Stephen Messer, Vice Chairman & Co-Founder, Collective[i]

Stephen Messer is a pioneering entrepreneur and investor who has shaped the digital economy since the Internet's commercial inception. As Co-Founder and Vice Chairman of Collective[i], he leads the development of Collective[i]’s models, applications, APIs, and agents that will are transforming enterprise AI.

Stephen Messer is the author of Artificial CommonSense, a newsletter that has become required reading for the people making decisions about AI. It reached more than 150,000 subscribers in under six months. Readers come for his clear, contrarian read on where the technology, the markets, and the money are heading, and they stay because he’s usually early.

Prior to Collective[i], Stephen co-founded LinkShare Corporation with his sister, Heidi. As Chairman and CEO, he built one of the world's largest affiliate networks and established LinkShare as a SaaS pioneer, revolutionizing digital advertising and the sharing economy. Under his leadership, LinkShare was recognized as the fastest-growing technology company in the New York Region by Deloitte and Touche for two consecutive years. The company was acquired by Rakuten (4755:JASDAQ) for $425 million in 2005.

A thought leader in artificial intelligence, enterprise technology, and the future of work, Stephen is a sought-after speaker at global forums including the WSJ CIO Network's Annual Meeting, Aspen Ideas Festival, and The Montgomery Summit. He regularly shares insights at leading institutions such as Harvard University, Columbia Business School, and Wharton.

His entrepreneurial achievements earned him the prestigious Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the New York Region. His expertise is frequently cited in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other leading publications, and he has appeared on CNBC, CNNfn, and Fox News Channel.

As an active angel investor, Stephen serves on the board of Spire, a pioneering satellite data and analytics company, and advises Tribeca Venture Partners. He holds a bachelor's degree from Lafayette University and a Juris Doctorate from Cardozo School of Law.

Toby Stuart

Toby E. Stuart is the Leo Helzel Distinguished Professor of Business Administration at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. He is Faculty Director of the Berkeley-Haas Entrepreneurship Program; Faculty Director of the Institute for Business Innovation; and Distinguished Teaching Fellow. Previously, Stuart was: The Charles Edward Wilson Professor at Harvard Business School; The Art Samberg Professor and Faculty Director of the Lang Center for Entrepreneurship at Columbia University’s Business School; and the Fred Steingraber-A.T. Kearney Professor of Leadership & Strategy at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He also served on the faculty of the Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship group at MIT Sloan School of Management. He received his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He holds an A.B., summa cum laude, in economics from Carleton College. At HBS and CBS,

Stuart led the required courses in Entrepreneurship and in Corporate Strategy, respectively.

Stuart is cofounder and member of the board of directors (chair, audit committee; compensation committee) of Flock Freight, a tech company that algorithmically carpools industrial freight and employs AI pricing engines. He is a long-time board member (audit committee) at HNTB Holdings, the largest dedicated transportation engineering firm in the U.S. He is on the board of directors of FLYR Labs (chair, compensation committee), an enterprise AI SaaS company, and of Atmosfy, a two-sided marketplace. Stuart is the founding Chairman of Workday’s global AI Advisory Board and serves as an advisor to Gruve.ai (AI-native enterprise consulting), Fabrik AI (inference compute), and Haymaker Capital (AI and fintech venture fund). He created and is the faculty director of AI for Executives at Berkeley-Haas. 

Stuart is an active angel investor and previously served as a Venture Partner at Avid Park Ventures. Stuart’s research lab and his current focus is on artificial intelligence. He is the author of Anointed, published by Simon & Schuster in 2025. His current book, All the Things We Used to Know (under contract to Harvard Business Review Press), examines how AI will completely reconfigure and change large organizations and economic markets. Stuart won the Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship, which is granted every second year. He has received the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence at Columbia Business School; the Award for Teaching Excellence at Cornell University; and is a multiple-recipient of the Cheit Award for Teaching Excellence at Berkeley-Haas. He has won the Administrative Science Quarterly’s Scholarly Contribution (best paper) award. Stuart was the long time Department Editor for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Management Science, and has held past editorial roles at journals including Strategic Management Journal, American Journal of Sociology, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Research Policy.