Brant Cooper helps startups get going.

As the author of the popular Lean Startup book "The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development.", he is a sought-after Lean Startup writer, speaker and consultant.

The "CustDev book" is required course text at several universities, including the University of Chicago MBA program, Stanford University, De Paul, Boston University, UC Santa Barbara and University of Oslo. His next book, The Lean Entrepreneur, will be published by Wiley in the Fall of 2012.

He has spoken recently at the GrowConf Vancouver, Agile Scandinavia 2012, Lean Software & Systems 2012, and the Kuala Lumpur Venture Capital Symposium. He as also presented at leading companies, such as Qualcomm, Intuit, and Hewlett Packard.

Brant Cooper is passionate about growing the San Diego tech community. He runs the San Diego Tech Founders monthly meetup that consistently draws 200 attendees. Past speakers have included Lean Startup author Eric Ries, Customer Development inventor Steve Blank, KISSmetrics CEO Hiten Shah, David Cohen, CatchFree CEO Sean Ellis and venture capitalist Mark Suster.

Prior to becoming involved in the Lean Startup community, Brant was involved with startups in a more traditional way. He has over 20 years experience in IT and a long track record of bringing innovative products to market. As a leader in Professional Services, Product Management and Marketing, he has directed strategy, design, marketing and implementation of numerous products for a variety of startups including Tumbleweed, Timestamp, WildPackets, Incode and InfoBright.

Brant Cooper blogs at Market By Numbers and tweets @brantcooper.

Patrick Vlaskovits is an entrepreneur, mentor and author. He has founded two startups, currently serves as CMO at Drumbi and co-wrote The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development and The Lean Entrepreneur, published by Wiley.

His debunking of the origin of Henry Ford's "faster horses" has been featured on Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal blog and The Browser. A dynamic speaker, Patrick has spoken at conferences nationally and internationally, including SXSW, The Turing Festival, Lean Startup Machine, LeanCamp, GrowConf, and SVC2LX. Patrick formally advises a number of tech startups and also serves as a mentor for the 500 Startups Accelerator. For some unknown reason, he holds a Master's in Economics (emphases in finance and econometrics) from University of California, Santa Barbara. When he has spare time, he can be found surfing his favorite Southern California surf breaks.