SPEAKERS
JOSEPH
LIU
CENTRAL TEXAS ANGEL NETWORK
Joseph has membership in 3 angel networks, Central Texas Angel Network, Tech Coast Angels, and Chemical Angel Network. He is currently serving on the board of CTAN. His investment portfolio comprises 35+ companies across Life Sciences, B2B Software, Hardware, and CPG industries. He has 7 exits with CTAN.
Joseph Liu worked in the IT industry for over 20 years. He holds a BS degree in Engineering for Sustainable Environment from National Taiwan University and an MBA degree from the University of Texas at Austin, a Master of Jurisprudence from St. Mary’s School of Law, and a biotechnology certificate from Harvard University. He is a candidate for the Master of Industrial Organizational Psychology from Harvard University.
RAMÓN BLANCO
BEWATER FUNDS
Ramón Blanco holds a degree in CCEE and Law from ICADE (E3). He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Fulbright scholarship. He started his career working in marketing at Unilever, continued in Investment Banking at Banco de Santander and in 1999 founded selftrade.es, an online broker whose parent company went public in France. In 2002 Selftrade was sold to Boursorama Banque (part of the SG group with a market capitalisation of €1 billion). At Boursorama Banque he was Deputy CEO (France), President of Onvista Bank (Germany), Vice President of Selftrade Bank UK. In 2012 he founded etece.com. Ramón has also been an investor in numerous start-ups (idealista.com, 11870.com, sindelantal.com), 15 times international rugby player for Spain and is Professor of the Master in Financial Markets at Garrigues.
Eduardo Diez-Hochleitner
SAMAIPATA
Eduardo is the Chairman and co-founder of Samaipata, a pan-European Venture Capital fund that invests in digital businesses with early stage network effects. He is also the Chairman of Grupo Másmóvil and co-founder of the impact fund Gawa Capital. Previously, he held various positions at BNP Bank, PRISA Group, was a partner at APAX Partners; and business angel and chairman of Bodaclick and Canalmail, advisor at Infojobs, member of the advisory board at LaNeveraRoja, among other startups.
CARLOS ALZATE
AI FUND
Carlos Alzate is the CTO & Colombia GM at Andrew Ng’s AI Fund. As CTO, Carlos assists portfolio companies in developing their ML technology and counsels them on the current state of the art. In his role as General Manager of the Fund’s AI hub in Colombia, he oversees the Fund’s LatAm technical talent and assists portfolio companies with hiring ML talent.
Prior to AI Fund, Carlos was a research scientist and manager at the IBM Research Lab in Dublin, Ireland. He managed the AI for Health and Social Care group and worked in close collaboration with IBM’s Watson Health division. His scientific interests are in productizing machine learning technology in diverse domains including computational argumentation and natural language processing.
For 5 years, he was the technical lead of the Dublin lab’s contribution to IBM’s Project Debater. Before joining IBM Research, Carlos was a postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) at the KU Leuven in Belgium. He received a Ph.D. in Engineering and a Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence from the KU Leuven in 2009 and 2004 respectively.
He also holds a degree in Electronic Engineering from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
RAMÓN BLANCO
BEWATER FUNDS
Ramón Blanco holds a degree in CCEE and Law from ICADE (E3). He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Fulbright scholarship. He started his career working in marketing at Unilever, continued in Investment Banking at Banco de Santander and in 1999 founded selftrade.es, an online broker whose parent company went public in France. In 2002 Selftrade was sold to Boursorama Banque (part of the SG group with a market capitalisation of €1 billion). At Boursorama Banque he was Deputy CEO (France), President of Onvista Bank (Germany), Vice President of Selftrade Bank UK. In 2012 he founded etece.com. Ramón has also been an investor in numerous start-ups (idealista.com, 11870.com, sindelantal.com), 15 times international rugby player for Spain and is Professor of the Master in Financial Markets at Garrigues.
Eduardo Diez-Hochleitner
SAMAIPATA
Eduardo is the Chairman and co-founder of Samaipata, a pan-European Venture Capital fund that invests in digital businesses with early stage network effects. He is also the Chairman of Grupo Másmóvil and co-founder of the impact fund Gawa Capital. Previously, he held various positions at BNP Bank, PRISA Group, was a partner at APAX Partners; and business angel and chairman of Bodaclick and Canalmail, advisor at Infojobs, member of the advisory board at LaNeveraRoja, among other startups.
