Investing in AI from Inception to Impact

Matt Sechrest is a dedicated conservationist, investor, and tech entrepreneur. He is the founder and General Partner of North Equity, where he is actively invested in over 50 private technology companies, from seed stage to buyouts. He is a Venture Partner with Sky9 Capital, a global VC with $2B under management, focused on seed AI investments.

Matt previously founded two SaaS companies and one digital rollup, raising over $500M in combined equity. He began investing as a founding member of E*TRADE’s $400M corporate venture capital fund, one of the first corporate venture capital funds with outside LPs including Softbank, General Atlantic and News Corporation.

Matt began his career as a mergers and acquisitions technology banker with Goldman Sachs. Matt is on the Global Council of Re:wild, one of the leading global conservation organizations co-founded by his twin brother Wes and Leonardo DiCaprio, which works with local partners on the frontlines to use nature-based solutions to address the interconnected biodiversity, climate, and human wellbeing crises.

Matt holds a degree in Economics and Government from Dartmouth College.

Robert (Tre) Sayle is a seasoned software investor and private equity executive. He was a Partner at Thoma Bravo, one of the world’s largest technology-focused investment firms with $181B in assets under management, where he spent two decades investing in and scaling category-leading software businesses. He was recognized by GrowthCap as a Top 25 Software Investor in 2021.

Tre served on dozens of boards during his tenure with Thoma Bravo, working closely with founders and management teams to drive innovation, M&A, and operational excellence. He has led both individual deals and investment funds.

Tre began his career in J.P. Morgan’s Technology, Media & Telecom Investment Banking Group, where he advised global technology clients on M&A, financings, and IPOs.

He holds a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University.

Momchil Filev is a visionary entrepreneur, inventor, and technology leader. He is the founder and former CEO of BestReviews, a pioneering digital media company at the intersection of content and commerce. Bootstrapped from inception, BestReviews scaled to over $1 billion in annual sales, reaching 400 million users and generating $80 million in net revenue, before its acquisition by Nexstar (Nasdaq: NXST) in a nine-figure transaction.

Before founding BestReviews, Momchil spent over five years at Google, leading teams across advertising, cloud computing, and business development. He spearheaded monetization strategy for AdSense and DoubleClick, overseeing a $600 million revenue portfolio and driving product strategy for Google’s ad-serving business. Later, he led business development for Google Cloud, negotiating key partnerships, shaping the growth of Google BigQuery and Google Compute Engine, and conducting M&A negotiations in cloud computing and storage.

A recognized innovator, he holds more than 30 patents spanning machine learning, AI, digital marketing, predictive analytics, and data-driven systems. He is passionate about applying cutting-edge technology to build transformative, high-impact businesses and has been actively investing and advising early-stage technology startups for the last decade.

Momchil is an Operating Partner at North Equity, where he focuses on investing in and scaling breakthrough companies.

He holds degrees from Stanford University and Harvard Business School.

Charles Carmel is a seasoned technology leader with over 25 years’ experience spanning private equity, venture capital, corporate development and investment banking. Based in Silicon Valley, Charles has a successful track record of over $25 billion in investments and acquisitions in disruptive growth companies across the technology industry. Charles is currently an independent investor, board member and advisor to emerging growth companies and investment groups.

Previously, Charles was a General Partner at Warburg Pincus where he led the firms’ growth investing efforts across the Enterprise Infrastructure and Communications technology sectors. His areas of focus included software and services at the intersection of cloud computing, mobility and data.

Prior to joining Warburg, Charles was a senior executive at Cisco responsible for driving the worldwide acquisition and venture capital strategy. During his 10 years at Cisco, Charles led more than 30 acquisitions totaling over $20 billion including some of Cisco’s most successful transactions. He was also responsible for Cisco’s $2 billion global venture capital portfolio driving significant strategic and financial returns.

Before joining Cisco, Charles was an early member of the Technology Investment Banking group at Goldman Sachs. During his time at Goldman, Charles was involved with over $2.5 billion of financings and M&A transactions across a diverse set of industry leading technology companies.

Charles holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Bachelor’s degree with honors from Tufts University.

Joe Goldberg is a Venture Partner at North Equity. He brings over 20 years of experience across technology, product marketing, and venture capital, with a track record of scaling go-to-market (GTM) strategies and launching category-defining products.

For over 15 years, Joe helped scale the GTM efforts at hypergrowth enterprise software companies, including Snowflake Computing, Splunk, Vanta, Sigma Computing, VMware, and Symantec. He was also the first marketer at a Series A software startup and served as Director of Finance at a Series B software company, where he led financial planning and analysis.

Joe has built up GTM expertise in product, technical, industry, solutions, and content marketing, together with messaging and positioning, field enablement, competitive analysis, product evangelism, and analyst and public relations. He also has technical expertise in big data, business intelligence, GRC, cybersecurity, AI, and cloud infrastructure.

Joe is a seasoned angel investor, adding value as an advisor or board member, with a focus on early-stage software companies. Earlier in his career, Joe was an investor with Outlook Ventures and part of E*TRADE’s VC team, after starting his career in investment banking at JPMorgan.

Joe holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a degree in Business from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

Matt is a proven leader in commercial transformations, revenue acceleration, and enterprise value creation across technology, media, and sports.

He’s helped lead teams to over $1B+ in exits and has deep expertise in go-to-market strategy and operational optimization. He’s adept at scaling organizations, driving EBITDA expansion, and aligning strategies with investor goals.

Matt was an executive at Yahoo and Verizon and has been the CRO of 4 private equity backed companies. He has a BA from Dartmouth College and an MFA from Harvard University and the Moscow Art Theatre.