About Co-Founders

Co-Founders is reimagining what live performance can be - a place where technology and humanity don't just coexist, but amplify each other. Through the story of Esata Thompson, an underrated Oakland coder who hacks her way into Silicon Valley's most competitive startup accelerator, the musical creates the kind of shared emotional experience that sparks real-world collaboration. The show features the first real-time rendered hologram puppeted by a human actor in theater history, and a web app that places two new startup ideas from the audience into the performance each night - making every show unique and every audience member a potential co-creator.

The Bay Area has already embraced this vision. In 2025, Co-Founders sold out its 6-week World Premiere at the American Conservatory Theater - 40 performances, over 10,000 tickets sold, making it one of the highest-demanded shows in SF theater history. Co-written by Ryan Nicole Austin, Beau Lewis, and Adesha Adefela, with producers including Anthony Veneziale (Tony-winning co-creator of Freestyle Love Supreme with Lin-Manuel Miranda) and Reid Hoffman (Founder, LinkedIn), the show proves that when you bring the right people together around powerful stories, transformation happens.

All People Powered is what happens next - bringing the fictional accelerator from the stage into reality, where music meets investment, and inspiration becomes action.