UGLY TALK: FAILURE IS KEY TO SUCCESS

Failure gets talked about like it is “part of the journey.” That is the lie. The real thing is messier. Missed bets. Wrong hires. Near-breakdowns. The week you stop sleeping and start doing math at 3:00 AM. Founders are expected to eat it quietly and keep moving. No language for what happened. No playbook for what to do next. Ugly Talk is a founder room for the part nobody posts. No fluff. No consultants. Just builders with scars, talking about the call that cost them. 🎯 Why you should be in this room. Hear what failure cost them. Then hear what they did next. Learn how experienced founders separate self-worth from outcomes when things go sideways. Spot the patterns behind repeat mistakes. And the early signals you should not ignore. Leave with a few concrete moves for the next hard week. Not inspiration. Meet other founders in the thick of it. The ones who are still building. 💬 What's on the table. “Dare to suck”: how permission to fail unlocks real progress The moment things broke: missed opportunities, wrong turns, near-breakdowns, and what changed afterward Failure vs identity: separating self-worth from outcomes Treating setbacks as data: what to measure, what to ignore, and how to decide fast Rejection as redirection: how founders find the signal in the “no” Habits for staying focused and resilient when everything feels uncertain 📋 Run of show 6:00 – 6:30 PM: Reception (check-in & light drinks) 6:30 – 6:40 PM: Welcome remarks 6:40 – 6:50 PM: Keynote Speech by Ben McKean 6:50 – 7:30 PM: Panel Discussion 7:30 – 7:45 PM: Audience Q&A 7:45 – 8:00 PM: Mixer + snacks and drinks 🎤 Featured speakers. Ben McKean - Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Hungryroot Ben McKean is the Founder and CEO of Hungryroot, a personalized healthy eating assistant that uses AI to make meal planning, food shopping, and nutrition effortless and enjoyable. Prior to Hungryroot, Ben was a Vice President and General Manager at Groupon, overseeing their food and beverage business. Ben came to Groupon through the acquisition of Savored, which he founded in 2009. Savored was the nation’s leading provider of yield management technology to the restaurant industry, used by over two thousand restaurants nationwide and nearly one million diners. Prior to Savored, Ben worked in Merrill Lynch’s technology investment banking group. Ben is a graduate of Georgetown University and currently lives in North Carolina with his wife and kids. Stephen McKinney - Founder & CEO, Bizbe Stephen McKinney is a serial entrepreneur with over a decade of experience across tech, marketing, and logistics. He's the founder and CEO of Bizbe.com, an AI-native business brokerage and lower middle market M&A firm based in New York and Miami. A former contestant on ABC's Shark Tank, Steve previously founded and led Retty Logistics, a seven-figure last-mile delivery company acquired by DXP Logistics and Webster Logistics. Gwendolyn von Rahn - Co-Founder and CEO, Sweetling Health Gwendolyn von Rahn is the Co-Founder and CEO of Sweetling Health, an postpartum intelligence platform built for at-risk and hard-to-reach populations. She’s a second-time exited founder, an award-winning marketer with over a decade of experience building consumer brands for women, Gwen led creative and brand teams at Vogue, InStyle, and POPSUGAR before founding and scaling a mission-driven consumer brand into Nordstrom distribution that raised over $1M for melanoma research through the Melanoma Research Foundation. She holds a Cornell Johnson MBA and founded Sweetling from her own lived experience with the postpartum care gap. Dmitry Koltunov - Founder and CEO, Arbor Dmitry Koltunov is a serial entrepreneur, technologist, educator, and storyteller. He is the founder and CEO of Arbor, an AI-powered content engine that helps enterprises scale their communications with video and beyond. Previously, he co-founded and served as CTO of ALICE, a hospitality technology company that grew into a global industry leader before being acquired by Expedia Group. Dmitry also leads the New York City chapter of the Startup Leadership Program, New York’s oldest startup fellowship, whose 500+ alumni have collectively raised more than $1 billion in funding across every industry imaginable. He is passionate about helping founders navigate the challenges of building and scaling companies. Outside of technology, Dmitry is an award-winning songwriter and theater producer currently developing a new musical for Broadway. He holds degrees in Computer Science and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and is a CFA charterholder. 🤝 Who's hosting it. Victoria Yampolsky - President, The Startup Station Victoria Yampolsky is the Founder and President of The Startup Station, a strategic CFO advisory firm and financial education platform for startups. She partners with founders on financial strategy, modeling, and fundraising, having supported over 150 companies across 15 industries in raising more than $50M in venture capital. Victoria is also an advocate for female founders and access to capital, and has taught finance to more than 20,000 entrepreneurs through programs including the Bank of America Institute for Women’s Entrepreneurship at Cornell. She began her career at Deutsche Bank and Capgemini, and holds a BS in Computer Science from Cornell University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. 🙋 Who's getting in. Early-stage tech founders and operators navigating uncertainty, setbacks, or the emotional weight of building a company. Expected roles may include: Founders and co-founders (pre-seed to Series A) Operators (COO, Head of Ops, Chief of Staff) Product and Engineering leads building through ambiguity Growth and GTM leads working through missed targets and pivots Finance and strategy leaders supporting founder decision-making 🎁 Additional Perks Mind Your Business Every attendee will receive a free copy of this book from keynote speaker Ben McKean’s Mind Your Business. Mind Your Business