BasisTech Demo Day

About Event
Presenting Startups
Agenda
Founders and Presenters

About Event

We are gathering founders, investors, operators, and academics to find new partnerships, collaborations, and market opportunities. Our one day program will include discussion, presentations, and demos by leaders in enterprise data platforms, applied machine vision, fraud detection, threat intelligence, and dual-use technologies.

Our evolving program will include multiple networking opportunities and lunch by our in-house chef Rodrigo Blanco. In the morning we will focus on the founder’s journey with a keynote and panel composed of founders who achieved strong exits, with a few startup spotlights. In the afternoon we will host more startups in a demo showcase and hold breakout discussions focusing on Japan, dual use tech, and specific startups.

To close out the event Gerry Sussman will give a talk on why programming is still fun.

Presenting Startups

Agenda

Time

Description

9:30 AM

Breakfast and networking

10:30 AM

Welcome and keynote

John Harthorne, founder of MassChallenge and Two Lanterns Venture Capital, will deliver a keynote on building organizations that help founders turn bold ideas into real-world impact. Drawing on an unusually close view of startups launching, succeeding, and failing, John brings hard-won perspective on what it really takes to help founders navigate uncertainty and build enduring companies.

11:00 AM

Startup Spotlight

Rapid pitches by Helix Carbon, Leela AI, LOOKOUT, Multitude Insights, and Solid.

11:30 AM

Panel: Humans + Agents, Rethinking How Software Gets Built

Moderator:

Jim Psota, serial entrepreneur and former CTO of Panjiva (acq. by S&P Global)

Panel:

John Frank, founder/CEO of Darwin Galactic
Trevor Keith, founder/CEO of Solid
David Rose, founder/CEO of LOOKOUT and author of SuperSight
Jeremy Wertheimer, investor, entrepreneur, scientist, philanthropist, and former VP Engineering at Google

12:00 PM

Lunch + Demo Floor

Fifteen startups will exhibit and demo, creating opportunities to explore new ideas and connect with founders. A lunch by our in-house chef, Rodrigo Blanco, will be served throughout the session.

2:00 PM

The Valley of Death is Misunderstood: Why Great Tech Still Fails to Transition

Lieutenant Colonel Alex “HEFOE” Hillman, PhD, U.S. Air Force, DARPA, will deliver a featured talk on one of the most persistent challenges in innovation: why strong technologies do not always make the leap into broader use.

2:30 PM

Dual-use Tech Hurdles

A focused discussion on the practical challenges of building, selling, and scaling dual-use technology, from navigating government adoption to translating technical promise into real-world deployment.

3:30 PM

Taking Your Startup to Japan

A practical discussion on what it takes for startups to enter the Japanese market, build the right relationships, and navigate the business, cultural, and operational considerations that shape success in Japan.

4:30 PM

Gerry Sussman Lecture

Why Programming is Still Fun!

Professor Gerald J. Sussman is a pioneer in teaching electrical engineering, computer science, and physics. He has been involved in artificial intelligence research at MIT since 1964, with work spanning programming languages, computer architecture, circuit design, and human problem-solving strategies in science and engineering. He is widely known as a co-author of the influential textbook Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs and as a co-inventor of the Scheme programming language.

He earned both his S.B. (1968) and Ph.D. (1973) in mathematics from MIT under the supervision of AI pioneer Seymour Papert.

Over his career, he has received numerous honors for his contributions to computer science and education, including the ACM Karl Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award and the IEEE Taylor L. Booth Education Award. Professor Sussman will present his thoughts on how and why, despite the rise of agentic coding, programming is still fun.