The Founder Institute's four-month curriculum covers everything you would expect from an early-stage startup program, including topics like "Startup Legal and IP” towards the beginning, to “Fundraising” near the end. What makes the curriculum special is the Mentors that teach it, whose passion, feedback and support helps our companies avoid rookie mistakes and set the foundation for a meaningful and enduring company.
The Founder Institute carefully recruits approximately 25 Mentors per Semester, who are normally the CEO or founder of a successful startup. Rather than specialists or consultants, we prefer Founders and CEOs to give our companies "the entrepreneur's perspective." The mentors share their experiences, best practices, and mistakes, while also providing specific guidance and feedback on the Founder companies.
In addition, the Founder Institute's unique Graduate Liquidity Pool allows our mentors to share in the equity of companies formed in each program - and, their share is based solely on the anonymous ratings they receive from the Founders both during, and after the program. In this way, the Founder Institute incentivizes mentors to take a special interest in our startups, and provide as much assistance as possible after the program.
We have a great lineup of Mentors confirmed for the Summer 2013 Denver Founder Institute, including many from out of town. See the full list below.
Adam Swiecki
Founder, Swiecki Enterprises
Adam Swiecki founded Swiecki Enterprises in 2003 after serving as an Army Officer and financier. Focused on the action sport market, he has built leading ecommerce businesses in skate (SkateboardsEtc.com), surf (SurfboardsEtc.com), and snow (SkiGogglesEtc.com). The quintessential bootstrapper, Adam avoided startup costs by learning to program a website, partnering with drop shippers, and housing inventory in his basement. After years, he is out of the basement, expanding his multi-million dollar ecommerce footprint, and still growing using free cash flow. Adam holds a BS from the United States Military Academy at West Point and an MBA from Georgetown University.
Adeo Ressi
CEO, TheFunded.com
Adeo Ressi is Founding Member of TheFunded.com, an online community of 17,000 CEOs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide. Adeo also runs the Founder Institute, a mentoring program that helps entrepreneurs launch hundreds of world-class companies each year. The Institute is the eighth start-up that Adeo has founded or built, four of which were acquired and three of which are still operating.
Anke Corbin
VP Marketing & Content, MapQuest
Anke Corbin is presently the founder of Corbin & Cie, a startup in the food industry. She was recently the VP Sales, Marketing & Content at MapQuest. Her experience includes being an entrepreneur, having co-founded RAW Marketing Training, as well as a variety of executive level roles including corporate marketing, business development, retail and distribution at divisions of Time Inc. Anke is a skilled sales manager, digital marketer and training expert. She has been helping entrepreneurs and start-ups go-to-market effectively for many years. Her passion is to create strong leaders and companies, teaching entrepreneurs how to think strategically as well as execute tactically.
Barbary Brunner
Principal, Promoveo Partners
Barbary's past roles have included Head of Marketing and Product Innovations for MediaNews Group, CMO for Experian's Pricegrabber business, VP Marketing and Strategy for Yahoo! and the executive head of Planning for Microsoft's MSN business. She's also received a patent for some of her work on the Smart Personal Objects Technology team in Windows Mobile and was the program manager for the first Microsoft consumer product to win a Mac User Eddy. Barbary's had an opportunity to work in some very entreprenuerial parts of large companies and has a deep passion for the place where people and technology meet as well creating organizations and plans that truly serve business beeds.
Bradley Brown
CEO ( edit )
Brad is the CEO and founder of InteliVideo, a cloud-based private label video platform. Brad was a TUSC founder and is currently a board advisor for Rolta. TUSC was sold to Rolta in 2008. Brad also founded IntelliReal in 2005, which was sold to Equifax in 2011. His vast experience and expertise have earned him roles as acting chief information officer of several companies over more than 23 years at TUSC. Brad has also served on numerous company boards. Brad is the author of several best selling Oracle Press books. Oracle awarded Brad the honorary title of Oracle ACE Director for Fusion Middleware. Brad taught “New Venture Creation” at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business for 2 years.
Brian Brown
CTO and Co-Founder, Broadnet
In 2008, Brian co-founded Broadnet Teleservices and began working as its CTO, developing and managing a software platform that enabled the completely bootstrapped, zero-debt company to sustain a 100% annualized average annual revenue growth over the last 8 years, showing up as #54 in the Inc. 500 in 2009. Broadnet's unique TeleForum service has been used regularly by most members of the US Congress and Senate, nearly all of the leading national professional sports teams in the US, the largest Unions in the country, President Obama, and President Bush. Prior to founding Broadnet, Brian founded several other companies, including Visionary Consulting, Antirion, Front Range Technology Group, and Agmetrics, after leaving his last corporate position as Director of Wholesale Services at Global Crossing Conferencing in 1996. Brian holds a degree in Computer Science from MIT, has served on national MIT committees, has won national alumni awards, and was president of the local MIT alumni chapter;
Chris Franks
Founder & CEO, MadSmarts
Chris Franks is CEO and Founder of MadSmarts, a media company focusing on startups, innovation, and impact companies. Previous projects include RealGood Technologies, a technology platform for political campaigns and Moblify, a contact sharing application that seeks to eliminate the needs for business cards. Chris is active in the Colorado Startup Scene as the Co-Founder and host of Denver Founders Network and Denver Startup Week. Chris graduated from Colorado State University and the Bard Center for Entrepreneurship at CU Denver. An avid outdoorsman, Chris has completed three IronMan Triathalons and enjoys fly fishing, snowboarding, drinking micro-brews and chasing around his two children.
Chris J Snook
Managing Partner/Venture Catalyst in Residence, Action Potentials
Chris J. Snook has spent over 13 years as a two-time International Best Selling Author, Entrepreneur, and Venture Catalyst. He has built global marketing and distribution businesses in the U.S. Canada, Japan, and Hong Kong, and has spent the last 5 years in the investment community incubating media startups as the Managing Partner of Action Potentials and Venture Catalyst in Residence at Qualcomm Labs (www.qualcommlabs.com). His recent startup Action Potentials University is a Social Entrepreneur Accelerator and online leadership development platform (www.actionpotentials.com) in private beta with a launch of August 2013 slated. He relocated to Fort Collins CO in June 2013 after 15 years in Southern California. He was awarded San Diego Metropolitan "40 under 40" in 2006, Cambridge Who's Who CEO/Business Coach of the Year 2007, and nominated for Biz San Diego's Coolest CEO in 2009. He is the happy husband of Brianne and proud father of Beckett.
Dan Daugherty
Founder & CEO, rentbits.com
Dan Daugherty is CEO and Founder of rentbits.com, a rental solutions company for apartments and single family rental homes. His experience includes four years with Google during which time he spent in various management positions including running the operations team for the Mountain States Region. He helped to grow the region from $1 million in annual sales to over $100 million within four years. He is also active in commercial and residential real estate investing in Colorado and received his business degree in International Business from Ohio Wesleyan University.
Denise Hulce
VP, Sales and Business Development
I'm Denise Hulce and joined SendGrid as the VP of Sales and Business Development in May 2010 as the first non-engineering/go-to-market strategic hire. I'm an entrepreneurial executive, having played foundational roles in the growth and success of two other Boulder based startups, most recently as the Director of International Operations at @Last Software/SketchUp, which was acquired by Google in 2006. I had the fortunate opportunity to participate in the Mentor Idea Review course at Founder Institute in Paris in Fall of 2011. It was a great experience and I'd I love the opportunity to give back to the wonderful startup community of Denver/Boulder as a Founder Institute mentor.
Erik Mitisek
Co-Founder, NextGreatPlace, Inc.
I am Erik Mitisek, a Co-Founder of NextGreatPlace - a Denver based travel company. Previously, I was the CEO of Claremont Information Systems, prior to that an early employee at Exclusive Resorts and before that, the first employee at a venture backed music company called XACT Radio. I am a Colorado native and entrepreneur in the Denver community and love and have been building companies for 15+ years.
Gary Gaessler
VP Sales & Marketing, Cloud Elements
Gary is the VP Sales & Marketing at Cloud Elements. Cloud Elements reduces the time and costs to develop and run Cloud Applications. We build open cloud applications faster with re-usable elements and a cloud-centric product dev team providing a unique blend of technology and app dev skills that accelerate the development of highly functional, supportable cloud-optimized apps. He was previously VP Sales of StreamStep- aquired by BMC Software in 2011. Co-founder of VoipReview- world's largest site for VoIP reviews, 8 million+ visitors, acquired in 2008. TechStars & Founders Institute mentor.
Jason Haislmaier
Partner, Bryan Cave HRO
Jason Haislmaier is a partner in the Boulder office of the law firm of Bryan Cave HRO. Jason assists emerging and established technology companies in structuring, negotiating, and closing technology and intellectual property transactions. A primary focus of his practice includes advising companies on all aspects of software and technology licensing and commercialization. He has helped clients throughout the world develop strategies to develop, protect, and commercialize their software and technology. In addition, Jason has also established expertise in the areas of open source software, data privacy and protection, outsourcing, cloud computing, technology join ventures, and technology mergers and acquisitions.
Jim Franklin
CEO, SendGrid
Jim is the CEO of SendGrid, the leader in email deliverability. Previously, James Franklin was the VP and General Manager of the Crystal Ball Global Business Unit and the VP for Enterprise Performance Management for Oracle Corporation. Previously Jim was the CEO of Decisioneering, Inc., CFO at Vericept Corporation and was a founder of webfamilies.com. Jim has a BBA in accounting and a JD/MBA all from the College of William and Mary. Jim is a past president and current board member of the Rockies Venture Club. Jim has also served as a mentor for Boulder Techstars and has invested in early stage startups.
Jon Nordmark
Co-Founder, CEO, UsingMiles.com (Wambo, eBags)
Jon is the co-founder of Wambo and co-founder/board member of eBags. Wambo’s "properties" are a portfolio of companies in which Wambo has become an investor, which includes UsedTunes, TrekShare, UsingMiles and a few more Web-based businesses. Jon founded eBags in 1998 and remained CEO through Spring 2008 (to 9.4 million bags sold, 1.4 million customer reviews). Previously, he held the position of senior director of product management at Samsonite, America. Jon received his B.S. in marketing from the University of Colorado at Boulder and has earned numerous awards and honors including Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year (Rocky Mountain Region, 2003) and the Bob Newman Lifetime Achievement Award from the Colorado Software and Internet Association (2009).
Krista Paul
Founder, VP Marketing
Krista is the Founder of UsingMiles, Inc., a loyalty management company that helps loyalists manage all of their loyalty programs in one place and find opportunities to earn and redeem miles and points in travel, retail and more. Krista graduated Summa Cum Laude with highest honors from the University of Colorado, Boulder. UsingMiles has received numerous accolades, including getting selected as one of 2011's "100 most brilliant companies" by Entrepreneur Magazine and one of Inc. Magazine's 2011 "Top 50 Business Apps."
Manny Ladis
Co-Founder, SVP of Sales and Marketing, Dizzion, Inc.
As SVP of Sales and Marketing, Manny is responsible for the planning, execution and management of Dizzion’s sales and marketing strategy. He has more than seventeen years of hands-on experience in the highly competitive technology sector. Manny has extensive experience selling to both the public and private sector and has successfully built channel programs and inside sales teams. He is an advocate of technology growth in Colorado, volunteering with groups like CTA (Colorado Technology Association) and The Founder Institute. Manny is a graduate of Michigan State University where he earned his BA in Finance.
Mark Roebke
Director, Product Innovation, The Active Network
Mark Roebke, Director of Product Innovation for The Active Network Founder and CIO of RTP, LLC; acquired in 2011 by The Active Network. Previously in software development for Vail Resorts and Microsoft Filed and awarded numerous technology patents. Enjoy an Active lifestyle!
Mark Geene
CEO, Cloud Elements
Mark recently co-founded Cloud Elements a fast growing consultancy that leverages reusable integrations to help companies build SaaS applications faster and less expensively. Prior to Cloud Elements Mark founded two successful SaaS companies, Channelinsight and Locationinsight, which combined generate more than $20 Million in subscription revenues. Previously Mark was part of the leadership team that took grew TenFold corporation to over $100M in revenue and a successful IPO. Earlier in his career Mark held leadership positions at Oracle and IBM. Mark has raised more than $25 million in venture funding and has extensive background in product management, business development, marketing and sales within both start-up and large company environments.
Max Miller
Director, eCommerce, Craftsy (Sympoz)
Max Miller currently serves as the Director of eCommerce at Craftsy / Sympoz. Craftsy is a Denver, CO-based late stage start-up that produces online educational content for the arts and crafts community. Mr. Miller has has held positions in investment banking, management consulting, corporate strategy, and eCommerce at companies including: Green, Manning & Bunch, Deloitte Consulting, Sports Authority, and Sympoz.
Michael Clark
CTO, Photobucket
Michael is the CTO of Photobucket.com. He is responsible for all aspects of technical operations and software development for Photobucket and all of its web and mobile services. He returned to Photobucket in 2012 after having built the startup SafetyWeb.com which was a cloud based security product to help families learn what their children were doing on social media and mobile devices and provide alerts. SafetyWeb was acquired by Experian in 2011. Prior to SafetyWeb, Michael was the first executive hire and architect as Photobucket and scaled their infrastructure to accommodate > 110 million registered users with over 12 billion images. He built the development, operations and customer support teams to keep up with the growth and helped lead Photobucket to a exit to News Corporation.
Michael Tognetti
Vice President and General Counsel, SendGrid, Inc.
Michael Tognetti is SendGrid's Vice President and General Counsel. He has a degree in Electrical Engineering from Notre Dame and a law degree from Harvard Law School. Michael has always worked for high technology companies, starting with his clients at law firms Cooley Godward and Holme Roberts and Owen, to working as in house counsel at Vericept and Decisioneering, the original makers of Crystal Ball software. After Decisioneering was acquired by Hyperion, who was subsequently acquired by Oracle, Michael spent time working with the Crystal Ball global business unit created within Oracle as a Solution Specialist.
Mike Stemple
Founder, Inspirer
Mike currently is CEO/Founder of Inspirer which helps businesses build substantially better products, processes, and technologies through innovation consulting. Inspirer specializes in appcessories, personalization, and innovation program design. Additionally Mike has also returned to his art career at Stemple Studios where he creates sports & wildlife paintings and large sports oriented murals.
Paul Guerin
CEO, Rebit
Currently CEO of Rebit, Inc. in Longmont, CO. Previous roles include CEO Jabber Inc. (acquired by Cisco), CEO Intelligent Solutions, and executive sales and management roles at successful startups Digital Archaeology (acquired by Delano Inc.) , Torrent Systems (acquired by Ascential Software) , Beyond Inc. (acquired by Banyan Systems), and Lotus (IPO and acquired by IBM). Extensive sales, marketing, and business development experience and ability to help early stage businesses cross the chasm from invention to innovation are core strengths.
Rick Emery
Director - Business Development, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Rick Emery is currently the Director of Business Development for Cisco’s Collaboration Software Group heading up the development and implementation of new route to market strategies for this business unit’s collaboration offerings. Prior to Cisco, Emery was VP of Business Development and a member of the management team at Jabber Inc, a company specializing in real-time messaging and presence software. During his eight year tenure at Jabber, Emery drove the company’s sales/partnership strategy until Cisco’s acquisition of the company in 2008.
Sandy Grason
CEO, Sandy Grason Unlimited
Sandy Grason is the author of JOURNALUTION and creator of THE ROAD TO FABULOUS talk show & podcast. Sandy has shared the stage with celebrity authors including; Rosie O’Donnell, Marianne Williamson, David Bach and Mark Victor Hansen on stages around the world such as the esteemed Omega Institute and T. Harv Eker’s Peak Potentials. Her work is endorsed by Deepak Chopra, Louise Hay, Debbie Ford, John Gray and thousands of individuals whose lives have been transformed through her books, workshops, interviews and live performances. Sandy has been featured in The Chicago Tribune, The Palm Beach Post, Body + Soul Magazine, Woman’s Day, Spa Magazine, Ocean Drive Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine and many more.
Scott Yates
Co-Founder, CEO, BlogMutt
Scott attends to the business side of Blogmutt, and has done so at two other companies. The first time was with MyTrafficNews, a company that sold to Traffic.com in 2006. He then worked on LegislativeDatabase and returned cash to the initial investors and that company continues to operate under different ownership today. Before starting his startup life, Scott was an award-winning writer in New York and Colorado, and continues to write occasionally on his blog at Sco.tt
