Building Enduring Companies: The Long Game in Venture

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In an environment shaped by rapid innovation and shifting market cycles, building a company that lasts requires more than speed or scale. This panel focuses on what separates truly durable businesses from short-term winners, and how founders and investors can align around long-term value creation.

Panelists will discuss how successful companies balance growth, efficiency, and resilience at the same time, particularly during periods of market volatility. The conversation will also explore how today’s venture investors evaluate long-term defensibility, including technology moats, business models, leadership, and adaptability.

Founders will gain practical insights on how to build through multiple market cycles, make disciplined strategic decisions, and position their companies for sustainable success well beyond the next funding round.

Speaker Bios

Gary Fowler, Co-Founder, CEO and President at GSD Venture Studios

_{Gary Fowler is an award-winning serial entrepreneur, investor, and global AI executive, best known as the Founder, President, and CEO of Fowler Family Office and GSD Venture Studios, a Silicon Valley–based family office and venture studio helping startups scale globally. Over his career, he has co-founded or been involved in 17 companies worldwide, including the unicorn Yva.ai (acquired by Visier), and was part of the original management team at ClickSoftware, acquired by Salesforce for $1.35 billion.}

_{Recognized among the Top 10 Most Influential AI Executives and a Top 5 AI Leader Redefining Success, Gary is also a Forbes Councils contributor and frequent global keynote speaker at the United Nations, Stanford, TEDx, and leading tech and AI summits. Through GSD Venture Studios’ Super Scaler program and GSD Reach, he empowers founders to super scale growth, attract investors, and expand globally under the ethos of #GoGlobal and Get Stuff Done.}

Amy Kelly, Founder & CEO at Miri

<sub>Innovating bold solutions for health & wellness seekers. Passionate about increasing access to concierge care for all using AI and unique business models to extend care capabilities.

Founder of Revive Health Therapy and Miri.</sub>

Mala Ramakrishnan, Managing Partner at Progressive Ventures

_{Mala Ramakrishnan is the founder and managing partner of Progressive Ventures, a seed stage venture firm, that fuels the next wave of AI innovation. She is also the co-founder & president at Founders Creative, a non-profit with over 30,000 founders, investors and executives out of Silicon Valley that elevates under-represented technologists.}

_{Mala is an entrepreneurial leader with 20+ years experience in leadership roles in product, engineering, and marketing in companies of varied sizes. Mala is a serial entrepreneur with three successful exits, and has outstanding ability at driving business strategy in establishing product-market fit of enterprise products. Mala holds a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University.} 

Preetha Ram, Managing Partner and CTO at Pier 70 Ventures (moderator)

_{Preetha Ram, PhD, is a Managing Partner at Pier 70 Ventures, where she architects the "Future of Health" through a high-impact 3D investment strategy focused on the convergence of Drugs, Devices, and Digital Health. A driving force for gender equity in finance, Preetha is actively building a powerful community of women VCs in the Valley, leveraging her role as an LP in How Women Invest and her leadership on the Board of TiE Silicon Valley to mentor the next generation of female check-writers. A Yale-trained scientist and exit-tested CEO, she previously scaled the learning platform OpenStudy to 60 million global users, securing multimillion-dollar backing from the NSF, NIH, and the Gates Foundation. Today, she bridges the gap between cutting-edge research from top-tier universities and global Fortune 200 networks, serving as a Director for Pelvital and a strategic advisor to disruptive health-tech startups.}