Austin Tech Connect: The Podcast For The Austin Technology Ecosystem, Business Leaders, and Tech Entrepreneurs!

James Beecham is a Founder and the Chief Executive Officer at ALTR, an innovator of automated data access control and security solutions. He has over a decade of experience leading technology and engineering teams in computer architecture design, database and operating system drivers, database security and data governance and privacy system design. James holds multiple software patents and a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. About ALTR ALTR is the only automated data access control and security solution that allows organizations to easily govern and protect sensitive data wherever it lives – to get more data to more users more securely in less time. Hundreds of companies and thousands of users leverage ALTR’s SaaS platform to gain unparalleled visibility into data usage, automate data access controls and policy enforcement, and secure data with patented rate-limiting, real-time alerting and tokenization-as-a-service, all in minutes instead of months. ALTR’s data ecosystem integrations with leading databases, data catalogs, ETL/ELTS and more enable scalable on-premises-to-cloud data governance and security for a single source of data access truth. To learn more, visit http://ALTR.com. To get the ALTR Free plan for Snowflake, https://get.altr.com/free. About Austin Technology Council Austin Tech Connect is the official podcast of the Austin Technology Council.  ATC was founded in 1992 to help promote the growth of Austin technology companies and to help create more community in the growth tech ecosystem.  Today the organization is a leading organization and a major voice for the continued growth of tech in Central Texas.

Mike Staples has over 15 years of experience in operations, stemming from his time in the Army as a Blackhawk pilot. Prior to Cruise, he brought two early stage tech startups to market, launched a non-sortable facility for Amazon, and launched remote markets for Uber. Mike is passionate about empowering people through tech and super pumped to scale the future of transportation, starting in Austin. Mike has a BS in Systems Engineering from West Point and an MBA from Duke (Fuqua). About Cruise Founded in 2013 in San Francisco, CA, and in partnership with General Motors and Honda, Cruise is building the world’s most advanced self-driving vehicles to safely connect people with the places, things, and experiences they care about.

Suzi Sosa is the co-founder and CEO of Verb, a social enterprise dedicated to unlocking human potential.  Verb's breakthrough platform supports employees in their journey of human-centered leadership development through online practice-based learning. The capabilities employees develop on Verb include self-awareness, empathy, supporting others, collaboration, inclusive leadership, having difficult conversations and building trust. Suzi is a serial social entrepreneur and loves to build businesses with the goal of creating positive social impact.  She is the recipient of the 2014 Ernst & Young Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award and the co-author of Social Impact: Adventures in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.  Prior to Verb she built the social entrepreneurship program at the University of Texas at Austin.  Suzi has a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a B.A. in the Plan II Honors Program from UT Austin.   About  Verb Verb is a people development platform that empowers L&D teams to quickly design, launch and track their soft skills training programs. Through expertly built, ready-to-go programs and flexibility to adapt and customize, it's easy for customers to address the various learning needs across their company. With the support of Verb’s customer success team, customers also get L&D expertise throughout program strategy, design, and implementation. Verb measures the results that matter, giving a deeper understanding of learners’ behavioral data and personalized recommendations to ensure they are giving the best learning possible to their learners.   Austin Tech Connect is the official podcast of the Austin Technology Council.  ATC was founded in 1992 to help promote the growth of Austin technology companies and to help create more community in the growth tech ecosystem.  Today the organization is a leading organization and a major voice for the continued growth of tech in Central Texas.

Razat Gaurav is chief executive officer of Planview, joining the company in 2021. Razat has over 20 years of experience in the enterprise software space, with a proven track record of driving innovation-based growth and scaling up technology businesses. He is a trusted advisor to leading executives, boards and investors on topics related to digital transformation initiatives.   Prior to joining Planview, Razat was the CEO of LLamasoft, the leader in AI-based supply chain design and decisioning software. At LLamasoft, he drove an expanded product vision combined with a purpose-driven culture enabling the company to more than double its revenue in three years and resulted in a successful $1.5 billion acquisition by Coupa in November 2020. Prior to LLamasoft, Razat held leadership positions at Blue Yonder, i2 Technologies and Ernst & Young’s management consulting practice. He also served on the Board of Directors of Sparta Systems and LLamasoft. Razat was recognized by Goldman Sachs as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2020.   About Planview Planview helps leading enterprises transform strategy to delivery with market-leading portfolio and work management solutions for connected work.

Joyce Durst is the CEO and co-founder of Growth Acceleration Partners, a strategic technology solutions partner headquartered in Austin, TX. An engineer by trade and visionary leader by nature — leveraging 30+ years of experience in the software and technology industry — Joyce started GAP in 2007 as a values-based company built on strategic, long-term client partnerships.   Joyce received a degree in computer science from Texas A&M University as a first-generation student and became one of few women to rise to executive ranks at a $1B enterprise software company. She later pivoted to the role of CEO of a venture-backed startup, where her passion for building teams flourished.   She’s a member of the Austin Chamber of Commerce, the Women Presidents’ Organization and Springboard Enterprises. Joyce has won several prestigious awards, including the Greater Austin Business Awards Top CEO in 2022, the Profiles in Power award from the Austin Business Journal, and the Stevie Award for Achievement in Developing and Promoting Women. GAP is a strategic technology solutions partner providing an exceptional experience in Digital Transformation and the Delivery of Software and Data Solutions via world-class consulting and engineering teams. By building strategic, long-term partnerships with clients, we develop extensive domain knowledge combined with deep technical expertise. We have the architectural skills to design next-generation solutions utilizing the latest cloud-based technologies. Our talented engineering teams are agile, transparent, accountable and focused on customer success, with one of the highest satisfaction scores in the industry. GAP helps you scale smarter, transforming your objectives into data, and delivering software solutions that drive business outcomes.

Brent Wistrom is senior editor at Austin Inno and a reporter at the Austin Business Journal. He covers startup news and tech trends through Inno’s daily newsletter, The Beat, and news stories on the Inno and ABJ websites. Prior to joining Inno in 2015, he covered state politics, city hall and crime at The Wichita Eagle, Kansas City Star and Wichita Falls Times Record News. He graduated from the University of Texas in 2003, and he grew up in Minnesota.   Austin Inno is the metro area’s leading source of startup and tech news. Launched in Austin in 2015, it is part of the broader American Inno network that covers emerging trends across local markets in the U.S. Inno is also a sister publication of the Austin Business Journal and part of the American City Business Journals network. Inno also publishes a daily newsletter called The Beat, which goes out to more than 14,000 subscribers each afternoon. Sign up here.  

 Krishna Srinivasan is a co-founder of LiveOak Venture Partners and has been investing in early-stage Texas based companies and entrepreneurs since 2000. His active board involvements at LiveOak include DISCO (NYSE: LAW), Eventus Systems, Homeward, Iris Plans, Imandra, Ojo Labs, Rollick, SchooLinks, Talent Guard, and Virdee. His notable past investments include Digital Pharmacist (acquired by K1), Hive9 (acquired by BrandMaker), Mavenir Systems (NYSE: MVNR), Opcity (acquired by Newscorp), StackEngine (acquired by Oracle), Telestax (acquired by Mavenir)   Prior to co-founding LiveOak, Krishna was a Partner at Austin Ventures and previously he was with Motorola where he wrote large scale optimization software for supply chain planning and worked with a variety of business units on strategic and operational issues. He started his professional career at SEMATECH.   Krishna received his MBA from Wharton where he graduated with highest academic honors as a Palmer Scholar. He also has an MS in Operations Research from the University of Texas at Austin, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, where he graduated with high all-round honors. About LiveOak Venture Partners: LiveOak Venture Partners is a venture capital fund based in Austin, Texas. With over 20 years of successful venture investing in Texas, the founders of LiveOak have helped create nearly $5 billion of enterprise value. While almost all LiveOak's investments begin in the early stages, LiveOak is a complete life cycle investor focused on technology and technology-enabled service companies based in Texas. With close to $500M under management, LiveOak Venture Partners has been the lead investor in over 50 exciting high-growth Texas-based companies in the last decade, including DISCO (NYSE: LAW), Digital Pharmacist, Eventus, OJO Labs, Opcity, Homeward, and TrustRadius. The firm was recognized as the Venture Capital Firm of the year in Austin in the 2022 inaugural A-List awards by the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce.

Rob is a serial software entrepreneur having built, scaled and exited multiple B2B and B2C venture-backed technology businesses. Most recently, Rob was co-founder and CEO of Convey, a pioneer in logistics and supply chain visibility software for some of the largest global retailers such as The Home Depot, Costco, Walmart and QVC. Convey was acquired by project44 in 2021 for $255M. Prior to Convey, Rob was President of BlackLocus, another retail SaaS software business that was acquired by The Home Depot for $55M within eighteen months of taking on the first venture capital investment. Rob then spent two years building Home Depot's Innovation Lab in Austin, TX. Prior to BlackLocus, Rob served as EVP & GM of TrueCar, an online technology business reinventing how cars are purchased & sold on the internet. TrueCar completed its IPO in 2014 after raising several hundred million dollars over the preceding four years.    Chris is a dad, husband, serial entrepreneur, CEO advisor, and bootstrap evangelist.  Chris founded Square Root in 2006 after a 10 year career at Trilogy Software.  He bootstrapped Square Root for 15 years until he sold it to an automotive strategic, CDK Global in 2021. Now Chris helps other entrepreneurs overcome their challenges and celebrate their wins. Square Root’s SaaS platform, CoEFFICIENT, helped the world’s leading automotive brands use data science to drive dealership performance.  Culture is a huge focus for Chris, and Square Root received many culture accolades including being named the 2nd best US workplace by FORTUNE, a top innovator by Fast Company, and one of PEOPLE magazine’s top companies that care. Chris graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Carnegie Mellon with degrees in Computer Science, Mathematics, and Cognitive Psychology.  Outside of entrepreneurship, Chris enjoys adventuring with his wife and two daughters, cycling, and a nice glass of wine.          

In his role as CEO and Founder of SailPoint, Mark brings almost 35 years of experience in technology, with over 20 years as a founder and leader of innovative identity management companies. Under Mark’s direction, SailPoint has grown into the leader in identity security for the modern enterprise with over 2K employees worldwide, operating in 155 countries. Last year, SailPoint was acquired by Thoma Bravo, a leading software investment firm, in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $6.9 billion. Mark directs and drives the overall vision and strategy for SailPoint, which is underpinned by his commitment and passion for building topperforming teams, creating a collaborative and innovative work environment, and focusing continuously on the needs of customers. Teaming is a concept that Mark promotes throughout the company: teaming with forwardthinking customers to understand their needs, with partners to ensure customer success, and ultimately within SailPoint to develop innovative, market-leading solutions. Mark is passionate about maintaining the spirit of teamwork, even as SailPoint grows its employee base and its global presence to offices around the world. Prior to SailPoint, he co-founded Waveset Technologies, which was ultimately acquired by Sun Microsystems. Mark’s career also includes diverse experience in international sales and marketing with Hewlett-Packard and IBM/Tivoli Systems.

Following 4 years of R&D at the University of Cambridge in England, CEO and founder Angela Hood returned to Austin, Texas to build ThisWay Global Inc., a company that converges technology with talent networks (not job boards) to unlock human potential. Today, ThisWay is one of the fastest growing SaaS automation companies in the world, serving over 5000 company customers. ThisWay provides unbiased talent matching and sourcing through its proprietary network of over 8,500 unique, diverse community partners. Hood is a well respected thought leader and international keynote speaker on the topics of mitigating bias using artificial intelligence, the ROI of diversity and human-centric automation. While many know ThisWay through their acceleration by Google, Hood is also the technology advisor for the Board of Directors of Consort Institute at Clark Atlanta University (HBCU). Her groundbreaking work is covered in Simon & Schuster’s book, Hack Recruiting, and she was also recognized by ideaSpace - University of Cambridge and Texas A&M University as Outstanding Alumni in 2021. “As a serial entrepreneur there is no greater accomplishment than to solve a problem that positively affects the world. Our agnostic approach enables us to truly ‘match all people to all jobs in all systems’. I’m proud that through technology, ThisWay is bringing candidates, employers and our network partners together to make meaningful change.“ - Angela Hood.