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Become A Sponsor

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Dent events and experiences are for people and brands acting with purpose and passion to make a difference.

Does your brand help people do something amazing?

Does your brand help fuel people’s passion and purpose?

Does your brand help people make a difference?

Dent is different, and so is your brand. Your brand might be consumer or B2B, automotive or apparel, food or drink, services or tech. No matter what your focus, if you’re enabling people to make a difference and connect with a greater purpose, you’re in the right place.

Dent attendees are influencers on the cutting edge of change, building something bigger than themselves. Dent partners enable that effort, reaching this exclusive group of influential buyers in unique ways. Dent experiences immerse attendees in your brand’s mission, products and story.

Whether you choose to sponsor a Dent:Dinner, an experience or meal at a Dent conference, or choose a bespoke partnership, we’ll help you influence the influencers and achieve your goals. Together, we’ll make a dent in the universe.

>> Learn More

Your sponsorship will be custom-tailored to match your goals and your brand messages. Most packages include promotional considerations, on-site presence, and product experience opportunities. Sample sponsorships include:

“Dine-a-round” sponsorships, where your sponsorship includes acting as sponsor host for a select group of attendees at an evening dinner event, as well as all “standard” event sponsorship benefits

“Artist in Residence” sponsorships, where your brand associates itself with the creative arts, sponsoring on-site artists during Dent events, as well as all “standard” event sponsorship benefits

Hospitality sponsorships might include breaks, breakfasts, lunches, charging stations, and the like, as well as all “standard” event sponsorship benefits

Bespoke sponsorships to match your marketing goals, from simple product placements to immersive experiences

>> Learn More

Dent at San Diego Comic-Con 2017

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Want an invite to our reception featuring Richard Browning? Do not comment here, instead Go here…

We are returning to San Diego Comic-Con with another set of panels, plus a reception on July 20, where we will be featuring an appearance by exosuit inventor “Iron Man” Richard Browning. Below are the panels currently slated for the #SDCC2017 stage. To be emailed with schedule updates, submit your info here.

Our SDCC panels have now gone live on the Comic-Con site!

The State of Iron Man Tech
Thursday July 20, 2017 2:00pm – 3:00pm
Room 32AB
Tony Stark and the technologies he creates are a part of modern lexicon. Mainstream publications like The Atlantic run articles like “Everyone Wants Elon Musk to Be Tony Stark,” and Musk himself admits that some of his inventions are modeled after Stark creations. While Musk has yet to build a flying exosuit or a J.A.R.V.I.S.-style assistant, others have. Some of these inventors will join moderator Steve Broback (Dent the Future, LLC) to discuss their innovations — ones that could have come straight out of Stark Industries. Panelists include inventor and TED speaker Richard Browning (founder of Gravity.co), who actually flies via his jet engine-powered suit, along with Chris Gerty (informatics subsystem team lead, NASA – Johnson Space Center), Adam Draper (founder & managing director, Boost VC), and Zoë Bell (stunt woman and actress).

The Lazarus Pit Gets Real
Friday July 21, 2017 4:00pm – 5:00pm
Room 28DE
The Marvel and DC (and other) universes universally feature age-inhibiting “renewal elixirs” in their storylines. Nick Fury, Black Canary, and Batman are among the scores of characters who have reversed or delayed the aging process. Thanks to rejuvenation biotechnologies being developed by people like Bill Maris (founder, Section 32) and physician Joon Yun (president of Palo Alto Investors), the Lazarus Pit, Vigoral, Super-Soldier Serum, Extremis serum, Infinity Formula, and Pym Particles are now no longer fantasy concepts. Remarkable progress has been made in extending the life spans of animals and, soon, humans. This panel will cover the latest in anti-aging and cognitive enhancements.

The Evolutionary Argument for Purpose Driven Companies

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In Yuval Noah Harari’s hit book Sapiens, he explains the far-reaching implications of our ability, as Homo Sapiens, to communicate about imaginary things:

Any large-scale human cooperation — whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe — is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination. Churches are rooted in common religious myths. Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to redeem our sins…Two lawyers who have never met can nevertheless combine efforts to defend a complete stranger because they both believe in the existence of laws, justice, human rights — and the money paid out in fees.

This shift, this ability to think in imaginary terms, is called the Cognitive Revolution (it was then followed by the Agricultural Revolution). This big step — imagination — is what took our species beyond tool-making and onto the top of the food chain; and in fact the world we construct with common fiction is perhaps stronger in some ways than the earth on which we walk:

Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have thus been living in a dual reality. On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations and corporations. As time went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the United States and Google.

The conclusion that human “groupishness” and our ability to put the needs of a group ahead of our own in service of a shared imagined reality, is common among various branches of psychology. Jonathan Haidt, in his book The Righteous Mind, references a series of studies on different stand-alone communes or cooperative communities, and found that those based on religious beliefs were far more successful than those without. The power of a controlling imagined reality is to allow people to work together.

Recently, our companies have grown in size and complexity. More recently still, digital communication has made it possible for people to feel they are part of a 200,000 person company, instead of a 200-person silo somewhere within a larger and somewhat anonymous organization.

To make matters worse (for humans), we have begun to shift between jobs and even careers at a very rapid pace. For my contemporaries, spending more than five years at a company that you didn’t create is odd and warrants some kind of explanation.

As a result, we are left with less natural trust within our companies and teams. We have begun to rely again on imagined realities instead of the more basic human tools of relationships and gossip. The motivational power of purpose for company employees is likely tied to this adaptive and psychological trick of creating trust and coordination within large groups of strangers through a shared story.

We’re Hiring a Director of Partnerships

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Director of Partnerships

Greater Seattle Area, WA
6 month full-time contract-to-hire

We are seeking a Director of Partnerships to help Dent grow and maintain a set of corporate relationships to support our conferences, dinners, experiences, and programs. Dent creates and empowers a community of people who are here to put a dent in the universe.

Our new Director of Partnerships will work closely with the co-founders to define corporate sponsorship and partnership opportunities based on the conferences, experiences, and community of Dent, price these offerings, draft documentation for these opportunities, draw on their own network and the existing network of Dent to find organizations interested in these partnerships, and work to bring these partnerships to fruition. The Director of Partnerships will also be responsible for maintaining the relationships with our partners and sponsors and ensuring that we deliver for both them and our community.

Candidates should have experience working in sales or partnership positions with quotas, be familiar with cultivating and closing deals with large organizations, show excellent communication skills, and a fluency in online social and CRM platforms.

Having said all of that, we’re way more interested in working with someone awesome than in finding a person who checks all the boxes. If you think you’d be a great fit for this role, even if you don’t have a resume that aligns completely with the above, please get in touch.

Our office is located at Thinkspace in Redmond. We’re flexible on most things, including time spent in the office, but some time spent in the office is a must; at least half a work week on average. Candidates should also be comfortable with a productive amount of chaos.

Interested? Apply here.

The deadline to apply is Wednesday, June 7th.

So, what is Dent?

For those of you interested in applying who aren’t all that familiar with Dent yet, here is a little bit more context about who we are and what we’re about.

Dent creates and supports a community of entrepreneurs, executives, and creatives who are driven to “put a dent in the universe.” We began as an annual conference but quickly developed into a strong community of people who call themselves “Denters.” The name Dent comes from the Steve Jobs quote: “we’re here to put a dent in the universe, why else even be here?”

The conference focuses on drawing actionable insights from the stories of others and building an environment where peers from diverse backgrounds and fields of expertise are encouraged to build meaningful relationships through conversation and shared experience. In addition to an annual conference, now hosted in Yountville, CA, Dent works to engage with Denters throughout the year and provide opportunities for them to connect with each other and forge the kinds of connections that lead to powerful collaborations.

Dent was founded in 2012 by Jason Preston and Steve Broback.

Elon Musk Doesn’t Read This Stuff

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Several years back I read through an answer to a question on Quora from Elon Musk’s ex-wife Justine. The question was “How can I be as great as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Sir Richard Branson?”

Today, years after reading the answers, what stands out in my memory is the part where she basically said: Elon doesn’t spend time reading stuff like this on the internet. He’s just out doing things.

I struggled with this one for a while, because I think there’s a lot of truth to it: it’s the difference between energy and motion, between light and heat. It’s one thing to dream, it’s another to quit your job and jump in.

But I am a total junkie for this kind of writing. A good portion of the posts on Farnam Street Blog are right up my alley. I loved High Output Management, and I will devour anything from books to academic papers authored by Ron Heifetz.

So how do I reconcile this?

As I’ve worked and sweat and struggled at my own startup, where we create and support a community of entrepreneurs, innovators, and creatives who are out to put a dent in the universe, I’ve found a lot of this kind of reading invaluable even as I’m out “doing shit.” It’s true that nothing teaches like experience, but there’s no question that the experiences of others are critical in guiding my journey.

I happen to be a reader. I have read more than 20 books this year, all of which have influenced my thinking and decisionmaking in some way. Others take their guidance in other forms. Conversations, videos of talks or interviews, even classrooms. But every successful entrepreneur, even Elon Musk, faces their struggles and takes their guidance from somewhere.

Elon may not be scrolling through Quora questions about his own life, but he is reportedly a voracious reader, and a famously quick learner of everything from UX design to actual rocket science.

Ultimately I think his ex-wife’s answer is misleading. Some of the stuff you can spend time reading will help you only a little — narratives constructed after the fact, voyeuristic peeks into other people’s “setups.” But a lot of what’s out there can be very useful as you tackle the challenges you will inevitably face. The trick is to know which content is which.

In fact, Justine Musk agrees with me on this. She later left a second, clarifying answer:

I said that a) extremely successful people tend not to waste time surfing the ‘Net and b) they are more likely to read books. They read more than the average person and they read deeper than the average person.

There’s a difference between gawking and learning; Elon does the latter. So should we all.

“Iron Man” Richard Browning to Appear at San Diego Comic-Con

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UPDATE: We are currently scheduling his equipment demo for July 20, at 5:30pm near the convention center. If you are interested in being on the priority list and to be notified of specifics, please fill out this short form.

We are excited to announce that noted inventor (and recent TED speaker) Richard Browning will be joining us in San Diego this July! For our fourth year in a row, we are honored to be helping the SDCC programming team produce panels covering science and tech topics, and whenever possible, organize real-life demonstrations of the cool technologies that get presented onstage.

Cnet.com recently wrote that Browning has created “a flying exoskeleton that’s the stuff of superheroes.” We could not agree more, which is why the Dent team jumped at the chance to bring Richard to San Diego Comic-Con.

As Richard himself said recently, “In terms of showing off what our flight suit can do, it’s hard to think of a better place than San Diego Comic-Con.”

If you are interested in being a part of this amazing experience as either a guest or a cohost/sponsor, please email steve [at] dentthefuture etc.