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2018 Speakers & Mentors
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Agenda
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Event OrganizersQuestions or any thoughts on how we can make things better? Interested in sponsoring or partnering? Have some great horse photos you want to send? :) Contact:
audrey@foundertalks.org
Michael StröckMichael is the founder of Gustav. He also is an active angel investor (including Flaviar, Chatgrape and SpeedInvest) and advises several startups and social initiatives such as Chancenreich.org. In his spare time he likes to paint horse-themed watercolors and airbrush his hair in photos.
Andreas KlingerAndreas is the CTO of Product Hunt and the brains behind klinger.io. Before this, he was the co-founder of LOOKK. Unfortunately, though, Andreas doesn't own a horse (the pic here is actually photoshopped). -
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PAST EVENTS2016
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2015
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2014
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Photos from Vienna 2014 Event
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Wesley Chan
Founder of Google Analytics, Google Voice, Managing Director of Felicis Ventures
Wesley Chan, best known for founding and launching Google Analytics and Google Voice, is a leading product innovator, entrepreneur, investor and advisor to startups and was formerly a General Partner at Google Ventures. Wesley has held positions as a research lead at HP Labs, a Program Manager at Microsoft, and holds both Masters and Bachelors degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT where he did his graduate research at the Media Laboratory. He was selected as a “Top 35 under 35” innovator by Technology Review magazine in 2010.
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Leila JanahCEO and Founder of Samasource & LXMILeila Janah is the Founder and CEO of Samasource and LXMI, two companies that share a common social mission to end global poverty by giving work to people in need. She is also the author of Give Work: Reversing Poverty One Job at a Time[ and co-author of America's Moment: Creating Opportunity in the Connected Age, a book by Rework America: A Markle Initiative.
Leila is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, a Director of CARE USA, a 2012 TechFellow, recipient of the inaugural Club de Madrid Young Leadership Award, and in 2014, was the youngest person to win a Heinz Award.
She received a BA from Harvard and lives in San Francisco.
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Daniel HaFounder and CEO of DisqusDisqus was acquired for ~$90 million in 2017 by Zeta. Disqus is the web's most ubiquitous discussion network, reaching over 1 billion unique visitors every month & spanning nearly any topic or type of community imaginable. In 2011, Daniel was featured in Businessweek's "Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs". Disqus had previously raised $14.5 million from YC, Union Square Ventures, North Bridge Venture Partners.
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Riva-Melissa Tez
Premutation Ventures
Riva-Melissa Tez is a managing partner at Permutation Ventures, an early-stage VC fund focused on applied-machine-learning companies. She has held teaching positions at the DAB and HTW business schools and has guest-lectured at Oxford, Birkbeck, and Stanford. Riva has written about artificial intelligence, finance, and philosophy, and represented AI in a 2016 Microsoft campaign for the Economist and was one of Forbes’s 2017 30 under 30 for finance.
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Tikhon BernstamFounder, Scribd and Parse, Investor, Y Combinator alumScribd is a document sharing site with over 100 million unique visitors per month. Parse was acquired by Facebook for $85 million. It provides cloud service for mobile developers, making it simple to add backend to iOS or Android apps. Tikhon is also an active angel investor in over 25 companies, including Reddit, Optimizely, ZenPayroll and Crowdtilt.
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Jason PutortiDesign at AngelList, Founding Designer of Mint.com, Cofounder of Brigade and Votizen
Jason was the founding designer or Mint.com which was acquired by Intuit. He also founded Votizen, which raised from various celebrity investors, incld. Sean Parker, Aston Kutcher, Guy Oseary, Lady Gaga, and was acquired by Causes in 2013. In 2011 he was featured in Forbes Magazine '30 under 30' list of best social / mobile entrepreneurs. He previously served as a mentor for 500 Startups, and currently is the designer at AngelList and founder of ResistBot.
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Matt MullenwegFounder of WordPress, Automattic and Audrey CapitalMatt Mullenweg revolutionized a truly global company with a 100% remote working model for his companies: WordPress (which 26% of the web is built on) and Automattic (which reaches over 1 billion people per month). Automattic is the secret force behind WordPress, Akismet, Gravatar, VaultPress, IntenseDebate, Polldaddy and more. He also founded Audrey Capital, an angel investment and research company.
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Andreas Klinger
CTO of Product Hunt, 'Forbes' K önig der Geeks ;)
Andreas is a founding member and CTO of Product Hunt. He is a product and metric-centric startup founder from Europe, currently based in San Francisco. He has recently been nominated one of the Top CTOs to watch in 2016. He is also the brains behind klinger.io. Forbes Magazine recently featured him on their cover as "King of Geeks."
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Past Speaker Bios
Steve HuffmanFounder, Reddit and HipmunkY Combinator part-time Partner----Reddit is one of the largest social news sites with over 542 million monthly visitors. Ranking as the #4 most visited website in U.S. and #8 in the world. Across 2015, Reddit saw 82.54 billion pageviews, 73.15 million submissions, 725.85 million comments, and 6.89 billion upvotes from its users
Emmett ShearFounder/CEO, Twitch.tvYCombinator Parter----Emmett is founder and CEO of Twitch and part-time partner at Y Combinator. Twitch sold to Amazon for $970 million in 2014. With 50 million users a month consuming more than 13 billion minutes of video, Twitch is the fourth-largest consumer of Internet traffic, just after Netflix, Google and Apple. Prior to this, Emmett was co-founder and CTO of Justin.tv. He was named in Forbes '30 under 30' in 2012.
Morten PrimdahlFounder, Zendesk----Zendesk is the leading customer-service software with over 40,000 happy clients worldwide (including Vodaphone, MTV, Box, LonleyPlanet). Zendesk has raised $85.5 million from reputable VCs, including Index Ventures, Benchmark and Goldman Sachs. Originally from Copenhagen and now based in San Francisco, Zendesk founder, Morten Primdal has great insights on overcoming the challenges of starting and growing a global company from Europe.
Victor JacobssonFounder/CEO, Klarna----Klarna is an online payment service based and founded in Sweden. In Europe, Klarna has 25 million users and 45,000 retailers. The company is estimated revenues of more than $300 million in 2013 and is used for 200,000 transactions per day globally. Klarna has raised $282.1 million from reputable investors, including Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, DST and Atomico, at a near $1 billion valuation based. It was founded in 2005 and turned profitable in only its second year of business.
Tikhon BernstamFounder, Scribd and Parse
Y Combinator alum
----Scribd is a document sharing site with over 100 million unique visitors per month. Parse was acquired by Facebook for $85 million. It provides cloud service for mobile developers, making it simple to add backend to iOS or Android apps. Tikhon is also an active angel investor in over 25 companies, including Reddit, Optimizely, ZenPayroll and Crowdtilt.
Jason PutortiFounder, Votizen; Lead designer, Mint
500 Startups former-mentor
----Votizen has raised from various celebrity investors, incld. Sean Parker, Aston Kutcher, Guy Oseary, Lady Gaga, and was acquired by Causes in 2013. Jason previously served as a mentor for 500 Startups, and was the founding designer or Mint.com which was acquired by Intuit. In 2011 he was featured in Forbes Magazine '30 under 30' list of best social / mobile entrepreneurs. He is now the VP of Design at Causes.
Daniel HaFounder, Disqus
Y Combinator alum
----Disqus is the web's most ubiquitous discussion network, reaching over 1 billion unique visitors every month & spanning nearly any topic or type of community imaginable. In 2011, Daniel was featured in Businessweek's "Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs". Disqus has raised $14.5 million from YC, Union Square Ventures, North Bridge Venture Partners.
Seth BannonFounder, Amicus
Y Combinator alum
----Founding Partner of Fifty Years Ventures. Fobes Magazine '30 under 30' best social-entrepreneur in 2012. Amicus empowers cause-driven organizations by leveraging the social networks of their supporters. Dropping out of his junior year at Harvard Univesity, Seth set out to reinvent the way non-profits do business. Since then he has raised $3.78 million from YC, and reputable valley VCs and angels, including Alexis Ohanian.
Kelsey OffieldWrigley Gum HeiressFounder, Gusford Gallery
----Wrigley is one of the world's most powerful brands with revenue upwards of $4.4 billion in 2012. Kelsey's great-grandfather started Wrigley selling soap from a truck in the 1800s, and they are now still the largest manufacturer of chewing gum, sold in over 180 countries. Kelsey brings a uniquely non-technical and over-century old perspective to startups culture.She continues the tradition of entrepreneurship and support of the arts with Gusford LA, a contemporary art gallery based in Hollywood representing emerging and mid-career local and international artists.
Jamie WongFounder, VayableY Combinator alum
----Vayable raised $2.1 million from reputable investors, including SV Angel and YC. She was one of the speakers at Y Combinator's first Female Founders Conference in 2014. Before founding Vayable, Jamie worked in journalism and media for the Jon Steward Daily Show, and was also a creative and strategy consultant for major tech companies such a Adobe, Boku, Comcast, JobVite, Juniper Networks and others.
Anson TsaiFounder, Cardpool and Anywhere.fm
Y Combinator alum
----Cardpool was acquired by Blackhawk Network for $45 million in 2011. Prior to Cardpool, Anson founded Anywhere.FM, an online music service that was acquired by imeem in 2008. Anson studied computer science at MIT and was featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 list of best tech entrepreneurs in 2011.
Joy JorgensonActress, Writer, Director
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Joy started in content as an actress on the Emmy-award winning series Desperate Housewives on ABC reaching 30 million weekly viewers. Joy works with content creators on how to navigate into the digital space and effectively engage with their online audiences
She is a director and writer of original 360 degree films and virtual reality content. Her film "Laps" won Best Editing at Sundance Film Festival. She is based in Munich and New York.
Ian RustFounding Engineer of Cruise Automation
----Rusty is the founding engineer of Cruise Automation, a San Francisco-based developer of autonomous vehicle technology, which was recently acquired by General Motors. No financial terms were disclosed, but Fortune has reported that deal is valued at “north of $1 billion.”
Edward KimFounder & CTO of Gusto
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Edward oversees all engineering and software development at Gusto, which processes more than $15 Billion in payments annually, and serves more than 30,000 companies. Gusto has raised over $116 million in funding and is revolutionizing health benefits and payroll. Prior to co-founding Gusto, Edward worked as a senior project engineer at Volkswagen Group of America Electronics Research Lab, where he led research and development for cloud-based navigation and speech recognition systems for Volkswagen and Audi. Edward is also the developer of several award-winning Android apps that have generated more than $1 million in revenue.
Edward holds a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
