Todd Embley, Program Director at Chinaccelerator, is a serial entrepreneur who has been living in China for more than 7 years. Todd’s main areas of expertise lie in Lean Startup methodology, Entrephilosophy, Marketing and Customer Development. He has been a speaker at BREAK in Bali; START Summit in St. Gallen, Switzerland; LIFT conference in Geneva;DreamPlus in Seoul, Korea; Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing; TEDx talk for TEDxSuzhou; GSMA Innovation Labs in Shanghai;and many others, as well as vetted more than 1000 companies for the Chinaccelerator program.

Hank is a 15-year China veteran, serial entrepreneur and early-stage investor.

Hank first arrived in Beijing in 2001 working as a Consultant for Samsung Electronics and then went on to found a digital services company in Shanghai in 2002. In 2005, he created ChinesePod which eventually became the world’s most popular online Chinese-language training service. Over the course of the next 7 years he raised a round of venture capital, grew the company to 80 people and eventually successfully sold the company in 2012.

After leaving ChinesePod in 2014, Hank made a number of early-stage investments (most notably in OpenLanguage - which was selected by Apple as having the best podcast in China in 2015). In late 2015 he started a new venture, Magnet Technologies, Inc., which helps retail locations recognize and engage their offline guests using a variety of location-based technologies and messaging platforms.

Mr. Penaloza is founder and CEO of four consumer Internet businesses that have served millions of users, received investments totaling over US$ 20 million, and two have achieved profitability and viral growth.
Launching in 2016, Bestaurant is a social app that solves the problem of ‘where to eat’ by using your friends’ trusted recommendations. Launched in 2010, Ushi became the leading professional social network in China by building the best quality member base through viral user-to-user invitation, creating the most respected brand, and attracting investment from well-known investors. Launched in 2003, WorldFriends is a profitable social networking service with 5 million members and over 200 distribution partners including Tencent and Yahoo! Japan. WorldFriends grew out from HungryForWords, an e-learning venture Mr. Penaloza founded in 2000 that has taught English to millions of users in Japan and China.