fnSummit 2021

CARMEL VALLEY | OCTOBER 13th - 15th

Join Our 6th Annual Fall Conference!

Escape the startup grind at a beautiful resort in
Carmel Valley.

Explore the theme of growth with fellow founders, investors and partners.

Enjoy farm-to-table food, wine tastings and activities.

This is the culmination of the Founders Network experience.

Member Registration

Days

Hours

Minutes

Seconds

Annual Traditions

Located on 850 acres in beautiful Carmel Valley, CA— property includes elegant accommodations,
a recently renovated 18-hole golf course, farm-to-table dining, a variety of recreational activities,
and a breathtaking location.

Champagne Sabrage
Opening Ceremony

Real Fireside Chats

Palate Club Blind Wine Tasting

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Farm-to-Table Dining

Panels & Office Hours

Swimming, sunrise yoga,
tennis, & golf

Elegant, On-site
Accommodations

Keynotes

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Leadership development workshops & Break-out sessions

By far the most worthwhile business event I've ever been to.

Carla Riggi

Founder of BandDjinni

The connections and learning more than paid for itself. So much inspiration and a spectacular venue!

Joe Deobald

Founder of Full Frame

I learned so much but most of all I felt part of a community.

Andrew Schulz

Founder of NoiseAware

An Exploration of Growth

Explore the topic of growth, both as a founder and for your startup.

Partial list of past speakers who share wisdom gained acquiring real
world experience over the past years.

Lisa Shields
Founder
Hyperwallet

After founding Hyperwallet in 2000, Lisa grew the global payments company over the course of 18 years, culminating in its $400M acquisition by PayPal last month. Now, Lisa is building FI.SPAN, another fintech startup that speaks to her passion for the social and economic imperatives that shape global payment technologies.

Christina Sass
Founder & President
Andela

Christina Sass is the Co-Founder and President of Andela or, as CNN has called it, "The startup that's harder to get into than Harvard". Andela has raised $81M and aims to train 100,00 software developers in Africa over the next 10 years. They are now backed by investors including Spark Capital, Google Ventures, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and more.

Sean Plaice
Co-founder & CTO
Postmates

Sean Plaice is Co-Founder of Postmates, which has raised $278M, has 65,000 active Postmates, and a presence in 44 major US metropolitan markets. Sean is a systems operations specialist with an emphasis on rapid growth environments, technology due diligence, cost management and efficiency.

Kriss Deiglmeier
CEO
Tides

As CEO of Tides, social change accelerator/philanthropic partner of Google, Okta, Box, PagerDuty), and former Head of Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Kriss has more than 20 years of senior executive experience and valuable insight to share. She is recognized as a pioneer in the field of social innovation and has presented nationally and internationally the subject.

James Leaverton
Founder & VP
StackPath

Founder, Mentor, Community Advocate, and Champion of Developers. James is a founder of StackPath which has raised $180M to date and offers secure edge services including CDN, WAF, DNS and more. Previously, James served as Director of Managed Services at Ricoh.

Neha Sampat
Founder & CEO
Built.io

Neha Sampat is the CEO of Contentstack, and previous Founder and CEO of Digital Experience Platform Built.io, which was acquired by German software powerhouse Software AG in September 2018. Neha is a recognized industry leader, a proponent of diversity and an outspoken advocate for women in leadership.

John Stewart
Founder & CEO
MapAnything

As co-founder and CEO of MapAnything, John has raised $40M+ from notable funds including Greycroft and Salesforce Ventures. He is highly focused on building a fantastic product that brings real business value to his customers, building a dynamic and innovative, and creating a corporate culture that attracts and retains the best employees to accomplish both goals.

Josh Breinlinger
Venture Capitalist
Jackson Square Ventures

Investor, entrepreneur & marketplace guru with a focus on early stage investments in marketplace or SaaS companies. Josh joined Jackson Square Ventures in 2010, bringing operating experience as a founding team member of oDesk, a cofounder at Rev, and the head of product and marketing at Adroll.

Scott Coleman
Venture Capitalist
Ignition Partners

Scott has worked at the intersection of technology and finance starting with the Telecom Act of '96, the TMT rise and fall, the open source revolution, and the beginning of the cloud era. Through it all, he has been an advisor, operator, investor, and equity analyst, and has particularly enjoyed building something new while working with smart, talented and passionate people.

Nitin Pachisia
Founder Partner
Unshackled Ventures

Passionate about building practical solutions that have a big impact on people’s lives. As an immigrant on visa and now VC, Nitin helps all entrepreneurs, whether born in the US or elsewhere, to start and grow companies in the US, the mecca of entrepreneurship. He is particularly interested in working with early stage startups on story-telling, pitching, fundraising, product strategy, and bringing in the first customers/sales.

Lev Mass
Venture Capitalist
Crux Capital

Advising world leading enterprise software investors and entrepreneurs, Lev focuses on SaaS, multi-channel commerce, payments, cloud and big data. He has a strong expertise in growth and partnerships for emerging startups with a focus on product strategy and monetization in enterprise and SaaS products.

Domingo Guerra
President & Founder
Appthority

Raised $25M+ through Series B funding rounds, is partnered with Google, and has grown a Fortune 1000 customer base. Former Brocade and Applied Materials. Holds 6 patents.

Amy Lesnik
President & CEO
Pledge 1%

20 years experience early stage high growth ventures. Named San Francisco’s Most Influential Women and Forever Influential Hall of Fame.

Angel Gambino
Founder & CEO
Sensai

Angel Gambino is a WIRED Top 100 executive who has built companies on three continents. As lawyer turned investor and founder, her career has included co-founding ventures as a Prehype partner, growing and exiting Sonico, senior roles at the BBC and MTV Networks, and leading the pioneering UK social network Bebo.

Nathan Parcells
Executive Coach
Sharpend Coaching

Founder and executive coach for 9+ years. Last company raised $10 million+ before successfully exiting. Works with founders and senior teams on culture and leadership. Mentor at 500 startups.

Daniel Handiaz
Founder & CEO
CandyBit Social

Serial Entrepreneur with enough failure, but just enough success, to still be doing it for 18 years improving from lessons learned. Previous to CandyBit Daniel founded Qode Media Inc. which was acquired in 2005.

Nadia Lee
Founder
Kollectin

With 20 years of operational experience running a profitable fashion product business as the CEO of Adia Kibur Accessories, Nadia knows the ins and out of the fashion business and is well connected in the fashion world from manufacturers to retailers to designers to influencers. She understands her customers, women who love fashion!

Peter Imburg
Founder & CEO
Elfster

Peter Imburg is the Founder of everyone's favorite secret santa service. With over 7M registered members, Peter has scaled his company significantly over the past 14 years into a profitable revenue model with no outside funding. He is also a member of Vistage, a peer advisory group for CEOs for several years.

John Rafferty
Legal Partner
Morrison Foerster

As a part of Morrison Foerster's Startup ScaleUp division, John Rafferty focuses his practice on representing private and public companies in a broad range of corporate and securities law matters. This includes mergers, tender offers, going private transactions and strategic and financial investments.

Martin Longo
Founder & CEO
GetWell.ai

Silicon Valley veteran Martin Longo was the Former CTO of Demandbase ($158M raised) and current founder of GetWell.ai. He has more than 30 years of experience in the software industry with a proven career of success in enterprise software environments with early and mid-stage software companies.

Neha Sampat
Founder & CEO
Contentstack

Neha Sampat is the CEO of Contentstack, which helps developers create better digital experiences; and raised a $57.5 million Series B round, led by Insight Partners. She is the previous Founder and CEO of Digital Experience Platform Built.io, which was acquired by German software powerhouse Software AG in September 2018. Neha is an industry leader, a proponent of diversity and an advocate for women in leadership.

Peter Imburg
Founder & CEO
Elfster

Peter Imburg is the Founder of everyone's favorite Secret Santa service. With over 7M registered members, Peter has scaled his company significantly over the past 14 years into a profitable revenue model with no outside funding. He is also a member of Vistage, a peer advisory group for CEOs for several years.

Jags Krishnamurthy
COO
Object Edge Inc.

Jags is a passionate tech vigilante. As COO of Object Edge, he follows how technology changes the landscape for businesses across the world. He’s motivated by happy, engaged people. His motto: financial yesterday, commerce today, eagerly waiting for tomorrow every day.

Nishant Patel
Founder & CTO
Contentstack

Nishant Patel is Founder & CTO at Contentstack, which helps developers create better digital experiences; and raised a $57.5 million Series B round, led by Insight Partners. With 20+ years of experience, Nishant has become a trusted technology advisor to many Fortune 500 companies. Nishant holds a B.S. in Computer Science from The Ohio State University.

Meetul Shah
Founder
DemandMatrix

The Founder of DemandMatrix, a marketing intelligence company that was recently bought by Demandbase, Meetul is an advisor to several startups and an investor in an array of projects. An idea machine, health freak and wine lover, Meetul has been featured in several major publications. Products he worked on have been covered in CIO, Silicon India, NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Venture Beat, Ted, and more.

David Ordal
CEO
ExaVault

David’s passion – and his area of expertise – is building technology companies. He is currently CEO of ExaVault, a business file sharing company. He has worked as VP of Engineering at Huddler.com and as CEO/CTO at CyberSense. He is well versed in both the technical and managerial aspects of fast-paced, agile software development and the lean startup methodology.

Ataer Arguder
Co-Founder
Aura

Ataer Arguder is a serial entrepreneur and consultant. He started a digital ticketing company in Istanbul, and after selling it, moved to London in 2017 and started Aura, a global platform for museums and their visitors that recently raised $966K. He is currently a Co-Founder of two London-based tech startups (Aura and Breath Hub).

Amy Wister
Co-Founder
RevShopp

Amy is the Chair of Founders Network Women’s Leadership Committee. As co-founder of RevShopp, Inc., Amy has turned shopping and style into a science. She and her team are dedicated to infusing human sensibility and experience into shape intelligence technology, which revolutionizes shopping while increasing a retailer’s conversation rate and lowering returns.

Ford Seeman
Founder
Forest Founders Rewards

Ford Seeman is the Founder at Forest Founders Rewards and fnNYC Chapter Growth Chair.

Trey Matteson
Co-Founder
Roadster

Trey is the co-founder at Roadster, which offers car dealers the tools to sell new and used vehicles online and was recently acquired by CDK Global for $360M. He likes making real products that solve the user's problem, perform well, look good, don't break and fit the business model. He enjoys a tech lead role that spans coding, architecture, mentoring and working with people outside of engineering.

Dan Lionello
CEO & Founder
Omnae

Dan is the CEO & Founder at Omnae.com and the fnVancouver Chapter Director. Throughout his executive experience, he has developed and executed strategic plans to build and lead forward-thinking teams. Dan has demonstrated success in growing revenue, profits, customer loyalty, and operational efficiency.

Whitaker Irvin
President & CEO
Q Hydrogen Solutions Corporation

Whitaker is the President & CEO at Q Hydrogen, which develops and deploys disruptive technology in the energy and renewable space. He is a seasoned entrepreneur with a wide range of experience in industries including finance, aerospace/defense, energy, and green technology companies. He is based in Park City, Utah.

Kris Bondi
CEO & Co-founder
Mimoto

Kris Bondi is the CEO & Co-founder of Mimoto. Kris made a name for herself in GTM strategies that significantly increased adoption and positioned companies for acquisitions and IPO filings. Notable accomplishments include VMware’s acquisition of Bitnami, acquiring Neura’s first 1M active end-users within nine months, and establishing “serverless” as a category.

Blake Tucker
Founder
Boozephreaks

Blake (aka Dr Inkwell) is the founder of Boozephreaks and brings a deep understanding of beverage taste, flavor, and pairing. A former writer/director at Pixar, his instinct has become one of his strongest assets. He created the first exhibit about how Pixar stories are developed and produced Intapp's first-ever product commercial.

Nicolas Mendiharat
Founder & CEO
Palate Club

Nicolas is now working full-time on his new startup with a focus on wine. Palate Club is a wine subscription service that uses blind tasting and AI to create your personalized wine profile with recommendations for your taste. Previously, Nicolas was the Founder & CEO of Travelhorizon Group, the European leader for ski vacation bookings with over 300K customers annually.

David Meltzer
Co-Founder
Sports 1 Marketing

David is the Co-Founder of Sports 1 Marketing. He formerly served as CEO of the renowned Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire. He is a three-time international best-selling author, a Top 100 Business Coach, the executive producer of Entrepreneur ‘s #1 digital business show, Elevator Pitch, and host of the top entrepreneur podcast, The Playbook.

Max Shapiro
CEO & Founder
PeopleConnect

Max Shapiro founded PeopleConnect in 2000 to help early-stage high-tech companies find the talent they need to succeed. Max likes to connect people and would love to know if there is any way that he and his team can help you add some fantastic, startup experienced people to your team.

Doug Lessing
Founder
Phin

Doug Lessing, Founder of Phin, spent nearly 30 years helping build Firebrand Technologies. During a moment of transition, Doug decided to take the experience he gained to use the power of business to create real social impact, using sponsored donations to connect great companies, their people and the causes that truly make a difference.

Ivy Walker
CEO
Helios Digital Learning

Ivy is the CEO at Helios Digital Learning. Ivy has experience developing and executing successful business plans, creating and streamlining business processes, developing and executing capital raising strategies, and managing operations in both for-profit and not-for-profit environments.

Nathan Parcells
Founder & Executive Coach
Sharpend

Nathan Parcells is a former startup founder at LookSharp ($20 million+ raised) who graduated from 500 Startups. He is an executive coach at Sharpend, where he works with the founders of a wide range of businesses, from startups to consulting firms. Nathan's specialty is in team-communication, conflict resolution and process changes that create stronger culture.

Murli Thirumale
Co-Founder & CEO
Pure Storage

Murli is the VP, GM Cloud Native Business Unit of Pure Storage. He is the co-founder and CEO of cloud-native storage solution Portworx, which was recently acquired by PureStorage for $370M, and was previously co-founder and CEO of Ocarina Networks, which was acquired by Dell in 2010 as well as co-founder and CEO of Net6, which was acquired by Citrix.

Sonal Puri
CEO
Webscale

Sonal is the CEO at Webscale, the Cloud Platform for Modern Commerce, offering security, scalability, performance and automation for global brands. Webscale recently entered a strategic partnership with Crownspeak, and was named SaaS/Cloud Security Winner at the 2021 Global InfoSec Awards.

Chaitanya Vaidya
Co-Founder
Deeprisk.ai

Chai is the co-founder of Deeprisk.ai and the Chapter Director of fnVirtual Chapter. Chai holds an MBA and has been doing heartfulness meditation for 12 years.

Jelle van Geuns
Founder & CEO
Decisions on Demand

Jelle is the founder & CEO at Decisions on Demand. He is an entrepreneurial software development leader with broad experience building and growing global development teams, architecting products and solutions, managing projects, enabling strategic marketing initiatives and working with customers and partners.

Kevin Shrock
Founder
WhichDocs

Kevin is the Founder at WhichDocs, a crowd-sourced database that expedites the process of getting a patient to the right medical provider. He is a leading orthopaedic surgeon in S. Florida since '94. Yale undergrad, Stanford Med, Harvard residency, fellowship trained. Clinical investigator at OrthoTrials.

Mike Mack
CEO
Fract

Mike is the CEO at Fract, a business intelligence platform powered by geospatial AI that recently announced its partnership with Current, powered by GE. They solve business problems that are inherently location driven.

Tyler Welch
Founder & CEO
Tyler’s Mystery Tours

Tyler is the founder & CEO at Meet I2I and Tyler’s Mystery Tours, which offers high quality, fully customizable social events, mixing games, sports, community service, adventure and collaborative learning.

Scott Schreiman
CEO
Samepage

Scott is a serial entrepreneur who built and sold Kerio, then founded Samepage, before selling it to Paylocity last November

Marjan Panic
Founder
Zucchabar

Marjan is the Chapter Director of fnSilicon Valley Chapter and the Founder at Zucchabar, an EdTech platform that helps people plan, organize and personalize their learning.

Micha Breakstone
Co-Founder & CEO
Neuralight

Micha is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded Chorus.ai (acquired for $575m by ZoomInfo) and is currently Co-Founder and CEO of Neuralight.ai, a VC-backed venture with a mission to transform the lives of billions of people suffering from neurological disorders. He holds a Masters in Math, and a PhD in Cognitive Science.

Marisa Bryce
Founder
Jack & Blue Capital

Marisa is the fnChicago Chapter Director and the founder at Jack & Blue Capital, based in Chicago and Denver with extensive access to investors and investments globally.

Rishi Bhargava
Founder
Demisto

Rishi Bhargava is the Founder at Demisto, which was acquired by Palo Alto Networks for $560M and is now VP, Product Strategy at Palo Alto Networks, whose mission is to be the cybersecurity partner of choice. Rishi has 15 years of product management experience with a strong technical background.

Zachary Smith
Co-Founder
Packet

Zachary Smith co-founded Packet in 2014 and became the leader in bare metal compute automation before it was acquired by Equinix for $335 million in March 2020. Zac now serves as Managing Director at Equinix, leading the strategy, product and go to market for Equinix’s bare metal compute and edge services platform.

David Plonsky
Founder
MyStandby

David Plonsky is the Founder of MyStandby, a service that allows businesses to efficiently fill expiring inventory, as well as fnNew York City Chapter Director.