Andrew Brackin is a Partner at Gradient Ventures. Prior to Gradient, Andrew co-founded Vial, a tech-enabled clinical trial platform that raised over $100M in venture capital from top-tier firms. Prior to Vial, he was part of the founding team and the Head of Growth at Newfront (YC W18), an AI-powered commercial insurance brokerage valued at $2.2BN, insuring numerous Fortune 500 companies. His career began at Jobr, a mobile job search business that Monster.com acquired in 2016.

Andrew was a 2013 recipient of the Thiel Fellowship. Outside of work, he loves reading about global affairs, working out at Barry’s Bootcamp, and enjoying live music.

Based in Vienna, Lukas has been a part of Speedinvest since 2015. As the company’s deal flow manager, he is making sure that the thousands of leads which enter Speedinvest’s system every quarter are processed properly. His daily work with a host of data points also enables him to generate complex reports on our deal flow and beyond.

A Vienna native, Lukas also lived in Virginia Beach and London. He studied Economics and History and holds a Master’s degree in History with a special focus on global topics.

When not crunching numbers for Speedinvest, Lukas spends his time studying his favorite subject, the History of ideas and how the past shapes our understanding of the present and the future alike.

Max joined WiL in 2023 with the mission of building out WiL’s data platform. He supports the investment team with sourcing and diligence efforts by building custom data pipelines, automating manual processes, and implementing predictive models. Prior to joining WiL, Max worked as a Sr. Business Analyst at Bill.com where he increased sales efficiency through data insights, process automation, and statistical models. Max has held similar roles at Visa and MicroStrategy and enjoys partnering with business stakeholders to understand their data needs and deliver them the best product.

Max holds a B.A. in Economics and Applied Mathematics from Vanderbilt University and a Master’s in Data Science from UC Berkeley.

David Hefter leads BlackRock’s internal AI strategy and adoption for investments, working across public and private markets. He chairs the AI governance committee and produces a weekly internal AI Newsletter. With over two decades experience at BlackRock, David has been driving AI initiatives for the past 5 years, having studied computer science and AI at Columbia University.

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