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ºÚÁÏÕýÄÜÁ¿ VentureBridge Demo Day - June 2026 - New York City

Wednesday, June 3, 2026

We're back in New York on June 3 for ºÚÁÏÕýÄÜÁ¿ VentureBridge (VB) '26 Demo Day during NY Tech Week.

This year, we're bringing a highly selective group of ºÚÁÏÕýÄÜÁ¿-founded companies across AI, robotics, and applied science - founders we've backed and worked closely with, with strong technical depth and early signals. We're also excited to welcome , Co-Founder & CEO of , joining us for an opening fireside keynote with , Managing & Interim Executive Director of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, during ºÚÁÏÕýÄÜÁ¿ VentureBridge Demo Day. 

Founder presentations will follow after the opening fireside keynote and the program will end with a closing fireside keynote featuring , Co-Founder & CEO of and , Co-Founder & Managing Director of .

Thank you to our host, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLP, and sponsor, J.P. Morgan.

This invite-only Demo Day event is for investors only. Limited spots available. Approvals required.

Wednesday, June 3, 2026
9:30 - 12:00 p.m. | ET
, New York, NY

ºÚÁÏÕýÄÜÁ¿ our Opening Keynote Speakers

Todd Olson

Todd Olson is co-founder and CEO of Pendo, the most comprehensive product experience platform. A three-time entrepreneur, Olson teamed up with fellow product leaders and technologists from Red Hat, Cisco and Google to launch Pendo in October 2013. The Raleigh, NC-based company has since raised $356 million in venture capital, landed more than 2500 customers and now employs nearly 800 people across ten offices globally. Pendo has appeared on the Forbes Cloud 100 and Inc. Best Workplaces lists for the last five years. Todd’s passion for helping digital teams build great products led him to write the book: “The Product-Led Organization: Drive Growth By Putting Product at the Center of Your Customer Experience".

Meredith Meyer Grelli

Meredith Meyer Grelli is the Interim Executive Director of the Swartz Center. She also serves as the Managing Director of the Swartz Center; the Assistant Dean for Entrepreneurship Initiatives in the School of Computer Science and the Director of Project Olympus, a Swartz-affiliated Center focused on commercializing advanced technologies. Meredith is also an Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Tepper School of Business. In her roles, Meredith leads a team that supports student, staff, faculty and alumni founders through an extensive architecture of programs and early stage funding. Carnegie Mellon affiliated startups have exits with a cumulative value of more than half a trillion dollars. Prior to her work in academia, Meredith was an entrepreneur and operator. She founded, scaled, and sold one of ºÚÁÏÕýÄÜÁ¿’s top 100 affiliated exits.

ºÚÁÏÕýÄÜÁ¿ our Closing Keynote Speakers

Sankalp Arora

Sankalp Arora is the Co-Founder & CEO of Gather AI, where they are on a mission to bring the power of data analytics to the physical world. With over 15 years of experience in robotics research and engineering, Sankalp developed safety and sensor planning for the world's first safe autonomous helicopter. A project that won the Howard Hughes award, AUVSI Xcellence award and was nominated for the Collier Trophy. He is a recipient of the Qualcomm Innovation fellowship and James R. Swartz Entrepreneurship fellowship. He has a PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon.

Christopher Lytle

Chris Lytle is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Smith Point Capital. He brings more than 25 years of experience in technology investing and management roles. Over the past 13 years, Mr. Lytle has served as President of Longfellow L.P., where he performed the dual roles of investor and executive positions at two technology companies. Mr. Lytle currently serves on the Boards of Inseego and Prolifiq and is an observer on the boards of both Virtualitics and ZEDEDA. Before 2019, Mr. Lytle was an investor and EVP of Enterprise SaaS & Chief Strategy Officer at Inseego, a publicly traded 5G and edge compute company. In 2017, Mr. Lytle led the hiring of a new management team and the creation of a new strategic plan. In addition, he led the restructuring of the balance sheet and recruitment of strategic capital.

From 2013 to 2016, Mr. Lytle served as lead investor and President of Cavulus, a privately held SaaS company focused on the automation of individual health plan membership acquisition, where he led both sales and finance functions. As the lead investor of a syndicate owning 50 percent of Cavulus, he led the sale of this stake to UPMC Enterprises in 2017. Prior to these operating roles, Mr. Lytle started the RCL Capital hedge fund at John Levin & Co. in 2003 and sold a controlling position in the fund to Morgan Stanley in 2006. He served as Managing Director at Morgan Stanley and managed the fund until 2009.