Startup Studio: Bottom-up Research, A Critical Approach to Validating your Idea with Laura Thompson ’09

Laura ’09 has spent the past decade working on radical innovations aimed at solving the world’s toughest problems.

Laura was an early product lead at Google X, where she drove product strategy for science fiction-sounding technologies including self driving cars, smart contact lenses, and delivery drones. While at X, she spread the team’s learning in real-time, delivering more than 100 speeches to C-level audiences around the world to inspire other global leaders to pursue radical innovation. She was also featured in Forbes as one of the few female investors at Google Ventures. Prior to X, Laura spent several years in London spearheading Google’s first efforts in consumer electronics.

Laura is a 2009 graduate of Brown University with a degree in Public Policy. While at Brown, she helped kick off Brown’s Social Innovation Initiative to support student social entrepreneurs, and co-founded Runa, a tea and clean energy drink company that now employs several thousand indigenous Amazonian farmers and is sold in 7000+ stores nationwide.

Laura currently lives in San Francisco where she is a trustee at Glide.org and a founding member of Glide’s Legacy Committee, a group of young people expanding the organization’s 51 year legacy of social justice innovation in the Bay Area.