June Founder Fridays

On June 4th, Google’s Developer Ecosystems will host a digital Founder Fridays for North American startups focused on Building with Community. Today, many startups across all sectors are creating and investing in communities as a core pillar of their strategy. However, community driven growth isn’t a new phenomenon, and in this month’s session, we’ll focus on how startups can foster communities and how community can be a channel for product growth and a brand differentiator.

This event will include lightning talks and a live Q&A panel with Google experts, technology leaders and founders to discuss how startups can leverage community as part of their ethos and strategy from Day 1.

Lockup

Who Should Attend?

Founders, technology leaders and marketing leaders of early stage startups interested in community driven growth as a pillar of their startup strategy. 

Schedule

  • Founder Fridays lightning talks will go live on Friday, June 4 at 12:00pm EST
  • The live Q&A will begin right after the content at 12:45pm EST so be sure to stay tuned!

Speakers

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Kudzi Chikumbu

Director, Creator Community, TikTok

Kudzi Chikumbu is a media technology executive, speaker and creator. He serves as the Director of Creator Community at TikTok where he is responsible for building the creator community through creator marketing, partnerships and creator education all while ensuring that the platorm is fostering a diverse and inclusive ecosystem. Kudzi's passion comes from his background as a creator where he learned how video content can help build community, amplify diverse voices and change the landscape of representation in entertainment. Kudzi has been at TikTok for over 4 years and has helped develop content strategies for some of the platform's biggest creators. Kudzi launched initiatives to foster diversity such as TikTok for Black Creatives in partnership with MACRO, the annual #MakeBlackHistory app-wide campaign to celebrate Black History Month, the TikTokTrailblazer List to highlight voices in diverse communities and the TikTok Creator Diverse Collective.

Kudzi was born in Zimbabwe and grew up in South Africa. He began his business career as an accountant and management consultant at Deloitte Consulting in South Africa, after which he enrolled at Stanford Graduate School of Business for his MBA. He then moved into the world of online video at TikTok. Kudzi was named as one of Fortune's 40 Under 40 in 2020, won the ADCOLOR Innovator Award in 2020 and was named one of the Next Gen Execs by The Hollywood Reporter in 2019.

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Chris DiBona

Director, Open Source, Google  

Chris DiBona oversees a variety of Open Source programs across Google, helping release thousands of projects since his start in 2004, including Tensorflow, Chromium, Kubernetes, Android and Go.

Chris has his masters from CMU, is an advisor to the Royal United Services Institute and served on the US Commerce Department's Data Advisory Council. He is a published author, editor and podcaster. Also, he has advised a number of productions, including HBOs 'Silicon Valley’ and FXs’ ‘Devs’.

Questions? Contact us at founder-fridays@google.com