Paypal co-founder Max Levchin to speak at web summit

More than 20,000 people expected to attend tech event in Dublin this November

Paypal co-founder and chairman of Yelp Max Levchin will be among the speakers at The Summit in November. Photo: Bloomberg
Paypal co-founder and chairman of Yelp Max Levchin will be among the speakers at The Summit in November. Photo: Bloomberg

The Summit, formerly known as the Web Summit, has confirmed Paypal co-founder Max Levchin and Oculus VR chief executive Brendan Iribe as speakers for this year's event.

The event, billed as a “Davos for geeks”, is expected to attract more than 20,000 people to the capital this November.

Mr Levchin is also a board member of Yahoo Evernote and chairman of Yelp. Mr Iribe meanwhile made headlines last month, as CEO of Oculus, after the company was acquired by Facebook for a reputed $2 billion.

As well as Iribe and Levchin, Limerick-native Patrick Collison will return to The Summit. Collison is founder and CEO of online payments company Stripe, which raised $80 million earlier this year.

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He will be joined by social entrepreneur Josh Tetrick, CEO of Hampton Creek, the firm that focuses on finding new ways of utilising plants to replace eggs.

The event will be held over three days this year and will include a fashion summit, a film summit and an enterprise summit.

"Technology is ubiquitous in everyday life and The Summit will now reflect that. Music will become a lot more engrained in the event this year and we will be putting a huge focus on the Internet of Things," Paddy Cosgrave, founder of The Summit, said.

The Summit is estimated to have contributed €40 million to the local economy last year with over 75 per cent of attendees travelling to Ireland from overseas.