Last year's Startup Grind Global Conference - Silicon Valley's most unsettling party - ended with a boyish face from Sam Bankman-Freed. The now-disgraced cryptocurrency has been reunited via a conference call at the Fox Theater in Redwood City for an "FTX Incredible Growth" session.
But a year later, Bankman-Fried was arrested for fraud and money laundering. Cryptocurrency stocks have plummeted. Celebrities face lawsuits for promoting questionable arguments. And Startup Grind has completely changed its tone.
The conference, held Tuesday and Wednesday in Redwood City, attracts founders from around the world as well as the Bay Area's leading investors. This year, visitors are waiting for simple but dramatic changes: there is no blockchain; It has artificial intelligence.
This is a drastic shift that shows how low the cryptocurrency has fallen and how quickly enthusiasm in the tech industry can change. At last year's conference, the general manager of the NFT Marketplace OpenSea spoke. Following the session, prominent Bay Area founders and investors discussed blockchain, cryptocurrency, and the future of the internet. The entire 30-minute presentation of the first day was devoted to the topic of tax reporting for cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
Cryptocurrency has been sidelined this year due to post-blockchain addiction and a booming economy.
The only blockchain-related program to take center stage at the 2023 conference was Leif Abraham, CEO of investment platform Public. He described cryptocurrencies as another way for people to enter the investment market, likening the once-thriving market to interest in rare sneakers or meme stocks.
“Every year has its own asset class,” Abraham said. “In 2021, there were promotions of memes and cryptocurrencies.” Now, he says, people are getting into state-backed government bonds.
In the conference web tent, Cheeze CEO Simon Hudson answered questions about NFTs in a presentation titled "How It Started, How It Happened." Initially focused on "camera-centric products on the blockchain," Cheeze recently added an AI feature.
With dozens of startups visible to passers-by in groups in the Fox Theater lobby, startup booth, and on the street outside of the conference, opposition to cryptocurrencies is growing. Ceeks Panel, a metaverse for celebrities and influencers, was wild for most of the day as three separate B2B AI startups on opposite sides were filled with interested members. .
The founders sold startups that used artificial intelligence to map social media experiences, automate sales workflows, digital marketing and meeting management. Oksana Voronova, co-founder of workflow automation platform Adminix, told SFGATE that a few months ago her team integrated AI into their products. “It's a must,” he said.
Startup Grind participants hope to get some of the information about artificial intelligence from the tech giants. Of the 272 Y Combinator start-up incubator companies, 57 are working on generative artificial intelligence. Fearful of missing out on the next big thing, big business owners have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into start-ups with little or no revenue.
The same venture capitalists see the conference as an opportunity to bet outside of cryptocurrencies. Venture capital funding for cryptocurrency and blockchain startups in the first quarter was the lowest since 2020. Sequoia Capital, one of the Valley's largest investors and an early supporter of FTX, has sent partners to Startup Grind to attend sessions on AI, cloud security, and data compliance. .
One of the participants, Kinshuk Shiv Agrawal, came to the conference wearing a funny FTX Risk Compliance T-shirt that he bought especially for the event. The former eBay employee said he responded well to the t-shirt, but unfortunately no one at the conference found it funny enough to offer him a new job. Last year, he considered learning about blockchain development but decided to stay away — a decision he is grateful for.
If there's one thing he's learned about the tech industry living and working in Silicon Valley, "it's that it's fickle," Agrawal said.
Be sure to contact Stephen Council, technology reporter at Signal, at stephen.council@sfgate.com or call 628-204-5452.