It's not every day you get the chance to hear a half dozen executives from successful startups speak openly about how their companies managed to get to where they are. In fact, its most likely that to get that kind of access in one day, you'd have to be at some high-priced convention that costs several hundred dollars to attend. This isn't the case, however, with Starter Day, an event hosted by software makers Atlassian that will showcase six CEOs and founders from various startups, including Boxee, Aardvark and Pandora.
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The event takes place on June 9th in San Francisco and will only cost $50 for anyone to attend. Atlassian's products help companies collaborate on software development projects, and the executives participating in Starter Day hail from companies that have experienced this first hand. But Starter Day is not a chance for them to blab on about how amazing they think Atlassian to be; instead, the guests will speak on a variety of topics centered around building a successful startup.
Steve Ginsberg, vice president of technical operations for Pandora, will speak about his company's operations and issues with scalability, while Aardvark co-founder Nathan Stoll will discuss how he and his colleagues incorporated user centered design and advanced algorithms into their engineering. Avner Ronen, CEO and co-founder of Boxee will also give a speech he has titled "Underdog 101: Question Everything" which will teach you "everything you need to learn by listening & not listening to anyone else."
The other speakers include Glenn Kelman of real estate startup Redfin, Mike Volpe of marketing software makers HubSpot, and Jochen Frey, CTO of Scout Labs, which makes tools for social media metrics. Atlassian co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar will kick off the event with a discussion about bootstrapping a startup, and a surprise speaker yet to be unveiled is also slated to speak.
Atlassian's marketing VP Jay Simons says the event spawned from the company's surprise that so many small businesses and startups were using their software. Atlassian provides a $10 starter licence for their products, and Simons says that since its inception, over 40,000 starter licences have been sold. Since they recognized a large group of their customers were small businesses, Simons says they created Starter Day as a way for startups that may not be able to afford attending their larger customer conference, which begins shortly after the event, to participate in the weekend's activities.
This is a fantastic opportunity for young companies and entrepreneurs to hear from the leaders of some of the most successful startups of the last few years. As prominent as these companies are, they all began as startups at one point, and the advice they will undoubtedly provide at Starter Day is sure to be a wealth of information to any startup or entrepreneur looking for an edge.
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