She-VC by Gayatri Sarkar She-VC

Kate Shillo Beardsley is a Founding Partner at Hannah Grey, an early-stage venture capital firm investing at the intersection of human behavior and technology.

Kate built Upslope Ventures (FKA Galvanize Ventures); as a Partner at Upslope, Kate led investments in Billie (acquired by P&G), Gridcraft (acquired by Workday), Notion (acquired by Comcast), Parcel (acquired by Walmart), PureWow (acquired by Gallery Media Group), Vida (acquired by Compress USA), Slash (acquired by Giphy), Wisebanyan (acquired by Axos), and many others.

Prior to Upslope, Kate was the first founding member of Lerer Hippeau in NYC where she worked with founders scaling their businesses and became a trusted ally of the inner circle of early NYC entrepreneurs. She helped raise 3 funds and invested in 200+ startups, including sourcing now-iconic brands Paperless Post and Venmo (acquired by Braintree), and participated in investments including Warby Parker, Glossier, Casper, Everlane, Food52 (acquired by Cherin Group), Makerbot, Barkbox, and BaubleBar. Today Lerer Hippeau is one of the largest and most active funds in NYC.

Kate is Board Co-Chair of the Rocky Mountain Venture Capital Association and on the board of the Rockies Venture Club. She has appeared on CNBC and Fox Business and has been featured on CNN, the Denver Business Journal as well as leading technology podcasts Twenty Minute VC, She-VC, and Upside.fm.

More about Arlan: 

Arlan Hamilton built a venture capital fund from the ground up, while homeless. She is the Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital, a fund that is dedicated to minimizing funding disparities in tech by investing in high-potential founders who are people of color, women, and/or LGBT. Started from scratch in 2015, Backstage has now raised more than $15 million and invested in more than 170 startup companies led by underestimated founders. In 2018 Arlan co-founded Backstage Studio which launched four accelerator programs for underestimated founders in Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and London.

More about Sahil: 

Sahil is the founder and CEO of Gumroad. He is the founder of solo GP fund on Angel list rolling fund.


Gumroad exists to help every creative earn a living selling the stuff they make directly to their audience.
Previously, he was early at Pinterest — a service that lets users collect, organize, and share the things they are into — and worked on turntable's mobile apps.


He designs and builds products for fun and profit.

More about Samir: 

Podcast (Venture Unlocked)and Blog: Ventureunlocked.substack.com
Twitter: @samirkaji
Angellist: Samirkaji

Samir is currently CEO and founder of Allocate. Allocate is a platform that makes private fund investing more accessible by providing investors of all sizes curated discovery, analytics, and access to high quality institutional firms.

Previously, Samir was a Senior Managing Director at First Republic Bank, where is started and built a 40+ person group focused on private funds and venture backed startups. During this time he worked with over 700 private equity and venture capital firms, and provided strategic guidance to emerging managers.

Prior to joining First Republic, Samir spent 13 years at SVB working in various capacities, with his first 10 years being focused on providing early stage growth capital and working capital financing to venture and non-Venture backed software and Hardware companies of all stages. Companies he worked with at the early stages of their development included LinkedIn, Aruba Networks, Meraki, Yodlee, and Shutterfly.

As part of the senior leadership team on SVB's venture group, Samir worked with Venture Capital and Private Equity firms covering firms such as Sequoia Capital, Francisco Partners, Lightspeed Partners, IVP, Formation8 Partners, Venrock, and Founders Fund.

He has completed over $12.0B in debt transactions with 700+ companies/firms.

More about Nihal: 

Nihal is the human Rolodex, thanks to the thousands of connections he has made with some of the world’s top companies and brands. He developed many of these connections over the past 20+ years while founding five different tech startups. Prior to founding Eniac, Nihal was the founding CEO of LocalResponse, where he grew revenues 2153% in three years and landed them on Inc. 5000’s Fastest Growing Companies. Nihal also was the founding CEO for buzzd, the first real-time mobile cityguide, and ipsh!, one of the first full-service mobile marketing agencies in 2001, which was acquired by Omnicom (NYSE: OMC) in 2005.

Early in his career, Nihal honed his ability to spot top entrepreneurial talent by investing in Admob (acquired by Google), Swiftkey (acquired by Microsoft), Tapad (acquired by Telenor),  Tala, and Uber to name a few. Because of his experience both building and funding top technologies, he frequently guest lectures at business schools around the country on entrepreneurship and mobile marketing and is published in over 15 books and white papers on the subject.

Outside of the office Nihal loves to spend time with his wife Reshma and is a big supporter of her non-profit Girls Who Code. Around town, you will usually see him with his sons Shaan and Sai and beagle-bulldog Stanley. Nihal is the life of the party, which is why he always spearheads Eniac events.

Nihal graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Philosophy and a BSE in Computer Science.

More about Bahiya: 

Bahiyah Yasmeen Robinson is a recognized innovator of new avenues for VC and Impact investment. Her expertise in leading technology, investment and social impact initiatives culminated in creating VC Include (VCI) in 2018. VCI was created because she didn't see any platforms specifically cultivating the type of undervalued, outperforming product led by diverse managers that would drive alpha and innovation in Private Equity and Alternative Investments over the next 30 years.

With just 1% of the $70 Trillion of assets in the U.S. managed by diverse asset managers, VC Include meets this market opportunity by building an ecosystem of women, Black, Latinx, Indigenous and LGBTQ+ managers in alternative investments.

Born in Palo Alto, California, and raised between NYC and central California, Robinson’s expertise is enriched by real-life and professional practice and demonstrates an aptitude for building and managing a matrix of high-level partnerships. She expanded the first online technology competitions and conferences in Africa, partnering with The U.S. Department of State, The World Bank, Microsoft, Mozilla and Nokia to provide early-stage capital to the first wave of technology entrepreneurs throughout the continent. At Ashoka, she devised value-added propositions for clients including Exxon Mobil, G20, AMGEN, The Ebay Foundation, HUD, Google and Omidyar Network. She launched Young Art Collector in 2012 to connect art collectors with artists within the African Diaspora.

Robinson was a former Co-chair with the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, and is a graduate of University of California, Davis. Her work has been recognized by the Knight Foundation, Echoing Green, Entrepreneur, CNN and Forbes.