Vinod Khosla is an Indian-American billionaire businessman and venture capitalist. He is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures. Khosla made his wealth from early venture capital investments in areas such as networking, software, and alternative energy technologies. He is considered one of the most successful and influential venture capitalists.
Peter Andreas Thiel is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook. As of July 2024, Thiel had an estimated net worth of US$11.2 billion and was ranked 212th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Reid Garrett Hoffman is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman is the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for professional networking. He is also chairman of venture capital firm Village Global and a co-founder of Inflection AI.
Timothy Ferriss is an American entrepreneur, investor, author, podcaster, and lifestyle guru. He is known for his 4-Hour self-help book series—including The 4-Hour Work Week, The 4-Hour Body, and The 4-Hour Chef—that focused on lifestyle optimizations, but he has since reconsidered this approach. He also supports scientific research into psychedelic treatments.
Steve Blank is an American entrepreneur, educator, author and speaker. He created the customer development method that launched the lean startup movement. His work has influenced modern entrepreneurship through the creation of tools and processes for new ventures which differ from those used in large companies.
Linda Rottenberg is an American businesswoman and author. She is the author of Crazy Is a Compliment: The Power of Zigging When Everyone Else Zags. She is the CEO and Co-founder of Endeavor, a non-profit organization that encourages the power of entrepreneurship.
Alexa von Tobel is the founder of LearnVest.com, a personal finance website that was active between 2009 and 2018, and the founder and Managing Partner of Inspired Capital. Von Tobel is the author of the New York Times bestseller Financially Fearless, which came out on December 31, 2013, and the author of Financially Forward, which came out on May 14, 2019. In April 2014, von Tobel was selected as an inaugural member of the Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship, alongside Steve Case, Reid Hoffman, Tory Burch and others. Von Tobel is the host of Inc.'s The Founders Project with Alexa von Tobel podcast.
Benjamin W. "Ben" Powell is the director of the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University and professor of economics at Texas Tech University's Rawls College of Business. He is also a junior fellow at the Independent Institute and the South American editor of the Review of Austrian Economics.
Gagan Biyani is an American of Indian descent serial entrepreneur, marketer, and journalist. He was a co-founder of Udemy, an online education company, and was co-founder and CEO of Sprig, a food delivery company.
In business, a unicorn is a startup company valued at over US$1 billion which is privately owned and not listed on a share market. The term was first published in 2013, coined by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, choosing the mythical animal to represent the statistical rarity of such successful ventures.
Handy Technologies, Inc. is an online two-sided marketplace for residential cleaning, installation, and other home services. Founded in 2012 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the now New York–based company operates services in United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. The company was acquired by ANGI Homeservices in October 2018.
Alexa Clay is an American writer, public speaker and researcher with a focus on subculture, informal economy, and new economic thinking.
Ernestine Fu is an American venture capitalist, investor, and author.
Alice Olivia Fox Cabane is a French and American author, public speaker, and the co-founder of The KindEarth.Tech (KET) Foundation. She is the former Director of Innovative Leadership for Stanford University's student accelerator, StartX. She is the author of The Charisma Myth and the co-author of The Net And The Butterfly, two books on charisma and the neuroscience of innovation, respectively.
Antonio Fernandez, also known as King Tone, is the former head of the Latin Kings. In 1999, Fernandez was sentenced to 12 to 15 years for conspiring to sell narcotics. He is the main figure in the HBO documentary, Latin Kings: A Street Gang story, which was released in 2007. He is also featured in the book, The Misfit Economy, by Alexa Clay, which was published in 2015. Upon his release, Fernandez has shared his insights as a former gang leader and political activist, and how that relates to the "legitimate world".
Avid Larizadeh-Duggan OBE is an Iranian-French-American entrepreneur and venture capitalist. She is a managing director at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Innovation Platform, EMEA and is a non executive director of Barclays Bank UK.
Midas Touch: Why Some Entrepreneurs Get Rich — And Why Most Don't is a non-fiction book about personal finance, co-authored by Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki. The book was published in hardcover format in 2011. The coauthors became familiar with each other through mutual work at The Learning Annex, and The Art of the Deal. Trump was impressed by Kiyosaki's writing success with Rich Dad Poor Dad. The coauthors then wrote Why We Want You to be Rich together in 2006, and followed it up with Midas Touch in 2011.
Ellen Petry Leanse is an American author, businesswoman, educator, entrepreneur, and online community pioneer. Leanse has spent 35 years working with leaders at Apple, Google, Facebook, as an entrepreneur, and with dozens of startups. She's a writer on topics of workplace dynamics and a Stanford instructor. Her work has spanned entrepreneurship, corporate leadership, investing, and strategy consulting.
Tien Tzuo is a Taiwanese-born American tech entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Zuora, and prior to that was chief strategy officer of Salesforce.
Tina Lynn Seelig is an American educator, entrepreneur, and author of several books on creativity and innovation. She is a faculty member at Stanford University.
