Lavin Exclusive Speaker
Stand-up comedian and entrepreneurship speaker Matt Ruby shows you how to succeed in business by demonstrating, hilariously, all the ways to fail. Creator and star of the viral online video series Vooza, which devastatingly satirizes startup culture, Ruby’s talks meld creative business strategy and standup humor: entertaining, instructing, and cutting through the jargon of the start-up and business world to increase the humanity in your workflow.
Matt Ruby is a Swiss Army knife of talents and skills, all put to use in his deeply funny and versatile stand-up act about the anti-business-as-usual way of doing business. As the creator, producer, and star of Vooza, a video comic strip about the startup world, Ruby has aired over 150 episodes, which have been viewed millions of times. Mashable called Vooza “the Spinal Tap of startups” and Forbes called it “viral video done right” and “comedic genius.” With a background in business, comedy, and the comedy of business, Ruby provides conference comic relief, germane as it is uplifting.
Before producing Vooza, Ruby spent over a decade as employee #1 for the web application company 37signals (now called Basecamp), where he worked as a designer and media maker, as well as authoring the 37signals Manifesto and helming the 37signals podcast. With his current company, Fort Pelican, Ruby helps tech companies create writing, videos, and other content to broadcast their human sides to consumers. Likewise, his comic presentation addresses what might seem like boring or drab tech topics, making them interesting, educational, funny, and accessible to any audience—from suits to hoodies to everyone in between.
Ruby is the co-author of The New York Times bestseller Rework, which he describes as a “Zen self-help business book with lots of drawings,” as well as Getting Real, and Defensive Design for the Web. He is also the co-author of Signal vs. Noise, which was one of the top business blogs on the Internet. Ruby’s debut comedy album, Hot Flashes, is out now.