How to Fail for Success: Three Key Startup Mistakes

I am an event producer for the Bay Area Startup Community, having managed shows including SF MusicTech Summit, Inside Social Apps, Unleashed Conference, SF Beta, and Finance4Founders.

I am also the creator and executive producer of FailCon, a one day summit focussed on helping startup founders identify, prepare for, and learn from the most common mistakes made. This year’s event attracted over 450 people, and will probably be traveling to New York, Paris, and Montreal next year.

• Website

Janice is an entrepreneur, designer, and advisor to early stage companies. She has raised capital, founded both successful and failed startups, and consulted to both large enterprises & tiny startups. Along the way Janice has learned a lot about what makes some teams thrive and others wither. At LUXr she’s answering the question, “How can regular, smart people do predictably good user experience work in an agile or Lean Startup™ environment?” She believes the answer lies in the operating practices and behaviors of the team. Janice is a guest lecturer at Haas, Stanford, Northwestern, CCA and the Presidio Graduate School of Management. Prior to starting LUXr, Janice was a founding partner of Adaptive Path and served as the company’s first CEO.

• Website

Kevin is CEO of Burbn, inc. – the company that makes the popular iPhone app Instagram. Originally from Boston, Kevin moved to the Bay Area to attend Stanford to study Finance and Decision Analysis. Very quickly, he got wrapped up in the world of entrepreneurship and landed a gig at Odeo as an intern working with Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey. After a two year stint of working at Google on the Gmail team and Corporate Development, Kevin worked at Nextstop which was purchased by Facebook. Kevin then decided to take the plunge and start Burbn, inc. with a focus on creating a new way of communicating and sharing in the real world. Their first product, Instagram was an instant hit – shooting to the top of the charts and gaining over 100,000 users in the first week.

• Website

Manu is the founder and Chief Firestarter at K9 Ventures. Manu previously founded, grew and sold two successful ventures. He was the Founder, President and CEO of SneakerLabs, Inc. – a company which developed software and services for web-based customer interaction. After the successful acquisition of SneakerLabs (March 2000), Manu served as the Vice-President of Interactive Technologies for E.piphany. He then served as the Chairman and CEO of iMeet, Inc. – a provider of web-conferencing services. Manu completed his Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering with University Honors from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was inducted in to the Electrical Engineering Honor Society – Eta Kappa Nu, the National Engineering Honor Society – Tau Beta Pi and the honor society of Phi Kappa Phi. He holds a Masters degree in Software Engineering with a concentration in Business from Carnegie Mellon. Manu also holds a Masters and a Ph.D. in Computer Science (Human Computer Interaction) with a Distinction in Teaching from Stanford University. Manu serves as an investor and/or advisor for several technology startups including Refocus Imaging, Dolores Labs (CrowdFlower), Twilio, DNAnexus, HighlightCam, CardMunch and others. His interests include discovery, creation and commercialization of new and innovative technologies.

• Website