Martin Varsavsky is an Argentine/Spanish entrepreneur, former IE & current Columbia University Professor who founded 7 firms in the past 20 years. Today he's CEO of Fon, a global WiFi community that has grown to be the largest in the world. He started his entrepreneurial career in the 80s with Urban Capital Corporation, one of the early leaders of the loft movement in Manhattan. This was followed by Medicorp Services, a pioneer in AIDS testing. In the 90s he started Jazz Telecomunicaciones (Jazztel), Spanish telco giant. Ya.com, (today Orange) Spain’s third largest internet web provider was also among his successful ventures. The father of 6 is devoted to improve education and access to technology through the Varsavsky Foundation.

"Trends...Find them, ride them and get off" says Howard Lindzon, "super angel" investor, hedge fund manager and writer. Howard is the founder of Stocktwits, the Facebook of the financial community and an active mentor to entrepreneurs. He is also the creator of Wallstrip, the successful business satire news video podcast, which was purchased by CBS. As a managing partner of Social Leverage seed fund, he invests in early stage web businesses. To sum up his knowledge and experience as an investor, Lindzon published his first book in 2009, "The Wallstrip Edge: Using Trends to Make Money".

Candace Johnson was named one of the 50 most powerful women in Europe by Time and Fortune magazines. She's a telecoms expert and entrepreneur, who helped to pioneer the satellite industry in Europe that earned her several awards. In her 40 year career she created several companies, including, SES/ASTRA. She is the most proud of her work that advanced the democratization of access to telecoms and internet, which earned her the name "The Satellady". Candice is playing a major role in the European startup scene. She is the President of JPV, Johnson Paradigm Ventures, which is one of the founding shareholders of Sophia Europe Lab, Europe’s first early-stage investment company. Candace is also co-founder of Ariadne Capital. She expanded her investments into tech and med tech businesses.

Anshuman Vohra, a former JP Morgan investment banker, always wanted to live the ‘American Dream’ and have his own company. As the son of a diplomat, he travelled the world and developed a palate for exotic tastes. Dissatisfied with what was then being offered on the market, he decided to produce his own brand of gin: Bulldog Gin.

Mr Vohra left his career in banking to put the finishing touches on launching his own business. Despite the economy, Bulldog Gin is proving to be a viable brand because, as Mr. Vohra explains, liquor is countercyclical,

Born in Chinese-Brazilian culture, Bedy uses her multi-cultural power as venture partner to discover start-ups in Brazil and across Latin-America for "500 Startups" . She's also founder of Brazil Innovators that creates Silicon Valley DNA in the Brazilian start-up scene. Using Portuguese, German, Mandarin and Spanish she's working tirelessly to spread the Silicon Valley mindset around the world.

Chenoa is a "Hawaii Angel" with a particular passion for scalable start-ups with an environmental and social mission. She's the managing director of Blue Startups the Honolulu based accelerator program and has been managing director of Hawaii Angels Hawaii's only Angel Investor network that was built to strengthen the start-up ecosystem on the island. Chenoa also co-founded Kolohala Ventures, which invested $40 million in Hawaii's startups.

Jeff, is a serial entrepreneur with a focus on social and tech ventures. He's CEO of J-Seed, Tokyo based venture incubator and he's also chief mentor at Venture Generation. Originally from Hawaii, Jeff has been a long-term resident of Japan. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Jeff worked as an attorney and investment banker. He's a Berkeley and Harvard Law School alumnus.

50 years of brilliance! Legendary Californian/Hawaiian wave rider, surfboard designer-shaper is considered among the sport's most influential boardmakers; creator of the popular Bing Pipeliner model longboard in 1967 became one of the first masters of shortboard design in the early 70s. His love affair with surfing started in 1952 and was inducted into the Surfing Walk of Fame in Huntington Beach California in 2012. Dick is the owner of Dick Brewer Surfboards Hawaii and has been an entrepreneur selling his revolutionary designs for almost 50 years.

Nava is an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, innovation and technology commercialization expert with 20 years of experience. She's an adviser to the Israeli Government on innovation and international R&D collaborations; President & Co-Founder of the International Commercialization Alliance that influences policy on commercialization for 22 member countries. She's also Vice Chair of the Excellence for Commercialization of Research Canada and Founder of NanoIsrael, the international nanotech conference & exhibition.

Angel is leading investor relations as CFO at Mola Factory, an investment fund based in the beautiful island of Mallorca, specializing in technology start-up companies at the seed stage. Previously Angel worked at Lazard, a leading investment advisory and asset management firm for 8 years in mergers and acquisitions.

Nadia combined her passion for food and for the tech world when she launched Foodlve a social discovery platform for food lovers. Prior to Foodlve she worked as a web designer, developer and online marketer for 12 years.

Karim consults startups as an investment associate at Oasis 500 a leading early stage and seed investment company in the MENA region. He assists companies with fund raising, business growth strategy and legal due diligence among many other things.

IE Business School is one of the most celebrated business schools in the world ranked No.1 in Europe and 8th Worldwide by The Financial Times 2012. IE Business School is also ranked No. 9 Worldwide for Entrepreneurship by Bloomberg´s Business Week. The Venture Lab is IE Business School´s startup accelerator where students and alumni are given the oportunity to launch their own ventures with the support of our expert mentor network, a series of startup workshops, and incubation at Area 31 our startup incubator. We accelerate 50 innovative high potential startups a year of which we see up to 20% of teams go on to launch the venture and/or secure seed funding.