Mark your calendars: On Thursday night, September 10, StrictlyVC, TechCrunch’s boutique late-night series, will head to New York’s West Village (the real one, brownstones, cobblestones and all), not the stretch of Mission Bay in San Francisco that earned the nickname “Vest Town”for all the Patagonia-clad VCs wandering around).
It’s our first event in New York in two years and, after a string of fantastic nights this year in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Athens, we couldn’t be more excited to be back, with a lineup to match. What’s in store:
Keith Rabois. We start the night with the inimitable Keith Rabois, who recently moved east from Silicon Valley and, true to form, seems determined to change things wherever he lands. Rabois has never been shy about what he thinks works in business and what doesn’t: He’s backed Ramp four times and invested just as often in State Affairs, a company that uses artificial intelligence and local journalists to track state-level news and policy data in all 50 states. He’ll share his strong opinions on founders who raise more capital than they really need, simply because they can. And we’ll get him talking about Khosla Ventures’ boldest AI bet yet — his first $50 million check into OpenAI in 2019, when the team had no clear business model — plus what he makes of the narrative that OpenAI faces more headwinds right now than its rivals.
Craig Shapiro and Jason Levien. After our meeting with Keith, stay for a conversation you won’t find anywhere else. Craig Shapiro’s venture firm, Collaborative Fund, will generously co-host the evening with us, and we’ll sit down with Shapiro and Jason Levien, CEO of DC United, to talk about sports organizations as business investments and the increasingly tangled intersection of sports, fandom, commerce, and community.
Tristan Walker. Continuing with the theme of community, we’ll delve into a conversation with two founders building a world where AI does more, but also takes something away. Tristan Walker, who sold his last company, Walker & Company Brands (maker of Bevel), to Procter & Gamble in 2018, is back with Heirloom Craft, a startup focused on repatriating fine American craftsmanship: training a new generation of artisans and rebuilding the supply chains behind them.
Brynn Putnam. Walker will be joined by Brynn Putnam, who sold her last company, connected fitness startup Mirror, to Lululemon for $500 million, just three years after it launched. Putnam’s new company is Board, a gaming company that combines physical play with AI-powered creation tools, created as a kind of antidote to the isolation that technology has fueled, bringing people together around, literally, a board.
Deven Parekh. Last but not least, we’re delighted to catch up with Deven Parekh, who has co-led New York investment powerhouse Insight Partners for more than 25 years. Insight doesn’t do much press, but Parekh agreed to pull back the curtain on how the firm thinks about a landscape in which it has become harder to distinguish asset classes as some of the largest funds have grown exponentially. What we want to know: How does Insight compete in a world where capital itself is a commodity, but where the potential returns on massive investments have never been greater?
Expect a fun night, with drinks, hors d’oeuvres, and plenty of networking before and after fireside chats, including with Connie Loizos, Rebecca Bellan, and other TechCrunch writers (as well as our friends from other outlets).
Many thanks again to the Collaborative Fund team for making the night possible. More details and ticketing information right here. See you in the (real) West Village.
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