Brett Hurt is a serial entrepreneur who is best known for founding Bazaarvoice (NASDAQ: BV) and serving as CEO and President for 7½ years, leading the company from a bootstrapped concept through its successful IPO. He is now co-founder and CEO of data.world, which is building the most meaningful, collaborative, and abundant data resource in the world as a Certified B Corp.

Prior to Bazaarvoice, Brett founded Coremetrics and helped grow the company into a global, leading marketing analytics solution for the eCommerce industry before its acquisition by IBM for around $300m.

He is also a seed-stage investor at Hurt Family Investments (HFI) in partnership with his wife, Debra.  HFI are involved in 53 startups and 12 VC funds.  HFI has directly made 42 startup investments, and Brett has also joined the Advisory Board of 11 additional companies.

In his talk, Brett will share his story of starting his first company and taking the lessons he learned to build Bazaarvoice and leading the company to its IPO. He will discuss the strategic mindset, the role of technology, and his perspective on data and innovation that enabled him to build the successful businesses he envisioned. Lastly, he will discuss why he started data.world, his first B Corporation, and why he believes this is the most important and biggest venture he’s ever been apart of.

The keynote will be followed by a Q&A led by Shehzad Bharwaniand Adnan Merchant with the opportunity for audience questions.

Mellie Price (https://capitalfactory.com/mentor/mellie-price/)is an eight-time entrepreneur, with experience spanning over 20 years, who has had ventures in industries ranging from healthcare and real estate to entertainment and data security. She is currently the Executive Director of Commercialization at the Dell Medical School (https://dellmed.utexas.edu/). She is a co-founder and a Managing Director of Capital Factory (https://capitalfactory.com/) and is also co-founder of Softmatch (http://www.softmatch.co/), a company that connects large enterprises with the fragmented global startup ecosystem.

Notably, Mellie was also Founder and CEO of Front Gate Tickets (http://www.frontgatetickets.com/), one of the largest ticketing companies processing over $300 million in sales (in 2014) from 2002 to 2015 when it sold to Live Nation.

As a veteran entrepreneur with years of experience as an investor, executive, fund manager, and technologist, Mellie will be talking about her journey from her days as a systems administrator to successfully launching and growing her own company and then some. Often characterizing herself as an “accidental entrepreneur,” she will reveal the lessons and insights she’s learned from her years in entrepreneurship from launch to exit and the stories that led to those realizations.

Mellie will discuss all of this and more.

Paul O’Brien (https://seobrien.com/) is a long time Silicon Valley technology and startup veteran and is known for his widely publicized blog SEO’Brien (https://seobrien.com/) where he shares his big ideas, thought provoking concepts, tips & tricks, and inspiration. He is a growth architect and a masterful marketer notably leading the early growth of startups such as Outright.com (Acquired by GoDaddy), Zvents (Acquired by eBay’s Stubhub), and MicroVentures (Venture Capital). With over 15 years of experience in the tech and media industry he now works closely with entrepreneurs, startups, and medium to enterprise-sized businesses helping them with all areas of marketing and business development and ultimately helping them grow, scale and get funded.

Paul will share his approach to tech, media and entrepreneurship. He will walk you through his unique and proven method of getting into the minds of investors and clients, and will discuss lessons learned along the way.

Paul will discuss all of this and more.

Whurley (http://whurley.com/) is a serial entrepreneur with multiple company exits (to Zynga, Accenture, and Goldman Sachs), 11 patents, 2 films, a TED talk, and was the host for President Barack Obama’s visit to SXSW in 2016; he seemingly can do it all. Despite all of his accomplishments and accolades in various industries, he is perhaps best known as an innovator with the most notable invention being his mind-controlled skateboard. In his keynote he will highlight pivotal moments in his life, illustrate his approach to innovation, and discuss his most recent obsession – the power and application of quantum computing.

Whurley will discuss all of this and more.