Started in the trenches.
Sales, publishing, internet directories, teams, customers, and the daily work of making a company survive long enough to matter.
Entrepreneur · teacher · investor · family man
A lifetime around founders, family, and the work of building.
I’ve spent most of my career working with entrepreneurs — first as an operator, then as a teacher, mentor, angel investor, and venture capitalist.
This site is meant to be a simple, fuller introduction: the work I’ve cared about, the people who shaped me, and the principles that still guide how I spend my time.
HusbandFatherGrandfatherEntrepreneurExecutiveAngel investorVenture capitalistPickleballGolfChess
Serious work, grounded relationships.A brief public introduction to the work, relationships, and ideas that have shaped my career.
Decadesaround entrepreneurs, operators, students, and founders.
Operator → educator → investorA career shaped by building, teaching, and backing companies.
BYU · InfoSpace · Google FiberSelected chapters before Startup Ignition became the current focus.
Bootcamp · Ventures · ToolSuiteEducation, capital, and tools for serious founders.
Quiet credibility matters.
For founders and investors, the signal should come from substance: what has been built, who has been helped, how decisions are made, and whether the person behind the work seems steady enough to trust.
Work
The through-line is entrepreneurship.
My work has moved through several forms — operating companies, teaching entrepreneurs, helping build startup communities, and investing in founders.
Founder education became a calling.
BYU and Startup Ignition gave me years of close-up work with entrepreneurs learning what to build, who to serve, and how to get real traction.
Backing narrow, serious wedges.
At SIV, the focus is practical: vertical B2B software, urgent workflow problems, early revenue evidence, capital discipline, and founders who can learn fast.
Founder principles
What I’ve come to believe about startups.
After years of operating, teaching, mentoring, and investing, a few patterns keep showing up. They are not slogans as much as working rules of thumb.
Specific beats big.
A narrow customer, painful workflow, and clear use case usually teach more than a broad market story.
Revenue changes the conversation.
Paying customers are better evidence than enthusiasm, polished decks, or abstract interest.
Capital should follow learning.
Money is most useful after the founder has learned what matters and can spend with discipline.
Founders reveal themselves under pressure.
The best founders learn quickly, tell the truth, and adjust without losing conviction.
Workflow matters.
Vertical B2B software becomes durable when it is embedded in the way real work gets done.
Durability beats noise.
Useful, trusted companies usually matter more than whatever happens to be fashionable for a season.
Startup Ignition
Three related ways to serve founders.
Startup Ignition has become the center of my current business focus. Its three related efforts — Bootcamp, Ventures, and ToolSuite — serve founders through education, capital, and tools.
BootcampPractical founder education: tightening the customer, problem, wedge, and go-to-market plan before too much capital is wasted.Visit Bootcamp ↗
VenturesEarly-stage investing focused on capital-efficient vertical B2B SaaS companies with clear workflow value.Visit Ventures ↗
ToolSuiteFounder tools and workflows that help entrepreneurs move from idea to sharper execution.Visit ToolSuite ↗
Founder education
Teaching forces clarity.
When you spend enough time with early founders, patterns become easier to see: vague customers, soft pain, unclear wedges, pricing uncertainty, and the difference between enthusiasm and evidence.
Start with a specific customer and a painful workflow.
Look for early revenue as evidence, not decoration.
Keep the plan narrow enough that a small team can actually execute it.
Professional timeline
Major chapters since college.
Selected chapters include print directories, the early internet shift, InfoSpace, BYU, Google Fiber, and Startup Ignition.
Early career
West Seattle Associates, Inc.
Early operating and sales experience in the Seattle market.
Seattle
Publishing
NTD Publishing, Inc.
Built in the yellow pages publishing world after the AT&T / Ma Bell breakup opened new opportunities.
President / CEO
Internet shift
Banana Pages → Yellow Pages on the Internet
A print-directory background met the early internet — a chapter that helped lead toward InfoSpace.
Founder / operator
Scale
InfoSpace
Joined the early internet platform wave and served in senior leadership during a formative public-company chapter.
Senior VP
Education
Brigham Young University
Worked with student entrepreneurs and helped build the entrepreneurship program and founder ecosystem around BYU.
2001–2013
Community
Google Fiber / Provo
Helped during the Provo fiber transition and then worked with Google Fiber’s Utah operations.
2013–2014
Current focus
Startup Ignition
Bootcamp, Ventures, and ToolSuite now form the center of the work: founder education, investment, and tools.
2015–present
Selected chapters
A few things that shaped the work.
This is not meant to be a trophy case. It is a short record of the operating, education, community, and investing chapters that explain how I see founders today.
Directories to the internet
Print directories, Banana Pages, Yellow Pages on the Internet, and InfoSpace were early lessons in timing, distribution, and market shifts.
BYU entrepreneurship
Years with student founders made teaching, mentoring, and founder pattern recognition a central part of the work.
Google Fiber / Provo
The Provo fiber chapter reinforced how infrastructure, civic trust, and startup communities can shape each other.
Startup Ignition Bootcamp
Bootcamp focuses on practical founder education before teams waste too much time or capital on the wrong assumptions.
CapitalStartup Ignition Ventures
SIV backs capital-efficient vertical B2B SaaS founders with narrow wedges, early evidence, and room to compound.
ToolsStartup Ignition ToolSuite
ToolSuite extends the education work into repeatable workflows founders can use as they test and refine their companies.
Ideas and conversations. A fuller resources section can come next — podcast episodes, founder frameworks, talks, or essays — once the best public links are selected.
Community & investors
Rooms where founders keep learning.
Events and annual meetings are not the whole story, but they show something important: entrepreneurship is learned in communities, through repeated exposure to people who have built, invested, failed, adjusted, and kept going.
For potential LPs, this should say something quietly useful: the fund is connected to a real founder education engine and a local ecosystem, not just a spreadsheet of abstract opportunities.
Life outside work
Family, competition, patience.
The personal side should create connection without feeling like a trophy case. These are simply parts of life that have mattered: Susan, children, grandchildren, Seattle roots, golf, pickleball, and chess.
Family is the long game.
Husband, father, and grandfather are not separate from the professional story; they shape how I think about commitment, trust, and time.
Husband, father, and grandfather are not separate from the professional story; they shape how I think about commitment, trust, and time.
John & Susan
Family roots
Golf · pickleball · chess
Games that reward patience.
Golf connects back to Seattle and family. Pickleball is competitive and social. Chess is pattern recognition under constraints. None of that needs to be over-explained, but together it adds a human texture that feels true.
Golf: long conversations, small corrections, and patience after bad shots.
Pickleball: fast reactions, partnership, and competitive joy.
Chess: seeing patterns early and staying calm when the board changes.
Mixed doubles with Susan.
A warm part of life outside work.
A warm part of life outside work.
Golf trips
Startup life, lightlyWays to connect
Different people come here for different reasons.
The site should make the next step simple without turning every relationship into a transaction.
Founders
Startup Ignition Bootcamp, practical mentoring, and tools for sharpening the customer, problem, wedge, and early go-to-market plan.
Investors & LPs
Startup Ignition Ventures, vertical B2B SaaS, disciplined pre-seed investing, and a founder education engine behind the pipeline.
Universities & ecosystem
Teaching, workshops, panels, founder education, and practical startup programming for serious builders.
Friends & relationships
Old friends, family connections, former students, founders, and people from earlier chapters are welcome here too.
Connect
For founders, investors, ecosystem friends, and old relationships.
The best public contact path for now is LinkedIn. If you are looking for Startup Ignition Bootcamp, Ventures, or ToolSuite, the links below point you back to the right part of the site.