Turntable.fm, Scott Cook, and Instagram Will Mix It Up At Disrupt SF

We like to mix things up onstage at Disrupt SF, which is only a month away so get your early bird tickets now. One session I am really excited will be on lean startups with Eric Ries on the day he will release his book, The Lean Startup (you can watch a video I recently did with Ries on the topic). The Lean Startup movement is picking up steam, and not just among startups, so we decided to bring two founders who take the approach to heart: Intuit’s Scott Cook and Instagram’s Kevin Systrom. What could a huge company like Intiut and a tiny startup like Instagram have in common? Come to Disrupt to find out.

Speaking of pivots (a lean startup strategy), one of the hottest early stage startups right now is Turntable.fm, which truly did pivot from its previous incarnation as Stickybits. Co-founders Billy Chasen and Seth Goldstein will come give us an update on the growth and interest in the social music site where you can grab the DJ stand and plays tracks to a crowd of bopping avatars. Maybe we can even convince investir Chris Sacca to come spin some tunes onstage (he is very musical, you know). Personally, I find it fitting that Turntable will be representing at Disrupt SF since I discovered the site working late the weekend before Disrupt NYC.

Other speakers will include Elon Musk, Vinod Khosla, Peter Thiel, Mike McCue, Dustn Moskovitz and many others. You can see the growing list of speakers here.

Early bird tickets are only available until August 24th, so for the best prices please be sure to get your tickets now.

Disrupt SF is going to be held at the massive San Francisco Design Center Concourse, and we have partnered with Oyster.com to provide several hotel options surrounding the area. Go ahead and visit the Oyster/ SF Disrupt website to make reservations. Be sure to use the code “Disrupt SF” for a 10% discount.

Disrupt is also known for its amazing after parties. Each ticket gets you into every after party, with all three parties starting at 9pm and going until midnight. One after party hotspot we will be taking over is Roe, with another after party at Mighty

If you’d like to become a part of the Disrupt experience and learn about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Jeanne Logozzo or Heather Harde for more information.

Scott Cook
Co-founder, Intuit

Scott Cook started his career at Procter & Gamble, where he learned about product development, market research, and marketing. He soon began using the insights he was learning there to look for an idea for a company of his own. That idea came to him one day when his wife was complaining about paying the bills. With personal computers just coming out at the time, Scott thought there might be a market for basic software that would help people pay their bills. He launched Intuit in 1983, which today offers software and online products to help individuals and small companies manage their finances. Scott Cook, a founder of Intuit, has been a director of Intuit since March 1983 and is currently Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board. He served as Intuit’s Chairman of the Board from February 1993 through July 1998. From April 1983 to April 1994, he also served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Intuit. Mr. Cook also serves on the boards of directors of eBay Inc., and The Procter & Gamble Company. Mr. Cook holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Southern California and a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, where he serves on the dean’s advisory board.

 

Kevin Systrom
Co-founder, Instagram

Kevin Systrom is a co-founder of Instagram, a photo sharing application for the iPhone. He also founded Burbn, an HTML5-based location sharing service. Kevin graduated from Stanford University in 2006 with a BS in Management Science & Engineering—he got his first taste of the startup world when he was an intern at Odeo that later became Twitter. He spent two years at Google—the first of which was working on Gmail, Google Reader, and other products and the latter where he worked on the Corporate Development team. Kevin has always had a passion for social products that enable people to communicate more easily, and combined with his passion for photography, Instagram is a natural fit.

 

Billy Chasen
Co-founder, Turntable.fm

Billy Chasen is the Co-founder of Turntable.fm. Before Turntable.fm, Billy Chasen was the Founder and CEO stickybits.com. Prior to stickybits, Chasen was on the founding team of betaworks, where he created chartbeat.com, a real-time analytics service and firef.ly, a chat service. Chasen has a B.S. in computer science from the University of Michigan. His art website is located at billychasen.com and his blog is anerroroccurredwhileprocessingthisdirective.com

Seth Goldstein
Co-founder, Turntable.fm

Seth creates and invests in really awesome companies. Most recently he and Billy Chasen created turntable.fm, an addictive social music service. In 1995, Seth founded Sitespecific, which pioneered online advertising solutions for companies like Duracell and Travelocity. It was acquired by CKS Group in 1997. In 1999, Seth joined Fred Wilson as Entrepreneur in Residence at Flatiron Partners where he built a practice in “pervasive computing,” investing in companies Kozmo, Modo and Vindigo. In 2002, Seth created Majestic Research, the first Wall Street research firm to mine primary data for hedge funds to forecast the financial performance of public companies. Majestic Research was acquired in 2010 by Investment Technology Group (NYSE: ITG). In 2005, Seth started Root Markets with renowned Salomon Brothers trader Lew Ranieri and the Chicago Board of Trade to create the first financial exchange for online mortgage leads. Seth started SocialMedia.com in 2007 which makes ads more relevant across the Web with a unique social advertising platform. SocialMedia was acquired in 2011 by LivingSocial. In 2007, Seth created the pre-eminent start-up ghetto Pier 38 in SanFrancisco, which houses Dogpatch and dozens of other startups. In 2010, Seth co-founded Stickybits, which connects digital media to real-world objects via barcodes. Seth has served on the board of the Internet Advertising Bureau, where he co-chaired its Social Media committee and helped architect the first set of best practices in social advertising. Seth was the original investor in Web 2.0 pioneer del.icio.us which was acquired by Yahoo! in 2005, and was one of the first investors in Etherpad which was purchased by Google in 2009.