​11:15 AM - PANEL | How to start a company as a student founder
Brian Rothenberg is VP of Growth and GM at Eventbrite, where he has spent the last 5+ years scaling the business to millions of events per year and more than $10B in gross transaction volume since founding. Prior to Eventbrite, Brian helped to grow TaskRabbit’s business 3x as Co-Head of Marketing, he co-founded and was VP of Product & Growth for his own VC-backed marketplace startup SkillSlate (acquired by TaskRabbit), and started his career as a consumer and growth-focused Product Manager within Yahoo!’s marketplace business unit. 
Casey Winters is a full time advisor and consultant to top tech companies like Eventbrite, Lyft, Thumbtack, and Reddit. Casey recently was the growth advisor in residence at Greylock Partners, where he helped startups on their growth strategies and scaling challenges. Prior to Greylock, Casey led growth at Pinterest, helping kickstart international growth. Pinterest recently crossed over 200 million monthly active users. Yes, those annoying signup prompts are his fault.

Prior to Pinterest, Casey was the first marketer at Grubhub, helping the company grow from 30,000 users to over 3 million by leading acquisition and retention marketing. Casey is responsible for some of Grubhub's worst performing ads, but definitely not its best. Grubhub went public in April 2014 and is now valued at $9 billion. Prior to Grubhub, Casey worked in online marketing at Homefinder and Apartments.com. Casey has a BBA in Marketing from Loyola University Chicago and an MBA from Chicago Booth. He blogs, not as well as most, at caseyaccidental.com. 
Elena Verna, SVP of Growth at Malwarebytes, previously SVP of Growth and Analytics at SurveyMonkey, She leads growth product, marketing, analytics, and design teams, driving business acquisition, activation, conversion, engagement, and customer retention metrics. She has led teams across Performance and Brand Marketing, Growth Product (Content/Messaging systems, AB testing, and Billing), Analytics, Product Marketing, and Design. Elena has been a featured speaker at many Growth conferences - both in the U.S. and Internationally.  Originally from Russia, she immigrated to the United States in her youth, and graduated with a statistics degree from UC Berkeley
​1:00 PM - PANEL | How to prepare for your YC application
Michael Ma is a founding general partner at venture capital firm Liquid 2 Ventures. Prior to Liquid 2 Ventures, Michael was a founder of TalkBin, a Y Combinator backed startup in the customer to business communication space acquired by Google, Inc in 2011. At Google, Michael had a variety of roles in sales and product most notably as the lead mobile product manager for Google My Business. He was honored by Forbes in their 30 Under 30 Venture Capital list for 2017. Michael is a graduate of Yale University with a BA in Economics (2009) and Harvard Business School (2015).
Natalie Luu is a Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners focused on Enterprise IT/SaaS and a founding member of the growth investing team.  Prior to Lightspeed, Natalie worked at Y Combinator investing in early stage startups and at Qatalyst Partners as a tech investment banker. Natalie graduated from Stanford with an MS in Management Science & Engineering and BS in Materials Science Engineering. A San Francisco native, Natalie enjoys boxing and rooting for the Golden State Warriors in her spare time.
​2:15 PM - PANEL | How to raise funding from early-stage investors
Brandon Reeves is an investor at Lux Capital. His goal is to identify companies that are turning science fiction into science fact, especially in areas of autonomous systems, robotics, machine intelligence, and space.​​ Prior to joining Lux, he was on the investment team at Capricorn Investment Group in Palo Alto, California, where he focused on autonomy, mobility, space, and semiconductors.  Previously, he worked for Texas Instruments in Sunnyvale, California, where he was a Field Applications Engineer that supported Tesla Motors and their autopilot and sensing teams. Brandon carries a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Central Florida and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Nicole Johnson joined the Forerunner investment team in December 2013 and focuses her efforts on deal sourcing, diligence, investment execution, and portfolio support. Nicole works closely with many Forerunner companies, including 11 Honoré, Neighborhood Goods, Cleo, Stadium Goods, among others. Prior to Forerunner Nicole worked with SapientNitro, a leading brand and digital strategy consultancy where she supported Fortune 500 retailers on their global retail strategies.

Nicole graduated cum laude from Princeton University with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology, and in 2016 was named to Forbes 30 under 30, Venture Capital.
Olivia and Justine Moore are both venture investors at CRV, where they focus on consumer and SMB companies at the seed and Series A stages. They both graduated from Stanford in 2016 with a degree in Economics, and co-founded the Cardinal Ventures student startup incubator, which has now graduated more than 100 student companies. 

Prior to joining CRV, both Olivia and Justine worked at Goldman Sachs in the firm’s Private Equity Group. They are also the co-authors of Accelerated, a weekly newsletter aimed at students and recent grads who are interested in tech and venture capital.