Camp Hustle

Adam Draper is the Founder and Managing Director of Boost VC, a 2x entrepreneur, and a 4th generation venture capitalist. Adam's superpower is finding scrappy entrepreneurs that build things many would consider "impossible". His vision drives the firm's investment strategy, positioning it at the forefront of innovation across Deep Tech, and specifically as a thought leader in DeSci, Crypto, and VR.

He's a trailblazing investor with tons of experience, and his investing wins include top-notch companies like Coinbase, Plangrid, Amplitude, Sendwave, and Benchling. When he's not busy shaping the future, Adam's nose is buried in a book, probably Harry Potter. In a nutshell, Adam Draper gets energy from founders with independent thought, and grand vision.

Grant has spent the past 10+ years building tech startups and has a background in finance and operations. He was interim CFO at Optimizely and the COO of Clearbrain, two YC startups. He grew up in the bay area and studied at Stanford, where he received his B.S. and M.S. in mechanical engineering. He is currently building Gamma, an AI-powered platform to create presentations, websites, and more.

Gamma has tens of millions of users gaining more momentum every day. At Camp Hustle, Grant will share his experience building the company from the ground up, what's next for Gamma, and his insights on the future of AI.

Maria is an operator turned investor. Before transitioning to investing, a better part of the first decade of her career was spent scaling multinational technology startups like Uber and Branch.co in leadership roles such as Country Manager and General Manager.

Prior to Openseed VC, Maria was a Fund Manager at Octopus Ventures First Cheque Fund and before that, was the Managing Director of the Oxford Seed Fund.

Maria holds an MBA from the University of Oxford, a BSc. in Computer Science from Covenant University, and is also certified Chartered Accountant with the ACCA in the United Kingdom.

Josh is a founder-turned-podcaster-turned-VC at The Pitch Show & Fund. Josh founded his first company in 2010 after pitching his e-commerce idea to a panel of investors in college. After exiting the business four years later, Josh ventured into the world of podcasting and started The Pitch. Which sold to Gimlet Media in 2017... which got bought by Spotify in 2019.

Now the plot twist! In 2022 Josh & his cofounder/wife Lisa bought the show back, took it independent and started The Pitch Fund. A public 506(c) fund for listeners to invest in the startups featured on the show.

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Shauntel Garvey is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Reach Capital where she invests in solutions that elevate human potential and ignite purpose across learning, health, and work. Shauntel currently serves on the boards of Brilliant, Fourthrev, and TeachFX.

Prior to Reach, Shauntel was a Partner at the NewSchools Seed Fund and invested in over 40 early stage edtech companies including Newsela, Class Dojo, Ellevation (acquired), and SchoolMint (acquired). Shauntel was previously a Senior Engineer at Procter and Gamble and received her BS in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and her MBA and MA in Education from Stanford University.

Carson is a seasoned LP with nearly a decade of experience backing emerging and spinout GPs across large institutions, government entities, and family offices. He began his career in public markets before discovering his passion for venture capital while working at a small seed fund.

Carson went on to join Greenspring Associates (now part of StepStone Group), where he split his time between direct investments and supporting established and emerging managers across global markets. He then became the first Head of Private Equity & Venture Capital at SITFO, a $3.5 billion State Sovereign Wealth Fund, where he built a reputation for identifying and backing innovative spinout GPs. Most recently, he developed an emerging manager strategy for a large European family office and is currently in stealth mode for his next firm, which will also focus on supporting top-tier emerging and spinout GPs.

Carson has backed everything from micro funds to high-profile managers spinning out of tier-one firms. He is deeply committed to being a thought partner and strategic resource to the GPs he supports, helping them navigate the complexities of fund building and long-term success in the VC industry.

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As Managing Director of Segal Ventures, Ariel advises emerging fund managers and founders on strategies to fuel growth, providing valuable resources and cultivating community. With 15+ years of experience as an operator at tech startups, Ariel most recently led marketing at Foursquare, where she developed deep expertise across content, events, customer insights, social media, email, paid advertising and more. Ariel holds a B.A. in Marketing & Psychology from Georgetown University, an MBA from NYU Stern, and lives with her husband, children and dog in Tiburon, CA.

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Lake Dai is a frequent keynote speaker on AI innovations, AI ethics, and board governance. In recent years, she has delivered keynotes and provided training at prestigious institutions such as MIT, Berkeley, House of Lords, and California state government, as well as for Fortune 500 companies and philanthropic foundations.

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Lake is an AI educator, investor, and builder. As an Adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, she teaches Applied AI and covers Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), Distributed Computing, AI Applications, and AI Alignment & Ethics.

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In her role as an investor, Lake is the Founder and Managing Partner of Sancus Ventures, a venture firm focused on pre-seed to seed-stage companies. Sancus Ventures takes a high‑conviction, thesis‑driven approach to investing in foundational software technologies that will fuel the next wave of AI adoption—spanning Data Infrastructure, Compute Infrastructure, AI Orchestration, AI Governance, and AI‑native super apps—to tap into a multi‑trillion‑dollar market opportunity.

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Lake's early career was rooted in product and engineering. She joined Alibaba shortly after its inception, leading its first product team to build the Alibaba B2B marketplace, a $1.2 billion business, from the ground up. She also served as Head of Search at Yahoo! China and was a founding team member of several tech startups in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles.

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Dave is the co-founder of Family VC, a global community of family offices investing in VC while leveraging the power of community.
Family VC is a tight-knit group with aligned values, many of whom are or were business owners themselves. These investors tend to be customer and revenue focused while leveraging new technology to improve their businesses.

Dave is also the MP of Sachse Family Fund, which is a venture fund that invests in technology companies, pre-seed to Series A.

At Camp Hustle, Dave will be part of Deck Clinic, where a panel of LPs will give real-time feedback to emerging fund managers on their pitch decks.

Samara is the Founding Partner of an institutionally backed pre-seed stage fund, Chingona Ventures, focusing on investing in tech and tech-enabled companies across the U.S. The fund has $60MM in AUMand has made over 40 investments across technology sectors in Financial, Food, Future of Work and Learning, and Health/Wellness.

Before this, Samara was an investor at MATH Venture Partners across two funds where she led new investment review, diligence, and execution.

Samara started her career at Goldman Sachs, where she was continually ranked top 5 in selling financial products, providing market insights, advising on portfolio construction, and consulting business practices. Her career started in the Fixed Income, Currency, and Commodity (FICC) group where she led multiple tech-enhancing projects across global exchanges. She is on the advisory boards for Coolwater, an organization to support the emerging manager community; Angeles Investors, an organization investing in early-stage startups led by Latinx founders; and Venture Forward, a non-profit working to get more diversity in the venture capital ecosystem.

Samara earned an Industrial and Operations Engineering degree from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in Business Administration from Northwestern University

David Hauser can't stop building companies. His first, Grasshopper, bootstrapped to $30m ARR and then sold to Citrix. He built Chargify, which was acquired by Battery Ventures; Vanilla, which raised $42m in outside capital; and ReturnPath (among others).

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David is also a prolific angel investor. He's invested in nearly 100 startups, including Intercom, Unbounce, ConvertKit, FleetPanda, Buffer, The Hustle, 8 Sleep, Felix Grey, and more.

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David is not only an entrepreneur and investor - he's also a mega operator. And the value he provides to his portfolio companies is unmatched. David's specialty is seed-strapped companies: startups who don't plan to raise beyond the seed stage. And his session at Camp Hustle will give insights into how investors can leverage these types of organizations.

Chloë Ryan is an artist, robotics engineer and creative technologist. She’s the founder and CEO of Acrylic Robotics, a tech startup on a mission to widen access to the archaic $70B fine art market.

At 21, she invented the world’s first robotic method to transform any image or digital illustration into a beautiful textured painting with real brushstrokes on canvas, at a speed and scale built for mass-production. Acrylic's technology is poised to disrupt the archaic art market currently built to serve the top 1% — they're bringing quality art to the general public all while allowing artists to reach new markets.

Chloë’s robots have been on tour across three continents, including as part of Adobe’s “Future of Art” exhibit at Art Basel, the Canadian National Exhibition and AWS Startup’s Generative AI Lofts tour. She is the recipient of 20+ accolades for her contributions as a pioneer at the intersection of art x tech, and Acrylic has been named one of Canada's Top 10 Ventures to Watch (GRIT), Websummit’s Top 10 Ventures (International) and a recipient of the international ArtTech prize.

Haley Bryant is an investor at Hustle Fund, where she invests in pre-seed startups building in b2b SaaS, digital consumer health, fintech and web3 industries.

In addition to evaluating applications from 1000+ founders a month, investing, and offering unprecedented support to portfolio founders, Haley also operates the Venture Fellows program. This program offers hands-on education to a select group of emerging fund managers.

Haley is also an active angel investor, an instructor for Soul Cycle, and a host at Flow Club. Haley is an active member of BLCK VC, and the winner of the 2024 "Hustle Award".

Shiyan Koh is the Managing Partner at Hustle Fund, a global pre-seed venture capital firm that believes great founders can look like anyone and come from anwhere.

Before Hustle Fund, Shiyan was the VP of Business Operations and Corporate Development at NerdWallet, where she was instrumental in scaling annual revenue from $1 million to over $150 million. She was also a senior investment associate at Bridgewater Associates. Shiyan holds a BS in Biomechanical Engineering and a BA in Economics from Stanford University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

At Hustle Fund, Shiyan leads many of our investments in startups based in Southeast Asia. Her background in fintech and crypto make her an asset to our portfolio companies in those fields. Shiyan is also instrumental in helping Hustle Fund automate many of its backend processes through AI and no-code tools, saving the fund 10s of hours of work each week.

Tony Cueva-Bravo is a VC with extensive experience in fintech and emerging markets. His expertise spans pre-seed to Series A investments, with a particular focus on payment solutions and financial technology in Latin America.

As Head of Business Development at Rebill (known as "Stripe for Latam"), Tony has driven 50% month-over-month growth and successfully closed multiple enterprise deals, cementing the company's position as a leading payment infrastructure provider in the region.

A recognized fintech thought leader with 10,000+ LinkedIn followers, Tony founded the "Fintech Latin America" newsletter which reaches 2,500+ senior stakeholders. He also hosts "Emerging Fintech," a weekly podcast exploring how technology is transforming financial services across emerging markets.

Tony has worked with Fortune 500 companies on their Latin American expansion strategies, and advised multiple fintech startups on go-to-market approaches. His session at Camp Hustle will focus on fintech startups in emerging markets.

Andy is the Managing Partner at Ranchos Ventures, a pre‑seed fund and venture studio that co‑founds, funds and scales cash‑flowing businesses into category‑defining franchise brands.

Before Ranchos, Andy was Chief Strategy Officer at Custom Ink where he oversaw and led over $1B in corporate transactions including $200M in M&A and $100M in new venture development.

Before Custom Ink, Andy was an investment analyst and real-money portfolio manager at The Motley Fool, where he helped launch Special Ops, an investment newsletter focused on special situations and deep value equities that grew to an estimated $500M in subscriber-AUM.

Andy began his career by buying into a six‑figure homebuilding business, which he then restructured and scaled into an eight‑figure‑AUM real estate development, brokerage, and management company.

Andy earned an Industrial & Systems Engineering degree from Georgia Tech, graduating as a member of the ANAK Society, and holds a Juris Doctor degree, w/ honors, from the University of Florida.

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Nicolas holds an M.S. in aerospace engineering, he specializes in autonomous systems. He developed collaborative robotic solutions for upcoming commercial lunar missions, worked on control of low-orbit satellites and built the industrialization plan of the future European reusable rocket. He was also a management consultant at Bain & Company, advising multi-billion-dollar groups on product strategies and innovation roadmaps across various sectors.

He is now co-founder and CEO of Iris Lab, a deeptech startup developing laser-based power supplies to enable continuous operation of drones and robots. By removing energy constraints, Iris Lab is unlocking a new generation of autonomous machines built for industrial-scale deployment.

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Brian Nichols is a 2x founder, and worked at Lyft, Zoox, and On Deck, among others. He founded the Lyft Alumni Syndicate and has grown it to 3500+ members, and later co-founded Angel Squad at Hustle Fund. Angel Squad is a program and community run by Hustle Fund that teaches new angels how to invest in startups, and gives them access to invest alongside our fund.

Brian will be leading a bonfire session on Running an Angel Syndicate on Wednesday, May 15.

Elizabeth Yin is a co-founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund, a pre-seed fund for software entrepreneurs. Previously, Elizabeth was a partner at 500 Startups where she invested in seed stage companies and ran the Mountain View accelerator. In a prior life, Elizabeth co-founded and ran an adtech company called LaunchBit (acq 2014). Elizabeth has a BSEE from Stanford and an MBA from MIT Sloan.

Elizabeth's bonfire session at Camp Hustle will be a “walk and talk” with Charles Hudson (Precursor VC) and Virginie Raphael (FullCircle) on Tuesday, May 14th. They will discuss strategies, pitfalls, and tactics around fundraising as emerging fund managers.

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Eric Bahn is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund, an early-stage venture capital firm ($130M+ under management) based in San Francisco. Hustle Fund invests in software startups at the pre-seed and seed stages, backing founders who exhibit great execution and high velocity (we call it ‘hustle’). Hustle Fund has invested in over 500 startups, and raised over $100m from our incredible LPs.

Eric is a master storyteller and fundraiser. His Bonfire Session at Camp Hustle will dive into differentiation tactics for fund managers looking to raise their first, second, or third funds.