Venture Rock

Mei Lin Fung serves as Vice Chair of the UN AI for Good Impact Steering Committee and Chair of the IEEE SSIT Sustainability Technical Committee. She co-founded the People-Centered Internet with Vint Cerf and the Nehitek Foundation with Michael MacFarland, and contributed to the development of early CRM systems at Oracle alongside Tom Siebel and Marc Benioff. Her career encompasses roles at Shell, Intel, and the U.S. Department of Defense, with current focus on digital public infrastructure, AI governance, and MSME financing, supported by academic training in mathematics and management from the Australian National University and MIT.

Navin Danapal is Managing Partner at Venturerock Asia, where he engages with corporate and government stakeholders across the region to develop frameworks in technology, media, telecommunications, and business development. His work includes organizing technology conferences and hackathons in Southeast Asia, establishing venture capital infrastructure through SOSV's regional office, and facilitating connections between investors and startups that have generated over $2 million in investments resulting in 10x returns. Danapal advises government agencies and corporations on innovation initiatives, speaks at international conferences on topics including fintech and space economy, and mentors entrepreneurs and venture capital professionals across the region.

Navroop Sahdev is founder and CEO of The Digital Economist, a research organization publishing over 100 papers annually on human-centered economics and governance. He holds a Connection Science Fellowship at MIT Media Lab and previously conducted research at Harvard University, with work focused on distributed systems, identity, and networks. Sahdev has authored Blockchain Economics (2019) and contributed to Hyperledger's "Blockchain for Business" course, which has reached approximately 200,000 entrepreneurs, and advises on emerging technology policy at international institutions including the UN and World Bank.

Xander van der Heijden is founder and CEO of UNL Global and co-founder of Venturerock. With over 25 years in technology entrepreneurship, he holds multiple patents in distributed and network computing, developed early cloud architecture and open-source encryption technology in the 1990s, and has founded more than 20 companies with multiple exits and over $100 million in capital raised. He created UNL to address the gap in global digital addressing systems, developing a micro-location database and mapping technology with centimeter-level accuracy for outdoor, indoor, and three-dimensional locations.

Mark Burbach serves as Chief Investment Officer at R/A Wealth Advisors, where he oversees investment management functions including strategic portfolio management, tactical asset allocation, manager selection, and risk management. His background in financial services includes experience in team building and development across investment and people management disciplines.

Pascal Verloop is COO and Co-Founder of UNL. He has experience exploring innovative business concepts based on new technologies across corporate and entrepreneurial settings, with focus on product and business strategy during ideation, prototyping, and growth phases.

Sudheer Kuppam is a venture capital and growth equity investor with experience across global technology markets. He served as Managing Director at Intel Capital overseeing the India, Japan, Australasia, and Southeast Asia regions and leading a US$250 million India-focused technology fund, and later founded Epsilon Venture Partners, a technology-focused VC and growth-equity firm that has deployed over US$600 million across more than 100 startups in Asia-Pacific. Kuppam holds a BTech from IIT Madras and an MS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and serves on multiple boards while advising early-stage technology companies.

Jason Collins is a wealth manager and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in investment advisory, portfolio management, and business development. He currently serves as Senior Wealth Manager at Holborn Assets in Amsterdam, where he develops strategic partnerships across the European Union, and as an advisor to the board of Valsheda Estates Limited. Collins previously founded and led Petshare Europe, a pet-care platform that reached the finals of the CzechInvest Creative Business Cup 2020, and the British Tennis Academy in Prague, a €20 million sports facility project. He holds certifications in Advanced Wealth Management and Wealth and Investment Management from the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investments.