Startup Grind

Sarah Drinkwater is the head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups, providing work and event space, mentorship and education programs, as well as access to a vibrant startup community.

Prior to Campus, Sarah led a global team of community managers around Google Maps, inspiring local experts to contribute their knowledge to the review platform, while also launching Campus for Mums in the UK as a volunteer project. Before Google, she ran the UK wing of European review site Qype, consulted on social media for household name brands and was a features journalist for UK magazines and newspapers.

Sarah mentors social impact entrepreneurs through Bethnal Green Ventures and female founders through Entrepreneur Academy.

Justin Kan is an internet entrepreneur. He is best known for founding Kiko, the first AJAX web calendar; Justin.tv, a live video streaming platform; Socialcam, a mobile video sharing app (acquired for $60mm by Autodesk in 2012); Twitch, a video game streaming platform (acquired by Amazon for $970mm in 2014); and Exec, an on demand maid service (acquired by Handybook in 2014). He is currently a partner at the seed fund Y Combinator.

He graduated from Yale University with a degree in Physics and Philosophy.

In the spirt of Startup Grind’s Female Founder Month we have a great interview with laura weidman powers founder of CODE2040 which is a great organization that brings african american and latino youth into tech companies via their popular fellow ship. 

Before graduate school at Stanford, where she earned a JD/MBA, Laura worked largely in the nonprofit sphere on organizations like CityStep and Portraits of Hope.

shortly before speaking at startup grind 2015 code2040 received a $700,000 dollar sponsorship from google! 

Laura is joined by Johnny C taylor who is the Ceo and President of the Thurgood marshall college fund which provides millions in scholarship funds each year for students to attend historically black colleges. 

they are interviewed by nicole sanchez who is the founder of vaya consulting. 

Today we have a chat from the chief technology offficer of New York city, a job she invented for herself which she says in the interview is how she has gotten every job she’s ever had.  

As CTO, Tantoco directs the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation with responsibility for the development and implementation of a coordinated citywide strategy on the subject while encouraging collaboration across agencies and with the wider New York City technology ecosystem. 

Brent hoberman born in south africa took last minute.com a travel and gifts commerce all the way from a startup to a billion dollar.com during the boom in the early 2000’s he now runs founders forum and is an active investor in the UK. 

Brent is interviewed by Marian Gazdik our Startup Grind europe regional director.

Today we have an exciting episode from startup grind 2015 featuring the co-founder of instagram mike krieger and USA Toda’s Jon Swartz. 

Mike was born and raised in Sao Paulo Brazil and then went on to earn an MS in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University. Prior to founding Instagram, he worked at Meebo as a user experience designer and front-end engineer. 

Mike speaks about the early days of instagram and future of social media with USA today SF bureau chief and tech writer Jon Swartz. 

Today we have one of Startup Grind’s all time favorite speakers. Biz Stone co founder of Xanga Odeo, Twitter, The Obvious Corporation, Medium, and Jelly. 

I just downloaded Biz’s most recent endeavor Super, a company he is Co-founder and CEO of that aims to inspire empathy through a visual social networking language that makes every exchange a work of art. 

Biz is interviewed by Greylock partner and former lead of growth at twitter Josh elm an at startup grind 2015. 

Today we feature an interview with Google X’s Dan Fredinburg, who tragically passed away on Mount Everest during the recent earthquake in Nepal. 

Grew up on a farm in Arkansas and left home at 15 to see the world. After earning advanced degrees from UC Irvine, USC, Stanford, and UC Berkeley. He then became a product manager and the head of privacy for Google X. 

As an adventurer he climbed 5  of the 7 highest peaks in the world, all using the same pair of hiking boots. 

He lived a deeply altruistic life as one of the founders of Save the Ice an organization that aimed at improving awareness around climate change. Most recently he founded the Laundry, a co-working space in San Francisco meant to accelerate companies with a social impact. 

Dan was interviewed by Startup Grind’s Jackson Hole Director, Natalie Spencer in February of this year. This interview is a great tribute to the amazing person he was and how much we all have to learn from him. 

As Co-founder and CTO of SwiftKey, Ben invented an intelligent typing system for smartphones that has transformed the text input industry. The software has become the global best selling app on Android and is preinstalled on tens of millions of mobile devices across the world. Based on advanced natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, the system adapts to individual language usage and device interaction, making touchscreen typing fast and enjoyable. SwiftKey won "most innovative mobile app" at the 2012 GSMA awards, and the company was ranked as the world's 6th most innovative mobile business by Fast Company. Ben developed his expertise in NLP and machine learning during eight years of computer science research, which culminated in a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He has reviewed for a number of prominent international journals, and his academic work is published in ACL, the leading conference for NLP research.

Melody McCloskey is co-founder and CEO of StyleSeat, the largest online marketplace for beauty and wellness services. Prior to StyleSeat, Melody led digital distribution for Current TV. In 2011, after feeling frustrated that there was no easy way to book beauty appointments, Melody founded StyleSeat with Dan Levine. More than 200,000 beauty professionals in nearly 15,000 cities use the platform today and more than 5.5 million beauty appointments were booked through StyleSeat in 2013 alone. Melody was recently named by Fast Company as one of its Most Creative People in Business 2014.