Daniel Cunningham was running a property management company in Los Angeles when a boiler in one of his buildings overheated and caught fire. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the residents lost hot water, rent credits had to be given to over 300 people, and the new boiler could only be installed via helicopter. 

The community managers simply didn’t know that vendors needed to be maintaining the equipment. Now they knew—but for how long? Managing a building is more than just maintaining heating and plumbing, it’s about maintaining institutional knowledge. Buildings are made up of exceedingly complex systems and components that require an in-depth understanding that is easily lost from one manager to the next. 

And it’s not just the inner workings of a building that need to be understood—it’s marketing, real estate law, finance, and more. Daniel’s first thought was to author a book on the subject. His better thought was to start a new company, Leonardo247. 

In this edition of UpTech Report, Daniel tells the story of Leonardo247’s inspiration, and how it’s helping companies avoid the next disaster.

For many founders, the precipitating experience to starting a company is merely a desire to solve a problem identified in a marketplace. But for Brian Rainey, it was working his way up the corporate ladder through accounting and finance. 

He went from CPA to CFO, all the while knowing it would eventually lead to spreading his wings and founding his own company. “My plan was always to get the corporate background and then apply that into a startup,” he says. Now that plan has come to fruition with his company, Gooten, which connects businesses with a global network of custom printers for fast, scalable on-demand print services.

In this edition of Founder’s Journey, Brian talks about how his experience as a numbers guy influences his decisions as a CEO—and he shares the single-most important advice he tells beginning founders.

William Hurley had a vision—begin an open source space for people to collaborate in quantum computing. It didn’t work out. So he decided to start his own company. And just as the quantum world is a little strange, so is his startup, Strangeworks.   

They’re not selling a product—at least, not yet. Instead, they’re building community and offering free resources, which includes tools you can use on their website to begin working in quantum computing right now.   

In this episode of UpTech Report, William talks about why he believes quantum computing is important, when we can expect this new technology to have a real impact in the marketplace, and ways you can get involved today. “I don't care what company you use,” he says, “I do care that you get involved.”

If you’re looking for an excellent case study on tech startup founders, Chris Bullock has all the ingredients: A drive to answer interesting questions, an eye for data, identification of a target user base, an openness to communication, discovery of a problem that needs solving, adaptability, and a plan for growth. 

It was all of these elements that led to the creation of his startup, ClearGov, which gathers budget and other data on local governments and presents them in an easy-to-read graphical format. ClearGov also offers local governments the advanced tools they need to record and share their budgets. 

In this edition of Founders Journey, Chris tells the story of how his startup evolved from a simple question, how he gained his first customers, and later acquired funding.

When having something delivered, or being picked up for a ride, we want more than rough estimates. We want to know where the driver is, which way they’re going, and exactly when we can expect them to arrive. But for the most part, this capability has been limited to companies willing and able to allocate massive resources. 

Kashyap Deorah sought to change that with his company, HyperTrack. They offer a sophisticated but easily integrated GPS tracking system as a SaaS, allowing companies of all sizes to track their drivers and share selected information with customers in real time. 

On this edition of UpTech Report, Kashyap discusses some of the intricacies involved in offering an API service, how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected his sector, and where he sees his company growing.

Simon Yencken was an executive at Reuters Group in London, when an impromptu invitation to negotiate an acquisition in New York suddenly set his career in an entirely new direction. 

That one meeting began a journey that brought him to co-found and lead Fanplayr, a technology startup that uses AI to help e-commerce businesses better understand the behavior of their customers, allowing for a more targeted, customized experience. 

In this edition of UpTech Report, Simon talks about his unusual path from studying law to working in finance to being the CEO of a startup. And he tells us what he believes are the essential elements startups need to acquire funding and be successful.

Machine learning is fast becoming a ubiquitous technology—but if you don’t fully understand what it is and how it works, you’re not alone. It’s an evolving idea with complex functionality. But our guests on this edition of UpTech Report figured out a way to conceptualize machine learning in a way that is easier to understand and apply in real-world settings. 

Jorge Torres and Adam Carrigan are the co-founders of MindDB (CEO and COO, respectively), a company that treats machine learning as a database layer, allowing you to retrieve predictive analysis by performing a simple SQL query. With their technology, obtaining insights on future sales is as easy as checking your inventory. 

On this edition of UpTech Report, Jorge and Adam explain how their implementation of machine learning works and its intriguing potential.

For decades, Ray Hein has been involved in designing products, working with remote teams spread across the globe. He’s always been interested in finding ways to make the process more efficient, which included a ten-year run with a software company eventually sold to Oracle. 

Now, for the first time, he finds himself the founder and CEO of a tech startup called Propel, a SaaS product built on Salesforce that helps distributed teams work together faster and smarter. 

In this edition of UpTech Report, Ray talks about how he first started working in this space, and his company’s fairytale funding origins.

Consumers in the digital age have come to expect a high level of customizability—we want products that are unique to us and hold meaning. Businesses also wish to create tailored experiences that resonate with their customers.

This was a dynamic Brian Rainey came to realize. “Consumer expectations continue to shift, really desiring personalized items while at the same time, retailers and brands need to be more innovative,” he says. “They need to connect on a more personal level.” But flexible manufacturing processes are key—no longer can companies fill warehouses with items that might never sell.

It was understanding the synergy of these dynamics that inspired Brian to start his company, Gooten, which helps businesses manage on-demand print services that are scalable, efficient, and affordable.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Brian discusses how the idea for Gooten first evolved from a front-end to back-end service, and he walks us through the complexities of managing a global network of on-demand suppliers.

It’s not uncommon that your first startup will end up becoming the process by which you discover your second. This was the case with Pere Codina, who founded a tech company that helped businesses sell online. But their best client was struggling with competition. They were losing money with advertising because they couldn’t keep up with the competitive landscape. 

Pere’s efforts to solve this problem became his next company, Kompyte, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to scope out the competition. 

On this edition of UpTech Report, Pere discusses how the idea for Kompyte developed from identifying needs of existing customers, and his unorthodox but successful strategy of starting a company in Spain, but targeting the United States as the primary market.