Fireside Chat with Phil Hellmuth
Session Introduction ▶ Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and ... more
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and many other world-renowned entrepreneurs are well known for their passion for poker. The reason why these entrepreneurs are passionate about poker is because there are similarities between poker and entrepreneurship. The common ground between poker players and entrepreneurs is making decisions in uncertain situations. In poker, players must predict the opponent's hand and make the appropriate decision, while in entrepreneurship, one must find the direction for success in an uncertain market. Additionally, both poker and entrepreneurship require individuals to handle situations based on their own abilities and experiences. Because of these similarities, poker players often transition to becoming entrepreneurs.
SparkLabs, which has invited various experts from different fields to provide new insights, is inviting legendary poker player Phil Hellmuth to this demo day. Not only have legendary athletes such as Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan enjoyed poker, but celebrities and politicians alike have also participated in the game. Phil Hellmuth, who has such an outstanding reputation that even Elon Musk has requested a poker lesson from him, is now active as a startup investor based on his extensive network of entrepreneurs.
Through a conversation with Phil Hellmuth, he will share his insights into the secrets of his success in becoming a poker legend, the most important considerations when investing in startups, and advice for early-stage entrepreneurs.
Record 16-time World Champion of Poker
New York Times Best Selling Author
Investor in >20 Start-up Companies
Advisor to 17 Companies
Senior Advisor to SparkLabs SPAC
Phil Hellmuth is a family man first and foremost, and lives in Northern California with his wife of 31 years. Phil has the following life goal: Become the greatest poker player of all-time. After winning a record 16 World Championships (and counting) at the WSOP (World Series of Poker), Phil has achieved that goal!
Phil is a New York Times best-selling author, a television commentator (WSOP on ESPN, World Poker Tour, and “Hellmuth’s Home Game”), a heavily televised poker player, a speaker, a poker tournament Host and MC (for charities he has raised $64 Million at events he hosted and MCed like Warriors Charity poker tourney; and for businesses: in 2021 he is MC/Host for Tiger Global’s annual event), he is an Advisor to, or Advisor Board member of, ten different companies, and Phil is sponsor money in three different SPAC’s (including finding, and taking out $ RSI to a $3B market cap on the NYSE). Phil thinks of himself as an early early-stage, and late late-stage investor.
Phil truly wishes to inspire a global audience to think bigger, to become better, to do more, and to ultimately achieve their dreams. To this end, Phil wrote the book “#POSITIVITY - You Are Always In The RIght Place At The Right Time” (8 Life Tips). Tony Robbins and Sheryl Sandberg endorse his book. In fact, in his advanced seminars, Tony advises people to buy Phil’s book.
CEO and Chairman of the Board
SparkLabs Acquisition corporation
James Rhee is currently the CEO and Managing Partner of SparkLabs Acquisition Corporation, an initiative focused on helping SparkLabs ecosystem companies with late stage funding and exits – especially focused on going public via a SPAC.
Prior to SparkLabs, James was the Founder and President of Aero K Holdings and Aero K Airlines, a startup in the aviation industry that seeks to leverage technology to change the customer experience and evolve the way airlines do business. Aero K had the largest initial capital raise of any independent startup in Korean history (54B KRW).
Prior to Aero K, he was CEO of AirAsia for North Asia where he was responsible for expanding their business into Japan, Korea, China and the Philippines. Prior to AirAsia, he was a Senior Adviser at Octave Private Equity Group where he led the development of an acquisition strategy for a $1 billion global business in the tech industry, and where he led the capital raise for establishing AirAsia Japan.
Prior to Octave, he held roles as Vice President and GM of Tyco Electronics Global PC Business, and Executive Officer at Dell where he led APJ Enterprise Marketing overviewing the PC, server, storage, software, services, cloud and solution businesses, and where he also led the APJ PC business $5B P&L. Prior to Dell, he was an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company where he focused on M&A and the Financial and Telecommunication sectors. He began his career as a Research Officer at the International Monetary Fund.
James received his M.B.A. (Beta Gamma Sigma) from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and attended Vanderbilt University and the University of Minnesota where he received his B.S. in Economics.
AI for Business
Last December, the US-based artificial intelligence startup OpenAI released ChatGPT, which sparked a global AI battle with dramatic reviews such as "the end of search" and "as shocking as the first appearance of the iPhone." Big tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Baidu have joined the battle by investing heavily in related startups.
Amr Awadallah, the founder of Vectara, currently considered one of the most innovative startups in Silicon Valley alongside OpenAI, will share insightful perspectives on the new challenges companies face in the AI era and strategies for leaping beyond survival at the SparkLabs Demoday.
Additionally, Dr. Sang Cha from Seoul National University, the foremost expert in the field of data science in Korea, who brought innovation to the field of data processing by developing software that compresses and stores data on DRAM memory for real-time processing, will participate and provide advice for Korean companies.
CEO of Vectara, Co-founder & Former CTO at Cloudera
Dr. Amr Awadallah is the CEO and cofounder of Vectara, a company that is revolutionizing how we find meaning across all languages of the world using the latest advances in Large Language Models, Deep Neural Networks, Natural Language Understanding and Information Retrieval.
Amr previously served as VP of Developer Relations for Google Cloud. Prior to joining Google in Nov 2019, Amr co-founded Cloudera in 2008 and as Global CTO, he spent 11 years working closely with enterprises around the world on how to ingest and extract value from big data (he famously coined the concept of “schema-on-read vs schema-on-write”).
He also served as vice president of product intelligence engineering at Yahoo! from 2000-2008. Amr joined Yahoo after they acquired his first startup, Aptivia, in mid-2000 which was a search engine for online product information. Amr received his PhD in EE from Stanford University, and his Bachelor and Master Degrees from Cairo University, Egypt.
Founding Dean of Seoul National University Graduate School of Data Science, Founder at Transact In Memory
Dr. Sang Cha is one of the globally recognized experts in artificial intelligence. He possesses extensive experience and knowledge in machine learning and AI, with high expertise in fields such as deep learning, computer vision, natural language processing, and reinforcement learning.
After graduating from Seoul National University and obtaining a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Stanford University, Dr. Cha has been serving as the inaugural director of the Seoul National University Data Science Graduate School, which fosters AI and big data talents, since February 2020. As a former professor of Electrical and Information Engineering, he developed software that compressed and stored data from hard disks to DRAM memory, enabling real-time, high-speed processing. This innovative technology, which he founded a venture called "TIM (Transact In Memory)" on campus and later took to Silicon Valley in 2002, was eventually acquired by the German global software company SAP. The current flagship service of SAP, the "HANA" platform, is built upon his technology.
Dr. Cha has published numerous papers in academic journals both domestically and internationally, many of which have achieved high citation counts across diverse fields. He also serves as an editorial board member, program committee member, and research committee member for various international AI conferences and competitions, including the ImageNet competition where he achieved excellent results. Through his education and research, he has made significant contributions to the domestic and international AI field and is striving to develop and disseminate innovative AI technologies that can be applied in various fields.
Co-Founder & CEO of Bespin Global, Co-Founder of SparkLabs
HanJoo Lee is a Serial Entrepreneur and a startup investor. He is passionate about Cloud, Startups and Global Entrepreneurship.
He co-founded Hostway with his college friends in 1998. HanJoo played an active role in Hostway’s growth both in the US as well as internationally. He successfully exited the Hostway US business by selling the majority stake to a private equity firm in the US.
In 2012, he co-founded SparkLabs along with 5 other co-founders. SparkLabs is both an accelerator and a VC.
His latest venture is Bespin Global, co-founded in 2015. The company is a cloud managed service provider (MSP) operating in Korea, China and Dubai. It helps mid to large enterprises adopt both private and public cloud services through professional services, managed services and OpsNow, a proprietary multi-cloud management platform. The company has grown to over 850 employees with more than 880 customers.
Lastly, he was born and raised in Korea and he is married with three children. He graduated with a B.A. in Biological Sciences from the University of Chicago.