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.
EXPIRED
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
Farm-to-Table Dining
Panels & Office Hours
Swimming, sunrise yoga,
tennis, & golf
Elegant, On-site
Accommodations
Keynotes
Leadership development workshops & Break-out sessions
By far the most worthwhile business event I've ever been to.
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.
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.
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 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.
Magical Location
Located on 850 acres in beautiful Carmel Valley, CA
PROPERTY INCLUDES:
- Elegant accommodations
- Recently renovated 18-hole golf course
- Farm-to-table dining
- Variety of recreational activities
- Breathtaking location
Previous Years
Check out footage from
our first ever fnSummit :)
Our Partners
fnSummit is made possible thanks to the generous support of our partners.
Learn more about our partner program here.
Gold Partners
Silver Partners
Bronze Partners
Wine and Spirits Partners
Interested in supporting FN's 600+ tech founders? Contact us.
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#fnIRL2021