On August 7 and 8, the sixth annual Traction Conference is returning to Vancouver to offer entrepreneurs insights and connections from North America’s tech ecosystems.
“I’m excited to share my experience and learn from all the entrepreneurs attending Traction.”
This year, the conference is introducing the Traction Fundraising Summit, led by Justin Kan, co-founder of Twitch and former partner at Y Combinator. The Fundraising Summit will feature discussions and talks on fundraising, pitch coaching, legal negotiation tips, and office hours with investors to help startups raise their next round of capital.
Kan has raised $150 million for his own companies from investors like Andreessen Horowitz, and has helped startups raise a billion dollars in funding. He is now the CEO of legal tech startup Atrium.
“I’ve been able to help many different startups raise capital in my career and every team that I’ve worked with has taught me something valuable about fundraising,” Kan said. “I’m excited to share my experience and learn from all the entrepreneurs attending Traction this August in Vancouver.”
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Notable speakers at this year’s conference include:
- Lynsey Thornton, vice president of user experience at Shopify: Thornton leads both the discipline and team of user experience at Shopify, where she helps product designers, developers, researchers, and content strategists to build Shopify’s foundational product.
- Chris Wright, chief technology officer at Red Hat: Wright is responsible for incubating emerging technologies and developing forward-looking perspectives on innovations such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, distributed storage, software-defined networking and network functions virtualization, containers, automation and continuous delivery, and distributed ledger.
- Leela Srinivasan, chief marketing officer at SurveyMonkey: Srinivasan has served as CMO at San Francisco-based Lever, the venture-backed recruiting software company that helps companies prepare for the future of employment. Prior to that Leela served as VP Marketing at OpenTable, and she also spent four and a half years as a marketing leader in LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions business.
- John Foreman, senior vice president of product at Mailchimp: Foreman creates and executes the vision for Mailchimp’s product, which includes coordinating product research, design exploration, prioritization, planning, and development. He also engages in collaboration with Mailchimp’s strategic partners, like Facebook, Google, and Shopify.
- Shawna Wolverton, senior vice president of product at Zendesk: Wolverton began at Salesforce, where she grew her influence over a decade to become a pivotal part of its product strategy team. In May, Zendesk acquired Montreal-based Smooch, a company that allows companies to manage customer conversations across multiple social messaging and communication platforms.
- Meghan Keaney Anderson, vice president of marketing at HubSpot: At Hubspot, Anderson oversees the content, product marketing and customer demand teams, helping to grow HubSpot’s audience worldwide and drive sales and adoption of the company’s marketing and sales platform. She also serves as an advisor to United Way, HelpScout and Evertrue.
Image courtesy Traction Conference
