Alap Shah is an investor and entrepreneur who relishes combining the two roles. He was previously the CEO and Chairman of Sentieo, a financial data platform he co-founded for hedge funds, mutual funds, investment banks, corporates and active individual investors. Sentieo had successfully secured over $70 million in funding with a successful exit to AlphaSense in 2022.

With fifteen years of professional investment experience, Alap's expertise spans large global equity portfolios at two of the world’s largest and most successful hedge funds (Viking Global and Citadel) to LBO and growth equity investments (Castanea Partners) to early-stage investments (White Ops, Wiser, Earnest Research, Powerlytics). He is also a co-founder and investor in Thistle, a health foods subscription service. Alap graduated from Harvard with an AB in Economics with honors.

Johnny Hwin is an artist and entrepreneur previously featured in a New Yorker article on San Francisco’s creative culture. He is a co-founder at Thistle and the songwriter/producer of Cathedrals, an indie-electronic pop duo The New York Times describes as “R&B with 1980s rock swagger.”

He has a BA in social psychology and an MS in technology entrepreneurship from Stanford University, where he launched his first company from the Stanford Facebook App Class. By night, he runs the San Francisco-based creative collective The SUB, whose latest art show “The 9 Cans of La Croix” garnered coverage from The Washington Post, Vice, and Elite Daily. He has advised and consulted a number of technology companies including Asana, DreamWorks, Lever, and Patreon.

Naman Shah is an entrepreneur and engineer with a deep-rooted expertise in product management. He earned his Bachelor's degree from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Naman co-founded Sentieo, an award winning financial research platform, where he spent more than a decade as the President leading the Product, Engineering and Design teams (200+ individuals). Prior to Sentieo, Naman co-founded Sarvajal, a social enterprise in India devoted to delivering clean drinking water to the bottom of the pyramid. Naman is also a Co-founder & Investor in Thistle, a healthy food delivery subscription service. At Studio, Naman focuses on investing in technology startups while also helping portfolio companies recruit teams and build products.

Rob Matei is an engineer and entrepreneur with expertise in product-driven growth and building consumer apps. He’s built apps that have gotten hundreds of thousands of MAUs, led growth at Quora for 5 years, and is currently helping incubate and grow projects inside Studio.

Ari Ameri is an investor primarily focused on venture investments, working to identify and support extraordinary products and entrepreneurs. Prior to Studio, he had a wide range of investment experience across the technology sector, including early and growth stage venture capital (Blue Cloud Ventures) and public market investing and research at a hedge fund (Light Street Capital). His expertise spans beyond investing and he has consulted for a range of startups on strategy, growth, and M&A. Outside of work, he is an avid musician with over ten years of experience as an improv jazz saxophonist. Ari graduated from UC Berkeley with a BS in Business Administration.

Jacob Brown is an engineer who has advised AI startups and built fintech products. He was previously a quantitative strategist at Deutsche Bank, where he developed behavioral models that predict the impact of political and economic events on global financial markets. As a graduate of Princeton University, Jacob developed a patent-pending system to discover cyber vulnerabilities and protect large-scale IoT systems. Jacob’s other interests include backcountry hiking and thinking about the sociopolitical impact of AI systems. His insights have been published in several news outlets including the Wall Street Journal.