Inkitt is a San Francisco-based AI-powered publishing and entertainment company that uses reader data and machine learning to identify breakout stories before they become hits. Writers upload fiction to Inkitt's community platform; the platform's algorithm tracks reader engagement to surface manuscripts with bestseller potential. Top stories move to Galatea, a premium immersive reading app offering ebooks, audiobooks, and chat-style fiction, and then to CandyJar, a short-drama streaming app. The result: a story-to-screen pipeline with 33 million users, a new million-dollar novel produced every four weeks, and 40x the hit-rate of traditional publishers.
Ali Albazaz is the founder and CEO of Inkitt, a San Francisco-based AI-powered publishing platform that uses reader engagement data and algorithms to identify and publish bestselling fiction. Born in Baghdad and raised in Germany, he bootstrapped Inkitt from a Berlin startup after 140 investor rejections into a $400M+ valued company with 33 million users across three platforms: Inkitt (writer community), Galatea (immersive reading app), and CandyJar (video entertainment). Inkitt has raised $116.8M in total funding, including a $37M Series C led by Khosla Ventures in February 2024.
Joshua Levy is the Co-Founder and CEO of Holloway, a San Francisco-based digital publishing platform that produces comprehensive expert-reviewed guides on professional and entrepreneurial topics. A mathematician-turned-engineer, Levy previously served as a founding engineer at BloomReach and held infrastructure roles at Viv Labs (acquired by Samsung) and SRI International where he worked alongside the original Siri team. He is perhaps best known in technical circles as the creator of 'The Art of Command Line' on GitHub - a guide with over 150,000 stars translated into 14 languages and read by more than 2 million people. At Holloway, he has pioneered a new model of expert-driven digital publishing, raising $4.6M in seed funding from NEA, the New York Times Company, and South Park Commons, and co-authoring guides on equity compensation and technical recruiting that have collectively reached millions of readers.
David Gaughran is an Irish author, self-publishing strategist, and indie author advocate who turned 18 months of rejection letters into a career dismantling the gatekeeping machinery of traditional publishing. Through his 'Let's Get Publishing' series of books, a free 27-lesson course, a weekly newsletter, and relentless watchdog journalism exposing predatory vanity presses, he has helped tens of thousands of writers navigate the digital publishing revolution. A nomad by habit — Dublin, Prague, London, Lisbon, southern France — and a storyteller at heart, he writes historical adventure fiction under David M. Gaughran and was awarded the 2020 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award by SFWA for distinguished contributions to the science fiction and fantasy community.
Jane Friedman is one of publishing's most trusted independent voices - a Cincinnati-based author, educator, and industry analyst who has spent two decades demystifying the business of writing. Through her newsletters Electric Speed (30,000+ subscribers, running since 2009) and The Bottom Line (8,000+ paid subscribers), her book The Business of Being a Writer, and her widely-read site janefriedman.com, she helps authors navigate a publishing landscape that keeps reinventing itself. She came to prominence beyond publishing circles in 2023 when AI-generated fake books appeared on Amazon under her name, making her an unlikely but authoritative voice on AI, authorship, and copyright.