These are our confirmed speakers. If you’d like to speak, apply here.

Workshops

Solana Crawford, DaT

Expand Your Brand (Without Fail)

Get your brand right from the start. Your business model may make or break the bank each quarter. Your brand will engage and live in the hearts of your consumers forever. We will use examples of cross channel branding from attendees to perform LIVE assessments. We will look at failures, successes, and give you easy to implement solutions. Email solana@DESIGNaboutTOWN.com to participate in the live assessment!

Perisho Tombor Ramirez Filler & Brown Accountants

Accounting & Taxes: Because It WILL Get You Eventually…

As a startup founder, we know cash is tight; it might be tempting to fudge some numbers, or just plain ignore the details for now. But your ability to obtain funding, and to keep investors on your side, is enhanced with strong accounting systems and internal controls. You may even be in a position to make better business decisions with valid financial data. And why not preserve the cash you have (or hope to have) by setting up your legal and business structures now to minimize the tax bite? In this workshop, we'll review basic accounting system requirements, internal control ideas, “choice of entity” decisions to enable you to maximize returns in your exit strategies, as well as strategies to stay on top of other taxes businesses pay. We'll also share a few of the horror stories we've seen and how you can avoid paying much more down the line.

John Devanney, Moment

Mobile Design Approaches that Fail the Right Way

Good mobile product design begins with having the right design objectives. When it comes to design, the best intentions aren't always right; in fact, some often lead to failure. This workshop will focus on two good intentions that have been the undoing of many mobile product design initiatives: asking your customers what they want and making the product fully featured.

Katherine Barr, Mohr Davidow Ventures

How To Not Fail at Negotiating Business Relationships

Some of the best potential and real venture investments, startup teams and business partnerships have failed because of ineffective approaches to negotiation. This session will discuss how venture investors assess risk and the potential for failure in startups, and how to avoid failing at pitching, negotiating and problem solving with investors, team members and business partners.

The Sprocket Group

Risky Business: Hidden Dangers for Funded Startups

So your startup got funded and now you can focus on developing your tech, capturing market share, and taking over the world! But don't forget: you also have a company to manage, including all the corporate loose ends that big companies hire armies to handle. Have you gotten the best insurance to protect everyone involved? Have you covered your legal bases like corporate structure, employment, and intellectual property? Do you have a system to monitor your funds? Without these, you're guaranteed to fail from the inside-out. Join The Sprocket Group for a series of round table discussions to answer your questions about corporate management.

Evan Hamilton, UserVoice

Show Your Customers You Care (or they'll GTFO)

Entrepreneurs care...but have a million things to focus on, which often isn't customer issues and feedback. This makes customers angry, which in turn makes them leave, which in turn means you have no money to work on the Next Big Thing. Oops. How can you show your customers you care without spending your whole day doing it? Evan will use his experience working with numerous small startups to demonstrate some quick ways to leave your customers happy and save you time to focus.

Main Stage

Chris DeWolfe, MindJolt
Liz Gannes, AllThingsD

Fireside Chat with Chris DeWolfe

As founder and CEO of MySpace, Chris DeWolfe created a giant, growing the social network from inception through its purchase by NewsCorp, and beyond. Now, as CEO of Mindjolt, he's applying the lessons learned from his time at MySpace and entering the crowded game space. In this session, Chris will discuss his experiences at MySpace, how those are helping him build MindJolt, and his advice for rising founders.

–

Joe Gebbia, Airbnb

How Airbnb Survived the Trough of Sorrow

Finding a model that both generates revenue and excites founders is tough, and tends to be one of the number one things that causes early-stage startups to fail. It took Airbnb over 2 years before they stumbled across the model that worked for them. Joe Gebbia joins us to share some of the tricks they used to stay afloat, find inspiration, and hold on to the dedication needed to create a successful company.



The Failure of Business Models

In the past few years, dozens of startups a month seem to get funded without having a developed or tested business model to show. Companies generate buzz, attract users, and earn press without this simple facet. So just how important is the business model for your early success? When do you need to worry about this and when can it bring you down? We'll hear from a number of experienced investors and founders with a variety of perspectives on this tricky question.

Cathy Brooks, Other than That
Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures

Fireside Chat with Khosla Ventures

Description Forthcoming

Hiten Shah, KISSmetrics
Christina Holsberry, Facebook

When to Quantify; When to Qualify

Metrics and user testing; both take a lot of time, energy, and training; and most startups simply don't have time for both. But using the wrong data at the wrong time can ruin you. Join our debate between two leaders in the field as they discuss the value of both types of data, common mistakes people make, and how it can be used in your startup.



Surviving to A Thousand

User acquisition: both the life blood and perhaps most challenging aspect of a startup. Often times it seems like the successful startups take off like magic - they just suddenly seem to have tens of thousands of users, and grow exponentially from there. But how can you survive until you hit critical mass? You can you attract users at an affordable rate and avoid desperate or scam-like tactics. Join this collection of experience founders and investors as they share mistakes made and lessons learned while trying reach user #1000.

Stephany Wilkes, Catch

Culture Fail

Description Forthcoming

Adil Wali, Kemists

Premature Commitment: How Irrationality Kills Startups

There is a lot of stuff people don't tell you about before you start your first company. Premature commitment bias is one of those things. This talk focuses on what it is, why we are incentivized to do it, and how we can avoid it.

Elizabeth Yin, LaunchBit

Stop Building! Get users first.

It's natural to get swept up in the excitement of a product idea and build out all the cool features you can think of. But, building too much of the wrong thing is time consuming, demoralizing, and ultimately a company killer. This talk focuses on how to validate and throw out iterations rapidly so that what you do build is useful.

Anna Patterson, Google

Cuil Case Study: Letting Things Go.

For many founders, especially first-time founders, they will inevitably have to close a company down. But rarely do we talk about just how to do this: not only practically, but emotionally. This is something you've invested months - if not years - of your life into, not to mention your money. Anna joins us to share what happened to Cuil: how did they wrap everything up, let go, and move on to become successful and confident in their next projects.

Travis Kalanick, Uber

Uber Case Study: Ten Years of Failure

Description Forthcoming