Seamon Chan is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Palm Drive Capital, a New York-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage tech companies. Seamon graduated from Stanford University and is completing the Owner/President Management program at Harvard Business School. He was one of the founders of the Stanford Chinese Entrepreneurs Organization (Stanford CEO) and NYC Chinese Entrepreneurs Organization (NYCCEO). Seamon is also a young leader of Committee 100 and a member of the Milken Institute Young Leaders Circle and the Economic Club of New York.

Michelle is an early-stage startup investor, connector, and communicator. She is passionate about working with founders worldwide to build great ventures. Before joining Lair East Labs, she spent eight years working at public accounting firms in both China and the U.S., including KPMG and PWC. Her experience covers industries such as manufacturing, construction, chemical, consumer goods, real estate, and financial services, with expertise in business strategy, operations management, and corporate finance. 

Yipeng Li is a senior executive in the Chinese consumer industry, primarily responsible for investment, capital markets, and innovative businesses. He used to be the co-founder of "Senior Help" and "Brothers Help" as the first Chinese campus P2P social service platform. Yipeng Li is a cross-border investor and has worked in Jiuding Investment and a family office in Singapore in the telecommunications, consumer, and aviation finance leasing industries. He has a keen insight into the Asian market.

Lee Lin is a co-founder of RentHop.com and RealtyHop.com. RentHop.com is in Y Combinator (YC)'s 2009 Summer Program and appeared in the Harvard Business School case study titled "Killing Craigslist." Lee is an angel investor who focuses on pre-Series A and pre-seed investment. He graduated from MIT and is an alumnus of Harvard. Before his entrepreneur journey, Lee worked at top quantitative hedge funds (D.E. Shaw and Two Sigma Investments) and Microsoft.

Kun Zhang (Quin) is a tenure-track professor of management at Peking University HSBC Business School in Shenzhen, China. His research interests revolve around technology innovation, startup value appropriation, and digitization strategies. Kun obtained his doctorate in strategy and entrepreneurship from the University of Colorado Boulder. He also holds a master's degree in management science from the London School of Economics in the U.K., where he focused on optimization and decision sciences for management. He is also an active angel investor in high-tech and bio-pharmaceutical industries.

Jie is a tech startup ecosystem builder with extensive experience in business development, program management, and venture investment. He has advised over 50 startups, facilitated over 9 batches of acceleration programs, and spearheaded international expansion for multiple startups. Jie is also a mentor at Project Invent, Peking University HSBC Business School, CUNY Startup and CUNY Firefly Innovations, accelerator arms of America’s most extensive urban education system, and Operations Advisor at National Realty Club, one of the oldest real estate organizations in the US. Jie received his bachelor's degree in Physics and co-authored multiple publications in quantum-optics and fluorescent hydrogel. As an entrepreneur at heart, Jie is a passionate follower of DeepTech.

Ruizhi is a serial entrepreneur and product manager with 10 years of hands-on experience in product development, user experience study, business strategy, and market research. He was the founding engineer at 3DM systems and developed products worth $140 million. Ruizhi has a strong technical background in Computer Vision Research, Robotics, Software Engineering, and IoT Hardware. Furthermore, he is the co-inventor of 4 granted US patents. Ruizhi holds an MBA degree from Georgia Tech.

Lauren Lee is an entrepreneur with a particular interest in hospitality and Consumer Packaged Goods. In addition to her position at Lair East Labs, she is Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Away Bar, a Shanghai-based company bringing together ice cream and premium spirits from around the world.

Prior to starting her business, Lauren worked in corporate marketing and communications at a growth-stage healthtech firm, assisting executives on the product and business development teams in initiating deals with health systems and large pharmaceutical and biotech firms. She graduated Cum Laude with a bachelor’s in East Asian Studies, concentrating on China, from Yale University, where she founded a dinner and cocktail pop-up partnering with Michelin-starred chefs in New York and New Haven.

Joy is a Creative Designer, Marketer, and Community Builder. She specializes in digital and print marketing, pitch deck design, branding, event planning, and public speaking. Joy's corporate experience includes her role as the Head of Community at Everywhere Ventures, a globally backed early-stage venture fund, and various positions at MassChallenge, a network for global innovators. 

Joy authored "Dear Mountain: A Poetry Collection on Love and Loss" and holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard, where she studied Environmental Science, Architecture, and Economics. She was an active member of the Harvard College Debating Union.

Jiake Liu is the Co-Founder and CEO of Outer, a Santa Monica-based outdoor living brand with a proprietary retail platform that's turning customers' homes into crowdsourced showrooms. He's successfully raised from top-tier VC funds such as Sequoia Capital, Capital Today.

Jiake is also an avid angel investor and advisor for early-stage startups in Los Angeles. Jiake was born in China, grew up in Alabama, and resides in Los Angeles. He has a Computer Engineering degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and previously worked as an engineer in the telecom and video game industries.

Jenn Chen is currently the Chief Revenue Officer at Connatix, a video platform serving publishers across content and advertising. She manages sales, accounts, and marketing functions. She began her career in banking at Lehman, joined early-stage e-commerce startup thereafter, and has spent the last decade in advertising and marketing in various commercial growth leadership roles. Outside of work, Jenn is the co-founder of a non-profit Givology.org that provides education grants to grassroots, international students and organizations.

She's also a mother of two little boys and lives in LIC, Queens.

Sheng Xu, CFA, FRM, CAIA, is a VP at BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager. Sheng has over ten years of diversified experience in fintech products and investment strategies across various business functions. She closely partners with BlackRock's senior leadership and C-level executives to drive strategic projects for BlackRock’s investments and trading platform by combining strategy, business process, firm navigation, and technology expertise. 

Sheng is a community contributor and influencer and serves a leadership role at BlackRock's Women Initiative Network. She currently co-chairs BlackRock's VP Network (SF). She is also a PADI Divemaster and enjoys traveling on the continents and in the oceans.

Yubo focuses his practice on strategic client counseling, including patent planning, development, prosecution, and post-grant proceedings, with an emphasis on electrical engineering, computer software, and biomedical devices. His experience covers prosecuting and appealing applications in the US, China, Europe, Japan, Australia, and India, and other areas such as post-grant proceedings, portfolio management, licensing, diligence, and opinion work. 

Yubo has helped design, develop, and monetize patent portfolios for Fortune 500 companies such as Foxconn, Haier, and numerous tech startups based in the U.S. and the Greater China region. Yubo is also an active angel investor who provides funding to early-stage startups. He helps founders mitigate risks, raise capital, and achieve business goals through leveraging the power of IP. 

Yubo holds a B.S. in Physics from Xiamen University, China, and an MSEE from Stanford University. He was also in the Engineer Program at Stanford and completed coursework at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Before becoming an IP practitioner, Yubo worked as an R.F. Engineer at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and a semiconductor process engineer at National Semiconductor.

Eric has been involved in the startup ecosystem for over a decade and has served as an early startup employee, founder, and investor. Throughout his career, he was entrusted to build multiple startup sales and business development teams from the ground up. Eric also co-founded Basilica, a YC-backed AI startup, where he managed all aspects of growth. As an angel investor, he focuses on startups specializing in building machine learning, developer tools, and enterprise solutions. Eric serves on the board of several startups and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in advertising from Penn State University.

Tianyi (Tony) is Director of Corporate Venture Captial at PTT Global Chemical, a $15 billion Thai petrochemical company. Tony is responsible for sourcing, evaluating, and executing deals for investment and partnership in emerging technologies in North America. He also participates in managing portfolio companies and initiation of new corporate strategies.

Prior to joining PTTGC, Tony was Lead Analyst at Lux Research, where he advised Global-1000 corporations, VCs, and government agencies on strategies in a range of deeptech innovations. Tony holds Ph.D. in Physics from Boston College and B.S. in Physics from Peking University in Beijing.

Jane Tran is a seasoned operator, with 10+ years of experience in product development, strategic planning and process improvement. She is currently the co-founder and COO of Sixfold.ai, the first AI assistant for insurance underwriters. Prior to Sixfold, she was a founding member and COO of Unqork, a $2B enterprise SaaS company focused on enabling the world to turn their ideas into future proof software. She is an LP investor at The Fund XX, an early stage VC focused on supporting and investing in the next generation of female founders. She is also an active mentor for Techstars and Lair East Labs.

For more than 15 years, Van has served as a leader in professional services, sales engineering, and product management in Federal and Commercial markets. Specializing in operations and scaling tech companies, Van has led operations and engagement at Unqork, sales engineering team at EVERFI, and established and led global professional services at Yext, a SaaS technology company that IPO'd in 2017. Throughout his career, he has built new organizations, rapidly scaled global delivery teams, and led complex technology initiatives resulting in $1B+ in new revenue. In his spare time he enjoys cooking and cheering on the UVA basketball team.

Elizabeth Tobey has run marketing, communications, support, and community teams for tech companies and startups in both New York City and San Francisco. Starting in the video game industry, she was at the forefront of the community and social media explosion and helped shape early strategies that redefined how companies marketed to and engaged their customers. She expanded the Tumblr Support team to incorporate community engagement and outreach, embedding the department with both product and marketing teams for a holistic go-to-market strategy. At Medium, she was the first marketing hire and defined what engaged readers and writers looked like on the platform and built out content and engagement strategies that balanced storytelling with data science. She is now leading marketing at a startup building research collaboration software for academia and the corporate market. She has successfully brought the company through its Series A funding, redefined its target audience and core messaging, and is currently working on expanding into biopharma and fintech for 2020. 

Prannoy Nambiar is now a Senior Product Manager at Audible. Before Amazon, he was the Director of Product & Growth at Careerlist, a platform that creates more opportunities for employers, recruiters, and talent, alike. Prannoy also co-founded Bansho, an e-learning platform that provides live learning that boosts confidence in kids and supports busy parents. He is a product leader inclined towards early-stage tech startups centered around the workforce and education. His most recent experience has included developing a go-to-market strategy, establishing a product vision, creating and implementing a product roadmap, drafting product requirements, and conducting user research and segmentation for marketplace platforms.

Hannah is a translational cancer biologist. She is passionate about transforming clinical cancer care and is using her cancer expertise in her role as Chief Product and People Officer with Cambridge Cancer Genomics (CCG.ai). CCG is a YC backed healthtech startup building tools to enable oncologists to make the best therapeutic decisions for their patients. They have raised over $8 million in funding. 

Stephen Stanczak is the Principal at Ondyr Marketing, a digital marketing firm based in NYC. Stephen's focus is on SEO, PPC, and Google Analytics, with a specialization on schema markup. Stephen has deep marketing experience including work on several digital marketing campaigns for companies such as Microsoft, General Electric and various SMBs. Stephen holds marketing degrees from Temple and Cornell University. He has spoken and mentored at Techstars, Baruch College, Techhub NYC, SEMrush Live, New York Marketing Association, and Grand Central Tech.

Charlyn is a seasoned deal lawyer who brings a wealth of experience from the business and legal worlds into her practice. Prior to launching Rikka Law, Charlyn was a partner in the Technology Transactions & Privacy Group at Perkins Coie, one of the largest law firms in the United States. Before Perkins Coie, Charlyn was an associate at Arent Fox and Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Charlyn has deep experience in drafting and negotiating complex commercial agreements, including strategic partnerships, cloud service agreements, data licensing and other technology agreements. She counsels clients on privacy and data issues. She has particular expertise in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML), virtual reality (VR)/ augmented reality (AR)/ immersive reality (XR), cloud services, blockchain, digital identity, and the Internet of Things.

Avi is the former Head of Product at Neeva where he joined the founders, former Google execs Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan, as the first product hire. Before that, he was at Google where he led a product team building a new video ads business focused on shopping & commercial actions for YouTube which was the fastest ever to grow from $0 to $1 billion. 

Avi loves leading teams through the chaos & ambiguity of zero to one problems. He excels at product strategy, analytics & leadership.

Li-Ann is a strategy and operations leader with nearly 20 years of start-up, scale-up, and F500 experience in consumer-oriented companies and professional services.

She specializes in driving results in ambiguous contexts - improving strategic and operating processes, qualitative and quantitative decision support, and iterative execution.

Most recently, she has been focused on advising early-stage companies and enjoys tackling 0-1 problems with lightweight solutions. At Spotify, she worked alongside multidisciplinary teams to enable its 2018 public listing. As the company grew 10X, she scaled strategic planning cadences. She directly managed a team to deliver on various growth, efficiency, and compliance initiatives. At White & Case, she worked with executives to increase revenue and contain costs through process design, organization restructures, and systems implementations, rolling out global changes across 30 countries. She began her career as a consultant at E&Y, performing business analyses for clients in the media, retail, real estate, and beverage sectors and managing teams in the US, Asia, and EMEA.

Minhao is currently the Strategy Manager at Didi Chuxing Technology Co. Minhao began his career as an engineer, designing buildings and bridges in the United States. As an entrepreneur, he leveraged engineering and digital technologies to optimize the food supply chain system in China from farm to fork. He holds a patent for his food production center. During his time as an MBA student, he helped food and agriculture startups in Southeast Asia and Africa in fundraising. Minhao has a strong passion for green and sustainable investing. He boasts extensive experience in investment and product management in Lighthouse Capital and Amazon.

Minhao holds an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School, a M.S. in Civil Engineering from Syracuse University and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Tongji University. In his spare time, Minhao enjoys reading, traveling, and car racing. As a car racer, he spent months at Shanghai International Circuit and Ningbo International Speedway. He is also a photographer used to develop his own films.

Han is a California based early-stage investor and entrepreneur with specializations in fintech, e-commerce and audio AI. Han holds an MBA degree from Columbia Business School. Before MBA, Han started his career as a TMT investment banker with JP Morgan in Hong Kong. He later shifted into the digital banking space as a project lead with DBS Digital Bank in Singapore. Han was also the co-founder and CEO of LGW, Singapore’s first e-commerce marketplace for skills-building education.

Zachary is the Founder of ZAMARTZ Consulting and Director of Enterprise Project Management at Eileen Fisher. He is a hybrid leader, creative, and technologist with an extensive background in retail and digital design. He has spearheaded projects at Club Monaco, Ralph Lauren, Grey Healthcare Group, and The Wall Street Journal. Currently, Zachary is evolving the project management office of Eileen Fisher Enterprise, managing its multi-million dollar projects, and building intelligently designed and high performing digital products as a brand consultant.

Jon Chu is a tech executive who loves to scale companies, build products and experiences that tells a great story. He is currently the Chief Product Officer at PrivCo, a private company data and services company.

He began his career at Goldman Sachs and led many technology initiatives at Bridgewater Associates. In the last decade, he led the transformation and strategies for large consulting and media companies before co-founding his own company. Outside of work, Jon is involved with multiple ventures focusing on entrepreneurial mentorship to minorities.

Zhen focuses on helping startups with R&D tax credit claims. Zhen has over 11 years of R&D tax credit experience in the US, including extensive IRS and State tax audits. Zhen has developed a SaaS-based approach for claiming R&D credits for startups with a compressive service offering at no upfront cost.

Zhen also serves as an advisor to some established incubators such as Idealab, Wavemaker lab, and UCI Wayfinder Innovation. Before establishing Technology Credit, Zhen was Ernst & Young (EY) US R&D tax credit leader in the Southern California markets and EY Greater China’s R&D leader. Zhen is a licensed CPA with a Master's degree and Bachelor's degree in Tax and Accounting from Brigham Young University.

Ryo is currently the President of ASCENDING, an AWS Certified Advanced Consulting Partner. Ryo spent his last 15 years in the IT and cloud consulting industry and has set a deep root in the enterprise software market. In the last few years, Ryo and his team have built several cloud solutions for enterprises and fortune 500 companies. Ryo is committed to using his experience to help startups in various aspects, from finding the right technical solution to testing product-market fit, from building a strong technical team to optimizing sales practice in the B2B enterprise software market.

Charles Qu is an NYS CPA, a skilled tax professional with more than a decade of experience in federal and state income taxation. Charles comes with a strong technical background in partnership, S corps, and C corporate taxation. He has rich experience in managing client relations at all levels, working directly with clients to understand their business objectives and providing them with cost-effective solutions. Charles currently works as a Partner at STAR TAX & ACCOUNTING INC (www.NYStarTax.com), aiming to provide high-quality tax and accounting services to Individuals and Small Businesses. Charles previously worked at AIG Tax Department and EY.

Long is an MBA Candidate at The Wharton School with extensive interdisciplinary knowledge of technologies and entrepreneurship, technology commercialization, project financing, financial modeling, and due diligence. Prior to starting his MBA at Wharton, he led the AI Accelerator summer program of 2018 at JD.com. As the CTO of Syntech Bioenergy, a $15 million search fund company, he raised $8M.