Jessica Bruder

Journalist

www.jessicabruder.com – @jessbruder

BIGGEST FAIL: Trying to live in Portland. For 18 months I put up with that cloud cover. Then I had to bail.

Jessica Bruder wrote "The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship" for Inc. magazine's September issue. She teaches at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and is the author of "Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man." In previous lives, she was a senior editor at Fortune Small Business magazine and wrote Start, a New York Times blog on new ventures. She lives with a spaniel named Max in Brooklyn, N.Y. and on the Internets at jessicabruder.com.

Gleb Budman

Co-Founder & CEO, Backblaze

www.backblaze.com – @glebbudman

Gleb Budman is CEO and co-founder of Backblaze, a leading online backup service that automatically backs up unlimited computer data for $5 per month per computer. Gleb bootstrapped Backblaze to millions in revenue and profitability. Previously, Gleb led the product team from pre-funding through acquisition at Kendara and MailFrontier, and founded three prior companies. He received his MBA from Berkeley’s Haas School and has been a speaker at GigaOm Structure, Ignite: Lean Startup, FailCon, CloudCon; profiled by Inc. and Forbes; a mentor for Teens in Tech; and holds four patents on security.

Jon Crawford

CEO, Storenvy

www.storenvy.com – @JonCrawford

Jon is the founder and CEO of Storenvy. With a background in engineering and design, Jon ran a web development shop in Kansas City, MO, before being struck by the unnecessary pain involved in setting up online stores. Jon spends his day-to-day jumping among product, engineering and “CEO stuff” while trying to talk to customers as much as possible. He is passionate about making complex things simpler, and his current objective is to turn regular people into successful online merchants via Storenvy. Jon lives across the street from the “Full House houses” on Alamo Square Park in San Francisco with his wife, daughter and little white dog.

Michael A. Freeman, M.D

Psychiatrist and Executive Coach

http://www.michaelafreemanmd.com/

BIGGEST FAIL: As a CEO, I failed to respond quickly enough to a rapid consolidation and rollup of our customer base.

Dr. Freeman is a psychiatrist, psychologist, consultant and former CEO who serves on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. His clinical practice is focused on the treatment of people with mood and anxiety disorders, and his consulting practice is focused on entrepreneurship and performance enhancement coaching for leaders and key contributors. Dr. Freeman’s research addresses the mental health issues faced by entrepreneurs. He has held CEO and C-level leadership positions in several public and private sector health care organizations.

Anik Guha

Attorney

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP

Anik Guha, a senior associate in the San Francisco office, is a member of the Emerging Companies Group, which advises emerging companies and venture capital firms. Mr. Guha represents emerging growth technology companies and venture capital firms. Prior to receiving his J.D. from New York University School of Law, Mr. Guha taught English in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Jonathan Hoyt

Software Developer, GitHub

www.github.com – @jonmagic

Jonathan Hoyt is a successful entrepreneur and professional programmer. Hoyt was 14 when he borrowed $10,000 and started his first business, which promptly failed. Seventeen years, 3 businesses, one successful exit, and one successful acquisition later Hoyt is working at GitHub solving problems for their business teams.

Julia Hu

Founder & CEO, Lark

www.lark.com/ – @ourlark

Julia Hu is the co-founder and CEO of lark technologies. Named one of the Top 10 Most Innovative CE Companies in the World by Fast Company, lark is a mobile and wireless technology company that uses behavior change to personally coach people to feel great. She has an engineering degree from Stanford University and half an MBA from MIT Sloan (a dropout, though they were kind enough to make lark a case study). Earlier this year, Julia was recognized by Inc Magazine as one of the Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30.

Miki Johnson

CEO, Parsecco

www.heymiki.com – @heymikij

BIGGEST FAIL: Realizing too late the difference between a get-big-fast startup and a "lifestyle" company. Turns out, I wanted the latter.

Miki Johnson: grew up on a hippy farm in Ohio; lived in Costa Rica after high school; studied journalism at Northwestern; was a senior editor at American Photo Magazine in NYC; started an online photo magazine for a website company in SF; consulted with creative professionals about online personal branding; started and ended a startup in Chicago to improve creative collaboration; currently is a program manager for a small, social-focused marketing firm in SF; likes watching humans and asking hard questions.

Dale Larson

Executive Coach, Startup Happiness

www.startuphappiness.com – @dalelarson

Dale Larson is a veteran of ten businesses as a founder or early employee (variously hacker, hustler, and CEO). In those roles, and as a consultant and advisor, Dale has helped build and bring to market hundreds of products and services over the past 30 years. Now a full-time Executive Coach, he works with many venture-backed tech startup CEOs. He helps high-performing leaders to be happier and more successful in all aspects of their work and life; continuing to learn and grow while they build outstanding products, teams and businesses. His second book is forthcoming: Inner Game of the Startup CEO: Success Secrets of Top Silicon Valley Leaders

Victor Lombardi

Founder & Author, Nickel

www.victorlombardi.com/ – @threefour

BIGGEST FAIL: Not joining Amazon.com back in 1995 when I had the chance.

Victor Lombardi is an award-winning product designer, contributing to over 40 Internet projects since 1994. His writing has appeared in several publications including Fast Company and Interactions on topics ranging from generating concepts for new products to website evolution over time. His new book is Why We Fail: Learning from Experience Design Failures. Victor earned a master's degree in music technology from New York University and a bachelor's degree in journalism from Rutgers University. He co-founded the Information Architecture Institute and the Overlap conference, and has taught design at the Parsons School of Design and the Pratt Institute.

Mike McDerment

CEO, FreshBooks

www.freshbooks.com – @MikeMcDerment

Mike McDerment is the co-founder and CEO of FreshBooks, planet earth’s #1 cloud accounting specialist for small business owners. In 2003, Mike built FreshBooks for his design firm, then moved into his parent's basement for 3.5 years to get FreshBooks off the ground. Since then over 5 million people have used FreshBooks to save time billing and collect billions of dollars. Mike and his team dedicate themselves to executing extraordinary experiences everyday for small business owners who want to focus on the work they love, instead of on their paperwork.

Anamaria Nino-Murcia

Entrepreneur Coach, Foothold Coaching

www.footholdcoaching.com/ – @footholdcoach

BIGGEST FAIL: Directing marketing at my last startup to focus on operations and branding details, instead of on scaling awareness and converting sales.

Anamaria Nino-Murcia is an entrepreneur coach who works exclusively with startup-CEOs and other early-stage founders. She has coached Julia Hu (lark CEO/Founder) since 2011. Over the last two years, Anamaria has helped Julia stay sane amidst the crazy ups-and-downs of startup life, and grow as both an entrepreneur and leader. Anamaria founded Foothold Coaching on the belief that early-stage entrepreneurs—the scrappy revolutionaries on the front lines of business—should have access to the same professional coaching usually reserved for corporate executives.

Jason Shen

Co-Founder, RideJoy

www.ridejoy.com – @jasonshen

BIGGEST LESSON: You will have lots of uncomfortable conversations with your cofounders. Every time I avoided one, I regretted it.

Jason Shen is the cofounder of Ridejoy, a Y Combinator backed startup that's helped tens of thousands of people share rides across the US and Canada. His blog The Art of Ass-Kicking has been featured in Vanity Fair, Mashable and Lifehacker. While at Stanford, he was the captain of an NCAA championship-winning gymnastics team — these days he more likely out for a run or doing a personal fitness challenge.

Jackson Solway

Co-Founder, Parsecco

www.jacksonsolway.com – @jacksonsolway

BIGGEST FAIL: Assumed my co-founders wanted a VC-track startup. They actually wanted a small business, which I refused to hear until they suddenly quit.

Jackson is a startup guy with experience managing products in the consumer web and new media spaces. After a rocky period as a freelance photographer, he edited photos at McSweeney's, he founded Once Magazine in '10, and he cofounded Parsecco in '12. His initials are JCS, which, sadly, don't stand for Jesus Christ Superstar.

Marcy Swenson

Co-Founder, Startup Happiness

www.startuphappiness.com – @marcyswenson

"Marcy Swenson is an executive coach who works with venture-backed tech startup founders. She loves to dig into the leadership, communication, and personal challenges facing leaders at high-growth companies. Prior to becoming a coach, she was a co-founder with multiple successful exits; at CPTH (Nasdaq), she built the technical team that led to IPO. Forbes names CPTH the fastest-growing high-tech company in the world in 1999, which explains her fascination with growth and its accompanying challenges."

Misha Chellam

Topic: Staying Happy In The Face Of Chaos & Uncertainty

Misha has launched a range of different projects over the past 13 years including a rock band, a commercial real estate company, a startup accelerator, a medtech startup, a sports league, and a school. He's experienced varying degrees of success and failure in these endeavors but still enjoys the thrill of starting up.

Solana Crawford

User Experience Designer

Topic: Designing An Experience

Solana is a UX Designer, an entrepreneur, an influencer, an industry award winner and judge, and yes... an actor. A designer at the university, a user experience freak at heart and everything else just happens, she's the heart and soul of DaT and currently being hired as a UX Consultant or as interim Head of UX to help companies get jump started with the right foot, and with a higher chance of success.

Alexis Finch

Founder, JobTosser & GraphiteMind

Topic: How Drawing Dinos Improves Performance

Alexis is a self-described Defenestration Expert – often called a 'UX-er' or 'Product Person' – consulting for startups. Her job is to recognize and eliminate feature creep and zombie users, while using sketchnotes to make obfuscated ideas and complex problems relatable and actionable. Previously, she Co-Founded Parsecco, and was Founder / Creative Director of TyK. Alexis is also a UX mentor for WIMAccelerator and PariSoma, and teaches visual thinking workshops.

Janice Fraser

Co-Founder, Luxr

Topic: 4 Tricks for Getting Big Groups To Make Great Decisions Fast

Janice is one of America's leading experts on Lean Startup, having advised many successful companies including Task Rabbit, Lyft, and Sharethrough. She has twice been called to The White House to train administration staff on innovation, and her workshops have been sold out around the world. Luxr.co provides on-demand workshops from a wide range of startup coaches. The company also provides curriculum to top accelerators and has coached more than 50 Silicon Valley startups.

Jason Fraser

Co-Founder, Luxr

Topic: Define Success through Actionable Metrics

Jason is an ops guy and has done everything from managing phone systems to running production, fulfillment, and customer service for a venture funded startup. At Luxr, Jason manages business operations and leads the global business development strategy, working closely with accelerators and partners to ensure that Luxr products support the growing ranks of entrepreneurs worldwide.

Michael A. Freeman, M.D.

Psychiatrist & Executive Coach

Topic: Emotional Support for Founders

Nathan Gold

Founder, The Demo Coach

Topic: The Pitch - Captivate An Audience in <30 Seconds

Nathan started The Demo Coach because he believed he could help other people learn to give more compelling and memorable presentations and product demos. Since then, he has coached people all around the world for high stakes opportunities and presentations for key-notes, sales meetings, board meetings, trade shows and venture capital fund raising. He is the speaking coach for FailCon 2013.