Celebrity Speakers

Richard Branson

Sir Richard Branson is founder of the Virgin Group. Virgin is a leading international investment group and one of the world’s most recognized and respected brands. Conceived in 1970 by Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin Group has gone on to grow successful businesses in sectors including mobile telephony, travel & transportation, financial services, leisure & entertainment and health & wellness. Virgin has created more than 400 branded companies worldwide, operating in over 50 countries.

Sir Richard has challenged himself with many record-breaking adventures, including the fastest ever Atlantic Ocean crossing, a series of hot air balloon journeys and kite surfing across the Channel. He has described Virgin Galactic, the world’s first commercial space line, as “the greatest adventure of all.”

He is also a record breaker online, voted the UK’s number one Twitter user, the world’s most social CEO and the world’s most followed person on LinkedIn. He maintains a daily blog on virgin.com with more than 21 million followers across five social networks.

Since starting youth culture magazine, Student, at age 16, Sir Richard has found entrepreneurial ways to provoke positive change in the world. In 2004 he established non-profit foundation Virgin Unite to tackle tough social and environmental problems and strives to make business a force for good. Most of his time is now spent working with Virgin Unite and organizations it has incubated, such as The Elders, Carbon War Room, B Team and Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship. We are proud to have Richard Branson as one of our Celebrity Speakers

Tony Hsieh

Mr. Tony Hsieh is the Founder and Partner of VegasTechFund. Mr. Hseih serves as a General Manager of Venture Frogs, LLC. Mr. Hsieh serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Zappos.com, Inc. Mr. Hsieh originally got involved with Zappos as an Advisor and investor in 1999, about 2 months after it was founded. Mr. Hsieh eventually joined Zappos full time in 2000. Under his leadership, Zappos has grown gross merchandise sales from $1.6M in 2000 to over $1 billion in 2008 by focusing relentlessly on customer service. Prior to joining Zappos, he co-founded Venture Frogs. Prior to co-founding Venture Frogs, LLC, Mr. Hsieh co-founded LinkExchange, Inc. During his tenure at LinkExchange, he was responsible for architecting some of the major technologies for the LinkExchange and served on the Board of Directors. Prior to LinkExchange, Mr. Hsieh worked as a Software Engineer at Oracle. Mr. Hsieh’s creativity led to the creation of many services to help web site owners grow their online traffic and sales. He has been a Director of Superior Air Charter LLC since September 2011. He serves as a Director of Everyone.net, Inc. and Zappos.com, Inc. He is the author of Delivering Happiness. He received a B.A. in Computer Science from Harvard University in 1995. Tony Hsieh is a one of our incredible Celebrity Speakers

Robert Herjavec

Robert Herjavec is one of North America’s most recognizable business leaders. Born in Eastern Europe, he arrived to North America on a boat with his parents after escaping Communism in the former Yugoslavia. From delivering newspapers, and waiting tables, to launching a computer company from his basement, his drive to achieve has led him to the fulfillment of a better life for himself and his family.

A dynamic entrepreneur, Robert has built and sold several IT companies to major players such as AT&T. In 2003 Robert founded Herjavec Group, and it quickly became one of North America’s fastest growing technology companies, scaling from $400K in annual sales revenue to a run rate of $150 million. Today, Herjavec Group is recognized as a global leader in information security specializing in managed security services, compliance, incident response and remediation efforts for enterprise level organizations.

His inspiring books, “Driven” and “The Will to Win”, were simultaneously Top 10 Bestsellers that earned him the title of “Best Selling Author”. Robert’s motivational business advice has received millions of impressions through TV, print, radio and digital media. He shares his expertise with other entrepreneurs each week as a leading Shark on ABC’s Emmy Award-winning hit Shark Tank as as one of our top Celebrity Speakers.

For the past four years, Robert has competed as Ferrari #007 for Herjavec Group Racing in the Ferrari Challenge North America Series, achieving multiple podiums and winning Rookie of The Year in 2011. To Robert, running a business is a lot like one of his greatest passions, racing cars. He believes, “You have to stay laser-focused when driving a car over 200 miles an hour, and the same approach is required when growing a business in today’s world of rapidly changing technology.”