Hiya Shah

Commerce Ventures is an early stage venture capital firm focused on investing and empowering the next generation of technology innovators in the retail and financial services industries. Our deeply committed LP base is composed of a strategic blend of established entrepreneurs, corporate executives and market leading corporations, enabling us to meaningfully add value to our portfolio companies via introductions to potential clients, distribution partners, top tier advisers and potential key executive additions. We also pride ourselves on being a thought and strategy partner to our portfolio CEOs when we can be helpful, but not wasting their time otherwise. For more information about Commerce Ventures and our 40+ incredible portfolio companies, please visit commercevc.com.

PeakSpan Capital is a growth equity firm based in New York City and Silicon Valley. Having partnered with over 57 scale-ups and with $2.5B+ in assets under management (AUM), PeakSpan’s mission is to be the partner of choice for growth-stage entrepreneurial teams building category-defining software for business buyers of all sizes. PeakSpan combines deep domain expertise across a select set of sectors with multiple homegrown, proprietary, and patented technology platforms that provide visibility into company and market performance, helping disruptive entrepreneurs drive resilient, risk-adjusted value creation. To learn more about PeakSpan Capital and its portfolio, please visit: www.peakspancapital.com.

David Kudla, CEO and CIO of Mainstay Capital Management, established the Kudla Fund in September 2015 with an initial funding of $1MM. Managed by a small group of undergraduate and graduate students, the fund provides a hands-on investing experience where students can learn and practice both fundamental and quantitative strategies.

MGG Investment Group provides bespoke solutions to mid-size and growing companies throughout North America. We concentrate our efforts on businesses with EBITDA between $10MM and $40MM a year who are in need of growth or transition capital. With a seasoned and experienced investment team, we are able to due diligence and address complex situations and specialized needs expeditiously while providing certainty to close for business owners. Founded in 2014 by Kevin Griffin and Greg Racz, MGG is based in New York City with offices in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Dallas. Since inception we have provided billions of dollars to dozens of businesses across sectors and industries in the middle market.

Girls Who Invest (“GWI”) is a non-profit organization founded in April 2015 dedicated to increasing the number of women in portfolio management and executive leadership in the asset management industry. Our benchmark for success is to have 30% of the world’s investable capital managed by women. This goal is in sharp contrast to 2014, a year in which less than 10% of the world’s investable capital was managed by women. We will focus on education, industry outreach, accessibility and career placement to achieve our mission. At GWI, we aim to create programs to inspire and support young women to become tomorrow’s leaders. By completing GWI’s rigorous program, talented and motivated women will be well prepared to enter the industry across all asset classes including public and private equity, fixed income, credit, hedge funds, real estate, infrastructure, and to be skilled allocators of capital.