Mark your calendars for the 2016 Founders Summit, a day of inspirational talks by world champion athletes, famed entrepreneurs and inventors, sponsored by the Tom Tom Founders Festival in partnership with the iLab at UVA.
Speakers for this year’s day-long Summit will gather at the Paramount Theater on April 15 to discuss everything from entrepreneurship to climate change and lip balm. With plans to announce more speakers in February, those already lined up for the event are listed below.
Bill Crutchfield
The founder of Crutchfield started his business from his mother’s basement with only $1,000 in savings and has since built the company into a $250 million annual revenue, 500-employee Charlottesville-based enterprise.
Rodney Mullen
This 35-time skateboarding World Champion is also an inventor and investor with a deep understanding of the role of passion and creativity in entrepreneurship.
Sukhinder Singh Cassidy
As founder of Joyus—the leading online video entertainment platform reimagining online shopping—she is a leading technology executive and entrepreneur who served as president of Asia Pacific and Latin America at Google, leading an 18 country expansion.
Craig Dubitsky
As founder of Eos Lip Balm and Hello Products, his approach to the $30 billion dental industry launched his products into 20,000 stores. Along with numerous honors and awards, Dubitsky holds six patents.
Doug Stoup
A movie stuntman turned extreme explorer and founder of Ice Axe Expeditions, he is the world’s leading polar adventurer who documents the effects of climate change on his record breaking expeditions.
The fifth annual Tom Tom Founders Festival will take place April 11-17 at various locations in Charlottesville and include “concerts, talks, competitions and public art that connect hundreds of bands, startups and visionaries,” according to a release. In 2015, over 26,200 people attended the festival, which showcased over 400 community organizations and had an economic impact of $1.5 million on the city.
Tickets are on sale for the “Early Bird” price of $69. The price will increase when the next round of speakers is announced.