Samiz Bayan is a Partner at Draper Dragon, an early-stage venture capital firm connecting Silicon Valley and Asia. He invests across frontier technologies, including AI infrastructure, agent systems, fintech, aerospace, and defense. He leads sourcing, diligence, and evaluation across that thesis, with investments that include Oklo, Otter AI, Ledger, Anthropic, Clinchoice, Jing Jin Electric, Coinbase, and Novel Beam.
Samiz also leads Draper Dragon’s internal aerospace and defense research team, covering late-stage private and public companies including Rocket Lab, Planet Labs, and Anduril. He previously held roles at Bank of America, Estée Lauder Companies, and founded a fintech startup in the real estate sector. He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from the USC Marshall School of Business.

Christine Tsai is Founding Partner and CEO of 500 Global. Since co-founding the firm in 2010, she has led its growth to $1.9B in AUM and investments in more than 3,000 companies in 80+ countries. She has spent her entire career building and investing in Silicon Valley. Prior to 500, she was in product marketing and operating roles at Google and YouTube, launching and driving early go-to-market for products like AdSense, Google Analytics, YouTube syndication, and Developer Platform Tools.
Christine serves on the venture capital committee of AAAIM and is a member of YPO. She has been recognized by Gold House’s A100 List and named as one of 10 Women of Influence in VC by Private Equity International. Christine holds a B.A. in Cognitive Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a National Merit Scholar.

Adit Swarup is a Partner at General Catalyst, a global investment and transformation company with $43B in assets under management. Adit works on GC’s Customer Value Fund, which provides capital at the largest scale to companies seeking new customer growth.

Ken Yoshida is Director of JETRO’s Startup Division in Tokyo, where he leads initiatives to support Japanese startups and entrepreneurs in scaling globally. He assumed his current role in August 2026 after spending five years in San Francisco, where he served as Executive Director of JETRO San Francisco and led initiatives connecting Japanese startups with Silicon Valley and other innovation ecosystems across North America.

With over 20 years of experience at JETRO, Ken has supported Japanese companies across a wide range of industries in expanding internationally. His experience spans startup acceleration, investment and business development, as well as the global expansion of Japanese SMEs in sectors including food and beverage, machinery, textiles, consumer products, restaurants, hotels, and retail. During his time in San Francisco, he led startup support programs providing mentoring, investor connections, market-entry support, and access to local innovation ecosystems.