AFTER DARK: Sunrise Edn.

​​'A Storytelling Event: The Hard Thing About Building Hard Businesses'

AFTER DARK brings together the tech founders and builders in the spaces not often discussed - the taboo, the sub-culture, and the wild frontiers.

​​No corporate polish. No sanitised pitches. Just raw, honest lightning talks about the hard truths of building hard things in provocative industries.

​​This is where innovation meets candor - and in this special Sunrise Conference edition - where the unfiltered stories of bold builders finally get their moment.

​​The official program might not go there. But we will.

​Speakers:

​Dr Samuel Banister - Xylo Bio

​Sam is co-founder & Chief Scientific Officer of Xylo Bio: revolutionising brain health with precision therapies that restore and enhance neural function

​Xylo is developing next-generation neurotherapeutics that enhance brain plasticity to restore and optimize cognitive and emotional function. By combining advanced neuroscience with computational drug discovery, they aim to create innovative treatments for neurological and psychiatric conditions worldwide.

​More: https://www.xylo.bio/

​--

​Caitlin Zotti - Caligra

​Caitlin Zotti is COO of Caligra, a hardware startup building the c100 - a Linux-native workstation designed for engineers, ML researchers, and data scientists who've outgrown general-purpose machines.

​Before Caligra, she spent seven years at Pin Payments, scaling the business and leading it through acquisition to a global payments platform. She brings a rare mix of operational depth and a track record of scaling startups from the early stage through acquisition and beyond.

​More: https://caligra.com/

​--

​Heather Morrison - Special Australia

​Heather is a strategist and entrepreneur with 15 years of experience,  working with brands from IKEA to Uber. 

​A few years ago, she co-founded Bump'n - a disability-driven startup on a mission to put pleasure within reach for an overlooked community, creating the world's first sex toy for people with disabilities. She learned first-hand that when you're building something nobody wants to talk about  - but millions of people need -  roadblocks and constant pivots come with the territory.

​Today she coaches startups in the disability and taboo space, helping founders take their big ideas and make them real.

​More: https://au.specialgroup.com/

​--

​Plus, maybe another very special guest speaker...

​--

Curated by Gaz Williams (GROUP GROUP) and Kali Norman (Innovation Bay)

​​Supported by Blackbird: https://www.blackbird.vc/