disrupt sf 2018

Auto Added by WPeMatico

Robinhood CEO Baiju Bhatt to talk fintech at Disrupt SF

Published July 12, 2018

Robinhood has gone from being a little consumer-facing fintech app to an absolutely giant consumer-facing fintech app.

The company, which launched in 2013, has ballooned to a $5.6 billion valuation on the heels of a $363 million Series D financing round led by DST Global. The app has also grown to 5 million users, as of today, with more than $150 billion in transaction volume.

But the app, which lets people trade stocks and options for free, is also dabbling in the wondrous world of cryptocurrencies, setting the stage for a potential transition from “fun app” to legitimate financial institution.

That’s why we’re absolutely thrilled to have Robinhood co-founder and CEO Baiju Bhatt join us on the Disrupt SF 2018 stage.

The key to everything here is that Robinhood offered a simple consumer demand: free transactions on financial services. Unlike incumbents E*Trade and Scottrade, there are no trading fees on Robinhood, giving average consumers the chance to dip their toes in the market without any added barriers to entry.

At Disrupt, we’ll ask Bhatt about how Robinhood Crypto is progressing and what the company has in store as we head into next year.

Bhatt joins a wide array of big name speakers, from Dara Khosrowshahi to Reid Hoffman to Kirsten Green. It’s going to be an absolutely terrific show and we sincerely hope to see you there.

Tickets are available here.

Come see Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi at TC Disrupt

Published July 11, 2018

In the days of Uber 1.0, the ethos seemed to be about doing all the wrong things. Now, with former Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi at the helm, Uber is clearly on its way to becoming a sort of Expedia for transportation. Though, Khosrowshahi has previously likened Uber’s business to aligning more with the idea of an Amazon for transportation.

At TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco in September, Khosrowshahi will join me to discuss Uber’s big plan to own the entire transportation experience for people, the highs and lows of his first year on the job, Uber’s upcoming initial public offering and much more.

Under Khosrowshahi’s leadership, Uber officially became a multi-modal transportation platform with its acquisition of JUMP Bikes for about $200 million, the launch of UberRENT and a public transportation partnership with Masabi.

Oh, and Uber is also working on electric scooters, as well as flying cars via its Elevate program. Just like residential and buildings have gone three-dimensional, Khosrowshahi said at a tech conference in May, “you’re going to have to build a third-dimension in terms of transportation.”

For Uber, Elevate is its “big bet” on that third-dimension of transportation, he said. The big plan with all of these modes of transportation — whether that’s bike sharing, electric scooter sharing, ride sharing, flight sharing or whatnot — is to become a multi-modal transportation service.

Under the leadership of Khosrowshahi, Uber also seems to be moving into an era where the company works with governments, instead of in spite of them. This is quite the 180 for Uber. Before the days of Khosrowshahi, Uber was reluctant to share data with cities. Now, Uber is expanding Movement, a platform that anonymizes and aggregates Uber data to map travel times, to 12 new cities across five continents. The intent is to help urban planners, local leaders and civic communities make more informed decisions.

While Khosrowshahi is making positive moves in a business direction, it’s worth noting the company is still in need of a chief financial officer, and there have been some high-level departures that have continued under his leadership. In June, for example, Uber’s chief brand officer, Bozoma Saint John, left a little after one year of joining the company.

At the time, Saint John told me that while “nothing horrible or terrible happened,” Uber’s corporate culture has not “righted itself 100 percent.” At Disrupt, Khosrowshahi and I will also discuss Uber’s corporate culture and what it’s going to take to fully recover from its 2017, which entailed reports of sexual harassment, mismanagement and a toxic work environment. Then, just this month, Uber’s chief people officer, Liane Hornsey, resigned following an internal racial discrimination investigation.

This should go without saying, but there will be a lot to discuss. In order to see him in person you’ll need to grab your passes to Disrupt SF, which runs September 5-7, are available here.

PlayVS CEO Delane Parnell to talk high school esports at Disrupt SF

Published July 9, 2018

The gaming world is evolving at a rapid clip. No longer is the idea of the lonely gamer a reality. Twitch and Discord have brought gamers together and given everyone the opportunity to see just how talented some of these young players are. Meanwhile, publishers and esports organizations have built out an infrastructure.

But there is plenty left to do, and PlayVS founder and CEO Delane Parnell is well aware of this.

We’re amped to announce that Parnell is joining us at TC Disrupt SF in September to talk about how high school esports could pave the way for even more growth in this industry.

PlayVS is a startup that has partnered with the NFHS to bring esports to the high school level, providing infrastructure around scheduling, refs, rules and state tournaments. Not only does this allow high school students to get extracurricular experience doing what they love (playing video games), but it offers a new way for esports orgs and colleges to look at the bright young talent coming up through the ranks.

PlayVS launched in April after securing its partnership with the NFHS. Through this partnership, the company will be able to bring organized esports to more than 18 states and approximately 5 million students across 5,000 high schools.

The company has since raised $15 million in Series A, and the inaugural season begins in October of this year.

We’re absolutely thrilled to get the chance to sit down with Parnell to discuss the launch of the platform and hear about how high school esports could set the tone for the industry as a whole.

Passes to Disrupt SF are available here at the Early Bird rate until July 25.

Jina Choi, SF Regional Director of the SEC, is coming to Disrupt to talk ICOs and more

Published July 6, 2018

The Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal agency responsible for protecting investors and maintaining fair and orderly functioning of our securities markets, has 11 regional offices, including in Miami, New York, Boston and Chicago.

None has quite the workload as the SEC’s San Francisco regional office, where a major area of focus in recent years has been investor fraud in pre-IPO companies, particularly the many startups that in an earlier era would have either have gone public or else out of business, but which today linger as privately held outfits because there’s so much money sloshing around.

Among the companies to find themselves in the SEC’s sights in recent years is HR software outfit Zenefits and its founder, Parker Conrad; they were fined $1 million last October as part of a settlement over charges that they’d misled investors. In March, the online personal finance company Credit Karma also settled SEC charges; it had been accused of unlawfully offering securities to its employees — then failing to provide them with timely financial statements and risk disclosures.

Of course, the best-known SEC case to date has centered on the blood-testing company Theranos, which was charged with massive fraud in March, along with the company’s founder, Elizabeth Holmes, and its former president, Sunny Balwani.

Leading the charge in each of these cases and many more: Jina Choi, a graduate of Oberlin and Yale Law School who worked as a lawyer for the Justice Department in Washington before heading to San Francisco and the SEC’s enforcement division in 2000.

Five years ago, Choi was promoted to director of that office, where she has since overseen enforcement and examinations in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, despite critics who believe the SEC should keep its eye on public companies alone. (“If no one is policing private markets, that’s a problem,” Choi said at a public forum in May.)

In an age of initial coin offerings, cryptocurrencies and mushrooming numbers of blockchain-related projects, Choi and her colleagues have their hands particularly full, so you can imagine how excited we are that Choi is coming to Disrupt to discuss some of those challenges, as well as the agency’s victories. We’re also looking forward to learning more about how decisions are made in Choi’s office and back in Washington.

If you’re interested in learning more about the SEC’s ever-evolving approach to Silicon Valley startups — and why you shouldn’t expect its interest to dissipate any time soon — you really won’t want to miss this conversation.

You can buy tickets to the show, taking place in San Francisco September 5th through September 7th, right here.

Warby Parker’s Dave Gilboa is coming to Disrupt SF

Published June 27, 2018

In 2010, the eyewear industry got its long-awaited new player. Warby Parker entered the market with a simple offering: stylish Rx glasses, bought online, for a reasonable price.

While this sounds like a pretty obvious concept in 2018, the world of e-commerce was just beginning its insane growth streak back in 2010. And glasses, of all things, weren’t something that many people thought could be purchased online.

But through a simple try-before-you-buy system, Warby Parker made it possible.

Flash-forward eight years and Warby Parker has become a household name, with more than 50 stores across the United States and Canada, and more than $290 million raised. The brand has evolved beyond a simple set of glasses to become an example for many startups, particularly where social good is concerned.

For each pair of glasses sold, Warby Parker donates a pair to someone who needs glasses but doesn’t have access to them.

All that said, we’re obviously thrilled to have Warby Parker co-founder and co-CEO Dave Gilboa join us onstage at Disrupt SF.

Gilboa has helped Warby Parker grow from a small e-commerce startup to a massive brand, and has helped evolve the company beyond an e-commerce brand, providing vision tests alongside the product.

At Disrupt SF, we’ll discuss how Warby grew its e-commerce presence, the company’s approach to offline retail versus online and what’s next in store for Warby Parker.

Gilboa joins other notable speakers, such as Drew Houston, Priscilla Chan, Ashton Kutcher, Reid Hoffman and many more.

Tickets to the conference, which runs September 5 to September 7, are available here.

Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd is coming to Disrupt SF

Published June 6, 2018

Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd has always done things her own way.

Whether it’s standing up for her political beliefs, building a company with fully outsourced engineers or avoiding the usual startup fundraising runaround, Wolfe Herd follows her own instincts in building a business. Which is why we’re super excited to announce that Whitney Wolfe Herd will join us at TC Disrupt SF 2018.

Wolfe Herd first came on the scene as a co-founder and VP of Marketing at Tinder, where she helped grow the dating app into one of the world’s biggest dating platforms. But after a lawsuit over sexual harassment and discrimination, which was settled out of court, Wolfe Herd left the company to build an app focused on compliments and positive affirmations.

Originally, she wanted nothing to do with the dating space. But after meeting Andrey Adreev, Badoo founder and Bumble’s majority stakeholder, she realized that giving women a voice in digital dating could be revolutionary. And so, Bumble was born in 2014.

The app has grown to 30 million users, and continues to grow in popularity based on a simple premise: women make the first move.

But Wolfe Herd’s ambitions don’t stop at dating. The 28-year-old founder has added new verticals to the app, letting users find friends and make professional connections via Bumble.

And all the while, Bumble’s cap table has never changed, with Wolfe Herd’s 20 percent stake as yet undiluted. Wolfe Herd was named one of Time 100’s most influential people this year, and has herself become a brand that represents authenticity and self-empowerment.

We can’t wait to talk to Wolfe Herd at Disrupt SF 2018. You can buy tickets to the show here.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong to talk the future of cryptocurrency at Disrupt SF

Published May 16, 2018

Coinbase has come a long way since its launch in 2012. The company has raised more than $225 million and paved the way for cryptocurrencies to enter the mainstream by providing a digital currency exchange. Which is why we’re absolutely thrilled to have Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong join us on the main stage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in September.

Armstrong worked as a developer for IBM and consultant at Deloitte before joining Airbnb as a software engineer in 2011. At Airbnb, Armstrong focused on fraud prevention, giving him the opportunity to learn about payment systems across the 190 countries Airbnb serves.

In 2012, Armstrong co-founded Coinbase and gave a budding demographic of cryptocurrency enthusiasts the opportunity to trade in their USD for bitcoins, and later the digital currency of their choice. Coinbase currently serves over 10 million customers across 32 countries, providing custody for more than $10 billion in digital assets.

In fact, Coinbase was valued at $1.6 billion following a $100 million funding round in August 2017.

In April, the company unveiled an early-stage fund for cryptocurrency startups, and acquired Earn.com for $100 million. As part of the acquisition, the company brought on Balaji Srinivasan as its first CTO.

There were also reports that Coinbase approached the SEC to become a licensed brokerage firm and electronic trading venue, which would allow the company to expand beyond the four coins (Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin) that trade on the platform now.

Just yesterday, Coinbase announced that it would offer a new suite of services aimed at institutional investors, who are beginning to warm up to cryptocurrencies.

There is plenty to discuss with Armstrong come September, and we’re absolutely thrilled to have him join the stellar Disrupt SF agenda. You can head over here to buy yourself tickets. See you there!

Goldman Sachs CFO Martin Chavez and Roblox CEO David Baszucki to hit up Disrupt SF

Published May 1, 2018

We’ve already got a star-studded lineup prepped to speak at Disrupt SF, running September 5 to September 7. So far, we’ve announced appearances by Sophia Amoruso, Carbon’s Dr. Joseph DeSimone, Adidas’ Eric Liedtke, Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse, Michael Arrington, and Drew Houston.

But given that today is the last day to purchase early bird tickets, we thought we’d let slip a couple more stellar speakers joining the agenda.

We’re thrilled to announce that Roblox CEO and cofounder David Baszucki and Goldman Sachs CFO Martin Chavez will be joining us on the Disrupt SF stage. (Not together, to be clear.)

David Baszucki – Roblox

Back in 2006, Roblox started out as an interactive physics program, giving people the opportunity to test out their own physics experiments in a virtual setting, from testing out pulley systems to simulating a car crash.

In the time since, Roblox has managed to turn physics into a gaming sensation for young people.

The massively multiplayer online game has overtaken Minecraft and is wildly popular with the pre-teen crowd. In fact, the company recently announced that it has hit 60 million monthly users, spending more than 780 million hours on the platform.

Roblox lets users build their avatars and almost anything else using their imagination, sort of replacing the LEGO of older generations. But because those users tend to skew young, Roblox has made safety a priority, implementing a number of parental controls, with moderators scanning all communication between users, ensuring that a young person doesn’t give out any personal identifying information.

The company has raised nearly $100 million from investors like Index Venture Partners, First Round Capital, Altos Ventures, and Meritech Capital Partners. Roblox also recently signed a deal with HarperCollins to grant them the publishing rights for Roblox, marking the beginning of Roblox’s existence in the physical world.

Plus, Roblox has established itself on YouTube as well as with merchandise, which is an increasingly important part of successfully running a game studio.

We’re absolutely psyched to have David Baszucki join us on stage to talk about the company’s meteoric rise.

Martin Chavez – Goldman Sachs

Many don’t think of Goldman Sachs as a technology company. But those people would be wrong.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has said many a time that the firm is a technology company, and has gone on to state that Goldman Sachs employs more engineers than companies like Facebook and Twitter.

But Goldman Sachs is also a huge investor, with more than 600 investments according to CrunchBase. Some of those investments include WeWork China, Cadre, Dropbox, Uber, and Ring, which recently sold to Amazon for more than $1 billion, according to reports.

Trust us, keeping a finger on the bleeding pulse of technology is exhausting. But Goldman Sachs CFO Martin Chavez, who has a long history in the technology sector, is keeping up with the Joneses.

Before serving as the CFO, Chavez was the Chief Information Officer at Goldman Sachs and led the technology division. He’s also a serial founder, cofounding and serving as CTO of Quorum Software Systems from 1989 to 1993, as well as cofounding Kiodex, where he served as Chairman and CEO until 2004.

We’re excited to pick Chavez’s brain on how fintech might evolve over the next five years and what role Goldman Sachs might play in that evolution, especially given the rise of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain.

Drew Houston to upload his thoughts at TC Disrupt SF in September

Published April 25, 2018

Dropbox is a critically important tool for more than 500 million people, which is why we’re so excited to have founder and CEO Drew Houston on the Disrupt stage in September.

Dropbox launched back in 2007 and Houston has spent the last decade growing Dropbox to the behemoth it is today.

During that time, Houston has made some tough decisions.

A few years ago, Houston decided to move the Dropbox infrastructure off of AWS. In 2014, Houston chose to raise $500 million in debt financing to keep up pace with Box, which was considering an IPO at the time. And in March 2017, Dropbox took another $600 million in debt financing from JP Morgan.

Houston also reportedly turned down a nine-figure acquisition offer from Apple.

All the while, Houston led Dropbox to be cash-flow positive and grew the company to see a $1 billion revenue run rate as of last year.

And, of course, we can’t forget the decision to go public earlier this year.

Interestingly, Houston first told his story to a TechCrunch audience at TC50 in 2008 as part of the Startup Battlefield. In fact, you can check out the original pitch from TC50 right here.

At Disrupt SF in September, we’re excited to sit down with Houston to discuss his journey thus far, the decision to go public and the future of Dropbox.

The show runs from September 5 to September 7, and for the next week, our super early-bird tickets are still available.

Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse and Michael Arrington to talk cryptocurrency at Disrupt SF

Published April 17, 2018

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Arrington XRP Capital founder (and TechCrunch founder) Michael Arrington will be joining us at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in September to talk money.

Garlinghouse has had a long and storied career in the tech industry, serving as a senior vice president at Yahoo!, president of Consumer Applications at AOL and CEO of the file collaboration service Hightail. But in 2016, Garlinghouse was promoted from COO to CEO at payment services company Ripple.

Ripple’s goal is to try to make it as easy as possible to transfer money between two stores of value. Right now, that process is incredibly tedious, with no unifying structure to send money overseas or to underbanked communities. The notion of a unifying ledger is not a new one, but it’s one that’s transformed Ripple into a full-fledged company.

But Ripple also created the world’s third-largest digital token, XRP. The token has a current total market cap around $30 billion, and the company is working to expand the use cases for XRP, which has primarily been marketed as a tool for banks but has only attracted cross-border payment services.

As cryptocurrencies continue to evolve and gain mainstream attention, questions continue to mount around how these tokens will revolutionize the economy and gain utility.

TechCrunch founder and former Editor-In-Chief Michael Arrington will join Garlinghouse onstage to discuss the evolution of cryptocurrencies. Arrington left TechCrunch in 2011 and went on to start CrunchFund, which has invested in big-name startups such as Uber, Airbnb and Yammer.

In 2016, Arrington reduced his role at CrunchFund and has since started Arrington XRP Capital, a $100 million digital asset management firm in blockchain-based capital markets. Ripple is one of the first portfolio companies for Arrington XRP Capital.

This comes at a time when the SEC is doing everything it can to learn more about cryptocurrencies, sending out subpoenas to crypto funds far and wide, including Arrington XRP Capital.

This conversation is sure to be an interesting one, and one you won’t want to miss. Tickets to Disrupt SF (September 5 to September 7) are available now.