Great Entrepreneurs is pleased to announce The Top 50 Business Leaders of San Francisco for 2023. Boasting breathtaking ocean vistas that include the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco has consistently drawn individuals from around the world. Its reputation as a hub for entrepreneurial spirit and technological advancement further solidifies its appeal, providing an advantageous environment for businesses seeking a competitive edge. Home to Silicon Valley, the area’s affiliations with the realms of science, research, and startups have garnered international recognition over the years. This has occasionally earned it the moniker "Tech Capital of the World." Renowned corporations like Salesforce and Wells Fargo have chosen the city as their headquarters, contributing to its impressive $669 billion GDP, making it the fourth-largest economy in the U.S. for 2022. Noteworthy also is the Bay Area's No. 1 position in GDP growth for a U.S. city last year. Its impressive 4.8% annual expansion rate for 2022 portrays a flourishing and well-balanced economy poised for unrestrained expansion. Notably, many of this year's esteemed awardees are leading San Francisco's most influential and recognizable players.
Among this year’s awardees is Steve Huffman, the Co-Founder and CEO of Reddit, the "front page of the Internet." After selling the company in 2006, Huffman returned to his Reddit roots in 2015 and has since been instrumental in growing the company to millions of daily users interacting across hundreds of thousands of communities. Additionally, this year we are recognizing the achievements of Kyle Vogt, the CEO, CTO, President, and Co-Founder of Cruise, a company that is focused on building the world’s most advanced self-driving vehicles. An engineer at heart, Vogt previously co-founded Twitch, which Amazon acquired for over $1 billion. Lastly, we have Spike Lipkin, the CEO and Co-founder of Newfront, a company that is transforming the insurance industry. Prior to Newfront, Lipkin was one of the first employees at Opendoor, where he helped grow a five-person company into a business currently valued at more than $3 billion.
We applaud these individuals for their commitment to the organizations they serve. Please join us in celebrating the accomplishments of The Top 50 Business Leaders of San Francisco for 2023.
1. Christie Fleischer
Chief Executive Officer, Benefit Cosmetics
Christie Fleischer is the CEO of Benefit Cosmetics, the indie beauty brand-turned-prestige powerhouse under leading luxury products group Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy. Benefit Cosmetics is one of the fastest growing prestige beauty brands with locations in 59 countries across 5 continents. Founded in 1976 by twin sisters Jean and Jane Ford, Benefit was built on the simple belief that beauty should be fun and make you feel good.
Fleischer joined the company in 2019. Previously, she was the head of global consumer products at Netflix. Before that, she served as the head of merchandise & product development at Disney Parks; and the head of experiences & consumer products at The Walt Disney Company. Earlier in her career, she worked with Warnaco as a sales & merchandising manager. Fleischer earned an MBA from the University of Southern California.
Benefit Cosmetics Milestone
"The company has since swept the world with one-of-a-kind products like Benetint, They're Real! Mascara and Hoola bronzer. With the launch of its brow collection in 2016 featuring bestselling products like Precisely, My Brow Pencil and Gimme Brow+, Benefit has become the leading brow destination for both products and services and is the No. 1 Brow Brand Worldwide. With nearly 3,000 Brow Bars and more than 5,000 Brow & Beauty Experts in stores and retailers, it is also the #1 global employer of aestheticians. Benefit is also the leading beauty brand to offer comprehensive solutions for pores and pore-focused skincare under its iconic The POREfessional franchise."
2. Kyle Vogt
Chief Executive Officer, CTO, President, and Co-Founder, Cruise
Kyle Vogt is the CEO, CTO, President, and Co-Founder of Cruise, a company that is building the world’s most advanced self-driving vehicles. Since its 2013 founding in San Francisco, they have hired over 3,000 talented individuals and opened additional offices in greater Seattle, Pasadena, Phoenix and Munich. Furthermore, they have raised $10 billion from General Motors, Honda, Microsoft, SoftBank, T. Rowe Price, Walmart and others.
As one of the company’s founders, Vogt has been there from the beginning. An engineer at heart, he has more than a decade of experience designing and deploying large-scale distributed systems, infrastructure, and complex robots that serve hundreds of millions of users. Before Cruise, he co-founded Twitch, which Amazon acquired for over $1 billion. Vogt graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
3. Mårten Mickos
Chief Executive Officer, HackerOne
Mårten Mickos is the CEO of HackerOne, the world's leading vendor of hacker-powered security. HackerOne helps companies connect with the best security hackers in the world to find system vulnerabilities so that these can be fixed before they are exploited by malicious actors. An industry veteran, Mickos is passionate about leadership, distributed teams, global businesses, innovation, infrastructure software, the industry landscape, and technology shifts that have profound impact on society.
In addition, Mickos is a former SVP and GM of Hewlett-Packard's Cloud Business. He also served as: CEO of Eucalyptus; EIR at Benchmark Capital and Index Ventures; SVP and GM of the Database Group of Sun Microsystems; and CEO of MySQL AB. Mickos graduated from Aalto University with an MS and from Teknillinen korkeakoulu-Tekniska högskolan with an MS in technical physics.
4. Amir Dan Rubin
Chief Executive Officer, One Medical
One Medical’s CEO Amir Dan Rubin has focused his career on transforming health care. Through One Medical’s human-centered and technology-powered model, he serves on a team dedicated to delighting members with better health and better care, while reducing total costs. Previously, Rubin served as an EVP and divisional CEO at UnitedHealth Group’s Optum division, where he oversaw a number of areas focused on helping to make the health system work better. He has twice been recognized as an EY Entrepreneur of the Year in Northern California.
Rubin also previously served as president and CEO of Stanford Health Care in Palo Alto, where he helped raise patient experience and quality scores to the highest levels in the nation, grow a regional network of care settings, and advance digital health and corporate partnerships. Furthermore, Rubin previously was the COO for UCLA Health, the COO for Stony Brook University Medical Center, and held leadership roles at Memorial Hermann Health System. He holds MBA and MHSA degrees from the University of Michigan, and a BA from UC Berkeley.
5. Drew Houston
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Dropbox
Drew Houston is the Co-Founder and CEO of Dropbox, the file hosting giant. With more than 700 million registered users across 180 countries, they’re on a mission to design a more enlightened way of working. Dropbox is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, and has offices around the world.
Houston began his career in 2006. He Co-founded Dropbox in 2007 with MIT classmate Arash Ferdowsi. Before joining Dropbox, Houston was a founder at Accolade. Before that, he served as a software engineer at Bit9, Inc. Houston graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with an undergraduate degree in computer science.
6. Matthew Prince
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Cloudflare
Matthew Prince is one of Cloudflare’s Co-Founders and has served as their CEO and Chairman since 2009. He also co-founded Unspam Technologies, Inc., a software and services company, and has served as its Chair since 2001. Prince holds a BA in English and a minor in Computer Science from Trinity College-Hartford, a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Cloudflare is on a mission to help build a better Internet. Cloudflare’s suite of products protect and accelerate any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare have all web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks.
7. Jason Citron
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Discord
Jason Citron began his professional career 18 years ago. Today, he is the Founder and CEO of Discord. Launched in 2015, Discord is a voice, video and text app that helps friends and communities come together to hang out and explore their interests - from artists and activists, to study groups, sneakerheads, plant parents, and more. With 150 million monthly users across 19 million active communities, called servers, Discord has grown to become one of the most popular communications services in the world.
Citron got his start in 2005 as a programmer at Stormfront Studios. From there, he went on to Doublefine Productions, before eventually rising to founder and CEO at OpenFeint, his most recent position prior to joining Discord. Citron graduated from Full Sail University with an undergraduate degree in game design and development.
8. Job van der Voort
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Remote
Job van der Voort is the CEO and Co-Founder of Remote. He previously worked as a neuroscientist before leaving academia to become the VP of Product at GitLab, the world’s largest all-remote company, where he hired talent in 67 different countries. On top of that, he is a sought-after presenter, speaking on topics related to scaling a remote-first startup, remote culture, and the future of work.
Remote’s mission is to create opportunity everywhere, empowering employers to find and hire the best talent, and enabling individuals to build financial and personal freedom. Businesses around the world use Remote to hire, manage, and pay their globally distributed workforces, simply and compliantly. Remote was founded in 2019 and is backed by leading investors including SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Accel, Sequoia, Index Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, General Catalyst, and B Capital.
9. Steve Huffman
Chief Executive Officer, Reddit
Steve Huffman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Reddit, an online community of communities. Huffman pursued his passion for programming from an early age and followed it through a computer science degree at the University of Virginia. He and his college roommate pitched their first start-up to then-new incubator Y Combinator in 2005. While the pair's initial idea for a food-ordering mobile app called My Mobile Menu was rejected, Y Combinator founders Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston invited them back to build the “front page of the internet,” which soon led to the creation of Reddit.
After selling the company in 2006, Huffman co-founded the travel company Hipmunk and served as CTO. In 2015, he returned as CEO of Reddit, where he has led the company through international expansion to new markets, sweeping updates to the platform’s Content Policy, and a full site redesign, while also growing Reddit to millions of daily users interacting across hundreds of thousands of communities. In addition to his work and leadership at Reddit, Huffman is a mentor at Hackbright Academy, a San Francisco-based coding school for women.
10. John Waldmann
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Homebase
John Waldmann is the Founder and CEO of Homebase, a company that is making work easier for more than 100,000 small businesses by providing everything they need to manage an hourly team: employee scheduling, time clocks, payroll, team communication, hiring, onboarding, and compliance. Just don’t call them “Human Capital Management.”
Waldmann began his career in 1998. Before joining Homebase, he was an associate at KKR Capstone. Before that, he served as an associate at Boston Consulting Group. Earlier in his career, he worked with Angry Hippo as a co-founder. Waldmann graduated from Stanford University Graduate School of Business with an MBA and from Stanford University with an undergraduate degree in political science and sociology.
Homebase Milestone
"Out of the 200+ SMBTech companies that were nominated, Homebase was handpicked by 30+ top venture capital investors as one of the 50 companies that is transforming the SMBTech ecosystem! We're proud 2023 recipients of SMBTech 50 powered by GGV Capital and in partnership with Nasdaq, Crunchbase & Fenwick.
We officially have over 200 full-time employees in the US and Canada, and over 270 team members worldwide! Our focus on company culture and high performance drives us forward. We recently celebrated new office openings in Toronto and Denver and are excited about continued growth this year!"
11. Sean Duffy
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Omada Health
Sean Duffy Co-Founded Omada in 2011 with the aim of merging medical trends and cutting-edge technology to revolutionize healthcare for chronic disease. Today, he proudly serves as CEO. He has also been instrumental in steering Omada toward global recognition, such as being hailed a potential “medical triumph” by The New York Times; and one of Fast Company’s 50 most innovative companies in the world.
A longtime devotee of healthcare and technology, Duffy also founded a largely automated lifestyle business around Excel Everest, the interactive Microsoft Excel training tool he created. He formerly covered healthcare innovation as a writer and editor for Medgadget, a popular medical technology blog. More recently, Duffy has been spending more and more of his free time learning how to build and fly first-person view drones. He earned an MD from Harvard Medical School, an MBA in healthcare from Harvard Business School, and an undergraduate degree in neuroscience from Columbia University.
Omada Health's Milestone
“In 2023, Omada announced the launch of a new partnership with Intermountain Healthcare that marks a new, deep collaboration between health systems and virtual care providers that is bringing us closer to truly integrated virtual care. Together, the two are partnering to offer virtual diabetes care and prevention to Intermountain’s primary care patients in its Utah medical group. Through this partnership, they are connecting traditional care with virtual care to reach more at-risk patients with Omada’s proven Diabetes Prevention and Diabetes programs.”
12. Spike Lipkin
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Newfront
Spike Lipkin is the CEO and Co-founder of Newfront, a company that is transforming the delivery of risk management, employee experience, insurance, and retirement solutions by building the modern insurance platform. Newfront makes insurance work for you. Headquartered in San Francisco, Newfront has offices throughout the country – and is home to more than 850 employees who serve clients across the United States and globally.
Prior to Newfront, Lipkin was one of the first employees at Opendoor, where he helped grow a five-person company into a business currently valued at more than $3 billion. Prior to Opendoor, he was an investor at Blackstone, where he served on the startup team that built Invitation Homes into the largest owner of single family real estate in the United States. Lipkin earned an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business, an MPhil in international relations & politics from the University of Cambridge, and an undergraduate degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania.
Newfront Milestone
“Newfront is a modern brokerage transforming the risk management, business insurance, total rewards, and retirement services space through the combination of elite expertise and cutting-edge technology. In July, the company announced that it has launched a suite of AI-powered tools, offering significant time savings and data-driven insights for both clients and insurance professionals, in addition to introducing a new brand and digital presence.”
13. Eric Mathewson
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, WideOrbit
Eric Mathewson founded WideOrbit in 1999 after realizing that there was an opportunity to dramatically streamline and automate the buying and selling of media. Prior to founding WideOrbit, Mathewson worked at Montgomery Securities in San Francisco and New York, managing portfolios for wealthy technologists as well as Kidder Peabody in Palo Alto, primarily focused on Equity Derivatives. He has been an active private equity technology investor since 1994 and maintains controlling ownership of WideOrbit. Mathewson graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with an undergraduate degree in social science.
Headquartered in San Francisco, with offices worldwide, WideOrbit serves as the System of Record for more than 5000 stations and cable networks around the globe – processing more than $35 billion in advertising revenue annually. WideOrbit helps media companies do more business by making it easier to buy and sell advertising. The company brings a Wider-World approach, providing the broader capabilities, bigger insights, and better connections that media companies need. That’s why so many industry leaders – including NBCUniversal, Fox, Paramount, AMC Networks, TelevisaUnivision, E.W. Scripps, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Gray Television, TEGNA, Graham Media Group, and Audacy – have partnered with WideOrbit since 1999.
Eric Mathewson Milestone
"After 24 years as CEO and Founder Eric orchestrated the sale of WideOrbit in March 2023 to Lumine Group Inc. (TSXV:LMN). Eric remains CEO and is on the board of directors of Lumine/Consellation Software Inc."
14. Ajaz Ahmed
Chief Executive Officer, AKQA
Ajaz Ahmed is the Founder and CEO of AKQA, a design and innovation agency that employs over 7,000 professionals across 24 countries. AKQA is united with independently minded industry legends, including Grey, Universal Design Studio, Map Project Office and Made Thought. Ahmed has co-authored and written three books about business, creativity, scaling and technology: Velocity (2012), Limitless (2015), and Defeat (2019). On top of that, he has also been involved in philanthropy since the start of AKQA for over two decades, and launched ajaz.org, which has made over 15 grants since it was launched in August 2021.
In addition to his own charitable organization, Ahmed sits on the board of Mission 44 (founded by Sir Lewis Hamilton: empowering young people from underserved groups to succeed), Elton John AIDS Foundation (founded by Sir Elton John & David Furnish, funding frontline partners preventing infections, fighting stigma and providing treatment) and Virgin Unite (founded by Sir Richard Branson, uniting people & entrepreneurial ideas to change the world).
15. Akilesh Bapu
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, DeepScribe
Akilesh Bapu is the Co-founder and CEO of DeepScribe, a medical technology firm that supplies AI medical scribe solutions to healthcare companies and medical professionals. DeepScribe, the world’s most widely adopted AI medical scribe, helps clinicians around the United States save 3 hours per day, improve patient care, reduce clinical burnout, and increase revenue and reimbursement. With millions of clinical conversations captured from thousands of doctors, DeepScribe is building the most comprehensive structured clinical database in healthcare.
Prior to DeepScribe, Bapu was a researcher at UC Berkeley’s AI Research Lab (BAIR), where he studied the applications of deep learning and natural language processing, and worked on the cutting edge of domain-specific summarization. Driven by a personal connection to the impact and challenges of medical documentation, Bapu has dedicated his career to improving the lives of healthcare providers and their patients. Along with DeepScribe, he is on a mission to bring the joy of care back to medicine.
16. Andrew Boni
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Iterable
Andrew Boni is the Co-Founder and CEO of Iterable, the top-rated AI-powered customer communication platform that enables brands like Doordash, Calm, Fender and Zoopla to deliver joyful experiences with harmonized, individualized and dynamic communications at scale. Under Boni’s leadership, Iterable has enabled over 1,000 brands and businesses spanning 52 countries to deliver customized, personalized and dynamic communications to their customers. Furthermore, Iterable's business journey has been punctuated by impressive milestones: surpassing over $150 million in annual recurring revenue, fostering a global team of 700 professionals, and venturing into new frontiers, including London, Australia and New Zealand.
As Iterable commemorates its 10th anniversary this year, Boni's vision continues to be the driving force behind Iterable's success and massive growth. The executive’s passion for technology and entrepreneurship started early on in his academic and professional career. Prior to Iterable, he worked on Google’s Strategic Partnerships team. Boni graduated with a BS in computer science from Boston College.
17. Rotem Iram
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, At-Bay
Rotem Iram began his professional career 25 years ago. Today, he is the Co-Founder and CEO of At-Bay, the InsurSec provider for the digital age. By combining world-class cybersecurity technology with industry-leading insurance expertise, At-Bay was designed from the ground up to empower businesses to thrive in the digital world by providing end-to-end prevention and protection. A full-stack insurance company, At-Bay offers Cyber, Tech E&O and Miscellaneous Professional Liability (MPL) policies.
Iram got his start in 1998 as a captain and group leader at Israeli Military Intelligence. From there, he went on to RAD Data Communication, before eventually rising to COO at K2 Intelligence - Cyber security practice, his most recent position prior to joining At-Bay. Iram graduated from Harvard Business School with an MBA and from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem with an undergraduate degree in computer engineering.
At-Bay Milestone
"At-Bay launched a new world first "InsurSec" solution named At-Bay Stance in April of this year, which is designed to help mid-to-small sized businesses close the persistent technology and skills access gap in security all through their cyber insurance policy. With 98% of cyber insurance claims in the past five years coming from the small business segment with revenue under $2B, according to a recent report from NetDiligence, providing an integrated solution to help businesses manage cyber risk is now more critical than ever. At-Bay Stance brings together best-in-class technology solutions and on-demand SecOps experts to help improve the security posture of every policyholder, regardless of their industry, budget, or technical expertise."
18. Aytekin Tank
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Jotform
Aytekin Tank is the Founder and CEO of Jotform. He is also the author of Automate Your Busywork. Notably, Tank bootstrapped Jotform from the ground up and currently oversees its growth and development. In his free time, he loves writing and sharing business advice. His articles can be found in places like Entrepreneur, FastCompany, the Jotform blog, and more. Tank graduated from the University of Bridgeport with an undergraduate degree in computer science.
Trusted by over 20 million users worldwide, Jotform’s powerful forms and suite of no-code tools are flexible enough for small businesses and robust enough for enterprises. Jotform helps organizations go from busywork to less work with forms that use conditional logic, accept payments, generate reports, automate workflows, and more. Jotform’s products make it easy for any team to streamline its processes. The options are limitless with Jotform’s 10,000 templates, hundreds of integrations, and almost 400 widgets.
Aytekin Tank and Jotform's Milestone
"After nearly two decades as Founder and CEO of Jotform, Tank shares his recipe for success, Aytekin published a book on Automate Your Busywork: Do Less, Achieve More, and Save Your Brain for the Big Stuff
Jotform reached 20M global users. Doubling its user base in less than two years, Jotform is poised for continued growth in 2023."
19. Brad Kittredge
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Brightside Health
Brad Kittredge is the Founder and CEO of Brightside Health, a telehealth platform that delivers life-changing mental health care to individuals with mild-to-severe clinical depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders. Powered by proprietary AI, purpose-built technology, and a world-class clinician network, Brightside Health combines precision psychiatry and leading-edge therapeutic techniques to offer timely care and improve patient outcomes across the entire clinical spectrum, affordably and at scale. Kittredge founded the company in 2017.
Kittredge has spent over a decade pioneering evidence-based and consumer-driven health care solutions, including building the Product teams at 23andMe and Lantern. After watching his father battle depression for many years before doctors landed on the right treatment plan, the executive was inspired to start Brightside Health and tackle the challenges of our current mental health care system, including lack of access to care, minimal measurement to ensure quality, and systemic inefficiencies. His mission is to ensure that everyone has access to mental health care with measurably better outcomes. Kittredge holds MPH, MBA, and psychology degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.
Brightside Health Milestone
"One of the most notable milestones from Brightside Health this past year is the introduction of Crisis Care – a first-of-its kind national telehealth program for treating individuals at elevated risk for suicide. Crisis Care provides fast, effective treatment virtually for people who are actively suicidal and/or have had a recent suicide attempt, as well as those in need of follow-up care after hospitalization. Individuals considering suicide can’t wait weeks or months to be seen by a provider, and Crisis Care ensures this high-risk population receives access to quality treatment in 48 hours or less."
20. Clint Sharp
Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Cribl
Clint Sharp is the CEO and Founder of Cribl, a company that makes open observability a reality for today’s tech professionals. Founded in 2018, Cribl is a remote-first company with an office in San Francisco, CA. The Cribl product suite defies data gravity with radical levels of choice and control. With Cribl, companies have the power to control their data, get more out of existing investments, and shape the observability future.
Sharp began his career in 1997. Before launching Cribl, he was a senior director of product management at Splunk. Before that, he served as a director of application operations at Cricket Communications/Leap Wireless. Earlier in his career, he worked with Internet Partners of America / OneMain.com as a network engineer. Sharp graduated from Metropolitan State University of Denver with an undergraduate degree in business management.
Cribl Milestone
"Cribl closed its last fiscal year with triple digit customer and ARR growth, two new product launches, and $150M in new funding. Cribl's customer base now includes 24 of the Fortune 100 companies, and the company was named to CNBC’s Top Startups for the Enterprise, received recognition at the Bank of America Technology Innovation Summit, and won several Comparably awards recognizing company culture."
21. David Barrett
Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Director, Expensify
David Barrett is a lifelong programmer who founded Expensify in 2008, building it into the most popular preaccounting platform on the planet. Barrett is recognized as one of the world’s top network engineers, having created Expensify’s blockchain-powered database a year before Satoshi’s white paper on Bitcoin.
Prior to Expensify, Barrett led engineering for Red Swoosh — which was acquired by Akamai Technologies in 2007 — and held various roles in 3D graphics and VR development. When he’s not fearlessly leading Team Expensify from Portland, he enjoys playing Minecraft with his daughter. Barrett graduated from the University of Michigan with an undergraduate degree in computer engineering.
Expensify Milestone
"Over the course of 2023, Expensify has been quietly building the most powerful version of its app yet: New Expensify. This next-generation platform will turn Expensify from an expense reporting giant into a financial management super app that can handle everything with a simple chat. Whether you’re requesting money from friends, assigning tasks to clients, or just asking your teammates a question, New Expensify can handle it all and more."
22. Stephanie Tilenius
Chief Executive Officer & Founder, Vida Health
As the Founder and CEO of Vida Health, Stephanie Tilenius is an entrepreneur and "intrapreneur" who builds products, platforms and businesses from the ground up. She was formerly VP of Commerce and Payments at Google. She also served as SVP at eBay & PayPal. Furthermore, Tilenius founded Planetrx.com, an online pharmacy and disease management company. She is on the Boards of Papa, Wish, and Seagate.
Her company, Vida Health, provides expert, personalized, on-demand health coaching and programs through a network of experienced health care providers — like dietitians, therapists, and health coaches — coupled with an easy-to-use app with award-winning content. They focus on chronic conditions — like diabetes, depression, and hypertension — which account for 80% of the $3 trillion spent on healthcare in the US. Tilenius earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Vida Health Milestone
"Earlier this year SelectHealth®, a nonprofit health plan serving more than one million members in Utah, Idaho, and Nevada, announced a new relationship with Vida Health. The relationship provides SelectHealth Medicare Advantage and Individual plan members with access to Vida's virtual cardiometabolic solutions for chronic physical and mental health conditions."
23. Nick Mehta
Chief Executive Officer, Gainsight
Nick Mehta began his professional career 25 years ago. Today, he is the CEO of Gainsight, a company whose innovative platform helps organizations of all sizes and industries drive durable growth. It offers a powerful set of customer success, product experience, and community engagement solutions that together enable businesses to scale efficiently, create alignment, and put the customer at the heart of innovation. With Gainsight, it’s never been easier to drive acquisition, increase product adoption, prevent churn, and grow with renewals and expansion.
Mehta got his start in 1998 as a co-founder and VP of marketing at Chipshot.com. From there, he went on to XDegrees, before eventually rising to general partner at Acceleprise San Francisco, his most recent position prior to joining Gainsight. Mehta graduated from Harvard University with an MS in computer science and an undergraduate degree in biochemistry.
Gainsight's Milestone
"Gainsight was awarded the #1 spot in Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work List for 2023, surpassing top-rated companies in North America, such as Google, Mckinsey & Company, NVIDIA, ServiceNow, and others. The company also expanded its portfolio of products with the acquisition of Northpass, the leading customer education solution, in July 2023."
24. Dave Evans
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Fictiv
As Fictiv’s Co-Foudner and CEO, Dave Evans leads the company vision to put world-class manufacturing and supply chain capabilities in the hands of innovators, without constraints. Prior to founding Fictiv, Evans was the first hire at Ford’s Silicon Valley Innovation Lab, under Ford's Global Research and Advanced Engineering Division. He earned his BS in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.
Fictiv is the operating system for custom manufacturing that makes it faster, easier, and more efficient to source and supply mechanical parts. Its intelligent system, supported by best-in- class operations talent, orchestrates a network of highly vetted and managed partners around the globe for fast, high-quality manufacturing, from quote to delivery. To date, Fictiv has manufactured more than 20 million parts for early-stage companies and large enterprises alike, helping them innovate with agility and get products to market faster.
Fictiv's Milestone
"The recent expansion of our Global Manufacturing Network into India, which joins our successful manufacturing centers in the USA and China. This expansion gives your customers even more manufacturing capacity, supply chain resilience, and choice to meet their wide-ranging new product development needs."
25. Stephen Hawthornthwaite
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Rothy's
Stephen Hawthornthwaite is the Co-Founder, CEO and Chairmanof Rothy’s, a sustainable lifestyle brand transforming recycled materials into modern shoes and accessories for all. With Roth Martin, Hawthornthwaite was inspired to bring the vision of an innovative, earth-conscious brand to life. In 2016, the pair of co-founders established a fully owned and operated factory in China, which allows them to set best-in-class sustainable manufacturing standards. Rothy's is constantly optimizing its sustainable practices and materials. The company is well known for its signature thread, which is spun from plastic water bottles.
Hawthornthwaite has a longstanding passion for well-designed and well-made consumer goods. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, he spent almost 20 years advising on M&A transactions and evaluating investment opportunities in both investment banking and corporate development. He focused in particular on the internet, digital media, e-commerce and consumer sectors. Hawthornthwaite graduated from Wake Forest University School of Law with a JD and from Duke University with an undergraduate degree in political science and government.
Rothy's Milestone
"In April of this year, Rothy’s became the first shoe manufacturer in the world to receive both LEED and TRUE Platinum Certifications at their factory, in addition to becoming the first factory in China to achieve LEED Zero Waste Certification. This impressive milestone underscores Rothy's belief in the possibility that things can and should be done better — better for the planet and better for the people on it."
26. Sandeep Acharya
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Octave
Sandeep Acharya is the CEO and Co-Founder of Octave, a company that is on a mission to create a new standard for mental health care that’s both accessible to people and sustainable for providers. By broadening pathways for care delivery, they can better serve their community and meet the growing need for mental health care. They partner with clients to develop personalized care plans to best suit the individual's needs. Grounded in science, Octave enables clients to experience profound change that is just as measurable as it is meaningful. Acharya began his career in 2003.
Prior to co-founding Octave, Acharya led strategy at One Medical for 5 years. In this role, he was responsible for launching & scaling several new services. He also oversaw the growth of its employer business to over 1,000 companies, while being a member of a senior leadership team that expanded the company to over sixty clinics in eight cities. Before One Medical, he spent his career as an investor, operator and consultant in the healthcare, retail, and technology sectors at Bain & Co, Bain Capital & Insight Venture Partners. Sandeep holds degrees in computer science and business from Wharton and Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar.
Octave's Milestone
"In June, we completed our Series C round of funding, our total funding is now $86 million. The $52M funding round will allow us to to drive national expansion of evidence-based, in-network therapy services. In addition, Octave was named by VCs for Insider's 16 most promising healthcare startups of 2023."
27. Jeevan Kalanithi
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, OpenSpace
Jeevan Kalanithi began his professional career 16 years ago. Today, he is the CEO and Co-Founder of OpenSpace, the global leader in reality capture and AI-powered analytics, empowers construction and real estate companies of every size to create an interactive 360° digital view of their built environment. Customers have used OpenSpace to operate more efficiently and reduce risk, capturing more than 17 billion square feet of imagery from construction projects across thousands of sites in more than 93 countries.
Kalanithi got his start in 2007 as a founder and partner at Taco Lab LLC. From there, he went on to Sifteo, before eventually rising to president at 3D Robotics, his most recent position prior to joining OpenSpace. Kalanithi graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with an MS in media lab and from Stanford University with an undergraduate degree in symbolic systems.
OpenSpace Milestone
"Introduced a new product, OpenSpace BIM+, to address the gap with construction teams utilizing BIM (building information models) in the field. We also partnered with Revizto, a complementary technology in this category, to accelerate value to our customers.
We've had some significant customer wins, including:
- Performance Contracting
- Comfort Systems
- Only reality capture solution for government
We raised $111 million last year in a Series D, giving us a strong runway for continued business growth."
28. Keith London
President, Chief Executive Officer and Board of Directors, Kennedy Jenks
As President and CEO, Keith London is responsible for the strategic direction and sustainability of Kennedy Jenks. For over a century, Kennedy Jenks has provided engineering and scientific solutions for innovative water and environmental projects. Their clients include government agencies, private utilities, and clients in the transportation industry. London became CEO in 2006 as the first non-Kennedy CEO in the firm’s history. Before being named CEO, Keith joined Kennedy Jenks as Southern California Regional Manager and Client Service Manager and then became the Public Works Operating Officer.
Outside of his leadership endeavors, London’s nearly 40 years of technical experience spans water, wastewater, and reclamation projects throughout California and Arizona. London, a registered Professional Engineer in California and New York, is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, American Water Works Association, and Water Environment Federation. He has served on the Executive Committee and Board of Directors, as Senior Vice Chair, for the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC), on the Board of Directors for the ACEC Research Institute, and on numerous ACEC committees. London holds a BS in Civil Engineering from Purdue University. He also holds an MS in Civil Engineering from San Diego State University.
29. Maju Kuruvilla
Chief Executive Officer, Bolt
Maju Kuruvilla is the CEO of Bolt, the technology company democratizing commerce. Bolt strengthens retailers' relationships with their customers by unlocking secure, logged-in, lightning-fast checkouts. The company's rapidly-growing network of one-click-checkout-ready shoppers visits Bolt merchants as if they are return customers. Hundreds of retailers leverage Bolt to offer their shoppers the seamless checkout experiences they've come to expect.
Prior to Bolt, Kuruvilla was the VP and GM for Amazon’s Global Logistics, managing that entire business unit spanning business, product, engineering, and operations. Kuruvilla holds an MBA from the University of Washington and a BS in Computer Engineering from Mangalore University.
30. Matthew Stevens
President & CEO, The Bay Club Company
Matthew Stevens is the President and CEO of The Bay Club Company. Founded in 1977, The Bay Club Company ("Bay Club") is a lifestyle company that – as of November 2022– owns and operates a growing collection of resort-inspired properties across nine West Coast campuses located within the San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Portland markets. Each campus is made up of a combination of fitness centers, athletic clubs, sports resorts, swim & tennis facilities, golf & country clubs, and/or hotel-resorts.
Bay Club's comprehensive approach to lifestyle is founded on four points of focus: Fitness, sports, family, and hospitality. With a vibrant community of more than 120,000 members and a professional team of over 3,000 associates, Bay Club is a one-of-a-kind model with innovative and exciting fitness programs, year-round options for tennis, swimming, squash, and golf, enriching family programs and Kids Camp, and gathering spaces with classic hospitality amenities, including dining options, workplace suites, and Sanctuary Spas
Matthew Stevens Milestone
"Matthew Stevens introduced Shared Membership—this pioneering model allows individuals to curate a membership comprised of friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family members, beyond the traditional household. The launch of this program recognizes that the definition of “family” is different for everyone and has increased dues and driven club usage well beyond pre-pandemic levels."
31. Anant Bhardwaj
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Instabase
Anant Bhardwaj is the Founder and CEO of Instabase. He founded the company in 2015. Instabase provides a unified platform with artificial intelligence (AI) and workflow automation capabilities that allow organizations to solve their most pressing business challenges at scale. With an open ecosystem that combines AI breakthroughs from research labs and deep industry expertise, the Instabase platform helps institutions embed intelligence into any system or business process and drive transformational outcomes. Today, many of the world’s largest financial institutions, insurance companies, governments, and enterprises rely on Instabase to automate their mission-critical business processes end-to-end.
Previously, Bhardwaj was a Product Developer at BMC Software. He earned a Ph.D. in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MS in computer science from Stanford University, and an undergraduate degree in computer science from Savitribai Phule Pune University.
Instabase Milestone
"Most recently, Instabase raised a $45 million Series C which doubled its valuation to $2 billion, and also launched AI Hub, a new generative AI-based platform for content understanding."
32. Nicolas Desmarais
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, AppDirect
Nicolas Desmarais is the CEO and Co-Founder of AppDirect. Founded in 2009, AppDirect is a San Francisco-based B2B subscription commerce platform company that brings together technology providers, advisors, and businesses to simplify how they buy, sell and manage technology. More than 1,000 providers, 10,000 advisors, and 5 million subscribers rely on the AppDirect ecosystem of subscription marketplaces to power their innovation, growth, and success.
Desmarais is accountable for AppDirect's corporate vision and has guided the company through unprecedented growth and transformation over the past 14 years. Through multiple strategic acquisitions over the past few years, including the 2023 acquisitions of TBI and ADCom Solutions, Desmarais has created an entire ecosystem surrounding B2B commerce. Before co-founding AppDirect, Desmarais worked at Bain & Company as a management consultant focused on media and business services. He holds a bachelor’s degree with a double major in economics and political science from Amherst College.
33. Zachary Perret
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Plaid
Zachary Perret began his professional career 11 years ago. Today, he is the Co-Founder & CEO of Plaid, a data network that powers the fintech tools millions of people rely on to live a healthier financial life. They work with thousands of fintech companies like Venmo and SoFi, several of the Fortune 500, and many of the largest banks to make it easy for people to connect their financial accounts to the apps and services they want to use.
Plaid’s network covers 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada, UK and Europe. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company was founded in 2013 by Zach Perret and William Hockey. Perret and his cofounder William Hockey met as junior Bain consultants before founding Plaid in 2012. Perret graduated from Duke University with an undergraduate degree in chemistry and biology.
Plaid's Milestone
"Notably, 1 in 3 consumers with a US bank account have used Plaid to connect to the more than 8,000 apps and services in the Plaid network."
34. Joshua Motta
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Coalition
Joshua Motta is the CEO and Co-Founder of Coalition, the world's first Active Insurance provider designed to help prevent digital risk before it strikes. By combining comprehensive insurance coverage and cybersecurity tools, Coalition helps businesses manage and mitigate digital risks.
Prior to Coalition, Motta was the CXO and Head of Special Projects at Cloudflare, a $25 billion web infrastructure and security company. Before that, he served in roles at Goldman Sachs, the Central Intelligence Agency, and Microsoft, among others. Motta graduated from the University of Chicago.
Coalition's Milestone
"Recent, unique highlights and a recent key company milestone include the following—Coalition recently announced CoalitionAI, a generative artificial intelligence for brokers and businesses. Earlier this year, we launched Coalition Insurance Company (CIC), the first full-stack, Active Cyber Insurance carrier. We were also named to Inc.’s 2023 Best Workplaces List and Forbes' Fintech 50, 2023."
35. Solomon Amar
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, ALLSTARSIT
Solomon Amar is the Founder and CEO of ALLSTARSIT. He founded the company in 2004. ALLSTARSIT is an international outstaffing service provider that helps businesses recruit, pay, insure, and support top global talent with payroll, benefits, and more. The company specializes in software development services for clients across diverse industries such as cybersecurity, healthcare, fintech, telecommunications, media, and more. ALLSTARSIT operates development hubs across Central and Eastern Europe, Israel, the UAE, India, the Philippines, and LATAM.
Furthermore, the company maintains headquarters in San Francisco and has over 1,000 talented software engineers and tech specialists across all locations. Previously, Amar was a director of software quality assurance at NetApp. Before that, he served as a software automation team leader at Oracle. Earlier in his career, he worked with Bezeq as a software performance and load engineer. Amar earned an undergraduate degree in software engineering from Afeka Tel Aviv Academic College of Engineering.
Solomon Amar's Insight
"Reflecting on the establishment of my company in 2004, I take immense pride in the remarkable growth of ALLSTARSIT. We collaborated with top global tech firms, attracted the finest talent in the market, conquered various markets, achieved new milestones, and received multiple awards for being the best employer. Our mission has been clear: to bring talent together for global innovation. I owe this success to my exceptional team!"
36. Parker Conrad
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Rippling
Parker Conrad is the Co-Founder and CEO of Rippling, the first way for businesses to manage all of their HR, IT, and Finance — payroll, benefits, expenses, corporate cards, computers, apps, and more — in one unified workforce platform. By connecting every workforce system to a single source of truth for employee data, businesses can automate all of the manual work they normally need to do to make employee changes. Based in San Francisco, CA, Rippling has raised $700 million from the world’s top investors—including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Sequoia, and Bedrock.
Conrad began his career in 2003. Before joining Rippling, he was a co-founder and CEO at Zenefits. Before that, he was a president and head of product at SigFig. Earlier in his career, he worked with Amgen as a product manager. Conrad graduated from Harvard University with an undergraduate degree in chemistry.
Rippling Milestone
"Rippling has expanded globally and launched the world's first native global payroll system. This means you can now manage HR, IT, and Finance globally in one unified system. This enables you to onboard employees and contractors globally in 90 seconds, pay everyone in their local currency in minutes, and automate your global compliance work."
37. Daniel Yanisse
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Checkr
Daniel Yanisse began his professional career 11 years ago. Today, he is the Co-Founder & CEO of Checkr, a startup that provides either online access or an API that returns automatically generated background checks. Checkr uses the same data sources as traditional background check companies, but can usually turn it around a lot more quickly than traditional providers. Through Checkr’s advanced background check technology, companies can better understand the dynamics of the changing workforce, bring transparency and fairness to their hiring, and ultimately build a better future for workers.
Yanisse got his start in 2012 as a software engineer at Mogreet, before eventually rising to software engineer at deliv, his most recent position prior to joining Checkr. Yanisse graduated from EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) with an MS in microengineering and an undergraduate degree in microtechnique.
38. Raj Verma
Chief Executive Officer, SingleStore
Raj Verma, the CEO of SingleStore, has more than 25 years of global experience in enterprise software and scaling operations. Notably, Verma helped grow TIBCO software to over $1 billion revenue as CMO, EVP Global Sales, and COO. He was also COO at Aptus Software and Hortonworks. Verma holds a bachelor’s in Computer Science from BMS College of Engineering in Bangalore, India.
SingleStore delivers the world’s fastest distributed SQL database for real-time applications, SingleStoreDB. By combining transactional and analytical workloads, SingleStore eliminates performance bottlenecks and unnecessary data movement to support constantly growing, demanding workloads. Digital giants like Hulu, Uber and Comcast, and many more of the world’s leading SaaS providers, choose SingleStore to unleash the power of their data – supercharging exceptional, real-time data experiences for their customers.
SingleStore's Milestone
"In May, SingleStore launched SingleStore Kai™ for MongoDB, a new API that turbocharges real-time analytics on JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) and vector based similarity searches for MongoDB based AI applications — without the need for any query changes or data transformations.
SingleStore also recently launched SQrL (“squirrel”), a ChatGPT bot that helps anyone using SingleStoreDB discover answers regarding their own data in real-time. This bot can generate responses from a company’s custom data stored in SingleStore that was otherwise not used for training other AI bots."
39. Sujay Jadhav
Chief Executive Officer, Verana Health
Sujay Jadhav is the CEO at Verana Health, where he is leading the effort to
accelerate the company’s growth and sustainability by advancing clinical trial capabilities, data-as-a-service offerings, medical society partnerships, and data enrichment. Jadhav was appointed as CEO in August 2021 after serving as the Global Vice President of the Health Sciences Business Unit at Oracle, where he led the organization’s product and engineering teams.
Prior to Oracle, Jadhav was the CEO of cloud-based clinical research platform goBalto, where he oversaw the acquisition of the company by Oracle. Jadhav is also a former executive for the life sciences technology company Model N, where he helped oversee its transition to a public company. Jadhav holds an MBA from Harvard University and a bachelor’s in electronic
engineering from the University of South Australia.
Verana Health's Milestone
"In 2023, Verana Health launched a full suite of data-as-a-service modules, which enable cloud-based access to curated, de-identified real-world data (RWD) across three therapeutic areas: ophthalmology, neurology and urology. Verana Health’s data assets, called Qdata ® , are research-ready, fit-for-purpose data modules designed to confidently drive business insights and inform research outcomes. Qdata draw insights from electronic health record data from roughly 20,000 clinicians and approximately 90 million de-identified patients, through exclusive partnerships with three leading medical societies. By providing secure and easy access to this comprehensive, high-quality RWD, life sciences organizations are able to unlock insights across the entire drug and device development cycle to better understand the patient journey."
40. Tony Jamous
Chief Executive Officer & Founder, Oyster
Tony Jamous is the CEO and Co-Founder of Oyster, a global employment platform that aims to remove the barriers to remote work and distributed hiring. Shaped by his upbringing in Beirut, Lebanon during a violent civil war, Jamous is passionate about empowering talented individuals from emerging economies through access to global career opportunities.
Previously, Jamous was the CEO of CPaaS provider, Nexmo (now Vonage), before exiting in 2018 and launching Oyster with co-founder Jack Mardack in early 2020. With Oyster, Jamous hopes to make it easier for companies everywhere to hire people anywhere.
Oyster's Milestone
Oyster is a global employment platform that helps companies hire, pay, and care for global teams. In just three years after launching, Oyster received B Corporation certification (one of only 20 B Corp Unicorns in the world!) and released its 2nd Annual Global Impact Report to highlight the transformative effects its platform has made on the lives of knowledge workers in emerging markets. Additionally, in an effort to understand shifting priorities amid numerous external stressors that have contributed to a general sense of disillusionment among employees today, Oyster released its Employee Disillusionment Report to help companies relieve some of the pressures employees are facing. The company also announced Oyster Total Rewards, a suite of new solutions to help remote, hybrid, and distributed companies both design a compensation strategy and offer salary, equity, and benefits for teams worldwide.
41. Glen Tullman
Chief Executive Officer, Transcarent
Glen Tullman is the CEO of Transcarent, a healthcare company that makes it easy for people to access high-quality, affordable care. Through an integrated mobile or web platform, members can access EveryDay Care. For example, they can chat with a provider in less than 60 seconds, or receive additional support for complex care needs like cancer and behavioral health. Transcarent takes accountability for results – offering at-risk pricing models and transparent impact reporting to align incentives towards a measurably better experience, better health, and lower costs.
An industry veteran, Tullman began his career in 1982. Before joining Transcarent, he was a CEO at Livongo. Before that, he served as a CEO at Allscripts. Earlier in his career, he worked with CCC Information Services as a president. Tullman graduated from Bucknell University with an undergraduate degree in economics and psychology.
Transcarent's Milestone
"Transcarent is the One Place for Health and Care. With the acquisition of the leading AI-powered virtual care platform and care business of 98point6, Transcarent is the most integrated and comprehensive health and care solution in the market. The Transcarent Experience is inclusive of 98point6’s world-class, chat-based technology, provider ecosystem, and Transcarent’s existing integrated solution partnerships and Centers of Excellence. Since this acquisition, Transcarent’s 450+ employees support over 4 million Members across 400 clients nationwide."
42. Sean Roberts
Chief Executive Officer, Villa
Sean Roberts is the CEO of Villa, a company whose mission is to be the easiest, fastest, and most cost-efficient way to build homes. Villa's unique, tech-forward approach allows customers to design ADUs for their backyards; and has enabled many families to move closer together, while empowering homeowners to grow their home equity. Villa has also increased the amount of affordable housing available for low-income families through unique partnerships, including a recent project with Habitat for Humanity.
Prior to Villa, Roberts served as both COO and CFO at Orchard, a proptech company with vertically-integrated real estate brokerage, title/escrow, and mortgage offerings and innovative capital-enabled consumer offerings. Prior to Orchard, Roberts was an investor at TPG, a leading global private equity firm, where he focused primarily on investments in operationally-intensive real estate oriented businesses. He began his career as an investment banker in the Financial Institutions Group at Goldman Sachs. Roberts holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Commerce from Queen’s University in Canada.
Villa's Milestone
"During 2023, Villa launched proprietary lot configuration and design center tools that have helped hundreds of people to effortlessly and efficiently design homes online. Villa's unique, tech-forward approach allows customers to design ADUs for their backyards and has enabled many families to move closer together, while empowering homeowners to grow their home equity. Villa has also increased the amount of affordable housing available for low-income families through unique partnerships including a recent project with Habitat for Humanity. In the coming months, Villa will open new model homes in Saratoga, CA and San Diego, CA"
43. Chris Mansi
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Viz.ai
Chris Mansi began his professional career 14 years ago. Today, he is the CEO and Co-Founder of Viz.ai, the pioneer in the use of AI algorithms and machine learning to increase the speed of diagnosis and care, covering more than 220 million lives across 1,400+ hospitals and health systems in the U.S. and Europe. The AI-powered Viz.ai Platform is an intelligent care coordination solution that identifies more patients with a particular disease, informs critical decisions at the point of care, and optimizes care pathways and helps improve outcomes.
Notably, Mansi got his start in 2009 as a medical doctor at NHS. He eventually rose to CEO at EDUSURG LTD, his most recent position prior to joining Viz.ai. Mansi graduated from Stanford University with an MBA and from the University of Cambridge with an MA in cognitive science and an MBBS.
Viz.ai's Milestone
"Viz.ai has received recognition for innovation and impact. In 2023, the company received a Gold Edison Award for Viz Aneurysm. Viz.ai was a finalist in 2022 for the Prix Galien for best digital health solution - and is currently a finalist for 2023. It was also featured in CB Insights' 2022 list of the 150 most promising digital health startups in the world, named one of Fierce Medtech’s “Fierce 15” Companies of 2022, and included in Forbes 2021 Next Billion-Dollar Startups list of the 25 fastest-growing venture-backed startups, and Forbes AI 50 list for four years."
44. Eren Bali
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Carbon Health
Eren Bali is the Co-Founder and CEO of Carbon Health. He founded the company in 2015. Carbon Health is a primary care provider combining brick-and-mortar clinics with virtual services. The company operates 100 clinics in 16 states, along with Reno, Nevada, Seattle, Washington, New York City and several cities in California. Furthermore, Carbon Health provides virtual care in 35 states – plus Washington, DC.
Previously, Bali was a founding engineer at speeddate.com. Before that, he served as a CEO and cofounder at Knowband. Earlier in his career, he worked with Gunlukbasin.com as a front-end developer. Bali earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics and computer engineering from Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi / Middle East Technical University.
Carbon Health's Milestone
"We recently launched AI charting in our EHR (electronic health records system) across all clinics and providers. This was in direct response to feedback from providers who wanted to remove the administrative burden of notetaking."
45. Lennie Sliwinski
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Trusted Health
Lennie Sliwinski is the Co-Founder and CEO of Trusted Health, the leading labor marketplace and workforce management platform for the healthcare industry. The company was founded in 2017 with a focus on the largest profession in healthcare: nursing. Since then, they've taken a process that has been dominated by recruiters and phone calls and turned that into a fully digital experience, connecting nurses directly to job opportunities and facilitating everything that needs to happen in between—including handling benefits, payroll, onboarding, and compliance.
Notably, Trusted Health’s platform provides full employer-of-record services for employers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Sliwinski began his career in 2011. Before joining Trusted Health, he was a co-founder at CabMe. Before that, he served as an account manager at Adlucent. Earlier in his career, he worked with Hired, Inc. as a director of marketing. Sliwinski graduated from Cornell Law School with a JD in business law and regulation and from Bowling Green State University with an undergraduate degree in business administration.
Trusted Health's Milestone
"We were recently featured on SIA's annual “Largest Staffing Firms in the United States” report. They ranked Trusted as the 52nd largest staffing company in the US, across all industries (not just healthcare), making us one of the fastest growing staffing firms in the US. You could also mention that as part of our work with Mercy Health on Mercy Works On Demand –- an app and online platform that allows the health system's full- and part-time nurses, as well as other local nurses, to easily pick up shifts pushed out by the 40+ hospitals within the system – we recently rolled out an AI-powered shift pricing algorithm in the app. This is a first of its kind of application of AI to healthcare staffing, and uses our proprietary AI to set hourly shift rates based on market demand and historical nurse behavior on the platform. It has saved Mercy millions on labor costs, improved nurse retention and cut down on the amount of time they spend on staffing and scheduling."
46. Evan Reiser
CEO & Co-Founder, Abnormal Security
Evan Reiser is the CEO of Abnormal Security, which he launched alongside Sanjay Jeyakumar in 2018. An expert in applied machine learning solutions, Reiser has over a decade of operational experience building enterprise behavioral profiling technologies. Prior to starting Abnormal, Reiser led product management and machine learning teams for the advertising business at Twitter. He has also co-founded several other successful companies, including Bloomspot, acquired by JPMorgan Chase, and AdStack, acquired by TellApart. Reiser started his career at Eastman Kodak doing research and development in machine learning for intelligence applications. He holds a BS in Computer Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Abnormal Security provides the leading behavioral AI-based email security platform that leverages machine learning to stop sophisticated inbound email attacks and dangerous email platform attacks that evade traditional solutions. The anomaly detection engine leverages identity and context to analyze the risk of every cloud email event, preventing inbound email attacks, detecting compromised accounts, and remediating emails and messages in milliseconds—all while providing visibility into configuration drifts across your environment. Customers can deploy Abnormal in minutes with an API integration for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace and experience the full value of the platform instantly, with additional protection available for Slack, Teams, and Zoom.
Abnormal Security Milestone
"With cybercriminals becoming increasingly advanced in their attack techniques, Abnormal has been focused on helping its customers stay protected against an evolving threat landscape. As the rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT enables threat actors to scale sophisticated email attacks, Abnormal is increasingly focused on using its behavioral AI platform to detect and stop AI-generated attacks. It recently announced a new capability that can help determine when email threats, including BEC and other socially-engineered attacks, have likely been created using generative AI tools."
47. Mary Laughton
President & Chief Executive Officer, Athleta
Mary Laughton began her professional career 24 years ago. Today, she is the President and CEO of Athleta. They believe that being fit and active makes life richer and bigger than it could possibly be otherwise. And they’re always looking for people who share their passion for leading an active lifestyle, growing personally as well as professionally, and creating game-changing products and experiences. Moreover, Athleta is a certified B Corp, which means they put people and planet right up there with profit – and they’re committed to using business as a force for good.
Laughton got her start in 1999 as a business analyst at McKinsey & Company. From there, she went on to Nike, before eventually rising to EVP of omni retail at SEPHORA, her most recent position prior to joining Athleta. Laughton graduated from Harvard Business School with an MBA in general management and from Indiana University Bloomington with an undergraduate degree in accounting and finance.
48. Frank Gibeau
Chief Executive Officer, Zynga
Frank Gibeau is the CEO of Zynga. In this role, which he assumed in 2016, he has led the company’s turnaround and transition to rapid growth. Impressively, Zynga’s market cap during Gibeau’s tenure as CEO has nearly tripled – in large part, due to optimizing live services and fortifying the company’s portfolio of wildly popular franchises. Under Gibeau’s leadership, Zynga has also acquired a pipeline of games, including global hits Empires & Puzzles and Merge Dragons!. While at the helm, Gibeau’s company has also secured game development partnerships with some of the world’s most iconic brands and entertainment franchises such as Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, and Star Wars.
Gibeau spent more than two decades at Electronic Arts where he held a number of influential business and product leadership roles. Most recently, he served as the EVP of EA Mobile, where he led strategy, product development and publishing for the company’s fast-growing mobile games business. Before that, Gibeau was President of EA Labels from 2011 to 2013. Earlier, he acted as EA’s EVP and GM of The Americas, where he was directly responsible for a publishing operation that accounted for more than $1.5 billion of EA’s annual revenue. Gibeau also serves as a member of the Yeti Board of Directors. He received a BS in Business Administration from the University of Southern California and an MBA from Santa Clara University.
49. Sanjit Biswas
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Samsara
Sanjit Biswas is the CEO and Co-Founder of Samsara, the pioneer of the Connected Operations™ Cloud, which is a platform that enables organizations that depend on physical operations to harness Internet of Things (IoT) data to develop actionable insights and improve their operations. With tens of thousands of customers across North America and Europe, Samsara is a proud technology partner to the people who keep their global economy running. Biswas co-founded the company with the mission to increase the safety, efficiency, and sustainability of the operations that power the global economy.
Prior to Samsara, Biswas was the CEO and co-founder of Meraki, one of the most successful networking companies of the past decade. Biswas has been recognized as an MIT Technology Review “Innovator Under 35” honoree, a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, Glassdoor’s 2018 Top CEO, one of Goldman Sachs 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs, and one of The Software Report’s top 50 SaaS CEOs. Biswas holds a BS in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford and an SM in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.
50. Bill Staples
Chief Executive Officer & Member of Board of Directors, New Relic
Bill Staples is the CEO of New Relic, where he is responsible for leading the company into the future in support of its customers, users, and their success. A product and engineering leader his entire career, Staples brings his passion for developers, technology, and innovation to his role at New Relic. Notably, Staples is an execution-focused leader who loves to build and scale cloud-based businesses to deliver increasing value to customers and users.
Previously, Staples was a VP of experience cloud at Adobe. Earlier in his career, he worked with Microsoft as a corporate VP of the azure application platform. Staples has an undergraduate degree in medical laboratory science from the University of Utah.
