Silicon Valley didn’t believe in actor-investors, just a few years ago. Then Ashton Kutcher stepped in and started making a bunch of smart, well-informed bets. He has money in Skype, Foursquare, Flipboard, Airbnb and Path, as well as less consumer-y startups like Optimizely and MemSQL. He’s continued into a solid range of earlier-stage startups via his own investment fund, A-Grade.
He’ll be joining us at Disrupt NY to talk about his firm’s current approach to investing and the trends and products he’s thinking about these days. And, he may share a little more about the Jobs movie he’s been working on.
Ashton joins our list of Disrupt NY speakers that currently includes Chamath Palihapitiya, John Donahoe, Roelof Botha, and Ron Conway, with more to be announced. Tickets and Startup Alley packages are available here.
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Ashton Kutcher is an actor, tech investor and producer. In 2011, Kutcher created a venture fund, A-Grade Investments, with Ron Burkle and Guy Oseary. A-Grade has invested in multiple tech companies including Spotify, Airbnb, Foursquare, Fab, Uber, Dwolla and Path. Kutcher is also co-founder of Katalyst, a media company creating original content for digital media, television and film. In 2010, Kutcher was named one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People. In that same year, his company, Katalyst, was named one of the year’s Top 50 Most Inspiring Innovators by Ad Age and one of Fast Company Magazine’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies.
Currently Kutcher stars in the CBS comedy series “Two and a Half Men.” Averaging more than 14 million viewers per week, the show ranks as the second most-watched comedy on all of network television. Kutcher first gained recognition as Michael Kelso on the Fox/Carsey Werner series “That 70’s Show,” which aired for eight seasons. Kutcher went on to star in a variety of box office hits on the big screen, including “What Happens In Vegas” with Cameron Diaz, “The Guardian” with Kevin Costner, “Valentine’s Day,” “No Strings Attached” with Natalie Portman and the cult hit “Dude, Where’s My Car?” Kutcher has long been recognized for his tech investments and social media prowess, beginning with Twitter. In 2009, he was the first Twitter user to obtain 1 million followers, beating out CNN in a highly publicized race.