Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur and academician Steve Blank is most recognized for developing the Customer Development method and a founder of the Lean Startup movement. Blank dropped out of school after one semester, and he hitchhiked his way over to Miami, where he found a job loading racehorses onto aircraft at the Miami International Airport. This job piqued his interest... read full bio
Noted computer scientist Paul Graham is also an essayist and a venture capitalist. He is noted for his work with LISP, a computer programming language, and he also co-founded the Yahoo! Store (previously known as Viaweb). Viaweb, which was founded by Graham and Robert Morris, was the first application service provider on the market, and it allowed its users to... read full bio
John Donahoe is a noted businessman and former CEO of the popular e-commerce site, eBay. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Intel Corp and eBay, and he is the chairman of PayPal. He serves as the president and CEO of a cloud company called ServiceNow. Prior to eBay, Donahoe acquired his B.A. in Economics from Dartmouth... read full bio
As the former CEO of Zenefits and founder of Yammer, David Sacks is an entrepreneur, executive, and internet technology investor. Previously, Sacks worked as a management consultant for the McKinsey Company and later left to work as the CEO of PayPal. A member of the PayPal Mafia, a group of tech whizzes who went on to found a number... read full bio
Online entrepreneur Drew Houston is best known for being the mastermind behind Dropbox, an online sharing and backup storage apparatus. Previous to his work on Dropbox, Drew worked with multiple startups including Hubspot, Accolade, and Bit9, among others. Born and raised in Acton, Massachusetts, Drew learned BASIC programming on his very first computer that his father bought for him. He... read full bio
Co-founder and CEO of about.me, Tony Conrad created the site as a platform for users to represent their personal identity on the web. Prior to creating about.me, Tony also co-founded Sphere and served as its CEO, and he has invested in multiple companies including Danger, Post Communications, Milk, OnTheAir, Iconoculture, Stonyfield Farms, Sabrix, and MusicNow, among many others. He also... read full bio
As the Editor-at-Large of TechCrunch, a tech news company, Mike Butcher MBE keeps up with the current trends, fads, and successes in the tech world. Mike also founded TechHub, a site meant to connect communities with startups. An esteemed writer as well, Mike has written for many publications including The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, and... read full bio
One of the most sought-after tech conference speakers in the world, Stephen Master is the Senior VP- Global Head of Sports Practice at The Nielson Company. Nielson is the global leader of marketing information, audience measurement and business media products and services. The Sports Practice division works closely with every major sports property, such as the USOC, NASCAR, NFL, NHL,... read full bio
Chief Executive Officer of The Priceline Group, Glenn Fogel has been with the company for over sixteen years. Prior to becoming CEO, he was the Head of Strategy and Planning for seven years, and EVP of Corporate Development for a year. While with The Priceline Group, Fogel has lead global corporate strategy, worldwide mergers and acquisitions, business development initiatives and... read full bio
Danish technology entrepreneur Jimmy Maymann has served as the Executive VP and President of AOL Content and Consumer Brands, and then as the CEO of The Huffington Post. Working alongside editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington, Maymann spearheaded the Huffington Posts rapid traffic expansion from 45 million to 200 million monthly visitors, as well as its global staff increase to 1,000 people. He... read full bio
Soon after Peter Fredell established his own investment banking boutique, named Fredell & Co., the company became one of the top players in the European asset backed debt market. Fredell & Co. also experienced success in their emerging markets operations, with significant mandates in Russia, Lebanon, Georgia, the Czech republic, and Hungary. Along with ABB, The Belgian Government and Boufonds,... read full bio
Porter Gale is a forerunner in the marketing world, with more than twenty years under her belt of working in branding, social media, advertising and filmmaking. She has been honored with the Changing The Game Award from The Advertising Women of New York, included on AdAges Digital Hotlist, iMedias Top 25-Digital Marketers, and named a Digital Passionista by The Huffington... read full bio
Cyan Banister, a globally renowned startup founder and angel investor, is currently a partner at Founders Fund. She invests across sectors and stages with a focus on heavily regulated industries, marketplaces, SaaS and businesses that assist people with basic skills in finding meaningful work. As an angel investor, Cyans portfolio has included Uber, Thumbtack, SpaceX, EShares, Postmates and Affirm. Cyan... read full bio
Adeo Ressi has been one of the most prominent figures in the Silicon Valley since establishing TheFunded ten years ago. Created to provide entrepreneurs with the tools to write anonymous reviews about venture capitalist groups and their processes, TheFunded became wildly popular among entrepreneurs. Ressi also started The Founder Institute, a startup accelerator and entrepreneur training program based in Palo... read full bio
Michael Jackson is the former COO of Skype, and now General Partner at Mangrove Capital Partners. Throughout Europe, Russia and Israel, Michael seeks out investable projects and advises portfolio companies as they grow into significant operations. Overseeing all aspects of Skypes paid services, he led the company into over 150M euro in just three years. Now actively involved in the... read full bio
Scott Belsky is an entrepreneur, investor and author, dedicated to helping creative people, teams, and networks make ideas happen. He was co-founder and CEO of Behance, a prominent online portfolio platform, until Adobe bought the company. Scott then became VP of Products at Adobe, re-launching their mobile product strategy. Now, Scott is an early-stage investor, a venture partner at the... read full bio
Padmasree Warrior is the Chief Development Officer at NIO and a member of its Board of Directors, overseeing the brains of NIOs autonomous, electric vehicles and the overall user experience. Warrior has established a career as a creative, visionary leader. Forbes named her among their list of The Worlds Most Powerful Women three years in a row, Business Insider included... read full bio
Prior to Yelp, Jeremy Stoppelman was the VP of engineering at PayPal. He left PayPal to attend the Harvard Business School. Upon completing his first year at HBS, Jeremy joined an incubator started by Max Levchin (co-founder of PayPal) for a summer internship. It was there that he was reunited with his old colleague Russel Simmons and the two teamed... read full bio
Web developer and online entrepreneur David Karp is known as the creator and CEO of the popular short-form blogging platform, Tumblr. Growing up in Manhattan, Karp started studying web design and HTML at the young age of 11. At age 14 he did an internship for Frederator Studios under animation producer Fred Seibert. He was influenced by the computer... read full bio
Known as an angel investor, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist, Mark Suster is an investment partner at UpFront Partners and also a well-known blogger. His blog, Both Sides of the Table, publishes a wide variety of articles on entrepreneruship, business, investing, success, and more. He often invest in early-stage technology ventures. Suster grew up in Northern California, and he attended the... read full bio
