Agenda

The Founderology Growth Summit opens with hosts Kathleen Wood and Cherryh Cansler welcoming Founders into a room built for breakthrough growth. Through rapid-fire introductions, Founders immediately connect, spark powerful collaborations, and tap into the game-changing energy of like-minded visionaries ready to scale bigger and faster together.

Ellis Winstanley is a serial entrepreneur who’s built, scaled, and transformed multiple ventures—from legendary restaurant El Arroyo to tech innovation with Axial Shift. In this candid session, he’ll share how he’s blended creativity, culture, and operational excellence to grow businesses that break the mold. Founders will walk away with real-world lessons in reinvention, leadership, and building brands that connect.

Kathleen Wood delivers a high-impact session filled with proven strategies to accelerate growth, increase profitability, and scale with confidence. Founders will start the summit energized, equipped with actionable plays they can immediately execute to create momentum and drive breakthrough results.

Power couple Pinky Cole, Founder of Bar Vegan and Slutty Vegan, and Derrick Hayes, Founder of Big Dave’s Cheesesteaks, take the stage to share how they’re building explosive brands—individually and together.

From launching bold concepts to scaling an empire, their story is one of resilience, reinvention, and relentless hustle. In this exclusive joint keynote, they’ll reveal the strategies, systems, and mindset shifts that helped them turn vision into viral growth.

Whether you're growing one brand—or many—this dynamic duo will leave you fired up and fully equipped with practical tools to scale smart, stay grounded, and lead with purpose.

The Founderology Growth Summit debuts its inaugural awards program, recognizing Founders who are setting new standards for growth, leadership, and transformation. These awards honor the trailblazers who are building concepts to breakthrough and shaping the future of our industry.

Attendees will hear three 15-minute case studies exploring how to ignite phygital strategies (in-store, app, delivery, third-party, catering, etc. ) They'll learn to optimize the guest journey for driving revenue, enhancing customer experiences and increasing profitability.

Don and Evonne Varady are the visionary founders of Clean Eatz, one of the fastest-growing healthy meal franchises in the country. From a single café to a national movement, they’ve built a mission-driven brand transforming lives through food, fitness, and franchise success. In this powerful session, they’ll share how purpose, partnership, and perseverance fueled their journey—and how today’s founders can scale impact, build community, and stay true to their mission every step of the way.

Live Interactive Mastermind for ALL Founders to participate in sharing hard-earned lessons, resources, insides tips, techniques, mistakes, and methods that work. Here’s where you will gain game-changing and money-making insights from Founders who have been there and done it.

The results are in — and it’s time to see where Founders stand! Founders Advisors will reveal the collective Investor Readiness scores, uncover the biggest growth opportunities, and share real-world strategies to help you fund, scale, and strengthen your business. You'll leave with actionable insights, expert tips, and a clear path to turn your investment readiness into real-world results.

Getting on Shark Tank is a  game-changer with or without a Shark. Danielle Mohan, Founder of Topsail Steamer shares her biggest benefits, unexpected challenges, and real growth lessons that followed her experience on being 1 of 100 of the of 40,000 entrepreneurs who apply to Shark Tank actually makes it on to the show!

From a parking lot pop-up to a billion-dollar phenomenon — this is the story of how Dave’s Hot Chicken became one of the fastest-growing restaurant franchises in the world.

COO and President Jim Bitticks leads co-founders Arman Oganesyan and David Kopushyan through an unfiltered deep dive into the strategy, speed and scrappiness it took to transform a cult concept into a global brand backed by elite investors and celebrity partners. 

Learn how bold vision, viral execution and relentless focus on brand culture became the foundation of this meteoric rise.

All Founders are invited to attend this special session designed to help you gain a deeper understanding of the results from your Investor Grade Readiness assessment.  This interactive session provides practical insights into addressing your assessment to position your business to attract and retain investors—whether you’re seeking capital now or laying the groundwork for future fundraising.

This will be an interactive format to: 

• Dive deeper into what investors look for in Founder-led businesses
• Common red flags and how to eliminate them
• Specific questions Founders have about how to address their format

Founders will walk away with greater clarity on how to build investor confidence, avoid common pitfalls, and prepare for successful investment conversations.