Startup Day 2015 300x250GeekWire Startup Day is just nine days away. As our biggest entrepreneurial event of the year approaches, we’re excited to announce awesome new speakers who will be providing tips, lessons and war stories from the startup trenches.

Tickets are still available here, so make sure to grab yours before they’re gone. (Speaking of which, the Startup Demo Zone slots just sold out).

Kicking off the event will be Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, who took office Jan. 1, 2014 and is looking to keep the momentum going in Seattle’s vibrant technology community.

Rahul Sood
Rahul Sood

Murray’s welcoming remarks will be followed by a talk from Rahul Sood — a startup veteran whose got more battle scars than we can count. Sood recently left his role at Microsoft Ventures to launch a new gaming startup called Unikrn, and he’ll be talking about what led him down that entrepreneurial path as well as sharing insights from his first gaming company, VoodooPC, which sold to HP.

Sood is a dynamic speaker, and we’re excited to have him on board.

Finally, we’re pumped to add celebrity chef Ethan Stowell to the mix. You’ve probably eaten at one of Stowell’s world-renowned restaurants — from Tavolata to Staple & Fancy to How to Cook a Wolf.  But here’s your chance to hear startup lessons from the award-winning chef, sharing insights from kitchen.

The restaurant business is especially tough, and we’re excited to have Stowell offer the good, bad and ugly of how he’s successfully navigated a sometimes rocky entrepreneurial voyage.

Ethan Stowell wil share startup lessons from the restaurant business.
Ethan Stowell will share startup lessons from the restaurant business.

Those speakers join an awesome lineup that also includes Ben Huh of Cheezburger; Kristen Hamilton of Koru and Matt Ehrlichman of Porch, fresh off the company’s whopping $65 million venture funding round. We’re also honored to welcome Concur co-founders Raj Singh and Mike Hilton for a fireside chat on their last day of work, following their blockbuster sale to SAP for $8.3 billion.

While we love the inspirational and emotional talks at Startup Day, this event involves more than just passively sitting back and taking in advice. We really encourage entrepreneurs to connect, commiserating and sharing ideas with others in the audience.

As part of that, we are once again hosting the Resource Room, an area where entrepreneurs can get hands-on instruction from experts in the areas law, finance, development and marketing. Some of our experts who’ll be joining us include entrepreneur T.A. McCann of Rival IQ and Gist; former Internet Explorer head Dean Hachamovitch and Nick Huzar of OfferUp.

We hope you can join us on January 30th for Startup Day, presented by our great partners at EY. You can check out the full agenda on our events Web site, and purchase tickets below.

Editor’s note: Can’t make it to Startup Day? Don’t worry. The big GeekWire Anniversary Bash & Ping Pong Tournament is just around the corner on March 26th, with early-bird tickets on sale now.

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