Mattress Science from MyComfort’s Tony Pearce
Tony Pearce, President and co-founder of MyComfort, talks with Kip Mecham about MyComfort’s path from startup to leader in the market for innovation-driven cushioning and mattress technology. As an inventor, engineer, researcher and entrepreneur, Pearce took his knowledge and experience from the aerospace industry and focused on the bed, the place where we all spend a full third of our lifetime.
MyComfort was founded in 2006 by Tony and Terry Pearce, partners in EdiZONE, a leading research and development firm for cushioning and other sleep products. EdiZONE has developed and patented many of the sleep technologies available at MyComfort including Intelli-Gel, FLOAM, and Multi-Cell. Their technologies are licensed by companies including Dr. Scholls, JanSport, and Nike, and can be found in products worldwide in such things as medical beds for critical care patients, consumer beds, pillows, wheelchair cushions, shoes, shoulder straps, toys, and much more.
v100 Show: What’s missing in sales organizations at startups?
Mentor Associates founder Jack Carroll speaks with vSpring’s Dennis Wood about startup sales organizations. He answers questions such as:
- What is missing in most startup sales organizations?
- What to look for when hiring a sales executive?
- What are the most critical steps in the sales process?
Jack Carroll is the founder and principal of Mentor Associates, Inc. He brings more than 25 years of strategic sales planning and management experience to client assignments. The last eighteen of those years have been dedicated to technology and business-to-business (B2B) selling. He is a dynamic strategist, teacher, and motivator who has directly mentored over 5,000 people during his career. Since 1987, under the banner of Mentor Associates, Mr. Carroll and his staff have served more than 65 companies.
v100 Show: Grant Beckmann Talks about Managing For Growth
WiLife COO, Grant Beckmann, talks about managing growth in startup companies. During the past 18 years, Beckmann has worked with some of Utah’s fastest growing startup companies including Folio (now FAST), Tenfold, NextPage, and WiLife. He discusses what he has learned about hiring, communicating with employees, and other best practices for high growth companies.
Beckmann joined WiLife in 2005. Prior to WiLife, he was the General Manager and Executive Vice President of NextPage, Inc. where he lead the creation of market leading content and knowledge management products for the Insurance, Publishing, Healthcare, and Outsourced Customer Service markets. Beckmann also served as VP of Application Services for TenFold Corporation which he helped grow from 20 to 800 and go public in 1999.
Before TenFold, Beckmann was a Chief Architect at Folio Corporation, an early leader in search engine development. Folio was sold to Mead Data Central and later became part of the LexisNexis division of Reed Elsevier. Beckmann began his career at Boeing Advanced Systems Division where he worked on avionics and materials development for stealth aircraft. Grant holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Manufacturing Engineering & Technology from Brigham Young University.
v100 Show: ContentWatch CEO Jack Sunderlage and Tech Sector Economic Growth
vSpring’s Dennis Wood speaks with ContentWatch President and CEO, Jack Sunderlage, about his participation in some of Utah’s most important economic development initiatives including the Utah Technology Council (UTC), the Utah Partnership for Education, The World Trade Center Utah, and Utah Science Technology and Research (USTAR) project. Sunderlage is a member of vSpring’s v100 – a peer-nominated group of the top 100 venture entrepreneurs in the rocky mountain region.
Mr. Sunderlage currently serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of ContentWatch Inc., a provider of Internet Management software and services. He has enjoyed a long and successful career in the Information Technology industry having held key sales and marketing executive positions with Burroughs, UNISYS, Digital Equipment, Compaq Computer, and Hewlett-Packard. His last assignment was Vice President of Global Accounts, West Region for Compaq, a part of HP. Jack took an early retirement from HP in July 2002.
Jack is the Past Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Utah Information Technology Association where he continues to be a trustee with the newly formed Utah Technology Council. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board for the World Trade Center Utah. In 2006, he was appointed to the Utah Science Technology and Research (USTAR) Governing Board for the State of Utah.
Steve Grizzell, Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum Chairman
Venture capital and angel investment success in Utah is not limited to the Salt Lake Valley. Focusing on matching up investors and early stage entrepreneurs Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum chairman Steve Grizzell discusses UVEF’s origins and successes. A 20-year veteran in entrepreneurship, finance, innovation and economic development, Grizzell observes while Utah entrepreneurs and investors face some stereotyping challenges, they are becoming increasingly sophisticated—yet entrepreneurial ‘overhyping,’ corporate inbreeding and soft market research remain problematic.
With significant projected growth in Utah’s future, Grizzell sees the Wasatch Front as rife with opportunities for entrepreneurs and investors.
A nonprofit organization founded in 1989, is a support group working together to share lessons learned and to learn the war stories of those who’ve succeeded. UVEF encourages the creation and sustained growth of entrepreneurial ventures through providing networking opportunities, promoting recognition of business accomplishments and contributions, sharing business experiences, and encouraging free enterprise.
v100 Show: Mediconnect Global CEO, Amy Rees Lewis, discusses entrepreneurship
Mediconnect Global CEO, Amy Rees Lewis, talks with Dennis Wood about how her own success as an entrepreneur, the passion to sell that successful entrepreneurs must have, and what to expect from venture financing. Lewis is a member of vSpring’s v100 – a peer-nominated group of the top 100 venture entrepreneurs in the rocky mountain region.
In 1996, Lewis started her first company, PerfectPractice.MD, with only $23,000 in seed capital and went on to build the nations first 100% Web-based medical practice management system for physician offices. She grew the company from a single employee to over 85 employees eventually selling the company in 2002. She is currently the CEO of Mediconnect, an online medical record retrieval company that utilizes web technologies to facilitate the retrieval of patient medical records for the Legal and the Insurance industries. Lewis is also an Owner and a Director of Globerian, a company located in Delhi, India that provides offshore business process outsourcing to US based businesses.
Amy has received numerous awards including the “Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award” from the Small Business Administration, the “Top Woman on the Move Award” from Utah Business Magazine, the “Free Enterprise Award” from Larry H. Miller, and the “UITA Million Dollar Award”.
Amy has previously served on the board of Young Entrepreneurs Organization - Utah Chapter, as President for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society-Utah Chapter (HIMSS), as Chairperson for the The IPA Association of America (TIPAAA) National Biodefense Committee, and has been featured in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Fast Company, Business Week, and many other national publications for her numerous accomplishments.
v100 Show: Control4 CTO, Eric Smith, on Home Automation for the Masses
Control4 co-founder and CTO, Eric Smith, talks with Dennis Wood about how Control4 is bringing home automation to the masses. Smith is a member of vSpring’s v100 — a peer-nominated group of the top 100 venture entrepreneurs in the rocky mountain region.
Control4 manufactures a complete line of home automation products that makes sophisticated home automation solutions practical and affordable for new and existing homes. Control4’s solutions integrate home theater, music, lighting, temperature controls and home security.
Prior to co-founding Control4, Eric co-founded STSN (now iBAHN), the worldwide leader in broadband services for business travelers. Eric developed the intellectual property that made it possible to simplify Internet protocols and offer fast, convenient broadband service to travelers staying in more than 175,000 hotel rooms in 200 cities around the world. Prior to STSN, Eric co-founded PHAST Corporation, which quickly became the leading control system in the residential control systems market.
v100 Show: Identity Management and Reputation-Driven Business, With Phil Windley
vSpring v100 member Phil Windley speaks with Dennis Wood about identity management and the emergence of reputation-driven business. He discusses his interest in identity management and reputation systems and the foundational roles these systems play in both the enterprise software and Internet applications spaces. Windley sees the identity management space changing rapidly as large vendors such as Microsoft and Novell and initiatives such as OpenID launch Internet identity platforms. These new platforms will create an explosion of new opportunities in reputation-driven industries such as new media, e-commerce, and social media.
Windley is currently the executive producer of IT Conversations. He’s also an associate professor of computer science at Brigham Young University, and the author of the popular Technometria blog, as well as a frequent contributor to InfoWorld and Between the Lines. He is also the author of the book Digital Identity, from O’Reilly Media. Prior to joining BYU, Phil served as the CIO for the State of Utah, serving on then-Governor Leavitt’s cabinet and as a member of his senior staff. Before entering public service, Phil was vice president for product development and operations at Excite@Home and chief technology officer of iMALL, Inc. an early creator of electronic commerce tools.
Cheryl Snapp Conner, SNG PR Partner & Executive PR Director
Social media and public relations activities are converging at different paces and in different ways for companies. Cheryl Snapp Conner, Partner & Executive PR Director at Salt Lake City-based Snapp Norris Group/SNG PR talks about this evolution and the impact of social media on PR strategy. Describing the phenomenon as ’shifting ground’ and a ‘moving target,’ Snapp Conner shares her professional insights, shares success stories from SNG’s clientele, and also comments on best practices–including how not to mix social media and public relations.
Founded in 2002, award-winning SNG PR is one of the industry’s premier public relations firms, and was voted the “Best PR Firm in Utah” by the readership of Connect Magazine.
v100 Show : Behind the v100 Top 100 Venture Entrepreneurs
In this inaugural v|100 Show podcast, vSpring Capital’s Dennis Wood, Human Capital, and Gavin Christensen, Principal, introduce the reason for creating the v|100 Top 100 Venture Entrepreneurs program and set the stage for future conversations with v|100 members. They discuss how as technology venture capitalist’s, finding and retaining key executive talent is key to the success of a startup. And how creating a program to find and leverage a community of executive talent has been an important initiative for vSpring.
v|100 Show : Behind the v|100 Top 100 Venture Entrepreneurs [18:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadHow to Build a Free Backup Service, Josh Coates, CEO of Berkeley Data Systems
Services like Gmail hit the market after their developers reengineered a mature solution to “work” the way the consumer expect the service to work today. Josh Coates, CEO of Berkeley Data Systems, describes his approach to creating Mozy.com, an automatic, secure, and free consumer-based backup service.
With 11 patents to his name, Coates discusses his experience from University of California at Berkeley (research in large scale parallel systems); content caching at Inktomi; his first startup Scale8; and his building a petabyte data center at Internet Archive.
Founded in 2005, Berkeley Data Systems is venture funded and is located in American Fork, Utah.
UTC Hall of Fame 2006 Inductee - Microsoft Research’s Jim Kajiya
We spoke by phone with Dr. Jim Kajiya, distinguished engineer and a general manager at Microsoft Research shortly before his induction into the Utah Technology Council’s 2006 Hall of Fame. Kajiya talks about the impact of the undervalued Utah technology community. Very much the research scientist, Kajiya is working to solve the problems of today’s ‘topped out’ computer processor and memory designs–and the economic implications of success or failure. He also discusses his passion for the quest to create programmable matter–enabling the transmission and download of physical objects over digital networks.
UTC Hall of Fame 2006 Inductee - vSpring Capital’s Dinesh Patel
Humbly self-described as a “big fish in a small pond,” managing director and founding partner of Salt Lake City-based vSpring Capital Dr. Dinesh Patel talks with us about his induction into the Utah Technology Council Hall of Fame. The “Father of Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals in the Mountain West Region” shares insights on vSpring’s equity investment strategy in the region’s unique opportunities in the bio/life sciences sector.
Working with the Budget Billionaire - Ron Heinz Recalls Ray Noorda
John Furrier coverage at UTC Marketing Exec Forum
Rocky Mountain Voices was on the scene at the UTC Marketing Exec Forum Friday, October 6, 2006. Not only did we enjoy the salmon and scrumptious chocolate desert but we also caught John Furrier’s presentation live.
While there, John presented on Social Media and the benefit of starting a conversation with customers and prospects through blogs and podcasts.
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