Marc Benioff, Ben Horowitz And Joel Klein Are All Ready To Disrupt SF

Our TechCrunch Disrupt event is coming back to San Francisco this September 8 to 12, and the agenda is coming together fast. Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz will open the show, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff will be coming by to share his latest on enterprise disruption. Meanwhile, former New York Schools chancellor Joel Klein is also on the agenda to discuss his work on education technology at News Corp.

Just a reminder, the applications deadline for the Startup Battlefield competition is approaching fast. Applicants have until Friday, July 13th, at 11:59pm PT. This a big opportunity. The winner takes home $50,000, bragging rights… and the publicity and connections that can help them get major exits, like Yammer’s recent $1.2 billion sale to Microsoft or GoInstant’s acquisition by Salesforce today for $70 million.

Startups who are ready and meet all of the qualifications can APPLY NOW.

Early bird tickets for Disrupt are on sale now.

If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, opportunities can be found here.

Marc Benioff
Chairman & CEO, salesforce.com

Marc Benioff is chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. He founded the company in 1999 with a vision to create an on-demand information management service that would replace traditional enterprise software technology. Benioff is regarded as the leader of what he has termed “The End of Software,” the now-proven belief that multitenant, cloud computing applications democratize information by delivering immediate benefits at reduced risks and costs.

Under Benioff’s direction, salesforce.com has grown from a groundbreaking idea into a publicly traded company that is the leader in enterprise cloud computing. For its revolutionary approach, salesforce.com has received a Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award, been lauded as one of Businessweek’s Top 100 Most Innovative Companies, named No. 7 on The Wired 40, and was selected by Forbes as the World’s Most Innovative Company in 2011.

Benioff has been widely recognized for pioneering innovation. In 2010 he was awarded the David Packard Medal of Achievement and was named by Fortune one of the Top 50 People in Business as well as one of the Smartest People in Tech. He has been honored as the San Francisco Business Times Executive of the Year, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and the Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year by the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.

Ben Horowitz
Co-founder & General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz

Ben Horowitz is a co-founder and general partner of the venture capital fund, Andreessen Horowitz.

Horowitz was a co-founder and CEO of Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), which was acquired by HP in 2007, and Horowitz was appointed vice president and general manager of Business Technology Optimization for Software at HP. Earlier, he was vice president and general manager of America Online’s E-commerce Platform division, where he oversaw development of the company’s flagship Shop@AOL service.

Previously, Horowitz ran several product divisions at Netscape Communications. Horowitz also served as vice president of Netscape’s widely acclaimed Directory and Security product line. Before joining Netscape in July 1995, he held various senior product marketing positions at Lotus Development Corporation. Horowitz’s blog reflects on the many experiences he’s had throughout his career.

Joel Klein
CEO Education Division, News Corporation

In January 2011, Joel I. Klein became CEO of the Education Division and Executive Vice President, Office of the Chairman, at News Corporation, where he also serves on the Board of Directors. Prior to that, Mr. Klein was Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education where he oversaw a system of over 1,600 schools with 1.1 million students, 136,000 employees and a $22 billion budget. He launched Children First in 2002, a comprehensive reform strategy that has brought coherence and capacity to the system and resulted in significant increases in student performance.

He is a former Chairman and CEO of Bertelsmann, Inc., a media company, and served as Assistant U.S. Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice until September 2000, and was Deputy White House Counsel to President Clinton from 1993-1995. Mr. Klein entered the Clinton administration after 20 years of public and private legal work in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Klein received his BA from Columbia University where he graduated magna cum laude in 1967, and earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1971, also graduating magna cum laude. He has received honorary degrees from Amherst College, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Fordham Law School, Georgetown Law Center, Macaulay Honors College at CUNY, Manhattanville College, New York Law School, and St. John’s School of Education. He was selected by Time Magazine as one of Ten People who Mattered in 1999, by U.S. News and World Report as One of America’s 20 Best Leaders in 2006, and was given the prestigious NYU Lewis Rudin Award in 2009 and Manhattan Institute Alexander Hamilton Award in 2011.