Rakuten Advertising is the global affiliate and performance-marketing arm of Japan's Rakuten Group. Born as LinkShare in 1996 and acquired by Rakuten in 2005, it connects the world's top brands with publishers, creators and highly engaged audiences across 200+ countries. Today it pairs a pioneering affiliate network with AI-powered tools for fraud detection, partnership discovery and reporting, while pushing influencer and affiliate marketing closer together.
Button is the leading mobile commerce enablement platform that uses AI-powered deep-linking technology to intelligently route mobile users to high-converting app destinations. Founded in 2014, Button has driven over $25 billion in cumulative commerce by connecting retailers, publishers, and creators in a performance-driven ecosystem - turning every mobile tap into a measurable, revenue-generating action.
Nick Stamos is the CEO of Rakuten Advertising, one of the world's largest affiliate and performance marketing networks, where he leads an AI-driven initiative called 'Affiliate Intelligence' to reshape how brands and publishers connect. A MIT-trained strategist turned serial entrepreneur, Stamos previously co-founded Sindeo, a digital mortgage startup, built mobile analytics at Telephia through its acquisition by Nielsen, and spent nearly a decade in management consulting before pivoting to tech. Based in Mill Valley, California, he champions the convergence of brand and partner marketing and has positioned Rakuten Advertising at the forefront of influencer and affiliate innovation.
Jerry Qian is the Co-Founder and CEO of Reacher, an AI-powered creator marketing platform headquartered in San Francisco. After stints at Meta and NASA and graduating from UC Berkeley, Qian co-founded Reacher in 2024 with Bora Mutluoglu to automate influencer discovery, outreach, and campaign management for brands on TikTok Shop, Instagram, YouTube Shopping, and Amazon. The company is a Y Combinator S25 alum, holds the #1 spot on the TikTok Shop App Store, serves 1,000+ brands including Under Armour and Logitech, and has crossed seven figures in ARR.

Pat Flynn is an entrepreneur, author, and podcaster best known for founding Smart Passive Income (SPI), a platform where he openly documents the strategies - and the income numbers behind them - that power his online businesses. Laid off from his architecture job in 2008, he turned an e-book about the LEED exam into a career-defining pivot, eventually building a media company with 60 million+ podcast downloads, multiple Wall Street Journal and Amazon bestselling books, a Kickstarter-funded tripod product, and a Pokémon card YouTube channel that became its own standalone business. His signature move: publishing every dollar earned and spent, monthly, in public.

Nick Eubanks is a serial entrepreneur, digital marketing executive, and distribution-first strategist who has built and sold multiple businesses, scaled agencies to 100+ clients serving the UFC and Nestle, co-founded Traffic Think Tank (acquired by Semrush for $1.8M), and now serves as Global CMO at Digistore24 while operating two investment vehicles. His core thesis - that distribution is the last competitive advantage that survives AI - is reshaping how founders and marketers think about sustainable growth.