Steve Blank is the father of modern entrepreneurship - a Silicon Valley serial founder who retired the day before his company E.piphany's 1999 IPO, then spent the next two decades teaching the world that startups aren't small versions of big companies. His Customer Development methodology and Lean LaunchPad curriculum, adopted by the NSF as I-Corps, have trained 9,300+ scientists, launched ~1,400 startups, and raised over $3 billion. A Vietnam-era Air Force veteran who never finished college, Blank now teaches at Stanford, advises the U.S. Navy, and co-directs Stanford's Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation - applying startup thinking to national defense.
Chris Hughes is a U.S. Air Force veteran, co-founder and president of Aquia Inc., VP of Security Strategy at Zenity, and the founder of Resilient Cyber - a cybersecurity newsletter and podcast with 31,000+ subscribers. A three-time Wiley/Springer author, inaugural CISA Cyber Innovation Fellow, and adjunct professor at two universities, Hughes has become one of the most influential voices on software supply chain security, vulnerability management, and agentic AI security.