One week away

ONE WEEK AWAY

LOOKING AHEAD TO CNBC’S DISRUPTOR 50 CONNECT

One of the first questions I get when I invite someone to a Disruptor 50 event is “Who else is going to be there?”

It’s an important question for startup founders, executives and VCs. They want to know that by attending an event, they will have the opportunity to make connections with people who can help them grow their businesses, either by delivering valuable advice or by opening the door to more conversation and eventually a true partnership.

This question, “who else is going to be there,” led us to reimagine the annual Disruptor 50 Celebration, which became the virtual Disruptor 50 Summit, when we decided it would go back to being an in-person event this year. The result is Disruptor 50 Connect, happening next week in San Francisco.

So… who is going to be there? Let’s start with our ten “networking ambassadors,” people we’ve asked to attend the event to offer advice and mentorship to all attendees across five categories:

• Building organizational cultures
• Corporate governance
• Scaling companies
• Telling your company’s story
• Venture capital

The networking ambassadors are a mix of high-ranking executives at public companies, academic thought leaders, creative investors and storytelling experts, and we’re excited to have them there to help facilitate conversation throughout the evening. You can see the full list of them below.

In addition, we’ve created an engaging on-stage program designed for founders and executives. First, leaders from three of this year’s Disruptor 50 companies will join CNBC’s Julia Boorstin for a conversation about challenges and opportunities facing startups today, from developing AI capabilities, to managing customer data, scaling and building brands, and much more. Then we’ll hear from Kim Scott, renowned CEO coach and author of “Radical Candor,” for some no-nonsense leadership advice that’s sure to spark additional conversation.

So now that you know who’s going to be there, I hope you’ll consider adding yourself to the roster of attendees. Click the link below to learn more.

MEET THE AMBASSADORS

Anna Avalos, SoFi Chief People Officer

Talk to Anna about: Building organizational cultures

Anna is responsible for total talent strategy at SoFi, a six-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company. Anna was there for SoFi’s 2021 IPO and can provide some experience-based insights about how company cultures change after they go public. Anna is also a member of the CNBC Workforce Executive Council.

Adam Davidson, Masterful Storytelling Founder & CEO

Talk to Adam about: Telling your company’s story

Adam’s company, Masterful Storytelling, helps founders and funders engage investors, leadership teams, customers, and others through a more powerful company story. You may know him better as the co-founder of NPR’s “Planet Money.” He’s currently working on a Harvard Business Review series on storytelling, strategy, and leadership, and he’s eager to share those ideas with you.

Emilie Gerber, Six Eastern Founder & CEO

Talk to Emilie about: Telling your company’s story

Emilie’s firm, Six Eastern, is a tech PR agency that works exclusively with startups and VC firms. And we love her “On Background” newsletter and Substack, which is full of actionable advice and news for PR professionals. Before she founded her firm, Emilie worked in communications for Disruptor 50 companies Box and Uber.

Gayle Jennings-O’Byrne, Wocstar Capital CEO

Talk to Gayle about: Building organizational cultures, venture capital

Gayle’s Wocstar Fund invests in the future of consumption and innovation using a female arbitratge strategy, focusing on women of color tech entrepreneurs. She has 30+ years experience on Wall Street, in tech, philanthropy and executive training.

Paolo Juvara, Pure Storage Chief Digital Transformation Officer

Talk to Paolo about: Building organizational cultures, scaling companies

Paolo is known for his years of software engineering experience in the tech sector, from helping drive the growth of Google Cloud to managing all the applications that run Oracle today. Now leading digital transformation at Pure Storage (a two-time Disruptor 50 company before going public in 2015) he is an expert when it comes to product strategy, managing customer data, accelerating tech capabilities and so much more. Paolo is also a member of the CNBC Technology Executive Council.

Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, Brown University Venture Capital Inclusion Lab Founder & Director

Talk to Banu about: Building organizational cultures, venture capital

Banu’s Venture Capital Inclusion Lab, which she founded in 2018, focuses on understanding and solving funding inequities in the VC industry through data-driven research, education and advocacy.  If you’re a startup founder or executive, Banu wants to hear about the challenges you’ve encountered in building your organization’s culture and talk to you about the role culture plays in your organization’s innovation strategy. Banu is also a member of the CNBC Disruptor 50 Advisory Board.

Martin Reeves, BCG Henderson Institute Chairman

Talk to Martin about: Telling your company’s story, strategy and leadership

Martin is a prolific strategic thinker, a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and other management journals, and a sought-after public speaker.  He has particular expertise in adaptive strategy, sustainability, collective learning and innovation, trust, and more. One-on-one, he can help leaders like you tune your strategies to the specific environment of your business.

Ellie Shephard, Park West Asset Management Chief People Officer

Talk to Ellie about: Building organizational cultures, scaling companies, telling your company’s story

Ellie has more than 20 years of experience as a human resources leader. She wants to share her passion for building transformational, cutting-edge teams, and to talk about how to find innovative ways to build diverse communities. Ellie is also a member of the CNBC Workforce Executive Council.

Nizar Tarhuni, PitchBook VP of Institutional Research & Editorial

Talk to Nizar about: Scaling companies, venture capital

Nizar manages investment strategy, fund performance and emerging technology research offerings for PitchBook, which has been a data partner to the Disruptor 50 List since 2016. Nizar also runs PitchBook’s daily news product for private market investors and advisors.

John Wall, Cadence CFO

Talk to John about: Anything! But also: Corporate governance, building organizational cultures, scaling companies

A 25-year veteran of Cadence and its CFO since 2015, John is responsible for the computational software firm’s financial strategy, enterprise data & analytics, capital allocation, and much, much more. He’ll talk to you about your business, but he also wants to know about you. If you’re interested in talking to John, think about the superpower you wish you had, a year in your life you might want to relive, and how different life will be 100 years from now. John is also a member of the CNBC CFO Council.

THE REST OF THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES

Flexport fires CFO, HR chief departs weeks after sudden ouster of Dave Clark as CEO

TOPPED THE 2022 DISRUPTOR 50 LIST

Three weeks after Flexport founder Ryan Petersen fired Dave Clark as CEO and returned to run his supply chain software startup, the company has ousted its chief financial officer, and its human resources chief has resigned, CNBC has learned. Flexport informed CFO Kenny Wagers last week that he was being let go, according to people familiar with the situation. His last day is Friday.

SpaceX wins first Pentagon contract for Starshield, its satellite network for military use

SIX-TIME DISRUPTOR 50 COMPANY

The Pentagon has awarded Elon Musk’s SpaceX its first confirmed contract for the Starshield network it’s developing, a military-specific version of the company’s Starlink satellite internet system. A Space Force spokesperson confirmed that SpaceX on Sept. 1 was awarded a one-year contract for Starshield with a maximum value of $70 million. The award came alongside 18 other companies through a program run by the Space Force’s commercial satellite communications office.

Peloton shares soar on digital content, apparel partnership with Lululemon

TWO-TIME DISRUPTOR 50 COMPANY BEFORE GOING PUBLIC

Peloton and Lululemon are joining forces. The two companies announced a five-year partnership that will bring Peloton’s content to Lululemon’s exercise app. Lululemon in turn will become Peloton’s primary athletic apparel partner, and a select number of Peloton’s instructors will become ambassadors for the apparel retailer. The terms of the deal, and whether the two companies will share revenue, were not disclosed.

Spotify will use AI to replicate podcasters’ voices and translate them to other languages

FIVE-TIME DISRUPTOR 50 COMPANY

Spotify announced a new artificial intelligence-powered feature that can translate podcasts into different languages using the host’s own voice. The company said the feature relies on OpenAI’s voice generation technology. The technology can create “realistic synthetic voices” from just a few seconds of speech, OpenAI said in a release. Spotify said it will help make the podcast listening experience more authentic and natural by maintaining podcasters’ “distinctive speech characteristics.”

ONE MORE THING…

NEW YORK IS A TECH STARTUP HOTBED AGAIN

Albert Wang, a native Californian, moved to New York from Boston with his wife a decade ago and got a job as a product manager at Datadog, which at the time was a fledgling startup helping companies monitor their cloud servers and databases.

New York had its share of startup investors and venture-backed companies, but it wasn’t a hotbed of tech activity. The San Francisco Bay Area was the dominant tech scene. On the East Coast, Boston was better known as the hub of enterprise technology.

But Datadog grew up — fast — going public in 2019, and today it sports a market cap of over $28 billion. After four years at the company, Wang left but chose to stay in New York to launch Bearworks, providing software to sales reps. The city is totally different from the place he encountered when he arrived, and you can feel it when you’re out at a bar or restaurant, Wang said.

“Now it’s extremely diversified — there are more people doing startups,” he said. Before, “you tended to be surrounded by consultants and bankers, but more and more now, there’s tech.”

Datadog’s initial public offering was followed less than two years later by UiPath, which develops software for automating office tasks. They were both preceded by cloud database developer MongoDB in 2017 and e-commerce platform Etsy in 2015.

None of those Big Apple companies are huge by the tech industry’s standards — market caps range from $9 billion to just under $30 billion — but they’ve created an ecosystem that’s spawned many new startups and created enough wealth to turn some early employees into angel investors for the next generation of entrepreneurs.

While the tech industry is still trying to bounce back from a brutal 2022, which was the worst year for the Nasdaq since the 2008 financial crisis, New Yorkers are bullish on the city that never sleeps.

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