Disruption never stops, especially around here. This year we are holding three Disrupt conferences. We descended upon New York City in May (those are special memories). Next up is San Francisco in September (and then we are off to Beijing in October). Buy tickets here.
Who will be there? I’m glad you asked. A few of the key speakers joining us will be Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Marissa Mayer, Mike McCue, and Vinod Khosla. Thiel, of course, was the first investor in Facebook and more recently a proponent of saving bright kids from college. Conway puts the “super” in super angel. Mayer is Google’s product veteran. McCue is turning publishing on its head with Flipboard. And Khosla is one of the most iconic VCs in the Valley. We are ecstatic to have them join us and share their insights with our audience.
Disrupt SF, is going to be no-holds barred, starting with our Hackathon on September 10 and 11, and then three days of the main event September 12-14. In the mornings, we will talk with the top founders and investors in tech, followed by our StartUp Battlefield where two dozen startups will vie for the Disrupt Cup, $50,000 and all the glory that comes with it. If you are a startup who would like to be considered for the Startup Battlefield, please submit your applications today here. Applications will be closed this Sunday, July 31st, at midnight PT.
You can be sure that Disrupt SF will be a star-studded event filled with new startups, guest speakers and judges, brilliant hackers, after parties, and much more. As we get closer to the event, we will announce more guest speakers, judges, and many surprises, which are yet to come.
It is going to be huge (trust me). 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.
Peter Thiel
President and Chairman, Clarium Capital
Peter is Clarium Capital’s President and the Chairman of the firm’s investment committee, which oversees the firm’s research, investment, and trading strategies. He is also a managing partner at The Founders Fund. Before starting Clarium, Peter served as Chairman and CEO of PayPal, an Internet company he co-founded in December 1998 and was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in October 2002. Prior to founding PayPal, Peter ran Thiel Capital Management , the predecessor to Clarium, which started with $1 million under management in 1996. Peter began his financial career as a derivatives trader at CS Financial Products, after practicing securities law at Sullivan & Cromwell. In addition to managing Clarium, Peter is active in a variety of philanthropic and educational pursuits; he sits on the Board of Directors of the Pacific Research Institute and on the Board of Visitors of Stanford Law School.
Ron Conway
Angel Investor, SV Angel
Ronald Conway has been an active angel investor for over 15 years. He was the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds (1998-2005) whose investments included: Google, Ask Jeeves, Paypal, Good Technology, Opsware, and Brightmail. Ron was recently named #6 in Forbes Magazine Midas list of top “deal-makers” in 2008 and is actively involved in numerous philanthropic endeavors. Ron is Vice Chairman of the UCSF Medical Foundation in SF, Board Member of The Tiger Woods Foundation, and SF Homeless Connect, and on the Benefit Committee of Ronald McDonald House, College Track, and the Blacked Eyed Peas-PeaPod Academy Foundation.
Marissa Mayer
Vice President of Location and Local Services, Google
Marissa Mayer is the Vice President of Local & Maps at Google. Previously she was Vice President of Search Product and User Experience. Mayer joined Google in 1999 as Google’s first female engineer, where she led the user interface and web server teams at that time. Her efforts have included designing and developing Google’s search interface, internationalizing the site to more than 100 languages, defining Google News, Gmail, and Orkut, and launching more than 100 features and products on Google.com. Prior to joining Google, Mayer worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland, and at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. Mayer has been featured in various publications, including Newsweek (“10 Tech Leaders of the Future”), Red Herring (“15 Women to Watch”), Business 2.0 (“Silicon Valley Dream Team”), BusinessWeek, Fortune, and Fast Company.
Mike McCue
Founder, Flipboard
Longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mike McCue founded Flipboard in early 2010, together with former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll. Flipboard is widely recognized as the first social magazine for iPad. Inspired by the beauty and ease of print media, Flipboardʼs mission is to fundamentally improve how people discover, view and share content across their social networks. There are Facebook and Twitter sections that let readers quickly flip through the latest stories, photos and updates from friends and trusted sources. Because Flipboard renders links and images right in the magazine, readers no longer have to scan long lists of posts and click on link after link – instead they instantly see all the stories, comments and images, making it faster and more entertaining to discover, view and share social content.
Vinod Khosla
Founder, Khosla Ventures
Vinod Khosla was a co-founder of Daisy Systems and founding Chief Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems, where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. Sun was funded by longtime friend and board member John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In 1986 Vinod switched sides and joined Kleiner Perkins, where he was and continues to be a general partner of KPCB funds through KP X. Through the years there, with other partners, he took on Intel’s monopoly with Nexgen/AMD (the only microprocessor to have significant success against Intel, sold to AMD for 28 percent of AMD), incubated the idea and business plan for Juniper to take on Cisco’s dominance of the router market, formulated the very early advertising-based search strategy for Excite, and transformed the moribund telecommunications business and its archaic SONET implementations with Cerent (sold to Cisco for $7B)