​Stanford Entreprenuers, in partnership with The Stanford Club of South Florida, Insead Club of South Florida, and Mana Tech Miami present...

​Exited & Scaling Founders, Miami
Late stage founders have few rooms that understand them, and exited founders even fewer. Our Stanford Clubs would like to support them in this curated gathering of exited founders, scaled founder, and investors. Attendance is by application. This is an off-the-record, live event for candid discussion.

​Agenda

​5:30 pm Networking
6:00 pm: Spotlight intros. 3 founders share a decision they are making, 2 investors shares a pattern they are seeing, followed by Q&A.
6:30 pm: Exited or scaling founder insights roundtable: Relocating to Miami, investing after an exit, and "What would you build differently with AI today?"
7:15 pm: Networking
8:00 pm: Close

​Want to give a spotlight intro or share patterns? Select it in your RSVP. You do not have to be alumni to apply, speak or attend.

​Speakers

​1. Nafis Azad, AI founder

​The decision Nafis is making: after two exits and a front-row seat to AI transformation inside a PE-backed acquirer, he’s weighing where a product builder should compound next. His read: the AI cycle is at its midpoint and the easy capital is gone, which makes this the best window for exited founders to build again as operators. The open question: where has value moved since the SaaS cycle he first built in, and which founder skills carry over to building an AI company?

​Nafis Azad co-founded Lucky, a commerce data platform that connected brands to live retail inventory at Sephora, Ulta and Best Buy. SPINS, backed by Warburg Pincus and General Atlantic, acquired Lucky in 2025, where Nafis led AI strategy and transformation. Earlier, he founded the venture studio Ghost Lab, which merged into the software consulting firm Waker in 2018. He invests in and advises AI-native companies, including Yann LeCun’s AMI, and is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and a PEF member.

​2. Mason Kesner, ad agency founder

​The decision Mason's making now: after years of building other people's brands (the shoemaker's kids never have shoes), whether to build his own brand, and how much of himself, including his faith, to put into it.

​Mason will share what only exited founders know: the year he was winning the most, the last one before the exit, was also the hardest, and almost no one around him could see it.

​Mason Kesner founded and scaled Asmbly Agency into Walmart's premier third-party content partner, growing it to a national footprint and 250+ CPG brand clients before its exit in 2023. Across 15 years in marketing, advertising, and retail, he has directed more than $1B in campaign and media investment.

​3. Harry Sim, energy founder

​The decision he’s making now: with an exit 18–36 months out, whether to run the process himself or hire an M&A advisor to maximize valuation. His worry: “I’d spend the time educating an advisor on how I segment and quantify my value to each acquirer, and they wouldn’t accelerate me.” It’s a decision with a public side, positioning the company as the standard in its market, and a private one: whether a quiet, targeted process with a few strategic buyers creates more value than a broad auction.

​Harry Sim is CEO of Cypress Envirosystems, which he founded in San Jose two decades ago to build rugged, certified sensor technology for industrial facilities. As AI data centers drive demand for nuclear baseload power, that technology has moved from niche to strategic. Harry holds an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford and an MBA from INSEAD.

​4. Daniel Teper, health AI investor

​The pattern Daniel is seeing: the companies that reach unicorn status are rarely running the business model they started with. One AI company he’s funding is becoming a drug developer, following the value to where it can be defended. He’ll share why openness to changing the model often separates unicorns from companies that stall just short, and why many that never make it were attached to the first version of the idea.

​Dr. Daniel Teper is Managing General Partner at Yaday Health Ventures, a Miami-based growth acceleration investment platform, and founder and CEO of NAYA Therapeutics, a Miami clinical-stage oncology company. A pharmacist with an INSEAD MBA, he has worked both sides of the table: as an executive at Novartis, GSK and Sanofi, a management consultant and a serial entrepreneur who took a company public on Nasdaq. He serves on the board of the Miami Biotech Collective.

​5. Etienne Gillard, international expansion incubator

​The pattern Etienne is seeing: what he looks for as an investor, and why exited founders are making Miami their next move.

​Etienne Gillard is Head of Ventures at Mana Tech, where he helps local and international founders land and scale in the US. A three-time founder and angel investor, he co-founded SCALE2MIAMI, chairs ALAS (Latin American Startups Alliance), and founded the Miami chapter of AI Salon.

​About Mana Tech

​At Mana Tech, our mission is to transform Miami into the ultimate hub for entrepreneurship across the Americas. From the heart of Downtown, Mana Tech is building the infrastructure of innovation that fuels this vision — connecting world-class entrepreneurs with capital, mentorship, and market access in a city positioned to lead the next era of hemispheric growth.

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