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Laura Shin is a crypto journalist, host of the Unchained podcast, and author of “The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze” (PublicAffairs, 2022). During the course of writing her book, she and her sources uncovered who they believe was behind the biggest whodunnit in crypto — the 2016 DAO attack on Ethereum. She is now working on a book about the collapse of FTX. Formerly a senior editor at Forbes, she was the first mainstream journalist to cover crypto full-time, and her podcasts and videos have had 25 million downloads and views. Shin has spoken about cryptocurrency at places such as TEDx San Francisco, the International Monetary Fund, Singularity University and the Oslo Freedom Forum. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with Honors from Stanford University and has a master of arts from Columbia University’s School of Journalism.
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Gary
Gary is the Managing Partner at Momentum Capital. Gary is a Silicon Valley-based investor, a serial entrepreneur, a Stanford-affiliated researcher, and a true believer in Web3. Gary has over six years of experience in blockchain technology and is currently focusing on scaling, DID, and liquidity solutions. Gary finished his Ph.D. and postdoc research at Stanford University before transitioning into the industry.
John Lilly
John Lilly is the Board Member at Figma.He spents the past 30 years working at and investing in technology companies that help people create & connect -- Mozilla, Apple, Instagram, Duolingo, Figma, Dropbox, Tumblr & more. He also spent a lot of time helping non-profit and civic tech organizations like Code for America, VotingWorks and Daffy.org.
Arun Devabhaktuni
Arun Devabhaktuni is a professional with a background in systems biology, physics, and biology. He is currently a Lead Researcher at Mirana Ventures and an Angel Investor at Valhalla Capital. He has also served as the Chief Technical Officer and Co-Founder of ZenMaid Software. Arun has received a PhD in Systems Biology from Stanford University School of Medicine and a BS in Physics and Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Guillermo Angeris
Guillermo is a Stanford lifer (BS, MS, and PhD in Electrical Engineering). He spends most of his work time in a dark corner of a room, figuring out random math problems for fun. He also loves to work with teams to model many of the weird (and fascinating) incentives in DeFi and beyond. Outside of work, Guillermo likes to cook pizza, hike, and have long, silly conversations with friends over wine.
Mandy Campbell
Mandy leads Bain Capital Crypto’s and portfolio marketing efforts across brand, content, events, and communications. Before joining the Bain team, she led Marketing for global crypto exchange Okcoin and managed fast-growing teams at companies like GitHub, Lyft, and Meta. When she’s not helping builders, she’s hiking with her family or searching for carrot cake in the Bay Area.
Michael Arrington
Michael Arrington is the Founder of TechCrunch, CrunchBase and Arrington Capital.
Theo Diamandis
Theo is pursuing an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science PhD at MIT, where he works on algorithms for and applications of mathematical optimization. These interests inevitably led to him being nerd sniped by Guillermo into working on crypto. When he’s not working on optimization solvers for DeFi-related applications, Theo can be found backpacking or skiing in the California Sierras.
Dan Roberts
Dan is the Editor in Chief at Variant. He has been writing about crypto since 2011. Prior to joining Variant, Dan was Editor in Chief at crypto news site Decrypt, where he recruited a team of writers and editors, led the site’s news strategy, created and hosted the gm podcast, planned and emceed live events, and moderated panels at conferences around the world. Before that, he spent five years at Yahoo Finance and five years at Fortune. He has written about tech, sports business, and books for a broad range of publications including Sports Illustrated, TIME, Vice, Air Mail, The Guardian, The Paris Review, NPR, Deadspin, Salon, The Daily Beast, The Morning News, and many more. He is the primary author of the 2013 book “Zoom: How to Supercharge Your Career.” He graduated from Middlebury College and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
Kevin Zhang
Kevin has led early-stage investments in financial technology and developer products since joining Bain Capital Ventures in 2017. Prior to Bain Capital, Kevin was the first business hire and Head of Product at Fundera, a lending marketplace acquired by NerdWallet (NASDAQ: NRDS). After hard weeks in the email salt mines, Kevin likes to catch Magic: the Gathering prereleases and watch Team Liquid play Starcraft.
Max Crown
Max Crown is CoFounder and Chief Finance Officer at MoonPay. Max started his career in 2004 with Mercedes-Benz McLaren, and has garnered experience across various finance, operations, and risk positions for over a decade and a half, spanning three distinct nations. Between 2008 and 2010, he took on the mantle of CFO for a high-end real estate firm operating in both London and Brazil, overseeing the entirety of its financial, tax, and regulatory frameworks. On the academic front, Max completed his Bachelor of Business Studies from City University, London in 2004, followed by a Master of Finance from London Business School in 2009. He later received a Master of Business Administration from Columbia Business School in 2014.