Today marks a major milestone for us as we reveal the first 100 confirmed speakers.
100 days before the event, we’re on track to curate the best speaker lineup to date, consisting of some of the most iconic founders of category-defining companies.
”Slush is on track to
curate its best speaker
lineup to date.
Why does this even matter?
The stage program at Slush is at the heart of our mission: helping and creating founders to change the world. In other words, our program exists to distribute first-hand knowledge on company-building and inspire the next generation of founders.
Consequently, we aim to bring the most iconic founders on stage that are willing to impart this knowledge, keeping our program non-commercial and (literally) laser-focused on company-building advice.
We’re thrilled to reveal a lineup of truly iconic founders to speak at Slush 2024:
- Justin Kan stuck a webcam to his head in 2007, becoming the first person to stream his life 24/7 online. This experiment led to him co-founding Twitch, which has revolutionized web streaming forever and is used by 240 million people today. Inspired by his experiences as a gamer, Justin co-founded Stash in 2022, a one-stop-shop for developers to publish, monetize, and merchandise their games directly to their hungry audiences.
- Neha Narkhede co-created the groundbreaking data management protocol Apache Kafka, leading to the co-founding of Confluent in 2014, a company that has gone on to change how data is managed and used worldwide. After an IPO in 2021, Confluent today is valued at over $7 billion. Neha recently co-founded her second startup, Oscilar, to tackle another problem many companies face: effective fraud detection in online transactions.
- Qasar Younis co-founded Applied Intuition in 2017. We all have imagined a world where cars drive autonomously. This is the company bringing this vision into reality, creating the technology that makes these vehicles safe, intelligent, and autonomous. Today, their solutions are used by 17 out of the top 20 car makers in the world including Porsche, Tesla, and Toyota.
- Milda Mitkute co-founded Vinted in 2007. Milda, still a student back then, was moving and needed a way to sell her surplus clothes. This led to the creation of a website where users could trade their clothes. Today, Vinted is Europe’s leading secondhand clothing marketplace with over 800 million items listed.
- Aravind Srinivas worked as a research scientist at OpenAI, Google, and DeepMind. In 2022, he co-founded Perplexity, a company that leverages AI to act as an “answer engine” and an alternative to traditional search engines. Think of receiving succinct and accurate responses to your questions instead of the clutter of multiple links. In less than two years, Perplexity raised over $100 million from investors like Jeff Bezos, Elad Gil, and Susan Wojciki.
What’s better?
This is just a fraction of our speakers. Check out the lineup on our website, including dozens of unicorn founders, world-class operators, and investors.
With still 100 days to go to the event, keep an eye out for additional, exciting speaker announcements throughout the fall–we’re not done yet.
Looking at the bigger picture, our mission not only focuses on helping and creating founders, but aims to help them change the world.
This made us think: where does the true impact of our work lie and what kind of a world are we helping to build?
”Where does the true impact of
our work lie and what kind of a
world are we helping to build?
In line with this mission, we are excited to also announce our first-ever impact quantification partnership with The Upright Project.
The Upright Project is a Helsinki-based impact data company and owner of the world’s largest public database on company impact. They use natural language processing-enabled technologies to draw together masses of humanity’s best knowledge–scientific research–to quantify the positive and negative impacts that companies have on the environment, health, society, and knowledge creation.
We recognize that no model is exactly right, but some are useful. To deepen our understanding of impact, we’ll be using Upright’s model to examine the impact of the companies confirmed to speak at Slush. Stay tuned for more as we approach the event—we can’t wait to share with you what we’re brewing together.
Now is the time to secure your ticket for Slush 2024 if you haven’t already–we can’t wait to see you in Helsinki.
Curious about our speaker lineup? Check it out here.
Want to see these speakers front-row (and potentially get some personal mentorship by some)? Buy your ticket to Slush now.