Thursday, June 18, 2020Get to Know the Wharton Alumni Angels & Toronto's Investing Environment
Please join the Wharton Alumni Angels and The Penn-Wharton Club of Toronto on June 18th, 7-8:15 PM ET for a fantastic time to learn about the Wharton Alumni Angels network and discussions with active VC's and two CEOs of funded startups. Together, these two alumni clubs aim to inform alumni about Wharton Alumni Angels and the startup ecosystem and angel investing in Canada.
The event builds upon the success of the Penn-Wharton Club of Toronto Corridor Demo Day event in February, at the MaRS Discovery District in downtown Toronto. Over 30 startups pitched to a full hall of investors & industry talent. Right now is an exciting time for tech in Toronto because the Collision Conference Toronto (now virtual) is just around the corner in late June!
Agenda:
1. Intro of Wharton Alumni Angels
- Daniel Yeh & Christian Kellett, Co-Presidents, Penn-Wharton Alumni Club of Toronto
- John Braze, President, Wharton Alumni Angels (Wharton MBA alum)
2. Five-minute Pitch by Griffin Schultz and Sheldon Fernandez, Founders of Funded StartUps
3. Panel Discussion, Q&A with online general audience
- Griffin Schultz, CEO Rapid Flow Technologies (Wharton MBA alum) – a Wharton Alumni Angels portfolio company based in Pittsburgh
- Sheldon Fernandez, Co-founder and CEO of DarwinAI, a GTAN portfolio company, a prominent startup in Canada with a few icon customers.
- John Braze, President, Wharton Alumni Angels (Wharton MBA alum)
- Jacky Chen, General Partner, Archangel StarForge Fund (Wharton MBA Alum)
More detailed bios on our speakers & their companies:
John Braze, President, Wharton Alumni Angels (Wharton MBA alum)
Founded in 2016, Wharton Alumni Angels is an active angel investment group composed of University of Pennsylvania alumni and non-alumni who have joined our angel community. Members are entrepreneurs, senior business executives, institutional investors, and other supporters of our ecosystem. Wharton Alumni Angels' over 200 members in 15 countries have invested in more than 45 early-stage companies in the past four years. Our members actively seek to add value 'beyond the deal' and provide mentoring and assistance to startup companies. Our angels are enthusiastic about entrepreneurs and passionate teams pursuing their dreams. Our organization has a deep network and close relationships with venture capital funds, other angel networks, and innovation ecosystems through a global membership and the Wharton alumni community. We participate most often in seed and Series A investments, and occasionally later-stage rounds and do not focus on specific verticals or industries.
Jacky Chen, General Partner, Archangel Fund (Wharton Alum)
Being an angel investor, entrepreneur, and former executive of a Global Fortune 500 company, Jacky has also been a Board Director for companies in Canada, USA, and China. Today, Jacky is dedicated to angel investments in technology innovations and advisory on corporate strategic planning and delivery. Jacky also serves on the Investment Screening Committee of Wharton Alumni Angels. Jacky has solid business development experience from many startups. He has also run billion-dollar businesses in enterprise ICT and Software industries, including DELL Technologies.
Griffin Schultz, CEO Rapid Flow Technologies
Griffin has a unique leadership background in both the public and private sector. After earning his MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, he has worked with five pioneering technology companies, three as the General Manager or CEO. Prior to his MBA, Griffin worked in US politics and government on Capitol Hill, for a US Senate and Presidential campaign, and as the Assistant Deputy Mayor for the City of Philadelphia. Rapid Flow Technologies LLC has recently spun out of Carnegie Mellon University with the goal of introducing new Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technologies into the marketplace. Rapid Flow was created to commercialize the Surtrac adaptive traffic signal control technology developed in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon as part of the Traffic21 research initiative. Rapid Flow is also a part of the NSF I-Corps Site program at Carnegie Mellon.
Sheldon Fernandez, CEO, DarwinAI
Sheldon Fernandez is a seasoned executive, startup veteran, and respected thought leader in the technology industry. Throughout his career, he has applied emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence to the enterprise to augment human capability and help organizations operate more effectively. Prior to joining DarwinAI as its Chief Executive Officer, Sheldon founded Infusion Development as its CTO and helped grow the company to 700 before its acquisition by Avanade. Through his career, Sheldon has coupled his entrepreneurial endeavors with non-technical pursuits, resulting in an interdisciplinary approach that is critical to the intelligent application of AI. An accomplished author, Sheldon has written several books and articles on entrepreneurship and advanced technology for numerous publications. He is a frequent guest lecturer and speaker for numerous institutions including Singularity University and MIT, and previously served as an Adjunct Lecturer at Waterloo University. Sheldon has a BASc in Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo, a Master’s degree in theology from the University of Toronto with thesis work in neuroscience and metaethics, and also pursued creative writing at Oxford University. DarwinAI, the explainable AI company, enables enterprises to build AI they can trust. Founded by renowned academics at the University of Waterloo, Based on years of distinguished scholarship, the company’s patented explainability technology accelerates advanced deep learning design. DarwinAI has been recognized for its industry-leading research and scholarship. The company was named a cool vendor in Gartner’s October 2019 Cool Vendors in Enterprise AI Governance and Ethical Response report. CB Insights also recently named DarwinAI a “high-momentum startup” in its “Game Changing Startups 2020” research report in the “AI transparency” category, and also selected Darwin for its AI 100, CB Insights’ annual list of the 100 most promising private AI companies in the world.
EVENT DETAILS:
Event Host: Wharton Alumni Angels and The Penn-Wharton Club of Toronto
Date: Thursday, June 18
Time: 6:00-7:15 PM CDT
Location: Zoom (Please register in advance for this webinar)
Cost: Free – RSVP required
