The Team
Kevin Johansen
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Kevin Johansen is a serial entrepreneur, recognized innovator, and widely-known contributor to the Colorado entrepreneurship and investment community. In addition to leading the Business Catapult, he is the Chair of Colorado's annual Angel Capital Summit (AngelCapitalSummit.org), a board director for the Rockies Venture Club, the oldest and largest entrepreneur and investor organization in Colorado (RockiesVentureClub.org), the founder of the Entrepreneurial Standards Forum (es2f.org), and a former director for a private equity investment bank. His experience with entrepreneurship includes starting companies, raising investment capital, serving as interim CEO to prepare companies for subsequent investment rounds, and reviewing companies for prospective investment.
Click here to view Kevin's full professional profile.
Dave O'Brien
Chief Operating Officer
Dave O’Brien has over 20 years of Senior Management experience as the COO and CFO roles in two successful startups, as well as Senior Operational management positions for four fortune 500 companies, including GE and AMD. Recently Dave was the COO/CFO for P2 Energy Solutions, a privately held $90M SaaS and outsourcing services company based in Denver.
Recently, Dave was President of Blue Waves Consulting, a firm that specialized in consulting to "C" level officers. In 2007, Dave was also the Entrepreneur in Residence for the University of Colorado Bard Center for Entrepreneurship where he helped entrepreneurs develop, manage, grow, and obtain funding for their companies. Dave managed the Bard Center as their Interim Director for the last half of 2007. In the last year he has supported over 40 companies in a variety of stages of growth.
Dave has MBA in Finance and Strategy from the University of Michigan, and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University. He is on the Board of Directors of Progressive Health Center, a non-profit complementary health care facility located on the Swedish Campus. Dave also participates as a board advisor to several local software companies and as a board advisor to other non-profits.
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Jonathan Shuster
Chief Scientist and Chief Technical Officer
Jonathan ("Jono") Shuster helps business owners and managers understand the dynamics that drive entrepreneurial success. In this practice, he has developed these principles into the logic that underlies the Benchmark Survey, Benchmark Report and matching algorithms. Jono's experience spans entrepreneurial, corporate, and academic settings. As president and co-founder of a software technology company, Jono financed product development through a mix of sales and Federal technology development contracts. As a research faculty member at Virginia Tech, he led the development of software systems to solve complex industrial management problems. Earlier, he held marketing and engineering management roles in large and small technology companies serving the Federal marketplace. Jono's passion is helping entrepreneurs succeed in taking innovative ideas and technologies to market, where they can help solve complex problems.
Click here to view Jono's full professional profile.