Funding & Founding [the future] of cloud

Mark Ghermezian is a serial entrepreneur and successful investor with 20+ years of experience in founding, building, and investing in early-stage SaaS startups. Before becoming the Founder and General Partner at m]x[v Capital, Mark co-founded Braze (BRZE) and led the company as it’s founding CEO, pioneering a new category from ideation to IPO (Braze IPO’d in November 2021). As an angel investor, Mark was an early investor in companies such as Nutanix (IPO), Lattice, Thoughtspot, Outreach, Rubrik, Wag (IPO) and Riskified (IPO), along with 50 other investments, largely focused on SaaS. Experiencing several IPOs, unicorns, and successful exits. At m]x[v Capital, Mark is proud to be a mentor to his founders and entrepreneurs, offering his experience and expertise to help their companies find the same success.

Jay Estefani Castillo is a Founding Principal at m]x[v, having helped launch m]x[v she has built the foundation for fund operations and drives the deal flow engine, founder support, industry research, and the investment team. An aspiring futurist, Jay approaches investing and building with the lens of contributing to a tech-enabled future that powers tomorrow's economy and cultural behaviors. As a master generalist, she has spent her career building new products, teams, and running enterprise-wide initiatives in multiple departments for companies such as Bridgewater Associates and WeWork. Curiosity and intensity drive her day-to-day as she focuses on finding exceptional founders and ideas to invest in, while playing a key role in helping founders think through their next steps.

Born to Iranian immigrants (who flee'd from the 1979 Iranian Revolution), Eli spent his early years in a small town in Alberta, Canada, and has been in NYC since. Prior to receiving his business/finance degree, he spent 2 year studying abroad. Soon thereafter, the beginning of Eli's career has now spanned across several industries including Commercial Real Estate, Private Equity, Banking, Startups, and now Venture Capital.

Issac studied Accounting at FDU keeping a 4.0 GPA. After graduating, he interned at PWC and soon after was an Analyst at Eastern Union where his main responsibilities were underwrite real estate deals and assist in raising capital for those deals. He also spent time as an Analyst at a family office focusing on purchases of bankrupt companies. He also scrutinized companies financials and manufacturing process to determine wether to purchase or not.

Vic has been in New York for almost 5 years and has focused on the start-up and venture capital world. Prior to moving to the east coast, she dedicated her time at the Girl Scouts of Hawai'i Council and has experience in sales, operations, and customer success in California. Tending to live life out-of-the-box, she graduated with her Bachelor's of Science in Communications from Arizona State University; Her graduation was the first time she stepped foot on campus as she drove from California just for the ceremony. In her career, the most self-rewarding responsibilities have been in business ops and making things happen "behind the scenes". On her off time, Vic enjoys getting lost in books, practicing multiple instruments, picking up new DIY hobbies, and spending time with her two rescue cats!

Sumedh spends most of his time applying game theoretic frameworks to business situations of strategic importance. He has experience consulting for multiple startups, SMB businesses as well as UNDP’s Early Warning / Early Action Bureau on the same. More recently, he has been focused on formulating operational & investment strategies for alternative investment (PE / VC) funds. Sumedh is also a very staunch disciple of the Graham-Dodd value investing tradition & (rather naturally) has found shelter at Columbia’s Heilbrunn Center. Prior to joining Columbia, Sumedh was a Sys-test engineer at Arista networks (NYSE: ANET) where he led Bangalore team's CloudEOS platform testing efforts.