Duke Skarda – Chief Technology Officer, SoftLayer
Duke Skarda joined SoftLayer in November 2010. As the CTO, he holds responsibilities for implementing, designing and enhancing the proprietary SoftLayer Infrastructure Management System (IMS). Previously, Mr. Skarda spent 10 years with Level 3 Communications in a series of increasingly responsible positions. As Senior Vice President for its Content Markets Group, he led Engineering and IT development for its Content Distribution Network platform and IT support systems. As Senior Vice President for IT Architecture and Application Development, he led a broad range of programs, including business process management, order-entry and service assurance development.
Jason Seats – Managing Director, TechStars
Prior to joining TechStars, Jason was a founder of Slicehost, an early cloud computing hosting company. In 2008 Slicehost was acquired by Rackspace and became the core for the initial Cloud Servers product. Jason continued on at Rackspace until 2010 as VP of software development for Rackspace Cloud, managing the cloud engineering teams.
Nicole Glaros – Managing Director, TechStars-Boulder
Nicole got her entrepreneurial start in the 4th grade, orchestrating cousins into theatrical plays and charging neighbors admission. From there, she founded three startups including PropertyManagementShop.com, all of which are still operating. She has spent nearly a decade working to improve the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Colorado through leadership roles at various organizations and incubators such as CTEK, Investor Avenue, CleanLaunch, and the Advance Colorado Center.
Misha Govshteyn – Founder, Alert Logic
Misha Govshteyn is a Founder and VP of Emerging Products at Alert Logic, where he develops the next generation of security technologies for cloud computing environments. At Alert Logic he built one of industry’s first cloud security services, launching a multi-tenant security platform that scales to thousands of customers and processes multiple petabytes of log data.
Alan ‘AJ’ Brown – Private Technology Consultant
AJ Brown has been a start-up entrepreneur for more than three decades with experience. Beginning his career as a software development engineer and continuing as a marketing executive, AJ laid the groundwork for successful technology companies in Silicon Valley including Red Brick Systems (public offering in 1996) and RightPoint Software (acquired in 2000).
George Karutz – Partner, Karutz Flavin Wells
Throughout his career, Mr. Karutz has advised CEOs and other executives from Fortune 100 companies, middle market companies, and start-up ventures on financial, strategic, and operational matters. At The Boston Consulting Group, Mr. Karutz advised companies on developing strategic plans necessary to realize company objectives for acquisitions, divestitures, and organic growth. Mr. Karutz assisted companies through business turnaround and bankruptcy situations while at Price Waterhouse.