Guest Speakers Series

Episode #1: Bianca Gates, Co-Founder & CEO of Birdies

Bianca Gates is the Co-Founder and CEO of Birdies, the company that created a new category of footwear with the stylish flats that are secretly slippers. Prior to Birdies, Bianca was a Sales Executive at Meta, where she worked with retail and gaming Executives to help them leverage their data and the social graph to scale their businesses. Bianca grew up in Southern California as the oldest child of Latin American immigrants and is a graduate of the University of California, Irvine.

Episode #2: Jared Friedman, Group Partner at Y Combinator & Co-Founder and CTO at Scribd.com

Jared Friedman is an American entrepreneur and angel investor. He is a partner at Y Combinator in San Francisco, where he invests in and helps startups. Previously, Jared was the co-founder and CTO at Scribd, a digital library and document-sharing platform, which has 80 million users.

Episode #3: Ali Debow, Founder of Swsh and Thiel Fellow

Ali Debow is the founder of Swsh, a social photo album that helps people share photos and stay connected after meeting at events. She is also a recipient of the Thiel Fellowship, which provides young people with a $100,000 grant to build new things.