ACG 101 Oct 10th 2024 VC TECH PANEL

Kris is an Audit Partner with over 30 years of experience in public accounting and consulting.

He has extensive industry experience throughout the technology sector—software, interactive gaming, semiconductor, telecommunications, and biotech—as well as manufacturing, distribution, and venture capital and private equity. Kris has served a wide range of companies, from privately held emerging growth companies (EGCs) to publicly traded multinationals with revenues exceeding $1 billion. He has guided these companies through various matters, including raising private equity capital, executing IPOs and carve-out transactions, structuring mergers and acquisitions, ensuring FCPA compliance, and conducting financial audits and SEC compliance.

Before joining HCVT, Kris was a Partner at BDO and previously at Deloitte. At Deloitte, he led Los Angeles office initiatives focused on technology industry clients, including EGCs. Kris also chaired the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Awards program and led CFO forums and IPO seminars for several years. As an accomplished public speaker, he has addressed audiences at IPO seminars and business conferences, including the CSQ 2016 LA Visionaries Summit. Kris was also a member of Deloitte’s Middle Market Group, focusing on small-to-medium-sized businesses with significant growth potential. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the University of Southern California.

Leslie Oliver Karpas has a deep product centric background in computer vision, SaaS, digital manufacturing, and robotics. A strategist, evangelist, and technologist with expertise in driving innovative solutions from inception to market; he’s collaborated with such entities as Stanley Black & Decker (DeWalt / Craftsman), Intellectual Ventures, Singularity University, Herman Miller, iRobot, Cirque du Soleil, and the artist Anish Kapoor. He is passionate about innovative user-oriented design through the interplay between digital and physical environments be it computer vision AI at the edge, mixed reality, spatial computing, advanced manufacturing, or scan-to-fit 3D printing; and has been lead inventor on 5 issued patents around said technologies.

Fen has led data science research at Alpha Edison since 2018, leveraging large scale data sets to identify silent suffering and market opportunities.  Prior to joining Alpha Edison, Dr. Zhao was a program officer at the National Science Foundation managing research portfolios in data science and cybersecurity, with a focus on commercialization of academic research.

During the Obama Administration, Fen worked at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on science policy for national security. Prior, she was an associate with McKinsey’s Risk Management practice.

A native New Yorker, Fen enjoys cooking her homegrown vegetables and playing video games and the flute. Fen has a PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford, studying computational astrophysics. She has a BSs in Physics and Mathematics for Computer Science from MIT.

Damien manages Morpheus's investments in Ten63, Verisim Life, Q-Ctrl and Quoherent. Previously, he led investments in Rigetti Computing (RGTI), DeepMind Technologies (acq. by Google), Vivino, Vicarious, Bossa Nova Robotics, Spirosure (acq. by Caire Inc.), Fanduel (acq. by Flutter), and Starship Technologies. He also actively helps other portfolio companies on financing, M&A and growth hacking. Damien was part of the team that represented the founders of Skype in all major transactions from founding through the sale of Skype to Microsoft for $8.5 Bil.

Mark has over three decades of financial advisory experience, primarily in corporate financial restructuring, business and securities valuation, forensic accounting and mathematical modeling. While his client list is diverse, he has a spent most of his career serving private equity and debt funds, and in particular early-stage life science and technology companies. He has experience valuing complex securities such as derivatives and structured products as well as contingent obligations for financial reporting purposes.

Mark has testified in federal and state courts on valuation, financial solvency and economic damages in complex civil litigation. In addition, he presents and lectures on valuation and mathematical modeling and has co-authored a valuation and modeling book and served on the AICPA Task Force for the valuation of securities held by private equity and venture capital funds.

Mark is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Accredited Senior Appraiser – Business Valuation (ASA-BV) destinations.  He earned a Bachelor of Science in mathematics from Indiana University, a Master of Business Administration from University of California at Davis and will receive a Master of Science in applied and computational mathematics from Johns Hopkins University in the fall of 2025.