/ About this event
After >400 RSVPs at LATW 2025 and requests for more how-to, please join Dr. Joe Mannion and, new for 2026, Khadevis “KD” Robinson, 2x U.S. Olympian, for an applied sport and performance psychology workshop designed to help founders grow in tandem with their startups. _______ RSVP for ticket-release notifications and event updates. See “Tickets & Updates” below for more. _______
YC CEO Garry Tan urged: “Your startup’s trajectory is tightly linked to your own growth as a founder. You can have the best tech and the smartest team, but if you’re unconsciously holding yourself back it’s like driving with the parking brake on.” Similarly, Nike’s mantra resonates nearly 40 years later because people around the world know how often we... just don’t do it.
Why isn’t knowing what needs to be done enough to do it?
Each nervous system is a unique experiment of nature, so one-size-fits-all advice is inherently limited. Instead, Joe will first use structured exercises to help attendees define their “IT”—what matters most—because optimizing performance starts with tuning our internal navigation system:
• Individual core values • How values differ from goals • What research and practice tell us about why values matter • How to apply the same framework to your startup’s core values
Next comes “DOING IT”. Like sports, founder performance is mediated by the nervous system. Yet founders rarely optimize that system with the same deliberateness elite athletes bring to theirs. Using a newly published neurodynamic model of executive functioning (Cozolino et al., 2025), Joe will help organize biological, psychological, relational, and contextual factors that enhance or inhibit our abilities to turn intentions into action.
Attendees will begin developing individualized approaches to enhance and better sustain values-based performance, supported by:
• Real illustrative examples of transformation • Fundamentals that need to be treated like daily hygiene • Attention to differences from neurodivergence to context
The workshop culminates in a fireside conversation with KD: someone who quite literally DID IT. He’ll share how he lived one of his own mantras—“A setback is a setup for a comeback!”—bouncing back from missing the Summer Olympics by a fraction of a second to make Team USA four years later.
Not once, but twice.
Together, Joe and KD will connect the science of performance with the lived realities of founders and those who support them.
You’ll leave feeling seen, inspired, and technically empowered.
Let’s do it.
See you in the host city of the 2028 Olympic Games! _______
This event is a part of #LATechWeek—a week of events hosted by VCs and startups to bring together the tech ecosystem. Learn more at www.tech-week.com.
