Michael Gronager

Cofounder & CEO, Chainalysis

“Is a Ph.D. the new MBA? It might be. I’m not afraid of problems that are way too big.”

Propelled by the belief that in 5-20 years all value transfer will occur over the blockchain, Michael and his co-founders Jan and Jonathan started Chainalysis in 2014. The New York-based Dane has been drawn to vast and vaguely defined questions his whole life - evidenced by him spending 8 years earning an MSc in Chemical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Quantum Mechanics. Bridging financial institutions and blockchain exchanges is indeed a very big problem and Michael’s excitement around solving it is unwavering. “More or less everything that we really value as items and functionality has been built by startups. The spirit of invention is infectious.”

Carol Vallone

Former CEO, WebCT;
Current CEO, Meteor Learning

“I am drawn to white space - and a challenge.”

Solving the skills gap crisis is Carol’s mission. She knows the space well - Meteor Learning is Carol’s third ‘next gen learning’ company. Carol’s holistic view of ‘the win’ is impressive. Products that matter, career opportunities for employees, strategic value for customers and financial returns are the measures of true success. This is the opportunity that calls, time and again. “You’re an entrepreneur by DNA. Therefore it’s never a good or bad time to pursue that path - it’s always time.”

Hilmi Ozguc

Founder & CEO, Swirl Networks

“My serial nature is driven by my desire to create.”

Marketing to retail customers on their mobile devices is good but doing it when they’re in stores, actively shopping is even better. It’s an obvious but complex opportunity and this is precisely what energizes Hilmi, inspires his work and drives him to succeed. Having previously built and sold two businesses, Swirl Networks is Hilmi's third start up. “Success is being able to return something to those people who bet on you - suppliers, employees, investors, partners, customers. It’s enormously satisfying.”

Nick Francis

Cofounder & CEO, Help Scout

“The best decision I ever made was to never stop learning - and to learn at a high velocity.”

Under Nick's leadership, Help Scout, a builder of customer support tools, has embraced a remote-only employment model, developed a fanatical customer base and consistently grown ‘up and to the right’.

Peter Lee

CEO, RapidMiner

“Boston is gritty, grounded and grinding. This town believes in lots of elbow grease and an emphasis on the fundamentals of building terrific businesses.”

With this mindset and a proven ability to operate at all levels of the growth curve, Peter joined RapidMiner two years ago. The company has quickly established itself as the leading open-source data science platform, an accomplishment Peter credits to teamwork. It’s this ability to collectively outperform that delivers results and a “temporary euphoria - until we climb the next mountain”. Named a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader, this team is making its mark in Boston.

James Cox

CEO, The Routing Company

“People first. What’s most critical to me as a leader is putting people first. Strategy, data, insights, projects, and goals will come and go in life, but the people we work with will not. People build companies.”

“Coxy” joined Routable AI co-founders Menno van der Zee and Alex Waller to make mass transit feel like teleportation. Routable AI is building the products (mission control dashboard, rider app, driver app) with a significant technical edge to dynamically route high-capacity vehicles in real-time. The time is now for on-demand shuttles and Routable AI is helping transform mass transit to serve its riders better in the 21st century.

Amir Bousani

Founder & CEO, RGo Robotics

“We envision a future where autonomous machines and robots become ubiquitous and a large part of our daily lives. Enabling them to sense, understand and navigate their surroundings with an unprecedented level of sophistication is what we do at RGo Robotics. We call it Intelligent Autonomy.”

RGo Robotics is pioneering an artificial perception technology that enables mobile robots to understand complex surroundings and operate autonomously just like humans.

Stacey Hronowski

Founder and CEO, Canix

“Our market did not exist a few years ago. A company like Canix can only be started now.”

Guided by Stacey’s leadership and vision, Canix is building tailored software solutions for a burgeoning industry. Now serving hundreds of customers, it is the only comprehensive ERP for the legal cannabis industry and has the ambitious vision of interconnecting the entire cannabis supply chain.

Sravish Sridhar

Founder and CEO, TrustCloud

“What makes my day is hearing customers say, ‘Where have you been all my life?’ We are fixing a fundamentally broken process in Infosec & Privacy compliance and risk assessment.”

Having successfully built and sold his previous startup, Sravish was drawn to truly big and thorny problems when deciding what to pursue next. The problem he settled on was Trust. TrustCloud is building the trust assurance platform for the modern enterprise, upgrading GRC into a profit center with AI and automation.

Akshat Thirani

Founder and CEO, Amper

“Traditional industries require innovation that makes technology not just powerful but also accessible. Our vision is to unlock the potential of every manufacturer and help build the next generation of factories.”

Coming from a fourth-generation manufacturing family, Akshat leveraged his passion for how things are built and knowledge of the challenges of factory operations to found Amper, which is building the factory OS for world-class manufacturing operations. Akshat and his team are innovating to make shop floor digitization accessible to a customer set that has historically been underserved by the software industry.

Jeff Orkin and Sarah Rudzki

Cofounders, Bitpart AI

“The way games are built and consumed is evolving. Our vision is to enable entirely new kinds of experiences by putting the power of generative AI into the hands of game developers and their players.”

Inspired by their unique blend of experience developing AI for the video game industry and creating conversational AI systems for the enterprise, Jeff and Sarah are leveraging the latest advances in generative AI to shift the paradigm for how game worlds are populated.