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13. RAM SHRIRAM
Founder, Sherpalo Ventures
Ram Shriram founded Sherpalo Ventures back in 2000 to guide and mentor
entrepreneurs with disruptive ideas. Since, the firm has invested in Paperless
Post, StumbleUpon, Zazzle, and Mint.
He’s also a founding board member — and one of the first investors in —
Google. He was an early employee of the Netscape executive team, and
was president of Junglee when Amazon acquired it in 1998 for about $185
million. He continued to work as an Amazon officer under founder and CEO
Jeff Bezos. Because of his extensive experience, Shriram is one of Silicon
Valley’s “golden angels.”
14. PADMASREE WARRIOR
Chief Technology and Strategy Officer, Cisco
As the chief technology and strategy officer at Cisco, Padmasree Warrior is
in charge of shaping the company’s vision, as well as handling mergers and
acquisitions.
Before Cisco, she was the CTO of Motorola and she’s passionate about
helping other women in tech succeed.
Cisco CEO John Chambers has said that she is “among the sharpest
technology persons in the world” and hinted that she could take his place
once he retires.
15. POOJA SANKAR
Founder and CEO, Piazza
Pooja Sankar’s startup, Piazza, is a question-and-answer platform for
students and teachers to collaborate, and it just raised $8 million from
Khosla Ventures and Bessemer. Before founding Piazza, Sankar worked as
a developer for Facebook, Oracle, and Kosmix.
She started Piazza while studying for her MBA at Stanford. Ironically, she
failed a class in entrepreneurship because she was too busy running the
business.
16. YASH NELAPATI
Engineer, Pinterest
Yash Nelapati was Pinterest’s first full-time employee, and worked with
founders Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp to get the site off the
ground.
At this point, he’s been at the company for more than four years. Along
with Marty Weiner — the second engineer to join the company — he’s
responsible for keeping the site up even during times of explosive growth.
Pinterest currently has more than 70 million users.
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