Founder Stories
Hear from thought leaders, experts, and seasoned professionals with unique experiences and valuable insights.
Join us as we hear directly from founders sharing first-hand accounts of the highs, lows, and entrepreneurship lessons learned throughout their journeys. These sessions are a great opportunity to hear from successful founders as you scale your own startup.
Founder Story: Chris Heivly
The word “startup” isn’t quite accurate. As any founder knows, starting is only the first step. It takes starting strong, then navigating what comes afterwards, to achieve success. So how do you get from the starting line to building a successful business?
On June 8th, Chris Heivly—appropriately dubbed the “Startup Whisperer”—will join us to share his Founder Story. He was a co-founder of MapQuest, directed over $75M in venture funds, and was recently the SVP of Innovation at Techstars. Currently, he’s an angel investor and focuses on startup community building, enabling economic development leaders to create the right environment for new entrepreneurs. He’s a multi-time author and hosts the podcast Your Startup Community with Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway.
Chris is one of the nation’s leading experts on launching startups. Founders will benefit from his insights and experience as we discuss what it takes to start and scale a successful business. We’ll also take questions from the audience—so feel free to come prepared.
We ask that all program attendees have a Bolster account. If you don’t have one, you can create your free account here.
Past Founder Stories
To access past recordings, simply login to your Bolster Client account and go to CEO Tools. All past Founder Stories - and other resources - are available under Exclusive Content.
Ana Chaud
Ana Chaud is the CEO of Lodestar, an accelerator that turns startups into successful global ventures, and has recently launched Sankalpa, a Leadership Program tailored to founders and CEOs looking to get clear on their goals and the intentions that drive their business and growth strategy.
We discussed what it takes to succeed as a CEO—in particular, knowing ourselves as leaders. Watch the recording for insights on how to lead with intention and how to stay one step ahead in defining your path, your strategy, and the reasons behind it.
Laura Mather
Laura Mather is a CEO, Independent Director & Entrepreneur with expertise in cybersecurity and environmental, social, and corporate governance. Over the course of her career, she has led cybersecurity initiatives for Fortune 500 companies, helped boards determine the appropriate ESG goals to maximize stakeholder value, and learned to effectively balance risk with product and revenue strategy.
We discussed her journey as a multi-time founder and board member in a high-tech industry—with widely applicable takeaways for founders scaling their own startups.
Tim Enwall
Tim Enwall is currently the COO at Fermyon Technologies, leading the ecosystem for the third wave of cloud computing. He started his career at Apple, and has since been a leader or founder of multiple successful tech companies. He’s also a board member for a variety of fascinating organizations, a Bolster Prime Mentor, an 11-time angel investor, and an advisor to Furhat Robotics and Spiky.ai.
In his Founder Story, Tim talks about what it takes to build great businesses—from passion and discipline to business management and high performance culture.