Gump, where she advised hundreds of companies. She has a BA in international affairs and Spanish literature from George Washington University and JD from Stanford. She is a member of the State Bar of California and the District of Columbia Bar.

Who Should Attend

This event is for women who are curious about starting a startup or have just started one. It will be particularly useful for women with science, engineering or product management backgrounds, or with specific domain expertise that could turn into a startup.

Whether you are a student, or already in the workforce, this is the best way to learn what startups are really like: from women who've started them!

Agenda

9:00 am

Welcome and introduction

Kat Mañalac, Partner @ Y Combinator

9:10 Am

EARLY STAGE startup advice

Jessica Livingston, Co-founder @ Y Combinator

9:30 AM

the truth about starting a startup

Tracy Young, Co-founder @ PlanGrid


9:45 AM

Learnings from technical founders

Cadran Cowansage, Founder & CEO @ Elpha

Erika Hairston, Co-founder @ Edlyft

10:45 AM

level the playing field

Anu Hariharan, Partner @ Y Combinator

Sonal Chokshi,  Editor in Chief @ Andreessen Horowitz

11:30 AM

From academia to biotech startup 

Lex Rovner, Co-founder and CEO @ 64-X

12:00 PM

Lunch Break



12:30 PM

On advice

Adora Cheung, Partner @ Y Combinator and Founder
@ Homejoy

12:50 PM

Making an impact

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, Co-founder and CEO @ Promise

Rose Afriyie, Co-founder and CEO @ mRelief

1:30 PM

A fireside chat on breaking sterEOtypes

Jess Lee, Partner @ Sequoia and Co-founder @ Polyvore


2:00 PM

The foundations of kick-starting your own company

Carolynn Levy, Partner @ Y Combinator

Kirsty Nathoo, Partner @ Y Combinator

Kat Mañalac, Partner @ Y Combinator

Nicole Cadman, General Counsel @ Y Combinator


 

2:40 PM

Lessons learned from building my first product

Christina Cacioppo, Co-founder and CEO @ Vanta






3:00 PM

So you want to start a startup?

Pamela Valdes, Co-founder and CEO @ Beek

3:20 PM

So, what's next?

Joan DeGennaro, YC Startup School Community Manager

3:40 PM

Open sessions with subject matter experts

More details about session leaders and what to expect below. 

List Block #5

3:40pm- 4:30pm PST


Choose your open session


The open sessions are casual conversations hosted by subject-matter experts. They'll answer questions submitted by FFC participants in small groups for a more intimate setting. Check out the line-up and choose one open session or multiple.


Surbhi Sarna

Visting Partner, Y Combinator

Founder nVision Medical

Areas of expertise:

    Medical Device

    Bio General

    Hardware

Surbhi Sarna founded nVision Medical to work on the early detection of ovarian cancer. She raised $17M in venture funding, and with that completed three clinical trials and two FDA approvals before being acquired by Boston Scientific for $275M





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Courtney McColgan

Co-founder & CEO, Runa


Areas of expertise:

     Latam

     B2B

     Scaling 0 to unicorn

Courtney is the CEO and founder of Runa (www.runahr.com), which is automating payroll for Latin America. Prior to Runa, Courtney scaled Cabify from $20MM to $1.5Bn valuation, opening up 130 cities across 12 countries across Latin America. Previously Courtney started 2 companies and worked in venture capital at DFJ and Morgenthaler. Courtney holds an MBA from Stanford and a BA from U.C.Berekely. She is the mother of 3 children.

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Reshma Khilnani

Visiting Partner, Y Combinator

Co-founder & CEO, MedXT

Areas of expertise:

     Software engineering/ product

     Healthcare, med device

     Building your initial team

Reshma Khilnani was co-founder and CTO of MedXT, an FDA cleared medical image management software company funded by Y Combinator in 2013, acquired by Box. She has held roles at Facebook and Microsoft, and was co-founder and co-CEO of life insurance lab testing Droplet Health (now Kit.com). She has a BS and MEng from MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.


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Katherine Homuth

Founder & CEO, Sheertex

Areas of expertise:

     Fundraising

     Manufacturing D2C

     Rapid Scaling

Katherine Homuth is the Founder and CEO of Sheertex, the company behind the world's first pair of unbreakable pantyhose. Sheertex scaled from 5 to over 150 employees in less than 18 months and has raised over $44M in financing. Prior to Sheertex Katherine founded and sold two businesses, and she is an active angel investor.

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Alyona Medelyan

CEO, Thematic

Areas of expertise:

     B2B SaaS

     Commercializing AI

     Inbound Marketing

Alyona Medelyan, Ph.D. is the CEO of Thematic, an AI-driven feedback analysis solution. Alyona holds a PhD in Natural Language Processing. Her academic work was cited more than 2500 times. Thematic helps companies like LinkedIn, DoorDash, and ManpowerGroup improve customer and user experience through insights from feedback.

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Whitney Gaynor

CEO, Sinovia

Areas of expertise:

     Hardware

     Physical sciences

     B2B

Whitney is the co-founder and CEO of Sinovia Technologies where her team is using traditional printing techniques to make low-information flexible electronic displays for IoT applications. She received her PhD in materials science and engineering from Stanford and her bachelor's from MIT.


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Yin Wu

Founder & CEO, Pulley

Areas of expertise:

     How to fundraise

     How to understand equity as a founder

     Solo founder

Yin Wu is the founder and CEO of Pulley, a cap table management platform for hypergrowth companies. She sold a previous startup to Microsoft and was one of the youngest principal engineers there working on AI and mobile products. Yin is a Y Combinator alumnus and studied Computer Science at Stanford.

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Ire Aderinokun

Cofounder & COO, BuyCoins

Areas of expertise:

     Software engineering/ product

     Launching a startup in Africa

     Crypto

Ire Aderinokun is a frontend web developer and user interface designer from Lagos, Nigeria. She is the Cofounder and COO of BuyCoins (YC S18), a cryptocurrency exchange for Africa.





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Esther Crawford

CEO, Squad

Areas of expertise:

     Consumer/ social

     Marketing

     Product

Esther is the co-founder and CEO of Squad. She was an early YouTuber and is a pioneer in influencer marketing and spearheaded award-winning digital campaigns for Fortune 500 companies. She has a MA in International Relations.



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Lindsay Amos

Director of Communications, YC

Areas of expertise:

     Launching a startup

     Working with press

     Storytelling/ branding

Lindsay is YC’s Director of Communications. In 2010, she was one of the first 30 employees at Square and the company’s first comms hire. Prior to YC, Lindsay led technology communications for Facebook’s global engineering offices, data centers, infrastructure hardware, and sustainability.


 

 

 

 

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Jackie De La Rosa

Startup BD, Amazon

Areas of expertise:

     Launching a startup

     Fundraising

     Building your MVP

Jackie is a former startup founder and currently works at AWS on their Startup BD team, a group of former startup founders and investors that help startups navigate Amazon. In addition to AWS, she’s a venture product partner at Afore Capital (a pre-seed VC in SF), an active angel investor and startup mentor. Her last startup, Oasys, was incubated out of the Harvard Innovation Lab and raised two rounds of VC funding, and prior to Oasys, she managed Mark Cuban's northeast investment portfolio and managed deal flow.

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Stefania Olafsdottir

Cofounder & CEO, Avo

Area of expertise:

      Fundraising
      B2b SaaS 
      Building a small async-first and remote-first team

Stefania Olafsdottir, CEO and Co-Founder of Avo, the next generation analytics governance platform, backed by YC, Heavybit and GGV Capital. Stef is a mathematician and philosopher, turned genetics researcher, turned data scientist, turned founder. She was the founding data person and became Head of Data Science and Growth Lead at QuizUp (100m users, backed by Sequoia and Tencent) where she built and led the data science division and culture – including pioneering company-wide ways to prioritize product innovation.

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Lex Rovner

Founder & CEO, 64x Bio

Areas of expertise:

     Biotech

     Spinning a company out of an academic lab

     Customer outreach/ B2B

Lex Rovner is the co-founder and CEO of 64x Bio (YC S18), a biotechnology company building a platform to engineer cells with enhanced properties for advanced biomanufacturing and therapeutics applications. Lex holds a PhD in Molecular Biology from Yale and did her post-doctoral work with George Church at Harvard and the Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering.

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Cadran Cowansage

Founder & CEO, Elpha

Areas of expertise:

     Building communities

     Software engineering/ product

     Finding early users

Cadran Cowansage is the CEO & Founder of Elpha, an online community where women grow their careers in tech. Before founding Elpha, Cadran was a Lead Software Engineer at Y Combinator, and before that a Senior Software Engineer at MongoDB. She holds a Masters in Biomedical Informatics from Columbia University and an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Biology from Colby College.

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Shadiah Sigala

CEO & cofounder, Kinside

Areas of expertise:

     SaaS for SMBs

     Scaling (hiring and org culture)

     Big BD deals and distribution

Cofounder of two venture-funded startups -- most recently Kinside ($4M) and previously HoneyBook ($86M). At Kinside, Shadiah is building a marketplace for parents to find child care, while leveraging the purchasing power of employers.  First-generation immigrant and mom of two kids under 5.



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Joan DeGennaro

Community Manager, YC

Areas of expertise:

     Nonprofits

     Honing 1- liner pitch

     Finding early users

Joan DeGennaro is the Community Manager for Y Combinator's Startup School. Prior to this role, Joan ran a YC-funded nonprofit building toilets in rural India and then worked at startup companies in roles ranging from organizing early stage operations and growth to maintaining hospital partnerships. She is passionate about connecting early stage founders to community and resources.







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Pamela Valdes

Cofounder & CEO, Beek

Areas of expertise:

     Fundraising

     Growth & product

     Pivoting and finding product market fit

Pamela Valdes is CEO & Co-founder of Beek.io, the Netflix for audio in LATAM. She dropped out of school, and became the first Thiel Fellow in LATAM, got into YC after being rejected 3 times, and became Accel and Greylock's first investment in Mexico. Beek is her first job.










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Avni Patel Thompson

Founder & CEO

Areas of expertise:

     Consumer SaaS

     Non-technical solo founder

     Solving for everyday consumer frictions

Avni Patel Thompson is the founder and CEO of Modern Village (YC W20), whose mission is to lighten the load of everyday parenting through thoughtful, delightful and collaborative technology. She is a third-time founder building technology solutions for today’s parents. Her previous company, Poppy (YC W16), helped connect parents to vetted caregivers when they had gaps in childcare. Prior to taking the entrepreneurial plunge, she spent over a decade building consumer businesses at P&G, adidas, and Starbucks. She has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BSc Chemistry from the University of British Columbia. She lives in Vancouver with her husband and 2 little girls.

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 At YC, we use an inclusive definition of “women” and welcome trans women as well as genderqueer and non-binary people who identify
as women or femme in any way to include themselves in these listings.

Future Founders Conference 2020

Join us for this one-day virtual event

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