ZURBsoapbox

Brad Garlinghouse: Why Companies Should Hate Peanut Butter

Tue, 19 March 2013 5:00:00 -0500

YouSendIt CEO Brad Garlinghouse tells us why companies shouldn't spread themselves thin like peanut butter and why startups should avoid the hype.

Howard Lindzon: Passing on Twitter and Building a Social Investing Network

Wed, 6 March 2013 5:00:00 -0500

Stocktwits CEO and Co-Founder Howard Lindzon talks about why he passed on investing in Twitter early on and how he's revolutionizing they way we talk about stocks.

Doug Mack: Taking One Kings Lane Into Mobile

Wed, 30 January 2013 5:00:00 -0500

One Kings Lane CEO Doug Mack talks about why mobile matters for E-commerce and why you should have a device-centric strategy.

Jeff Lawson: Rapidly Scaling Twilio Into a Worldwide Juggernaut

Fri, 30 November 2012 5:00:00 -0500

Twilio Co-Founder and CEO Jeff Lawson talks about revolutionizing the telecommunications industry and the challenges with scaling Twilio into a worldwide service.

Joe Gebbia: Scaling Airbnb from the Living Room to Across the Globe

Fri, 9 November 2012 5:00:00 -0500

Airbnb Co-Founder and Chief Product Designer Joe Gebbia talks about the challenges in taking the rental service from his apartment living room to a global audience.

Sahil Lavingia: Going from College Dropout to Designing Pinterest's Grid

Wed, 31 October 2012 5:00:00 -0500

Designer and entrepreneur Sahil Lavingia talks about how he dropped out of college to help design Pinterest's unique user interface and the lessons his learned from building his own products, like Gumroad.

The Winklevoss Twins: The Past, Present and Future

Tue, 11 September 2012 5:00:00 -0500

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, principals of Winklevoss Capital, tells us about their early beginnings as co-founders of ConnectU, what they thought about their story being told in "The Social Network," their opinion on the Facebook IPO and give us the scoop on their recently co-founded investment firm.

Evan Williams: Revolutionizing the Way We Communicate on the Web

Mon, 27 August 2012 5:00:00 -0500

Twitter Co-Founder and former CEO Evan Williams, Ev to his friends and colleagues, tells us about revolutionizing the way we communicate on the Web with Blogger and Twitter, and again with his latest venture, Medium.

Hiten Shah: Finding the Key Risk in Your Product

Fri, 8 August 2012 5:00:00 -0500

KISSmetrics CEO and Co-Founder Hiten Shah tells us about learning from his mistakes, going lean and finding the key risk in your product quickly.

Getting 10 Million Users in Less Than Two Months and Combating Cyberbullying

Fri, 15 June 2012 5:00:00 -0500

Formspring CEO and Founder Ade Olonoh talks about how the social Q&A site got 10 million monthly users faster than Pinterest and how the site weathered a cyberbullying controversy.

Building Stack Overflow From the Best Parts of Wikis, Digg, Forums and Blogs

Wed, 23 May 2012 5:00:00 -0500

Stack Overflow Co-Founder Jeff Atwood delves deep into the origins of the popular Q&A site, including taking the "evil" out of Experts Exchange and fixing the problems of other similar sites.

Robert Scoble: Building Startup Stories and Crossing the Freaky Lineom Bust to IPO in 3 Years

Thu, 12 April 2012 5:00:00 -0500

Tech evangelist and blogger Robert Scoble, of Rackspace and Scobleizer, why startups need to build their stories and how small philosophical differences can make or break a product.

Aaron Levie, Box.com CEO and Founder: From a Cold Email to 82% of the Fortune500 as Customers

Fri, 16 March 2012 5:00:00 -0500

Box.Com CEO and Founder Aaron Levie takes us through the early days of Box.com, how he got noted investor and Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban to invest in his company, and why he was scared to death of Google's long-rumored GDrive.

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne: Living 6 Months at a Time from Dot Com Bust to IPO in 3 Years

Thu, 1 March 2012 5:00:00 -0500

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne talks about how cancer shaped how he planned his days, circumventing the conventional IPO system, and his friendship with investment guru Warren Buffett.

Dave McClure: 20 Years of Investing and Geeking Out In Silicon Valley

Fri, 18 November 2011 5:00:00 -0500

Dave McClure of 500startups got on his soapbox to talk about how he invests and what he looks for in entrepreneurs.

Ron Conway: Godfather of Angel Investing

Wed, 19 October 2011 5:00:00 -0500

Ron Conway, the Godfather of Angel Investing, who has been called "the man who has placed more bets on Internet start-ups than anyone else in Silicon Valley" got on his soapbox to share with us how he invests and what he looks for in his companies and entrepreneurs.

Sachin Argawal: 8 Months Rethinking, Rebuilding and Rebranding Posterous

Wed, 28 September 2011 5:00:00 -0500

Two years and 15 million customers into developing their product, the Posterous team decided to scrap everything and start over from square one. Sachin Agarwal the founder of Posterous shared Posterous' setbacks, losses and wins, and reasoning behind many of the decisions made along the way.

Matt Mickiewicz: Building a Web Business When You Are 15 Years Old

Thu, 1 September 2011 5:00:00 -0500

Matt's was one of the most sincere, fun, laid back and brutally honest soapbox discussions we've had to date! He shared the story of his entrepreneurial journey, starting from when he disrupted the world of web design education with Sitepoint, at 14 years old, to the present, 13 years later, where he is successfully running two new businesses (99Designs and Flippa) and currently starting a fourth one (Learnable).

Kevin Hartz: Founder and CEO of Eventbrite gets on his soapbox

Mon, 11 July 2011 5:00:00 -0500

Kevin Hartz shared a number of great lessons from his extensive career building and launching hit startups.

Kevin Hale: Marrying Your Users: From First Date to Ever After w/ Founder of Wufoo

Tue, 14 June 2011 1:00:00 -0500

Kevin reveals Wufoo's customer service strategy and the path from idea to SurveyMonkey's acquisition.

Matt Mullenweg: Celebrating the Eighth Birthday of WordPress

Fri, 6 June 2011 12:50:00 -0500

Matt discusses the growth of WordPress over the last eight years and the challenges he faced along the way.

Philip Rosedale: From Cars Dealerships to Second Life

Thu, 31 March 2011 12:50:00 -0500

Philip discusses the challenges he faced bringing his "unfundable" virtual world of Second Life to reality, and what he's doing now.

Tim Ferriss: A Lesson in Self Promotion

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 00:15:00 -0500

Tim sat down with us for a Q&A about his tactics for self promotion, building community, and productivity.

Irene Au: How Google Creates Products.

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 00:15:00 -0500

Irene Au (Google’s Head of UX) shares some juicy insights on the design process and decision making behind Google’s products.

Julie Zhuo: How Facebook Uses Data

Thu, 9 Dec 2010 00:15:00 -0500

Julie Zhuo (Facebook’s Design Manager) giving us the low down on how her team uses data to inform decisions.

Tom Conrad’s talk on Apple, Pets.com, and Pandora

Fri, 24 Nov 2010 00:15:00 -0500

In the 30 minutes we managed to discuss Tom’s dating life, how much of a doofus Tony Fadell (the guy who invented the iPod) was, driving Pets.com into a cliff, and of course how Pandora was started.

Peter Skillman's talk on Innovating the Mobile Experience

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 00:15:00 -0500

Peter left all of us with some great lessons learned for creating awesome mobile experiences.

Konstantin Guericke's talk on how LinkedIn Broke Through

Thu, 9 Sep 2010 00:15:00 -0500

The story behind how the original LinkedIn idea was conceived and how they eventually managed to break through to mainstream. Co-founder Konstantin Guericke’s soapbox left all of us with some key lessons we wanted to share.

Nate Bolt’s rap on dos and don’ts of UX Research

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:15:00 -0500

Nate Bolt reveals some of his finding regarding remote UX research in a stylistic rap.

Luke Wroblewski: Design for mobile first!

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:15:00 -0500

Luke mades a strong and valid case of why we should focus on designing for mobile vs. the desktop. Not only does he tell us why, he also focuses on how we should design for mobile.

Bill Scott: Behind the scenes of Netflix's UI

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 00:15:00 -0500

Bill Scott discusses anti-patterns in UI and how Netflix was able to avoid them and build a rich user interaction.

Alex Faaborg of Mozilla: How was Firefox designed? What's next for Firefox?

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:15:00 -0500

Alex started off sharing how design works in a large open source community as well as the challenges which Mozilla has faced as a company.

Justin Kan of Justin.tv: One camera broadcast to a website with 35 million users

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:15:00 -0500

Justin shared his story of how he came up with the idea of a 24/7 live broadcast, how he became an international celebrity, and the sharp turn Justin.tv had to make to shape the company into the successfully operating business it is today.

Richard White of UserVoice: 250K site sale on eBay, Killing goats for 6 hours, and a healthy "no"

Mon, 12 Dec 2009 00:15:00 -0500

Richard started his talk off with a story of why UserVoice was born and went on to tell us how he gained traction and some of the lessons he learned along the way.

John Marshall on Van Halen, Marriage and Crucial Mistakes

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:15:00 -0500

John discussed mistakes he’s made, as well as guidelines for success of product- vs. service-based companies.

Dave Sifry Shares Lessons Learned from Technorati and OffBeat Guides

Tue, 6 Oct 2009 12:15:00 -0800

Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati and Offbeat Guides, gave a great talk covering starting a business, delivering products, finding the right talent and much more!

Luke Wroblewski reveals his insights on achieving product excellence.

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:15:00 -0800

Luke Wroblewski, Senior Director of Product Ideation and Design at Yahoo!, gave a very insightful talk on achieving product excellence from his experience at Yahoo! and eBay.

Bart Decrem reveals hard-earned lessons running his iPhone app startup

Wed, 03 Mar 2009 00:15:00 -0500

Bart Decrem, founder and CEO of arguably the biggest iPhone App brand, Tapulous, gave an incredibly passionate and honest talk about the lessons he's learned running startups from Firefox to Flock and now Tapulous, makers of the top iPhone game Tap Tap Revenge.

Mrinal Desai speaking about "The Cat, The Dog, and Web 2.0"

Fri, 09 Feb 2009 00:15:00 -0500

Our kick-off ZURBsoapbox lecture features Mrinal Desai of CrossLoop.com in a conversation about his experiences coming to America, a clever comparison of cat people to dog people in social media, and insights for how to make friends and do business using these social tools.