Brant Cooper helps startups get started. As a Lean Startup thought leader, he travels the world speaking to entrepreneurs at conferences, hackathons and workshops. Recent speaking events include the Kuala Lumpur Venture Capital Symposium, Lean Startup conferences in Vancouver and Michigan, the Forward Technology Conference in Wisconsin, the Lean Startup Challenge in Boston, and Lean Startup Machines in London, New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. Brant also consults for and advises startups on Lean Startups and Customer Development, with clients in Silicon Valley, New York, San Diego, France, Australia and Singapore.

Clients include Qualcomm, MOGL, HubKick, MotherKnows, i.TV, Lean Startup Machine, Discovr and many others.

Prior to becoming involved in the Lean Startup community, Brant was involved with startups in a more traditional way. He has over 20 years experience in IT and a long track record of bringing high tech products to market. As a leader in Professional Services, Product Management and Marketing, he has directed strategy, design, marketing and implementation of numerous products for a variety of startups including Tumbleweed, Timestamp, WildPackets, Incode and InfoBright.

He has published articles for Venture Beat and Business Insider, blogs at Market By Numbers and tweets @brantcooper.

Patrick Vlaskovits is an entrepreneur, mentor and author. He has founded two startups (now on his third).

Patrick has spoken at tech conferences nationally and internationally, including SXSW. He blogs at http://vlaskovits.com and can be followed on Twitter @Pv. Patrick enjoys advising and mentoring and serves as a mentor for the 500 Startups seed fund/accelerator as well as for The Lean Startup Machine.

Patrick organizes Twiistup, a well-attended tech/startup conference that celebrates the entrepreneurial and investment talent of the Los Angeles startup ecosystem. He also organizes the Los Angeles Lean Startup Meetup.

Patrick holds a Master’s in Economics (emphases in finance and econometrics) from University of California, Santa Barbara. When he has spare time, he can be found with his family usually on the beach or in the ocean either fishing or surfing.