How Engineer Angels Evaluate Data-Oriented Companies
While the vast majority of talks at DataEngConf are unabashedly technical, we recognize the fact that there are many deeply technical attendees who are likely thinking about founding, or joining, a startup. In this session we'll feature a unique panel of engineers-turned-investors which we've hand picked due to their technical prowess combined with their business success. Each of them are well-respected and highly sought after as angel investors and some are emerging into new roles as full-on venture capitalists. Parker was an early engineer at Pivotal Labs. Jocelyn was a Director of Engineering at Facebook and VP Engineering at VMware. Shruti has a MS in CS from Columbia (and an MBA from Chicago). And Itamar has as CS degree and has held engineering and product roles over the course of his career prior to switching over to the business side. Moderated by Pete Soderling, founder of DataEngConf, the session will dig into insights from our panelist's experiences as engineering leaders and product visionaries as well as uncover their key business strategies and investment criteria. As highly technical investors, what do they look for in founding teams, product differentiation, market dynamics and data defensibility? Listen and learn to discover how their views can help you develop your strategy and prepare you, as an engineer, for the types of questions commonly asked during the fund-raising process.