Martin Altorfer

Founder, Entrepreneur, Board Member of Bexio, Nine Internet Solutions AG & A. Baggenstos & Co. AG

Martin is an entrepreneur and investor in the technology space with over 25 years experience. He was the founder and CEO/CTO of a number of companies including Active-Net AG, a leading Swiss ISP which he sold to UUNet in 1999; BCAP AG, a Venture capital fund sold to BZ 2001; Celeris AG, an internet security company which he sold to Swisscom in 2005; replica, an online music company liquidated in 2006. He also served as CIO (Chief Information Officer) in one of Australias largest companies, CSR Ltd between 2007 and 2009.

Recent investments include Nutmeg (UK) and Bexio (CH) where he served as Executive Chairman until sold to Swiss Mobiliar Holding in 2018. Martin still considers himself primarily a “techie”.

Baybars Altuntaş

Chairman, World Business Angels Investment Forum

Former Senior Advisor of the Elite Program of the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), Chairman of the World Business Angels Investment Forum (WBAF) – an affiliated partner of the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) chaired by the Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, Co-chair of the Washington DC-based Global Business Angels Network (GBAN), Vice President of the Brussels-based European Trade Association for Business Angels, Seed Funds, and Early Stage Market Players (EBAN), President of the Business Angels Association of Turkey (TBAA), the World Entrepreneurship Forum Ambassador to Turkey and the Balkan countries, and President of Deulcom International Inc. Star of the Turkish version of the television show Dragons’ Den / Sharks Tank.

Recipient of the European Trade Association of Business Angels (EBAN) award for the Best Individual in Europe Globally Engaging with the Global Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in 2014 (Ireland), 2015 (Netherlands), 2016 (Portugal), 2017 (Spain) and 2018 (Bulgaria). The only entrepreneur to be granted a personal audience with former President Obama at the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in Washington DC.

Developer of the world-renowned entrepreneurship theory, the Altuntas Start-up Compass Theory, researched by Sheffield University and used in numerous MBA programs. Appointed as JCI Ambassador, following Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary General of the United Nations.

Profiled regularly by leading international media such as CNN International, Bloomberg, BBC. A co-author of Planet Entrepreneur: The World Entrepreneurship Forum’s Guide to Business Success Around the World, published by Wiley (2013). Author of Off the Bus, Into a Supercar! How I Became a Top TV Star and Celebrated Investor, published by Balboa Press (2014) and translated into Chinese, Croatian, Albanian, and Macedonian.

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James Digby

Managing Partner 3B Ventures

James is a Managing Partner at 3B Ventures, focusing on investing in innovation that can impact the lives of the next 3 billion. Also a founding Partner at the Global Startup Awards, a pan-regional startup competition that recognizes entrepreneurs and their respective supporting ecosystems in 53 countries around the world, and co-founded the award-winning startup incubator Rockstart Accelerator in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

As a seasoned board member, most recently with Louisiana State University (LSU), James has also served on the management team and a personal mentor for a number of startups that have gone on to raise significant funding and global traction, recently with the award-winning AIRTAME wireless HDMI streaming device that became the most publically backed crowdfunded project in Europe on Indiegogo of all time.

James has more than a decade of entrepreneurial experience working with startups and alongside corporations like Samsung, and public organisations such as the Saïd Business School at Oxford University and the Kauffman Foundation to develop innovation & strategy workshops as well as lecture and keynote on entrepreneurial techniques with a focus on ‘lean’ methodologies and social innovation.

Andreas Iten

Head Corporate Ventures SIX, Co-Founder & Member of the Board F10

Andreas Iten is Managing Director and Head of Corporate Ventures at SIX. He is co-founder of the SIX Hackathon (Europe’s largest Fintech coding contest), co-founder and board member of the Zurich based F10 Fin Tech Incubator & Accelerator.

Andreas is an experienced innovation & entrepreneurship strategist, with proven leadership in high-level innovation, open-innovation, information technology management and entrepreneurship. Andreas has worked for over 15 years within leading institutions in the IT service, airline & transportation and the financial industry.

Since 2015 Andreas was leading technology innovation and he acted as the Chief Information Officer for the division Financial Information within SIX Group.

Dr. Barbara Lang

Managing Partner at InnoExc GmbH

Dr. Barbara Lang started her career at IBM. She then moved on to consulting and is now managing partner at InnoExc GmbH Switzerland, a consulting company focused on innovation in crypto tech and biotech.

William Mougayar

Author & Managing Partner, JM3 Capital

William Mougayar is a blockchain investor, researcher, speaker, blogger, author of The Business Blockchain (Wiley, 2016), managing partner at JM3 Capital, founder of The Token Summit, and manager of WMX, a cryptocurrency index fund. He is a known authority on, and a direct participant in the crypto-technology market.

William is an advisor or board member to some of the world’s leading blockchain organizations, including the Ethereum Foundation (former advisor), the Kin Foundation, OpenBazaar, Coin Center, Steem, Stratumn, Cofound.it and Bloq. He blogs regularly about the present and future of blockchains at Startup Management.

Dalith Steiger

Co-founder of SwissCognitive

Dalith Steiger is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of SwissCognitive – The Global AI Hub, founded in 2016. She is also CEO of the Swiss IT Leadership Forum, an association of leading executives from the Swiss ICT industry, as well as Member of the Advisory Council of digital-liberal.ch, a political start-up of the liberals, which recognizes and promotes the opportunities of digitization.

Dalith is also Co-Owner and Member of the Executive Board of CORE Design Works, an agency for visual and industrial design founded in 2001. Dalith was born in Israel and raised in Switzerland, and she earned her degree in mathematics and information technology from the University of Zurich. She speaks fluent German, English and Hebrew, as well as some French and Italian.

She has been an entrepreneur for over a decade, driven by her passion for smart technologies & Artificial Intelligence. Prior to her entrepreneurial journey, Dalith worked in the banking industry, project managed IT operations at UBS. After this role, she moved to Avaloq Evolution, where she advised and supported the management at senior and board levels at various private banks in the field of banking software.

Dalith gives industry related speeches around the world, be that in Tel Aviv, Zürich, Davos, Brussels or even in Boston. She is often interviewed and seen on stage as keynote speaker or panelist, not only to share her broad knowledge and experience in the field of Artificial Intelligence, but also to motivate the younger generation to engage in cognitive technologies and follow their passion – just as she did.