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speaker photo

Harper Reed (he/him)

CEO, 2389 Research, Inc

Harper Reed is a technologist that predicts the future for a living. He spends most of his life building big things, hacking things, and talking about doing both of those things. As CTO of the Obama 2012 campaign, Harper was the first to bring the tech mentality to a political level. He believes the talent of a great bunch of humans can transform an organization like nothing else and uses that belief to strengthen, deploy, and inspire every team he works with. Harper also believes his incredible luck has led him to achieve wonderful things like pioneering crowdsourcing at Threadless.com, founding Modest Inc, and guiding the software team at PayPal. He is the CEO of the venture backed AI company, 2389.ai. You can find Harper hacking on personal projects and enjoying life in Chicago with his partner, Hiromi and their beautiful and bizarre poodle, Lulu.

Sessions

Mentor Office Hours

Office Hours: MVP & First Product

July 8, 202611:00 AM EDT – 12:00 PM EDT
Office 2
English
Build the minimum product that validates your core idea, know when to launch versus when to keep iterating, and avoid the trap of over-engineering before you have customers. See More.
Mentor Office Hours

Office Hours: Customer Success & Retention

July 8, 20262:30 PM EDT – 3:30 PM EDT
Office 6
English
Reduce churn by understanding why customers leave before they do, increase expansion revenue from existing customers, build customer success functions that prevent problems rather than just fix them, turn satisfied customers into champions who sell for you, and make retention more profitable than acquisition. See More.
Mentor Office Hours

Office Hours: Founder Mental Health

July 8, 20264:00 PM EDT – 5:00 PM EDT
Office 3
English
Recognize the signs of burnout before it's too late, cope with the isolation that comes with leading a company, manage stress without it consuming you, and find sustainable pace in a culture that glorifies founder mode. See More.
Mentor Office Hours

Office Hours: AI & Automation

July 9, 202611:00 AM EDT – 12:00 PM EDT
Office 4
English
Leverage AI to create competitive advantages your competitors can't easily replicate, develop automation strategies that let small teams punch above their weight, build AI-native features into your product, and stay lean by using AI tools effectively. See More.
AIFest

Life in the Fast Lane - Building a Dark Factory Code Generator

July 9, 20261:05 PM EDT – 1:35 PM EDT
SKY STAGE
English
Harper Reed shares what a year of running a team on ~100% AI-generated code has taught him about workflows, guardrails, org design, and the choice every leader is about to face. See More.