Vytas is a seasoned and respected leader, innovator, and mentor with over 25 years of experience leading advanced technology R&D in many DeepTech fields.  With a core focus on AI and autonomous robotics, Vytas has also led R&D teams in synthetic biology, computational chemistry, bioinformatics, mechatronics, aerospace, quantum computing, and more.  He has  founded and provided leadership to startups at all stages from slide-deck concept, through hyperbolic growth, all the way to IPO.  Vytas also founded and ran a very successful AI and Robotics R&D lab at NASA Ames.

Currently Vytas is leading his own technology consulting business, supporting companies by helping them to take advantage of emerging technologies, exploring new techno-commercial opportunities, pursuing private and government funding, providing thought partnership with company leadership, and supporting technical due diligence for investors.  

Mentoring areas: pitch training, go to market strategy, business models.

Jonathan  Baer is the Managing Partner at StoneHearth Ventures (formerly called Threshold Ventures), a venture startup and advisory firm that he founded in 2000.  Based in Silicon Valley, he is the co-author of Decoding Silicon Valley: The Insider’s Guide. He is a self-described recovering venture capitalist.  Previously he was a General Partner at a pioneering Sand Hill Road venture capital firm.  

Mentoring areas: Sales operations, financial modeling, and business strategy. 

Vaida Brusokaite is a seasoned leader with extensive experience in global sales operations, having successfully built and managed teams across Americas, EMEA, and Asia. She specializes in driving strategic growth through process automation and innovative solutions.With a strong foundation in finance and management consulting, Vaida has delivered impactful projects for startups, FTSE100 companies, and government advisory bodies.Vaida is passionate about empowering others to succeed, leveraging her leadership, creativity, and analytical skills to inspire teams and foster meaningful business transformations.

Paul is the partner for startup operations at Kingson Capital in San Francisco. He is a highly experienced mentor who has worked with companies from all around the world. He has developed and presented bootcamps and training programs to many hundreds of companies. He is currently active with venture fund advisory, incubator and accelerator programs, content development and mentoring activities for companies and venture funds around the world. As the former general manager of a co-working space in San Francisco, he has seen all there is to see in the start-up world and he is always eager to share his depth and breadth of experience. An engineer by training and an internationally recognized authority on intellectual property issues, he brings an eminently practical mindset to helping companies achieve and exceed their growth ambitions.

Simon is a founder driven by a passion for building from 0 to 1, spanning from startups to leading venture capital for 500 Global in Canada and a16z in the US. The two startups Simon has founded and exited include BRNT, a cannabis tech play modernizing cannabis consumption and dosing, as well as KnightOwl, a DevOps security library for GraphQL. He’s currently building Astra Studios, an edtech platform helping tech founders around the world build repeatable sales and close their next round faster through individualized mentorship and coaching.

Simon’s expertise and passion when it comes to mentorship are all around bringing new products to life, building a high performing team to help those same products scale, and fundraising.

Girts Graudins is a Latvian-American technology entrepreneur. He has been building and running engineering teams at Silicon Valley startups for 15+ years, with two successful exits – most recently from Twilio, where he built and scaled the video platform.

Girts is the founder of Baltic Way LLC, a consultancy advising ambitious Baltic startups scaling in the US. He is an active investor in the Baltic early stage startup ecosystem as a Venture Partner at Change Ventures, and as an Investment Committee member at BADideas.fund.

Gerald Kasulis is a Director at Nord Security, the world’s leading cybersecurity company, which gave birth to highly recognized global brands such as NordVPN, NordPass, NordLayer, and NordStellar. For the past 2 years he was responsible for growing Nord Security’s business operations in North America. Kasulis is currently responsible for the market growth for the newly released cyber threat intelligence solution NordStellar.

Gerald has a vast, over a decade experience in business development, consultancy & operations in cyber security industry, sales & channel deployment strategies as well as a deep expertise in sales engineering for software solutions, scaling startups and tech businesses.

Mentoring areas: Human Resources, DEIB, Cross-cultural training for organizations, and Network Referral Services.

Solveiga Jaskunas’s extensive experience as a Human Resource consultant and connector in Lithuania and the U.S. adds value to organizations expanding into new markets. She partners with business leaders to plan and execute short- and long-term HR solutions. Based near Washington DC, she has worked for small and medium-sized non-profit and for-profit organizations in the U.S. and overseas, in a variety of industries, including education, international development, consulting, retail, associations, and start-ups.

Additionally, she provides comprehensive training solutions and mentoring programs to help all employees thrive in our quickly evolving intercultural business climate.

Mentoring Areas: Healthcare and life science product development, market assessment, capital formation. Product launch planning. Board governance & investor syndication.

Garrett Vygantas, MD, MBA is Founder & Managing Partner of Riverine Ventures, a life science and healthcare dedicated venture capital firm. Trained as a physician and an experienced entrepreneur, Garrett provides strategic direction and valuable clinical and commercial networks as a Board Member or Advisor emerging healthcare and life science companies.

With over 20 years, Garrett’s expertise spans across biopharma, life sciences, healthcare, medtech and digital health investing and operations. Before founding Riverine Ventures, he has invested on behalf of The 4100 Group, OSF Healthcare, Jump Capital and Burrill & Co. As an operator, he served as Founding CEO of TherOptix, NewBridge Pharmaceuticals and Mitre Medical and Chief Business Officer of Corsair Pharma. At NewBridge, he and his team raised over $60M in financing and created $470M in nominal value.

Mentoring Areas: 
entrepreneurship, corporate development, market assessment, biotech start-ups.

Tomas Skrinskas has gained exposure to various transformative health technologies throughout his career including surgical robotics and lipid nanoparticle drug delivery. He has experience in pre-clinical drug development and company formation while leveraging academic partnerships towards IP development. Tomas has guided company growth strategies in early biotech teams, helped develop process and operations for start-ups, managed alliances and the Canadian innovation ecosystem to the benefit of bootstrapped operations moving towards fund raising and revenue growth.

Mentoring areas: Stem cell biology, regenerative medicine, non-invasive diagnostic tools including AI and digital tools. 

David Sassoon has a background in stem cell, developmental biology, disease biology and rare diseases affecting multiple tissues. He has organized international multipartner projects on therapeutic development and is currently on SAB and advisory boards of several biotech companies. He has run independent research laboratories at Boston University Medical School, Mount Sinai Medical School and built a new department in Paris, France with Inserm on muscle biology and therapeutic development. His interest is in translating basic research into clinically applicable ideas as well as generating new tools, particularly in the diagnosis of rare diseases and women’s health issues. 

Mentoring areas: Intellectual property; patents, trade secrets, trademarks, copyright, licensing, litigation.

Erik Puknys is a partner at Finnegan LLP, one of the world’s largest intellectual property firms, with offices in Silicon Valley, Washington, DC, Boston, and Atlanta, as well as Europe (Munich and London) and Asia (Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul, and Shanghai).  

He advises clients of all sizes who need to protect their IP as they grow or enter new markets. He has worked for startups and Fortune 100 companies in a wide variety of technical fields, including software, telecommunications, computer hardware, semiconductors, medical diagnostics, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals.