San Diego Startup Week 2018

Startup CEO, Health Care Reform Strategist, National Speaker

Making   the Hard Choice Can Make All The Difference:  When     Kristin was young, her brother needed a bone marrow transplant. The state was concerned her parents might force her into being a donor at 4 year old so they took her away from her parents. She became a ward of the state and lived with her grandparents for a year. After a year she was given the choice to save his life and made the challenging decision to undergo the excruciating donation process at the age of 5 to save her brother’s life.

Build a Business That Solves A Problem - Kristin  started and sold several different healthcare related companies over the next few years, iterating on each business model.

Don’t Be Afraid to Test and Pivot:    She says she doesn’t always know what will work in her businesses     but has the confidence to keep trying new things. She also gives her team the opportunity to try things and fail. In addition to her team, she was also saying yes to everything her clients asked for and one night decided she needed software to create reports and data for her clients. In doing that, she realized that in order to scale the company, she needed to go from a service company to a software company. It was a hard changeover, and reducing her team from 47+  employees to 12 was the hardest day of her life but her company is now growing quickly.    

Giving  Back Is An Important Part of Giving Back:   Kristin tries to always say yes because everyone always said no to her. She’s now focused on helping more female business owners scale to over $1 million. She is also working to popularize the concept of a Queenmaker, to support women need and help them succeed.

Join us for our keynote with Arlan Hamilton, the high-profile investor behind VC firm Backstage Capital - one publication recently dubbed her "America's hottest VC" Hamilton - who, as a lesbian black woman, is a pioneer in the overwhelmingly white and male world of VC - has dedicated the fund to minimizing funding disparities in tech by investing in founders who are of color, women and/or LGBT. Backstage has invested nearly $5 million into more than 80 companies to date, including San Diego-based Aquaai. The company, founded by CEO Liane Thompson, uses biomimetic platforms to gather marine data. The event will include a fireside-style chat between Hamilton and Thompson.

Want to learn about how to get your start-up funded, or interested in investing in startups yourself? Join us for the second half of our keynote to learn how investors think and what you can do to increase your chances of funding. Learn from angels, venture capitalists and a family office how they source deals, what they look for in companies, about their due diligence process and what they are doing to fund more diversity.

Storytelling is the most basic aspect of our humanity. It’s how we express ourselves, how we remember and how we envision. Join Mark Lovett in discovering the humanity that binds us all –Navy SEALS, inmates and entrepreneurs – and ultimately helps us build successful lives and businesses. Mark Lovett spent 25 years in the world of corporate storytelling as a c-level executive.  He is a master storyteller, founder of TEDxSanDiego, a speaker, a coach, and a professional story listener who focuses on the art of impactful storytelling. He has worked with dozens of CEOs, executives, writers, military personnel and entrepreneurs and focuses on creating meaningful narratives that resonate with your audience for both your personal and corporate brands.

Come meet and chat with under-the-radar founders that have built $100M+ companies in San Diego and have had an exit. Yes, you can build, raise money and sell a tech company in San Diego. This happens more often than we know. We just need to tell the story more often.