Rahul Sood
General Manager & Partner, Microsoft Ventures
Rahul Sood is General Manager of Microsoft Ventures. His team operates startup accelerators and outreach around the world. They also run a strategic fund that makes seed investments in startup companies from their portfolio and others.
Rahul launched Microsoft Ventures in June 2013, after creating the Bing Fund in 2012. He joined Razer’s Board of Advisors in 2013.
A serial entrepreneur, Rahul spent 18 years at multiple startups prior to joining Microsoft in 2011. He founded luxury and gaming computer manufacturer VoodooPC, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2006.
Sood is a co-founder of BrightSquid Medical, a unique collaboration platform for medical professionals, which was subsequently acquired by NetworksMD. He co-founded BrightSquid Dental, created BullsOnWallstreet, and is an active angel investor in a number of small Canadian-based energy companies.
He is active in the entrepreneurial community, helping and mentoring a variety of startups. Sood often speaks of creating balanced teams by bringing design + technology + business together to create beautiful products. You can find him on Twitter @rahulsood.
Ed Fries
Ed Fries joined Razer’s Board of Advisors in 2010.
He created his first video games for the Atari 800 in the early 1980s. Ed then spent 18 years at Microsoft, starting as an early developer of Excel and Word and then created Microsoft Game Studios. Over eight years, he grew the team from 50 people to over 1200, published more than 100 games, co-founded the Xbox project, and made Microsoft one of the leaders in the video game business.
In 2004, Ed retired as Microsoft Vice President to continue his work in the video game business as board member, advisor and consultant.
In 2007, Ed launched FigurePrints, a company that uses color 3D printing technology to bring video game characters to life. In 2010, Ed released “Halo 2600”, a “demake” of the Halo video game series for the Atari 2600 and is one of the first two video games to be added to the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
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