San Francisco Bay Area
Grace Gong is the founder of Smart Venture Media and the host of two well-known VC podcasts: Smart Venture Podcast (SVPpro.com) and Venture with Grace, a daily show. She is an angel investor in the AI sector, a super angel & venture scout for Alumni Ventures, Advisor at Berkeley SkyDeck. She is also the founder of Smart Ai Summits and G Fellows. Her podcasts have featured high-profile guests such as C-level executives and VPs from companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Sephora, Dunkin' Donuts, Chipotle, Adidas, Pepsi, Instagram, Deloitte, Reddit, DoorDash, Pinterest, Cisco, Salesforce, NVIDIA, Snowflake, Nebius and more. Additionally, she has interviewed Managing Partners from top funds, many of whom have appeared on the Forbes Midas List, as well as unicorn founders from companies like Craigslist, Square, Loom, and Glean. Grace regularly posts about technology, venture capital, and entrepreneurship and has been recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice in Finance. She is also a #1 Bestselling author in the VC category on Amazon New Release. Before founding Smart Venture Media, she worked in venture capital and private equity. If you share her interests, feel free to connect with her on LinkedIn @GraceGong. 2026: G fellows, Smart Ai Summits. CEO club dinners. spoke at human x, google HQ, snowflake summit, etc. 2025: Spoke at AWS, Seattle Startup Summit, event collab w/ various funds. Hosted Smart AI Leadership Summit and Smart AI 100 Summit SmartVentureMedia.com (10M+ impressions/ yr) Companies we have worked with including Microsoft, Snowflake, Sequoia, Vercel, Nebius, Amazon AWS,etc. 2024: Venture with Grace daily live podcast (top 5%) features top GPs, LPs, execs, and founders. Angel investing in the AI space. 2023: Spoke at LinkedIn HQ, ads clients: VC funds, startups, big tech. 2022: LinkedIn Top Voice in Finance, LinkedIn's creator accelerator fellow; speaking engagements: Dell, Microsoft 2021: CEO of Smart Venture Media (monetized, joined VC fellowship) 2020: Podcast - Smart Venture Podcast (top 1.5% among 3.5M podcasts globally, listeners in 110+ countries) 2019: PE 2018: VC 2017: Book 2 - How To Be A VC (No.1 new release on Amazon VC category; ft. 22 investors on the Forbes Midas List - investors who invested in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Apple, etc) 2016: Book 1 - The Last Key To Success (ft. 21 founders on Forbes 30 under 30) 2014: Master's + PE 2013: UIUC 🤓 svppro.com 🚀 Stay connected: https://linktr.ee/gracegong115 💼 podcast ad/ speaking: [email protected] 💰consulting: https://intro.co/gracegong
Conferences: https://www.smartventuremedia.com Speakers include: Grace Gong (Founder & CEO of Smart Venture Media) Jeetu Patel (President of Cisco) Justin Osofsky (VP of Meta, former COO of Instagram) Marc Boroditsky (CRO of Nebius) Shravan Narayen (Partner of IVP) Dave Zilberman (GP of Norwest Venture Partners) Casber Wang (Partner of Sapphire Ventures) Ilya Kirnos (Founding Partner & CTO of SignalFire) Nikhil Sachdev (Managing Director of Insight Partners) Tushar Gupta (Managing Director of Qualcomm Ventures) James da Costa (Partner of Andreessen Horowitz) Anna Patterson (Founder of Ceramic. ai, Formerly VP of Google & Managing Partner of Gradient Ventures) Miloni Madan Presler (Partner at IVP) Anna Barber (Partner of M13) Thomas Jueng (Senior Managing Director of Samsung Ventures) Matt Vail (Head of VC Partnerships of OpenAI) Eylul Kayin (Partner of Gradient Ventures) Tejas Manohar (Co-CEO of Hightouch) Lauri Moore (Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners) Kenan Saleh (Partner, a16z) Madison Faulkner (Partner, NEA) Andrew Brackin (Partner, Gradient Ventures) Megh Gautam (Chief Product Officer of Crunchbase) Meagen Eisenberg (Chief Marketing Officer of Samsara) Tim Shi (Co-Founder of Cresta) Lucas Swisher (General Partner of Coatue Management) Susana Rojas (Partner of Index Ventures) Dipti Borkar (VP & GM, Microsoft Azure Data) Kevin Smith (CIO, Lyft) Deepa Gopinath (CIO, MongoDB) Patti Degnan (Partner, a16z) Sonali Singh (Partner, Sequoia Capital) Alan Du (Partner, M12 -Microsoft's Venture Fund) Samantha Wu (Chief Marketing Officer of Eventbrite) Alex Mashrabov (CEO & Co-founder, Higgsfield AI) Olivia Nottebohm (COO, Box) Scott Holden (CMO, Vanta) Rashida Hodge (CVP, Microsoft) Dave Steer (CMO, Webflow) Vijay Krishnan (Founder, Turing) Chase Lochmiller (Founder, Crusoe) Many thanks to our amazing sponsors: Amazon AWS Snowflake Vercel SVB Sequoia Nebius Wilson Sonsini Hubspot for Startups Rackhouse Ventures Wayo and more...
I go LIVE with a VC/ LP/ founder daily here on LinkedIn. Podcasts guests: Partner @ Sequoia - James Flynn Partner @ a16z - Emily Bennett Partner @ Lightspeed - Hemant Mohapatra Managing Partner @ Greycroft - Ian Saginaw Partner @ NEA - Aaron Jacobson General Partner @ IVP - Somesh Dash Partner @ Bessemer - Mike Droesch Partner @ Kleiner Perkins - Aditya Naganath Managing Director @ Insight Partners - Nikhil Sachdev Partner @ Sapphire Ventures - Rajeev Dham Managing Partner @ Pear VC - Mar Hershenson General Partner @ Gradient Ventures - Darian Shirazi General Partner @ Lux Capital - Shahin Farshchi Partner @ Upfront Ventures - Aditi Maliwal Partner @ Primary Ventures - Ben Sun Partner @ Menlo Ventures - Steve Sloane Partner @ M13 - Brent Murri Partner @ Madrona - Vivek Ramaswami Partner @ Bain Capital Ventures - Saanya Ojha Partner @ True Ventures - Tony Conrad Co-Founder and Partner @ Tribe Capital - Arjun Sethi Managing Partner @ Eclipes Venture - Lior Susan Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital - Jason Fiedler Founder & Managing Partner @Ahoy Capital - Chris Douvos Partner @ Vintage Investment Partners - Shira Eting Founder & General Partner @ Boldstart - Ed Sim Founder & Partner @ Defy VC - Neil Sequeira Partner @ Cendana Capital - Kelli Fontaine Founder & CEO @Techstars - David Cohen Partner @ Redpoint Ventures - Jordan Segall Founding Partner @ Wing Venture Capital - Peter Wagner Founding Partner @ NewView Capital - Ravi Viswanathan General Partner @ DCVC - Alan Cohen Managing Partner & Co-Founder at 645 Ventures - Nnamdi Okike General Partner @ Foundation Capital - Ashu Garg Managing Partner @ Base 10 - Adeyemi Ajao Partner @ Lead Edge Capital - Mitchell Green Managing Partner @ General Catalyst - Niko Bonatsos General Partner @ AlleyCorp - Abe Murray Partner @ 500 Global - Clayton Bryan Founding Partner @Acrew Capital - Mark Kraynak Chief Investment Strategist @ Ark Invest - Charlie Roberts And more …
Craig Newmark - Founder of Craigslist Jim McKelvey - Co-founder of Square Justin Osofsky - COO of Instagram Chris Slowe - CTO of Reddit Todd Kaplan - CMO of Kraft Heinz, ex- CMO of Pepsi Suzanne Kounkel - CMO of Deloitte Elizabeth Jarvis-Shean - Chief Corporate Affairs Officer of DoorDash Daniel Kan - Co-founder & CPO of Cruise Matt Madrigal - CTO of Pinterest Ben Kus - CTO of Box Berent Bellm - ex CEO of BigCommerce Henry Schuck - CEO of Zoominfo Tony Stubblebine - CEO of Medium Chris Koehler - CMO of Twilio Kevin Rose - Partner at True Ventures, ex-GP at Google Ventures Robert Rosenberg - 35-Year CEO of Dunkin' Donuts, ex-Board Member @Domino's Pizza Monty Moran - ex-CO-CEO Chipotle Mexican Grill Jeetu Patel - CPO of Cisco, ex-CPO & CSO @ Box Deepak Agarwal — Chief AI Officer at LinkedIn Rob Chesnut - ex Chief Ethics Officer @Airbnb, SVP @eBay & Chegg Olivia Nottebohm - CRO of Notion, ex COO of Dropbox, ex VP at Google Marvin Chow - VP of Google Erin Egan - VP & Chief Privacy Officer, Public Policy at Facebook / Meta Ethan Evans - VP of Amazon Howard Wright - VP of Nvidia David Cowan - Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners Portfolio: LinkedIn, Twitch Kim Scott - NYT&WSJ Bestselling Author of Radical Candor, ex-CEO coach of Dropbox &Twitter Chris Voss - WSJ Bestselling Author Denise Persson - CMO of Snowflake Aparna Chennapragada CPO @ Microsoft AI for Work, ex CPO of Robinhood, ex VP of Google Sumit Chauhan - CVP of Microsoft Dave Steer - CMO of Webflow Roman Chernin - Co-Founder of Nebius Ryan Gavin - CMO of Slack Gary Pinkus - Chairman of McKinsey North America +more Ranked by Listen Notes as one of the top 1.5% most popular shows globally Listenership 110 + countries Nominated by Asian American Podcasters Association for Golden Crane Awards Apple:https://apple.co/3d6bGea Spotify: http://bit.ly/gracegong Website: https://www.smartventurepod.com YouTube: https://bit.ly/gracegongyoutube
G-Fellows brings together an exclusive cohort of the most driven undergraduate students from top universities across the country for four weeks from April 10 to May 10. Each G-Fellow sources promising startups, tracks emerging industry trends, and nominates founders to pitch leading investors. G-Fellows are guided by top VC and founder advisors, and get direct access to some of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley through hands-on workshops designed to help them land their dream internship and become truly industry-ready. This is real experience — the network, the reps, and the credibility to walk into any room in venture or tech and belong there. Grace Gong founded G-Fellows — part of Smart Venture Media — alongside Founding Fellow Siya Verma, who has been with the program from day one, to bridge the gap between the most talented students in the country and the venture world they're trying to break into.
Investor in AI startups, portolios including Vantager, Hyperspell (YC F25), Orange Slice (YC S25), Espa Labs, Hyperbolic, AgentHub (YC S25), Clodo (YC S25), Jam, Ditto AI, Hostie, The Residency, HydraDB, Generative Alpha, Emancro Robotics, LD Talent, among others. Advisor to Quill.