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Summer 2025
San Francisco

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Our Story

Our debut in 2024 brought together 750 attendees, 72 showcasing startups, 100+ VCs and investors, and 40 speakers, creating an electrifying environment filled with creativity, forward-thinking ideas, and dynamic connections. Whether you’re a founder, investor, or tech enthusiast, Step SF is your go-to event for cutting-edge conversations, networking, and discovering the next big thing.

Top Tech
Speakers

Global Startup
Community

Investor & Startup
Matchmaking

Startup
Showcase

Previous speakers

Abe Minkara

Legacy Knight

Abe Minkara

Legacy Knight

Founding Partner of Legacy Knight. Prior to Legacy Knight, Abe was the Managing Director at Mark Cuban Companies. Abe managed the portfolio of investments at Mark Cuban Companies. Abe is also actively engaged as an advisor and board member with a number of companies leveraging his expertise in strategy, operations, and capital allocation to help accelerate their growth.

Gabriela de Queiroz

Microsoft

Gabriela de Queiroz

Microsoft

Gabriela de Queiroz is the Director of AI at Microsoft, where she provides strategic guidance to both early and growth-stage startups, helping them harness the full capabilities of AI and Microsoft’s products. Prior to joining Microsoft, Gabriela held significant positions at IBM. As their Chief Data Scientist, she spearheaded the AI Strategy and Innovations, and as the Program Director for AI Open-Source Technologies, she led numerous Data & AI open-source initiatives and projects. Earlier in her career, Gabriela gained experience in diverse sectors, working for startups in the Software, Financial, Advertising, and Healthcare industries.

Aaref Hilaly

Bain Capital Ventures

Aaref Hilaly

Bain Capital Ventures

Aaref is a partner at Bain Capital Ventures. He presently serves on the boards of Clari, Contextual AI, Cleanlab, Felt and a handful of other early stage companies. Previously, he spent seven years as a partner at Sequoia where he served on the boards of Guardant Health (NASDAQ: GH), Lightstep (acquired by ServiceNow), MobileIron (NASDAQ: MOBL), Skyhigh Networks (acquired by McAfee), and ThousandEyes (acquired by Cisco). Before becoming an investor, Aaref was part of the founding team at Clearwell, an early SaaS application that automated e-discovery for legal teams. Aaref grew Clearwell from a handful of engineers into a profitable company with over $100 million in annual recurring revenue. In 2011, Symantec acquired Clearwell and Aaref became vice president of engineering in Symantec’s information management group.

Sara Rona

Silicon Valley Bank

Sara Rona

Silicon Valley Bank

Managing Director for Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Head of UK/Europe, Middle East North Africa (Turkey, Egypt, UAE, and Jordan) and Australia/New Zealand (ANZ) where she manages a global portfolio of tech startups and venture capital firms who are expanding stateside and need cross-border banking services as they scale, providing value beyond banking and being their bridge into the US. Sara joined SVB in 2018 and has been in finance for the last 15 years at a variety of different financial institutions including HSBC, IFC-World Bank and Deutsche Bank and has an MBA in international business. She’s spent time living in Dubai, Bangkok, Paris, London, and the US. By way of background, Sara is from France and Afghanistan.

Calvin Chin

E14 Fund

Calvin Chin

E14 Fund

Calvin Chin is Managing Partner at E14 Fund, the early stage venture capital fund affiliated with MIT that invests in deep tech companies from the MIT community. Previously, Calvin has been an operator and founder at deep tech companies Transist, Qifang, SMIC and others.

Omar Shaya

MultiOn

Omar Shaya

MultiOn

“Omar Shaya is the founder of MultiOn, an AI company that develops autonomous agents. Prior to this, he led product management for Core Product Ranking at Meta and worked on product management at the Microsoft Search, Assistant, and Intelligence (MSAI) organization. Omar holds an MS in Management from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He also has a Computer Science background, holding BS and MS degrees with a focus on AI from Göttingen University in Germany. He holds several patents in AI applications.”

Dr. Wardah Inam

Overjet

Dr. Wardah Inam

Overjet

Dr. Wardah Inam is the Co-Founder and CEO of Overjet, the leading AI technology provider for the dental industry. Previously, she led product development at Q Bio, a healthcare startup focused on biomedical imaging. She was also a Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, working on remote biomedical sensing with machine learning. Dr. Inam holds a PhD from MIT, where she developed AI-powered microgrid technology recognized by National Geographic. She has worked at GE and Apple and received the MIT Graduate Women of Excellence Award. She has been named one of the 32 most influential people in dentistry by Incisal Edge, one of the Top 100 Female Founders by Inc. Magazine, and received the Shils Innovator Award in 2022. Dr. Inam is also a member of the Santa Fe Group’s Strategic Advisory Council.

Jon Chu

Khosla Ventures

Jon Chu

Khosla Ventures

Jon is a Partner at Khosla Ventures passionate about machine learning and its impact on enterprise infrastructure, applications, and developer tools. Prior to KV, Jon built a career in technology as a founder, early employee, and organizational leader across a variety of engineering and product roles. He began his career as an early engineer at Palantir (PLTR), helping scale it from 200 to 1800 employees and founded and sold KoalityCode to Docker, where he created and led Docker’s enterprise division. At Opendoor (OPEN), Jon held roles as both Head of Product for Growth and Head of Engineering for Core Machine Learning helping scale the company to IPO. Most recently, Jon spent time at Facebook leading international engineering organizations in both VR & ML. Jon holds a B.S. in Computer Science with University Honors from Carnegie Mellon University.

Bilal Zuberi

Lux Capital

Bilal Zuberi

Lux Capital

For nearly two decades, Bilal has been investing in founders that want to solve big, important problems with technically ambitious solutions, across industries (enterprise software, deeptech, healthcare, national security, climate) and stages (from seed to growth). He wants to partner with good human beings who are driven to build responsible, ethical companies, and believes technology can not only help address some of the world’s largest problems, but also make humans lives significantly better. Bilal brings 20 years of experience to Board roles. Bilal led Lux’s investments in Applied Intuition, Ironclad, OpenSpace, Nozomi Networks, Commure, Tendo Health, DesktopMetal ($DM), Evolv ($EVLV), Aurora Solar, Kyra Health, Saildrone, Cloaked, Happiest Baby, Zededa, Fiddler, Copia Automation, Kinetic, Nominal, and others. Prior to joining Lux, Bilal was a VC at General Catalyst. Before that he was a technical founder/entrepreneur. Earlier in his career, Bilal was a strategy consultant at BCG. Bilal earned a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (under Prof. Mario Molina, Nobel laureate, 1995). He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Lemelson Foundation. He is an immigrant citizen in this country, and thankful every day for opportunities that he has been afforded here.

Jeremiah Owyang

Blitzcaling Ventures

Jeremiah Owyang

Blitzcaling Ventures

VC of Blitzscaling AI Fund, Speaker, Event Host in Silicon Valley

MAIN PARTNER





WHAT GOES ON

What goes on

Talks & Panels

Our engaging talks and panels cover cutting-edge AI, SaaS, Startups, and Investments topics. Gain fresh perspectives from industry leaders and participate in thought-provoking discussions that will propel you forward.

Startup Programming

Our dedicated startup program offers a comprehensive package designed to empower your venture. Get a full-day showcase booth, connect with investors & partners, and maximize your funding chances.

Exhibition Areas

Gain high-impact exposure for your brand alongside leading companies. Connect directly with potential customers, partners, and investors eager to discover cutting-edge solutions

 

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