HumanX 2026 — The #1 AI Conference (Investor 101: Early-Growth Stage Playbook)
Investor 101: Early-Growth Stage Playbook
For founders navigating the early growth stage, fundraising and scaling can feel like an entirely new game.
Investors are looking for different signals at this stage: traction, efficiency, market potential, and the strength of the team.
In this session we’ll break down what investors are really looking for at early growth stages, how founders should think about scaling their companies, and how to navigate the investor landscape during one of the most critical phases of building a startup.
Venue
Living Room
To join this event, please register and obtain a valid ticket here: https://www.humanx.co/register
Time
2:00 - 2:45 PM
Speakers
Rie Yano, Coral Capital
Murray Newlands, IA Seed Ventures
Dr. Vaibhav Agrawal, ODDBIRD VC
Vik Ghai, Founder & Managing Partner, G2C Ventures
Rie Yano, Partner at Coral Capital
Serial Entrepreneur and Partner at Coral Capital, a global VC based in Tokyo investing globally. Rie has deep expertise in the U.S. and Japanese startup ecosystems.
Murray Newlands, Partner, IA Seed Ventures,
Murray Newlands is a venture capitalist and Partner at IA Seed Ventures, focused on early-stage investing, LP development, and building executive communities across the C-suite. He is the founder of the Open Future Forum and host of Murray's Newsletter on Substack, where he reaches 50K+ subscribers on AI, startups, and innovation. A former contributor to Forbes and Inc., Murray brings operator experience from Turing.com and a deep network across Silicon Valley and beyond.
Dr. V, Founder& GP, ODDBIRD VC
2 time founder. Former Lightspeed GP. Backed $B+ companies like Glean, Innovaccer, Zetwerk. Founder, ODDBIRD VC.
Vik Ghai, Founder & Managing Partner, G2C Ventures
Vik Ghai knows what it feels like to build from zero - he's built, scaled, and sold B2B companies with 2 exits at 15x MOIC. Today he's Managing Partner at G2C Ventures, backing early-stage enterprise AI founders at pre-seed and seed. He's not just capital, he's the GTM playbook, the enterprise relationships, and the operator who's been in your shoes.
Event moderated by: Adelina Martiniuc
Founder and CEO at RoryPlans.ai, Adelina has over 15 years of experience in tech, including leadership roles at Vercel, Cruise, and Google. I'm currently building a multi-agent orchestrator that aligns human teams and AI agents in one system of execution. With Rory you can create agents across multiple data sources and tools, or manage agents from other platforms in one place.
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