Colorado TechCast

Episode 48 - JB Holston - Part 2

Episode 48: JB Holston – Greater Washington Partnership JB Holston is the CEO of the Greater Washington Partnership and was the dean of the University of Denver’s Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science from July 2015 until August 2020. Prior to becoming Dean he was the founding Executive Director for the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network and founding CEO for NewsGator/Sitrion. JB’s impact on the business, policy, and technology sectors in Colorado have been numeriou...

Episode 47 - JB Holston - Part 1

Episode 47: JB Holston – Greater Washington Partnership JB Holston is the CEO of the Greater Washington Partnership and was the dean of the University of Denver’s Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science from July 2015 until August 2020. Prior to becoming Dean he was the founding Executive Director for the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network and founding CEO for NewsGator/Sitrion. JB’s impact on the business, policy, and technology sectors in Colorado have been numeriou...

Episode 46 - Phil Weiser - Attorney General State of Colorado

Episode 46: Phil Weiser – State Of Colorado Phil Weiser, Colorado Attorney General, was sworn in as the State’s 39th Attorney General on January 8, 2019. As the state’s chief legal officer, Attorney General Weiser is committed to protecting the people of Colorado and building an innovative and collaborative organization that will address a range of statewide challenges, from addressing the opioid epidemic to reforming our criminal justice system to protecting our land, air, and water. At...

Pattie Money | Twilio

Episode 45: Pattie Money – Twilio Pattie Money brings over 25 years of People leadership experience, working with executives and leaders at all organizational levels. Her work is focused on driving exceptional organizational performance while helping those within the organization achieve their fullest potential. She currently serves as the interim Chief People Office at Twilio and was the Chief People Officer at SendGrid until their successful acquisition by Twilio, where she was responsib...

Episode 43 - Mike Freeman - Innosphere

Jarret Winkelman | Incident Response Technologies, Inc.

Episode 41: Jarret Winkelman – Incident Response Technologies, Inc. Jarret Winkelman is the founder and CEO of Incident Response Technologies. He previously worked for a number of public safety organizations in Colorado, and through that experience saw a need to modernize the processes used to pre-plan and manage emergency responses. Incident Response Technologies solves that need with the Rhodium Incident Management platform. Historically, public safety agencies have used binders of pap...

Kent Dickson | Yonomi

Episode 41: Kent Dickson – Yonomi Kent Dickson is the co-founder and CEO of Yonomi, the IoT company creating a more connected smart home. Yonomi builds smart home solutions for people and companies to connect devices, integrate multiple platforms, and Bring the Home to Life(TM). Kent’s background includes serving as General Manager of GridMachine, a massive scale Grid Computing-as-a-Service operated as a business unit of Sentient AI. Prior to that Kent was CTO at Tendril where he led pro...

Adam Ahern | Village Social

Episode 40: Adam Ahern – Village Social Adam is CEO and co-founder of Village. As a parent of 4 kids, he saw the problems that social media causes kids and committed to building a safer and healthier alternative. Previously Adam has been a leader in tech companies ranging from pre-revenue to pre-IPO, including a $1.9 billion exit with Mercury Payments in Durango. He started his career in investment banking where he helped companies with capital raising, IPOs and M&A. Links to things we t...

Paul Foley | SmartCapital Colorado

Paul Foley is a Colorado native and huge tech startup enthusiast. He co-founded and sold a tech startup Augur to BounceX, and has since turned his attention to investing and venture capital. He has created a new investment model, SmartCapital Colorado, which is a portfolio of 25 fast-growth Colorado companies. Colorado is one of the most innovative states in America. We have one of the highest concentration of entrepreneurs and technology companies in the nation. But in order to keep growi...

Brian Watson | Proximity

Episode 37: Brian Watson – Proximity Brian Watson is an entrepreneur, connector, and community developer. Brian has been starting and running businesses since he was 17 and believes that entrepreneurship is the greatest tool we have to positively impact our communities. His startup, Proximity, strives to help connect the world’s mobile workforce through an innovative combination of hardware and software that manages coworking spaces across the world. Links to things we talk about: Bria...

Clint Tasset | AdSwerve

Episode 36: Clint Tasset – AdSwerve Clint is the founder and president of AdSwerve a successful Denver company who recently acquired Seattle-based Analytics Pros. AdSwerve empowers data-driven marketers to achieve more success by using media and analytics technology — together. For more than a decade, AdSwerve and Analytics Pros’ team of Google Marketing Solutions experts have supported Fortune 500 companies like SAP, Visa, Starbucks and GoPro. As a Google Marketing Platform partner, AdSwe...

Bill Morris | Blue Star Recyclers

Episode 35: Bill Morris – Blue Star Recyclers Bill co-founded Blue Star Recyclers in 2009 after discovering people with Autism and other disabilities possess innate skills for tasks involved in the recycling and refurbishing of electronics. Blue Star Recyclers is a nonprofit social enterprise with a mission of ethically recycling electronics to create real jobs for people with autism and other disAbilities. The fulfillment of their mission to date has resulted in the recycling of 18 mill...

Bart Lorang | FullContact

Episode 34: Bart Lorang – FullContact, Inc Bart Lorang is CEO and Founder of FullContact and Managing Director of v1.vc Funding Partners and Startup Colorado. Born and raised in Bozeman, Montana, Bart is a proven entrepreneur, executive and manager in the global technology industry. He is active in the startup technology community as an investor, mentor, writer and speaker. Links to things we talk about: Bart Lorang on LinkedIn FullContact, Inc Principles by Ray Dalio Traction: Ge...

Krista Morgan | P2Binvestor

Episode 33: Krista Morgan – P2Binvestor Krista Morgan is cofounder and CEO of P2Binvestor, a marketplace lender that helps entrepreneurs and innovators transform their companies from sector newcomers to industry leaders. P2Bi partners with banks and investors, while also offering a robust crowdfunding platform, to provide affordable, flexible capital that evolves with business growth. Krista has quickly grown P2Bi into a multimillion-dollar company, a thriving online marketplace, and one o...

Nichole Montoya | Cheddar Up

Episode 32: Nichole Montoya - Cheddar Up Nichole Montoya has more than 15 years of experience helping to grow and build businesses. She is the co-founder and CEO of Cheddar Up, a platform that helps organizers move online and save time by making it easier to collect payments and information. Nichole has presented at SXSW Interactive, Women 2.0’s PITCH events, was part of the 500 Startups and numerous women entrepreneur panels. Prior to founding Cheddar Up, Nichole worked in management cons...

Brock Berry | Adcellerant

  Episode 31: Brock Berry - AdCellerant Brock Berry Mr. Brock Berry is the Co-Founder and CEO of AdCellerant. Under Mr. Berry’s leadership AdCellerant has become a nationally recognized, award winning, digital marketing and adtech company, operating in 300 US cities, 5 countries, managing 10,000’s of local advertising campaigns every year. Under Brock’s leadership AdCellerant has grown from 3 founders to 37 full time team members running in excess of 10,000,000+ in top line revenue growi...

David Barnett | PopSockets

Episode 30: David Barnett – PopSockets David Barnett is the founder and CEO of PopSockets LLC. He was a philosophy major at Emory, a physics major at University of Colorado Boulder, received his PhD in philosophy from NYU, and from 2005-2015 was a philosophy professor at University of Colorado Boulder. His research specialized in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, before he reached enlightenment, stopped doing philosophy, and became an entrepreneur. In 2010, Barnett was looki...

Kristen Stiles | Sitter

Episode 29: Kristen Stiles – Sitter Kristen Stiles is co-founder and CEO of Sitter. Sitter is revolutionizing the care industry by giving care companies, big and small, the technology needed to compete in today’s world. Sitter was born out of Kristen’s personal interest in removing the dread of booking babysitters for her family. She now taps her 20 years experience in business consulting and technology development to streamline the care-giving process for business owners and families alik...

Andy Funk & Cameron Williams | OverWatchID

OverWatchID helps organizations prevent data breaches with its holistic Identity Security Platform, sealing off the most vulnerable points of attack. Andy Funk has 20 years in the technology industry and managed services segment. An astute investment decision-maker, including angel investments into technology corporations, Andy has held management and executive roles with a Fortune-ranked telecom. He was part of the Executive team and one of the original team members of Virtela Technolog...

Grant Flaharty | Aleph Objects

Episode 27: Grant Flaharty – Aleph Objects Grant Flaharty is President of Aleph Objects.  New to Aleph Objects, but not new to the industry, Grantis is bringing over 20 years of Executive Leadership driving Sales, Operations, Product Management and Finance to assist in taking the company to new levels of success through the expansion of products, improved market messaging and awareness, along with the attention to detail internally to maintain the quality of product in our customers hands....

Tracy Rue | Skywriter MD

Episode 26: Tracy Rue - Skywriter MD Tracy Rue is the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Skywriter MD. Skywriter MD is a HIPAA-compliant virtual medical scribe service focused on helping healthcare providers to become more efficient and improve productivity. Tracy shares his story of how a conversation with a tired and frustrated doctor in the Grand Junction airport sparked the idea for Skywriter and how to streamline the collection of health records. Skywriter MD addresses the 5 m...

David Secunda | WorkBright

David Secunda is the founder and CEO of WorkBright, an HR tech startup that serves employers with large contingent workforces. The company was founded in 2014 and has over 350 customers. David is also the founder and Visionary of Avid4 Adventure, an outdoor education company that serves kids from age 3 up. The company was founded in 2003, has 600 seasonal and 25 full time employees, served 14,000 campers this summer, and is #25 on Outside’s Best Places to Work in the US. David has lead num...

Cody Cornell | Swimlane

Episode 24: Cody Cornell – Swimlane A respected authority on cybersecurity, Cody Cornell is responsible for the strategic direction of Swimlane and the development of its security automation and orchestration and response (SOAR) solution. His passion for open exchange of security information and deep vendor integration drives him to pursue opportunities to maximize the value his customers receive from their investments in security operations. Collaborating with industry-leading technology ...

Jeff Swaim | Influence Technologies

Jeff Swaim is the founder and CEO of Influence Technologies — developers of a of a kick-ass Digital Experience Platform (DXP) called iVX®. Influence Technologies believe the entire next generation of digital content will be hyper-personalized, immersive, responsive, and transactional interactive experiences — so they created a platform that can create, distribute, and track these interactive experiences at massive scale. As a five-year Colorado startup — Influence Technologies has now hit ...

Melissa Risteff | Courgion

Melissa Risteff is the CEO & Co-Founder of Couragion, a social enterprise generously supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), AT&T Aspire, and the Colorado Office of Economic Development. Their mission is to inspire underrepresented students to pursue STEM pathways and fuel educator confidence to succeed in the classroom. Melissa shares the mission of Couragion, the moment she decided to strike out on her own, and the positive impacts they are having on students across Colorado....

Alex Capecelatro | Josh AI

Episode 21: Alex Capecelatro – Josh.ai Alex Capecelatro is the founder and CEO of Josh.ai, a voice-controlled home automation system with a focus on artificial intelligence. Josh.ai utilizes a proprietary natural language understanding (NLU) engine with state of the art home control integrations for a powerful smart home experience. Alex started his career as a research scientist for NASA, the Naval Research Lab, and later Sandia National Laboratory. He then ventured into consumer technolo...

Yoav Lurie | Simple Energy

Yoav Lurie is the CEO and Founder of Simple Energy, the leading provider of marketplaces, instant rebates, and customer engagement software for electric and gas utilities. Simple Energy’s software-as-a-service (“SaaS”) offerings drive energy savings, facilitate the sale of energy-saving products and services, and serve as the customer energy action platform for the utility of the future. Before founding Simple Energy, Yoav helped build a Washington, DC-based technology services firm, served ...

Phil Elsasser | MARKET Protocol

Episode 19: Phil Elsasser – MARKET Protocol Phil Elsasser is the CTO and Co-Founder of MARKET Protocol. Phil has spent the last 7 years as the lead developer on an algorithmic trading desk. Phil has led teams of developers focused on creating trading infrastructure, user interfaces, execution platforms and quantitative trading analytics. The founding members of MARKET Protocol have been managing a 24-hour algorithmic trading group since 2014. Based on the experiences and over 30 cumulativ...

Chris Magyar | Techtonic Group

Episode 18: Chris Magyar - Techtonic Group Techtonic Group a software development organization that services start-ups and the Fortune 1000, and has called Boulder home since 2008. In 2014 sensing an opportunity to do more, CEO and co-Founder Heather Terenzio launched Techtonic Academy. Techtonic Academy is a Department of Labor (DOL) approved paid Apprenticeship program that recruits people who have the desire, ambition and skill set to be a great software developer – regardless of thei...

Mike Hess | Blind Institute of Technology

Mike Hess is the Founder and Executive Director of the Blind Institute of Technology. The Blind Institute of Technology is a team of staff, volunteers and board members passionate about addressing an attitude shift for blind professionals and educating companies on how to hire and cultivate success for the visually impaired. As the token blind guy in private Fortune 500 companies, Mike experienced just what it takes to build organizations through people, processes, and tools. Mike managed ...

Kris Bennett | The Block Chain Beard Guy

Episode 16: Kris Bennett - Aenea, LLC. Kris Bennett is passionate about decentralized architecture. He is a Blockchain educator in Denver and is an active advocate for all things Blockchain. Chris is a frequest speaker and writes about the massive transformative change that's coming our way, and what it all means for business, culture, government, art, and personal relationships. Kris shares the nearly prehistoric history of Blockchain and some modern day applications for it, outside of cr...

Reyn Aubrey | PocketChange

Episode 15: Reyn Aubrey - PocketChange I believe that entrepreneurs solve problems but traditionally, we’ve been using entrepreneurship to solve pain points not problems. Reyn Aubrey is the founder and CEO of PocketChange. PocketChange is a technology that targets the moment when someone is really genuinely motivated to take action and remove all the barriers to that action. PocketChange helps people support causes on social media in a whole new way. What Reyn and team are creating is a ...

Dave Dupont | TeamSnap

Episode #8 - Dave DuPont As one of our people said to me, and this is someone who is top of her class at Stanford Business School, "Society tells me now that I can either work for you or work for Starbucks" The combination of remote work and flexible hours has enabled us to become very active in hiring people returning to the workforce after taking time off to raise kids. It has been a benefit to us and also a positive societal good. Welcome to Episode 8 of Colorado TechCast. In this epi...

James Eberhard | Fluid Market

Episode #14 – Fluid Market lets users list items they have but aren’t using, giving people in their neighborhood the opportunity to borrow them in exchange for a fee. James Eberhard is the founder and CEO of Fluid Market, a truck sharing application that allows people to easily and securely list, discover, and rent trucks to and from one another. People are making real money renting out vehicles by the hour, day, or month, using assets that would otherwise go unused. And Fluid Market isn...

Robert Kluin | Real Kinetic

Episode #13 – Writing good OKRs is hard; OKRs require thought and iteration. A well written OKR, however, will align resources and empower contributors to make good decisions that support the business’ needs Robert Kluin is an experienced technology executive and entrepreneur. He is passionate about helping companies develop engineering organizations that reliably deliver business value. At Workiva, Robert lead the operations engineering, infrastructure engineering, reliability engineering...

Peter Bell | CTO Connection

Episode #12 - CTO Connection is a community for Engineering Leaders where they can connect with and learn from their peers   Peter Bell is a former CTO who started organizing CTO summits in 2014 to learn from and connect with other experienced engineering leaders. He also co-founded the New York CTO School to help the next generation of engineering leaders to build their skills and also organizes a number of other CTO Schools around the world. If you're technical and manage software de...

Kevin Owocki | GitCoin

Episode #11 – The analogy that I’ve been using is that blockchain could do the financial and insurance industries what the information revolution did to our media or what Napster did to record companies. WARNING: Some of this stuff is pretty complex. I spent a while on Wikipedia reading up on the things Kevin talks about just to write this post. Kevin Owocki is a leader in the Boulder tech community and helps run Boulder Startup Week and leads the Boulder Blockchain Meetup group.  He is ...

Miles Matthias | InKind Capital

Episode #10 – I really emphasize networking. It’s kind of a dirty word for a lot of computer science people like myself who don’t see that it’s a positive thing or just equate networking as standing around awkwardly at a party holding a beer. And what I’ve done is help people understand that it doesn’t have to be like that. Miles Matthias joins us for episode 10. Miles is Chief Technical Officer InKind Capital, Boulder Startup Week Organizer, and co-host of StartupCTO Podcast. Miles tal...

John Williamson | Elite Massage Chairs

Episode #9 - Once we got to the point where we really understood and believed in our brand and the effect we wanted to have on people it changed everything, from what we said on our website to what we said when we were speaking in front of a crowd to what we said on a sales call. It really pervaded all aspects of our communication   In this episode I interview John Williamson, a serial entrepreneur who has found success in bringing technology to business that are traditionally low tech. ...

Brian Watson | Proximity Space

Episode #7 -    A lot of times when you have conversations with people from small towns they're trying to figure out how to become the next Silicon Valley or how do we become Boulder.  The reality is they never will be those communities.  They are the communities that they are.  But by applying technology to industries that they have invested on in the past they are going to come up with new solutions to old problems which will enter turn into new businesses or enable them to increase ca...

Jeff Casimir | Turing School of Software and Design

Episode #5 -    Jeff founded Turing School of Software and Design with the mission of training a diverse, inclusive student body to succeed in high-fulfillment technical careers and create a world powered by technology where the people building it are represented by the people using it.   Welcome to episode 5 of Colorado TechCast.   Colorado TechCast brings you interviews with entrepreneurs, thought leaders and technology pioneers from around the state.  We provide a behind the s...

Peter Melby | Greystone Technology

Episode #6 –    Colorado TechCast brings you interviews with entrepreneurs, thought leaders and technology pioneers from around the state.  We provide a behind the scenes look at who’s doing what, why, and how you can get involved.  Join us each episode to hear the exciting stories of technology happenings in our state.   I want this show to be relevant to you, so please send me your thoughts and suggestions. My email address is [email protected]. You can also hit me up on...

Paul Kurkulis | Savvy Amigo

Episode #4 -    Paul founded Savvy Amigo knowing that the best way to ensure a great vacation was to ask a local, but not just any local, but a real savvy amigo   Welcome to episode 4 of Colorado TechCast.   Colorado TechCast brings you interviews with entrepreneurs, thought leaders and technology pioneers from around the state.   We provide a behind the scenes look at who’s doing what, why, and how you can get involved.   Join us each episode to hear the exciting stories...

Michael Simpson | Pairin

Episode #3 – Michael Simpson, Co-Founder and CEO of Pairin was founded on the belief that all people have amazing value, but most of us never realize our potential. Welcome to episode 3 of Colorado TechCast. Colorado TechCast brings you interviews with entrepreneurs, thought leaders and technology pioneers from around the state. We provide a behind the scenes look at who’s doing what, why, and how you can get involved. Join us each episode to hear the  exciting stories of technology...

Brian Pontarelli | Inversoft

Episode #2 – Brian Pontarelli, Founder and CEO of Inversoft, shares the history of Inversoft, what’s behind the explosive growth in the Colorado tech industry, and challenges associated with bootstrapping a company In this episode, I will speak with Brian Pontarelli, founder and CEO of Inversoft a startup software company specializing in systematic language censoring and highly scalable identity and access management software, based right in the heart of Denver.  Born and raised in Colora...