João Simões, A skilled fintech and fund management professional, with more than 10 years of experience in the Finance field. Currently, João is the Chief Growth Officer at Swell, driving growth, innovation, business and strategy to the whole ecosystem at Swell, that is constantly growing. Starting with Staking, then Restaking and now AI. Before, João was supporting Byzantine Finance an innovative infrastructure protocol that allows for risk-optimized yield generation as an Exec. Consultant, using his network and contacts to provide new leads specially of Family Offices and Liquid Funds, helping this way Byzantine to grow its brand. He is also the Co-founder of InceptionLRT, a innovative protocol in the Liquid Restaking space. He served as the CEO of Inception (ex-Genesis) for almost 2y, growing successfully the company from 4 to 30 employees, from 0 to more than 130m+ USD in TVL and successfully raising more than 3.5m+ USD in venture funding, after a big merger he left his operational role in the company in January of 2025. He is also a member of Staking Circle, a global group for Staking and DeFi professionals. Apart from this he was also a DeFi Business Developer at Tagus Labs, a Venture Studio based in Dubai, for almost 2y. He is also known for: Being the founder and CEO of BitMasters, Portugal’s first Bitcoin mining cryptocurrency firm. He lived, worked and studied in Portugal, Berlin, San Francisco, US and London, UK. He finished his Management and Business degree in London School of Economics and completed his Master’s degree in Finance and Business Management at UC Berkeley in the US and at Europeia University in Portugal, with the highest honours and won a prize by the Ministry of Culture in Portugal, for his theoretical master thesis entitled: "Crypto-Currencies: Does Sentiment Play a Role?". He worked 3 years as an executive in a Private Equity fund with focus on Energy and Infrastructure projects in emergent markets, with its main focus on the African continent. Currently, he is also a professor at the Global MBA program from Deakin University, Australia, teaching Corporate Finance via remote learning. He is also an Advisor for several innovative Web3 projects and companies.