Prerna Gupta is the founder and CEO of Hooked, the chat-fiction app that turned bite-sized text-message stories into a habit for over 100 million Gen Z readers and topped the App Store in 25 countries. A Stanford economics grad who once ran consulting decks before building apps, she co-created the music hits LaDiDa and Songify under her startup Khush (acquired by Smule, where she became Chief Product Officer) before reinventing fiction for the smartphone generation. She describes Hooked as 'books for the Snapchat generation' and her own role as a product CEO who would rather build with her team than work a room.
Nir Eyal is an Israeli-American behavioral designer, author, and angel investor best known for the 'Hooked Model' - the four-step framework used by the world's most habit-forming tech products. His 2014 book Hooked became a Silicon Valley bible for building engagement; his 2019 book Indistractable offered the antidote. His 2026 NYT bestseller Beyond Belief, co-authored with his wife Julie Li, tackles the hidden variable behind human performance: belief itself. A former Stanford lecturer, Eyal has backed companies like Canva and Kahoot, writes for the NYT and Harvard Business Review, and runs the influential blog NirAndFar.com.