Mason Yates joined Blackbird Ventures in 2018 as Portfolio Analyst. Over his six years at Blackbird, Yates’ impact has been recognised with his promotion to Investment Associate in 2021 and more recently to Principal. Mason has been a mentor and later Partner for Startmate’s Accelerator, and founded and hosts the Wild Hearts podcast. Blackbird Ventures’ portfolio is worth over $7 billion, and includes some of the most successful Aussie and NZ-founded start-ups like Canva, SafetyCulture and Culture Amp. 

A senior associate at ANZ VC firm for early-stage start-ups, Rampersand, Abhishek Maran has become a top voice in the VC landscape, with his Substack, Superfluid, amassing 2,500 subscribers. The newsletter provides support and authentic guidance to start-up founders on how to build relationships with investors, craft your start-up’s narrative and successfully raise capital. Maran is also the co-founder of DAO Under, which he says is a safe and inclusive virtual and physical space for web3 entrants, participants and builders in APAC. It so far has close to 600 members. 

After a career spanning data science, venture capital and consulting, Annie Liao launched Build Club – a community for ambitious start-up founders – back in 2023, with a focus on those in the AI space. Her faith was rewarded with strong membership growth and blue-chip founding partners including AWS, NVIDIA, Airwallex, MongoDB, Stone and Chalk and Aura Ventures. Initially her side-hustle, Liao’s gone all-in, and after launching Build Club’s accelerator, has banked $1.8 million in funding to turn Build Club into an education platform to democratise AI learning.

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