Dan Wright is the Co-Founder and CEO of Armada, a San Francisco-based edge computing company building ruggedized, modular AI data centers deployable anywhere in the world - from oil rigs to military forward operating bases. Before Armada, he led DataRobot as CEO during its hypergrowth phase (peak valuation $6.3B) and was COO and General Counsel at AppDynamics through its landmark $3.7B acquisition by Cisco. A lawyer-turned-operator, Wright co-founded Armada in December 2022 alongside Jon Runyan, raised a $230M Series B at a $2B valuation in May 2026, and has deployed edge AI infrastructure across 43 countries for customers including the U.S. Navy and Aker BP.
Usman Pervaiz is the CEO and co-founder of Tekxai, a San Francisco-based digital innovation studio that builds AI-powered MVPs and custom software for startups and enterprises. With over a decade in tech, he leads a ~56-person team delivering full-stack web and mobile products with a signature 6-week build methodology, serving founders backed by Y Combinator and Techstars.
Kai Cheng is the Co-Founder and CEO of Creao AI, an AI-native app builder that lets anyone turn a plain-language conversation into a fully autonomous, self-running application. After a decade deploying production AI systems for more than 250 enterprise clients, he co-founded Creao in late 2024 with a conviction that the AI productivity revolution hasn't started until humans stop being the ones clicking 'run.' The platform hit 200,000 users organically in under a year, raised $25 million across three rounds, and runs its own internal operations - marketing, SEO, content - on the product itself.
Karthik Srinivasan is the CTO of Studio at Forum Ventures, the AI venture studio co-building the next generation of B2B companies from concept to company. With 20+ years of product engineering across Travelocity, Getty Images, and his own startup Pixibo, Karthik brings a rare hybrid of hands-on builder instinct and startup architect thinking to a studio that has already launched 17 companies - helping domain experts turn ideas into fundable businesses at sprint speed without the usual technical debt hangover.
Kent C. Dodds is a world-renowned web development educator, open source engineer, and entrepreneur based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Creator of React Testing Library and the Testing Library ecosystem, he left a staff engineering role at PayPal in 2019 to build a self-employed education empire spanning EpicReact.dev, EpicWeb.dev, TestingJavaScript.com, and now EpicAI.pro. Recognized as a Google Developer Expert, Microsoft MVP, and GitHub Star, he has taught tens of thousands of developers through hands-on workshops, books, courses, and his long-running newsletter. Father of six and an adrenaline enthusiast who snowboards and rides a onewheel, Kent believes that kindness and teaching compound faster than any technology trend.
Nader Dabit is a developer relations leader, educator, and engineer who built a career from scratch after starting to code at 30. From React Native expert to AWS advocate to Web3 bridge-builder, he has spent the last decade making complex technology accessible to developers everywhere. A founder of DeveloperDAO, author of two O'Reilly-family books, and now working at Cognition on AI software agents, Nader is the rare person who connects technical depth with community instinct - and has the self-taught story to prove it.
Tanner Linsley is a Salt Lake City-based software engineer, open source creator, and founder of TanStack - the ecosystem behind React Query, TanStack Router, TanStack Table, TanStack Form, and TanStack Start. Co-founder of Nozzle.io, an enterprise SEO platform, Tanner built a multi-million-download open source empire by solving real problems he faced every day, pioneering headless, framework-agnostic, fully type-safe libraries now used by Fortune 500 companies including Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Walmart, and Target.
Wes Bos is a full-stack JavaScript developer, educator, and course creator from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He has taught over 500,000 developers worldwide through his free and paid online courses covering JavaScript, CSS, React, and Node.js. His flagship free course JavaScript30 has over 682,000 enrollments. He co-hosts the popular web development podcast Syntax.fm with Scott Tolinski and CJ Reynolds. His course business has generated over $10M in revenue, largely as a solo operation with a free-tier marketing strategy that has built a massive, loyal audience.