DEEP Startup
Ecosystem Conference

Seth started the Foundry Group together with Techcelerator Founder Brad Feld. They knew each other from Brad’s previous fund Mobius Ventures and are investing in technology companies throughout the US and Canada. His career spans venture capital investing as well as operational, transactional and advisory roles at both public and private companies.

Bernhard is Head of the Innovation Accelerator at the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). The WFP Innovation Accelerator identifies, nurtures and scales disruptive startups and entrepreneurs that accelerate progress towards zero hunger. Previously, Bernhard co-founded the ShareTheMeal app, built up WFP’s Business Innovation team and worked as Project Leader at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) for global tech and industrial goods companies.

Entrepreneur with 13 years of experience in community building, Lais led the development of entrepreneurial communities across every continent. From leading 2000 volunteers across Argentina, Chile and Uruguay as the president of a non-profit organization, to selecting and training community leaders across Latam, Africa, APAC for Startup Grind and working for governments and innovation agencies in 75+ ecosystems as part of Startup Genome’s executive team.

Erin works regularly to support entrepreneurship in the Upstate, both as Director of the VentureSouth Spartanburg angel investor group and as the leader of the Economic and Entrepreneurial Vitality focus area for Ten at the Top.

Pedro is a founder, CEO and jack of all trades at darwinLabs, a specialized IT consulting company focused on #lowcode and out systems. He is also a co-founder at Beta-i, a non-profit organization for the promotion of entrepreneurship. Pedro has extensive experience in the consulting, financial services, telecom, internet and mobile marketing industries.

Dominik is Innovation Consultant, Design Thinking Coach and Workshop Facilitator with 8+ years of international experience. Previously, Dominik worked as Innovation Manager for the European Institute of Innovation and Technology’s digital technology branch (EIT Digital). Additionally, he ran intrapreneurship and innovation programs at large international corporations and organizations such as Airbus, Celfocus, Deutsche Telekom, SAP and others.

Aneth is a Hub Network Community Manager at Tech Entrepreneurship Initiative ‘Make-IT in Africa’ implemented by GIZ. Aneth is passionate about entrepreneurship and ecosystem building having been involved in various entrepreneurship projects. Previously, Aneth led the Reach for Change incubator program in Rwanda. For the past 3 years, Aneth has supported the 2nd year seminar course as a teaching assistant at Carnegie Mellon University Africa.

Anna is a trained systemic consultant and heads the Berlin team of the Conscious Innovation consultancy Mandalah. She has led various national and international projects with corporations, public institutions and NGOs alike. She also is the co-founder of Welana, a social business importing fabrics from Ethiopia.

Eric is part of the founding team at Cintrifuse. His background combines corporate marketing for one of the world’s most-beloved brands (the Walt Disney Company) with the hand-to-hand combat that comes with being on the leadership team of several productive small businesses.

Marketing, technology, operations, and startup development professional with specialties in data analytics, growth, operations management, digital strategy, investor relations, product management, business development, ecosystem development, user/market research, data analytics, operations digitization, & product launch. His past clients include Startupbootcamp, Touch Surgery, Hackster.io, Incident gTar, Car and Driver Magazine, Noisebridge, Asa, among many others.

Stefano is a Lecturer of Economics of the European Union at Bocconi University (Italy) and at University of Auckland (New Zealand), and Lecturer of EU competition policy at ISPI (Italy). He is also a board member of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in New Zealand and of the NZ European Business Council. He is also an 'angel investor' in love with clear-cut differentiation and scalability.

Michaela is a Startup Coach at the Technical University of Munich. She supports research projects in Horizon 2020 and helps entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to the market.

Stephan is an Investment Partner at TS Ventures and Director Founders Education at the Founders Foundation. Prior to that, he has led the startup units at Microsoft in Germany and Europe and was co-founder of the Microsoft Accelerator in Berlin. He manages a portfolio of 20 angel investments in Germany, Europe and the US with a focus on AdTech, Marketplaces, SaaS and Climate Tech. 

Zane is the head of marketing and communications at Startup Wise Guys. She is also the founder and co-owner of Lude (Z2B Ltd). Prior to that, Zane was a consultant at Hauska & Partner.

Aru runs his own data science consultancy called Arulytics, and is the Director of Data Science at Willapay, a fintech startup based in Stockholm. Previously, he has been building and scaling analytics and data science functions at HiQ, Springworks and Truecaller in Stockholm. He also has experience working as an Analyst for the Search team at Yahoo in London, and at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.

Natalie is a sociologist and researcher on early-stage entrepreneurship in Europe. For the last five years, she has been conducting fieldwork with entrepreneurs and community builders for the project, The Startup City. Her research and experience in the startup ecosystem spans 27 different countries on nearly all continents.