Events

Through our annual Founders Summit, topical webinars, and intimate, invite-only dinners, we aim to build community among the investors and founders driving the responsible innovation movement.

Founders Summit | Webinars | Dinners |

Responsible Innovation Founders Summit

Co-hosted by Responsible Innovation Labs and the Startups and Society Initiative, the Founders Summit convenes the best early stage founders, funders, and other leaders to share their stories of using responsible innovation to scale world-class companies.

On November 10th, the Responsible Innovation Founders Summit convened nearly 500 global tech leaders across San Francisco, New York, and online. Speakers included: Cityblock Health CEO Toyin Ajayi, Guild CEO Rachel Romer, Gusto CEO Josh Reeves, and many more. Check out our panels from 2022 -

Beyond the Tech: Innovating Responsibly Across Your Company

Responsible Innovation is about more than technology — It is a lens that informs every decision across product, business model, culture, and operations. Hear from leaders who have built structures to bring responsible innovation to every function across their company and how these activities have supported growth and long term value.

Building to Endure: The Business Case for Stakeholder Value

What do tech companies that have a strong sense of mission and center stakeholder value look like? Can it exist at scale? Hear from founders who have built big and impactful businesses by taking a stakeholder value approach and how it has driven innovation and led more differentiated products and resilient businesses.

Big Questions in Emerging Tech

We are on the precipice of a number of technologies that can redefine the internet and how we live, work, and play. To build the future we want, we have to optimize for intended consequences and guard against unintended ones. This session will focus on what we should be asking today to support the world we want tomorrow.

What can we do differently to advance inclusive prosperity?

Technology reshapes how we work and who benefits from our economy. What does it look like to be thoughtful about this in how we build technology and teams? We spoke with founders and investors who are doing it and scaling products to help others get there faster. What did they get right? What had they wished they’d known? And what do they think lies ahead?

Responsible Innovation for Early Stage Founders: What can we really do?

Being an early stage founder is hard. You're worried about product market fit, runway, and making payroll. With such limited time and resources, responsible innovation can become an afterthought. Ultimately, you can’t retrofit equity, purpose, or ethics. What are the concrete tools and tactics available to founders for building good into the DNA of your company?

Founder Stories: Responsible Innovation Tools and Methods

The best founders and operators want to do the right thing. And it’s hard to do. That’s why we brought together founders to share their stories on how they’ve put responsible innovation into practice – from data ethics to product decisions to board management.

Webinars and Roundtables

We host a series of in-person and virtual events with experts on pressing current issues. Check them out:

Dinners

We host intimate, invite-only dinners focused on founders running high potential businesses with the Responsible Innovation mindset. The overall goal is to create a space to explore these fundamental, thorny issues of responsible innovation in the context of personal goals. This is a meaningful experience that helps founders think in new ways about responsible company building.