San Francisco Data Summit 2024

Pouya Taaghol is a passionate engineer and the founder of Big Data Federation. Pouya was the CTO of Cisco’s Smart Home and Intel’s of Mobile Wireless Group where he led technology evolution, intellectual property strategies, ecosystem development, business acquisition, and divesture. Pouya has also held senior technical positions at Motorola and NEC.

Pouya holds over 71 granted and pending patents in wireless/networking/security/big data, and 150+ publications and contributions to standards bodies. Pouya holds a BSc from Sharif University of Technologies (Iran) and a PhD from University of Surrey (UK).

Shannon is a Senior Manager Leading the Intelligence Services Centre (ISC) within Deloitte’s Risk Advisory practice with over 7 years experience covering a variety of areas.

In in her role she specialises in helping clients proactively manage their operational resilience through intelligence based managed services. She leads the innovation, planning, development and implementation of propositions based around open-source intelligence technology.

‍

Taylor is the CEO of Metal, an AI platform built to streamline private equity and venture capital investment workflows. Metal leverages proprietary data processing infrastructure to extract and integrate key data into its AI-native SaaS, accelerating investor workflows across the entire investment lifecycle and maximizing the value of critical data sets.

Taylor and the founding team launched Metal out of Y Combinator and are based in NYC.

‍

Tiago is originally from Brazil. He holds a PhD in Economics from UCLA, where he studied Econometrics and Game Theory. Previously, he was a data scientist in Airbnb's ranking algorithm and Uber's pricing team. He led the Data Science team at Goodwater Capital for over four years.

Tiago is now the co-founder and CEO of Neural Sourcing, a start-up focusing on bringing machine learning and AI to VCs and PEs. He is also the proud father of three boys.

Todd has spent the past decade building and leading best-in-class data strategy, data sourcing and data acquisition teams within two blue chip, global hedge funds, that were among the earliest adopters, largest buyers and thought leaders in the industry.

With over 20+ years at top-tier firms on both the buyside and the sellside, Todd has partnered with numerous data and fintech companies as well as data scientists and data engineers to create and commercialize proprietary insights and products.

Tony Ho discovered his love of math and computer science at an early age, and began entering competitions in those fields for the pure enjoyment of breaking down puzzles and solving them at speed. While studying applied math and computer science at Harvard, he aced a hackathon and won a position coding for a newly launched tech recruiting firm before he was out of college. He quickly realized that while building a young business also demanded fast, accurate problem-solving, the results made a difference in the real world.

Tony took his skills and experience into one of the more results-sensitive industries out there – media and entertainment – as CTO for Los Angeles-based EDO, which uses data to assess and predict the effectiveness of marketing for movies, television and online media. As he notes, the entertainment industry is like venture investing: it’s hard to predict the winners, but better information almost always improves the odds. 

Tony came to the venture side as director of engineering for an early-stage firm seeking to incorporate data into the day-to-day work of supporting portfolio companies on their growth journey. With General Catalyst, Tony leads the engineering on Customer Value Financing - a source of capital underwritten by a Company’s cohorts and cash flows. Part of working with CVF involves analyzing company data from a completely different angle.

On his own time, Tony is a fan of the Golden State Warriors and a consumer of all media. He also finds time to inspire young people to pursue their love of math and science.

‍