Pony Ma and Lei Jun anchor to break the Beijing

Sarah Lacy is currently working on TechCrunch senior editor. She is also an award winning journalist and author of two books, critically acclaimed in "once you're lucky, twice you're good: the rebirth of Silicon Valley and the rise of Web 2.0" (Gotham books, April 2008) and "a brilliant, Crazy, cheeky: how the top 1% of entrepreneurs profit from global chaos ... ? Read More

Even before I worked at TechCrunch Disrupt was one of the few industry conferences that I looked forward to every year. There are two big reasons why: the enthusiasm and joy of the startups out there that run and an unprecedented lineup of the most interesting people in tech, Frank and honest talk.

We expanded the franchise to New York, it was natural for most exciting Silicon Alley stage names. This includes people like Fred Wilson and Dennis Crowley, but also the top names in media as Charlie Rose and Arianna Huffington. We even threw New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the mix.

In thinking through the lineup to derail the Beijing – our first ever international conference – I wanted to make sure we and some of the most interesting personalities from the West to China. But more importantly that we anchor the show with the most interesting names on the stage of Chinese technology, we can find.

This is not a conference about Silicon Valley coming to China to tell in the country, as is the case. China is the only country in the world, where entrepreneurs are already build Locomotive Online $ 1 billion. This Conference, which aims to bridge the gap between two distinguished tech ecosystem in the world today.

So after many months of work and in the early morning, Transcontinental phone calls, I'm happy to start announced the composition of our group. This combination of veterans and newcomers, investors and entrepreneurs, and of course the East and West.

The Conference will kick off with one of the most captivating people in the tech world today: Tencent CEO and founder of Pony Ma.

Although the Alibaba and Jack MA or Baidu, Robin Li, often at the international conference circuit, this pony Ma, which proved to be a strength, Chinese entrepreneurs may be on a global scale. Tencent is not only the largest Internet company in China, it is the third largest in the world. This Titan from China surging online games/virtual goods universe is one area where Valley copycats not Chinese. Tencent company you worry, if you run in China, and if you start in the US – how to Groupon –, is a company you want to do a joint venture.

It's the perfect time for Ma event header TechCrunch. After years of focusing on the Chinese market Tencent are starting to get more international, expands its staff in the United States and quietly acquiring United States launches. If you can't make it to China, it will be a keynote address, which you'll want to make sure you catch on livestream.

Lei Jun is not nearly as well known as MA, but when I asked friends and entrepreneurs in China, which they most like to see on stage at Disrupt, almost all of them mentioned it. He is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, which is compared with each of Ron Conway in Peter Thiel. Earlier this month he made waves with the announcement of the upcoming Android phone Xiaomi's in keynote, Steve Jobs-style.

Xiaomi is one of the most ambitious startups in China right now. It seeks to make the first smart phone with high quality, and for the Chinese market, the price is cheaper than other local smartphones and less than half the price of the iPhone. Will it run on Android, but Google features and services are specifically for the Chinese market. It's sure to turn off the pricing war that will affect everything from HTC for Google and Apple one of the biggest tech stories of the fall.

We will announce more speakers over the next few weeks, so you may want to grab your tickets here now. And if you don't speak Chinese or Chinese speak only – don't worry. TechCrunch invests in real-time translation headsets for the Conference, thus each of the guests could solve the audience in their native language and everyone in attendance can trace.

As I said at the beginning of this post, another thing that could Disrupt a special event is to start the battle. We can stack agenda with big names, but we rely on the TechCrunch community make battlefield simply unforgettable. If you're a startup, and you want to demo your product at one stage as pony Ma and Lei Jun, send us your application now. Application forms are available in English and Chinese languages, and presentations can be done in any language. The battlefield is not limited to Chinese companies – like all our Disrupts startups from around the world are invited to submit.

Questions about whether your company fit? If in doubt, don't hurt to fill in the questionnaire. Just TechCrunch staff will verify applications, and we want to see every great.

Stay tuned for more information about how to defeat Beijing in the coming weeks!

The company claims since March 2008, Tencent is China's largest and most used Internet service portal. Popular products company powers as instant messaging and games.

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Break open registration SF Hackathon! Plus the last day for early bird tickets

Tarikh KOURULA is a technologist and entrepreneur based in New York. In 2005, Tarikh founded non-standard projects in New York City based design studio hardware and software. This is the last product offer – Marco mobile application that uses SMS for private share maps and steps-a portable instruction. Uncommon work included development of products and R&D for Hopelab, Yahoo!, ... ? Read More

Registration officially opened for our fourth Hackathon, and we would like to make it our biggest yet! We promise more pizza, more caffeine and more fame than ever. We have 700 registrants for the last event in New York — let us top! The format remains unchanged – slightly less than 12:0 am a hack on the site and to represent the working demo audience of developers, press, and industry insiders. Sign up now!

Celebration of developers

GroupMe proved that you can build a hacked off, seed-funded-A-series ed, acquired by Skype, all in about a year starting from TC Hackathon. (Props to Jared and Steve for their heinous hustle). But the purpose of these increasingly awesome events not only to build startups – we want to give developers a platform on which to shine. For each there is Mr GroupMe Stabbyphone; for each Wisedame is Drunkerator; for each Docracy venture Crapital. It's that mixture of utility and imagination that keeps Hackathons and our industry, however, fresh. Most of the area is being built behind the scenes of hard work by talented developers and Hackathons are the best way we found in the center of their attention.

The first organized Hackathons, Daniel Raffel, Chad Dickerson and myself and we had a blast doing it. This time Jeff Bennett will take the helm. He is an experienced player, Hackdays past for Yahoo and even win one or two along the way! It will be a great event. While we strive to take into account all, better register now to make sure that you're in!

Last day for early bird tickets!

For those of you that are not hackers today is the last day to get the best price tickets for derailing the SF. check list of all-star guests and speakers here and here. Disrupt SF will have an amazing after-parties and even better battle both startups compete for the ultimate upset a cup and a $ 50 000. You won't want to miss this. Get tickets early bird now here.

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Turntable. FM, Scott Cook, and Instagram will mix it up at the break of SF

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Erick Schonfeld currently works at TechCrunch as Co-Editor. He joined in 2007 and is based in New York. Schonfeld oversees the editorial content of the site, selects and edits guest posts, helps to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produces some TCTV shows, and writes daily for the blog. He is also the father of three... ? Learn More

We like to mix things up onstage at Disrupt SF, which is only a month away so get your early bird tickets now. One session I am really excited will be on lean startups with Eric Ries on the day he will release his book, The Lean Startup (you can watch a video I recently did with Ries on the topic). The Lean Startup movement is picking up steam, and not just among startups, so we decided to bring two founders who take the approach to heart: Intuit’s Scott Cook and Instagram’s Kevin Systrom. What could a huge company like Intiut and a tiny startup like Instagram have in common? Come to Disrupt to find out.

Speaking of pivots (a lean startup strategy), one of the hottest early stage startups right now is Turntable.fm, which truly did pivot from its previous incarnation as Stickybits. Co-founders Billy Chasen and Seth Goldstein will come give us an update on the growth and interest in the social music site where you can grab the DJ stand and plays tracks to a crowd of bopping avatars. Maybe we can even convince investir Chris Sacca to come spin some tunes onstage (he is very musical, you know). Personally, I find it fitting that Turntable will be representing at Disrupt SF since I discovered the site working late the weekend before Disrupt NYC.

Other speakers will include Elon Musk, Vinod Khosla, Peter Thiel, Mike McCue, Dustn Moskovitz and many others. You can see the growing list of speakers here.

Early bird tickets are only available until August 24th, so for the best prices please be sure to get your tickets now.

Disrupt SF is going to be held at the massive San Francisco Design Center Concourse, and we have partnered with Oyster.com to provide several hotel options surrounding the area. Go ahead and visit the Oyster/ SF Disrupt website to make reservations. Be sure to use the code “Disrupt SF” for a 10% discount.

Disrupt is also known for its amazing after parties. Each ticket gets you into every after party, with all three parties starting at 9pm and going until midnight. One after party hotspot we will be taking over is Roe, with another after party at Mighty

If you’d like to become a part of the Disrupt experience and learn about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Jeanne Logozzo or Heather Harde for more information.

Scott Cook
Co-founder, Intuit

Scott Cook started his career at Procter & Gamble, where he learned about product development, market research, and marketing. He soon began using the insights he was learning there to look for an idea for a company of his own. That idea came to him one day when his wife was complaining about paying the bills. With personal computers just coming out at the time, Scott thought there might be a market for basic software that would help people pay their bills. He launched Intuit in 1983, which today offers software and online products to help individuals and small companies manage their finances. Scott Cook, a founder of Intuit, has been a director of Intuit since March 1983 and is currently Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board. He served as Intuit’s Chairman of the Board from February 1993 through July 1998. From April 1983 to April 1994, he also served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Intuit. Mr. Cook also serves on the boards of directors of eBay Inc., and The Procter & Gamble Company. Mr. Cook holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Southern California and a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, where he serves on the dean’s advisory board.

Kevin Systrom
Co-founder, Instagram

Kevin Systrom is a co-founder of Instagram, a photo sharing application for the iPhone. He also founded Burbn, an HTML5-based location sharing service. Kevin graduated from Stanford University in 2006 with a BS in Management Science & Engineering—he got his first taste of the startup world when he was an intern at Odeo that later became Twitter. He spent two years at Google—the first of which was working on Gmail, Google Reader, and other products and the latter where he worked on the Corporate Development team. Kevin has always had a passion for social products that enable people to communicate more easily, and combined with his passion for photography, Instagram is a natural fit.

Billy Chasen
Co-founder, Turntable.fm

Billy Chasen is the Co-founder of Turntable.fm. Before Turntable.fm, Billy Chasen was the Founder and CEO stickybits.com. Prior to stickybits, Chasen was on the founding team of betaworks, where he created chartbeat.com, a real-time analytics service and firef.ly, a chat service. Chasen has a B.S. in computer science from the University of Michigan. His art website is located at billychasen.com and his blog is anerroroccurredwhileprocessingthisdirective.com

Seth Goldstein
Co-founder, Turntable.fm

Seth creates and invests in really awesome companies. Most recently he and Billy Chasen created turntable.fm, an addictive social music service. In 1995, Seth founded Sitespecific, which pioneered online advertising solutions for companies like Duracell and Travelocity. It was acquired by CKS Group in 1997. In 1999, Seth joined Fred Wilson as Entrepreneur in Residence at Flatiron Partners where he built a practice in “pervasive computing,” investing in companies Kozmo, Modo and Vindigo. In 2002, Seth created Majestic Research, the first Wall Street research firm to mine primary data for hedge funds to forecast the financial performance of public companies. Majestic Research was acquired in 2010 by Investment Technology Group (NYSE: ITG). In 2005, Seth started Root Markets with renowned Salomon Brothers trader Lew Ranieri and the Chicago Board of Trade to create the first financial exchange for online mortgage leads. Seth started SocialMedia.com in 2007 which makes ads more relevant across the Web with a unique social advertising platform. SocialMedia was acquired in 2011 by LivingSocial. In 2007, Seth created the pre-eminent start-up ghetto Pier 38 in SanFrancisco, which houses Dogpatch and dozens of other startups. In 2010, Seth co-founded Stickybits, which connects digital media to real-world objects via barcodes. Seth has served on the board of the Internet Advertising Bureau, where he co-chaired its Social Media committee and helped architect the first set of best practices in social advertising. Seth was the original investor in Web 2.0 pioneer del.icio.us which was acquired by Yahoo! in 2005, and was one of the first investors in Etherpad which was purchased by Google in 2009.

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Elon Musk, Dustin Moskowitz and Eric Ries are ready to shake things up at the break of SF

Elin is Community Manager for TechCrunch. It had previously been the Community Manager and worked on one of their most successful products, SuperPoke! Pets. Originally from Huntington Beach, Elin attended California State University, Chico, where she studied organizational communications and art history. ? Read More

As you know, Disrupt comes to San Francisco in September this year, and we have some amazing speakers and judges declare. Tickets are on sale SF upset here.

We have already announced some of the keynote speakers: Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Marissa Mayer, Mike McCue and Vinod better. Who else is going to be there? Well today we announce several key speakers. Not only we will have four listed above, we are incredibly excited to be Elon Musk, Dustin Moskowitz, Eric Ries, and Matthew Prince to join us. Musk co-founded PayPal, Tesla Motors, and space exploration. He is currently CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX and Chairman of SolarCity. Of course, Moskowitz was a co-founder of Facebook, and most recently, startup, Asana, in addressing the problem of cooperation at the workplace. RIES Lean startup helped start the movement and there is a book published under the same name. And Prince wrote his first computer program when he was 7 and now the co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare, which started at our last defeat SF and now helps to speed up billions of page views per month across the Internet.

You can be sure that disrupt the SF will be studded event filled with brand new startups, guest speakers and judges, amazingly brilliant hackers, after parties, surprises, and more. As we get closer to the event, we will post a few guest speakers, judges and many other surprises. Break the SF will be 12-14 September, starting with our Hackathon on 10 September and 11. It takes place in beautiful San Francisco design center concourse, which is 125 000 square feet of space shocks for us.

This is one event you won't want to miss. If you want to be part of Disrupt the experience and to learn about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Jeanne Logozzo or Heather Harde for additional information.

Elon Musk
General Director & CTO, space exploration technologies, co-founder of & CEO, Tesla Motors

Elon Musk is an entrepreneur and co-founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors, and space exploration. He is the Chairman/CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX and Chairman of SolarCity. Musk was born and raised in South Africa, the son of a South African engineer and Canadian-born mother worked as a dietician in New York City and for fun. His father inspired his love of technology and musk bought his first computer at age 10 and taught himself how to program; at the age of 12 years he sold his first commercial software space game called Blaster. In March 1999, co-founder of X.com musk, financial services and email payments company online. A year later, X.com received Confinity, originally the company was established for light money between Palm Pilots and combined entity focused on email payments through PayPal domain, acquired as part of Confinity. In February 2001, X.com renamed legal in PayPal. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for 1.5 billion in stock. Prior to its sale of musk, the company's largest shareholder-owned 11.7% of the shares of PayPal.

Dustin Moskowitz
Co-founder, Asana

Dustin Moskowitz is the co-founder of Facebook and, more recently, Asana, start addressing the issue of cooperation in the workplace. In Facebook, it has been a leader in technical staff where he conducted basic site architecture. He was also responsible for the mobile strategy and development of the company. Since Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on their dorm room, Dustin plays an important role in the growth and development of the site since its inception. Dustin attended Harvard University as an economics major for two years before moving to Palo Alto, California to work full-time on Facebook.

Eric Ries
Author, speaker, consultant, the lean startup &

Eric Ries is an author, speaker and consultant to run lean. Previously, he was one of the founders and served as the Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. He is the co-author of several books, including The Black Art of Java game programming (Waite Group press, 1996). While students at Yale that he co-founded, catalyst set. Although catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a senior engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content. In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the best young entrepreneurs of Tech he was a member of the Advisory Board of several technology startups and venture capital firms. In 2008, he was Adviser to the company at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers &

Matthew Prince
Co-founder Of &, CEO Of CloudFlare

Matthew is the founder and CEO of CloudFlare, Inc. Matthew wrote his first computer program when he was 7 and could not shake the bag after visiting the University of Chicago law school, he worked as a lawyer for one day before jumping at the opportunity to be a founding member of the tech startup. He never looked back. CloudFlare-Matthew third entrepreneurial venture. Matthew holds a degree in English and computer science in Trinity College. He graduated with highest honors from the Harvard Business School, where he was a George f. Baker Scholar and was awarded the Dubliner to entrepreneurship. He earned a JD from the University of Chicago and a member of the bar of Illinois. He teaches technology law as an adjunct professor at the Faculty of law, John Marshall, where he is a member of the Board of advisors for the Center for information technology and privacy law. He is also the co-founder of project honey pot.

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