We’re excited to announce that Jessica Alba and Chris Thorne will be speaking this May for our first Disrupt in Brooklyn. Alba last appeared at Disrupt SF 2012 when The Honest Company was just starting up. At the time, she and CEO Brian Lee talked about the passion that drives founding a startup. This time around, there’s a bit more to talk about.
Alba and Lee co-founded the The Honest Company in 2011, having since raised $222 million through four rounds of funding, with the latest round valuing the company around $1.7 billion — all on the back of personal products the company says are effective, safe and, well, honest.
The company reportedly started looking for a public exit in 2015, but that plan might have changed. The Honest Company might be looking to sell instead of going public, citing the coolness of the public markets, according to a report in WWD.
Last year at SXSW, when talking to Alba and Lee, interviewer Lindsay Blakely of Inc. pointed out that Lee’s last two startups, LegalZoom and ShoeDazzle, didn’t IPO, so she asked: Will the third time be the charm? Lee replied, “I love LegalZoom, I love ShoeDazzle, but The Honest Company definitely has a deeper meaning for us.”
“If the public markets are open, we may or may not take advantage of them, but we don’t have to take any one path,” he added.
We’re thrilled to have Jessica and Chief Marketing Officer Chris Thorne at Disrupt to talk about the company’s path from fledgling startup to a company worth more than a billion dollars and what the plan is going forward. They join our growing list of Disrupt NY speakers that includes Giphy’s Alex Chung, Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley, and Ellevest’s Sallie Krawcheck.
Tickets are still available for Disrupt NY and we would love for you to join us. Or, even better, bring your startup and exhibit in Startup Alley.
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