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Atlanta Tech Leaders

Month: February 2014

Louie Bernstein with Izenda and Mike Slawson with Lumense

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ATL

Louie Bernstein/Izenda LinkedinTwitter

Louie has been successfully selling B2B products and services for over two decades. His first job was at the age of 10, working at a hot dog stand in Skokie, Illinois. It’s where he first learned the value of, “you want fries with that?”

Louie is the Chief Sales Officer (CSO) at Izenda. Last year his team increased sales contract value 104%, compared to 2012. Since joining Izenda sales have grown an average of 52% per year, over the last three years.

Louie is the recipient of the Top 25 Most Influential Inside Sales Professional award for 2013. Over 1,000 nominations were received and I was among the 25 selected. This is a peer-nominated award.

Louie has won sales awards with every company he has been associated with, or has run. In 2002 his company, MindIQ, was included in the INC. 500 list for one of the fastest growing private companies in America, over a five year period.

Louie is the author of  “How to be a Professional Salesperson” a comprehensive and daily sales training course that is sold around the world. The lessons in this course pull from a career of real-world selling experiences.

Mike Slawson/Lumense LinkedinTwitterFacebook

Mike Slawson is a co-founder and the Chief Executive Officer of Atlanta-based Lumense, a Georgia Tech spinoff commercializing real-time chemical and biological sensor technology. At Lumense Mike oversees all aspects of the company’s development, including business strategy and fundraising. Prior to Lumense, Mike was the founding CEO of Qualtré, Inc., another Georgia Tech spinoff commercializing MEMS inertial sensors. While at Qualtré, Mike was instrumental in licensing the company’s intellectual property from Georgia Tech, developing the business model and strategy, establishing relationships with key customers, partners and suppliers, hiring team members, and raising $5 million in equity capital and $2 million in debt and grant capital from top-tier investors. Mike has served as Advisory Board Chairman at Qualtré since relocating the company to Boston in late 2009.

From 1998 until 2011 Mike was also a general partner at Alliance Technology Ventures, a $250 million Atlanta-based venture capital firm focused on developing early-stage companies in information technology and life sciences. For several years, Mike was responsible for the firm’s information technology investment strategy. Mike either managed or assisted other partners with the management of the firm’s successful investments in several companies, including SecureWorks, Novera, Telaxis, SyChip, Digital Furnace, Mindlever, and OmniGuide. Prior to joining ATV, Mike was a Kauffman Fellow at Chicago-based ARCH Venture Partners.

Mike has a bachelor’s degree (magna cum laude) in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics from Vanderbilt University, a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University, and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Mike also held engineering and engineering management positions with Hewlett-Packard, Siemens, and Alcatel, and holds three US patents. Mike lives in Atlanta with his wife and three children and, in his spare time, enjoys creative writing, coaching youth sports, and hiking.

 

Today’s show is brought to you by Band of Coders.

 

Jim Berryhill with DecisionLink and Sidd Ahmed with VDart

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Jim Berryhill/DecisionLink LinkedinTwitterFacebook

Jim Berryhill is CEO with DecisionLink.  Jim is a highly respected executive with substantial experience in enterprise sales and management at CA, Siebel and Mercury/HP Software. His understanding of value selling was key in transforming these companies from product to solution selling with dramatic increases in revenue, ASP, and other key metrics. His vision for pervasive customer alignment through automation is the driving force of DecisionLink, and an industry game-changer.

Sidd Ahmed/VDart Inc. LinkedinTwitterFacebook

Sidd is the President & CEO of VDart, Inc., a leading Information Technology Staffing firm headquatered in Atlanta, GA. In little more than five years, it has transformed from a brand new firm to a major player on the IT services landscape. Touting nearly 500+ employees, with offices in Atlanta, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, UK and India, VDart provides IT staffing solutions to clients all over the globe.

Founded in 2007, VDart is laser focused on the core objective of finding the right IT professional in emerging technologies with the perfect mix of skills and experiences to meet the client’s business objectives. As a result that commitment and Sidd’s leadership, VDart has received numerous awards and honors recognizing its rapid growth and high achievement including being a Inc 500’s fastest growing privately held firms in U.S. for the past two years, earning ACG Fast 40’s 9th fastest growing company in Atlanta in 2013, and claiming rank on the Pacesetter Awards list for being the fastest growing privately held company in Atlanta for the past two years. Without question, VDart, is doing great things and is a shining example of how a certified MBE can leverage its resources to achieve exponential growth.

 

Today’s show is brought to you by Band of Coders.

Robert Pease with Salesfusion and Rick Copeland with Synapp.io

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Robert Pease/Salesfusion TwitterTwitter

Robert Pease is the Vice President of Product Marketing at Salesfusion and has over 20 years of experience designing, building, and launching software products for both businesses and people.

Rick Copeland/Synapp.io

Rick is currently Chief Technology Officer and cofounder with CEO Mike Marian of Synapp.io, an Atlanta-based startup focused on email deliverability and list compliance. Founded in January 2013, Synapp.io grew from its two cofounders to 10 employees and $1M in annualized revenues in one year, helped in no small part by Flashpoint at Georgia Tech, a “startup studio” helping startups find product-market fit. Synapp.io was also named the “Unsexiest Startup” by 500 Startups at their Unsexy Conference and was featured in Inc magazine.

Prior to founding Synapp.io, Rick worked in a variety of technology companies from large enterprises like IBM and Lucent to startups like Atlanta-based retail analytics firm Predictix. Most recently, Rick was a senior software developer at SourceForge, a pioneer in the open source software project hosting space. There, he helped lead the design of SourceForge’s next-generation project hosting platform Allura.

While at SourceForge, Rick was inducted into the Python Software Foundation and the Masters of MongoDB for his involvement in the Python and MongoDB communities, respectively. He is also the author of the O’Reilly publishing titles MongoDB Applied Design Patterns and Essential SQLAlchemy. He is a frequent speaker at MongoDB events and the Python Atlanta user group.

Rick earned his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Eckerd College and both a Bachelor’s of Computer Engineering and Master’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech. Rick lives in the Metro Atlanta area with his wife Nancy, son Matthew, and daughter Anna.

 

Today’s show is brought to you by Band of Coders.