Introducing StartCon’s 2018 theme:
While Silicon Valley is dying, Sydney is thriving!
Once looked upon as the utopia of technology, Silicon Valley drew entrepreneurs from far and wide to change the world. Some found fortune, some found fame. Some became deities.
In today’s hyper-connected, hyper-scrutinised world, where global news headlines hinge on the next 140 character tweet, even demigods are fallible.
“The single greatest danger for a founder is to become so certain of his own myth that he loses his mind. But an equally insidious danger for every business is to lose all sense of myth and mistake disenchantment for wisdom” – Peter Thiel
As every action is scrutinised. Those that were once worshiped for taking risks are now pariahs. That utopia is groaning under its own weight, with soaring costs and lack of housing.
While unicorns are mythical, sightings are being reported increasingly in far away lands like China & Indonesia. Even Australia.
Is the new technology frontier somewhere other than Silicon Valley?
The conference, which will be hold in Sydney 30 Nov & 1 Dec, is expected to sell out for the seventh year running with 4,000 attendees, lasts 2 days, with over 20 international tech superstars sharing their knowledge and experience with the Australian tech and entrepreneurial community. The event will include:
- Over 60 world class speakers in technology, entrepreneurship, growth, marketing, design, engineering and corporate innovation
- A 150-booth expo showcasing the biggest technology names and a large startup alley with high-growth Australian startups
- The largest startup pitch competition in the country, where over 100 startups will compete for the chance to win a $1,000,000 investment from Right Click Capital.
- A two day hackathon, where teams compete to solve complex problems facing Australia.
- The 2nd Annual Australasian Startup Awards, where leading and emerging technology companies in the APAc region are nominated and awarded at the event
The first 6 StartCon 2018 international speakers
Jon Chang, IBM Watson
Jon Chang is IBM Watson Digital Marketing Director and New York University Adjunct Faculty of Social Media and Web Analytics. He is an award-winning digital, growth and product marketing expert and educator, teaching at General Assembly and mentoring at Techstars and Chobani.
Matthew Brimer, General Assembly
Matthew Brimer is Co-Founder of General Assembly, a 21st century educational institution with campuses around the world. He supports General Assembly’s global efforts around social impact, enterprise partnerships and community outreach. He is also co-founder of global community and lifestyle brand Daybreaker and is an angel investor.
Steve Rader, NASA
Steve Rader is Deputy Manager for NASA’s Centre of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation, where he facilitates the use of collaborative innovation platforms for development projects across the U.S. Government. He has also worked on NASA’s Space Shuttle, Space Station, X-38 and Constellation programs.
Alana Podreciks, McKinsey
Alana Podreciks is Head of McKinsey’s New Ventures Platform, which takes a venture capital approach to identify, fund and incubate startups inside McKinsey, while leveraging the consulting firm’s access to leading companies and go-to-market channels to help them move rapidly from startup to scale-up.
Marvin Liao, 500 Startups
Marvin Liao is a Partner at 500 Startups, a global seed venture capital firm and startup accelerator based in Silicon Valley. He runs the 500 Startups San Francisco-based accelerator program and invests in digital media, enterprise, software-as-a-service and other types of startups across the globe.
April Dunford, Rocket Launch Marketing
April Dunford of the founder Rocket Launch Marketing, where she works with early stage startups on go-to-market strategies and how they intersect with marketing, product, sales and customer success, and with large companies on new product introduction and market positioning.
Bonus Announcement…
IBM Watson: IBM Watson is a cognitive computing system which uses artificial intelligence to analyse high volumes of data and process information more like a human than a computer. It does this by understanding natural language, generating hypotheses based on evidence and learning as it goes. In 2011, IBM Watson competed on the Jeopardy! gameshow, and won.
StartCon is at Randwick Racecourse, Sydney on 30 Nov & 1 Dec
