David's style is direct, generous, and deeply human. He blends radical candor with practical wisdom earned from building companies and guiding executives through change. Each keynote invites reflection, sparks conviction, and equips audiences to grow through uncertainty rather than react to it.
He creates a space where truth becomes usable. His questions reveal what is real and what must change. His stories come from experience, not theory, and his delivery carries the presence of a founder, investor, and coach who has lived the journey from startup to scale. The result is a conversation that feels personal, actionable, and lasting.
Grounded in two decades of entrepreneurial success and enterprise partnership, his message converts disruption into direction and conviction into action. Leaders leave with clarity, renewed focus, and the systems to sustain growth long after the event ends.
Keynotes
Learn more about David's Keynotes
Organizational Keynote
The Resilient Growth Playbook: Thriving Through Change
The hardest moment for any leader and team is realizing that what worked yesterday won’t work tomorrow. Vision is important, but resilience is what carries organizations through change. Drawing on decades of experience, David brings lessons from ventures and enterprises that turned uncertainty into momentum. Leaders and teams walk away with ways to adapt faster, navigate uncertainty, and keep growth alive in any environment.
Most failures don’t come from bad ideas, they come from the assumptions no one thought to question. The Premortem is a way to surface those blind spots before they cost you. In this keynote and workshop, David demonstrates how teams can pressure-test their plans, align on what really drives success, and turn risks into advantages. The result is sharper decisions and stronger outcomes when it matters most.
No one succeeds alone. Behind every breakthrough is a circle of people who challenged, guided, and supported the journey. In this keynote, David shares how to create your own Personal Board of Directors. It’s a group of mentors, peers, and truth-tellers who help you see what you cannot see and raise the bar on who you can become. Leaders leave with a clear, practical way to bring this into their own lives and careers.
Every company eventually hits the wall where the old playbook no longer works. Growth doesn’t come from a silver bullet. It comes from building systems that work every day, in good times and in hard ones. David shares stories of organizations who uncovered their real strengths, adapted when markets shifted, and built systems that made growth part of the culture. This keynote shows how to install an always-on engine that keeps moving forward, no matter the disruption.
David Kidder is the unique human you always want in your corner, personally and professionally. His experience as an entrepreneur is peerless and his insights to successfully grow a business are priceless. There is no one I quote more often professionally and trust more personally.
Linda Boff
CEO, Said Differently
Deploying David Kidder’s Growth Operating system at Citi was a game changer. His powerful and compelling case for change hit home. Our leaders stepped into the urgent need to learn new skills and new ways of working in order to bring relevant new products and services to our customers.
Debra Hopkins
Former CEO of Citi
Once a big company makes the decision to grow, it has to learn how. New to Big presents a unique roadmap for big companies looking to spark powerful growth engines from within.
Clayton Christensen
Harvard Business School and bestselling author of The Innovator’s Dilemma
The lessons of Kidder's book are simple. They did it and you can too. No magic tricks, no special genetic advantage, just passion, persistence, good sense, and a little luck
Seth Godin
Founder + Author (This is Strategy)
Kidder’s Startup Playbook is a one-inch punch of the start-up experience—a raw insider’s guide to the real playbooks behind some of tech’s greatest successes and comebacks.
Marc Andreessen
Cofounder and General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
David Kidder and his team at Bionic offer innovative and powerful ways for legacy companies to create entirely new legacies.
Pauline Brown
Former Chairperson, LVMH NA
With passion and unbridled candor, David and Bionic team deliver not just the “Growth Operating System tools” but the ability to spark a new way of thinking among ‘co-founders’ and provoking large Enterprises to do things very differently.
Jud Linville
CEO, Citi Cards, Citi
Working with David Kidder and the Bionic team gives teams the energy, tools, and, most importantly, the courage to innovate and scale new growth.
Beth Comstock
Former Vice Chair, GE
David Kidder understands like nobody else what makes start-ups successful and how big companies can learn from them. If entrepreneurship is a new form of management, David is the Michael Porter of our era!
Pedro Earp
Chief Marketing and ZX Ventures Officer
New To Big is a great how-to book for change leaders seeking to drive scalable, profitable growth in big companies, reminding us how to use deep questioning, masterful listening, and a learning culture to discover the ‘commercial truth’!
