James Currier, Sarah Nahm, Arun Mathew and Vlad Magdalin to speak at Early Stage SF

Early Stage SF goes down on April 28 and we are more excited than ever to introduce this brand new event to the community.

The day-long event is meant to give early stage founders the chance to pick their own adventure, hearing from a wide variety of experts in fundraising, marketing and operations in a more intimate, Q&A-centered environment. Unlike our other events, which usually center around a single, large stage, Early Stage will feature speakers in breakout rooms fit for ~100 people, who will give their own tactical advice and then answer audience questions.

We’re thrilled to announce that James Currier, Sarah Nahm, Arun Mathew and Vlad Magdalin will be joining us at the event.

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James Currier

A serial entrepreneur, James Currier has led four VC-backed companies (Tickle, acquired by Monster; WonderHill, acquired by Kabam; Iron Pearl, acquired by PayPal; and Jiff (acquired by Castlight). He’s an early pioneer of some of the most-used tactics in the tech startup world, including viral marketing, A/B testing, and crowdsourcing. In 2015, Currier cofounded NFX, an early-stage venture firm with $425 million under management.

How to move fast and find the right VC investors

Learn the right and wrong ways to find and approach the right investors for your startup. Discover the 6 elements VC’s look for that will make your process fast, in this lightning talk with James Currier, investor in over 130 startups and Managing Partner at NFX Capital.

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Sarah Nahm

Sarah Nahm began her tech career at Google after graduating from Stanford with a bachelor’s degree in Engineering and Product Design. She’s no CEO and founder of Lever, an enterprise SaaS startup with more than $70 million in funding. Lever boasts a 50-50 gender ratio, with 53 percent women in management, 40 percent women on its board, and is overall 40 percent non-white.

What scale-stage execs need to know about culture and D&I during hypergrowth

Your company’s culture and commitment to diversity and inclusion shouldn’t take a backseat when hiring at scale. Hear from Sarah Nahm, CEO of Lever, on how her company has evolved their culture as they grew from 20 to 250 while keeping D&I at the forefront of how they hire. A leader in the D&I and hiring space, Sarah will share actionable advice from Lever, her time at Google, and examples from leaders in the tech industry.

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Arun Mathew and Vlad Magdalin

Vlad Magdalin is the founder and CEO of Webflow, a no-code tool that allows designers and entrepreneurs to build websites and apps easily. Magdalin bootstrapped Webflow for seven years, bringing the company to profitability before ever entertaining the idea of VC money. Arun Mathew, who leads growth investments in enterprise, security and infrastructure markets for Accel, ended up leading Webflow’s first investment ever.

The business of bootstrapping

Webflow was bootstrapped and profitable for seven years before co-founder and CEO, Vlad Magdalin trusted Accel’s Arun Mathew as their first institutional investor. Hear how Magdalin designed a sustainable, high-growth business without institutional investment, and the surprising factors that led him to take VC investment.

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There will be about 50+ breakout sessions at the show, and attendees will have an opportunity to attend at least seven. The sessions will cover all the core topics confronting early-stage founders — up through Series A — as they build a company, from raising capital to building a team to growth. Each breakout session will be led by notables in the startup world on par with the folks we’ve announced today. 

But wait, there’s more! Don’t worry about missing a breakout session, because transcripts from each will be available to show attendees. And most of the folks leading the breakout sessions have agreed to hang at the show for at least half the day and participate in CrunchMatch, TechCrunch’s platform to connect founders and investors based on shared interests.

Here’s the fine print. Each of the breakout sessions is limited to around 100 attendees. We expect a lot more attendees, of course, so signups for each session are on a first-come, first-serve basis. Buy your ticket today and you can sign up for the breakouts we are announcing today plus you’ll save $50 with the early bird discount. Pass holders will also receive advance notice before we announce the next batch. (And yes, you can “drop” a breakout session in favor of a new one, in the event there is a schedule conflict.)

So get your TC Early Stage: San Francisco pass today, and get the inside track on the sessions we announced today, as well as the ones to be announced in the coming weeks. 

Possible sponsor? We have some very nifty ways to bring sponsors in on the show flow, so please contact us here!

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