Meerkat Founder Ben Rubin Added To Traction Conference Lineup

Traction, a conference taking place on June 18 at Vancouver’s Harbour Event Centre, has announced the addition of Meerkat founder Ben Rubin to its already impressive lineup of tech entrepreneurs, c-suite executives and growth engineers.

Meerkat, since its debut at SXSW, has generated significant buzz in the tech community, attracting $14 million led by Greylock Ventures, with participation from celebrities Ashton Kutcher, via his Sound Ventures, Jared Leto, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley and Universal Music Group.

Greylock Ventures partner Josh Elman, ex-director of growth at Twitter, has since joined Meerkat’s board of directors, while Greylock’s Bobby Goodlatte, previously design lead for user growth at Facebook, is involved with the Traction conference.

Although founded in 2012 by Ben Rubin, Meerkat was introduced to the world at SXSW in February and has been fighting it out for livestreaming app supremacy with Twitter’s Periscope app, which debuted practically simultaneously.

On March 18, Jimmy Fallon used Meerkat to broadcast a Tonight Show rehearsal, attracting over 4,000 viewers. And while the 330 people who tuned in to watch Al Roker cook a steak in his home no doubt enjoyed the privileged access to someone they mainly know as a weatherman, Meerkat’s long-term success will depend on whether it outlasts the fry-pan stage of tech journalism buzz and manages to outlast its Twitter-sponsored rival.

Traction will present over 30 speakers, including Hootsuite’s Ryan Holmes, PlentyOfFish’s Markus Frind, and Neil Patel of KISSmetrics.

Presenting representatives from LinkedIn, Pinterest, Quora, Dropbox, Zillow, Hubspot, Marketo, Groupon, AngelList, the Traction conference will present strategies for growth, including content marketing, analytics, conversion and strategic partnerships.

Proceeds from the Traction conference will go to non-profit entrepreneurial support hub Launch Academy.