Startup Cafe: A conversation with a Slack founding team member
☕️ Startup Cafe: A conversation with a Slack founding team member
Learn how to scale yourself and your company without losing your soul by hearing case studies and organization-building examples from the world's most iconic companies.
Evolution is Silicon Valley's most prominent AI-powered executive coaching and consulting firm, helping seed to public companies scale, such as Slack, Snap, Notion, Glassdoor, and Netflix. They support broad organizational development from the individual leader to the systemic and technical, supporting the distinct stages start-ups developmentally go through via a unique human-led, AI-backed proprietary process.
Our integrated approach combines AI-enabled solutions with deep human expertise to cultivate collective intelligence, foster meaningful connections, and guide conscious cultural evolution, ensuring organizations can navigate and thrive through unprecedented change.
Evolution came into prominence working closely with Slack in 2015 at their earliest stage and scaling with them through their IPO and acquisition by Salesforce. This involved coaching their leaders, facilitating their cultural architecture, building early people ops infrastructure, and training hundreds of managers.
Evolution has hundreds of use cases and has learned key lessons at each stage for the leader and organization as a whole, with an underlying philosophy rooted in Integral Theory that provides an intuitive map to build sustainable organizational success. They now have an AI suite that dramatically increases impact and reach and provides precision-guided, adaptable intelligence for organizational transformation.
Agenda
8:45 - 9:45 am • Coffee and Socialize
9:45 - 10:30 am • Scheduled Experience
August 27th, 2025
About: Ali Rayl
Ali Rayl is an original employee of Slack, where she built the customer support organization before moving into a product leadership role during her 11-year tenure. Join her and Matt Auron to hear the story of how Slack was founded, as well as critical leadership and scale lessons learned along the way.
The conversation will be conducted by Matt Auron, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Evolution. This coaching firm has supported some of the fastest-growing and most iconic start-ups.
About: Matt Auron
Matt Auron is the Managing Director and Co-Founder of Evolution, who supports senior leaders in fast-growing companies to scale into their potential with long-term, sustainable success. Matt’s combination of deep intuition, organizational experience, and behavioral science expertise allows him to design powerful and customized development solutions for their clients. He has worked with clients such as Slack, Snapchat, Notion, Change.org, Coursera, Tile, Eero, Collective Health, Dropbox, and Radiology Partners.
Matt is also a founding partner at Evolution Ventures, an early-stage venture fund that combines coaching with investment for seed- and other early-stage companies such as Slack, Density, Relativity Space, verse.io, Seed, Radiology Partners, and Wade&Wendy.
Matt formerly worked with DaVita HealthCare Partners, a highly progressive and culture-focused Fortune 500 healthcare company, as Senior Director and Global Lead on their Wisdom Team. There, Matt served as the steward for the culture globally, developing leaders and facilitating change through coaching, facilitation, and training. Matt’s team was awarded Training magazine’s “Top 125” award for the five years he helped lead it. Before DaVita, Matt worked as an Organizational Effectiveness Consultant at the ground-breaking Los Angeles Universal Preschool (LAUP), building an organization that coached early childhood education professionals with developmental curriculum.
Matt has been trained and mentored by luminaries in the field of organization development, such as Peter Block, Chris Worley and Edie, Charles Seashore, and continually learns and integrates current thinking into his coaching practice, such as neuro-leadership and mindfulness. As an author, Matt has published articles in both academic, peer-reviewed journals as well as trade magazines such as Training and Development.
He has been a regular presenter at the Organization Development Network annual conference. Matt holds a Master’s degree in Organization Development (MSOD) from Pepperdine University, where his thesis research was focused on building trust in groups.
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ABOUT The KINN
The KINN is a membership network, accelerator, and collaborative workspace for conscious entrepreneurs, based in Venice, CA. Running tailored inner development and business accelerator programs for startups, providing executive coaching, accountability, and access to a top-tier LA-based community of entrepreneurs, creatives, intrapreneurs, and investors. If you're interested in learning more about KINN Membership, please visit http://thekinn.co/apply
About Startup Coil
Networking for innovators to connect with like-minded individuals, startups, and entrepreneurs. startupcoil.com
About Nerds of LA
Join Nerds of LA—where LA’s most innovative minds collide! We’re building the ultimate network by connecting with other powerhouse groups in the area, expanding our reach across the city. If you’re ready to link up with founders, VCs, AI visionaries, and innovators shaping the future, this is the group you’ve been looking for.
Pick your platform and join the conversation with LA’s tech community. 🤝 🦾
Highlights from previous special guests
Building Businesses from the Heart with Lavinia Errico, Co-Founder of Equinox
How to Scale Consciously with Ryan Blair
Founder Mental Health Pledge with Brad Baum
Art Show with Denise Di Novi
Operating Incubators with Reuben Vollmer
Malibu Love Affair with Brigitte Londo
Live Through Love with Ruben Rojas
Finding Stillness with Henry Mitchell
Smarter with Science! with Science Stanley and Zen Zachary
The Science of Charisma: The 7 Secrets of Public Speaking with Richard Greene
Unveiling the Human Experience with Paul Vincent
Note: By attending this event, I hereby give my permission to the Horizon House LLC, their Releases, and to the photographer, my free and unlimited consent and permission to publish/broadcast, republish/rebroadcast or exhibit in the furtherance of their work, with or without identification of me by name, any photographs, videos or audios of myself, that have been obtained from my participation in KINN or Horizon Studio activities. I furthermore waive any and all claims for any compensation by reason thereof or for damages for reasons thereof.