Entrepreneur-turned-educator Steve Blank is the Father of Modern

Entrepreneurship. Credited with launching the Lean Startup movement, he’s

changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is

commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate.

Steve is the author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany, The Startup Owner’s Manual

-- and his May 2013 Harvard Business Review cover story defined the Lean

Startup movement.

He teaches at Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley and NYU; and created the National

Science Foundation Innovation Corps -- now the standard for science

commercialization in the U.S. His Hacking for Defense class at Stanford is

revolutionizing how the U.S. defense and intelligence community can deploy

innovation with speed and urgency, and its sister class, Hacking for Diplomacy, is

doing the same for foreign affairs challenges managed by the U.S. State

Department.

Kelly is the Director of Content and Marketing Data Science (aka “Hollywood Data Science”) at Netflix, focused on using causal inference and machine learning to grow the Netflix member base and audiences for its titles worldwide. Kelly started at Netflix almost 7 years ago as a statistician working on the initial research around to best promote Netflix Originals within the Netflix service.

Prior to her time at Netflix, built predictive models to understand customer retention at GEICO. She also served in the Peace Corps in the Republic of Georgia, where she helped women entrepreneurs start and manage small businesses.

Justin heads up eBay Commerce Innovations is an innovation studio focused on building new platforms, products, and businesses that augment and enhance the shopping experience on- and off-eBay.One such project is catch.app which carried the mission of finding a way to help eBay address the millennial customer group

Some of my most important responsibilities leading Commerce Innovations have been to set the vision and to establish this new function and team. Now, we are an end-to-end, agile team encompassing product development, design, retail & merchandising, marketing, and analytics & business insights. My team is fully responsible to conduct user research, identify customer needs, ideate solutions, validate product-market-fit, and build, launch, and iterate on the minimally viable products (MVPs). Furthermore, we also own, operate, and scale the new innovations, or at times, spin them out as new ventures.

Of our numerous projects, we have launched a few notable ones to date:

eBay BlitzDeals: https://blitzdeals.ebay.de/

- A gamified, short-form auction shopping format where everything starts at 1 euro; the platform goes live as scheduled events

NHS PPE Portal: https://nhs-ppe.co.uk/

- An invitation-only portal for personal protective equipment, created pro bono for the UK National Health Service to distribute PPE to their network of smaller healthcare providers

Angelo is a founding partner at HP Tech Ventures, where he leads investments and partnerships in AR/VR, Gaming/eSports, and AI. He is on a number of boards, including at AdHawk Microsystems, Mobalytics, Mojo Vision, and Parsec Gaming. He also advises numerous startups and is a frequent speaker and judge at industry conferences, including Augmented World Expo, NASA, StartX, StartupGrind, SXSW, Web Summit, etc.

Previously Angelo was with HP’s corporate strategy group where he focused on M&A and growth strategies. Before joining HP, Angelo was VP Business Development and Strategy at Couchsurfing, where he helped raise $23M. Angelo previously ran a tech sector focused management consulting company for 8 years and consulted to numerous startups, including Groupon and YouSendIt, as well as Fortune 500 companies, including Adobe, Apple, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, and Oracle. He has conducted over 4,000 interviews and managed 100+ strategy and market research projects.

He has lived in the Bay Area for 20 years and helped companies in boom and bust times. He has taught graduate business classes around the world, including at Wharton and Haas, and earned degrees from Northwestern and Wharton.

Gideon mentors globally for Google Launchpad and is himself a serial entrepreneurs with 3 successful exits via public listings on NASDAQ and 4 others via successful M&A transactions. He has been involved in building numerous companies, growth initiatives, funding from Venture funds and the public.

Gideon Marks brings a unique perspective from his long and successful track record leading technology companies in financial, business and corporate development roles.

Gideon brings more than 30 years of experience. During his career he took three companies public on NASDAQ and led four other companies to successful acquisition. He has also been involved in building numerous companies from scratch to various stages of maturity.

Gideon has also worked with growth initiatives, achieved funding from venture capital funds and the public.

Currently a mentor at Google Launchpad, Plug and Play, US MAC, 10X Innovation Lab, Mind the Bridge and other organizations.

His topics on startups cover:

1. Leadership and team building

2. Pitching your story

3. Funding options

4. Traction and competition

5. Business models

6. Negotiation

7. Ethics and values

8. Silicon Valley and Israel ecosystem

In his spare time Gideon helps his children run an app for dog owners called DogLog.

Carolina helps scale adoption of new technologies across this 300,000 person organization. The challenge is to accelerate going from concepts to end-to-end digital products supporting Nestlé use cases. Strategy + Delivery + Customer focus + Team work. Among other things she heads acceleration of use cases for Artificial Intelligence within the company.

Can you imagine your life without the Internet? Hell, no! That's why I help businesses build awesome digital products that improve the way we live. And these days, it’s more and more about AI.

Back in Barcelona after multi-year stints in Madrid, London and New York, I joined Nestlé in June 2017 to scale up emerging technologies. The challenge is to accelerate going from concepts to end-to-end digital products supporting Nestlé use cases. Strategy + Delivery + Customer focus + Team work.

Mix of analytical thinker, creative soul, techie and communicator, my background is strategy, development and delivery of technology products and services, both B2B and B2C. I've worked for telco & networks, healthcare, automotive, mobility, and consumer packaged goods industries.

I've also worked in large and small companies, including startups, and have built and led high-performing teams.

In a past life I did a lot of applied research in tech, publishing 70+ papers and 1 patent and pitching in many international conferences and events. I love the thrill of pitching and how on-the-fly questions make you think on your feet, and fast.

Deborah Magid represents IBM’s $25B software business in the company’s Venture Capital Group. Deborah is responsible for sharing insights about emerging markets, technologies, and business models with venture firms and entrepreneurs around the world. She scouts for emerging business opportunities, and shares views on innovation and growth areas of the market. As a director of strategy in IBM Software Group, she also brings insight from the venture community to the development of IBM’s growth strategies. Deborah is responsible for fueling the ecosystem pipeline in strategic areas related to building a “smarter planet” and contributes to filling out the IBM product portfolio through M&A. Deborah’s relationships are global and extend into emerging geographies. 

Deborah is a frequent spokes-person on topics of relevance to entrepreneurs and investors. She is Chairman of the Board of SVForum, the Silicon Valley emerging technology network; on the advisory board of White Bull, serving the European entrepreneurial and venture communities; and on the Steering Committee of the California Sustainability Alliance. Previously, Deborah held positions in product management, marketing, and user-centered design at Taligent, GE Information Services and AT&T. Deborah holds degrees in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Connecticut.

Sheel is the founding partner of the 500 startups FinTech Fund. His own startup experience includes 2 successful FinTech exits – a payments company (FeeFighters) and a high-stakes auction company (Innovative Auctions). He's invested into over 80 companies in the past 6 years, mostly in the fintech space. He formerly worked as a financial services consultant at BCG and started his FinTech career at the non-profit p2p lender Kiva.

Helping to design, build, and improve human ecosystems through technology, as a creator or an investor/partner. Particularly interested in technology businesses that disrupt financial institutions or enable them to act more efficiently. He has a soft spot for companies that help those who feel abandoned by the current financial system, but invests across the fintech/insuretech/Real estate tech spectrum. Has been quoted in a number of publications. Additionally, his works have been featured in The Atlantic, Mashable, The New York Times, GigaOm, Techcrunch and others. Has been a regular public speaker on topics of Financial Innovation, entrepreneurship, social innovation, and the revolution taking place in payments/point of sale.

Aside from fintech, Sheel has co-founded the podcast "The Pitch" which was acquired by Gimlet Media (reaches ~100k weekly listeners), and a food company called Thistle that serves 10's of thousands of customers every week. He lives in San Francisco and enjoys travel.

Peter Komornik is the co-founder and CEO of Slido, an audience interaction platform that is transforming the world of meetings and conferences. Since its foundation in 2012, Slido has been used at over 1.2 million events including customers such as Asana, BBC, Oracle, and renowned conferences such as SXSW and Web Summit. Before starting Slido, Peter worked for Google Slovakia and Samsung. He also holds an MBA degree from a joint program of SKK GSB and Kellogg School of Management.

Derek Andersen ​is the Founder & CEO of Startup Grind, a 400,000 person entrepreneurial community with 200 chapters in 85 countries run by more than 1,000 volunteers. Startup Grind's mission is to help every entrepreneur in the world. It's core values are giving before you take, helping others first, and making friends. Derek Andersen spent four years in product management at Electronic Arts working on games like The Godfather, Burnout, The Sims 3, and Mirror’s Edge. He left EA in 2009 to start Vaporware Labs, a product incubator which mostly failed but built products including Commonred which was acquired by Income.com in 2012, and Startup Grind. After running Startup Grind as a side project for 2 years, Derek turned his full attention to scaling it from 3 chapters to 200 chapters today. In 2015 Startup Grind will host 1,200 events for 75,000 entrepreneurs. He currently lives in Palo Alto, California but has lived eight years outside the U.S. in France, Germany, Switzerland, New Zealand, and the Cook Islands.

Ted was the Futurist at 20th Century Fox, where he worked on the evolving art, science and technology of advanced interactive visual storytelling. He was part of the creation team for the Martian VR and Wild VR experiences, Ted is one of the founders and creators of the G-Tech product line of advanced hard drive storage products.

Ted spends his time in a unique role in the motion picture entertainment industry. As the Futurist at Paramount pictures, Ted works with studio leadership and the technology teams at Paramount / Viacom, exploring forms of new and emerging technologies, with an emphasis on Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. He was part of the creation team for the Martian VR and Wild VR experiences, which premiered at CES and Sundance as groundbreaking projects that pushed the envelope of Virtual Reality storytelling. Ted was an integral part of the product development team at RED Digital Cinema as a founding member and the company’s first employee. The Red One and Epic cameras have made a significant impact on the Motion Picture Industry, with many of the world’s biggest movies now being shot with these ultra-high-resolution digital movie cameras. Ted is one of the founders and creators of the G-Tech product line of advanced hard drive storage products.

Luke Kowalski is recognized for his loyalty and pragmatism, but he also excels in his ability to work across disciplines. He has executed projects involving legal issues (antitrust, IP, audits, litigation), acquisitions (due diligence, integration, or divestitures), technical standards (document formats), government affairs (EU/USA trade, IP reform, repatriation), and even managed functions like physical security, user interface design and accessibility.

He currently serves as a vp in the corporate architecture group at Oracle reporting to one of Larry Ellison’s EVPs. Before coming to Oracle, he worked for various startups in technical, design, and business roles, as well as for Netscape's Server and E commerce divisions. He holds several patents and professional certifications, serves as an ISO representative for US through ANSI and lectures frequently at conferences and universities. His educational background includes advanced degrees from UTA, Pratt Institute, and Columbia University. He is currently teaching a blockchain challenge lab at UC Berkeley's Engineering School on Mondays and pursuing a distance learning PhD at University of Leicester in his free time. 

"Mr. Graylin （汪丛青） is the China President at HTC leading all aspects of HTC's business in the region (Vive/VR, phone, Viveport content platform, partnerships and investments) and the company’s XR Suite Business globally. He is also currently Vice-Chairman of the Industry of Virtual Reality Alliance (IVRA.com) with 300+ company members, President of the $18B Virtual Reality Venture Capital Alliance (VRVCA.com) and oversees the Vive X VR Accelerators (VIVEX.co) in Beijing, Shenzhen and Tel Aviv. Mr. Graylin is a sought after speaker and thought leader in the areas of VR/AR, AI, Entrepreneurship, and doing business in China by events and media globally.

Mr. Graylin has over 28 years of business management experience in the tech industry, including 20 years in Greater China. Prior to HTC, he was a serial entrepreneur, having founded four venture-backed startups in the mobile and internet spaces, covering mobile social, adtech, search, AI, big data and digital media. Additionally, he has held $100+ million P&L roles at a number of public companies.

Mr. Graylin was born in China and educated in the US. He received his MS in computer science from MIT, MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and BS in electrical engineering from the University of Washington, where he had specialized in VR and AI over two decades ago. Mr. Graylin is fluent in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese. "

Ken Singer is a serial entrepreneur, technology executive, university lecturer and investor/advisor to numerous startups. He has been the Managing Director of the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at the University of California, Berkeley since 2012 and Chief Learning Officer of the Center since 2019. Ken is the co-creator of the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship pedagogy and is the inventor of the game-based Challenge Lab course now taught in several universities around the world. Challenge Lab courses engage local industry leaders and corporations in spinning out student-led startups such as Eko (a medical device for underserved markets). Ken is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and has been a guest lecturer at universities in Latin America, Asia and EMEA. He works with governments and universities to foster entrepreneurship education and consults with corporations on product and innovation management. Ken is the Academic Chair of the European Innovation Academy and also the co-founder of the Applied Innovation Institute, a nonprofit that sponsors student competitions and innovation projects around the world.