Everything you need to write about SuperDebate.

Fact sheet

Founder & CEO

John Thomas Connor

Headquarters

Chicago, IL (remote-first)

Incorporation

Delaware C-Corp

Round

$500K pre-seed open on standard SAFE

Live events

Active league, including an international championship

Cities

Three cities operating, eight in active outreach

Community

200-person Chicago community, 250-person Meetup base

Topic of the year

AI — nine questions, every town, all year

Flagship event

Chicago Debates Showcase at mHUB (2026)

Format

1v1 to 5v5, structured rounds, judged + audience vote

Founder bio

John Thomas Connor is the founder of SuperDebate. He grew up in Chicago, worked in the Chicago Urban Debate League, and is rebuilding live competitive debate as a recurring club model — the way Toastmasters did for public speaking and Tough Mudder did for endurance racing.

Email: john@superdebate.org

Advisors

• Brian Esposito
  Fractional Chief Strategy Officer · 2.5%
  Founder, Esposito Intellectual Enterprises (100+ companies). Strategic capital, partnership, and media path.
• Matthew Rolnick
  Sponsorships and Live Events · 0.5%
  SVP Partnerships and Events, Real American Beer. Fortune 500 partnerships operator. Real American Freestyle parallel.
• Iain Lampert
  Competitive Credibility · 0.5%
  Founder, Authentalk. COO, ModernBrain. All-time IPDA professional record holder for both speech wins and debate wins.
• John Hines
  Education and AI · 0.5%
  CEO and Co-Founder, DebaterHub. NSF SBIR Principal Investigator. Scaling debate to 10,000+ Title 1 students.
• Stephen Nilsen
  Brand and Cultural Positioning · 0.5%
  Former VP of Lifestyle Marketing at Liquid Death. Former Sports Marketing Manager, Red Bull. Cultural-moment activations operator.

Quick links for press

• · Live proof page — events shipped, cities live, founding members
• · Sponsor one-pager — printable, partnership tiers and audience
• · Founding Members wall — public list of early supporters
• · Ambassador program — open cities and warm contacts
• · Founder Arena — podcast / video series
• · The AI debate topic of the year

Logos & assets

Branded assets (logo PNG/SVG, founder headshot, photo selects, sample clips) live in the press-kit bucket on Supabase Storage. For now, email press@superdebate.org with your outlet and we'll send the kit directly.