Check in
March 24th
Like-minded people venturing outside the bubble.
MIAMI ANIMO SUMMIT BRINGS TOGETHER A CURATED GROUP OF LEADING VENTURE CAPITALISTS AND FOUNDERS.
AS A FRIEND OF OUR FIRM, YOU'RE INVITED TO JOIN THE +40 LOCAL STARTUPS AND +20 VCs THAT WILL BE IN TOWN FOR AN AFTERNOON TOGETHER.
ASIDE FROM WORLD-CLASS SPEAKERS AND A ROOFTOP HAPPY HOUR, THE CORE IS ALWAYS THE PEOPLE YOU MEET.
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When?
Friday, March 24th
@ 2.00 pm. ET
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Where?
Frank Gehry’s stunning
New World CenterMiami Beach
Agenda
New World Symphony performance
Fireside chats
Happy hour with a view
Fireside chat #1
Scaling in uncertain times
Andrew Parker
(Papa)
Throughout his career, Andrew Parker has focused on health care innovation that brings care to the consumer. In late 2017, Andrew founded Papa, a curated platform of companionship and support for older adults and families.
He started the company to support his own grandfather, his “papa,” and the company has since scaled to provide social support nationally through Medicare Advantage, managed Medicaid, and employer benefits. Prior to Papa, Andrew was part of the founding team of MDLIVE where he held several roles in sales, product, and strategy. He was named one of Goldman Sachs’ Most Exceptional Entrepreneurs of 2022 and Fortune’s 10 Innovators Shaping the Future of Healthcare on its inaugural list.
Andrew resides in Miami, Florida with his girlfriend Romi and dog Chewie.
Auston Bunsen
(QuickNode)
Auston is a web developer and entrepreneur. He has been fortunate enough to work on things used by millions of people over the last 12 years of his career with products like 1Sale.com, Reviewed.com, and other personal projects.
He is one of the four co-founders of QuickNode, where they are building out the future of the internet. He also spend his free time organizing an awesome conference with his wife called SuperConf and help founders succeed whenever he can.
His work has been featured in the NY Times, Forbes, Business Insider, Miami Herald, FastCo, Entrepreneur, TechCrunch and more. He is also an active angel investor - if you'd like some of his money - go here.
Auston really enjoys building things, shooting photos, writing and helping people. You can reach out to him via email or telegram.
Sari Azout
(Sublime)
Sari is the founder of Sublime, a social bookmarking tool reimagining the Internet as a tool for thought. Previously, she was a partner at Level Ventures and occasionally publishes her writing at sariazout.substack.com
Fireside chat #2
Investing in a downturn
Niko Bonatsos
(General Catalyst)
Niko Bonatsos is a managing director at the venture firm General Catalyst, partnering with founders from seed to growth stage and beyond to build companies that withstand the test of time. Niko focuses his investment strategy on finding first-time technology founders with strong product instincts, a robust appetite for learning, and a desire to create innovations with the potential to benefit millions. Niko is currently obsessed with partnering with young technical founders who are building products for themselves.
Niko’s portfolio of investments includes: Audius, Bounce, Celo, ClassDojo, Collective, Cover, Discord, Dubsmash (acquired by Reddit), Ecologi, Jadu, Hive, Livongo [acquired by Teladoc (NYSE: TDOC)], Medely, Microverse, Numerade, Paribus (acquired by CapitalOne), Remote, Saturn, Seafair, Sleeper, Snap (NYSE: SNAP), Superplay, Tempus Ex, Wag!, and ZestWorld, among others.
Prior to joining General Catalyst, Niko attended Stanford University as a Fulbright Scholar earning an MS in Management Science and Engineering. He has studied in several countries, earning additional degrees in Manufacturing Engineering & Management and Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and worked as a part of the R&D team for Yokogawa Electric Corporation in Japan.
Ben Ling
(Bling Capital)
Ben is the Founder and General Partner of Bling Capital. He has backed 19 "unicorn" billion dollar companies, with the best yet to come.
Previously, Ben was a General Partner at Khosla Ventures, where he focused on consumer, Internet, mobile, marketplace, SaaS and consumer health businesses. There, he led investments in Wattpad, Tapingo, Gitlab, True Accord, Webflow, among many others.
Previously, Ben served in senior operating roles at Google, YouTube and Facebook. He also is an active angel investor with early stakes in Airtable, Lyft, Square, Palantir, Quora, Gusto, Udemy and others.
While at Google, he served as Senior Director of Search and Local Business Products, which included overseeing Google Images, Videos, Books, News and Finance. At YouTube, Ben was Senior Director of Partnerships and Platform, where he was responsible for music, movies, sports and news, as well as mobile, television and API partnerships. In his first role at Google, he was the founder and general manager of Google’s commerce group, which includes Google Wallet and Google Shopping.
At Facebook, Ben was the first director of the Facebook platform and oversaw the development of the company’s developer ecosystem. He also led product, marketing, developer operations and partner solutions. Ben played a crucial role in developing Facebook Connect, which helped grow Facebook across the web.
Ben holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS) from UC Berkeley, and a M.S. and PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University. Ben is a Department of Defense fellow and a recipient of UC Berkeley’s Bechtel Achievement Award, given to the top graduating senior from the College of Engineering.
Mar Hershenson
(Pear VC)
Mar Hershenson is a co-founder and Managing Partner at Pear VC, a seed-stage venture firm in Palo Alto backing companies like Guardant Health (NASDAQ: GH), Doordash (NYSE: DASH), Gusto, and Branch. Mar has been recognized in the Midas List of Top Tech Investors in 2021 and 2022.
After earning a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, Mar developed a groundbreaking technique of optimizing the design of analog semiconductors. Since then, she has accrued over 13 years of founder experience, co-founding three startups in mobile/ecommerce, enterprise software and semiconductor industries and has registered 14 separate patents.
Mar has received many awards throughout her career. Among them, the renowned T35 Young Innovator Award by MIT (for her technical work), and the prestigious Marie R. Pistilli Women in EDA Achievement Award in 2010 (for her work in entrepreneurship).
Mar currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Harvey Mudd College and on the Advisory Council of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University. Mar is a founder of Equity Summit, the premier conference for connecting URM Venture Capital GPs to LPs, and an initial founding member of All Raise.
About ANIMO
With a profound PEOPLE-FIRST approach, ANIMO is a seed-only firm with ~$140m AUM across two funds.
We lead PRE-SEED & SEED rounds IN THE US.
