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Meet the Goldman Sachs Silicon Valley Hotlist, 2015 Edition

Instacart, WeWork, Automattic and more.

Catmando / Shutterstock
Peter Kafka
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.

Every fall, Goldman Sachs holds a private, off-the-record conference at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, where it gathers some of tech’s most influential investors and some of tech’s buzziest companies.

Ultimately, the purpose of the event is to burnish Goldman’s reputation in the Valley, where it doesn’t carry as much weight as it does in older industries. But people who attend say they get genuine value from going there — it’s a super-high-level crowd, and the onstage interviews and speeches can be surprisingly useful. People who attended the 2013 edition, for instance, came away impressed with Snapchat’s Evan Spiegel’s market insight and onstage presence.

For the rest of us, the event provides a quick snapshot of hot startups circa 2015, at least in Goldman’s eyes. The companies Goldman asks to come onstage are either the ones it thinks are most promising, or the ones it would like to land as clients, or some combination.

Here’s the speaker list, provided to us by several attendees. The event started today and continues through tomorrow afternoon:

  • Xiaomi
  • Wish
  • FanDuel
  • Flipkart
  • Credit Karma
  • Automattic
  • 1-Page
  • Boxed Wholesale
  • Earnest
  • Fundbox
  • Casper
  • Flexport
  • PillPack
  • BlaBlaCar
  • Movile
  • Glassdoor
  • Linio
  • Oscar
  • Thumbtack
  • Adyen
  • Instacart
  • SoFi
  • Jet.com
  • Uber
  • WeWork
  • Laurel & Wolf
  • Managed by Q
  • Mic
  • Shift
  • Stance
  • Etsy

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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