Shirish Nadkarni is a serial entrepreneur with proven success in creating multiple consumer businesses that have scaled to tens of millions of users worldwide. Shirish was the co-founder of Livemocha, the world’s largest language learning site with 15+ million registered members from over 200 countries. Livemocha was acquired by RosettaStone in 2013. Prior to Livemocha, Shirish was the founder of TeamOn Systems, a mobile wireless e-mail pioneer that was acquired by Research in Motion in 2002. The TeamOn technology served as the core foundation for Blackberry Internet E-mail which serviced over 50 million BlackBerry users at its peak. Shirish is the author of an award winning book - “From Startup to Exit - An Insider’s Guide to Launching and Scaling Your Tech Business”.

“From Startup to Exit” shares the knowledge that pioneering, serial entrepreneur Shirish Nadkarni has gained from over two decades of success, detailing the practical aspects of startup formation from founding, funding, management, and finding an exit.

Chief Customer Officer at Freshworks post-acquisition (Jan 2020)of AnsweriQ by Freshworks.

Founder & CEO of AnswerIQ (2017) , a Seattle-based artificial intelligence company in the customer service automation space. Prior to AnswerIQ, I was the CEO of Aditi Technologies (2007-2016), a leading cloud services provider, led the company to a successful sale to Symphony Teleca, a PE firm. In short succession, I was part of another transaction of Symphony Teleca to Harman International in Jan 2015.

Previously, I was at Microsoft as the General Manager of the Independent Software Vendors (ISV) business and spent 12 years (1994-2006) in Microsoft in various leadership roles in sales, marketing, and program management.

I am actively involved with the software community and startups in Seattle, I was currently the President of Tie Seattle from 2015-2017 and then served on the board. I served on the board of the Washington Technology Association (WTIA) from 2004 to 2012 and on the advisory board of several startups in Seattle.

Sonu Aggarwal is a technology visionary, leader, and serial entrepreneur. 

He was the founding CEO of Unify Square, whose cloud software-enabled Fortune-500-scale enterprises to run robust modern communications using Skype, Teams, and Zoom. Unify Square was just sold in June 2021 to Unisys for $152.5M.   

After his B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he went on to found 3 enterprise software companies – Flash, Cordant, and Unify Square.   At Flash, he invented enterprise Instant Messaging, and sold the company to Microsoft – Flash’s technology was version 1 of the messaging technology that has since evolved into Microsoft Teams. Sonu intends to someday start a 4th startup delivering novel applications of Artificial Intelligence.

Vetri Vellore is a mission-driven, serial entrepreneur with two successful exits (Ally.io acquired by Microsoft and Chronus acquired by private equity). Passionate about building world-class products and teams, to bring purpose, happiness and enable everyone to achieve more.

Launched Ally.io, an OKR-based, Business Execution Platform in 2018. In under 3 years, grew to 1,000 customers in over 80 countries and a team of 250+ amazing people. Raised $76m in funding including 3 rounds in just one year, from top-tier VCs including Accel, Addition, GreenOaks, Tiger Global, and Vulcan Capital.

Previous to Ally.io, bootstrapped Chronus and built a highly successful B2B SaaS Mentoring solution that is used enterprises including GE, Amazon and Coca Cola. Chronus was acquired by a private equity firm and continue to grow strongly.

Before Chronus and Ally.io, Vetri turned around $200M+ Systems Management enterprise software business at Microsoft. Lead the Visual Studio platform team and managed the partner ecosystem. Shipped several v1 and award-winning products over the 14-year tenure at Microsoft

Sona Venkat is an experienced technology executive who has held senior leadership roles at Comcast, Microsoft, SAP and Oracle. Currently, as Vice President, Engineering and Head of Cloud Product and Customer Success at Comcast, Sona helps drive Comcast’s cloud vision, product management, financial operations, and customer success.  

Sona was previously General Manager, Business Development at Microsoft and a key member of the leadership team responsible for the cloud transition and growth of Microsoft’s Business Applications and Business Intelligence portfolio to a multi-billion-dollar cloud business. 

Sona spent over 13 years at SAP across a variety of cross functional leadership roles including most recently, as SVP of Corporate Strategy and Head of Market Intelligence where she was was instrumental in defining, evangelizing, and rolling out SAP’s cloud strategy globally as well as shaping its future product and technology portfolio. While at SAP, Sona was part of the team that helped launch a six-year high school in Queens, N.Y to help develop the next generation of talent in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. 

Sona holds an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University and a BBA in International Business, magna cum laude, from the George Washington University. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two sons.