The Alderson Program in Entrepreneurship and the Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship for the New West started its entrepreneur in-residence (EIR) program in the spring of 2011 with its first EIR, Gary Gannon. These seasoned entrepreneurs are brought in to act as mentors the CoB students.
This program provides one-of-a-kind mentoring and face-to-face interactions with successful entrepreneurs spanning diverse fields of expertise. During the week, entrepreneurs visit a number of classes to chat with students, answer questions and give constructive criticism on projects and presentations. They also hold office hours.
Latest Entrepreneur-in-Residence:
ROB IRIZARRY Public Presentation: March 27, 6:15-7:00 pm Rob Irizarry has spent 25 years in the technology industry, working with hardware and software in the finance, garment and automotive industries. He's worked in and with public and private sector organizations from 10 people to the Fortune 10 building systems, processes and teams in the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South Africa and spent a decade living in Asia. After his stint in Asia, Rob returned to the US & joined an East Coast startup that pioneered smart card financial systems that were sold to banks, universities and the US Navy. While working in this venture, he started using software from RightNow Technologies and joined the company shortly thereafter when the financial systems company was acquired by ICL/Fujitsu. Rob was an early employee at RightNow Technologies in Bozeman, joining in 1999 and working in a variety of roles in Sales, Product Management and the Customer Experience group. RightNow was a pioneer in the multi-tenant Software as a Service revolution, providing Customer Experience software that served about 2,000 of the world’s largest consumer firms like Nike, Motorola and AMEX, becoming one of the world’s 100 largest web sites in terms of traffic. After Oracle's $1.8 billion acquisition of RightNow in 2012, Rob moved to the next phase of his career, founding StartupBozeman.com to help the Montana startup ecosystem grow, invested in a local software startup that uses machine learning to process large amounts of data from social networks and is in the process of launching a second, bootstrapped startup. Rob has a Bachelors degree in Electronic Engineering and has three patents pending on technology he has helped develop.For more information about the Entrepreneur-in-Residence program, please contact Scott Bryant, bryant@montana.edu. |
