Defiant

A product builder who began his career as a quant trader and financial analyst at global investment banks before moving into product, where he founded and scaled several SaaS businesses and led one to exit.

Began investing at 16 and later worked as an engineer before joining institutions such as Rothschild, Vitruvian Partners, and Felix Capital. Over 10+ years he has supported more than 20 startups from seed to IPO across Europe, the US, and Asia.

Gary Jaitowal is Chief Investment Officer and Managing Partner at Kathaka, where he serves as a board member and investor in more than 15 growth-stage technology platforms spanning late Seed through Series C. His earlier career included private equity investing in middle-market healthcare software at IndUS Growth Partners and strategy and product roles at GLG, a B2B marketplace backed by Bessemer Ventures and Silverake. He previously worked in academic healthcare research before moving into venture capital, with a focus on late Seed to Series C companies in the consumer and enterprise software segments.

Avi Ashkenazi is Senior Director of Product Design at Deel, where he leads multidisciplinary design teams. He previously worked in design at Shopify.

Cristina Lasagni is the founder of FUTURAYA LTD, a consultancy providing cybersecurity and cloud architecture services to small and medium enterprises and system integrators across EMEA, with a focus on Cloudflare technologies, multi-cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP), regulatory compliance (GDPR, NIS2, DORA), and cloud cost management. She works as a fractional Chief Revenue Officer and angel investor, and her prior experience includes roles at Cloudflare, Dropbox, and Cisco.

Leo Balan is a Senior Manager of Creative Cloud Monetisation Growth at Adobe. He has more than 16 years of industry experience, with a focus on B2B SaaS growth and product management.

Marcus Granström is Chief Financial Officer at Pappas Capital. His experience includes private company fundraising, equity accounting, corporate governance, financial reporting, international accounting including US GAAP conversion and consolidation, and SEC reporting such as S-1 and periodic filings, as well as oversight of Human Resources, IT/Systems Administration, and Operations. He previously spent a decade providing finance and accounting services on a project, short-term, or part-time basis at Together Consulting LLC, with clients including Atsena Therapeutics, Precision Bio, Novan Therapeutics, and Relias Learning.

Steve Pearce is a design and product leader with nearly 30 years of experience leading multidisciplinary design teams in Europe and globally. He currently serves as an Advisor at Defiant and has held vice president of design roles at companies including Monday.com, TravelPerk, Checkout.com, Skyscanner, Skype, and Microsoft. He has also worked as a founding partner, advisor, and board trustee.

Holds leadership roles in academic internal medicine organizations with interests in cancer research.