The most exciting and important stage of a startup's life is the beginning of the scaling process. It's during this stage that you’ll learn if your startup is going to survive expansion. But why is expansion so difficult? During this panel, executives of Denver-based startups will discuss lessons learned and how to position your startup to expand beyond the Denver market.

Moderator:

Dave Bacon, founder & CEO, BWBacon Group

Enthusiastic business leader, investor and entrepreneur in the technology staffing arena with 21 years’ experience building awesome teams. His company, BWBacon Group, was recognized as a 2016 ‘Best Places to Work’, a 2015 ‘Top 50 Colorado Companies to Watch’ and has been on the Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies three times. He is a founding board member of the Playing For Change Foundation, the O’Brien School for the Maasai in Tanzania, the Ernst Bacon Society, and is Regional Member Products Director for the Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO), a National Ski Patrol alum, and he and his wife Heather are the proud parents of 3 growing bacon bits under the age of 10.

Panelists:

Andrea Pearson, chief marketing officer, DispatchHealth

Andrea drives consumer awareness and demand as DispatchHealth rapidly expands its service area to new markets. DispatchHealth offers on-demand mobile urgent care services, delivered in the home, senior care facility or office. Prior to DispatchHealth, Andrea served as chief marketing officer at Healthgrades. Her experience spans product development, customer acquisition, affinity partnerships, branding, marketing communications and public relations in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer environments.

Luke Beatty, chairman and CEO, Brandfolder

Luke Beatty serves as the Chairman and CEO of Brandfolder, a brand management platform located in Denver. Prior to that, he served as the President of Media Brands at Verizon/ AOL. Luke founded Associated Content, Inc. in 2004 and served as its President & CEO. He sold that company to Yahoo in 2010. Prior thereto, Luke served on the executive management team of WAND, Inc. His expertise is in contextual advertising models, online media collection, and distribution strategies. In his free time, Luke is a youth lacrosse coach and fly fishes around the world. He holds an M.Ed. from Harvard University and a B.A. from Connecticut College.

Laurie Kuhn, co-founder and COO, Flyreel

Flyreel offers an Artificial Intelligence platform that gathers property insights, makes real-time decisions and deepens customer engagement for personal & commercial insurance. Laurie brings 20+ years of experience in digital innovation to Flyreel, where she leads the company's product, marketing and operations strategies. Laurie has built her career on identifying disruptive opportunities to address unmet market needs and making transformation happen. Prior to Flyreel, Laurie honed her skills in both corporate and startup environments, including digital strategy work for Samsung, Capital One, StarMedia and Barnes & Noble.com, where she helped shape the modern e-commerce and digital marketing playbook.

Carm Huntress, CEO, RxRevu

Carm is one of the founders of RxRevu and leads the organization as CEO. He has a diverse background in technology, with specific expertise in new product development. After graduating from Northeastern University with a degree in Electrical Engineering, Carm served in key leadership positions at a variety of consumer-focused technology start-ups including as Chief Technology Officer at two successive organizations.He was inspired to create RxRevu and take on the challenges of Health Information Technology in 2013. Since that time, he has made transforming the value of healthcare through better prescription decisions both his and the organization's shared mission. He has been instrumental at a national level supporting interoperability and patient access to data through the development of the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR) and other demonstration projects with the Office of National Coordinator (ONC). Alongside his team, he leads the industry in taking Prescription Decision Support from a concept to a marketable reality for physicians, payers and health systems.

Scott R. Cousino, CEO and co-founder, myStrength

Scott R. Cousino is the CEO and co-founder of myStrength, Inc., a digital behavioral healthcare company delivering innovative, scalable solutions for healthcare payers and providers. Scott has a successful corporate career that spans finance, marketing and business development. Prior to founding myStrength, Scott was an executive at Alta Colleges, a higher education services company offering associate and bachelor degree programs to over 18,000 students. As President, Scott oversaw the 600-employee organization, and led the launch and successful growth of Alta's fully accredited e-learning platform. Prior to Alta, Scott served as Senior Vice President at Fidelity Investments and led the offshore division, with locations across Canada, United States and South America.