Kate Beardsley is a venture capitalist, angel investor, and business strategist. She is Managing Partner at Upslope Ventures (Galvanize Ventures), she also serves on the Board Vice-Chair of Rocky Mountain Venture Capital Association and is a board member at the Rockies Venture Club.

Kate is also an active member of the Colorado Technology Community, and prior to joining Upslope, she started funds for Lerer Hippeau and did business strategy for Martha Stewart. Kate serves as a mentor for both TechStars and Galvanize; she has appeared on CNBC and Fox News, and she has been featured on CNN and...

Sammy Abdullah is the Founder and Managing Partner of Blossom Street Ventures, which is also known as the anti-VC. Blossom Street Ventures focuses on companies with $2 million to $20 million of run-rate revenue, and year over year growth of 50% plus. They invest anywhere in the US or Canada and they prefer leading one to 10 million series A or B rounds, but can also follow. BSV does traditional growth rounds, inside rounds, recaps, secondaries, and restructings. And unlike a lot of other VCs, they like hearing from founders directly.

Here’s a glimpse of what...

Stephanie Sims is a Capital Strategist who teaches founders how to tell economic stories that make dollars and cents. She is the founder of Finance Ability, a boutique consulting firm focused on helping entrepreneurs get the money they need to grow their business. Stephanie founded Finance-Ability after her more than two decades of experience working on both Wall Street and Main Street.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn

• Stephanie Sims plays the speed round
• Stephanie talks about why she couldn’t refuse the opportunity to work in Paris and how it...

Jeff Erickson is an Entrepreneur, Founder, CEO, and Director of Business Development at Carta, a leading software company that helps companies, investors, and employees manage their equity. 

Jeff founded a successful consumer goods company that was ranked number 138 on the Inc. 500 List of Fastest-Growing Companies. Prior to that, Jeff was a partner at Beanstalk Partners where he led the sales and business development activities, and also served as the Business Development Director for a venture-backed tech startup, where he developed a company's channel partner program. 

Jeff has...

Courtney Williams is the Co-Founder and CEO of Emagine Solutions Technology. She leads the company's business development, customer care, and operations. Courtney has over 12 years of experience leading customer metrics and analysis in Fortune 500 companies. She has extensive international marketing experience in Africa and Latin America, and has served on the board of the Open Windows Foundation in Guatemala, and has volunteered for Mobile Meals of Southern Arizona. 

Courtney is a Marketing graduate from the University of Arizona, Eller College of Management and received her MBA from...

Chris Ronzio is the Founder and CEO of Trainual, a leading SaaS company that helps fast-growing businesses automate their onboarding and training by documenting every process policy and procedure in one simple, searchable, teachable system. 

Chris helped hundreds of entrepreneurs create scalable systems and processes with his consulting firm that he started in 2013, called Organized Chaos. Chris developed a passion for helping business leaders find the time to do more of what they love by providing a way to document and delegate what they do. 

As a serial entrepreneur and startup...

Geri Stengel is the President of Ventureneer, a company that does brand research, training, and educational content on and for entrepreneurs. The company is best known for producing the American Express’ State of Women-Owned Business Report. They have also worked with renowned clients such as CNBC, Del, NYC SBS, the National Women's Business Council, QuickBooks, and the Tory Burch Foundation.

Geri has a column in Forbes about women entrepreneurship, and she believes that the entrepreneurial world is at a moment of meaningful change with women and minorities leading that change.

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Ethan Austin is a two-time founder, Angel Investor and currently the Managing Director of the Western Union accelerator powered by TechStars. 

Prior to joining TechStars, Ethan pioneered the medical crowdfunding space as a co-founder of GiveForward, the world's first medical crowdfunding platform. After going through the TechStars program himself in 2010, GiveForward raised $7 million in funding. 

The GiveForward platform went on to help families raise 200 million for their loved ones' out-of-pocket medical expenses, and help change the way people care for each other during life's...

Ji Mi Choi is the Associate Vice President leading entrepreneurship and innovation at Arizona State University. 

She uses her 20+ years of expertise in higher education at the intersection of entrepreneurial and public-private partnerships. Prior to ASU, she served in various fast-paced and evolving roles in New York University and she has also served at the world-renowned Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Ji Mi has served in a leadership role for the United Nations Development Programme and in various capacities for numerous start-up organizations, both not-for-profit and...

Leib Bolel is the President and CEO of the Arizona Israel Technology Alliance where he oversees the facilitation of growth in bilateral trade between the technology communities of Arizona and Israel across the spectrum of the technology sector. He is also a Venture Partner at Grayhawk Capital with over a decade of experience in the area of new business development, startups, marketing, funding acquisition, and general operations management. He is a recipient of the Phoenix Business Journal’s 40 under 40, and one of two Valley leaders selected to the National List of Influential Young...