Global | North America | LATAM | EMEA | APAC | Emeritus
Nayan Patel - Founder, CEO & Board Director @ H2: Nayan leads global strategy and operations for H2 with a focus on network growth, program/platform development and partnerships. He has over fifteen years operating experience in growth-oriented leadership positions across product management, business development, and international operations with high growth, global companies including LinkedIn, Google, and Yahoo!. Prior to H2, he held early lead roles at LinkedIn with its international operations and corporate/business development teams, and previously at Google with its product management and syndication partnerships teams. Nayan received his MBA from Santa Clara University, and his BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.
Reshma Sohoni - Board Director @ H2; Co-Founder & Managing Partner @ Seedcamp: Seedcamp is Europe's seed fund, identifying and investing early in world-class founders attacking large, global market and solving real problems using technology. Since launch a decade ago Seedcamp has invested in 250 startups including the likes of fintech unicorn TransferWise along with some of Europe's fastest growing companies Revolut, UiPath and wefox. Earlier in her career, Reshma spent over 3 years at Vodafone in their Commercial Strategy team, working across the Europe and Japan footprints in marketing strategy and pricing functions. Her venture capital career started with eVentures India where she actively supported companies like Make My Trip (NASDAQ – MMYT), Contest2Win, and Clubgreetings. Reshma started her career in the US in investment banking with Broadview (now part of Jefferies). She has an MBA from INSEAD and dual undergraduate degrees in Engineering and Business from the University of Pennsylvania.
Charles Hudson - Board Director @ H2; Managing Partner & Founder @ Precursor Ventures: Precursor Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on investing in the first institutional round of investment for the most promising software and hardware companies. Prior to founding Precursor Ventures, Charles was a Partner at SoftTech VC. In this role, he focused on identifying investment opportunities in mobile infrastructure. He was also the Co-Founder and CEO of Bionic Panda Games, an Android-focused mobile games startup. Prior to joining SoftTech VC and co-founding Bionic Panda Games, Charles Hudson was the VP of Business Development for Serious Business until the company was acquired by Zynga in February 2010. Previously, Charles worked in New Business Development at Google and focused on new partnership opportunities. He holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.A. in Economics and Spanish from Stanford University.
Tom Clayton - Board Director @ H2; Chief Revenue Officer @ Bill.com: Tom is a seasoned technology leader that has built numerous tech companies. As Chief Revenue Officer at Bill.com, Tom leads all sales, marketing, and strategic partnerships. Prior to Bill.com, Tom was an early executive at Houzz, the world’s largest home renovation platform, where he built all of the company’s international operations from scratch. Previously, he was the CEO of Bubbly, a social media messaging service backed by Sequoia Capital, SingTel, and others, building it into a leader in mobile social media across Asia, with over 200 million users. Prior to running Bubbly, Tom was GM of the Mobile Business at BEA Systems, an enterprise software company acquired by Oracle for $8.5 billion. Tom holds a B.S. from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, where he graduated as a Baker Scholar.
Jeff Merkel - Founder & Board Director @ H2, Co-Founder & Chief Distribution Officer @ Ladder: Offering life insurance built from the ground up, Ladder’s digital-first approach is smart, easy, and accessible for the next generation. Prior to Ladder, Jeff was Director of Mobile Sales and Partnerships at Google. He joined the company from AdMob, where he was Vice President and General Manager of Asia Pacific. Earlier in his career, Jeff served as Director of Media Solutions at Motorola, Marketing Manager at Apple, and Business Development Manager for a wireless payment startup in Singapore. Jeff holds bachelor’s degrees from Taylor University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Chris Misner - Advisory Board Member @ H2; Advisor & Investor: Chris Misner is an active advisor helping startups and founders globally. Most recently, he served as President of Roblox International, where he led the company's international expansion and growth initiatives. Chris is an expert at creating high-functioning cross-border teams and bringing commercial opportunities from idea to scale. Prior to Roblox, he served as an internal entrepreneur at Apple Inc for 12 years – most recently launching the Apple Online Store in China and growing it to multiple billions in revenue while leading all of Apple’s e-commerce in Asia Pacific. Chris began his Internet career at Netscape, where he ran strategic business development. After that, he led marketing, business development and international expansion on the executive teams of venture-funded start-ups Backflip and Good Technology (acquired by Motorola). Between his Architecture degree at Princeton and his MBA at Wharton, Chris was a management consultant and a United Nations observer of South Africa’s first free and fair election.
Rajesh Sawhney - Advisory Board Member @ H2; Founder & General Partner @ GSF: Rajesh founded GSF in 2012, establishing it as India's leading seed-stage tech investor. Rajesh has made over 100 investments in tech startups in India, providing the first cheque to today's category defining businesses. Rajesh was the Founding President of Reliance Entertainment, prior to which he founded Times Internet (Indiatimes.com). Rajesh was also the Founder & CEO of Innerchef, a leading cloud kitchen platform in India. Rajesh serves on the board of Indiamart, Ixigo, Microland and Zest Money. Rajesh is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School (AMP) and has a fellowship from the London School of Economics.
Arvind Rajan - Advisory Board Member @ H2; Co-Founder & Executive Chairman @ Cricket Health: Arvind is Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Cricket Health, a comprehensive kidney care provider with an evidence-based approach to managing chronic kidney disease (CKD) and end-stage renal disease. Prior to starting the company, Arvind spent six years at LinkedIn, where he served in a series of executive leadership roles. Among other things, he led LinkedIn’s entry into new markets around the world and helped the company operate as a global business. Before LinkedIn, Arvind co-founded Grassroots Enterprise, which developed pioneering online grassroots marketing and influencer programs for Fortune 500 companies, national non-profit organizations, and government agencies. Over the course of nine years, he served as COO, then CEO and eventually Executive Chairman. Arvind began his career with the Boston Consulting Group, and has also held executive leadership roles in technology companies across a wide range of industries.
John China - Advisory Board Member @ H2; President @ SVB Capital: John is President of SVB Capital, SVB’s funds management business with $4.5 billion under management across venture capital funds of funds and direct funds. In this role, he is responsible for growing the funds business as well as SVB’s Early Stage Practice supporting entrepreneurs and startups at their earliest stages, and SVB’s Family Office practice. John is a part of SVB’s Executive Committee and has led Technology Banking teams across the US specializing in software, internet, hardware, infrastructure, private equity, venture capital, and premium wine. He has also been responsible for the company’s Corporate Venturing Group, Early Stage banking services, SVB’s Global Gateway program, the Credit Solutioning Group and Corporate Finance. John earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Stanford University and he is learning to kite surf.
Gokul Rajaram - Advisory Board Member @ H2; Advisor, Investor & Entrepreneur: Gokul is an active board member and company helper to leading Silicon Valley startups and has served on the executive team at DoorDash since November 2019. Prior to DoorDash, he worked at Square as Product Engineering Lead from July 2013 to October 2019, where he led several product development teams and served on Square’s executive team. Prior to Square, he served as Product Director of Ads at Facebook from August 2010 to July 2013, where he helped Facebook transition its advertising business to become mobile-first. Earlier in his career, Gokul served as a Product Management Director for Google AdSense, where he helped launch the product and grow it into a substantial portion of Google’s business. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, an MBA from MIT Sloan and a Master of Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, where he received the MCD University Fellowship.
Peter Werner - Advisory Board Member @ H2; Partner @ Cooley: Peter is co-chair of Cooley’s global emerging companies and venture capital practice group. Peter’s practice primarily focuses on the representation of high growth companies and their investors. He regularly assists clients with financings and mergers and acquisitions, in addition to entity formation, governance matters and securities transactions. Peter is a member of Cooley's firmwide pro bono and mental health and wellness committees and is also one of the founders and curators of Cooley GO, a microsite with tools, forms, guidance and data for entrepreneurs and emerging companies. Peter serves on the board of directors of the Full Circle Fund, a nonprofit engaged philanthropy organization, and Imagine H2O, a nonprofit organization accelerating solutions to water problems. He also serves as a mentor at MuckerLab, a Los Angeles-based startup accelerator.
Reid Hoffman - Advisory Board Member @ H2; Partner @ Greylock and Co-Founder @ LinkedIn: Reid joined Greylock Partners in 2009. He focuses on building products that can reach hundreds of millions of participants and businesses that have network effects. An accomplished entrepreneur and executive, Reid has played an integral role in building many of today’s leading consumer technology businesses, including LinkedIn and PayPal. Reid co-founded LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional networking service, in 2003 and led the company through its first four years and to profitability as Chief Executive Officer. Reid is the co-author of two New York Times best-selling books: The Start-up of You and The Alliance. His next book is focused on “blitzscaling”, based on his Stanford course of the same name. Reid is the host of the podcast, Masters of Scale. Reid earned a master’s degree in philosophy from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and a bachelor’s degree with distinction in symbolic systems from Stanford University.
Nirav Tolia - Advisory Board Member @ H2; Advisor, Investor & Entrepreneur: Nirav is a technology entrepreneur and executive with over 19 years of experience founding and leading early-stage, pioneering consumer Internet companies. Most recently, he was Co-Founder and CEO of Nextdoor, the free and private social network for neighborhoods founded in 2010. Under Nirav's leadership, Nextdoor raised $210 million in funding from Benchmark, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Tiger Global Management, Allen & Company, Google Ventures, and others. Nirav began his entrepreneurial pursuits as an early employee at Yahoo! before co-founding and serving as CEO of Epinions, a website devoted to user-generated product reviews. Epinions was acquired by Shopping.com, and he was COO before the company went public on Nasdaq and was subsequently acquired by eBay. Nirav grew up in Odessa, Texas, and graduated from Stanford University.
Ellen Levy - Advisory Board Member @ H2; Managing Director @ Silicon Valley Connect: Ellen is Managing Director of Silicon Valley Connect, working with organizations and entrepreneurs on opportunities for “networked innovation.” Additionally, she actively manages a portfolio of ~25 startups either as an angel investor or advisory board member. Ellen spent much of the last decade working with LinkedIn, including as VP of Strategic Initiatives, head of Corporate & Business Development and member of the Executive Team, and her original role as Advisory Board member. Over her career, Ellen has held roles in venture capital (Softbank; NeoCarta; Draper Fisher Jurvetson), startups (WhoWhere; Softbook Press; LinkedIn), think tanks (Interval), large corporations (Apple; PwC), and universities (Harvard; Stanford). She has a BA from the University of Michigan, and MA/PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Stanford University.