Disrupt SF is right around the corner. The event starts on September 12 and we’re delighted to reveal the agenda. The lineup is stacked and we are excited to return to Pier 48 in San Francisco to host the best Disrupt yet.
The conference kicks off on September 12 and is a packed three days that feature inspiring entrepreneurs, savvy investors and TechCrunch’s world-renowned Startup Battlefield competition. At the end of it all, one startup will take home $50,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup.
David Marcus is the vice president of messaging products at Facebook. He leads Messenger, which is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world daily. David joined Facebook in 2014 from PayPal, where he spent the previous two years as the company’s president and previously as vice president of mobile, leading its mobile products and business. He will speak at 9:05 AM on Monday, Sept. 12.
Jason Robins is Chief Executive Officer of DraftKings, a leader in the Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) industry and at the forefront of its astronomical growth. Robins co-founded DraftKings in 2012 and oversees all of the company’s strategy and operations, while also driving funding and partnerships. He will speak at 9:25 AM on Monday, Sept. 12.
Jager McConnell is the CEO of CrunchBase, the leading platform used by millions of entrepreneurs and investors looking to discover innovative companies and the people behind them. Jager joined CrunchBase after it spun out from AOL, a move that was announced at TechCrunch Disrupt last year. Prior to joining CrunchBase, Jager spent 11 years at Salesforce in various roles across sales, marketing and product development. He will speak at 9:45 AM on Monday, Sept. 12.
Megan Smith is the United States Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. In this role, she serves as an assistant to the president. As U.S. CTO, Smith focuses on how technology policy, data and innovation can advance the future of our nation. She is an award-winning entrepreneur, engineer and tech evangelist. She will speak at 10:05 AM on Monday, Sept. 12.
Alexander Macgillivray, also known as “amac,” is U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer. Prior to joining the federal government, Mr. Macgillivray had a variety of roles at Twitter, including general counsel, head of public policy, corporate development, communications, and trust & safety. He will speak at 10:05 AM on Monday, Sept. 12.
Morgan DeBaun started her career in Silicon Valley and is the CEO of Blavity. She is a serial entrepreneur, passionate about building technology at the intersection of creativity and culture. Since founding Blavity, Morgan has been quoted in nationwide outlets like Forbes, NPR, TechCrunch and Huffington Post as a voice of her generation. She will speak at 10:30 AM on Monday, Sept. 12.
Jeff Lawson is a serial inventor with over 15 years of entrepreneurial and product experience. Prior to co-founding Twilio, Jeff was founder and CTO of NineStar, founding CTO of Stubhub.com and founder, CEO and CTO of Versity. He was also one of the original product managers for Amazon Web Services. He will speak at 10:50 AM on Monday, Sept. 12.
Leslie Miley is a director of engineering at Slack. He formerly held engineering leadership roles at Twitter, Apple and Google. He serves as an adviser to several startups founded by women and minorities and is an investor in a fund dedicated to entrepreneurs who are POC, LGBT and women. He will speak at 11:30 AM on Monday, Sept. 12.
Min-Liang Tan is the co-founder and CEO of Razer, a world leader in connected devices and software for gamers. He was named one of the “Top 10 Most Influential Leaders in Tech” by Juniper Research, shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Satya Nadella, Jony Ive, Elon Musk and Jack Ma. Mr. Tan was distinguished among the “25 Most Creative People in Tech” by Business Insider, and he was honored by Kotaku in that publication’s “Power 40” list of influencers. He will speak at 11:50 AM on Monday, Sept. 10.
Mike Judge is a co-creator, executive producer, writer and director for the Emmy® and Golden Globe® nominated comedy series, Silicon Valley, which debuted its third season in April, and is currently in preproduction for its fourth season. He will speak at 12:10 PM on Monday, Sept. 10.
Tim Armstrong is CEO of AOL Inc., a leading global media technology company headquartered in New York City and operating in over 20 countries worldwide. Prior to joining AOL, Tim spent almost a decade at Google, where he served as president of Google’s Americas Operations and senior vice president of Google Inc., as well as serving on the company’s global operating committee. He will speak at 1:40 PM on Monday, Sept. 12.
Marni Walden is executive vice president and chief operating officer for Verizon Wireless, the largest wireless company in the United States, with responsibility for the company’s nationwide operations and delivery of industry-leading performance for consumer and business customers. She will speak at 1:40 PM on Monday, Sept. 12.
Marc Benioff is chairman and CEO of Salesforce. A pioneer of cloud computing, Benioff founded the company in 1999 with a vision to create a new kind of enterprise software company, with a new technology model based in the cloud, a new pay-as-you-go business model and a new integrated corporate philanthropy model. Under his leadership, Salesforce has grown from a groundbreaking idea into a Fortune 500 company, the fastest-growing Top 10 software company in the world and the largest CRM company. He will speak at 9:05 on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
Sebastian Thrun is a scientist, educator, inventor and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and president of Udacity, whose mission is to democratize education. Udacity focuses on affordable, lifelong learning to give people the needed skills to get a new job or advance their career. Thrun is also the founder of X (previously Google X), where he led the development of the self-driving car, Google Glass and other projects. He will speak at 9:25 AM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
Reid Hoffman joined Greylock Partners as an investment partner in 2009. He focuses on building products that can reach hundreds of millions of participants and businesses that have network effects. An accomplished entrepreneur and executive, Reid has played an integral role in building many of today’s leading consumer technology businesses, including LinkedIn and PayPal. He will speak at 9:45 AM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
Josh Elman is an investment partner at Greylock Partners. He invests in entrepreneurs building social networks and platforms, mobile apps, new media and connected devices. He joined the team in 2011 and invests in entrepreneurs building new consumer products and services. Josh specializes in designing, building and scaling consumer products, having been part of multiple companies that have grown to more than 100 million users. He will speak at 9:45 AM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
Melonee Wise is the CEO of Fetch Robotics, which is delivering advanced robots for the logistics industry. The company introduced their robot system, including Fetch and Freight, in May of 2015. Prior to joining Fetch, Melonee was CEO and co-founder of Unbounded Robotics. Before then, Melonee was manager of robot development at Willow Garage, where she led a team of engineers developing next-generation robot hardware, including the PR2 and TurtleBot. She will speak at 10:10 AM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
Ash Carter is the 25th Secretary of Defense. Secretary Carter has spent more than three decades leveraging his knowledge of science and technology, global strategy and policy, as well as his deep dedication to the men and women of the Department of Defense, to make our nation and the world a safer place. He has done so in direct and indirect service of 11 secretaries of defense in both Democratic and Republican administrations. He will speak at 10:30 AM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
Marc Andreessen is a co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is an innovator and creator, one of the few to pioneer a software category used by more than a billion people and one of the few to establish multiple billion-dollar companies. Marc co-created the highly influential Mosaic internet browser and co-founded Netscape, which later sold to AOL for $4.2 billion. He also co-founded LoudCloud, which as Opsware sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion. He will speak at 11:10 AM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
Rana el Kaliouby is co-founder and CEO of Affectiva. As a research scientist at MIT Media Lab, Rana spearheaded the applications of facial coding. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Wired, Forbes, Fast Company, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, CBS, TIME Magazine, Fortune and Reddit. She was recognized by Entrepreneur as one of the “7 Most Powerful Women To Watch In 2014,” inducted into the “Women in Engineering” Hall of Fame, a recipient of the 2012 Technology Review’s “Top 35 Innovators Under 35” Award, listed on Ad Age’s “40 under 40” and recipient of Smithsonian magazine’s 2015 American Ingenuity Award for Technology. She will speak at 11:30 AM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
Danny Lange is head of machine learning at Uber, where he leads an effort to build the world’s most versatile machine learning platform to support Uber’s rapid growth. With the help of this branch of artificial intelligence, including deep learning, Uber can provide an even better service to its customers. Previously, Danny was the general manager of Amazon Machine Learning — an AWS product that offers Machine Learning as a Service. He will speak at 11:30 AM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
Janica Alvarez is the co-founder and CEO of Naya Health, responsible for company leadership, product vision and strategy and operations and manufacturing excellence. Beginning with reinventing the breast pump and bottle, Janica’s mission for Naya Health is to create better experiences for moms through a range of early-infant nutritional products and services. She will speak at 11:55 AM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
Deborah Anderson-Bialis is the co-founder and CEO of FertilityIQ. FertilityIQ is a platform for consumers to find information about fertility doctors and procedures. One-third of all IVF patients now use the site to find their doctor and research costs and drug protocols. She will speak at 11:55 AM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
Ida Tin is the co-founder and CEO of Clue, the world’s fastest growing female health app. She is convinced that technology will profoundly change the future of family planning. She will speak at 11:55 AM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
Neal Stephenson is a futurist and a writer. Throughout his impressive, 30-year writing career, he has proven to not only possess one of the boldest imaginations in contemporary fiction, but also the unique ability to illuminate the vital intersection of science, technology and sociology through a diverse list of themes. After cementing his position as a beloved writer of speculative fiction with Snow Crash, he tackled code-breaking and world wars in Cryptonomicon, historical fiction and the origins of science with the Baroque Cycle, philosophy and mathematics in Anathem, and high-stakes, action-packed global adventure in Reamde. In SEVENEVES, Stephenson shoots for the moon — literally — and takes fans into outer space. He will speak at 12:20 PM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
Christina Sass is the co-founder and COO of Andela, a company that recruits the most talented software engineers on the African continent and pairs them with global tech companies as full-time, distributed team members. Founded on the premise that brilliance is evenly distributed but opportunity is not, Andela has built one of the most selective engineering institutions in the world, with headquarters in Lagos, Nairobi, and NYC. She will speak at 1:40 PM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
George “Geohot” Hotz is best known for being the first person to unlock the iPhone (original) from the AT&T network and allow the device to work on other cell carriers when he was 17. He hacked the PlayStation 3 when he was 21. At 25, he was approached by Tesla to build them a car vision system for millions of dollars and said no. Today, at 26, he plans to bring consumers a self-driving car, by the end of 2016, for less than $1,000. He will speak at 2:00 PM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
David Sacks is CEO of Zenefits. He is an internet entrepreneur who was the founding CEO of Yammer and original COO and product leader of PayPal. He also produced the award-winning independent film Thank You for Smoking. He is an angel investor in tech companies like Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, Houzz, SpaceZ and Palantir. He will speak at 2:20 PM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
Diane Greene is the leader of Google’s cloud businesses: Google Cloud, Google Technical Infrastructure and Google Apps. She also serves on the boards of Alphabet, Intuit, Khan Academy and MIT. Diane co-founded and was CEO of VMware from 1998-2008, taking the company public and to a $2 billion run-rate. She will speak at 2:40 PM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
Stephen Curry garnered national attention for his impressive play at Davidson College. He was drafted in 2009 by the Golden State Warriors, and eventually developed into one of pro basketball’s top players with his stellar shooting skills. After garnering Most Valuable Player honors and helping the Warriors win the NBA championship in 2015, Curry led the team to a league-record 73 wins the following season. In May 2016, Curry became the first person to be named Most Valuable Player by unanimous vote in NBA history, and one of only 11 players to win the MVP award two years in a row. He will speak at 5:40 PM on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
Kyle Vogt is the CEO and founder of Cruise Automation, which develops self-driving car technology and was recently acquired by General Motors. Previously, Kyle was a co-founder at Justin.tv, Socialcam (acquired by Autodesk) and Twitch (acquired by Amazon). Kyle studied computer science and electrical engineering at MIT. He will speak at 9:05 AM on Wednesday, Sept. 14.
Emmett Shear is founder and CEO of Twitch (www.twitch.tv), the world’s leading social video platform and community for gamers. Mr. Shear is also a part-time partner at venture capital firm Y Combinator, where he advises fledgling startups on product and strategy. Prior to launching Twitch in 2011, he co-founded its Justin.tv predecessor in 2007. He will speak at 9:25 AM on Wednesday, Sept. 14.
Adam Mosseri is a VP of product management at Facebook and leads the product team in charge of News Feed. The News Feed team is responsible for delivering relevant content to more than 1.7 billion people on phones, tablets and the web. Before this role,7 Adam was the design director for the mobile product group, where he was responsible for the design of all of Facebook’s mobile apps. He will speak at 9:45 AM on Wednesday, Sept. 14.
Hemant Taneja is a managing director of General Catalyst, a venture capital firm with approximately $3.75 billion under management. He launched the Palo Alto firm in 2011. He focuses on founders with an authentic mission to change entire industries. Taneja’s current investment portfolio ranges across the fields of energy, education, media, medicine and finance, and includes companies such as Stripe, Snapchat, Gusto, Livongo Health, TuneIn, ClassDojo, Fundbox, Digit, Fractyl, Gridco Systems and Highfive. He will speak at 10:05 AM on Wednesday, Sept. 14.
Bradley Tusk is the founder and CEO of Tusk Holdings, the parent company of Tusk Strategies, Tusk Ventures, Kronos Archives, the Ivory Gaming Group and the Tusk Montgomery Family Foundation. Prior to creating Tusk Strategies in 2010, Bradley served as Mike Bloomberg’s campaign manager, guiding Mayor Bloomberg to a third term. In 2016 he advised Bloomberg on a potential presidential run. He will speak at 10:05 AM on Wednesday, Sept. 14.
Ted Ullyot is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz where he leads policy and regulatory affairs. He is also a co-founder of the Economic Innovation Group, which brings together leading entrepreneurs, investors, economists and policymakers from across the political spectrum to address America’s economic challenges. From 2008 to 2013, Ted served as general counsel of Facebook, where he built and ran the company’s legal and security teams from private, early-stage through IPO.
He will speak at 10:05 AM on Wednesday, Sept. 14.
Apoorva Mehta is founder and CEO of Instacart, the fast-growing retail delivery service whose workers hand-pick and deliver items from trusted local stores. Originally launched in San Francisco and since expanded into many other cities, Instacart has fundamentally changed the traditional grocery delivery space by connecting customers with shoppers and drivers who shop for and deliver groceries and other items in as little as one hour. He will speak at 10:30 AM on Wednesday, Sept. 14.
Marc Raibert is co-founder and president of Boston Dynamics Inc. (BDI), which is located near MIT in Cambridge. Raibert’s research is devoted to the study of systems that move dynamically, including physical robots and animated creatures. Raibert’s laboratory at MIT, the Leg Lab, is well known for its work on systems that move dynamically, including legged robots, simulated mechanisms and animated figures. He will speak at 3:15 PM on Wednesday, Sept. 14.
Diana Williams is a member of the Lucasfilm Story Group, the team charged with developing narrative cohesion and connectivity within the Star Wars universe. She is also the creative development executive for ILMxLAB, a laboratory for immersive augmented and virtual entertainment. She will speak at 3:35 PM on Wednesday, Sept. 14.
Michael Koperwas provides creative direction and supervision for numerous internal projects and demos with ILMxLAB. Michael led the initial prototyping group when xLAB was first formed in June 2016, working on concepts for WarCraft (Skies over Azeroth), Jakku Spy and the Jakku Sundance xDECK demo, and led the teams for xLAB’s Magic Leap initial investigations and collaboration. He will speak at 3:35 PM on Wednesday, Sept. 14.
Gui Cavalcanti is the CEO and co-founder of MegaBots. He will speak at 4 PM on Wednesday, Sept. 14.
Matt Oehrlein is the COO and co-founder of MegaBots, creating the future of sports and live entertainment by pitting multi-ton piloted robots against each other in stadium-sized battles. His background ranges from high-tech hydraulics and military research to producing multi-million view viral videos. He holds an MS in Control Theory & Robotics from the University of Minnesota. He will speak at 4 PM on Wednesday, Sept. 14.
Shervin Pishevar is a managing director at Sherpa Capital, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm he co-founded with Scott Stanford in March 2013. Sherpa Capital is an investor in companies such as Uber, Airbnb, Munchery, ipsy, Shyp, Stance, Rent the Runway, Beepi, PillPack, Doctor on Demand and Cue Health. Shervin is co-founder and executive chairman at Hyperloop One. He will speak at 5 PM on Wednesday, Sept. 14.
Judges
Stewart Alsop is a co-founder and partner of Alsop Louie Partners, an early-stage technology venture capital firm founded in 2006 and located in San Francisco. The firm focuses on disruptive and innovative technologies, and has made investments in the areas of cybersecurity, predictive analytics, education and entertainment. Some of the companies the firm has led investments in include Twitch (sold to Amazon), Netwitness, Keyssa, Cleversafe, Wickr and Lookingglass Cyber Security.
Anjula Archaria-Bath is the CEO of DesiHits! She has built her career on bridging the pop culture gap between Bollywood and Hollywood. Following an initial stint as co-founder of search firm Merchant McKenzie, the U.K.-raised entrepreneur moved to the United States to launch the site DesiHits.com with her husband, Ranj Bath. The online destination has since grown into a multimedia platform and Acharia-Bath has raised capital from investors, including Interscope Geffen A&M chairman Jimmy Iovine.
Scott Belsky is a general partner at Benchmark. Previously, Scott co-founded Behance in 2006, and served as CEO until Adobe acquired Behance in 2012. Millions of people use Behance to display their portfolios, as well as track and find top talent across the creative industries. For three years, Scott served as Adobe’s vice president of products, rebooting Adobe’s mobile product strategy and leading Behance, the leading online platform for creatives to showcase and discover creative work.
Aparna Chennapragada is a computer scientist trained at IIT (India’s MIT) and MIT, and a product leader with years of experience building and growing Google products like Search and YouTube, Aparna is the head of Google Now. With Google Now, Aparna is spearheading Google’s big bet on making smart phones smarter and transforming how we’ll get information and get things done in a mobile world.
Rafael Corrales is now a general partner at CRV and brings operating and founding-CEO experience from the world of early-stage startups. He has led CRV’s investments in Amino, as well as two current stealth companies. He also sourced CRV’s investments in companies like PillPack and Airtable.
Brian Dixon focuses on identifying and evaluating early-stage investments, along with helping portfolio companies grow effectively. Brian has joined Kapor Capital after spending two summers as an MBA intern. He is committed to making sure entrepreneurs of all backgrounds have access to advice and capital in order to make their business succeed.
Ilya Fushman is a partner at Index Ventures. A former academic with both an operating and venture capital background, he is passionate about the frontiers of cutting-edge technologies and helping the next wave of startups and entrepreneurs build global businesses. Prior to joining Index, Ilya was the head of product at Dropbox.
Rob Hayes joined First Round as a partner in 2006, opening the firm’s San Francisco office. Over the past eight years, he has led investments in companies such as Mint.com (acquired by Intuit), Gnip (acquired by Twitter), Square, Uber and Planet Labs.
Wende Hutton is a healthcare investor who brings 23 years of experience to identifying, investing in and building companies that are changing the practice of medicine. She has facilitated bringing over a dozen medical devices and drugs to market, and currently sits on the boards of Antiva Biosciences, Chrono Therapeutics, Glooko, OncoResponse, ReVision Optics and Theraclone Sciences.
Aileen Lee has many years of experience helping startups build products customers love, and helping companies scale, both as an investor and an operator. She is the founder of Cowboy Ventures, a seed-stage focused fund. Cowboy Ventures seeks to back exceptional founders who are building technology products that re-imagine work and personal life in large and growing markets.
Jenny Lefcourt is a partner at Freestyle, a $60 million seed-stage fund in San Francisco whose partners are all serial entrepreneurs. Jenny invests in next-gen commerce, marketplaces, real estate technology and SaaS. Freestyle has led investments in companies such as Intercom, Patreon, Apple Pie Capital and Digit.
Susan Lyne is the founder and president of BBG Ventures, an early-stage investment fund for women-led tech startups.
Carine Magescas is a partner at AngelPad, a seed-VC fund and accelerator based in San Francisco and New York. AngelPad was ranked No.1 U.S. Accelerator by the Seed Rankings Project of MIT/Rice University in 2015.
Sergio Monsalve is a partner at Norwest Ventures. He is focused on early and growth investments in e-commerce, consumerized SaaS, consumer finance and educational technologies. His current investments and board seats include Adaptive Planning, Bionic Panda Games, Branchout, Gemvara, Motif Investing and Rafter.
Stephanie Palmeri invests with micro VC fund SoftTech VC, where she leads deals in next-generation commerce and marketplaces, mobile services, SaaS, consumer health and edtech startups — including Poshmark True & Co., Clever, Handshake, Grovo, Panorama Education, Lantern and ClassDojo. Stephanie currently represents SoftTech as board member for Chariot, Educents and Fatherly and as board observer for numerous investments.
Peter Pham is a co-founder at Science, a four-year-old technology studio that helps incubate companies, co-building them alongside CEOs, with recent companies like Dollar Shave Club, which sold to Unilever for $1 billion, and leading marketplaces like DogVacay.
Brian Pokorny is a general partner of SV Angel. Prior to this, he was at Airbnb, where he joined via an acquisition of DailyBooth/Batch. DailyBooth was a venture-backed social media startup that Brian led for three years as their CEO.
Santi Subotovsky is a general partner at Emergence Capital. Prior to joining Emergence, Santi founded, AXG Tecnonexo, a SaaS e-learning company in Latin America. He expanded the company to 150+ employees with operations across Latin America and the U.S.
Sarah Tavel joined Greylock Partners as an investment partner in 2015. Her areas of focus include products, platforms, networks and marketplaces that enable new forms of communication, media and commerce.
Hans Tung joined GGV Capital in 2013 as a managing partner to focus on consumer mobile internet, cross-border ecommerce, IoT and mobile social communication investments in both China and the U.S.
Monique Woodward is a venture partner at 500 Startups, where she invests in early-stage startups and leads a $25 million microfund that invests in Black and Latino founders and markets. She believes that shifting demographics, combined with the current $2.5 trillion in Black and Latino purchasing power, are creating the next big emerging market — right here in the United States.
Cyan Banister is a partner at Founders Fund, where she invests across sectors and stages with a particular interest in heavily regulated industries, marketplaces, SaaS and businesses that help people with basic skills find meaningful work. Prior to joining Founders Fund, Cyan was an active angel investor with a portfolio including Uber, Thumbtack, SpaceX, EShares, Postmates and Affirm.
Matthew Panzarino has been a retail jockey, founded a professional photography business and had a news blog covering the Apple ecosystem. He has served as news editor and managing editor at The Next Web and is now editor-in-chief at TechCrunch.
Roelof Botha focuses on internet, services and software investments. He is a director of Eventbrite, Evernote, Inside.com, MongoDB, Natera (NTRA), Plain Vanilla, Square (SQ), Unity Technologies, Weebly and Whisper. He is also involved with Sequoia Capital portfolio companies, including AssureX and Mapillary.
Susan Wojcicki is the CEO of YouTube. Previously, she was the senior vice president of advertising and commerce at Google. She oversaw the design, innovation and engineering of Google’s advertising, commerce and measurement platform products, including AdWords, AdSense, DoubleClick, Offers and Google Analytics.
Padmasree Warrior is CEO of NextEV, U.S. She also serves as the chief development officer of NextEV, as well as a member of its board of directors. In these capacities, she is responsible for the brains of NextEV’s autonomous, electric vehicles and the overall user experience.