Team
The SpringStage Team
David Cohen is a co-founder of SpringStage and has been blogging at ColoradoStartups.com for three years. He’s covered hundreds of local startups and his blog is well known in Colorado by those involved in entrepreneurship. David is a four time founder of companies in Colorado - he’s investing the money he made from those ventures and giving back to his local community. David is also an active angel investor. David also runs TechStars, a seed stage investment fund in Boulder, CO.
Alexander Muse is a co-founder of SpringStage and at TexasStartupBlog.com for nearly four years. He too has covered and promoted the Dallas startup scene with great fervor. Alexander is also a well known entrepreneur in his community. Alexander organizes regular events in Dallas and brings the entrepreneurial community together through his efforts. You’d be hard pressed to find someone in the Dallas community who has done more to help put it on the national map as a leader of entrepreneurship.
Shannon Barrett is the business development manager of SpringStage. He has 10 years of experience in the IT space and has spent the past few years managing client relations for Architel. Shannon has a passion for technology and social media. He is an avid fan of all things “beta” and is always excited about the latest and greatest web app. Shannon works directly with SpringStage catalysts: recruiting, empowering and assisting them in meeting their objectives.
Aaron Harp is CTO of SpringStage. He helped build SpringStage’s WordPress MU infrastructure and keeps it running. When he is not setting up new blogs for catalysts he sometimes (well rarely) blogs here. Aaron is an accomplished entrepreneur in his own right and is a co-founder of a North Texas-based startup called Magnt. Aaron is a talented musician and composer attending the University of North Texas.
Chad Hutchins is the Abilene Catalyst for SpringStage. He is an aspiring entrepreneur, passionate about creating web applications that help others. He writes about West Texas entrepreneurs, investors and opportunities on the AbileneStartups.com blog. From 8-5, he works for Milsoft Utility Solutions in Business Development. All other hours of the day, he works as co-founder of Big Tech Onions, creating web applications in the social media space.
Bradley Joyce is the Fort Worth Catalyst for SpringStage. currently works for Squeejee, a relatively young Texas-based Ruby on Rails development shop. Aside from numerous client projects like Mindbites.com, Squeejee is working on its own web applications including Tweet Congress, a twitter mashup that allows you to search and discover which United States Congress people are using twitter and TickStart, a team-oriented productivity and time-tracking application. After studying Aerospace Engineering and working at The Boeing Company, Bradley decided he wasn’t cut out for big corporate culture and shifted gears to turn his long-time web design/development hobby into a career.
Jackson Miller is the Nashville Catalyst. He currently lives in Nashville, TN with his wife and 4 sons where he has been a successful entrepreneur since 2003. With expertise in software development, data warehousing, and business intelligence he has recently been working on. Statzen.com (an attention analytics solution for bloggers), urlzen.com (a url shortener with click tracking), and gpsAssassins (a location based role playing game for mobile devices). He also is a partner in L2M LLC which owns two franchise retail stores in the Nashville area.
Bart Morz is the Philadelphia Catalyst for SpringStage. He has a very well rounded technology and business background. Currently a partner at round3media, a creative agency, Bart has been providing strategic technology and business consulting services for the past few years and he is also one of the founders of IndyHall in Philadelphia, PA, USA. You can find most of his internet life at electronicsandbox.com.
Robert Shedd is the Penn State Catalyst for SpringStage. He is currently a CRM Business Intelligence consultant in the Financial Services sector with IBM Global Business Services. Prior to joining IBM, Robert worked with several entrepreneurial ventures, including an independent consulting firm he founded. In addition to his work in technology, Robert serves on the board of directors for the Lion Launch Pad, a non-profit business accelerator to support students at Penn State in the pursuit of entrepreneurial ventures. He holds a bachelors degree in Information Sciences and Technology from Penn State.
Chris Sundberg is the North Texas Catalyst for SpringStage. He is currently pursuing a fast-track Masters Degree in Accounting and Finance at the University of North Texas. Prior to dreaming of being a bean counter, Chris co-founded Digital Carbon, a company that converts paper files into searchable databases for businesses using high level indexing and OCR technology. He also currently serves as the webmaster for the Delta Epsilon Chapter of Delta Sigma Pi, a professional business fraternity, as well as being an administraor and technical consultant for the Sax on the Web Forum, the world’s largest and most widely read discussion site related to saxophone.
Alan Weinkrantz is the San Antonio Catalyst for SpringStage. He is a Public Relations and Social Media Consultant serving clients in the U.S. and Israel. He is a contributing columnist to the San Antonio “Express-News,” where he covers Social Media and AT&T. His blogs and commentaries have been featured in “The Wall Street Journal,” “The New York Times,” “Kiplinger,” “CNET,” and “Telephony Magazine.” He has appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and interviewed on NPR’s “Marketplace,” on money saving strategies for triple play residential services.
Marc DeWalle is the North Carolina catalyst. Marc is an experienced management and start-up consultant with extensive experience in corporate entrepreneurship: injecting innovation and entrepreneurship in corporate governance, strategy and execution. Marc has 10+ years experience in business development, sales and channel management. In 2005 he started the on-line business video streaming service www.streamdallas.com which he sold in 2007.
Jake Lumetta is the Detroit catalyst. Jake is a pretty down to earth guy that has a passion for technology, specifically web technology. He created and launched BonafideReviews, a popular
tech publication, back in college at Michigan State University as his first foray into running an online business. Since then Jake has recently obtained his MBA and is applying his newly
acquired knowledge, extreme passion, and technical background to change the way others shop together online by co-founding ShopFiber.
Richard Stump is an entrepreneur, consultant, writer and advisor. He is currently the Vice President, Operations with Transposagen Biopharmaceuticals, a biotech start-up. He previously worked as a management consultant where he advised life-science and technology start-ups on strategy, technology commercialization, business plan development and venture finance. He is the founder of the Entrepreneur Foundation of Kentucky and is on the board of the Bluegrass State Skills Corporation.
Dug Song is VP engineering at Zattoo, a virtual cable provider based in Ann Arbor and Zurich bringing TV to the Internet. Previously, Dug spent 7 years as co-founder and Chief Security Architect at Arbor Networks, responsible for products securing over 70% of the world’s Internet service providers, and many of the largest enterprise and defense networks. Prior to Arbor, Dug was the architect of an enterprise network security product at Anzen Computing – acquired by NFR Security, acquired by Check Point (CHKP). Dug is well-known for his work in Internet security and open-source software, and has organized or spoken at many academic and industry conferences around the world. In his spare time, he is building a free, public skatepark in Ann Arbor (a2skatepark.org) and helping organize Ann Arbor’s tech/startup community (a2geeks.org).
Lee Drake is CEO of OS-Cubed, Inc. - a Rochester based software development company which specializes in Entrepreneurial Software Development. Lee is on the board for the Eyes on the Future event, the Genesee Valley Society of Human Resource Managers, the Neighborhood of the Arts Business Association, and JSEC. He is a former Small Business Council board member. Lee actively participates in the Rochester startup economy by providing training and seminars to SBC members, Procurement Technical Assistance Center members and TEN participants. He is also a mentor for the award winning Penfield High School FIRST robotics team 1511, Rolling Thunder.
Brandon Cotter is a chronic entrepreneur who has been involved in founding or cofounding about a dozen ventures over the last 15 years in Dallas. He was fortunate to have been a part of a few successful ones (CreateTech (sold to Broadcast.com), musicforce (sold to Gaylord Entertainment), Viewzi, etc.) and some fantastic failures (Stick Networks among others). Brandon currently runs a startup called Viewzi. Viewzi does “multi-view” search and we are trying to help web sites deliver richer, more engaging search. His favorite part of all this is working with really smart folks to build great things.
Marc Dangeard is an Entrepreneur and Network Weaver based in San Francisco, with extensive management and business development experience, including experience in starting, growing, managing, buying and selling businesses in various fields and coordinating multi-national teams working across multiple time lines. Marc is the founder of Entrepreneur Commons at www.entreco.org. He is currently a managing partner at Melcion Chassagne & Cie where he is a trusted advisor to entrepreneurs, helping them through the various phases of their ventures.
Shane Gibson became interested in entrepreneurship at an early age. In the year 2000, his parents purchased Mardi Gras Costume Shop, the largest professional costume shop in the Southwest. The experience of working in the family business, combined with his theatrical/acting experience, has allowed him to recognize that he has a natural ability to create successful sales and marketing strategies. During the fall semester of his freshman year at Babson, he became extremely interested in the Internet/new media industry. He took an active interest in learning about the entire industry, from how to create websites using HTML, to how to make money with advertising. This interest led to two short-lived affiliate marketing websites that were shuttered once he realized the potential of Defender’s Own.
Gwin Scott is currently President and Board Member of EmergeMemphis, www.emergememphis.org a business and technology incubator whose purpose is to help startups and entrepreneurs with the resources they need to become self-sustaining and successful. EM has 27 portfolio companies comprised of various technology, service, and consumer product organizations. Job sector tasks include provide strategic insight to the CEO’s of each company, as well as duties within management, operational, P-L and all financials, HR, PR, company recruitment, and fundraising areas.