Demystifying Venture Capital

Scott Kupor is an investing partner focused on growth-stage companies in the bio and healthcare industries. He manages the firm’s investor relations team and is responsible for the firm’s growth initiatives.

Mr. Kupor was the first employee at Andreessen Horowitz and managed the firm’s growth from $300 million in AUM to more than $30 billion. Prior to joining the firm, he worked as vice president and general manager of software-as-a-service at Hewlett Packard. Before that, Mr. Kupor held numerous executive management positions at Opsware, including senior vice president of global field operations, vice president of financial planning, and vice president of corporate development. Prior to Opsware, he represented software companies in both financing and mergers and acquisitions transactions at Credit Suisse First Boston and Lehman Brothers.

Mr. Kupor is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller ”Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It” and serves on the boards of Cedar, Headway, Foursquare, Labster, Ultima, and SnapLogic. He also served as chairman of the board for the National Venture Capital Association.

Mr. Kupor graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a Bachelor’s degree in Public Policy with honors and distinction. He also holds a law degree with distinction from Stanford University and is a member of the State Bar of California.

Ikenna Nwafor is a 2023 MBA candidate at Cornell SC Johnson Graduate School of Management. Prior to Johnson, he spent two years as a biomedical engineer for SpectralMD, a medical device startup creating innovative imaging technologies using artificial intelligence and machine learning. Mr. Nwafor interned at Bank of America as an investment banking associate in the Healthcare group during the summer of 2022. He is also an M.D. candidate at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and received his Bachelor of Science in Biomechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

Jimmy Carnes is a 2023 MBA candidate at the Cornell SC Johnson Graduate School of Management. Prior to Johnson, he spent four years in the United States Marine Corps as a telecommunications officer, where he was stationed in Virginia and California and deployed to Saudi Arabia. Following his military service, Mr. Carnes worked as the Director of Business Operations for a startup specializing in analyzing nutritional data. He is passionate about robust, interoperable systems and the people that use them. Mr. Carnes received a B.S. in Business and Management and an M.S. in Business Analytics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York.

Laura DeMassa is a second-year J.D. student at Cornell Law School. While attending Cornell University as an undergraduate, Ms. DeMassa conducted immigration research in Paris, was the editor-in-chief of the Cornell International Affairs Review, and won the M.H. Abrams Honors Thesis Award for her thesis on capital punishment. This past summer, she worked for a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Ms. DeMassa is an associate on Cornell Law Review and the president of the Intellectual Property and Technology Students Association at Cornell Law School. She will also be a teaching assistant for “American Legal Writing” and “Startup Legal Issues.” In the summer of 2023, Ms. DeMassa will work as a summer associate at a law firm in Palo Alto, where she will be part of the Emerging Companies & Venture Capital group.