rackspace startup program insider

Dan Di Spaltro is the General Manager in Rackspace’s San Francisco office. He graduated from Oregon State University in 2007 with a degree in Computer Science.  After graduation, he moved to Silicon Valley and worked for IBM doing consulting work. At the end of 2008, Dan co-founded and held the CTO duties of Cloudkick with two fellow OSU alums, Alex Polvi and Logan Welliver. Cloudkick focused on changing how the IT world managed and monitored servers in the cloud. By late 2010, Cloudkick had grown to 12 employees and the three founders sold Cloudkick to Rackspace Hosting. Dan remains fanatical about solving real problems using technology and building a strong company culture. We are about to get inside the mind of this startup evangelist and find out why getting to market is the most important part of a startup and how leveraging the cloud can get you there faster.

Pat Condon is one of the founders of Rackspace. Throughout his tenure at Rackspace, he has held numerous leadership positions in marketing, business development and customer care, helping champion Rackspace’s unique flavor of customer service, Fanatical Support™. These days, Pat spends time figuring out how to expand Rackspace products and services to better serve customers and enlightening new Rackers on the company culture. And, with an entrepreneurial flame burning within, Pat has aligned with startups, sharing his business experiences as a mentor at 3 Day Startup, TechStars Cloud and as co-founder of Geekdom, the collaborative workspace in San Antonio. We are about to get inside the mind of this evangelist of the local San Antonio startup ecosystem and learn how startups defy conventional wisdom and do more with less.

Gerardo A. Dada, Director of Product Marketing at Rackspace, is an experienced technology marketer with over 15 years of driving business strategy and product marketing for leading technology companies including Bazaarvoice, Vignette/OpenText, Microsoft and Motorola. His passion lies in product marketing, online strategies and social media. Gerardo has a true understanding of aligning the right products for the entrepreneurs’ needs. We are about to get inside the mind of this product guru and find out why connecting with customers and community is essential to the success of a startup.

Back in 1998, three Trinity University students approached a San Antonio entrepreneur named Graham Weston with an idea to build an internet hosting company. The deal was inked – and the startup they launched was Rackspace Hosting. Today, Graham is Chairman of the company. One of those students with big dreams of making his mark in technology was Dirk Elmendorf, one of the founders of Rackspace. These days, Dirk spends time promoting the technology and services that make Rackspace unique to industry leaders, customers, business partners and startups. At the moment, Dirk is working on a new startup venture, TruckingOffice, which provides cloud-based software to manage small trucking companies. Dirk is a true promoter of the startup movement, and we are about to get inside this serial entrepreneur’s head and find out why startups are so near and dear to his heart.

Not so long ago, Rackspace was searching for a way to be attractive to startups in their very early stages. Startups don’t have a lot of money when they’re ramping up, and Rackspace wanted to find ways to give entrepreneurs exposure to our cloud services before they could afford it. The entrepreneurial spirit within Rackspace was crucial in creating the Rackspace Startup Program. One man who was instrumental in bringing the program to fruition is Rackspace Senior Vice President Pat Matthews. Coming from his own startup, Pat knows that startups are critical to Rackspace; and here he shares his inside knowledge from within Rackspace and the startup space.

Entrepreneurs are an essential fabric within the Rackspace Startup Program. To help facilitate the dreams of startups from ideation to implementation is truly fulfilling for the Space Cowboys. Startups are leading the way into the future of computing. Within Rackspace Hosting, we have leaders who embrace the startup movement and understand that we must engage, add more value to and enhance our relationships with startups. Lew Moorman, newly appointed President of Rackspace Hosting, is one of those leaders. Moorman joined Rackspace in April of 2000 and has served in a variety of strategy and marketing roles throughout the company’s growth. Now it’s time to go inside and find out Lew’s views on how Rackspace and the Startup Program are supporting startups.

Over the last year it has truly been a privilege to share stories with you about some of the companies, partners and events that the Space Cowboys have attended within the Rackspace Startup Program. The technology world is buzzing with brilliant entrepreneurial minds creating new ways and improving on old ones, making our planet a better place. This innovation makes the stories easy to tell.