Speakers

Uri Levine is a passionate entrepreneur and disruptor, a 2x 'unicorn' builder (Duocorn), and the author of "Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution – A Handbook for Entrepre-neurs". He is co-founder of Waze, the world's largest community-based driving traffic and navigation app, which Google acquired for $1.1 billion in 2013, and former investor and board member in Moovit, 'Waze of public transportation', which Intel acquired for $1 Billion in 2020.

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Levine's vision in building startups is to disrupt inefficient markets and improve under-functioning services, focusing on solving "BIG problems" and saving consumers time and money while empowering them and changing the world for the better. Among Uri's startups are Pontera (formerly FeeX), FairFly, and Refundit, and he is always working on the next one.  Uri has been in the high-tech business for the last 30 years, half of them in the startup scene, and has seen everything ranging from failure to moderate success and big success.

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He is also a world-class speaker on entrepreneurship, disruption, evolution vs. revolutions of markets, mobility, and startups. Motivated to encourage the next generation of thinkers and innovators, he also leads an academic workshop entitled "How to Build a Startup", aimed at undergraduate and graduate-level business students.

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Levine is a BA graduate of Tel-Aviv University. Before attending University, he served in the Israeli army at special intelligence unit 8200. In his public activity, he serves on the board of trustees of Tel-Aviv University. He also mentors young entrepreneurs at the Zell Entrepreneurship Program at Reichman University (IDC Herzliya).

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To learn more about Uri, visit www.urilevine.com.

Paul Ryan was the 54th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. In office from October 2015 to January 2019, he was the youngest speaker in nearly 150 years. Prior to becoming Speaker of the House, Paul served as the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. He also served as Chairman of the House Budget Committee from 2011-2015.

In 2012, he was selected to serve as Governor Mitt Romney’s Vice-Presidential nominee. Paul was first elected to Congress at age 28 and represented Wisconsin’s First District for two decades. In 2019, he launched the American Idea Foundation, a non-partisan, not for profit organization that expands economic opportunity by partnering with local organizations and academics to advance evidence-based public policies. In 2020, Paul was named as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Executive Network Partnering Corporation and in 2021, he was named as a Partner at Solamere Capital. In 2022, he was named Vice Chairman of Teneo, a global management consulting company.

Paul is a member of the Board of Directors of the Fox Corporation, of SHINE Medical Technologies LLC, and of Xactus. He also serves on the Advisory Board of Robert Bosch GmbH.

Paul serves as a Professor of the Practice at the University of Notre Dame and a visiting fellow in the practice of public policy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is on the Board of Trustees of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute and on the Board of Directors for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Paul and his wife Janna have three children: Liza, Charlie, and Sam. He holds a degree in economics and political science from Miami University in Ohio and was also awarded an honorary doctorate by the University.

Jeff Ubben is a Founder, Managing Partner and the Portfolio Manager of Inclusive Capital Partners. He has served on over 20 public company boards and is currently a director of The Exxon Mobil Corporation, Vistry Group Plc, and Enviva Inc., and serves on the Sustainability Council of Bayer AG. Jeff is a former Founder of ValueAct Capital. In addition, he serves on the boards of Duke University, the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Redford Center, and formerly served as Chair of the National Board of the Posse Foundation. Jeff has a B.A. from Duke University and an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Josh co-founded Lux Capital to support scientists and entrepreneurs who pursue counter-conventional solutions to the most vexing puzzles of our time in order to lead us into a brighter future. The more ambitious the project, the better—like, say, creating matter from light.

Josh is a Director at Shapeways, Strateos, Lux Research, Kallyope, CTRL-labs, Variant, and Varda, and helped lead the firm’s investments in Anduril, Planet, Echodyne, Clarifai, Authorea, Resilience and Hadrian. He is a founding investor and board member with Bill Gates in Kymeta, making cutting-edge antennas for high-speed global satellite and space communications. Josh is a Westinghouse semi-finalist and published scientist. He previously worked in investment banking at Salomon Smith Barney and in capital markets at Merrill Lynch. In 2008 Josh co-founded and funded Kurion, a contrarian bet in the unlikely business of using advanced robotics and state-of-the-art engineering and chemistry to clean up nuclear waste. It was an unmet, inevitable need with no solution in sight. The company was among the first responders to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. In February 2016, Veolia acquired Kurion for nearly $400 million—34 times Lux’s total investment.

Josh is a columnist with Forbes and Editor for the Forbes/Wolfe Emerging Tech Report. He has been invited to The White House and Capitol Hill to advise on nanotechnology and emerging technologies, and a lecturer at MIT, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Columbia and NYU. He is a term member at The Council on Foreign Relations and Chairman of Coney Island Prep Charter School, where he grew up in Brooklyn. He graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Economics and Finance.

Joe Lonsdale is the Founder and Managing Partner at 8VC, an early-stage venture capital firm managing over $6 billion in capital. He has founded over a dozen companies, including Palantir, a leading data analytics company; Addepar, a wealth management platform; and OpenGov, the largest cloud software provider for local governments. He continues to create and scale companies through the 8VC Build program.

Joe was an early investor in many companies, including Anduril, Oculus, Guardant, Oscar, Illumio, Blend, Qualia, Joby, Orca Bio, and Flexport.

Joe and his wife Tayler are active in many philanthropic and institutional pursuits: they founded the non-partisan Cicero Institute to promote accountable governance, and in 2021 Joe became the founding chairman of the University of Austin.

Joe, Tayler, and their four daughters live in Austin, TX.