Deven Verma
Titan Award
Sidebar Summit presents the Deven Verma Titan Award in recognition of the amazing accomplishments and contributions to technology and innovation.
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The award is named after Deven Verma - the original Sidebar Summit curator.
Steve Jurvetson
Titan of
Venture Capital
The inaugural Titan Award was presented to Steve Jurvetson - a true Titan of Venture Capital. Steve led founding investments in several companies that had successful IPOs and others that were billion-dollar acquisitions, representing $800 billion of aggregate value creation. Some of those early VC investments include Planet Labs, SpaceX and Tesla. ​
Hemant Taneja
Titan of
Venture Capital
The prestigious Titan of Venture Capital award has been presented to Hemant Taneja - a visionary leader at General Catalyst. Hemant has led transformative investments in companies like Stripe, Snap, Gusto, and Livongo while championing his "responsible innovation" philosophy. His expertise spans AI, healthcare, and climate tech, with his thought leadership captured in books like "Unscaled" and "Health Assurance," firmly establishing him as a true Titan of the venture capital world.
Chris Webber
Hall of Fame
Award
A five-time NBA All-Star and #1 overall draft pick, Chris Webber is a Naismith Hall of Fame inductee who redefined the power forward position. Beyond his legendary career with the Sacramento Kings and the "Fab Five," Chris is a dedicated philanthropist whose Webber Foundation has awarded hundreds of scholarships to at-risk youth and spearheaded major urban revitalization projects in Detroit, cementing his legacy as a champion of community equity.
Dan Springer
Titan of
Tech
Dan Springer, former CEO of DocuSign, was presented the Titan of Tech award. Dan has almost 30 years of executive leadership and experience driving innovation and hyper-growth across the SaaS industry. Prior to DocuSign, Dan served as Chairman and CEO of Responsys, where he led the sale of the company to Oracle in 2013 for $1.6 billion.​
Dharmesh Thakker
Titan of
Venture Capital
As General Partner at Battery Ventures, Dharmesh Thakker is a primary architect of the cloud ecosystem. A mainstay on the Forbes Midas Brink List, Dharmesh has led landmark investments in industry giants like Databricks, Gong, and JFrog. His career is defined by a relentless focus on mentoring the next generation of founders building the modern digital economy.
René Lacerte
Titan of
Entrepreneurship
René Lacerte, awarded Titan of Entrepreneurship, is a fourth-gen entrepreneur. Prior to BILL, René founded PayCycle, the first and largest online payroll solution which was acquired by Intuit in 2009. Early in his career, he spent five years at Intuit, growing its bill payment and credit card businesses and launching Intuit’s first connected payroll product.
Bhaskar "bg" Ghosh
Titan of
Venture Capital
Bhaskar Ghosh, Partner and CTO at 8VC, is a preeminent builder of the modern data stack. Following leadership roles at LinkedIn and Yahoo!, "BG" now anchors 8VC’s enterprise and AI infrastructure practice. A scholar-investor with a PhD from Yale and over 20 patents, he is recognized for scaling technical breakthroughs into category-defining global enterprises.
Dan Warmenhoven
Titan of
Silicon Valley
The prestigious Titan of Silicon Valley award has been presented to Dan Warmenhoven - a transformative leader who guided NetApp from startup to Fortune 500 status during his 15-year tenure as CEO. Under his leadership, NetApp pioneered networked storage solutions that revolutionized the industry, growing to billions in annual revenue while establishing a culture of innovation that cements Dan's legacy as a true Titan of Silicon Valley.
Rob Das
Titan of
Innovation
Rob Das, co-founder of Splunk, was awarded the Titan of Innovation award. Since the late ’90s, Rob focused entirely on venture capital backed, early-stage companies where in addition to hands-on development, he held the roles of VP of Engineering, Chief Technology Officer, and board member.​
David Hornik was awarded Titan of Venture Capital for his history of amazing investments. David joined August Capital in 2000 to invest in a broad range of software companies. Since that time, he has invested in dozens of companies across the software spectrum, including a number of enterprise software and SaaS (e.g, Splunk, Fastly, GitLab), consumer services (e.g., Evite, Ebates, Drop), and financial technology companies (e.g., WePay, Bill.com, PayNearMe).​